Danielle Quayle . I listened to a lot of commentary by pundits and others on the newstalk shows last nite, and received a hostile email to my own commentary yesterday:

what exactly is your problem with women? You seem to have a border line hatred of any women that hold high office, I never met a gay man that who was misogynist but you sure seem like your one.

I did not point out the various grammatical errors in that message but sent this reply:

YOU may be confused about gender. I am not. Nature didn't make men larger, stronger, smarter, faster, and more powerful (better able to deliver strength with speed) to be inferior to women in the social order. Matriarchy is extremely unhealthy: witness the condition of blacks in the United States. Female domination [in the human species] is unnatural and is found NOWHERE on Earth, not presently, not in history. A female commander-in-chief is not what any country wants, and the idea of a woman issuing compulsory orders that send men to their death is repugnant to sane people.
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I don't know if you are a heterosexual sado-masochist who likes being dominated by women, or just a maladjusted homosexual, be it mama's boy or 'transsexual', or female heterosexual or lesbian. I don't care. But there are appropriate things for women, and inappropriate things. Radical Feminism devalues traditional women's roles, and says that women aren't good enuf as real women, but must be imitation men to have any value. People who like real women appreciate their traditional roles, and know that nurturing, educating, nursing, and other traditional women's pursuits are good enuf. Women don't have to be combat troops or commanders, and shouldn't be. People should listen to and follow their nature, not deny themselves to be something they were never intended to be. You are entitled to believe what you will, however, so if you disagree with me, don't read my blog. Don't trouble or irritate yourself. And do not trouble me again.

Gay men, unlike straight 'men', don't have to worry about women's sensibilities. We are not emotionally nor sexually dependent upon women, and most of us aren't financially dependent upon them either. So we can speak our mind on all things feminist. The bulk of straight 'men' in this country are not men at all, but mama's boys, often raised in the effective absence of fathers away at work, and dominated into adulthood, even till death, by mama-replacements. To the bulk of this planet, "American man" is a contradiction in terms. Most American 'men' are psychologically castrated losers who don't dare upset their wives or girlfriends, lest they "cut them off" sexually, at least figuratively and, in an age when Lorena Bobbitt was not only not convicted of a horrible crime against her husband but actually made into a "hero" (not, of course, "heroine") of the feminist movement, possibly literally. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of straight 'men' are what they eat, so it is only proper for them to give 'lip service' to Radical Feminism.
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If any straight man reading this doesn't like that, I suggest that straights man-up rather than get angry with me. I'm not the one who makes you live in a house with a pink bathroom and sleep on a bed with a dust ruffle and, during the daytime, 7 pillows.
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Matriarchy has been a catastrophe, or calamity ("calamity" seeming to me more disastrous), to the black community. Between 6 and 8 times as many blacks as whites are in PRISON; black men have a higher unemployment rate than black women, 9.5% vs. 8.5%; and an appallingly high proportion of black males die early ("young black males between the ages of 15 and 34 years are nine times more likely to die of homicide than their white counterparts and nearly seven times as likely to suffer from AIDS" (which is to say, drugs)), many of violence in their teen years, many others as victims of crime or drugs in their early 20s, many others to disabling maladies produced by years of bad choices in youth.
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Radical Feminism as the New Conservatism! The rabid partisanship of the Radical Right has produced a chorus of praise for John McCain's choice of a woman to be "a heartbeat away from the Presidency". If McCain dies in office, his veep will become President of the United States and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. When Hillary Clinton ran for that office, Radical Rightwingers were horrified at that prospect. But all of a sudden, anti-Radical Feminists are now rabid Radical Feminists! What is wrong with these people?
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Conservatives are supposed to value and preserve our traditions. Are female Presidents our tradition? They are not. We have had 43 Presidents, exactly 43 of which have been men. So how is it "conservative" to want to end that tradition and make a woman President? That is not a conservative value. That is so Far Left as to be, let's say it, Communist. Indeed, it's LEFT of Communist, because no major Communist country has ever had a woman dictator. Lenin wasn't a woman. Nor was Stalin, nor Brezhnev, nor any of the other heads of the Soviet state. Nor was Mao Zedong nor any of his successors a woman. So these Radical Rightwingers who are eager to make Sarah Palin Vice President of the United States so she can ascend to President of the United States if John McCain has a heart attack or recurrence of his past cancers, or is assassinated by some Rad Fem loon, or dies in a car crash or plane crash, are to the LEFT of Lenin and Mao Zedong! Astounding.
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Nor is it conservative to give women a job so demanding that it will take a mother away from her children, and subject those children to motherless neglect. How on Earth can Focus on the Family endorse giving a woman who has five children, including one with "special needs" (Down's syndrome), a position that will require her to spend 12-hour or even 16-hour days on the campaign trail, and push all her maternal responsibilities off onto other people? How is that "conservative"? "Family-friendly"?
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Rabid partisanship has driven some Republican "conservatives" out of their minds, into self-confuting stances absolutely inconsistent with everything they have ever stood for — until yesterday! Rightwingers really are stupid slime.
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Paul Begala, a pundit of the Democratic Left, observed last nite that John McCain has had four occurrences of (skin) cancer. AOL recently hilited a story warning that skin cancer may precede other, fatal forms of cancer.
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Begala also pointed out that eight Vice Presidents have become President due to the death of the President. Four Presidents died of assassination; four of natural causes. One President, Nixon, resigned and his Vice President, Ford, ascended to the Presidency. So of the Nation's 43 Presidents, 9 became President before their term as Vice President ended: 21%.
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John McCain was 72 years old yesterday. At the end of his first term, if he is elected and survives thru 2012, he will be 76 years old. Of the four Presidents who died in office, Tyler died before age 72, Taylor before 66, Harding before 58, and FDR at little more than 63 years old.
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I don't care that the present life expectancy of a healthy man of 72 is 83. John McCain is not exactly healthy. He has had four occurrences of cancer; skin cancer often precedes other cancers; and not all cancers are curable. I don't like the odds.
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Begala was right in wondering aloud how McCain, a man who has spent his entire adult life in service to his country, could have been so foolish as to put the future of the Nation in the untested hands of a person (of either gender) who is utterly unqualified to become President if something happens to him. And it doesn't even have to be death. A President could become so seriously and permanently disabled that the 25th Amendment would come into play to create the Veep into Prez.
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So the question again arises, as I asked yesterday, did McCain make this choice, or was it made for him by the Invisible Hand that has given us all recent Republican Presidents? Before yesterday, the most egregious and ridiculous choice for veep in recent memory was Dan Quayle, supposedly selected by George Bush the Elder but perhaps actually chosen by the Invisible Hand, which wanted to balance an old man with a young one, a Southerner of New England ancestry with a Midwesterner, a beautiful young man who was assumed to appeal to the superficial women's vote to balance a craggy, wrinkled old face that would not. And Quayle's family owned a bunch of influential newspapers. Say what you may about Dan Quayle, but he at least had Federal Government experience, which Palin has not had.
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(Sidebar: Quayle is best remembered for two things: criticizing the single-mother storyline on the sitcom Murphy Brown and 'correcting' a kid, during a schoolroom visit, for spelling "potato" without a final-E. Because Dan Quayle was generally regarded as almost a mental defective, his defensible criticism of 'Murphy Brown' for getting knocked up and having a child out of wedlock, spurning an offer to marry, was dismissed as lacking intellectual substance, even ridiculous. Not because it was invalid but because the person who uttered the criticism was a dope. As for the "potatoe" mistake, how silly was that, really? How do you pronounce the word "to", which may seem to a young reader to end "potato"? With a long-O? No. With a long-U. The way we spell a long-O sound after T is indeed OE: "stub your toe". Quayle's error was silly, but, again, defensible. It is because spelling is so very hard in English — a huge number of errors in comment areas all over the Internet should demonstrate that beyond doubt — that I am a spelling reformer. Spelling doesn't have to be hard. It really can be easy, for every single word in the English language.)
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Republicans desperate to rationalize McCain's / the Invisible Hand's ridiculous choice of Sarah Palin have asserted, ludicrously, that she has "executive experience" that would easily transfer from her current and past political offices to the Presidency. Of course she has. She was the mayor(ess) of Wasilla, Alaska, population of between 6,700 and 8,500. Wow-wee! It sure must be hard to make executive decisions for such a bustling metropolis. And just think of all the areas of policy that such an exalted office in such a metropolis would have to deal with!
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Moreover, we are reminded, she is the Governor (Governess) of an entire State! Never mind that Alaska, tho physically huge (about twice the size of Texas), has a population of only 684,000, which works out to 1.2 people per square mile. Wow. How impressive!
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To show how qualified she is to lead the Nation in reducing taxes, the Radical Rightwingers pretend she balanced the Alaska state budget against all odds. These people rely upon people in the Lower 48 knowing NOTHING about Alaska. This is the truth you are not to know:

Alaska has the lowest individual tax burden in the United States, and is one of only five states with no state sales tax and one of seven states that do not levy an individual income tax. To finance state government operations, Alaska depends primarily on petroleum revenues.

How large is the State's income from Alaska's oil industry? So large that:

From its initial principal of $734,000, the [Permanent F]und has grown to $38 billion as a result of oil royalties and capital investment programs. Starting in 1982, dividends from the fund's annual growth have been paid out each year to eligible Alaskans, ranging from $331.29 in 1984 to $1963.86 in 2000.

In short, not only do Alaskans basically pay NO State taxes, but they also get free money from the State Government, which comes from the oil industry. How is that comparable to the financial situation of the United States generally? It's not. Not in the slitest. How 'tuf on the oil industry' has she been? Not at all. She didn't establish the Permanent Fund; she didn't have to fite to expand it. Alaska's oil industry is a captive industry that is making money hand over fist and didn't mind a modest increase in oil taxes. The Republican storyline about Governess Palin's tufness in dealing with financial crises and cutting taxes — what taxes? — is all bullsh(asterisk).
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Dan Quayle too had some executive experience, in the Indiana State government and in his family's publishing business. But he didn't make a great vice-presidential choice, did he? Indiana is a real state, with a substantial population (6.4 million), urban and other real American problems, and no windfall revenue source like Alaska's unearned petrodollars.
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Alaska has fewer people than the COUNTY I live in, Essex County, NJ. Indeed, the total state population is less than that of 16 individual cities in this country. New York City alone has 12 times as many people as all of Alaska.
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And Ms. Palin has been Governess for 22 months, not even two years. I'm not impressed. Nor should anyone be impressed by so thin a resume. And some of what she has done is outrite outrageous, such as awarding the contract to build a new natural gas pipeline to a CANADIAN company! Think about that: she awarded a government contract to a foreign company. Americans can't even get GOVERNMENT contracts anymore under the globalist Republicans.
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Palin is also involved in a controversy (or scandal) involving a decision to fire the State's public-safety director because he wouldn't fire her former brother-in-law who was then involved in a divorce and child-custody dispute with her sister (whose married name, curiously, was Molly McCANN). Did she abuse her authority, or is it just a coinkydink? Oh, please, she's not a vindictive bitch misusing governmental power to attack her ex-brother-in-law. She can be trusted with the most powerful job in the world, if it comes to that. Sure she can.
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Ms. Palin apparently has no political writings nor intellectual accomplishments of any sort, even tho she has a Bachelor of Science degree — science, not arts — in communications-journalism. She put that communications training to work in sports broadcasting. The broad is deep!
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This nomination has all the trappings of an Invisible Hand appointment to which McCain merely assented, on the supposition that these people know what they're doing. They have, after all, won the White House 6 of the last 8 times. "If they think Sarah Palin will fly, I'll have to go along." I'd hate to think that McCain's own judgment is that bad.
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The Republican Party has a chance to save itself from this embarrassment and reject Sarah Palin in convention, but the 'buzz' among "conservative" (albeit newly Radical Feminist) Republican commentators suggests that the party will rush full steam ahead to put that empty-headed nobody "a heartbeat away from the Presidency". I'll have none of it.
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The Republic may yet save itself from the dreadful choices both major parties have made, by electing Ralph Nader President. Few people see that as possible, because the major parties have done a very good job of making everyone think it absolutely impossible for a third-party candidate to win the White House. But Nader will be on the ballot in 45 states, and all but one of the remaining states permits write-ins. Oklahoma feels no obligation to count write-in votes. Imagine that: Oklahoma refuses to count some votes. Amazing.
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If enuf people are disgusted with the choice they have been handed by the major parties, "take it or leave it" style, they can indeed "leave it", and vote for Nader. In 2004, 122 million people voted for the major parties. That represented only 60.7 percent of eligible voters:

although turnout reached new heights, more than 78 million Americans who were eligible to vote stayed home on Election Day.

How does that compare with the votes for the major parties? Bush got 62,028,719 votes; Kerry, 59,028,550. If Nader were to get 1/4 of the combined major-party vote (30.5 million) and 1/4 of the people who didn't vote last time but were eligible to do so (19.5 million), he'd have 49.5 million votes. He would also take away about 9.5 million votes from each party, which would bring the Republican tally down to 52.5 million, and the Democratic tally down to 49.5 million — the same as Nader! Given that the Nation's population may be up by 12 million since 2004, if Nader were to get a good portion of that group too, he'd be very close to triumph. And if we were talking about taking away 1/3 rather than 1/4, we'd be talking about 40.7 million votes from the two major parties plus 1/3 of people who didn't vote last time (26 million) and 1/3 of new voters (3 million). That would add up to 69.7 million votes, substantially more than either major party drew in 2004, and hugely more than either major party would get once votes for Nader were deducted from their tallies (about 20 million less for each of the Democrats and Republicans). So Nader would have almost 70 million votes, compared to about 42 million for the Republicans and 39 million for Dems if the same ratio applied this time as last time. If the Republican-Democratic split were pretty much even, Nader would have 70 million to at most 43 million each for the Dems and Republicans, assuming a modest increase in overall vote totals because of increased population but not a significant increase in new voters from disaffected groups that refused to vote last time.
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Plainly, the idea that a third-party candidate cannot win the White House is true only if people believe it and waste their votes on voting for the lesser of major-party evils — or stay home out of hopelessness. But if people refuse to believe that a third party cannot win, and large numbers of people who usually stay home instead come out and vote for that third party, the third party candidate can not just win but win in a landslide.
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I'm not wasting my vote by voting for the lesser of major-party evils. I'm voting for Nader.
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P.S. TV viewers may see a lot of the Minnesota State Capitol Building in the next few days. It is a magnificent structure, designed by St. Paul's, and Minnesota's, most distinguished architect, Cass Gilbert. Other great buildings by Cass Gilbert include the Woolworth Building in Downtown Manhattan, the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, and the Old Essex County Courthouse — and two other structures — in my city, Newark, NJ.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,150 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:51 PM