Our Latest Stories:

A lot of people are very upset at Cynthia Ruccia, the long-time Democrat who has put together an organization conflictingly called “Clinton Supporters Count Too” and Women for Fair Politics. Whatever the organization is called, it and she have explicitly called for Hillary Clinton supporters to vote for John McCain in the 2008 general election. Cynthia Ruccia has personally committed to voting for John McCain herself.

There are a lot of criticisms people might make, and in some cases are making, against Cynthia Ruccia’s effort. In my review of them, I’ve found a fair number of mentions of the fact that as a congressional candidate in the 1990s, Ruccia criticized her Republican opponent, John Kasich, for sharing living quarters with his male chief of staff. These criticisms call Ruccia a gay-baiter who therefore has no business raising charges of sexism. I’m unimpressed. First of all, it’s not clear that Ruccia meant to imply that Republican Representative Kasich was gay, even though many people assumed that’s what she meant. Taken literally, her argument was about the ethics of taking the favor of cheap living quarters from an employee. Second of all, even if Cynthia Ruccia is being a hypocrite and is guilty of past sexism while accusing others of current sexism, that alone doesn’t make Ruccia’s charge inaccurate. She may be an imperfect messenger, but her message is not automatically invalidated by that.

I am frankly surprised that nobody has identified Ruccia’s historic debt to the Clintons; as a struggling two-time congressional candidate, Ruccia got a big boost to her campaign when then-President Bill Clinton arrived in Ohio to provide personal and public assistance and an endorsement (Source: Robert G. Boatright, Expressive Politics: Issue Strategies of Congressional Challengers, pp. 173-176). This is a debt that Ruccia ought to for her own integrity’s sake acknowledge, in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. But Ruccia’s sizeable debt to the Clinton family, while casting her motivations into some reasonable doubt, does not invalidate her claim.

So let’s set these ad hominem criticisms of Cynthia Ruccia aside and consider her arguments. The conclusion that Ruccia advocates for is a stark one: that prior supporters of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency ought to campaign in active opposition to Barack Obama and vote for John McCain for president on Election Day 2008. Why?

1. “We women are the biggest constituency of the Democratic Party and we have been completely ignored.” — Appearance on the Bill O’Reilly Show, May 2008

2. “An incredibly sexist campaign” by Barack Obama — comment on Bill O’Reilly Show May 2008

What’s the evidence Ruccia provides that the Democratic Party has “completely ignored” women?

In her appearance on the Bill O’Reilly Show, Ruccia provides none. In her other appearance on FOX News, Ruccia also provides none.

And what’s the evidence that Ruccia provides of an “incredibly sexist campaign” by Barack Obama? Again, in neither of these television appearances does Ruccia actually identify such evidence.

Instead, Ruccia slips into a critique of media coverage of the Hillary Clinton campaign, calling it sexist. I have no argument with this. I completely agree that the news media have made sexist comments about Hillary Clinton. I completely agree that this is a problem that the news media needs to address. The news media has made clear it doesn’t understand this. Take for example Keith Olbermann’s contention to the New York Times that he was part of…

constant reflection and analysis at MSNBC, and I must say there was constant good faith in trying to make certain Senator Clinton was not treated unfairly.

If you watched Keith Olbermann’s show during the campaign, you could not possibly swallow that statement without swallowing an entire fifth of whiskey first. Olbermann turned his show into an embarrassingly partisan pro-Obama vehicle. I supported Barack Obama more than I supported Hillary Clinton, and even I felt like I had to wipe myself down with sanitizer after Olbermann’s nightly 30-minute pro-Obama tonguey wet kisses.

Yes, members of the news media said unfair things about Hillary Clinton. Yes, some things the news media said were sexist. But the news media were hardly fair to Barack Obama, either. The same news channels flogged coverage week after week after month after month of scary-black-man coverage of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even after Obama specifically repudiated Wright’s views, even after Obama specifically repudiated Wright the man. Those channels never examined Clinton’s weird religious affiliations with “The Family,” and they covered Jeremiah Wright much more extensively then they covered Hillary Clinton’s bizarre Tuzla fabrications. The news media was unfair to Clinton, but it was unfair to Barack Obama too. If Barack Obama had not been the nominee, would Cynthia Ruccia have been out there telling Obama supporters to vote for McCain because he had been treated unfairly by the media? I don’t think so, and that’s telling.

A second and more central problem is that the news media is not the same thing as the Democratic party or the Barack Obama campaign. They’re distinct entities, and the news media is not running for president this year. Barack Obama is. In order for Ruccia’s call for opposing Barack Obama to make rational sense, Barack Obama (or at least, in a weaker version, Barack Obama’s campaign) must be identified as the agent of such unacceptable sexism that he is unacceptable as a presidential candidate. She has not done that in her television appearances, and she has not done that in the posts she’s signed on her new website, either. Oh, Ruccia says that the Barack Obama campaign is characterized by “the blatant sexism,” but she does not identify exactly what this such unacceptably sexist behavior is. This is a big, huge, gaping hole in her argument.

And then there’s the biggie, the big, fat, ginormous gaping hole in Ruccia’s argument, the hole that elicits an uncomfortable change in Ruccia’s stance. You see, it’s not just that Barack Obama has to somehow be a glaring sexist, more glaring than the Bill Clinton whose support Cynthia Ruccia gratefully accepted as a congressional candidate, more glaring than the John Kerry to whom Ruccia gave campaign contributions. No, in order for it to really make sense that Barack Obama’s sexism is driving her to vote for John McCain, Barack Obama has to be more sexist than John McCain!

Is Barack Obama more sexist than John McCain?

John McCain, who said to his wife in public, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.”??

John McCain, who has sworn to appoint judges that would overturn Roe V. Wade and so lead to the outlawing of abortion in America?

John McCain, who has voted to outlaw contraception?

John McCain, who sought the endorsement of a fundamentalist who preaches against lesbians?

John McCain, who came out this year in opposition to letting women sue when they’ve suffered sex discrimination in pay because that would just lead to a lot of pesky lawsuits?

John McCain, who affirmed he supported abstinence-only sex education, even though it has been shown to have no benefit, just before he admitted he had no idea whether condoms provided protection against HIV infection?

On all these issues, Barack Obama is on the feminist side of the policy spectrum, and John McCain is on the anti-feminist side of the policy spectrum.

What is Cynthia Ruccia’s response to this policy distinction?

“There’s a whole lot more to women’s rights and women’s position in our society than abortion rights.” — appearance on Nightline, May 2008

Ruccia yesterday accused Senators Barbara Boxer, Claire McCaskill, and Debbie Stabenow of being “the Worst Sexist in the United States” for “shilling for the Obama campaign their ‘Women’s Rights’ platform which was made up of the same old stuff we’ve been hearing about for years that they’ve done nothing about——-equal pay, health care, the war, etc…. our worst sexist of the day goes to Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Claire McCaskill, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Shame on you, ladies!!!!!!!”

And in an extended comment on the subject, Ruccia writes:

Those of us Democrats who are not supporting Obama are being bombarded with a very ugly scare tactic——Roe v Wade. I want to share my thoughts on the subject with you as we continue on our path to either vote for McCain, write in Hillary, or abstain….

The Democratic Party and the Obama campaign are responding to this by trying to scare us into thinking that if we protest the sexism by not voting for Obama that Roe v. Wade will be overturned and women will be sent back to the dark ages of back-alley abortions and zero women’s rights.

Well, we must stand up to them and reveal that tactic for what it is——FEAR MONGERING.

First of all, Roe v Wade is the law of the land and has been for many years now. The chances of any Supreme Court overturning it in its entirety is slim. They may chip away at it, but they will not overturn it. Also states will have the right to pass their own laws keeping abortion legal. The legal system churns exceedingly slowly and is done piecemeal. The idea of losing abortion rights overnight just like that is ridiculous….

This is an election of change this year. The women’s agenda needs to change as well. For too long, abortion has become the only item on anyone’s feminist agenda. We need to move beyond that and bring to the forefront other pressing issues. Women For Fair Politics is doing that by insisting that our society needs to understand that sexism will not be tolerated. Our agenda is to help our society understand what sexism is and that expreessions of it will not be tolerated. But first, we need by our presidential protest vote make everyone understand that we are a force to be reckoned with.

And that means that we will not be letting the Roe v Wade scare tactic stop us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You got that right… Ruccia’s position is that

* with one extra justice, Roe v. Wade won’t actually be overturned (despite the fact that abortion bans have been recently struck down by mere 5-4 margins),

* and what the hey, so abortion will be made illegal in some states… at least it will be legal in some other places somewhere.

* Besides, other things matter more to feminists…

… like what? Like what other policy? Ruccia names no other policy… only electing Hillary Clinton president.

There’s a clear choice here, and it was identified by Hanna Pitkin in her 1967 book The Concept of Representation. Pitkin describes two approaches to understanding political representation: descriptive representation and substantive representation. Descriptive representation of a group occurs when a member of that group reaches a position of political power — so women gain descriptive representation if Hillary Clinton becomes president. Substantive representation, on the other hand, occurs when those holding political power enact policies that are favorable to a group — so women can best gain substantive representation by electing the candidate for president who would be most likely to advance women’s interests when enacting policy.

The option of descriptive representation for women is no longer possible in the 2008 election, now that Hillary Clinton has endorsed Barack Obama, who will run as the Democratic nominee against John McCain, another man. Cynthia Ruccia’s argument seems to be that since descriptive representation is no longer possible, the candidate whose primary victory precluded that possibility should be defeated — even though descriptive representation in the presidency in 2008 is now impossible in either case and even if the result of electing his rival, John McCain, is to the detriment of women’s substantive representation in policy. Or, in laypersons’ terms, “Roe v. Wade, Schmoe v. Wade. Equal Pay, Schmequal Pay. Contraception, Schmontraception. Lesbian rights, Schmesbian rights. Sex education, Schmex education.”

Ruccia’s position only makes rational sense for a person who does not care about substantive policy, and for whom descriptive appearance is all that matters. In other words, despite her tossing around of the word “sexism,” for Ruccia substantive sexism isn’t really that important compared to the debacle of the electoral defeat of one person who is a woman. That appears to me to be a very weak stance.

There has been an attempted line of attack against Barack Obama that claims that, because Barack Obama speaks eloquently of the need for change from a politics of fear and hate to a new politics of hope, he doesn’t have any substance. Of course, the remarkable substance of Obama has been easy for people see, in the United States Senate and in his presidential campaign.

That hasn’t stopped the Hillary Clinton campaign from issuing statements like “It’s no wonder that Americans are coming to see that for all of his lofty rhetoric, Senator Obama’s candidacy is really just words.” (March 21, 2008 press release)

In response to these attacks, I offer the following quote:

“O Youth: Do you know that yours is not the first generation to yearn for a life full of beauty and freedom? Do you know that all your ancestors felt as you do — and fell victim to trouble and hatred? Do you know also, that your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of men, and animals, and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain? Open your eyes, your heart, your hands, and avoid the poison your forebears so greedily sucked in from History. Then will all the earth be your homeland, and all your work and effort spread forth blessings.”

This eloquent statement did not come from Barack Obama. It came from Albert Einstein, in Germany back in 1932, as the Nazis were moving toward their Holocaust.

Back then, Albert Einstein spoke the same message that Barack Obama speaks today: That we do not need to be restricted to the fears and hatreds of our predecessors. We can overcome it.

Germany did not listen to Albert Einstein in 1932. Will America listen to Barack Obama in 2008?

Will Obama’s opponents now tell us that Albert Einstein was not a man of substance?

The choice between fear and hope is the most substantial choice of the 2008 presidential election.

Finally, after long months of plainly illegal delay, the Department of the Interior announced that the polar bear will be listed as a species due protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Will the Bush Administration now reconsider its lease of oil and gas drilling rights in the polar bear’s habitat in Chukchi Sea? That lease could surely have been blocked under the Endangered Species Act. Don’t hold your breath.

Dirk Kempthorne, the Secretary of the Interior, issued the following statement:

“While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting. Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective. That is why I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies.”

In other words, although the Bush Administration was finally forced to obey the law and list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush White House has no intention of following the law and providing the polar bear with any of the protections it is now legally due.

For the polar bear to be listed under the Endangered Species Act because of threats created by global warming requires that the United States federal government finally act to stop global climate change to the extent possible and prevent as much sea ice from melting as it can. Dirk Kempthorne doesn’t understand that, and that’s a very important reason why America needs to elect a progressive President in 2008 - a genuine environmentalist as only a progressive can be.

(Source: Department of the Interior, May 14, 2008)

Mother Davis searches for some Sweet and Low to stir into her late afternoon tea, and asks,

What are you going to allow to be your motivation in the 2008 presidential election? Bitterness or betterment?

You could allow bitterness to motivate you, and follow along with the crowd that gasps in shock at the idea, proposed by Barack Obama, that small town Pennsylvanians who grab onto racism, bigotry against non-Christians, obsession with guns, and other such extremisms, do so in part because of a misdirected economic insecurity.

Alternatively, you might join the much smaller group of people who notes in alarm that George W. Bush now admits that he approved of plans to create cruel, painful and humiliating techniques (torture) to be used by American interrogators against prisoners.

Don’t blame media for your where your attention is focused. Don’t blame political consultants. Don’t blame anybody else. You have sole responsibility over where you direct your concentration.

You have the power to decide: Is it more important to you that America remain free, or is it more important to you that politicians continue to pander to the pride of extremists who live in small town Pennsylvania?

People make these decisions as individuals. Their individual decisions have a collective power, however, to determine whether the United States of America takes over the next four years will be moved by serious considerations of high purpose, or by confused mutterings over superficial slights.

Deciding to take her tea without sweetener,
Mother Davis

A gem from yesterday’s testimony of Michael Mukasey before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Senator Edward Kennedy: Would waterboarding be torture if it were done to you?

Attorney General Michael Mukasey: I would feel that it was.

Mukasey went on to explain that although he’d feel it was torture if it was done to him, waterboarding isn’t necessarily torture in general.

This is classic Bush administration morality: heavens, if it’s done to me, it’s wrong, but it’s all right for other people. This is an extention of the morality that made it OK for the Bushes to spy on the most intimate details of your life while you couldn’t get the simplest details of your own government’s activities.

It also shows a willful obfuscation of the law on torture, in which torture is defined by the effect on the subject: pain, fear of pain, and the threat of imminent death. If the procedure creates pain, fear of pain, or the threat of imminent death for Attorney General Michael Mukasey, then it’s torture under federal law. If the procedure creates pain, fear of pain, or the threat of imminent death for any other detainee, then it’s torture under federal law. The law recognizes no distinction according to the privileged status of the subject of waterboarding. Only Michael Mukasey does. That makes him a dangerous Attorney General.

(Source: New York Times January 30 2008)

Mother Davis begins counting on her fingers as she relates,

On December 31, 2007, we here at Irregular Times finished compiling our list of 2,008 reasons to elect a progressive President. What we could not have known at the time is that the Center for Public Integrity was compiling its own list - a list of all the lies the Bush Administration told in order to convince Americans that we had no choice but to invade and occupy Iraq.

They went back through White House press releases, news reports, congressional testimony and other sources and found not just one, not just ten, not just one hundred, but 935 times the Bush Administration lied about the national security threat posed by Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

If we had been in the mood to take a shortcut, the Center for Public Integrity’s list could have reduced our workload by almost half.

Goodness me, but you’ve got to work hard to lie that much.

Giving her fingers a rest to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome,
Mother Davis

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

Mike Huckabee has promised the founder of the Minutemen, Jim Gilchrist, that if elected president he would push for judicial rulings and amendments to the U.S. Constitution to keep babies born right here in the USA from having American citizenship. After uncovering this promise, the Washington Times confirmed it with Mike Huckabee’s spokesperson.

Mike Huckabee wants to get Biblical on these babies, visiting the sins of the father or mother on the child. The children we’re talking about here, children of illegal immigrants who were born in the USA, did not sneak into the country. The U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are not themselves illegal immigrants, since they have not immigrated from anywhere. They are American born. They are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, just as any person (save those with diplomatic immunity) inside the borders of the United States is. These babies have broken no law, shown no contempt for the legal system. They clearly meet the standards of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. You’d have to agree that these babies, born right here in the USA, clearly merit citizenship — unless you don’t respect the United States Constitution, that is.

And that’s where Mike Huckabee finds himself. He just doesn’t respect the U.S. Constitution. Mike Huckabee thinks the U.S. Constitution is wrong, and he has sworn to the Minutemen that he’ll work against it. In its place, Mike Huckabee has promised to implement the 20th Century German model of citizenship, in which the worthiness of your parentage is the standard by which you are deemed worthy or unworthy of citizenship, in which generations of families can live in a country and yet not have the right bloodline to merit citizenship. Mike Huckabee’s pledge to take us down this road, his pledge to work against the citizenship standards of the U.S. Constitution, stands in direct opposition to the presidential oath of office prescribed by the U.S. Constitution itself, in which any new president must swear a solemn oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

This is the man who’s running neck-and-neck with John Mccain for the Republican presidential nomination. I don’t want Mike Huckabee anywhere near the Oval Office.

For the last year, Ron Paul supporters have been busy coming here to Irregular Times and lecturing us about how Ron Paul’s “revolution” is unstoppable, and how his good straw poll performances in a few states, and successful fundraising (much of it through white supremacist groups) indicated that Ron Paul would win the Republican nomination for President. They told us that we were stupid not to see this obvious truth.

So, now that there is an election with actual voters, how is Ron Paul performing? So far, Ron Paul is in 5th place, with just 11 percent of the vote. That puts Ron Paul behind lazy Fred Thompson, who has actually announced to his supporters that he doesn’t actually want to be President very much.

Woo hoo! I’m watching the Ron Paul Revolution go down in its tin-foil, John Birch, libertarian highway to the North American Union flames, and I’m loving it!

Oh, but never fear - we’ll still have Ron Paul to kick around for a few weeks yet. He and his supporters love to blame everyone but themselves for the lack of support they get from the American public in general. Besides, Ron Paul has lots of money to spend yet… on advertisements about how wonderful he is. Who could turn down such an opportunity for national self-indulgence?

Back in August, 2007, when I observed that Ron Paul made a terrible showing in the Iowa Republican straw poll, coming in 5th place, Ron Paul supporters were predictably irked at the observation. They should prepare to be irked again.

In spite of all of the predictions by Ron Paul’s supporters that he would ignite a revolution within the Republican Party and sweep into victory, Paul is actually not doing so well. In the Des Moines Register poll predicting performance in the Iowa caucuses tomorrow, Ron Paul has the support of only 9 percent of Republicans. That puts him on par with lazybones Fred Thompson, fighting desperately for 4th place.

Yes, Ron Paul convinced people to give him 20 million dollars in the last quarter of 2007. Paul’s followers would have us believe that money equals victory, but in a democracy, dollar bills don’t vote - people do. No amount of money can get sane people to vote for a kook like Ron Paul.

What specifically turns Republicans off of Ron Paul is impossible to say. Maybe it’s the way that Ron Paul voted for earmarks before he voted against them. Maybe it’s the whole white supremacist thing.

After tomorrow night, only one important question will remain for Ron Paul: What’s he going to do with all that money people gave his campaign? Try to buy some political influence?

Dennis Kucinich has given Barack Obama a significant boost in the Iowa caucuses by directing his supporters to cast their second vote for Barack Obama, rather than any other candidate.

That’s a significantly more important form of support than what John Edwards got yesterday with an endorsement from Ralph Nader. Dennis Kucinich is actually running for President, for one thing, and is, for another thing, a Democrat, and capable of significantly influencing other Democrats, especially the progressives likely to support Barack Obama or John Edwards instead of Hillary Clinton.

When you hear news about who is ahead in the polls predicting the vote in the Iowa caucus, you should remember that a great deal of uncertainty remains, because the supporters of any candidate who fails to get 15 percent of the vote must recast a ballot in support of another candidate. Kucinich’s support of Obama could give Obama a boost of several points above what is shown in the polls.

Kucinich’s move is more of a blow to Edwards than to Clinton. Few Kucinich supporters would have voted for Clinton as a second choice in any event.

Way back in 2005, I set myself a goal of compiling a list of 2,008 reasons to elect a progressive President in 2008. I set as stakes for the challenge a nasty punishment: If I failed to compile a list of 2,008 reasons by January 1, 2008, I would write a check for $2008.00 dollars to every Republican presidential candidate.

The high stakes worked as a motivation, especially this last month, and as of this afternoon, we have 2,008 reasons compiled. A few need to be edited, sourced, or sorted, and some revisions may need to be made as we now doublecheck the list to get it up to date but all the material is there - and just in the nick of time.

What a relief. I’m now ready to sleep my way into the new year. Auld Lang Nap, everyone.

Today, on New Year’s Eve, the newspapers were full of articles telling us that 2007 was a record breaking year in terms of the theft of private information. The really sad thing is the newspapers didn’t even count the millions of items of private information about American citizens stolen by the government itself through infiltration of peaceful activist organizations, eavesdropping on our telephone calls, reading of our emails and postal mail, and data mining of information gathered on us from commercial sources, regardless of privacy agreements.

It may be a record year for private identity thieves, but compared to the government, the hackers are small time. (Source: Associated Press, December 31, 2007)

At the end of this year, as America considers the difference between presidential candidates who supported the rush to invade Iraq and those who opposed that rush, let’s remember of the words of U.S. General and Senator Carl Shurz, who said in 1898, “The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to ‘loving and faithfully serving his country,’ at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting.”

Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Mike Huckabee are competing for the support of right wing preacher John Hagee, praising his leadership and commitment in pushing extremist religion into the the public sphere. It’s well worth noting, therefore, the way that Hagee proposes we all look at the identity of the American nation.

Conventional history has it that the United Sates was created as a sovereign nation in 1776 through the American Revolution, and subsequently through the Articles of Confederation, which were succeeded by the American Constitution, which is now the supreme law of the United States of America, defining the parameters of what the USA is.

That’s not how John Hagee sees things, though. According to John Hagee, the United States was born in the year 1607. Hagee took part in the Consecration Conference at Assembly 2007, which declared, “In April of 1607, the Jamestown colony landed in Virginia Beach and planted a cross, birthing a new nation dedicated to God.”

Progressives believe that the United States was born through the American Revolution and the establishment of the Constitution. Right wingers like John Hagee believe that all it took to create the United States was a prayer and a cross planted in the sand.

If you vote for John McCain and Mike Huckabee in 2008, you’re voting for the cross-in-the-sand vision of the birth of America.

(Source: People for the American Way, March 22, 2007)