Hey New York, we might have a senator

So, I'm watching Olbermann, and I have to give MSNBC the credit (that I'm aware of) for this scoop: Kristen Gillibrand, a New York State Congresswoman from the 20th district, ia strangely-shaped region of New York that sort of resembles a ninja performing a front kick, is being vetted by Governor Paterson as a potential for the Senate position, now that Caroline Kennedy has withdrawn her attempt at New York's junior senate seat. Gillibrand is a Democrat, which isn't surprising, but she leans a great deal to the right for a potential candidate to replace Mrs. Clinton.

According to the Village Voice, she's pro-gun, earning an A+ from the NRA, which makes her pretty odd among Democrats, who typically treat guns as if they were glowing green rock that saps their powers and can kill them with prolonged exposure. She's also opposes amnesty and wants to "secure" the borders. To balance those more conservative stances, she supports solar power, affordable healthcare, social security reform, and middle class tax cuts, all more standard Democratic issues.

Tomorrow the governor is going to sit down with everyone he has in mind for the position; hopefully we know by next week.

Fernando Arrue

Why Sarah Palin?

Why Sarah Palin? This question has been asked quite a bit by newscasters, journalists, and just about everyone else who thought that they were paying attention; in the past week it's probably been asked almost as much as 'Who the hell is Sarah Palin?'

Not many people can claim to have a window into the mind of Senator McCain; perhaps his wife knows what he was thinking. I won't pretend to, so instead, let's just analyze this rather ubiquitous character and maybe come up with some reasoning for his decision, at the very least so that I can go to sleep secure in the knowledge that a man who is, effectively, a coin flip away from being the president, isn't just some senile trainwreck of a candidate. One can at least hope.

Wikipedia illuminates Mrs. Palin as a 44-year-old who got pregnant at 24 and ran off with her boyfriend. They have five children, one of whom, Bristol, 17, is pregnant now and has plans to marry her boyfriend and keep the baby. Palin is in complete support of the decision; she's actually a die-hard pro-life candidate, which is a term I will never use again, because it's as slanted as saying she's anti-choice. Obviously Governor Palin supports people being able to choose things as much as Hillary Clinton supports life, at least theoretically. The terms are misleading; Mrs. Palin does not support abortion rights.

Despite her stance on abortion, the Republican Party, or at least John McCain, feel Palin will be a strong female candidate, and help him pick up "Clinton Democrats" who are disenfranchised by Barack Obama's victory over Senator Clinton. These democrats were, of course, only going to vote for Clinton because she was a female, so they won't mind voting for McCain now, since he's found a vice-presidential candidate with breasticles. It's absolutely unfounded that any democrat might be hesitant to vote for a woman who is anti-abortion rights, a gun enthusiast, has about as much foreign policy experience as I picked up on a family vacation to Ottawa one year, somewhat ironic from a campaign that has tried to beat, bash, and bully Senator Obama for his lack of experience in that same area.

If you have any doubts about Mrs. Palin's experience with foreign affairs, Mrs. Cindy McCain said it best:

She comes from a state near Russia. That's like saying the most qualified person to negotiate with Japan is the governor of Hawaii, and that, since I come from New York, and we have lots of African-Americans, I should be sent as an ambassador to Kenya.

I think the choice of Palin illuminates a fundamental problem with John McCain's logic; he's going to slam Obama again and again for being less experienced than he is, but then he chooses an even less experienced candidate for his running mate? I don't wish ill on the man, despite my many disagreements with him, but let's be honest, he's just turned 72 (happy birthday, by the way, Senator McCain), and while he's thankfully in excellent health now, according to his doctors, we don't know if he'll remain that way. He's known for his temper, and in a high stress position, complications could arise. So, God forbid, he's elected and has a heart attack, who's going to be running the country? A woman with no experience past state government, who governs a state with so little in common with the other 49, and with a total state population estimated to be roughly equal to that of Memphis.

The only thing Mrs. Palin has going for her is ovarian fortitude and a charming personality; she has no qualifications for national government, and I think her presence on the ticket makes McCain look like a hypocrite. So I ask again; why Sarah Palin?

Links:
Cindy McCain's Comments: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/31/cindy-palin-russia/
John McCain's Health: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/23/mccain.health.records/

Urgent

I was planning on ranting about ethanol today, but something more important has come to my attention.

Apparently the internet's vital role; a the place where anything and everything can be aired freely and openly, without fear of censorship or corporate interests stepping in to influence content; has come under attack. The signs are beginning to show now that by 2012 corporate marketers will have packaged and parceled the internet into orderable groups, where you order web site service in groups, similar to basic and cable.

This has to be stopped. We have to stop this.

Finally

What a great way to end my vacation! Obama has his delegates! And Clinton is slowly accepting it!

It was about 5 in the morning when I heard CNN reporting about how Obama had made the numbers; made my time at Detriot Metropolitan a hell of a lot nicer. The last segment of the flight still sucked (thank you so much, Northwest Airlines, for all of the arguably excellent service), but it's good to know that the Democrats can get their act together.

Finally! Finally, the body of Democrats can stop arguing between themselves about which one of them is best fit to fight the Great Conservative Zombie. Finally, McCain has to actually answer all those 'nonissue' questions about how he plans on fixing the economy, and how he's going to revamp health care so that the average working American doesn't have to flip coins to decide whether they should go to the doctor (assuming they haven't spent all their change on gas).

Finally, instead of having a cushy spectator seat on the sidelines, the Straight Talk Express(R) can actually explain what he means when he says the war was a 'good idea.' I'm not the type of person to hold something like the 100 years comment against him, I know what he's talking about. Creating a sustainable task-level presence in Iraq that can oversee certain secondary defense objectives in the nation, as well as serve as a field operations center for any things that might come up in that region, much like our forces in Japan, Korea, and Germany. I think 100 years is a long time to estimate, but it also seems like one of those 'off the top of your head' numbers.

That said, McCain can finally explain how he's going to sell the idea of a 100 year foreign presence to Iraqis; after all, I would like it if French, British, or Russian forces were based in my home, and the effects of even further degrading our relationship with Iraqi civilians might be even more disastrous. If you recall, there was some guy in Saudi Arabia who had a BIG problem with us having even a menial presence in his nation, and, despite our cocky assumptions of our own dominance, that lanky, cathedar-bound ass has turned into quite a thorn in our side... so how does Mr. McCain foresee the Iraqi people not having a problem with our troops essentially squatting in their cities.

While he's at it he can explain how, if we do go to war with Iran, we can avoid a draft, since it seems just a little impossible at this point. He could go into further detail and explain how going to war with ANOTHER member of OPEC is going to reduce our gas prices, and if he says the word ethanol, he can explain exactly how that's going to work. More on ethanol in my next post, but suffice to say it's not exactly the cure-all everyone (including me) would like it to be.

McCain has lots of questions to answer, and maybe now he'll finally have to.

http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2008/05/27/dunkin_donuts_yanks_rachael_ray_ad">www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2008/05/27/dunkin_donuts_yanks_rachael_ray_ad

You have to check out the above, it's positively ridiculous. Scarves support terrorism? Are you kidding me? That's like saying wearing a sweater with black and white stripes makes you a bank robber, or symbolically states that you support bank robbery.

I can't stand Rachael Ray, I think she's an over-hyped twit, but frankly this is a preposterous allegation for anyone to make, even Michelle Malkin, who wrote oh so eloquently that the scarf, allegedly a keffiyeh, "is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad."

Her editorial: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MichelleMalkin/2008/05/28/rachael_ray,_dunkin_donuts_and_the_keffiyeh_kerfuffle

Now, with all due respect to Ms. Malkin (an admittedly pointed comment), are you out of your damn mind?

Ok, first off, Yassir Arafat is not the fashion guru of the Palestinian world, he was a political and social leader of those people, and a terrorist. They viewed him as a leader, but that doesn't mean they followed his dress code; George Bush didn't 'popularize' the suit.

Secondly, when I look at Rachael Ray, the woman who brought us 30 Minute Meals, several thoughts cross my mind, but none of them are supporter of terrorism, regardless of her choices in ugly neck apparel. Thirdly, you ninny, keffiyehs are worn on your head, not your neck. They're worn like a turban, mainly so that people who live in a desert don't have sunburn on their heads, and so that when large dust storms come, they can cover their faces.

Now, I don't want to hurt your brain, Ms. Malkin, but please imagine something with me: you have a bunch of disgruntled colleged students in New York demonstrating repeatedly for communism. Let's guess what most of them would be wearing... jeans and Yankees caps? Maybe Mets? Does this mean blue jeans are pro-communist? Should we boycott Levi's? Is the blue really a hidden symbol representative of liberalism? No. It's not. And so if you have a group of Palestinian men organized in any regard, chances are at least several will be wearing head scarves, also known as... (time to gasp) - keffiyehs.

Yassir Arafat was a very political man, he wore his particular head scarf decorated with the colors of his national identity, and since he wore it for about 40 years, people associate that scarf with him. It's similar to how I wear glasses, I have for my whole life, and now, when my friends see me without my glasses, they remark that it's a little strange, I'm associated with my glasses and they are with me. If I wore very distinctive glasses for a long time, like Arafat's distinctive keffiyeh, they might even think of me if they saw similar glasses, but I can guarantee you that they wouldn't be reminded of me whenever they saw glasses.

To prove this point, let's look at all the other people who have worn keffiyehs that Ms. Ray could surreptitiously be trying to seduce us into supporting:
Lawrence of Arabia - perhaps this is all a ploy to help Britain and Arabia resist the Ottoman Empire?
British troops (called shemaghs, much like the British call bathrooms loos) - Dunkin Donuts supports our allies troops?
Charlie Sheen in Navy SEALs - Fan of crappy 90s movies?
Kanye West - "Tell em holla at ya boy, cuz I'll be coming home"

You see the ridiculousness of this whole charade, Ms. Malkin, how accusing Rachael Ray of supporting terrorism is like saying Barney supports gay pride because he's purple? There is nothing terror inducing about a 39 year old woman with a hand bag and a latte, even if she's wearing an ugly floral scarf, which, if you'll notice, is a very different design than the spiderweb-type design that Arafat sported.

I'm sorry if pandering to your base of drum-thumping super-patriots is so difficult that it forces you to attack this younger, more attractive Martha Stewart, but it's really a stretch, even for you. I'm sorry scarves remind you of A-rabs, that's really no one's problem but your own. But to say that Rachael Ray and Meghan Megan should know better than to wear a loosely knit scarf because it might evoke your paranoid delusions is preposterous.

As for your 'beef' with Urban Outfitters; I don't really know what to tell you, sweetheart. Scream about it somemore, maybe those meddling, anti-authoritarian kids will get the message that the 'authority' doesn't like Urban Outfitters. Not to accuse you of being an authority on anything, but allow me to break a hard something to you, the reason Urban Outfitters sells those hateful items is because their target customers will buy them, because their target customers are liberal to a fault and think that everything you say must be untrue. So really all you're doing is embedding the 'badness' of these items into the psyches of America's youth, many of whom are so messed up on poor breeding, good pot, and/or prescription drugs to think past the b.s. (yours and theirs) and actually realize what they're supporting. They just know that you don't like it, so they think they do.

And to rebut a rather obnoxious note you ended on:

"It's just a scarf, the clueless keffiyeh-wearers scoff. Would they say the same of fashion designers who marketed modified Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid as the next big thing?

Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence -- unintentionally or not -- they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style."

Now, I'm not a keffiyeh-wearer myself, so I can't really speak for an entire culture of Middle Eastern people, or the questionably-fashionable in America and Japan, but I don't recall ghost hoods being a cultural symbol in the South before the Ku Klux Klan came about, meaning there is no cultural signifigance to them other than terror, plus the fact that looking like a dead cone head is still beyond America's regressing taste in clothing, so I don't think that's quite the same argument. There's no doubt a keffiyeh could be construed as political, much like a bumper sticker. But not all bumper stickers are political, and not all scarves hate America.

When have scarves lead to violence? Certainly you're not implying that the American people are too stupid to know the difference between a scarf and an AK-47? Frankly, the result of your little pissing contest with Dunkin Donuts annoys me, because I like it when companies exercise their right to sell whatever the hell they want to, and I like it when you exercise your right to not buy it. Is bending over to your side any worse then bending over to mine? Why does Dunkin Donuts need to bend over at all? Why all this bending; this isn't porn, stop with the bending. And wanting other people to bend. I thought we needed to stand against terrorism, the way you have it, we'll all be so busy bent over in outrage at terrorism that we won't even see when it sneaks around and 'gives it to us', so to speak.

Oh, and if you want to imply that every American who hates terrorism also hates Arabian scarves, you might be a little off base. I hate terrorism; I'll rant about that next. But I also really don't give a damn what Rachael Ray wears on her neck, or head, or waist for that matter. In fact, I'd rather her wear nothing at all, then I might actually watch her show.

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To my readers, if there are any yet (and hopefully ever) - check out the scarf for yourselves, the Huffington Post still has an image of the ad up: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/28/dunkin-donuts-pulls-ad-fe_n_103859.html