Everyone hunts, fishes, rides snowmobiles, and works for the oil industry in the north. Palin knows how dependent the north is on resource extraction, but she’s also aware global warming is very real. She’s found a way down the middle that satisfies, for now: She’s nailed the oil industry with taxes (something even Canadian politicians haven’t done), and pushed an oil pipeline through Canada to move Alaska crude to Texas refineries. Based on that alone, the oil industry will be lobbying for her. It’s a done deal for McCain with her as his VP, even if she wasn’t a far better citizen and more ethical politician than Clinton.

Two things about her one hopes were different: she’s anti-abortion, and some say, anti some gay rights: no to marriage, but yes to civil rights.

I hate the male left so much I’d vote Republican if I was American, but I don’t think, from reading at Reclusive Leftist, that PUMAs are voting McCain. They’re voting Green or (still possible?) writing Clinton in.

I also commented on that blog, on an earlier entry, citing the 14th Amendment in response to a clueless man saying the ERA was a plot to enforce a different morality on men like him. Ms. Feldt asked me to elaborate on how Republicans sold feminists out, so I just did some ranting of my own over there. The word male occurs three times in that amendment, to make sure women could not vote or claim rights granted to black men.

Former head of Planned Parenthood Gloria Feldt posted this on her blog and the WCF blog today:

DOES PALIN TRUMP BIDEN?
Obama’s speech was excellent, but not quite great, comforting if not moving. Strong on substance as it needed to be, yet not as strong on the rhetoric as he can be. I don’t remember any of his specific lines, which is a  clue.  And though the warm-up speeches by Al Gore and Dick Durbin touched on reproductive rights, Obama’s spoke only in a downplayed, appeasing way about reproductive justice, even though he stood on the podium in a state with a pending ballot initiative that intends not just to outlaw abortion but to take down many kinds of birth control with it, granting fertilized eggs full personhood status while demoting women to second class citizenship:
What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that’s what we have to restore.
We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.
The — the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.
(I left in the gun control part to illustrate that women’s rights to reproductive self-determination and gay rights get equated to just another policy issue that it’s ok for people to disagree on. Would he say the same about civil rights based on ethnicity or religion? I think not. And pray tell, why didn’t he mention his co-sponsorship of the Freedom of Choice Act?)
(End quote)

Good questions from a liberal feminist, I would say, though her reaction to that speech is overgenerous, in my estimation. It left me cold, as soaring oratory from male charmers generally does. In my comment, I alluded to Heart without naming her, inviting people to click on my name to find out who is that woman still running for President, not willing to take a back seat. Ordinarily I would not be so reticent, but I really did not expect my comment to be approved. That it was gives me some hope, that liberal feminists may have an open mind about an alternative to Obama/Biden. They may have been loyal Democrats forever, but that Hillary came so close with virtually nothing to show for it seems to leave a bad taste in their mouths.

I also note that the Gore challenge to end the use of carbon based fuels for electricity within ten years is far bolder than the Obama plan, to “finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East” in ten years. Obama is still stuck on clean coal, safe nuclear power, and the next generation of biofuels, meaning ethanol produced from plants genetically engineered for that purpose, though he has the political savvy not to trumpet that last dirty little secret. All of that is environmentally irresponsible, greenwashing hogwash. Even the Gore plan does not go far enough, though it is not a bad start. As I noted on my blog and the Randi Rhodes forum, clean coal and safe nuclear power? Uh huh. When pigs fly. BTW Ms. Rhodes had some choice words for Governor Palin today. She repeatedly referred to Ms. Palin as a chick or girl. That was bad enough, though she also frequently refers to herself as a chick or girl, but she also tossed in bitch and breeder. The sexism coming from Obama supporters is not confined to men.

Your link to Naomi Klein in your post #13 was very helpful.  The best description and analysis of why progressive issues get dropped during and certainly after campaigns are over.  I can’t recommend this link highly enough to the other readers here.  Check it out!  Thanks.

As far as I’m concerned, the elections are rigged. Which doesn’t mean I won’t vote, but I just don’t want to put my energy into men’s politics. Women did not create this system, women did not start wars, design nuclear explosives, ruin our planet, and on and on and on. Instead, we have to pick up after the men who have designed this system, while attempting and far too often succeeding in ruining us and our children in the process.

I personally don’t see much difference in my life based on artificial politics.  The difference came when lesbians themselves organized their own groups, and that was the most meaningful experience to me.  But my experience in mixed groups never meant much to me.  There was no emotional connection, only a kind of detached feeling that I’m drowning is a sea of hetero realities, and often I experience this as utter boredom.  Even most women can really bore you with the constant chatter and the fear of confrontation and agrument.  Men bore in a different way.

In a lesbian world and society, I just find life interesting and complex, but that world is invisible to the larger world.

Obama or McCain?  Who knows.  I don’t really believe either one of them.  Certainly I felt little to no connection to Obama’s speech last night, and it amused me that the one thing he did say about gays and lesbians is that he thought it was fine that we could visit our partners in the hospital.  Big of him.  Interestingly enough, I had just heard Frank Pastori of “Intersection of Faith and Reason” a right wing christian political show, say that very same thing.  Big of him too.

No Aletha, people won’t read a reasoned argument and comment thoughtfully very much anywhere these days.  Some of my best writing just is ignored or not understood at all.  I’m used to the hetero world completely ignoring my existence, welcome to the club

I meet a lot of people, and they seem kind of zoned out.  Obama wants to up the ante in Afghanistan and McCain is still all for it in Iraq, but neither one seems anti-war to me.  The war certainly took a back seat last night.

Why would people vote for McCain and not Obama?  Maybe because Obama doesn’t make much sense to them.  I know I feel this way.  I don’t know what all the fuss is about him; he just seems like a south side Chicago politician to me, and I grew up near Chicago, so it has this odd familiarity to me.

McCain is like every straight man out there.  Militaristic, overly revering the armed services, clueless about women and lesbians.  Just floating out there.  No matter who is in the White House, my life changes very little.  Straight people in power are just another world, and to me it’s just two guys with their doting wives yet again.  No big deal.

I guess I’m tired of the left going on and on about how every right wing idiot is a disaster.  The world is going to end etc.  But it isn’t. We should be a lot farther along as a feminist movement, but we aren’t.  We are mired in a sea of lieing men once again.

I am wondering how long it will take before the Women’s Campaign Forum decides to ban me from its blog. I made a brief comment there last night that was approved, protesting that women are expected to play second fiddle once again. Snarky Sue took off on that, so I tried a longer comment to elaborate on what I meant. If that makes it through moderation, I will be amazed.

More later….