posted June 12, 2008 11:25 AM            

She's been caught out lying! Why vote for anyone, woman or not, who has been caught lying?

Named after the guy who climbed Everest eh? What a whopper!

posted June 12, 2008 12:20 PM            

quote:

---

Hi everyone, me back, Forget M.TV. this is better. I dream about two year ago. That Hillary was President...BrightStar

---

posted June 14, 2008 03:14 PM              

That lady is crazy.

She's a little more calmer here :
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SIIDtlFzAkg&feature=related

__________________________________________________________________________________________

posted June 21, 2008 11:29 PM            

June 21, 2008
Obama to Clinton Women: 'Get over it'
Rick Moran

Usually, when we use a headline like this, it's to describe the subtext of what a politician really means. Not this time, Obama told members of the Black Caucus that they should "get over" the fact that Hillary lost: (Via Hot Air)

Sources at the meeting said that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, a Clinton supporter, expressed the desire that Obama and his campaign would reach out the millions of women still aggrieved about what happened in the campaign and still disappointed that Clinton lost.

Obama agreed that a lot of work needs to be done to heal the Democratic Party, and that he hoped the Clinton supporters in the room would help as much as possible.

According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, "However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I'm running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it."

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., a longtime Clinton supporter, did not like those last three words - "Get over it." She found them dismissive, off-putting.

"Don't use that terminology," Watson told Obama.

Ed Morrissey has the real subtext of Obama's message:

Listen, sweetie, I'm busy with man-work. Why don't the women-folk get together and handle this themselves? I'm sure that'll convince women he takes them seriously. He all but told Lee and the other women at the meeting that they have nowhere else to go, so he's not going to waste his time.

This isn't the first time Obama has proven to have a tin ear when it comes to what he says in front of certain groups. Perhaps we might begin to wonder when the press is going to stop protecting this guy and hold him up to the same kind of ridicule he's getting from most conservatives.

There may be more to this insult than meets the eye. As Ed mentions, it very well could be that Obama feels himself under no obligation to reach out to Hillary supporters, that his own coalition of minorities and young people along with the Democratic far left will be enough to win.

posted July 10, 2008 09:26 PM            

Sadly, it's not surprising. Hillary vs. McCain would've been easy. As much progress as women have made, our rights just don't carry the vote-for-me guilt that she'd need to win*. Obama has that, whether or not he wants it. And with all the pumped up racial issues people are already going on and on about, Obama vs. McCain is going to be ugly, no matter who wins.

*Note, I'm not saying that all women need that to win because they are lacking. I'm saying that, if we viewed the candidates positions as gender neutrally as possible, Hillary would not have, imo, a great enough influence in this election to sway as many voters as she'd need. But don't let's pretend that her gender had nothing to do with her getting screwed out of the candidacy. Racial issues and equality have received infinitely more effort and praise than have feminist issues. (And both are important and both groups are deserving of equality.) As an old, racist southerner I know said, "We'll elect a negro** to office before we elect a woman." And that way of thinking, imo, is what the "big" Dems have pinned their hopes and support on.

posted July 11, 2008 11:49 PM            

Michael Kinsley glosses over...completely over the reasons Hillary supporters are ticked but because a black candidate for President is someone "we've been working all our lives for", Hillary supporters are supposed to forget about the way Hillary was treated by the press and worse by the elitist party bigwigs at the DNC.

From what I'm reading, Hillary supporters...who have worked their whole lives to put a woman in a position to be President of the United States aren't "getting over it". In fact, there's much talk of defecting from the party and voting for McCain. Not to mention the big campaign contributors in Hillary's corner are not shelling out big bucks to support the O'Bomber campaign.

The fact is I don't like Hillary's politics, don't like Hillary's financial and political corruption and don't like Hillary's style either but Hillary is a far better qualified candidate for the job than O'Bomber. I don't like Hillary Clinton but the unfair way Hillary was treated sets my teeth on edge.

If I had to choose between them and thanks God that I don't, I vote for Hillary every time over O'Bomber.

"Sometimes, in fact, it requires the opposite: putting aside your dislike, your disappointments, your anger, your feelings of betrayal. In the case of Hillary Clinton's erstwhile supporters, all of these feelings seem overwrought to me. But there is no point in arguing about this, or at least not now. Now is the time to just get over it."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1821662,00.html

posted July 12, 2008 10:46 AM            

More than two million angry Democrats are rejecting Sen. Barack Obama as the likely Democratic nominee for the presidency this year, according to a new protest organization.

"I hate to use this word but it's fascist, and that's the approach they're taking to silence any Hillary Clinton supporters," Will Bower, co-founder of PUMA/Just Say No Deal, an exploding coalition of voters who say they have raised $10 million in just days to pay down Clinton's campaign debt.

"Barack Obama wants to give his acceptance speech in a stadium because he intends to minimize any pro-Hillary supporter dissent. It's not because he wants to include more people. He knows that if they pull any shenanigans at convention, the Hillary delegates will walk out, and they don't want that to be seen or heard. They're bringing as many Obama supporters as they can to fill that stadium. It's fascism," he said.

The voters who still are supporting Clinton are doing everything they can to make sure that doesn't happen, raising an estimated $10 million since Independence Day to retire her debt.

Nearly 18 million people voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primaries and many of them believe their candidate was cheated out of being the Democratic nominee for president.

Now more than two million, based on donation and other records, are determined to protest the nominating process and push for an open convention in Denver this August.

"The seeds of discontent for the birth of the PUMA/Just Say No Deal movement were planted during Barack's poor performances at the debates, the media assault on Clinton after Iowa, Obama's arrogance on the campaign trail, and the DNC's selective application of its own rules," Bower explained.

"We said we are not falling in line just because Obama and (David) Axelrod and the DNC were saying 'All right, this is over, let's all get behind Barack Obama.' There are plenty of us out here saying, 'No this is not over. You have treated us very unfairly and in fact, anti-democratically,'" he said.

Bower said Hillary supporters were so incensed with the DNC's action they wrote about it at their blogsites. The issue went viral, spreading rapidly across the Internet. One irate blogger came up with the acronym PUMA after blogging "Party Unity, My A**." The abbreviation eventually evolved into the puma cat logo used at multiple sites.

It took only days for PUMA and dozens of other grassroots organizations and political activists to discover one another and convene a conference call. They agreed to band together and call the movement Just Say No Deal.

"We formed this coalition to give people time to say 'Look, everything is still on the table. You still have months before November to make this decision' " Bower explained.

PUMA/Just Say No Deal now represents and gives voice to more than 230 grassroots organizations, blogs and millions of self- professed PUMAs intent on one mission: NOBAMA!

"On June 8th the coalition was born and within 24 hours we were on Fox News," Bower said. Since then, he and several other coalition members have done dozens of television, radio and print interviews. And they've met with the Republican presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain and his campaign advisor Carly Fiorina.

"We felt reassured after that meeting that come November, we'd be voting for McCain, but we still haven't made that choice. We want him to work for our vote," Bower said.

PUMA/Just Say No Deal members are pushing varying agendas and voting strategies, but the factions are united in their unwavering decision to not "fall in line" in supporting Barack Obama. For many of the disenfranchised Democrats, the choice will be John McCain. For others, it will be a third party candidate, a write-in, or no vote at all.

"A lot of us still want Hillary to get the nomination, but we all agree that none of us want Obama to be the next president," Bower said.

"We're letting the Democratic National Committee and other party leaders know that PUMA/Just Say No Deal members are serious. We're not going to take this lightly and we're prepared to vote for John McCain if need be."

Bower said he believes his group is creating an impact with the Democratic National Committee.

"They are worried. They saw these past few weeks how much money we're still raising for Hillary Clinton. Originally they said 'Hillary has until the convention to pay off her debt if she wants to be on the roll call.' Well, then we started making money for her. And then they moved it up to July 15th. So we started making a lot of money for her."

"We started an initiative just before the 4th of July to raise money for Hillary, and so far we've raised approximately $10 million. Sources tell us that's less than $5 million away from being in the black. By this weekend Hillary's debt will be finished."

Bower makes it clear that Sen. Clinton has not asked the organization to do anything. "We're doing this on our own. We don't want the DNC to use her debt as a strong-arm tactic to keep her or her supporters from having a voice at the convention. All of us are contributing what we can. None of us want Barack Obama to be the next president."

Coalition members donate in increments of $20.08. "That way they know it's from us," Bower explained.

It's not just the money giving the DNC angst.

"Some of their superstars are now having to spend all of their time addressing us specifically," Bower said. “Donna Brazile's (superdelegate and DNC rules committee member) job now is fighting the PUMAs. Ed Rendell created a group called Hound to address the PUMAs. So some of their best people are having to devote all of their time and energy just to address us."

Money raised by PUMAs also doesn't go to Obama's campaign or the DNC coffers.

Bower also pointed to polls indicating shrinking support for Obama.

"CNN did a poll at the beginning of June that showed 1 of every 5 Clinton supporters would not vote for Obama. Well, just one month later that's now 1 in 3. So we're getting our numbers up and we're growing strong. And if the DNC's not worried about us, then they're clueless as to this movement."

They also credit Obama with helping their effort.

"In the last two weeks we've seen Obama go back on his campaign promises – FISA, campaign finance, especially the Iraq war," Bower said.

"There is a movement afoot," Bower confided. "It hasn't hit the ground yet, but we want to target down-ticket Democrats who have been complicit in the DNC's dealings these past few months. You'll probably be hearing more about that soon. Some of Obama's original supporters are leaving him. Eight super-delegates left Obama this week. People are realizing Obama will be a dead weight to them and that's why these eight delegates have switched back over to Hillary's column. And I'm expecting there'll be more to follow."

"He's only the presumptive nominee. And he's doing everything he can, the DNC is doing everything it can, to shove Hillary out of the process when she has received more votes than any primary candidate in history," he said.

The coalition believes the Democrat leadership in Congress is supporting Obama because they want a weakened executive branch and Obama is an inexperienced, manufactured candidate who'll have to rely on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

posted August 07, 2008 12:34 PM            

Will Hillary outsmart Obama and take the nomination at the last minute?

Many of us familiar with Hillary Clinton's approach to achieving her goals refused to believe that she ever gave up all hope of winning the nomination and the presidency. Her words and actions on the subject of the convention itself always left the door open for a return, should Obama falter or suffer some calamity.

Her artful evasions were enough to lull journalists and (more importantly) Obama and his supporters into the presumption of inevitability. No further rumblings of a mass protest in Denver should the first black candidate be denied his rightful due were heard. After all, he received enough publicly expressed support from super delegates to put him over the top. And he won the popular vote in the primaries, we were assured, lending legitimacy to the super delegates who voiced their support.

Everyone presumed the presumptive nominee was a lock.

Now there are a few signs that Hillary may be making her move.

- Blogger Patterico alludes to the Hillary Clinton campaign burning up the phone lines to the super delegates.

- Bill Clinton told ABC News, "I am not a racist" and contended the race card was played against him. Even when prompted in the same interview to state that Obama was ready for the Presidency, he did not deliver.

- Hillary's PUMA ( short for "Party Unity My A--.") supporters in Denver and nationally plan a rally at a Denver park during the convention.

- ABC news reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton does not rule out putting her name in nomination,contradicting earlier press reports.

Many people, including no doubt a goodly number of nervous Democrat super delegates, are asking themselves the David Brooks' question about Obama's standing in the polls: "Where's the landslide ?" After evaluating him for several months, voters in the middle still aren't ready to embrace him.

National polls show not only a tightening of the Obama-McCain race to a statistical dead heat but momentum toward a McCain lead, something inconceivable only weeks ago. The specter of an Obama collapse has to haunt more than a few super delegates.

Buyer's remorse seemed evident and growing among many Democrats toward the end of their primary season when Obama lost again and again to Clinton, even as the delegate math was by then stacked in his favor. That remorse was put on hold (but apparently not resolved) by Obama's seeming to secure the nomination and the subsequent popular boost he enjoyed at first. But lately the candidate with a difference has had a hard time living up to his promise to be a new kind of politician.

According to RealClearPolitics, Obama has 1766.5 pledged delegates, 352 short of the 2118 needed to secure the nomination. He also has 463 super delegates, which puts him over the top -- if they hold. If a combination of Clinton campaigning and nervousness can cause a hundred and twenty or so super delegates to sit out the first ballot, Obama does not get the nomination on the first ballot and perhaps not at all. After that first vote a great many pledged delegates and all the super delegates are free to vote as they choose.

How much pressure could there then be for the forty-seven year old Obama to take the VP spot under Hillary, with the understanding that he would as such be the next Democrat in line for the top nomination whether Hillary won or lost, served one, two or no terms?

It looks like Obama's belief in his inevitability may have led him into a blunder, making it easier for Hillary supporters to prevent a nomination on the first ballot. After that point, anything goes, as all super delegates and many pledged delegates are free to vote their preferences.

After accepting the party's decision last June to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida but with half votes, only days ago Obama said he wanted the delegates to have full votes

Obviously, he said this believing he has won the nomination and that pandering to voters in critical general election states is of more importance.

If the party goes along with Obama's request, it reduces the number of super delegates who would need to sit out the first ballot for Obama to be denied the nomination, opening the way for Clinton! Ouch!

This is proof that the man should not be negotiating with Ahmadinejad. If he cannot think strategically and recognize his vulnerability to a last minute ambush at the convention, he would be eaten alive in big league world affairs.

Worst of all, in his letter to the Credentials Committee arguing in favor of full votes for the two delegations, he writes:

Democrats in Florida and Michigan must know that they are full partners and colleagues in our historic mission to reshape Washington and lead our country in a new direction.

These words tacitly argue for acceptance of the popular vote results in those states. Obama cannot see one step ahead, for adding them to the vote count would give the Democratic primary season popular vote majority to Hillary. ***Note...give them back to Hillary from whom they were stolen by the DNC.

posted August 10, 2008 03:24 AM              

HOW THE CLINTONS WILL MAKE IT THEIR CONVENTION
By Dick Morris
08.9.2008

The agenda for the Democratic National Convention makes it, effectively, a two day convention for Hillary and a one day convention for Obama. The Democratic candidate, who needs all the national buildup a four day convention normally affords, will have to cut it short because of the Clintons’ skill in hogging the limelight on Tuesday night, when Hillary speaks, and on Wednesday night, when Bill does. So until Obama himself addresses the delegates and the nation on Thursday night, this is really a Clinton convention.

Why did the Clintons so want to got the stage? Because they want to do everything they can get away with to assure an Obama defeat in November so that Hillary can run against an aged McCain in 2012. She could capitalize on an Obama defeat by saying “I told you so” to primary voters.

Why did Obama allow it? Because the Clintons showed that they can make no end of trouble for him. Hillary leaked a video of her speech at a closed fund raiser talking about the need to her delegates to feel that their voices were heard and Bill said he didn’t think anybody could really be said to ready to be president (despite the fact that Hillary’s slogan was “ready to lead”).

posted August 11, 2008 12:28 PM            

Have you heard anything about the unflattering internal memos coming out of the Clinton campaign..about Barack O'Bomber? Don't expect to see much if anything in the so called main stream media. These clowns have and will continue to circle the wagons around their favorite leftist candidate.

posted August 12, 2008 01:07 PM            

"The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun,"

posted August 22, 2008 10:51 AM            

But, as I later found out, Barack Hussein Obama's high school chums called him O'Bomber way back when.

posted August 22, 2008 02:21 PM            

There’s one Democrat who would seem to have little or no chance of being picked by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to be his running mate – his former opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

But it’s not for the reason you think.

Obama has often said, most recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on July 27, that Clinton “would be on anybody’s short list.”

But apparently not his.

“She was never vetted,” a Democratic official reported. “She was not asked for a single piece of paper. She and Senator Obama have never had a single conversation about it. How would he know if she’d take it?”

The official also said Clinton never met with Obama’s vetting team of Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy...............

posted August 25, 2008 11:28 AM            

On the other hand, a picture is worth a thousand words.

There's no doubt in my mind that if looks could kill, O'Bomber would have assumed "room temperature" by now.

posted August 29, 2008 11:02 PM            

There is an uprising against both O'Bomber and the DNC in the making. PUMA..."Party Unity My Ass" has been all over the DNC but they're even more riled that Hillary wasn't the VP nomination.

You should see what some..many Hillary supporters are saying about McCain choosing Sarah Palin. They are praising both McCain and Palin...and vowing to vote for them in November.

They're also ticked that the DNC and their support sites have rolled out a barrage of insulting rhetoric against Palin.
http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/forumdisplay.php?s=c99191149e63cb59845af03413522612&f=84

posted September 27, 2008 10:29 PM            

The PUMAs told their story and it really surprised me: they said that during the caucuses, their delegates were bullied and cheated by the Axelrod people of the Obama camp and that was enough to steal the election from Hillary. But it also alienated them from the party and drove them to McCain. They were very pleased when Sarah Palin made her first acknowledgement upon nomination to Hillary.

They said that during the primaries, Obama delegates at the Texas caucus (I think) got told to go right in and do the caucus, while Hillary delegates got told to sign on the dotted line and leave. Some knew there was foul play afoot and fought it, but in the end, they were all railroaded by the Obamatons. They have a couple of web sites, and they insisted the election was stolen from them because other primary states with conventional primaries showed Hillary victories and only the caucus states were decisively Obama.

Maybe this is familiar to you but it was an eye opener to me. This PUMA thing may be a bit stronger than I first estimated, due to Obama fraud. I'm really glad the PUMAs said they were comfortable with Sarah. They also said they thought Obama was a trash-talking sexist, aggressive and creepy to Palin -- an undercurrent I detected a couple weeks ago during the lipstick pig thing.

FWIW -- it was a great evening and I laughed hardest when Bambi listened to McCain's intense spiel on Ukraine and utterly dumbfounded, could only say 'I agree with Senator McCain.'

posted September 27, 2008 10:33 PM            

Kimberly Peacock | September 27, 2008
"If you want to learn more about what Obama's people did to take over the caucuses, the link below goes to a video made by Democrats about Democrats who are just as happy about it as the Puma's mentioned above."
http://wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/video/index.htm

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/09/watching_the_debate_in_deep_bl.html

posted September 30, 2008 11:47 AM            

Sep. 30, 2008 | Is this the week that Democrats and Republicans join hands -- to heap pity on poor Sarah Palin?

At the moment, all signs point to yes, as some strange bedfellows reveal that they have been feeling sorry for the vice-presidential candidate ever since she stopped speaking without the help of a teleprompter. Conservative women like Kathleen Parker and Kathryn Jean Lopez are shuddering with sympathy as they realize that the candidate who thrilled them, just weeks ago, is not in shape for the big game. They're not alone. The New Republic's Christopher Orr feels that Palin has been misused by the team that tapped her. In the New York Times, Judith Warner feels for Sarah, too! And over at the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates empathizes with intelligence and nuance, making clear that he's not expressing pity. Salon's own Glenn Greenwald watched the Katie Couric interview and "actually felt sorry for Sarah Palin." Even Amy Poehler, impersonating Katie Couric on last week's "Saturday Night Live," makes the joke that Palin's cornered-animal ineptitude makes her "increasingly adorable."

I guess I'm one cold dame, because while Palin provokes many unpleasant emotions in me, I just can't seem to summon pity, affection or remorse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just like all of the rest of you, part of the bipartisan jumble of viewers that keeps one hand poised above the mute button and the other over my eyes during Palin's disastrous interviews. Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do something so badly. Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem, Sophia Coppola acting in "The Godfather: Part III," Sarah Palin talking about Russia -- they all create the same level of eyeball-squinching discomfort.

But just because I'm human, just because I can feel, just because I did say this weekend that I "almost feel sorry for her" doesn't mean, when I consider the situation rationally, that I do. Yes, as a feminist, it sucks -- hard -- to watch a woman, no matter how much I hate her politics, unable to answer questions about her running mate during a television interview. And perhaps it's because this experience pains me so much that I feel not sympathy but biting anger. At her, at John McCain, at the misogynistic political mash that has been made of what was otherwise a groundbreaking year for women in presidential politics.

In her "Poor Sarah" column, Warner writes of the wave of "self-recognition and sympathy [that] washed over" her when she saw a photo of Palin talking to Henry Kissinger. Palin -- as "a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life" -- apparently reminded Warner of herself. Wow. Putting aside the massively depressing implication that Warner recognizes this attitude because she believes it to be somehow written into the female condition, let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked.

In her piece, Warner diagnoses Palin with a case of "Impostor Syndrome," positing that admirers who watched her sitting across from world leaders at the U.N. last week were recognizing that "she can't possibly do it all -- the kids, the special-needs baby, the big job, the big conversations with foreign leaders. And neither could they." Seriously? Do we have to drag out a list of women who miraculously have found a way to manage to balance many of these factors -- Hillary Clinton? Nancy Pelosi? Michelle Bachelet? -- and could still explain the Bush Doctrine without breaking into hives? This is not breaking my heart. It is breaking my spirit.

The Atlantic's Coates takes a far smarter, but ultimately still too gentle, approach to Palin in his blog. He writes, compassionately, "There are a lot of us lefties who are guffawing right now and are happy to see Palin seemingly stumbling drunkenly from occasional interview to occasional interview." Coates asserts that McCain "[tossed] her to the wolves" and notes that while she surely had some agency in this whole mess, "where I am from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too far, when your head has gotten too big."

Where I come from, a woman -- and especially a woman governor with executive experience -- doesn't have to rely on any elder or any man to protect her and pull her ass out of the fire. She can make a decision all on her own. (Palin was more than happy to tell Charlie Gibson that she made her decision to join the McCain ticket without blinking.) I agree with Coates that the McCain camp was craven, sexist and disrespectful in its choice of Palin, but I don't agree that the Alaska governor was a passive victim of their Machiavellian plotting. A very successful woman, Palin has the wherewithal to move forward consciously. What she did was move forward thoughtlessly and overconfidently, without considering that her abilities or qualifications would ever be questioned.

Christopher Orr writes sympathetically about the scenario that Palin may have envisioned, in which she tours the country on the wave of adoration that buoyed her out of St. Paul and through a post-convention victory lap. In his mind, she might well have continued to give winning, grinning interviews, charming the pants off regular folks all across the country, if the accursed McCain campaign hadn't nervously locked her in a no-press-allowed tower. Orr compares Palin to a talented athlete who, as a result of being over-coached, doesn't soar to new physical heights but instead gets "broken down, [loses] confidence in his game, [becomes] tentative, second guessing himself even to the point of paralysis."

Surely if Palin's political muscles were as taut and supple as Orr suspects, the campaign would not have been so quick to put her on a special training regimen.

It was so predictable that we would get to a pity-poor-helpless-Sarah phase. The press was already warming up for it on the day McCain announced her as his running mate, when NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell speculated that McCain's choice was designed to declaw scrappy Joe Biden, whose aggressive style would come off as bullying next to the sweet hockey mom from Alaska. Now, of course, we know about the hockey moms and the pit bulls; the more-powerful-than-expected Palin juggernaut forestalled the pity/victim/mean boy/poor Sarah phase.

So here it is, finally. And as unpleasant as it may be to watch the humiliation of a woman who waltzed into a spotlight too strong to withstand, I flat out refuse to be manipulated into another stage of gendered regress -- back to the pre-Pelosi, pre-Hillary days when girls couldn't stand the heat and so were shooed back to the kitchen.

Sarah Palin is no wilting flower. She is a politician who took the national stage and sneered at the work of community activists. She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.

When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you.

When you treat women as your toys, as gullible and insensate pawns in your Big Fat Presidential Bid -- or in Palin's case, in your Big Fat Chance to Be the First Woman Vice President Thanks to All the Cracks Hillary Put in the Ceiling -- I don't feel bad for you.

When you don't take your own career and reputation seriously enough to pause before striding onto a national stage and lying about your record of opposing a Bridge to Nowhere or using your special-needs child to garner the support of Americans in need of healthcare reform you don't support, I don't feel bad for you.

When you don't have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test -- a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics -- I don't feel bad for you.

When your project is reliant on gaining the support of women whose reproductive rights you would limit, whose access to birth control and sex education you would curtail, whose healthcare options you would decrease, whose civil liberties you would take away and whose children and husbands and brothers (and sisters and daughters and friends) you would send to war in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and wherever else you saw fit without actually understanding international relations, I don't feel bad for you.

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.

In fact, the only people I feel sorry for are Americans who invested in a hopeful, progressive vision of female leadership, but who are now stuck watching, verbatim, a "Saturday Night Live" skit.