TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - Jun 04 2008 | the, clinton, womenQuoted: More important, feminists need not be too heartbroken at their heroine’s loss. The truth – and it is one worth remembering this week as paeans to Mrs Clinton’s stalwart campaigning come pouring in – is that the New York senator was always an imperfect standard-bearer for the cause of female advancement in the US. Even her harshest critics admit she is smart, tough, disciplined and incredibly hard-working – but none of those sterling qualities negates the biographical fact that the US’s first credible female contender for the White House owes her national political career to marrying the right guy.
In using her marriage – notably her eight years as first lady, which was often invoked as evidence that she would be “ready on day one” – as her launch pad, Mrs Clinton has more in common with the wives and daughters who inherited high office in dynasty-friendly regimes in south-east Asia and Latin America. It contrasts with leaders such as Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher, who were elected to run Group of Seven high-income countries under their own steam.
It is a critical difference. For one thing, where marriage or paternity have put women in power it is hard to be sure they have broken glass ceilings for the rest of us. The persistent, punishing societal sexism of some countries that have been ruled by women who got to the top through family connections suggests their breakthroughs reflect the importance of political clans more than that of girl power.
Moreover, the dynastic path to the White House is a route Americans of both genders should treat with suspicion, and not only because of the sorry performance of the latest child of a president to take over his father’s job. Rejection of the aristocratic principle was one of the great revolutionary ideals upon which the republic was founded: that does not quite chime with the fact that, were Mrs Clinton to be elected president in November, just two families would have shared that post for at least 24 continuous years, and maybe for 28. Oddly, for all the hardball character of this nominating battle, this aspect of Mrs Clinton’s bid has received little domestic scrutiny. But Americans should be aware that in countries such as Russia and China, where democracy is still a dissident’s dream, dynastic succession in the US would help bolster the ruling regimes’ arguments that American democracy is merely a Potemkin village.
- TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - Jun 04 2008 | the, obama, clinton
Quoted: This suggests the possibility that far more Democratic voters would have come out in both states if they'd expected the contests to count, meaning that it's hard to argue that the primaries that actually took place really reflected the will of the people.
ShareViewed: 2 Times - TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - Jun 04 2008 | the, obama, clinton
Quoted: ome evolutionists are arguing, for example, that 'there seems to be no natural law sufficient to describe Darwinian pre-adaptations', as evolutionary theorist Stuart Kauffman puts it. A Darwinian pre-adaption is a property that has no selection value in one environment, it's value only emerging in another later. 'An example is human middle-ear bones, which are derived from three adjacent jawbones of an early fish,' Kaufmann continues. And its not just ears. Lungs, hearts, livers and much more besides fall in the same category. (The battle over spandrels will be familiar to many, recently stirred up by Jerry Fodor.)
ShareViewed: 2 Times - TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 30 2008 | the, clinton
Quoted: Even if it were true that no new female candidate can appear to amaze and inspire us by 2012, we are already blessed—as even the naysayers concede—with a bullpen that's both deep and wide. It features female talents such as Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Condoleezza Rice, and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. Why diminish all these women with claims that whatever qualities of Clinton's they lack are precisely those qualities needed to become president someday? What possible evidence do we have for that?
- TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 29 2008 | the, clinton, obama
Quoted: It's hard to come up with an objective measure of which candidates are being attacked the most, but this ought to be a reasonably interesting proxy.
- TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 28 2008 | the, clinton, obama
Quoted: Without editorial comment, here's a list of quotes and statements about the 1992 Democratic nomination battle from March and April of that year.
- TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 23 2008 | the, obama, clinton
A summary of--and rant on--recent Clinton bullshit.
Quoted:This is a secret bet between Bill and Hillary ala Trading Places in which they bet how much bullshit they can make the electorate swallow.
ShareViewed: 2 Times - TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 22 2008 | the, obama, clinton
Quoted: How Hillary's latest math hurts the party.
- TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 21 2008 | the, obama, clinton
Quoted: Currently pregnant with the next generation, let me just say this: There is no greater wish that a mother can have for her daughter than that she will exploit poor people, obliterate Iran, and win rigged class president elections, Putin-style. (Mom, I won 100 percent of the vote!)
- TopBillin | Shared With: Everyone - May 14 2008 | the, clinton, news
Quoted: 2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton's plane to Charleston's hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane's wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.
- Tosh - Jun 05 2008
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