1. When in doubt, shout “epic fail”.

2. Pretend to read. It makes you look erudite. Post the name of a book you are reading in the sidebar, something like say, Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, but never change it. No one will notice.

3. Collect grievances. If you can’t find any, make them up. When you complain about something on your grievance list, don’t use specific quotations or link to anything. You don’t want anyone to find out that you made the whole thing up.

4. Post pictures of cute little animals. Include some videos of pets doing tricks with balloons.

5. Swear. If you are posting on a blog with a child-friendly rating, swear anyhow. The F-word is preferred, but talking about genital mutilation works as a standing joke. If you use the genital mutilation one, you have to pretend someone else on a different blog said it. See #3.

6. Ridicule other people. Especially fat people, people with unusual chromosomes, and children who have been sexually assaulted. Also women who have been abused or killed by their husbands and boyfriends. Then maybe the jerks you are so afraid might turn around and ridicule YOU will forget to do it as you egg them on to ridicule someone ELSE. (For some real doozies, see some of the comments Rumproasters left over at KPFT.) When people question you about why you were making fun of them, say you know they were having icky thoughts and they deserved it. Make and wear the special inverse tinfoil hat that amplifies other people’s thoughts so you know what they are thinking.

7. Don’t think of anything new of your own. Find a blog or two with creative writers and post long stretches of conversation from their forums. You can probably even create a whole new blog with them as the theme. You might call it something like stupidpumas.wordpress.com.

8. If you can’t think of a good argument against someone, claim they insulted you and go off in a snit.

I first became aware of the bots reading straight news. It’s no secret that my first love is the Middle East. I subscribe to several international type feeds as well as the major U.S news feeds, as a feedreader lets you scan a lot of headlines quickly without trying to google all the websites. If you read just one news source, you won’t find out the truth–you have to read several.

And what I found in scanning the national news stories was literally armies of very obnoxious people posting hate comments at the end of the straight news pieces. The same comments over and over on one news service after another. I was appalled at their hatred towards women and the vulgarness with which they approached sexuality. It was clearly organized. At the same time I discovered a few individuals trying to hold back the tide of misogyny who signed their names with Puma. They had all discovered the Obots individually, but they blogged together collectively at PumaPAC.org. They were the only ones actually trying to do something about the iron-my-shirt kind of ugliness and hatred directed against any and all women in the public sphere regardless of their political affiliation.

Who knows what direction this blog might have taken if I hadn’t seen the Obots.  I might have reread Biden’s plan for dividing Iraq and commented on it.  I might have had time to write about some amazing detail about the Palestinian state I came across in a book about something else.  I might have spent more time polishing my Arabic.  But instead someone named Geeklove left a message asking me to post a video about women.  I did.  Since then I have gotten pulled further and further away from my personal goals.  Here it is again.  Hillary ‘s voice talking about the contributions of women all over the world in her China speech against a backdrop  photo montage of the way women in public service  are treated–by Obots.

Will I ever get back to blogging about the things I love?  Or will I be forever stuck at first base, back at election 2008, defending the right of women–ordinary women like myself and extraordinary women like Hillary — to have lives and to be treated with basic human dignity.

Sniffing around their blog, I found an odd mixture of  profanity, snarks,  politics, and grisly anatomical fantasies involving the women who blog at PumaPAC.  Instead of deleting the misogynist comments, or debating the assumptions behind them, the editors and other commenters compliment each other for every particularly vicious turn of phrase.  They seem to spend hours a day combing the pumapac blog  for something in the comments they can collect  for their complaining sessions.  What kind of “dialog” can you have with people like that?

If that sounds like an exaggeration, here are some examples of the type of comments I found over there (I have had to add some asterisks to keep my child-friendly rating):

Kevin
“Tell the PUMAs over at The. Best. Mexican. Soap. Opera. Ever. that we really appreciate the endless hours of entertainment you’ve provided us with in 2008 and we’re looking forward to a lot more of it in the new year.”

strangeapar8us:
“And, no, I don’t get my kicks out of “mocking” you. I get my kicks out of thwarting your purblind political agenda and actively campaigning against it in online forums and the media-at-large. I only post here for the regular check from Soros, which ain’t nearly enough.”

Kerry Reid:
“I have absolutely no problem quoting the late great Michael O’Donoghue to you disgraceful racist idiots and losers: “I’d give you all a swift kick in the c*nts to wake you up, but I wouldn’t want to ruin my shine.” Now go back to crying in the Giant Bowl o’ Fail that makes up your collective lives.”

Kerry Reid again:
“If I was really being crude, I would have suggested you f*ck yourself in the *ss with a rusty d*ldo (thereby avoiding congress with those nasty Rapist Oppressor Real P*nises) until you enlarge your *nus to the point where you can shove your head comfortably up the enhanced opening.”

yetanotherfreakingbrit:
“As for Guy PUMAs, they’ll no doubt have bled to death after you’ve shot all their p*nises off or whetever the next fantasy is.”

skillit:
“Armed with Rusty D*ldos
On Fantasies we Ride
We Dance with Pumas Left and Right
No P*nis by our Side
Up, up, up we scream
Rise, Hillary, Rise
Until the Day that We Can See [minus corneal transplants, cataracts, shingle-related eye-disease] NOBAMA on the outside
So up, up, up with people (but only if you’re GIRLZ)
And save yourself for all the pleasures of b*tt pl*gs and d*lderzz.”

Tom65
“We need to do some more pointing and laughing.”

Brad Mays
“Why do you feel that so many men feel justified in using sexual imagery and language as a way of demeaning women engaged in political discourse?”

Brad Mays, of course, is sort of a Puma, or at least used to hang around filming Pumas.

And who are the Pumas they hate so much? What is the “purblind political agenda” the Rumpsters are so desperate to thwart?  Here is the Puma mission statement Manifesto:

• Passing the Equal Rights Amendment after 86 years of struggle
• Monitoring the 111th Congress and advocating for legislation that supports our mission
• Documenting and Protesting sexism in the mainstream media AND educating the public about its widespread and long term effects
• Developing a national women’s rights curriculum for all American children
• Researching and investigating voter fraud and campaign finance violations during the 2008 election
• Protecting women’s lives by strengthening anti-femicide laws and drawing attention to the crisis of woman-lynching in the United States

How do you talk to someone who opposes that?

Ah, but they used the word “dialog”.   They had sucked me in.  So I opened a first thread thread for the Rumpsters, then a second thread and eventually 11 of them came to visit. Rumpster Guests in the order of their appearance: StrangeAppar8us, pumarubbernecker, kcindenver, Mrs. Polly, sean, Betty Cracker, Clownshoes the Clown, yetanotherfreakingbrit, johnd, Observer at PUMApac, zipperupus…. thank you all for your comments.

What with the new semester starting and everything, it took me more than two weeks to sort out all the comments and respond to them. Here is the final tally.

Total word count: 11071

Written by Nijma: 6172 words

Written by Rumpsters: 7450 words (average: 677 words/Rumpster)

Censorship:  15 Rumpster swear words and ethnic slurs edited.

Okay,  so the Rumpfest was exhausting. For me at least.  What did it accomplish? I don’t know.  But I remain firmly convinced that dialog is never wasted.  And what did the Rumpsters want to talk about? They wanted to repeat campaign talking points. They wanted to comment about my defense of Arabs and moderate Islam in  the comment threads.  They were troubled about the variety of opinions in the Puma website comment threads.  Some were thoughtful; some were bombastic.

And over and over again they mentioned one particular Puma commenter, JenniforHillary, who had been involved in a radio show (transcript here) and a video (transcript here) about the Pumas. Curious, I went back and looked.  If I was a Rumpster, I would not be too proud of this episode.  Wonkette and Rumproast posted photoshopped pictures of her in order to make fun of her weight.    Curiously they did nothing to refute the points she made in the interviews about election fraud in the primaries.  The posts were taken down quickly after both the Confluence and PumaPAC pointed out the difference between ridiculing powerful political figures and ridiculing private citizens because they take their civic responsibilities seriously.

What the Rumproast did to Jenni was tacky at the very least.  When Jenni first started writing at PumPAC she was just excited about Hillary, and her posts conveyed her thrill in being part of it all, but after she was baited, she started getting nasty and writing in ALL CAPS: what a surprise! And as someone once said, what fun it is to bait people until they turn nasty! If you did that to someone’s face, they would probably punch you, but since it’s on the internet all they can do is get angry.  What cowards to bait someone until they get angry and then write post after post ridiculing them for it.  Did I say coward?  No, comic! It’s funny to bait someone until they turn nasty, yeah, that’s the ticket. Bullying tactics are funny.

JenniforHillary: Hello, first of all I want to thank KPFT for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Jennifer and I am an American. I have always voted for the Democratic party, but this year something happened. In the general election, the democratic party lost its way.  Instead of encouraging one of the finest candidates ever to run, who happened to be a woman, the national Democratic party told Hillary Rodham Clinton to quit. They told her to quit when she was winning and they told her to quit when she was losing. The Democratic national party and the media told her this over and over and over, describing her and her following, which numbered over eighteen million Americans in terms that were misogynistic and downright unAmerican. they kept telling us to vote for Barack Obama,  but they never really told me why.  In the end, even though Hillary Rodham Clinton had more people vote for her than any candidate ever in the history of the United States of America, I was told that Barack Obama won.  Because my mother raised a smart girl, I decided not to believe them and I found P.U.M.A.  The day after Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign speech in Washington D.C. From that day on, my life will never be the same.  Puma started fighting that day, and will never stop fighting, until the massive media fraud, voter registration and actual voting fraud, delegate selling, the lying,   and the misogyny are exposed and ended.  I probably voted a straight Republican ticket this year and I’m now both independent and P.U.M.A.  I am very concerned about the lack of democracy and the dumbing down of the American voter, and because of this I have asked Darragh Murphy, the founder of P.U.M.A. to speak tonight on KPFT and tell us about her group, and what PUMA plans to do to save America.  I would like to introduce Darragh Murphy.

Murphy: Hi, Jenni, can you hear me?

Jenni: I can hear you.

Murphy: Oh, good.  Thank you so much for doing this and for inviting me to join you tonight.

Jenni: You’re very  welcome.

Murphy: And that was a very heartfelt, as always, introduction from you, and I don’t know if we have a plan to save America, Jenn, but, um, we are trying to help things.  I don’t know, do you think there are a lot of people like you who have watched the election and the earlier campaign, do you think there are people who are disturbed, and distraught, and wondering what’s going on:

Jenni: Yes, I can speak for Houston, Texas. My job keeps me in the public eye and I can tell you that I see people wandering looking lost, I’ve even seen grown men with tears in their eyes, I think know something’s bothering them, they know something is very wrong, but they don’t know what to do. That’s why I wanted you to come tonight and tell us, what is PUMA doing, how can they get involved, what can they do to help America?

Murphy: Well, the first thing people can do is visit our website, which is at www.pumapac.org, our name, it’s a funny name, but our name stands for People United Means Action, and the PAC part stands for [4:00] Political Action Committee, which is what we are, organized with the federal elections commission, and all… and all that stuff, and just to back up a little bit, if you don’t mind, Jenni,  we organized back on June third, right before Senator Clinton suspended–and I know she was really popular in Texas, and not even getting into your primaries and caucuses there in Texas , but I know there are so many Democrats in Texas who supported Senator Clinton. I imagine that Democrats and listeners out there probably remember how it was for her at the end of the primary when we realized that, holy smokes, that the Democrat National Committee  was gonna take the results of the primary and everything and they were gonna select the nominee and that’s what motivated me to start PumaPAC, that the Obama campaign’s more than a campaign, Jenni, It’s… by the time…March April that ‘s when I woke up and realized it was a movement, that it was kind of a scary thing inside the Democratic party, it had always been divisive, um,  but by the time we got to March of April I felt like we needed a counter movement, we needed something inside the Democratic party that could fight against, like you said, the misogyny, and things that have come out since then that [5:30] were really pretty scary in terms of suppression of freedom of speech,  and in terms of bullying tactics, and not counting votes, ..so that’s how I started PumaPAC and…

Jenni:  Murphy, can I interrupt for a second?

Murphy: Of course.

Jenni: You’re talking specifically regarding the Michigan Florida debacle?

Murphy: Um hmm. Yes.

Jenni: I think a lot of people don’t even realize what happened.  Sum it up for us; what happened in Michigan and Florida?

Murphy:  Well, Michigan and Florida, back in the… now we’re going way, way back before the primaries had even started, Michigan and Florida were competing with other states in order to make their primaries more significant, and I don’t even understand all the details of all of it, but Michigan and Florida scheduled their primaries outside of the rules of the DNC calendar, and in Michigan I think there were some shenanigans, but in Florida it was a real tragedy because I believe that it was a Republican controlled legislature in Florida that changed the calendar for the Democratic primary…

Jenni:  Yes.

Murphy: … so it wasn’t even the Democrats in Florida who got themselves in trouble, it was the Republican party that was doing shenanigans to get the Democratic party in trouble. So anyway, the Democratic in Florida and Michigan primaries were outside of the DNC approved calendar, and all of this stuff is terribly boring and contentious, but the fact is that people in Florida and Michigan, democrats in Florida and Michigan went to the polls on the day of their primary and they voted; they voted for whoever they wanted to vote for,. There was some silliness in Michigan about Obama taking his name off of the ballot. The end result was the democratic party decided to punish the voters in Florida and Michigan and not count their votes in the primaries..and they had the right to do it, which is what the Obama campaign always claimed, because political parties aren’t a branch of the government, they’re not governed by the constitution, they’re similarly run to an Elk’s club or a private club so they can do whatever kind of rules they want to, but that only flies so much, because  when I go to vote in the Democratic primary I don’t think of it as much different from any other kind of election and I want my vote to count. [8:00]

Jenni:  Right. ‘Cause that’s the American way.

Murphy: Yeah. When you go in to vote, then you think your vote should count.  So the people in Florida and Michigan they were disenfranchised, and when you vote in a primary what happens is whoever wins the primary, that sate, that state’s delegates are assigned to one or the other candidate , so the whole delegate count thing is complicated, so going into the Democratic convention in August, Clinton was only behind by I think seventeen delegates, really the closest in any kind of party history going into a convention like that, and the fact that the American people don’t even know that is a tragedy.

Jenni: Yes, and I think that the thing that upset me too was that they then used exit polling to divide people’s votes

Murphy: Yup.

Jenni: …according to alleged voting practice. This is not America, a vote has to count, and that’s what really alerted my to some very undemocratic tendencies in the Democratic party also and I know, I don’t want to interrupt…

Murphy: Oh, please do.

Jenni:  I’m just going to put in my …one of the things that really upset me…one of the things…was you know, Jesse Jackson ran as a Democratic contender for …a couple years ago,

Murphy: Twenty-seven years ago

Jenny: …but God bless him, he tried, and not once did the Democratic national party ever  ask him to quit; they never felt that he was divisive or hurting the party.  In fact, if I remember correctly they allowed a full roll call vote at the convention that year, and it really strikes me as unbelievably misogynistic for the democratic party to not give Hillary Clinton, to not have given her the same right.   In the Michigan-Florida thing, asking her to quit, was when my ears perked up,  and I said this does not smell right to me, and the thing that capped it most of all , or I wouldn’t even say most of all [10:00] was when the DNC shut their offices and moved them to Chicago to be part of Obama’s complex.

Murphy: Right.

Jenny:  And I wondered to myself, he hasn’t even won the primary, and yet they’re already moving their office into his office, do they know something I don’t, and that’s what drew me to Puma and I know we’ve got callers Murphy, but I want you to talk, even if you can give us five minutes, tell us, tell the public about what Puma has done, because I think you’re a miracle worker.

Murphy:  Oh, my goodness. Thanks, Jenny. Well, we’ve been, like you said, you’ve been with us since day one Jenni, you’ve been working, before the convention in August we’ve been working to alert the superdelegates–I have to praise Texas because the Clinton supporters–not just Clinton supporters–I’m from Massachusetts, and I’ve only been in the airport at Dallas/Fort Worth so I’m not all that familiar with Texas, but I’ve met a lot of Texas Pumas. In Texas they understand the idea, they have a sort of basic connection  with the constitution or basic ideas of one person one vote, and when things don’t smell right they are not afraid to stand up and…

Jenni: Yes.

Murphy: …argue against it, but one thing that we did was try to alert the superdelgates. If people are familiar with the Democratic party minutiae, that the superdelgates ended up deciding the selection, so we ended up sending what 2000 emails to superdelegates asking them to respect the will of their voters, we shut down the what do you call it the switchboard at the DNC

Jenni: That was great, Murphy.

Murphy: yeah, that ‘s the really great thing about Puma is that it’s the new sort of model of political action. What we try to do is get as many people to join in on our prowls, which are citizen actions, which mean either sending a fax, making a phone call, what we’re trying to get people to member what it means to be an American citizen, and what it means to be an American citizen is to hold your representatives accountable, so don’t be afraid to call them up on the phone, and don’t be afraid to send them a letter, and if we all do it together from all across the country then I think people will listen, and our motto or tagline is “the voice of the voters” and that’s what I think has been lost in the last 25, 30 years, is at this point, the political parties, we’re just an afterthought, we just don’t matter.  They decide what they’re going to do in their big campaign strategy rooms, and the voters don’t even count, it’s eerie, but in the Democratic party we don’t even count in fact, they’re not even going to necessarily count our votes.

Jenni:  Exactly [13:00] exactly, and you know, I want to mention for everyone, once again the website of Puma is www.pumapac.org, because if you’re like me, if you’re frustrated, if you’re upset and concerned about America, I tell you, if I did not have this website to go to, if I did not surround myself with active thinking people, who are willing to fight for the constitution and the bill of rights in America, I don’t know what I would do, I really, I can’t thank you enough, and we have so many callers. Can we take a caller, Murphy?

Murphy:  Sure.

Jenni:  How about Juliet, she’s been holding for seven minutes.

Juliet:  Hi Murphy, can you hear me?

Murphy:  Hi, Juliet how are you?

Juliet: Good, I could be better if we had a different president–president elect– but I think we have to be forward-looking and take some real hard looks about the policies that he’s proposing that will be very damaging to America (crosstalk)

Jenni: What are you concerned about Juliet?

Juliet: Deeply concerned about instituting a mandatory civil defense training camp for all Americans. I’ll be interested to see Bill Ayers’ interview on Good Morning America tomorrow morning. You know I guess this is the kind of training that we can see young people in America learning from people like Bill Ayers, no, we can’t let it happen.

Jenni:  No, we can’t.

Juliet:  ..no, we can’t let it happen, but I wouldn’t this administration because this [15:00] president elect Obama was selected by a willful ignorance, people in our party who would just not see him for what he was, and when you present them with facts, when you present them with the evidence of what his philosophies are, what his ideology is, they won’t see it for what it is.

Jenni: Well, don’t you think that the college students who elected him, don’t you think they’re going to be upset when they realize they’re going to have to be part of a civilian army  and hundreds of hours a month of service ? I don’t think that’s going to fly with them.

Juliet:  Well they could be upset, but what can you do about it when he’s the commander in chief? They can be upset all they want, but you know he is the elected commander in chief, I mean when I see him going in and getting briefed on issues of national security I get chills, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I mean with his first meeting with George Bush, all things were leaked to the press, this is outrageous..

Jenni: I want to invite all of those college students to join pumapac.org , because you know, remember the Boston tea party?  All it takes…because we are Americans. Our government, we elect them to govern, not rule, and if we don’t like what they’re doing, we can let them we can let them know, so it’s not ever, so if all of these college students listening are worried about your hundreds of hours wearing brown shirts, come to Pumapac

Juliet:  And red berets.

Jenni:  We have so many people waiting. Can we take another call?

Juliet:  Sure, and thank you Murphy.

Jenni: …and let’s go to John

This appears to be a hostile interview. The camera zooms in and out wildly during the whole thing and at the end the questioner does not address the issues raised but merely labels them “emotional”. I have tried to show the camera movement in the transcript. [See more Carey on video here (NSFW-language) and here harassing coworkers behind the scene while live on camera by recording them on his cellphone.]

Isiah Carey: Tell me your situation. You have McCain and Palin posters there (camera zooms out) or billboards and you said you were a  (camera zooms in) Democrat only a couple of months ago (closeup shot of face)

JenniforHillary: Yeah (crosstalk)

Isiah Carey: What happened?

JenniforHillary:  What happened was Hillary Clinton won the primary but the Democrats decided that they didn’t like her (camera zooms out quickly) and wanted Barack Hussein Obama so they (camera zooms in) fiddled with the votes in Florida and Michigan and then (quick zoom to closeup) they strongarmed people at the convention and I’m a member of Puma, People United  Means Action,

Isiah Carey: Um Hum.

JenniforHillary: …and we’re making a documentary (camera zooms out) about it and we had people there and we filmed it.  They had Barack Hussein Obama people on every delegate.  They wanted to know the minute they got to the convention who they were voting for. They strong armed people, they told them if  we’re going to run somebody against you where you live, it was the worst Democratic fascist situation I have ever in my life heard of, and it happened in Denver, this year.  That is why I stopped being a Democrat.

Isiah Carey: One thing is clear that you’re constantly using the middle name Hussein. What are you trying to do by using that middle name?

JenniforHillary: I don’t like the fact that he’s running an alleged transparent campaign, yet we can’t talk about him, (camera zooms out quickly) We’re not allowed to talk about Reverend Wright, we’re not allowed to talk about Reverened Otis,  (camera reaches maximum far distance and quickly zooms back in) we’re not allowed to talk about Reverend Pflager, we’re not allowed to talk about Michelle Obama’ s college thesis, we’re not allowed to talk about his middle name, we’re not allowed to talk about anything. Well, that doesn’t sound very transparent to me.  You know we’re not allowed to know where his hundreds of millions of dollars are coming in from, we’re not allowed to talk about anything or we’re called a racist.  And I have spent my life (camera begins zooming out)  fighting for civil rights in this country. I am the furthest thing from a racist. I’m American. (camera begins zooming in).

Isiah Carey: You’re getting very emotional about this . (camera zooming in)

JenniforHillary: I am emotional, I , you know, what happened in Florida and Michigan happened.  In other countries people would have revolted in the streets. In other countries people are dying to have  what we have here, which is a democracy where every person’s vote counts equally. And it seems like this year we’ve just forgotten the importance, (camera stops movement) ….if a vote doesn’t count as a vote, that’s the cornerstone of our democratic country, we’ve lost our country.  a viote has to count.  If it doesn’t count, we’re not a democracy (camera zooms out suddenly).  Florida and Michigan (camera pans down to McCain/Palin rally sign) were a travesty (camera zooms in suddenly) an absolute travesty.

Isiah Carey:  (camera tight shot to face) Former Democrat, now independent, give me your full name.

JenniforHillary:  [ name]

Isiah Carey: Thank you ma’am.

JenniforHillary: Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: Not sure why this post has gathered so much attention in the last two days, but the photoshopped picture from this video is still online, along with two pages of comments ridiculing her for her weight at :

http://rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/happy_new_year_open_thread/

The video was online for a while at the now defunct Pumafail.com started by “johnd” at stupidpumas.wordpress.com.

For a transcript of the interview with JenniforHillary and PumaPAC’s Darraugh Murphy, see here.

]]> http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/jennirforhillary-interview/feed/ 0 Nijma isiah-carey-500px isiah-carey-publicity-shot http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/peggy-agars-sweetie-rematch/ http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/peggy-agars-sweetie-rematch/#comments Sat, 29 Nov 2008 05:38:56 +0000 Nijma http://camelsnose.wordpress.com/?p=2292 ]]> It is probably the best kept secret in the blogosphere, but remember back when Presidential candidate Barack Obama called a reporter Sweetie? Then he apologized and promised to give her an interview later. Well, someone left a message on a thread here earlier today saying Agar was going to get her interview. But when I googled it, I found out the interview had already taken place–back in June.

What did Peggy Agar want to ask a presidential candidate back in May?

I wanted to ask him what he plans on doing for, you know, auto workers in America, which of course specifically means Detroit…. you know, he’s shaking hands with auto workers, he’s running for president, he hasn’t been here in ten months, you know. That’s the time to say what you’re gonna do for these people, how you’re going to help them keep their jobs and keep their homes.

When the interview did take place on June 2, that’s exactly what Agar asked him about. Then she went on to ask about seating the Michigan delegates at the Denver convention, about education for Michigan’s children, continuing with questions about how his answers for Michigan differed from McCain’s.

Early in the interview, she even got a laugh from him

AGAR: Most people I think are probably saying now that they think you’ll have the nomination. If that does come to fruition, do you think Hillary Clinton will vote for you?

OBAMA: Yes, I do.

Not a difficult or hostile interview, and not one that asked any tough questions, but to the point and done in a way that let him give his prepared answers to the issues. About what you would expect from a local reporter in a major metropolitan area–if one who got an unexpected 15 minutes of fame.  And since everyone wants to comment on how women look these days, let me just say that Agar looked very put together and so did Obama.

Transcript and video here.

“I’m a Republican.”
“You shoulda voted Democrat, you’d have a check comin’.”
(The Republican leaves.)
“Whether he’s Republican or Democrat, he’s got a check comin’.”

Today the pundits are asking who will be on the staff of the executive branch. Good question. Currently the the United States ranks 69^th in the world with regard to women in government.

Surely the new president who says he wants to unite people will have an inclusive staff? Doesn’t look like it. Obama’s people say there “aren’t enough qualified women” and call the idea “stupid”.

After the last Democratic Primary was over and it was clear Senator Clinton was not going to get the Democratic nomination, myself, and a small group of Clinton supporters met with Senator McCain.I personally explained to Senator McCain that women comprise well over half of the population, yet you will not see a single picture of a woman on paper currency. Women are underrepresented in every branch of government and there has never been a female president or vice president. I personally asked Senator McCain to choose a woman for the Vice Presidential slot and to increase the number of women in the cabinet and on the Supreme Court. Senator McCain listened respectfully to my request. Little did I know then that he heard me and the millions of women of this country who have gone unrepresented in the Executive branch of government for far too long.

When I made similar requests of the Obama campaign, I was laughed at by the canvassers outside my home, told there weren’t enough qualified women by a member of his Finance Committee, and asked by a member of a policy committee why I was making such a stupid request.

But that’s just the finance and policy staff, right? Obama himself really stands for fairness, doesn’t he?  Maybe not.

Obama’s female staffers, on average, make just 83 cents to the dollar his male staffers make.

Ooops.  And it looks like Vice President Elect Biden’s pay practices are even worse. Despite the fact that Biden employs 27 women and only 14 men, very few of the women and men share common titles.  The one job where there is overlap is staff assistants.  These are traditionally entry level low-wage jobs in congressional offices.

So how do Biden’s salaries stack up?

The average male staff assistant in Biden’s office (based on the most recent salary figures) made $39,162 in the time period.

The average woman in that position made $21,323.

McCain’s promise:

By the end of my first term, I promise you will see a dramatic increase in the presence of women in every part of the government. You have my word on it.

For those of us who don’t have a trust fund, this could be a looooong four years.
(Thanks to Madamab at The Confluence)

This is part of a larger, more well known poem, Maya Angelou‘s “The rock cries out to us today.” The themes of hope, change, self-determination, and new beginnings, are of course cyclical in American politics.

Me?  The weather is perfect for a little stroll by the lake.