"An emotional Clinton vows to fight on"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080107/...sa_politics_dc

Against some pretty difficult odds? Still playing the gender card, eh? Even as your front-runner campaign crumbles like a sand castle? You're still the victim, Hillary?

Show of hands... Who wants a victim in the White House for 8 long years?

(Crickets chirping...)

Anyone?

(Crickets chirping...)

Anybody at all.

(Crickets chirping...)

For those who doubt how effeminate our political process has gone, look no further than this news item. All the major networks have covered this instead of say some policy position!

There was a Iranian action in the Strait of Hormoz (the juglar of the world, as 80-90% of the oil comes out through that narrow bottleneck), but Hitlery cried so which should we cover endlessly!

If war breaks out in the Strait of Hormoz the markets will tumble, lights will go out within days, weeks or a month and we will all be very concerned with oil (just like or more so than oil executives-as they will be covered better than us) and there will be chaos in full. And if any of you think Bush wants a conflict there then reason is all but gone.

Our societies are so far gone that we don't know which way is up! But who cares for what is the latest gossip about Hillary showing her emotions??? Amazing!

Anyone who would vote those thieves back in office are nutters. Hillary is coming to the realization that the world don't like her as much as she had thought.

Those tears didnt move anyone who knows what this woman is all about.I hate that lying femimarxist.Most americans do not support her "it takes a village" philosophy either.

Make the scawy twoll go awayyyyy....

I voted for both of the above. I know it wasn't snow melting on her face....snow would be much more likely to turn to ice then to water on her.

I was watching a snippet of a meeting she had with some folk in a coffee shop (I think). This is where I understand, she nearly cried. Maybe a 'practice cry'.

(Just why her news-team thinks that we durn furriners in the deep south of the farthest end of the world, just before the friggin' hopping dragons, want to know about Hillary's tearful episodes with terrible coffee is beyond me, but our TV news seems to be dominated by the damned US election process at the moment. )

( I was waiting for the Huonville sheep-dog competition results to come on.)

Anyway, one of her supporters, a woman, asked a question. "I know, we women have such difficulty getting out of the house, getting ready: How do you do it? ".

No wonder she teared up. It can bring tears to anyone's eyes hearing such a heartfelt cry of 'Why Us - eeeee'.

I, however, nearly had apoplexy.

Difficulty? What friggin' difficulty?

Is it incompetence in getting dressed or something?

Wardrobe Indecision Syndrome?

Self-induced stupidity?

When a woman says she is ready to go out, it means she will be ready, as soon as she finds her other earring, makes one more phone call, finishes putting on her make-up and goes to the loo.

She will inspect every dress, skirt, blouse and ‘top’, she has. Two to six changes are average until she finds something barely satisfactory. There will be several moments with each change devoted to altering the designed effect of the neckline by pulling out, or down. (rarely up)

If she is going to be out with other people, that she does not know, say, Ambassadors, visting Heads of State, Joint Chiefs of Staff, she will select her best underwear. Her bra straps will be displayed.

She will, at some point, look in her husband's side of the wardrobe.

No one knows why she does any of this.

I wonder what that woman wanted Hillary to do about it when she becomes President.

Perhaps hoping to have a personal maid for every woman in America, provided by the Government under some Equal Dressing Opportunity Program?

No wonder there is an influx of Mexican maids.

How about every woman have a personal cosmetician arrive at 7.30am with a lorry load of Victoria Principal's best and assorted paint brushes?

Those damned Men!! (tm), they have it sooooo easy. Not like 'empowered' women.

All the women there in the coffee-barn seemed to nod in agreement that things were just so 'difficult' for women.

Nod, nod, nod. Cricky, it was as if she was surrounded by those furry puppet thingos you find in women's cars, that 'nod' like, well, nodding thingos.

If that's a big stopper to getting on with the day, how is Hillary going to face China rising or Osama bin Liner or even a visit from the Zimbabwe Ambassador?

Send out for a Victoria's Secret take-away / White House delivery?

Schedule everything to after lunch?

(Nod, if you agree. Its a 'women-power' display)

Oh dear, fixing Lunch. We all know how 'difficult' that is.

Tofu or lettuce? Fettucini with or without the cheese sauce? Maybe just an energy-filled glass of water, after all there are only the woes of the whole friggin' world to deal with. Decisions, decisions.

"Where is that damned Mo^%$fu%^$*&ng, sh&^t# Secret Service officer with the f*&$*ng Imperial calorie counter suitcase".

I recommend Hillary runs the world from bed.

Strike that. Don't vote her in at all.

Vote #1 My mate Amfortas. He dresses real quick and doesn't whine.

I think its more likely a desperate, last-ditch attempt to try to get the sympathy vote while her campaign implodes around her. There will be more tears before the end, 'cause Hillary can't take the heat!

So, do we think this is typically female behavior? I do. If things don't go your way just cry about it, and some man will bail you out... Unless of course you're dumb enough to be running for President at the time.

It Takes a Family (to Break a Glass Ceiling)
By KERRY HOWLEY
New York Times
January 5, 2008


SOME women, even progressive ones, are surely celebrating Hillary Clinton’s third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. Those of us who think 43 male presidents in a row is quite enough, thank you, still sometimes question whether a woman whose greatest political move was her marriage deserves to be the first woman in the White House.

But while there are plenty of reasons not to vote for Mrs. Clinton (as an antiwar libertarian, I could happily list them for you at length), her marital journey to power is not one of them. The uncomfortable truth is that political nepotism has often served feminism’s cause well.

In 1924, Miriam A. Ferguson, a Texas Democrat known as Ma, became the first woman elected to a full term as a governor. Her husband, James Edward Ferguson, had been elected, impeached and removed from the same office. Mrs. Ferguson ran on a platform of “two governors for the price of one” — a package that included a convicted extortionist and an untested woman.

Like it or not, the road to female advancement often begins at the altar. History books are thick with examples of women who broke political barriers because their family connections afforded them the opportunity.

If you’ve ever wondered why India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan and the Philippines seem readier to elect women than does the United States, here’s your answer: Societies that value a candidate’s family affiliation, and therefore have a history of nepotistic succession, are often open to female leadership so long as it bears the right brand. Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, among many others, slashed through gender barriers on the strength of their family names.

In the United States, where a poll last year found that 14 percent of people still admit they would not vote for a woman, nepotistic advancement for women in politics was most common early in the 20th century. As Jo Freeman, the feminist political scientist, has pointed out, six of the first 14 women elected to Congress were widows of incumbents. Three more were the daughters of politicians.

The first three women to serve full Senate terms all succeeded their husbands. Only with the 1978 election of Nancy Kassebaum, a Kansas Republican, did a woman finally achieve a full Senate term without first following her husband into office. (And Ms. Kassebaum was the daughter of Alf Landon, the former Kansas governor.)

To some voters, Hillary Clinton’s husband provides reassurance that the “calculating” senator from New York won’t degenerate into a feminine hysteric if she is elected to the White House. Yet Mrs. Clinton, the first woman who is a serious contender for the presidential nomination of one of the nation’s two major political parties, still has to work overtime to prove herself non-threatening. She clings to the political center like a life raft and rarely ventures from the shallow waters of establishment predictability.

Social psychologists have found that women in leadership roles are typically seen as either warm, likable and incompetent, or cold, distant and competent. To be a strong, competent woman is to be something culturally unattractive, which probably says something about why few American women even aspire to political office. Worldwide, even popular female politicians — Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Angela Merkel — are slapped with the moniker “iron lady.”

Granted, women who rely on their last names to ascend to power are not especially likely to pursue explicitly feminist policies. They may even be less likely to do so, in order to seem worthy of office.

But their chief function to the cause is outside of policy. By their very existence, these women attack the norms and assumptions that bar other women from ascending to power on their own.

Women like Lindy Boggs of Louisiana, who lost her husband in a plane crash in 1972 and then assumed his vacant office in the House of Representatives, showed us they could lead as well as their husbands did — even if they never would have been given the chance otherwise.

The best way to convince voters that women leaders are fully human — likable and competent at times, unlikable and incompetent at others — is to fill the world with more of them.

No mother wants to tell her daughter that she can aspire to the presidency only if she snags the most gifted politician of her generation. But Hillary Clinton’s rise to power, unsettling as it is, follows a time-tested pattern for the breaking of gender barriers.

The great feminist promise of a Hillary Clinton presidency amounts to this: If we elect a political wife now, perhaps we won’t have to later.

Kerry Howley is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/op...=1&oref=slogin


Another example of 'affirmative action'?

I do believe that some women can be effective leaders, but I think men are generally more suited to exercise public power.

a BBC correspondent called this "a rare unplanned moment".

Puh-LEASE!

I am waiting for the hissy fit when she finds out she cannot get her own way...