QUESTION: When we are successful and we have a conservative House and a conservative Senate, as soon as that happens, what do you think are the top three things that have got to be done?

PALIN:…And then, I think, it is kind of tougher to — kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America’s spirit to rise again by not being afraid — not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God-fearing nation where we are not afraid to say, especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, we are not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women.

So it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that, you know, they have to be afraid of what the media would say about them if they were to proclaim their reliance on our creator.

I’ve just read the Plain Dealer article, “Fired state workers accuse their boss of religious harassment,” that describes exactly the kind of scenario I believe Palin’s rhetoric encourages.  The possibility of interference of religion in state affairs is not far-fetched.  It is something that’s always bothered me and even more so as offices of faith-based and community initiatives have come to direct more and more taxpayer funds to religious institutions and good works.

In this context, to me, Palin’s exhortation to seek “…some divine intervention again in this country so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route…” reflects an abject failure to understand and accept the constitutional cornerstone of separation of church and state.

Then again, maybe I’m all wrong and in fact she’d like to see the daily fulfillment of 613 mitzvot written into the constitution and government employee contracts.

Here ya go – twenty years later, it’s going in N. Collinwood:

Polensek was anything but grateful to Mayor Frank Jackson three years ago, when the city appeared poised to build a recreation center south of Interstate 90 in the South Collinwood ward of then-Councilman Roosevelt Coats. Polensek and Coats had been arguing over where a recreation center should be built since the late 1990s.

Not one quote from Ward 10’s current council member though.  Someone might want to get that input.

…The data used is from Catalyst, a non-profit organization which works to promote the status of women in business. Our analysis compared the Fortune 500 women who are executive officers as defined by the SEC to data on the number of female members of boards of directors at the same universe of companies. This is the first time these two lists have been cross-referenced for a public analysis.

The companies on the 24/7 Wall St. Worst Places for Women to Work list have no women on their boards and no women in senior management.  Any company on the list would have to: 1) completely lack sensitivity to the issues of women in the work place, or 2) have enough misgivings about women to insure that all the people who have any meaningful place in running their companies have to be men. It is hard to say whether these companies are “female-free” at the top tiers because of misogyny or dull-wittedness.  The practice of equal opportunity is missing at all of these companies.Our analysis makes an assumption, but we believe it is a fair one. A company with no women on its board or in senior management is extremely unlikely to be concerned about the issue of disparity in pay by gender  and is likely to perform worse than the national census average in terms of what it pays its non-executive female management and its women rank-and-file employees.

And the winners are (with greater detail at the article):1. Phillip Morris

2. Icahn Enterprises

3. Virgin Media

4. Liberty Media

5. L-3

6. EOG Resources

7. Cameron International

8. National Oilwell Varco

9. Emcor

10. XTO Energy

Hattip to Women’s Voices for Change.  What criteria would you look at?

This is going to sound oh-so-familiar to those of us who’ve been writing and momming for a while now, but it can never be said often enough – because until it happens to you, it is nearly impossible for others to believe or understand (she wrote as she noticed it was 7:15am and time to wake up the third of three kids who must get ready and go to school):

Not long ago I worked as a reporter for daily publications. I used to hammer out up to three stories a day. Now it seems like I have lost all ability to write anything on the fly, other than an e-mail to my husband begging him to come home from work and help me get mac ‘n cheese on the table before the 2-year-old melts down.

It took me nine months, for example, to get this piece into publication.

No Time for Basic Needs

Before I had children I had heard about the challenges of parenting: the sleep deprivation, the round-the-clock nursing, the separation anxiety, the terrible twos.

But I had no idea that parents actually had trouble finding time to meet basic needs like eating, bathing and sleeping.

Allison, welcome to yet another sisterhood. And thank you for making what it sounds like you think will be a sacrifice, but I promise, you will see and hear the rewards before you know it.

Cuyahoga County Executive: Vote Zimon – She’s No Retread

B’nai Jeshurun Synaogogue President: Vote Zimon – Enough With This Predetermined Stuff

American Jewish Committee: Vote Zimon – She Tells Scott What To Do Anyway

Ohio Bar: Vote Zimon – She’s Married To A Practicing Lawyer And That’s Good Enough For Us

National Association of Social Workers: Vote Zimon – Talk About Talk Therapy!

Last year, my slogan was, Don’t Get Mad, Get Elected.  But now, on Purim, I want to make it clear that my newest mantra is: Don’t Get Elected, Get Overextended!

And if my enthusiasm for simultaneously running for multiple top spots sounds a little circumspect, at a minimum, do check out the Coffee Party.  It actually sounds kinda cool:

MISSION: The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

Follow the Coffee Party at its Facebook fan page and on Twitter. Read about it in these news items.

And for those who didn’t know, one Purim tradition is parody. Although note that I did not say I’d also run as an Independent for Ohio Treasurer or my state rep’s seat.

Coming from a community that voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama and that is strongly aligned with the Democratic Party, Jewish Democrats are nevertheless seeking to strike a new tone this year. This means taking a step away from the party and the president and using the term “independent” as much as possible on the campaign stump. And for Jewish Republicans running for statewide offices, hopes are high that they can cash in on public disappointment with the conduct of leaders in Washington.

…

Republican Jewish political candidates — none of whom are known to be in serious contention for Congress this cycle — expect that public frustration with the Democrats will work to their party’s benefit.

“There is definitely a new momentum,” said Josh Mandel, a Republican running for the post of Ohio state treasurer. “I think it will have more of an impact in states with bigger Jewish populations.” Jewish Republicans have high hopes for Mandel, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, and view him as a potential future player on the national level. [emphasis added]

As an interesting footnote, during Mandel’s 2008 re-election campaign, he stated that he’d never met a Jew who supported him blindly because he was Jewish:

Asked if he thinks he’ll receive Jewish votes for being Jewish himself, Mr. Mandel answered, “Maybe my opponent has met people who blindly support me because I’m Jewish, but I certainly haven’t.

The political reality of identity politics in Ohio – like it or not, agree with it or not – does involve the sizeable Jewish population on Cleveland’s east side as a factual situation. No one I’ve ever met has disputed that and in fact, I was told by a non-Jew in Pepper Pike that he would not help me get on the ballot because, as he told me, there already are too many Jews in Pepper Pike.  Honestly, I’m not sure why anyone involved in politics would try to dispute this very well-known, acknowledged information.

Rather, the challenge with identity politics is to decide for yourself, as a candidate, how that reality informs your choices, as a candidate. For example, I never went out saying, “I’m the mom! We need a mom!”

What I did say was that I am a parent of school-aged kids and nearly one-third of the taxpaying households in Pepper Pike have school-aged kids in them, and if I wasn’t elected, there would be zero direct representation of that demographic on Council and there needs to be direct input and contribution from that demographic because of its size and its desires and concerns that vary from other distinct constituencies within the city.  Given the current financial situation in the city, it is even more important since that one-third demographic comprises far more than one-third of who pays wage income tax to the city.

If you’re not very familiar with how identity politics works and is perceived, here are two very different pieces on the topic:

The New Identity Politics Party on FiveThirtyEight (12/09)

Matt Bai in the NYT Magazine: Retro Identity Politics (9/08)

Final footnote: The Forward also published an article, The Ten to Watch in 2010, about Jews running for office this year (Lee Fisher, Mandel and Ted Deutch who used to live in Ohio included) but, wouldn’t you know – speaking of identity politics – only two of the ten are women. On the other hand, at least one of Alaska’s 3000 Jews is running for that state’s Lt. Gov. post.

Ten high-ranking politicians, including David Cameron and Gordon Brown, have appeared in live webchats on Mumsnet in the last year. “Just two of them,” its co-founder Justine Roberts said yesterday, “had been asked to take part.” The rest invited themselves.

Such is the political clout of Mumsnet.

…

[However, Roberts] dismissed the idea that Mumsnet represented a coherent block of votes as totally wrong, saying that the online community – in political terms – is “like an octopus with pre-menstrual tension.”

You can view an interview with the Mumsnet co-founder at that link.

Yeah, I’m not sure I’d describe BlogHer in remotely the same language, but you can read all about the enormous amount of money and time being spent by UK political candidates on Mumsnet in my most recent post at BlogHer here.

“Women are more diligent than men, and they don’t take long lunches or go to the bar,” insisted Mr. Borisov, who has cited his mother and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany as his role models.

“Women have stronger characters than men because when they say no they mean no, and they are less corruptible,” he said last summer, inaugurating the women’s wing of his center-right party. [emphasis added]

Cue eye-roll – but okay. (I’d probably debate the lunch length and bar-hopping opinion but if that’s what Borisov would like to believe, I’m not sure how eager I should be to disabuse him of that notion, not to mention, it’s all relative.)

Why else might women be desirable for government service:

Mr. Borisov, dubbed Batman for his proclaimed invincibility, asserts that women are his secret weapon in fighting lawlessness. Kamen Sildniski, deputy chief prosecutor, noted that there were no criminal cases of corruption against a woman in Bulgaria and that female applicants to the Prosecutor’s Office consistently outperformed men on polygraph tests. “It’s hard to admit, but women are less corruptible than men and are cleaner,” he said. “Because they are more risk averse.” [emphasis added]

I’m hoping it’s a lost in translation thing when he is quoted as saying that women are “cleaner” – ugh – but I get the gist.

There’s a lot of good information in the article but beware! This is all possibly a secret – or not so secret – extension of…wouldn’t you know it!? SOCIALISM! RUN AWAY! /sarcasm:

In the case of Bulgaria, sociologists say the recent rise of women in politics, which was instigated by Mr. Borisov’s mentor, Bulgaria’s former king and prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, can be traced to the Communist era, when socialist ideology empowered women to be equal to men.

Tatyana Kmetova, director of the Center of Women’s Studies and Policies, noted that under Communism, women were expected to work and often received the same wages as men.

“We never had a feminist movement in this country,” she said, noting that in the late 1970s, Bulgaria had the highest percentage of working women in the world. “During Communism, women in Bulgaria were represented in almost every walk of life, from plant managers to medicine.”

A more gendered assessment, however, comes from Evgeniy Daynov, whom the article says is “…a leading political analyst:

… in a patriarchal Balkan country, Bulgarian men traditionally were coddled, and…this made them idle and ineffective.

“Bulgarian men have been spoiled by their mothers because boys are the stars of the family, and when they grow up, they don’t have enough stamina to stand on their own two feet,” he said. “Meanwhile, under Communism, women would have to work all day at their jobs and then come home and clean the house, and take care of the lazy men. This made them twice as strong.”

And, finally, what would an article about women getting ahead in leadership be without a classic potshot at the fact that women are, you know – human beings?

Not everyone in Bulgaria is convinced of the wisdom of promoting women in politics. Minko Gerdjikov, the deputy mayor, said that promoting women to powerful positions could prove a liability at a time of crisis.

“The big problem is that women are moodier than men and rule based on intuition rather than facts,” he said. “During a crisis a woman can transform very quickly from being a politician to being a human being, and this can be bad.”

Best part about that statement?

The implication that male politicians are not human beings. I’ll leave that one alone.

An excerpt from Forbes’ article honoring the fifth anniversary of BlogHer.com:

“BlogHer is one of the most influential blogger platforms out there,” says Sree Sreenivasan, professor of digital journalism at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. “Among tech-savvy women, they know this is the place to be.”

If you’re having trouble imagining what BlogHer.com is really all about, think of it as an ecosystem of blogs where each feeds off the others. The site rotates headlines from the thousands of blogs in the network, which allows smaller players in the blogosphere to benefit from the traffic of larger blogs through a shared space and homepage. …

…

Make no mistake–BlogHer is not a pet project or an activist mission. The site, which is venture-backed by Venrock, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, the Peacock Fund and Azure Capital Partners, expects to be profitable for the first time this year and has just secured its third round of funding. A hefty 80% of its revenue comes from Web-based advertising, and the remaining 20% comes from sponsorships, conferences and research and consulting.

I attended BlogHer ‘08 as a panelist addressing the topic of race and gender in politics, and am excited to be registered for BlogHer ‘10 in NYC this year.  My most recent piece for BlogHer should be posted shortly and it is a great blend of everything I’m doing these days.  I credit the editors there for giving me great assignments (not a few of which force me to stretch!).

For what supposedly actually happened, read here.

Whatev.  I don’t see how pretending it might be more rage-filled than it actually wasn’t is any better than it not actually being as it was originally described by The Hill.  The anger remains the same.  And the hits on the media, traditional or otherwise, only undermine all the criticisms these folks try to pin on the media in the first place – because they’re the ones working to manipulate everything.

All a big waste of energy. Can you just imagine if that was used for something good?