Sakharov Prize

Nadia Murad and Lamiya Asi Bashar have been awarded the Sakharov prize by the European Parliament.  Nadia and Lamiya are Yazidis both from the same village of Kocho near Sinjar and who both escaped from ISIL slavery.  Lamiya was blinded by a mine explosion during her escape.  The two of them have been speaking out internationally against human slavery and ISIL cruelty and are unofficial spokespersons for the thousands of Yazidi women still in chains.  The wannabee Caliph al-Baghdadi has issued a fatwa against them and threatened them with re-enslavement or death.  In getting the Sakharov award they join the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Malala Yousafzai.  Lofty company, but they deserve it IMHO.

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/10/27/courageous-women-nadia-murad-and-lamiya-aji-bashar-honored-with-top-e-u-humanitarian-award/

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sakharovprize/en/home/the-prize.html

I never understood the attempted genocide of the Yazidis.  The claim by Salafists was that they were devil worshippers.  Not true, and it boggles the mind to think that in the 21^st century that anyone would resort to mass murder, mass kidnappings and rape whether true or not.   Although Yazidis are not <i>”people of the book”</i> mentioned by Mohammed, they are monothiests.  But then all of the world’s monotheistic religions have been murdering each other for millennia.  I am reverting to the beliefs of my grandmother – Jesus maybe, but also leaving tobacco or trinkets or moonshine at the base of trees, in creeks and rivers, and on graves of loved ones.  Color me pagan.

BTW, Yazidi women and even their mothers and grandmothers are fighting back:   

http://www.alfredyaghobzadehphoto.com/-/galleries/gallery/iraq-yazedis/yazidi-women-fighters

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-in-iraq-the-women-kurd-and-yazidi-fighters-that-put-the-fear-into-jihadis-because-theyll-rob-a6977761.html

Group Grope

Dope, peace, magic

and gods in the tree trunks

and a group grope, baby! 

--Group Grope,
 The Village Fugs

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime 

--To His Coy Mistress,
 Andrew Marvell

My God, he was like an octopus.

Hands all over the place

--The Gift,

The Velvet Underground

___________________

This Sunday's New York Times Travel section uncovered a threat to female airline passengers so great, the paper was moved to run not just one, but TWO, articles on the matter.

Since it WAS Sunday when I read this -- and one ought operate from a principle of charity -- one imagines the paper ran these out of a spirit of public service, for surely the print taken up by this imminent threat was not cheap.

In a word, Donald J. Trump's small but roving hands may show up in an airline seat near you shortly -- BEWARES, ladies!

Just to make sure you know (in case you have been in Timbuktu): there have been sinister "allegations that Donald J. Trump once groped a passenger" [quote -- see clips below]. I dunno about you, but as a ladyfolk, I'm feeling a darn site better knowing that my national paper of note is hard on the job working for my safety and erudition, right?

Yup.

UPDATE

Recent Incidents Put a New Focus on Sexual Assault on Airplanes

By KAREN SCHWARTZ

Recent sexual assaults — and allegations that Donald J. Trump once groped a passenger — have prompted questions about safety on airline flights.

UPDATE

How to Protect Yourself From Sexual Assault on a Plane

By KAREN SCHWARTZ

To minimize the risk of being sexually assaulted on a plane, book an aisle seat and talk to a flight attendant if someone is making you uncomfortable.

But Ranger wonders: after airline passengers have been pre-frisked so robustly by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) mashers, how would one know the difference between an offense and a defense grope?

After all, some of those TSA handlers have some hella good fun in executing their appointed duties (all for Uncle Sam, mind.)

Taking people's wallets and loose change, belts and shoes, putting them in plastic boxes and running them through conveyor belts, pat downs and wand scanners. Day in and day out, peering closely at the bodily outlines of the obese and the skinny.

It must be a calling, like being a proctologist, perhaps.

Well, it's like being a member of the government (which they are). And like Mr. Reagan said, Don't worry -- we're here to help you.

Just sayin'.

--Lisa & Jim

[cross-posted @ rangeragainstwar.]

Douglas Munro

US Coast Guard Cutter 'Munro' just successfully completed a first round of acceptance trials.  She is named after Coast Guard Signalman 1^st Class (SM1c) Douglas Munro, who was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry in World War II.  Munro was serving as a coxswain in a Higgins Boat and was killed in action at Guadalcanal 74 years ago last month.  The US Navy took in a lot of Coast Guardsmen during WW2 as they had a wealth of experience piloting small boats in the surf.  Most Navy Sailors were used to blue water and usually the only experience they had as coxswains in small boats were in relatively quiet harbors when the big ship was at anchor.

Munro was lead coxswain in a group of ten Higgins Boats that rescued a 500 man element of First Battalion Seventh Marines (1/7) who were outnumbered and surrounded by 4000 plus Japanese at a beach west of the Matanikau River, Guadalcanal.  It was Rifle Companies only with no heavy machine guns and no mortars and out of range of artillery support.  Chesty Puller was the Battalion Commander of 1/7.  But he was east of the river commanding an ad hoc two battalion task force and separated from those that were surrounded.  With casualties to his comm section, Chesty stood up on the beach wig-wagging with signal flags to the USS Monssen (DD-436) for naval gunfire and directed that fire support himself acting as his own Forward Observer. 

SM1c Munro volunteered to lead a small force of ten Higgins Boats into the beach.  He brought those boats in-shore under heavy enemy fire and got the evacuation started while covering with his machine guns on his boat.  After the majority of the Marines had got aboard, Munro saw that the Marine rear guard was having difficulty embarking due to continued intense fighting.  Sizing up the situation, Munro deployed his and other boats into position to cover the rear guard.  By doing that he exposed himself to even more intense enemy fire and was mortally wounded.  He was 22 years old.  His final words were: ”Did they get off?”.

Munro is buried in his hometown, Cle Elum, in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.  Every September 27^th many Coast Guardsmen and Marines and Cle Elum residents gather at Laurel Hill Memorial Park to honor him.   I served briefly with 1/7 myself many years later in Vietnam and should have gone to the memorial last month but was not able to make it.  I hope to be there next year for the 75^th anniversary of his heroic rescue.  The new Cutter 'Munro' will initially be stationed out of Seattle when she has finished all her sea trials.

On Mrs. Obama's Disdain

 --Tip Drill, Nelly

 In heaven's name
why do you play these games?
--Hang On, to Your Love,
Sade

We see not only with our eyes,
but with all that we are,
and all that our culture is
--Dorothea Lange

I've seen all good people
turn their heads each day
So satisfied I'm on my way
--I've Seen All Good People,
Yes

_______________________ 

[The graphic features the rapper Nelly and his "Tip Drill", in which he slides a credit card between a woman's buttocks. I saw it playing on a t.v. in a gym in 2001. An inauspicious beginning to the 21st century, far as women's rights go, I thought.]

Mrs. Obama, recently delivered a tremulous speech hailed for its unbridled emotion ostensibly on behalf of every woman. One does not become an attorney without some acting skills.

No doubt Mrs. Obama, hailing from Southside Chicago, knows of some men who “throw down, and take away.” But Mr. Trump has never been accused of being one of those men. 

ISTM in the pantheon of bad male behavior, copping a few feels and talking locker room about ladies private parts pales in comparison to the ACTUAL behavior of so many men who have inhabited the Oval Office. Stealing a kiss or copping a feel versus getting fellated in the Oval Office and inserting a cigar into a 19-year old's vagina.You decide.

But we trot out the little ladies when need to feel chivalric, which is to say, righteous and purposeful, in the face of a national political atmosphere which is anything but.

Witness one of the after-the-fact phony justifications for the Phony Wars on Terror (PWOT ©): women's rights. And things have gotten a lot better for women since that action, no?

But no one questions the bombast, because it sounds so good. I mean, who could be against women having rights, right? That is like saying you are against moms and apple pie.

This speech came in an atmosphere that has allowed the wide dissemination of  false rape tales like that of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Magnum by members of the Duke Lacrosse squad. The mythical targets were black women, in a reverse Mandingo fantasy.

We are all good people, and have been taught to atone. We believe that wearing our horsehair shirt will buy favor from the gods.

So when Mrs. Obama says “we”, what we hear is, “we black women”.  We live in an age in which there are calls for monetary reparations for slavery, and #blacklivesmatter is a social networking movement. A collective guilt gets superimposed upon any man, especially a privileged one, accused of some wrongdoing.

Mrs. Clinton’s initial campaign ads featured a black girl alone before the image of a florid Trump exhorting something on the screen, ad infinitum. She is wide-eyed, and seems afraid.

Ironic that a month later, tapings of Trump's private conversation appear, along with a few women over a span of 30+ years who allege they have been “inappropriately touched” (NYT headline) by Mr. Trump.

Have we no shame? Is there no adult in the newsroom, or among the viewers of the spectacle?

The stumping Mrs. Obama expresses her horror at Mr. Trump's bravado and possible overreach:

 “It’s that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they’ve said no but he didn’t listen. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day,the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office.”

Unfortunately, her speech about the bogeyman bossman is fraught with untruth. And the lawyer in her would say that The New York Times will surely face a libel suit after this election.

But if the paper gets its candidate into Office, it will have been worth it. The lawsuit will occur post-election, and someone will happily foot the bill.

No woman has said that she said "no" to Mr. Trump, and that he then gave chase, as Mrs. Obama implies. And sorry to say, but exploitation and misogyny did not stop back in Mrs. Obama's mother's day. 

This is a transparent attempt to tarnish Trump with the biggest sin, that of being old and therefore, out of touch. The implication is clear: Mr. Trump and his superannuated brethren are from another place and time. This is blatant ageism.

Trouble is, Mrs. Clinton is exactly the same age, and the FLOTUS's speech is rent is rife with problems.

She states Mr. Trump spoke "freely and openly" on the secretly recorded tape. This IS still America, and we may hold opinions and we have free speech. We may speak freely, with an expectation of privacy unless permission has been granted otherwise.

She also said she is "worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.” 

However, if she were truly worried about that, then she would address the very real problem of the much too many young black boys who grow up lacking fathers or even father figures, for that surely has a corrosive effect upon that population, and our population at large. (She could witness that in Southside Chicago, too.)

Incarceration rates for black males are at epic proportions. 72% of black children are raised in single head of household families. Now those are problems that need tending to.

Mrs. Obama says she is hurt to her core over Trump's words. To quell her shock, perhaps she should stop listening to "Earth, Wind and Fire" and borrow from her husband's iPod to broaden her horizons regarding the state of relations between the sexes.

There, she may listen to some of Jay-Z's greatest hits -- try "Big Pimpin'" for a start. Oh, I know, now that he and his wife are billionaires he tries to explain it away. But misogynist rappers have always contended that they are just expressing life as it is.

Jay-Z's wife, Queen Bey, earned her almost half a billion by robustly shaking her moneymaker and singing about fellating men in limousines, among other things. 

Probably not what Mrs. Obama wants for her daughters, but there it is.

This would be today, and it is exactly where women stood in her mother's day (and hers), if she cared to see and tell the truth.  

[cross-posted @ rangeragainstwar.]

Little Red Riding Hood

--Little Red Riding Hood 

 Hey there Little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good.
You're everything a big bad wolf could want
--Little Red Riding Hood,
Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs 

He asked me for a good night kiss
I said, it's still good day
I would have told him more except
His lips got in the way  
--A Guy is a Guy,
Doris Day

 I moved to another seat
--Jessica Leeds, 74, who alleges that Mr. Trump
groped her over 30 years ago on a plane
________________________

Why must we play these foolish games?

Is the story of Mr. Trump's alleged gropes really news we can use? If our nation's top priority in choosing our President were to achieve parity between the sexes, then, yes. 

However, considering it has been 93 years and counting since the yet-to-be ratified Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) guaranteeing women full and equal rights under the law has stood before the chambers --  I'd say "No".

 Ranger suggests that the press's recent fronting of several woman who allege that Mr. Trump groped them is, in fact, anti-feminist.

The implication is that these women do not know to avail themselves of the legal protection established since the 1960's Civil Rights bills. They live in the age of Girl Power, and yet we are to believe they are June Cleever, too?

Should we believe that they need to be protected by -- whom? Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Clinton?

--The Perils of Pauline (1947)

The trope being exploited is that of Little Red Riding Hood. She is a girl alone in the woods who is accosted by the ravenous Big Bad Wolf. She can be saved on by a lumberjack, a hunter or some such manly man who happens by to save fair maidens in the nick of time.

Mr. Trump is also the Wolfman, and little lady must be saved from his sharp teeth and hairy little palms. 

Really? 

Trump likes and hires pretty women over ugly -- ya say you hadn't heard of such things? Well, look at a few peer-reviewed studies to get your Homo sapien mind right. Woman judged as attractive gain more hires, more advancements, bigger raises.

Mr. Trump practices this and he is adjudicated a dog. Well, then Canis universalis.

Trump says what many think, and is demonized for it. He is the externalization of our id, and we cannot bear it. Hence we let the talking heads attack, and all smile smugly when his name is mentioned: "How can he BE?" we ask, in a disingenuous attempt to shuttle that part of ourselves.

"Ugh -- such a man cannot be President" we say, reflexively, knowing that scores of such men HAVE been presidents (many within the last 60 years). To hoist him on his petard on the basis of old secretly-recorded tapes of private talk and a few instances of alleged groping is skulduggery, and should shame a nation which has far bigger issues on its agenda.

Morality falls under the umbrella "religion", whose separation from matters of state is a hallmark of the United States. This is not Vatican City (thank God.) Sexual harassment falls under EEOC guidelines.

That is the end of the story, until you re-engineer the human. For now, the dance of the sexes plays on.

Tomorrow: Mrs. Obama on Mr. Trump

[cross-posted @ rangeragainstwar.]

...the fun is having lots to do and not doing it."

I don't want the 'Pub to become a political commentary blog, but this election has me worried, and not (like Lisa) because I seem to becoming objectively Trump-curious or (like PF) I'm worried that Hitlery will invade Poland.

No.

I'm worried for what I see as the long-term implications for the United States' system of government.

First, let's agree that it is blindingly obvious to anyone that hasn't drunk the wingnut Koolade that the GOP in it's present incarnation really offers only two policy "things":

1. Working for open oligarchy, and
2. Comfort for white nationalism, Christian theocracy, and fear of the "others" (whether those others are gay, or brown, or Muslim)

I know that sounds harsh, but...that's really it, isn't it? It's all tax cuts and privatize and deregulate and unshackle Wall Street and shove the homos back in the closet and no abortion and open carry everywhere. "Small government"? Sure...unless you count the DoD. Or the NSA.

There's no GOP vision of a future United States that doesn't really come down to a return to the Gilded Age, is there?

Now...don't get me wrong. I'm not in love with the mainstream corporate-whoring Democratic Party. The Dems' neglect of the horrible effects of capital flight, economic inequality, and crony corporatism are a yuuuuuuge part of why we're in this mess right now.

But.

The Sanders movement shows that the Democrats CAN be pulled to the left.

Not only can the GOP not go there...it's obvious that it won't even let the corporatist centerist Democrats go there - it won't let them be corporate centerist Democrats because they're insufficiently fucking nutzoid for smacking homos, luuurving Jesus and snowflake babies, hugging rich people and big corporations, and bombing the shit out of darkies and fuzzy-wuzzies.

The ugly parallel that jumps to my mind (and I’m not the only one, given the spate of articles about this…) is the rise of Jacksonism in the 1820s.

And the reason that scares me is the damage Jacksonism did; the next thirty years of American politics were dominated by Jacksonians and Jacksonian policies like internal minority genocide and external aggressive war. Plus the malign neglect of slavery (or the outright approval of and expansion-encouragement of it). A whole bunch of our worst Administrations were Jacksonian, culminating in Buchanan. Basically Jacksonism was the bedrock on which the Civil War was founded. One of the worst features of the politics of Jacksonism was that it helped made it impossible for the United States to simply outlaw slavery as Great Britain did between 1830 and 1845. Jacksonism wasn't the only reason, or the main reason...but it was a reason, and not a small one.

The upside of GOPism (call it "Trumpism if you want, but can we accept the the Donald is just the inevitable culmination of 40 years of what the GOP has asked for?) versus Jacksonism is that we no longer have a franchise limited to white males.

The downside is that the GOP’s propaganda machine has done a helluva a great job pulling in the “white male allies”; Christian theocrats, people fearful of imaginary jihadis under the bed, and the plutocracy into a coalition that looks like it represents about 40% of the public.

And the downside of that is that this hard nut of "conservatives" is dead-set against allowing the United States any government but the one they desire.

Do I think that we will see “another Jackson Administration” anytime soon? Probably – and hopefully – not.

But I think that the GOP has become a self-licking icecream cone; I think that regardless of whether the media comes down hard on the Trumpeters after November that this hard core of Jacksonians will not dissipate, and the United States will be, in effect, dealing with the same situation that broke the nation in 1860; there will be a large, indigestible, irredentist minority that will never, NEVER accept the legitimacy of their opponents. No non-Jacksonian/Trumpter will be allowed to govern. Obstruction will be the order, not just of the day but of the week, the year, the decade.

And let's not even start into the nightmare place the GOP is taking us with it's "vote fraud" and "rigged election" fantasies.

And the problem with THAT (beyond the problem of a dysfuntional U.S. government) is that I think, eventually, the American public will get frustrated with the dysfunction. And, as now, there won't be an acceptance that one of the two major parties our first-past-the-post system allows us is a craven lickspittle for corporate power while the other has gone utterly Jacksonian-batshit-nuts but anger and frustration at "both sides".

We the People will writhe and fume - not at the oligarchy we have become, but - that the oligarchy itself no longer "works".

We the People will look for a “savior”, and in my horrified imagination that "savior" will be a Man on Horseback.

And then all the sort of worrying and fretting and discussing things like policies and strategies and politics that we do here will be over and done with, and I hope I am safely dead long before that happens.

He That is Without Sin Among You, Let Him

--You Sexy Thing

I can bring home the bacon.

Fry it up in a pan

And never, never let you forget you're a man

--Enjoli advert

To all the girls I've loved before

Who traveled in and out my door

I'm glad they came along

I dedicate this song

To all the girls I've loved before 

--To All the Girls I've Loved Before,

Willie Nelson  

Men don't have platonic friends okay?

We just have women we haven't f*cked yet

--Chris Rock

First Lady: As I was saying, how do you find the new vicarage?

Vicar: Oh yes, certainly, yes indeed,

I find the grounds delightful,

and the servants most attentive and particularly

the little serving maid with the great big knockers,

and when she gets going...

 --The Dirty Vicar, Monty Python

_____________________

O,k., boys. You did not like my last post, and since I always take my 2nd opportunity when it's 2-for-1 night, I shall give you another chance. (We women can be such harpies and shrews, vixens and wenches.)

To whet you whistle: Think about what's happening as we count down to the final weeks before our presidential election. We are being whipped up into a Puritanical, proletariat frenzy about morality, such as we haven't seen since, well, I dunno.

We are all beside ourselves at the discovery that female objectification is still alive and well. I reflect fondly upon the good ole' days when President Clinton sat in the oval office and did a bit of groping and penetration himself.

Whoever wins this election, we shall have a groper back in the White House (Bubba will be the Mister, this time.) It's all sex and violins, as Ruth Buzzi said.
_____________________________

So the powers situated to emplace She That Will Not Be Denied on the Presidential throne feel they can finally wipe the sweat from their brow.

We have learned from last Sunday's Great Debate that Mr. Trump objectifies and covets women's lady parts. Shocked, you say? Much like Capt. Renault, I s'pect. Puh-leeze.

Anderson Cooper -- that greatly underwhelming talking head who could not even win a round of dumbed-down celebrity Jeopardy! (Ranger had even a SEAL reader -- God bless you, Stevie -- who won a real Jeopardy! contest)  -- came out of the gate like a snorting bull about Trump's sexcapades 20 years ago.

A real "gotcha" moment, eh? News worthy of being "broken" by a national paper like The Washington Post (not). Kinda makes you proud to be an American, no?

But how does Mr. Trump's machismo and bravado disqualify him from the Presidency? Are we riding some sort of crest of female empowerment of which I am unaware?

Less than 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment (1920) gave women the right to vote. (The 15th Amendment granting black males that right was ratified 50 years earlier.) In the first blush of that voting rights victory, the Equal Rights Amendment, designed to guarantee equal rights for women across the board, was introduced to Congress in 1923.

Ninety-three years on, it has yet to be ratified.

Females currently compose a little over 4% of Fortune 500 company's CEO's. Women earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man, a gender wage gap of 20%. Intimate partner violence shows no signs of abating, and 20% of women report having been raped in their lifetime.

Forty percent of Americans are regular viewers of online pornography, and 20% of men say they have viewed porn online at work.

Candidate Trump is not accused of rape. Powerful and monied men are an aphrodisiac for some women (news flash, right?). Trump does not hide his proclivities ("I just start kissing them.") To be in the stable of a man like Trump is not to be surprised by his track record.

If we were honest, we would acknowledge that powerful men throughout history take their just desserts. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss-Kahn ("DSK") and Russia's Vladimir Putin, are but a few. But let us look at ourselves first.

Innumerable United States Presidents have pussyfooted about with women to whom they were not married. Among these were Thomas Jefferson, Warren G. Harding, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, FDR (who died in the presence of his mistress), JFK and Bill Clinton (both with teenage White House interns, among others) and LBJ. And the beat goes on.

These were all Gropers-in-Chief, yet we turned a polite eye to their dalliances provided they steered the ship of state with some skill and attention. Their inability to be emancipated men -- whatever that means -- and overmaster their heady and hormonal drives did not disqualify them from their job. Their opponents attempted, to a greater or lesser extent, to utilize their actions against them.

Thing is, reporters -- when that was an actual profession -- used to enjoy habitual relationships with the Presidents. They had entree to the actual news, while agreeing to keep the sordid stuff out of the headlines. Nod, nod - wink, wink.

Make no mistake: The people who slandered these men did not do so on any chivalric grounds of protecting women's honor. Any muck-racking was done with the sheer intent of toppling these men's presidencies. 

Neither people nor the societal structures which house and instruct them, have changed in the mere 2,0000 years when we wrote down some rules about what we should and shouldn't do. (One might go so far back as almost 4,000 years with Hammurabi's Code; in any event, we have not been operating under rules approximately equable to all for very long, and the rules were certainly not equally applied to women.)

Sadly today, the smut has become the kernel. Rather than a ship of the state, the next President will steer a ship of fools. Our behaviors have not regressed; we are the same nutty sexual monkeys.

What has changed is that voyeurism and exhibitionism have moved from the edge to the center. Representative Weiner can send an image of his over a cell phone, and someone like Anderson Cooper can make us think that the voyeuristic "bust" is actual news.

The move to accept the LGBTQQIP2SSA communities got you thinking the sky's the limit in terms of gender enlightenment? You may pat your smiling liberal self on the back, but think again.

Last Monday's BBC America featured a two-minute story on the travails of newly-robbed multi-millionairess Kim Kardashian and her husband Kanye's end-of-show response -- approximately 7% of the network's world news broadcast for that day. Now ask yourself a question: what makes Mrs. Kardashian newsworthy? 

It is one thing alone, to wit: her massive tits and arse. You can't have it both ways, people.

Seen another way, what makes candidate Clinton preferable? Is it because she is monastic? Is she consistent?

In 1992 in the face of sexual misconduct charges against her husband, President Clinton, Mrs. Clinton  told CBS anchor Steve Croft that she was not a "stand by your man" kind of woman. She also asked the news media not to turn the 1992 campaign into "a game of 'gotcha'." 

But she ended up standing beside her man for future political returns and "gotcha" is now her game. Even then, her feminist creds were decaying as she worked hard to discredit every woman associated with Mr. Clinton.

This is the Caesarean Secretary of State Clinton who said of Libya's President's death by mob, "We came, we saw, he died." Today, she is Lady Macbeth silently screaming, "Out, out, damned spot!"

She has now morphed into Grandma Hillary, a safe and sexless white woman with a milquetoast running mate in Mr. Kaine (an acceptable white male.). But Grandma Hillary is not toothless.

She is Jung's archetypal Old Crone, and she may subvert or conform to the power structure at will; she has nothing left to lose. She will not usher in an Age of Aquarius because she will have to be (as Ranger puts it) a "Billy Badass" as the first United States female head of state.

If one believes what one reads, it seems that despite the amazing support that elected a Republican candidate not even backed by his own party, Mrs. Clinton must win. It is somehow cognitive dissonance to think otherwise.

She is the politician between the two, and politicians become Presidents. You could not have a haberdasher, or a community organizer or a peanut farmer, fer gawdssakes.

But back to the sex story. It is unlikely that Mr. Trump would grab for Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel's vajayjay for any reason, and is not she the only one who really matters? And did not our own President G. W. Bush err by attempting a back rub of the Frosty One?

The only one to watch out for would be Denmark's Prime Minister Helle-Thorning Schmidt, with whom President Obama and England's David Cameron enjoyed a selfie (to the apparent disdain of Mrs. Obama). However,  the lovely Mrs. Trump should provide eye-candy enough to keep her husband's roving little hands at home.

But as Donovan sang, this may be the Season of the Witch. No het white male today is immune from excoriation at the press's whim. Secretary of State John Kerry was lambasted for his effete Spandex-wearing, Francophile ways. Now, Mr. Trump for his machismo.

So Trump wants to grab and kiss women? BFD. In a Don Draper sort of way, he is like a rib-eye steak in a world of crepe-y raw vegans. As it is written of the Big Macher in the Sky, so it could be said of Mr. Trump, "I am that I am". (As for the shape-shifter Mrs. Clinton, there is no declarative "I AM" in her "I" -- only a reflection of her audience du jour.)

We could watch no more after this October Surprise. Such thin gruel for such a glutted audience
__________________________

Addendum:

It was deplorable when the Republicans moved to impeach President Clinton over his indiscretions, and it's equally deplorable that this lower level of lasciviousness has the Democrats so wrapped over Mr, Trump.

Granted President Clinton showed no discretion and poor morality with his Oval Office escapades. It was so Arkansas and tatty. Surely there were throngs of older women among his wealthy inner circle of supporters who would have obliged him (though they might not have been wearing thongs.) But it was not comme il faut to dally at work, when one should be focused on world leaders and such. Off-duty, please.

Now, Mrs. Clinton has the opportunity to rise to the occasion, to address the madding throngs and say, "Good sirs, please let us all join in the important matter before us, which is to help the American people understand our positions on matters of State, not of the genitals."

She could be a giant. Instead, she revels in the swampland, in silence. We know she's there, salivating as her moment approaches. She hasn't got the cahones to do what is needed at this moment.

Another stray thought:

It is clear how entrenched our patriarchy is when it cravenly exploits the few women they've kept in the pocket to expose Trump's poor behavior, as though they are silly little maidens who had no idea how to protect themselves from the Big Bad Wolf's roving hands. (I will develop that idea soon.)

Also, the NYT Book Review features a new release on Eleanor Roosevelt's lesbian affair with Lorena Hickok. Why is it that a man's affair, once revealed, become licentious, but a woman's lesbian affair is accepted de facto.

Any thoughts?

[cross-posted @ Rangeragainstwar.]