New Media Alliance - Carey Roberts

By Carey Roberts

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s finest moment was the day she was elected as Speaker of the House. That’s when she curled her fist and flexed her right bicep, he-man style, promising to institute “the most ethical Congress in history” after all those years of testosterone-addled, business-as-usual in the U.S. Congress.

Shortly afterwards she named Rep. William Jefferson, caught with $90,000 funny-money in the fridge, to the Homeland Security Committee. That’s the committee that’s supposed to protect us from terrorists. Then in a dramatic move, she proposed a rule to ban earmarks from all appropriations bills. (Just kidding.)

That was the time, you may recall, when Hillary was a shoe-in as the next Commander-in-Chief, the Surge was just a cola drink, and the price of gas hovered at $2 a gallon.

Soon Pelosi’s airtight image began to unwind. Remember her grandstanding trip to Syria to meet with terrorist-enabler President Assad? And her complaint that the Air Force wouldn’t let her use a gas-guzzling jet to fly to California?

Before long it became apparent that Pelosi was just another pol on a high-octane power trip. Senator Arlen Specter derided her “autocratic rule,” and even fellow Democrat Harry Reid complained Pelosi “runs that place with an iron hand.”

Pelosi has become a throw-back to the days of ‘Boss’ William Tweed, the man who ran the infamous Tammany Hall political machine in the mid-1800s in New York City.

So as Nancy fretted over her jumbo jet, the price of gasoline kept going up, and up, and up. The day petrol hit $4 a gallon was the tipping point. Newspaper headlines screamed, “$4 FOR GAS” and people stopped driving their SUVs.

Since we can’t tame global demand, increasing supply became our main prospect for relief. Problem is, Nancy Pelosi’s signature issue is protecting the environment. “We have the planet to save,” she grandly proclaims to anyone who is willing to listen.

Clearly, doing nothing was out of the question. So House Democrats put together a bill that would have mandated the Interior Department to conduct yearly leases in the National Petroleum Reserve. Pelosi failed to explain, we should mention, that those wells had mostly gone dry.

Last week Pelosi scheduled a vote for the Democratic proposal under the so-called “suspension of the rules.” Normally, suspension of the rules is used to pass non-controversial bills to celebrate National Watermelon Month or to congratulate the Pascagoula State Girls’ Softball Team for winning its seventh consecutive championship. But suspension of the rules, which forbids amendments, is not supposed to be used to muzzle political debate.

So faced with Pelosi’s take-it-or-leave-it proposition, House Republicans decided to throw down the gauntlet. Joined by a number of Blue Dog Democrats, the Republicans refused to grant the bill the necessary two-thirds majority.

This past Friday morning Speaker Pelosi readied to pound the closing gavel. That would send the Congress home for a five-week vacation without passing any legislation to address the energy crisis.

But the Gang of 50 – all Republicans – planned to take advantage of the long-standing rule that allows any member of the House to speak for five minutes on any topic at the end of each legislative day. Boss Tweed Pelosi would have none of that – after all, it smacks of unfettered Freedom of Speech. So she hastily pushed through an adjournment motion.

But Representatives Tom Price and Mike Pence would not be deterred. So as San Fran Nan ordered the lights doused, the press section closed, and the mics turned off, congressman after congressman stood up to present their vision of the future.

Fortunately, the acoustics in the House chamber ring true, and the absence of sound equipment proved no impediment. Soon the public gallery began to fill as ordinary citizens wandering through realized history was in the making.

In desperation Pelosi resorted to removing the “official” water cups from the room – maybe the renegades would be silenced once their throats ran dry. But the statements continued. With each impassioned testimony, persons in the gallery began to chant, “Vote! Vote! Vote!”

Five hours later, around 5pm, the soliloquies came to an end. By then, many Democrats were sipping rum-and-cokes on their flights home, ready to brag to the tree-huggers how they had protected the pristine Outer Continental Shelf from the wayward intrusions of the drillers.

But Nancy Pelosi’s high-handed attempt to still the Congressional debate had ignominiously failed. Which raises the question, Is this the beginning of the end for the Honorable Speaker’s imperial reign?

By Carey Roberts

Does Michelle Obama remind you more of Teresa Heinz Kerry or former First Lady Hillary Clinton? Read on and decide for yourself.

As we recall, First Lady wannabe Teresa had a habit of shooting first and aiming second. Remember when she wondered out loud whether Laura Bush “ever had a real job”? And the time she cut off a reporter’s questions with the rebuke, “Now shove it.”?

Likewise, Mrs. O has a penchant for freely speaking her mind on almost any topic.

Speaking to CBS reporter Steve Kroft, Michelle commented, “As a Black man, Barack can be shot just going to a gas station.” (Note to would-be gunslingers: Next time you see a white woman at the gas station, try to hold your fire.)

A few months later, she appeared on Good Morning America and recounted one of her husband’s most notable qualifications. “I’ve got a loud mouth,” she freely admitted, but Barack “is very able to deal with a strong woman, which is one of the reasons why he can be president, because he can deal with me.”

Then on to an interview with MSNBC’s Janet Shamlian to discuss her role as a mother and political wife. But things got a little testy and Mrs. Obama decided to set the record straight: “The campaign is gonna have to adjust to a mommy being involved in it. Fortunately I know the boss.”

Appearing on the Larry King show this past February, King asked whether Barack has ever changed his mind? “Absolutely. Hey, I change it every day,” came her frosty response.

She then traveled to southern Ohio to scour up votes for the upcoming primary election. Paying a visit to the Zanesville Day Nursery, she found herself talking to a group of hardscrabble moms with runs in their stockings. Michelle decided to empathize with them by sharing the tidbit that her family is “spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports supplements.”

Michelle then lectured the puzzled women to never sell their soul to the capitalist devil: “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse.”

(Advice to Michelle: Next time you want bang on the community service drum, you may want to pay a visit to your husband’s website, which claims he is fighting for pay equity for women. If you’re going to tell women to shun the corporate rat-race, fine, but don’t whine because women earn less than men.)

And then in May Michelle reacted to a question about Bill Clinton’s use of the word “fairytale” to describe her husband’s position on the Iraq war. After a slight pause, she blurted, “I want to rip his eyes out!”

Hey there, that’s one scary woman!

But other times Michelle takes after Hillary.

No, Mrs. O doesn’t cotton to the word “feminist” like Hillary does. But she did tell the Washington Post, “if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it.”

Michelle Obama is a privileged graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School who earned a cushy $317,000 salary at the University of Chicago. But that doesn’t stop her from talking the woman-as-perpetual-victim line.

In May 2007 Michelle traveled to South Carolina and bemoaned the fact that, “We have spent the last decade talking a good game about family values, but I haven’t seen much evidence that we value women or family values.”

Not valuing women? PULLEEEEASE.

Stung by media caricatures as “America’s Unhappiest Millionaire,” Mrs. Obama staged a counter-offensive, appearing on The View last week. But if that was designed to soften her image, Mrs. O has got to find a new publicity manager.

That’s because she kept lapsing into her sexism-behind-every-bush victimspeak. “It’s only when women like her take the hits and it’s painful, it’s hurtful, but she’s taking them so that my girls, when they come along, won’t have to feel it as badly,” Mrs. Obama said of Hillary Clinton’s recent campaign.

And then she deplored the fact that “People aren’t used to strong women.” It should be noted for the record that Mrs. Obama’s closest bosom-buddies refer to her as The Taskmaster. Others would say she has a monumental chip on her shoulder.

Oh, and then the thing about Barack not taking out the garbage. One only wonders when was the last time Michelle cleaned out the gutters and changed the oil on the car.

So cast your vote: Is Michelle Obama an amusing but essentially harmless reincarnation of Teresa Kerry? Or does she herald the third term of a Hillary Rodham Clinton co-presidency?

By Carey Roberts

Like an over-hyped TV reality series that finally came to an end, Hillary has conceded the Democratic nomination race to Barack Obama. This past Saturday the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee drove the final nail in the coffin, declaring the vote of the Florida and Michigan delegates would only count for half.

Predictably, the let-every-vote-count ladies were livid. “Someone wins, someone doesn’t win, that’s life,” wailed Maryland treasurer Nancy Knopp. “But women don’t want to be totally dissed.”

Everywhere I turn, liberal women have lapsed into a deep funk. Katie Couric turned the CBS Evening News into a therapy hour. Female columnists ask dark questions about the state of the national psyche. After all, this was the year women were destined to elect the first female president and make up for 200 years of patriarchal oppression.

In the liberal mind, every adversity and setback can be blamed on a conspiratorial presence. Be it global warming, racism, classism, or sexism, a dark miasmatic force always can be singled out.

For Hillary, sexism is the demon that requires a daily exorcism. In a May 20 interview with the Washington Post, Clinton hit the supposed sexism in media coverage of her campaign as “deeply offensive to millions of women.”

Former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro became so worked up over the issue that she has ponied up her own money for a full-blown study. As we know, Ferraro is an enlightened guru on racial tolerance, having revealed a few months ago that “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.”

So let’s commence the Long March to examine how entrenched sexism spelled Hillary’s defeat. I’ll warn you, though, that this discussion will quickly turn into a murky exercise of Freudian psychology. As we know, unconscious gender bias is always lurking in the shadows — so be careful about those eye-blinks, leg twitches, and crossed arms!

But really, folks, this is serious stuff – so exactly where’s the beef?

For starters, some pundits made unflattering comments about Mrs. Clinton’s cackle. But was that really sexist? Or was it just a colorful way of referring to her loud and silly laugh?

And then the cleavage commentary. Those remarks can be traced back to a July 20 column by Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan. Has sexism become so embedded in our culture that even women fall prey to its allure?

In February Jack Nicholson exclaimed, “Hillary is the best man for the job.” During an Indiana rally, Hillary did a take-off on Nicholson’s endorsement, bragging, “real men vote for Hillary.”

That comment was clearly insensitive to the ladies in the crowd because she said nothing about “real women,” right?

Last month at a gathering of sheet metal workers, Sen. Evan Bayh described Hillary as having “testicular fortitude,” a characterization that she did not resist. Then Hillary booster James Carville bragged that if she gave Obama “one of her cojones, they’d both have two.”

A couple months before Rush Limbaugh made a wisecrack that “Mrs. Clinton’s testicle lockbox is big enough for the entire Democrat hierarchy.”

So were those comments sexist, or merely an example of the spirited discourse that marks any hard-fought political campaign?

Oh, and before I forget, there was Barack Obama’s gaffe to a female reporter in Detroit: “Hold on a second, sweetie.” Now there’s REAL sexism.

If we look at the other side of the coin, Hillary has some S-word skeletons in her own closet — like the time she dismissed Southern white male voters with the vulgar, “Screw them. Let’s move on.”

And her sense of humor sometimes comes across as a gender put-down: “When I look at what’s available in the man department, I’m surprised more women aren’t gay,” she once quipped.

(Lest you think that gibe is humorous, try switching the language: “When I look at what’s available in the woman department, I’m surprised more men aren’t celibate.”)

The truth is, Hillary didn’t lose the nomination because of sexism. All the polls showed the great majority of voters said the candidate’s sex was unimportant – and those voters who said gender does matter tended to side with Mrs. Clinton. Whatever sexism existed worked in her favor.

Clinton lost her historic bid because her message was shrill, her strategy flawed, and in the end her public persona became inauthentic.

So before we launch into any “long overdue dialogue” on sexism, maybe we should recognize it for what it is — a con-job by the purveyors of the politically correct.

By Carey Roberts

Ready for a morning chuckle to jump-start your day? Pay a visit to Hillary Clinton’s website that claims with a straight face, “Women still earn significantly less money than men for doing the same jobs.” [www.hillaryclinton.com/video/13.aspx]

The first part of Hillary’s sentence is true – women indeed earn less than men. But the last four words – “for doing the same jobs” – is as laughable as Hillary’s dodging-sniper-bullets-in-Bosnia tale.

Let’s say you have a job opening and two persons apply who have identical skills and qualifications. Joe wants to be paid the prevailing wage, while Jackie says she is willing to work for only 77 cents on the dollar.

Who would you hire? Jackie, of course.

So if women are doing exactly the same work as men and getting paid 23% less, every profit-maximizing entrepreneur would hire only women. But last I heard, men are still getting jobs. Obviously there’s something wrong with the gender wage gap theory.

Last month Senator McCain was campaigning in the hard-scrabble coal fields of Kentucky. He commented that if women want to overcome the gender wage gap, they would need more “education and training.” And knowing that Women’s Studies grads might not realize that coal mining is the economic mainstay of the region, McCain then deadpanned, “traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work.”

But the Funny-Fems reflexively insist the culprit is sex discrimination, not women exercising the right to choose their preferred work. So when they heard Senator McCain’s comments, they flew into a purple-passion rage. Within days MoveOn rolled out its propaganda machine, making the claim that “Study after study has shown that women are paid less than men for the same work.”

That’s good for another belly laugh, of course, because in eastern Kentucky, the best paying jobs go to the sooty-faced men who are willing to descend 900 feet into the ground and hope a boulder doesn’t break loose from the mine roof. That’s what happened to Cornelius Yates, who was crushed to death in a Kentucky coal mine in January 2006.

Yates’ death came just a week after 12 miners were killed in a West Virginia mine explosion. And that followed a year in which nine miners died throughout Kentucky.

Not surprisingly, women are not very interested in doing hazardous jobs that may send them to the grave. Indeed study after study has shown that when differences in the type of work, hours on the job, and education are accounted for, women are treated fairly.

Actually, women may be doing better than men. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, in many fields female college grads are being offered higher starting salaries than their male counterparts.

Female physicists are getting $6,500 more. Co-eds who majored in petroleum engineering are being offered $4,400 more. And women computer programmers are being enticed with $7,200 extra pay. In fact for dozens of majors and occupations, women coming out of college are getting better offers than men, reveals Warren Farrell in his book, Why Men Earn More.

Why these disparities? Because in traditionally male-dominated professions, employers are willing to ante up more greenbacks to attract females in order to forestall a costly discrimination lawsuit.

So once again the radical left is caught red-handed, trying to push a socialist scheme that centralizes bureaucratic control and weakens free markets. That’s the approach that brought the Soviet economy to its knees 20 years ago.

The Sisters of Silliness are out of touch with the needs of women. By scorning the notion of education and disempowering women, they prove they are trying to force women into a dependency relationship at the porcine foot-stool of the government trough.

By Carey Roberts

Belatedly, the Clinton campaign has come to realize that white men represent the critical swing vote of the 2008 primaries. When Hillary captured the white male vote, she has won 9 out of 14 contests. But when the good-ol’-boys gave the nod to Barack, he triumphed in 9 of the 15 races. [www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/080313]

Problem is, Hillary has been rubbing a lot of persons the wrong way with her girl-power jokes and “Iron my Shirt” pranks.

Earlier this month the Democratic elders began to call for Clinton’s withdrawal from the race. Predictably, Hillary’s surrogates screamed “misogyny” and pushed back with the claim that “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”

Obviously these women never danced the lead for the tango.

So how is Hillary going to pull off her kiss-and-make-up with the male electorate? Well, simple – if she can’t beat the boys, why not join ‘em!

So on April 1 – April Fool’s Day, for those who noticed – Mrs. Clinton showed up on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and invoked the memory of Rocky Balboa, legendary boxer of film fame. Putting on her best he-man imitation, she exclaimed, “Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up.”

A few days later she shared one of her fondest childhood memories. “You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” she related. Waxing sentimental, she added, “People enjoyed hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are.”

(Note to Second Amendment advocates: Before getting excited over this political pabulum, be sure to check out Hillary’s record on gun control. On at least 17 different occasions, she has issued statements on the need to restrict access to guns, including her 2000 proposal to license and register handgun sales: www.ontheissues.org/2008/Hillary_Clinton_Gun_Control.htm .)

But by mid-April the non-stop campaigning began to take its toll and Mrs. Clinton hankered for some quality time with the boys.

So she sauntered over to Bronko’s Restaurant and Lounge in Crown Point, Ind. Sidling up to the bar, she ordered the bartender’s finest. In full view of the cameras she took a sip of the Crown Royal whiskey, then threw her head back and finished off the rest of the shot.

Then wiping off the dried tobacco spittle around her mouth with the back of her sleeve, Mrs. Clinton let loose a guttural “Ahhhh” and ordered up a round of Jack Daniels for all the blurry-eyed gents huddled around the bar. (I made up that part.)

Hillary still wasn’t done with her Rambo wannabe routine. As Pennsylvania voters streamed to the polls this past Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton appeared on ABC. Asked about the looming threat from Iran, Clinton indulged in some high-profile saber-rattling. “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran,” she warned. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Totally obliterate them? Goodness gracious, if Senator McCain ever uttered those words, he’d be tarred, feathered, and sent packing to Arizona.

Even after she won the Pennsylvania primary, Clinton continued her belligerent rhetoric. On Tuesday evening she cut loose with a victory stem-winder, reiterating the words “fight,” “fighter,” and “fighting.”

History shows very time a Democrat’s campaign is on the ropes, the beleaguered candidate tries, somewhat pathetically, to play the macho.

Remember the time when Michael Dukakis donned his helmet, military coveralls, and red tie, and crawled into the gun turret of a 63-ton M-1 battle tank?

Don’t forget that Al Gore paid feminist Naomi Wolf $15,000 to turn him into a beta male.

And do you recall John Kerry’s quail-hunting romp? By the time the cameras caught up with the hunting party, he was no longer holding the bagged birds. Teresa would not have approved.

So as Hillary Clinton tries to restart her quixotic bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, it’s inevitable that she would try to portray herself as a gun-toting, military-loving fighter on behalf of the common man.

And above all, a woman who can really hold her liquor.