Chris Cox

Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission probably should be sacked. Allowing debt to be turned into securities and specifically how mortgage debt was turned into a security with floating cash returns is something that Cox should have and could have prevented.

As to McCain pointing out that Obama has stated publicly he will not draw back on the social spending programs he has promised- as well as differing from McCain in also calling for individual mortgages holders getting direct government pay-offs isn't a case of vehemence, its just reiterating what Obma was saying as recently as last night.

I do agree utterly that the Republicans are acting in a way FDR would have never have attempted. It is indeed a naked power grab.And I do wonder if McCain sees this and expects to have unprecedented power in terms of capital in his new administration. Maybe Obama recognizes it to be a power grab favoring the Republicans because he is now stating the solution being presented to Congress should be viewed only as a first stop-gap test, that will need further expansion and refinement with a new administration's oversight in January.

One thing mitigating McCain's motives would be if Cuomo was appointed SEC head. Cuomo is indeed a nightmare to Republican leadership, but he is also an ideal person for the job.

Conservatives in the Republican party are afraid of this tendency in McCain. He isn't as partisan as many Republicans want him to be. And often they mask this fact by claiming they hate his temper.

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Is Palin a Feminist

Marriage isn't a circumstance of luck. You do not decide one day to marry someone because you believe it is a lucky thing to do. Anecdotally, I am sure all of us can retell a story of people who have "lucky" marriages. The reality however is that marriages that endure and eventually become perceptively apparent as "lucky" to outside observers tend to be those marriages that are fundamentally partnerships in full measure and extant.

Palin is lucky only in the sense that she and her husband share a common perception and common goal for their family. In practice it means that her husband willingly takes care of the children because they share the idea that the cheif parental responsibility is the children. If the children get sick, the parents see the primary responsibility as being theirs. One of them must take care of the child. It then becomes a case of which parent should take that role when their are external responsibilities. It is very common sense based pragmatism on the part of the Palins. Mom happens to be governor and Dad happens to be a seasonal jack of all trades.

It is not necessarily true that Todd is willing to work flexible hours. The reality is that his choice to work and when to work is fundamentally linked to the nature of his wife's employment. Given a chance to actualize his own personal career fantasy, he may indeed wish that he worked a 9-5 job with full time pay and benefits package. But, the reality is that even if he wanted to do that, his children come first because the Palins hold to an old idea that it is the parent's primary responsibility to take care of the children personally. If he had a 9-5 job I am sure he could afford a full time nanny to take care of the children. For that matter, I am sure that as governor Sarah could certainly maintain a state paid full time nanny.

The thing is the Palins are the embodiment of the feminist idea that children should not be an impediment to women having successful careers outside the traditional role of women being primary care givers and homemakers. Todd is also part of that feminist idea that men should willingly act as primary care givers when there is the need for them to do so. In the end, their marriage is indeed a full partnership of a jointly agreed upon goal of the children coming first in their combined priorities. It is not luck that Sarah can be a devoted public servant nor is it luck that Todd is willing to be a secondary contributor to the family income. It is instead a case of both believing that their responsibility is to their children and not a nanny or institutionalized childcare. They have fully bought into the feminist idea that a woman has both the right and capability to be the primary economic resource of a family.

They ultimately see their children as their joint primary responsibility. That is indeed one of the original goals of feminism in the United States.

As to the Palins not being the norm, the reality is that most married couples with children make exactly the same choice the Palins have. These people put their children first. They choose to take care of the kids. Even if it is due to an inability to find or afford childcare, one parent takes the responsibility for the child. The reality is that the numerous tax credits for child care, social welfare programs, and even government sponsored institutional child care programs all contribute to the opportunity for essentially any family to chose to have someone else care for their child. Yet, many people chose to do exactly what the Palins did.

A parent takes primary care duties instead of passing it off to someone else.

This is the norm in America, and although it flies in the face of the leading intelligencia and academia beliefs of the American political left, this is another example of their perception of idealized reality being wrong. Just as many people became offended by Hillary Clinton's book on the need for a village to successfully raise a child, there are now many Americans again questioning the left's criticism of how most people chose to raise their children. Most people do not use nannies and child care. Most people do share responsibility with their spouse to raise the children. For that matter most parents do not even consider gender stereotypes when it comes to defining what each parent should individually take responsibility for in child care roles. Most of America's parents with children know from personal experience that it doesn't take a village to raise your kids as well as also knowing that parental gender does not define parental responsibility.

That the left is trying to declare Palin to not be a feminist is ironic. Because, Palin is indeed the very embodiment of the future the ERA movement and NOW advocated and argued for. She is that reality.

Children are indeed expensive. And it is a responsibility I would not even be able to fathom as a single parent. Any parent, regardless of gender who is faced with sole responsibility of raising a child will face amazingly difficult choices in options related to raising a child alone. Tax credits for single parents for in home child care would help all single parents regardless of gender. No amount of tax credits will change anyone's social or legal equality. Feminism is simply about removing the impediments created by the legal framework of society. In no way would it be possible for the feminist movement to hold out a solution which would place a woman on a legal ground that makes her a special legal class.

If by legal enactment, a body of law was created to enable a single woman to benefit from having a child as a sole caregiver while also being given the legal facility to also have a legally mandated right to a career , then feminism would be a hypocritical movement. Its goal has always been to make women equal, not insulate them from any consequences of their own choices. Any political movement which would seek to secure legal mandated improvement to a stay at home mother and also secure her a right to a mandated "outside" career should be shunned due to the obvious gender bias and also the fact that it would discriminate against 50% of the population. If feminism wants to make it better for any gender stay at home parent and also mandate an outside career for that same class of people that would be one thing. But if this is really what feminism stands for then it is simply an insult to any parent with a penis.

It is indeed Republican policy to remove legal impediments to anyone's ability to enter the work force. The institution of on site child care, flex-time, and telecommuting came from the private sector. And the laws permitting it were aggressively supported by Republicans. In fact the laws covering compensation packages and right to hire laws have realistically removed institutionalized discrimination based on gender. Equally qualified people of equal experience regardless of gender now tend to closely earn the same salaries and compensation packages. The so called "gender gap" is now more understood as a reality that it is instead a "parentage gap".

Regardless of a person's gender, when a parent stops their career, or scales back their professional career to instead care for a child, they are making an economic choice that will impact their current and future earnings. A man who stops working a career to care for his child suffers the same impact on his earning as a woman who is of equalitive experience and qualification. The reality is that if one parent has chosen to be a primary care giver. their option for outside work is inherently limited. The feminist argument has always been that a woman has the right to work in the manner she choses. Their argument has always been that the woman has just as much a right to be the person who makes the "real bread" as a man. But if feminism really wants to argue that the woman should have the right to be the chief bread winner of a family simply because she is a woman, then that is again a very illogical and flawed political goal.

The issue is that Palin is a living breathing example of what feminism has advocated. She has her own career. She has not been impeded by society or cultural bias in terms of her having had children. Her husband takes an equal role in child care duties. They are in fact fully equal in the relationship- which is something feminism has always argued for. It seems that her "shortcoming" is that she also is religious, thinks abortion is morally wrong, has a husband who is a man's man despite his being a stay at home dad, and she has an "R" after her name.

Any argument that Palin isn't a living example of feminism would have to argue either that she has a penis or that feminism didn't mean what it has meant for the past 30 years.

Either way, such an argument would be pretty laughable.

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