Things are getting bad...really bad

This is a map showing all the dispensary locations in Santa Barbara.

Including the online mobile ones, there are 22 dispensaries in this city.

There are 11 Starbucks.

Clearly, we are the toker capital of the Central Coast.

Das Williams thinks 22 dispensaries represents a lot of demand. For recreational smoking, that is.

Too bad that's not legal under state law.

Who's behind all this medical marijuana? Big Canabusiness, that's who!

Let’s call medical marijuana dispensaries what they are: big canabusiness. Their interest is big profit, low regulation, and fooling nice, well-meaining city council people and citizens, even those who are pro-marijuana legalization, into believing this is all about compassion.

Please. I can go get medical marijuana right now because my feet hurt from standing here before you in high heels. I can get a recommendation from a doctor online in Santa Maria, take it to a dispensary and get my ounce of pot. You are not being compassionate in allowing dispensaries. You are being fooled. This is about money.

Don’t be fooled by cannabusiness. They invented the dispensary business, and they want to keep prices artificially high, and actually prevent Californians from growing their own medical marijuana, either personally, or within a collective, under a doctor’s supervision. That is what is allowed by state law. Nothing in state law mentions the word dispensary, nor authorizes it.

If pro-marijuana legalization advocates would stop and think about it for a moment, they would realize that canabusiness forces are actually against legalization, which is up on the state ballot in 2010. Canabusiiness owners don’t want you growing your own pot, or working with a collective. They want you to buy it from them! They’re actually against legalization because the state will likely shut down the dispensary business in favor of some other model for distribution and regulation. Pot shop owners are operating in a nice legal haze currently and they want that to keep right on going. Legalization is against the interest of dispensary owners because it will virtually stop the rampant profiteering that is currently going on.

State law provides for marijuana use under a doctor’s recommendation for pain relief for the seriously ill. Pain caused by high heels or writer’s cramp is not seriously ill. Cities attempting to allow dispensaries are actually going beyond what state law intended, and this is just what the canabusiness owners want you to do. Sanction them to operate in your city.

Ask yourselves, did you mean to do this? Did we mean to become, as a city, a community of pot shops and dispensaries, legal or otherwise? Is this really preserving the heritage and uniqueness of Santa Barbara? Did we mean to expose our children and our neighborhoods to this? To those representing the canabusiness groups who say nothing has happened yet, not so. Kids are getting pot from dispensaries. Schools are dealing with it on their campuses. Armed robberies are going down in LA – 16 in the past 2 weeks, with 2 shootings. We’ve had an armed extortion here. Bad things ARE happening. Did we mean to bring dispensaries to Santa Barbara and overrun our city? I don’t think any citizen here that voted for the ordinance meant for this outcome to happen. We all thought pharmacies would handle it. They won’t because the feds have not legalized it.

Other cities across the state ARE doing something about this. LA is looking at banning dispensaries outright, closing them all down, and they’ve got 800+! They’re looking at forcing a collective model, where patients register and work within a collective to grow their own. They’re looking at limiting the number of patients any collective could work with, perhaps even to 5. This would gut the profit-potential in the current canabusiness landscape, which is a good thing, and serves compassion without engaging in profiteering, or going beyond state law.

Danny Kato is a great guy, and he’s good with drawing maps. But I can’t ask him to bone up on customs law to decide whether it’s legal for a dispensary to sell Afghanistan hashish. I can’t ask him or the City Attorney to familarize themselves with US Agriculture Department laws on growing so they can regulate growers. I can’t ask the planning department to get a handle on doctors, who can recommend it, and how much they can recommend. Even the American Medical Association won’t do this. In short, to support the canabusiness owners in allowing dispensaries asks cities to take on a regulatory burden that is beyond their purview and capabilities. It’s like asking the Parking Department to figure out Insterstate commerce. It can’t be done from looking at zoning maps.

Even Amsterdam, where marijuana, along with prostitution, is fully legal, the Dutch have tighter rules around possession and proximity to children than anything on the books in Santa Barbara. If we can’t even be better than Amsterdam, then what are we doing?

IN an election year, when this city council seems very beholden to the interests of cannabusiness, when this could well become such a big election issue that would make discussions on bulb-outs and building heights seem like schoogirl arguments over very small, provincial matters, think carefully about your stance on this issue before you side yet again with big canabusiness. Don’t be afraid to be called a conservative, Republican, uncompassionate meanie simply because you don’t want to support big canabusiness.

Medical Marijuana in Santa Barbara

What’s up with medical marijuana dispensaries springing up like, ahem, mushrooms?

They call themselves healthcare collectives. Most don’t have business marquees. Healthy, fit people, mostly under age 30, and even some gang-bangers, enter their doors, leave moments later, heading off to smoke their score, or resell it.

Welcome to the medical marijuana dispensary industry in Santa Barbara. With 10 already open, 3 more permitted to open, and even more in the permit pipeline, they are starting to cluster as densely as one per block in some areas of Santa Barbara.

How does it work? A doctor will see you within minutes, even come to your home, and issue a recommendation for anxiety or writer’s cramp. Then you’re off to the dispensary to pick up your pot.

This is very far away from the intent of the Compassionate Use Act, passed in 1996, allowing people who were seriously ill or dying the ability to access marijuana, if it eased their suffering, and their doctor thought it appropriate.

How did we get from pain relief for the seriously ill to dispensaries? Pro-marijuana forces such as NORML, Americans for Safe Access, and Reason.org saw medical marijuana as a door-opener to legalization. The roadblock was the Feds, who still consider marijuana illegal. When Obama took office, Eric Holder, head of the DEA, said that they would not target medical marijuana users in states that had adopted laws like ours in California. Ganjapreneur dispensary operators interpreted this as a window in which they could now sell to primarily recreational users under the semi-legal protection of medical marijuana.

Here’s a how-to checklist for a dispensary to subvert the state laws. It could have been written by a pro-marijuana organization (who have plenty of lawyers on their payrolls):

State law: Seriously ill patients can grow up to 6 plants. If they are too ill, their primary caregiver can grow it for them.

Get all patrons to sign forms designating the dispensary as their ‘primary caregiver’.

State law: Collectives or cooperatives are the only forms of organization allowed where caregivers can cultivate marijuana together for their seriously ill patients.

Cooperatives distribute all profits among members, so that’s no good. Form a collective. No one knows what that means, anyway. The Attorney General had to look it up in Webster’s. Get people to become members of your collective by having them sign a form.

State law: Patients can reimburse the primary caregiver for expenses incurred in cultivating medical marijuana.

That means you can sell it! Ask for a ‘suggested donation’ to recover costs that matches the street price.

State law: No profit is allowed.

Organize as a non-profit. That just means we don’t issue stock and pay dividends to shareholders. It doesn’t mean we can’t make tons of money at this. We’ll pay ourselves very high salaries so it looks like it’s not that profitable.

State law: Patients must have a doctor’s recommendation that marijuana is appropriate to relieve their pain.

Some doctors are very happy to write recommendations for almost any condition, seeing up to 20 patients or more per hour, at $200 each. Get a list of these doctors, and hand them out to prospects. The recommendation is good for up to a year. We can always scream ‘patient confidentiality’ if law enforcement asks to see our records. People don’t know that HIPAA confidentiality only applies to drugs distributed legally under federal laws.

City councils aren’t exactly comfortable with having dispensaries.

No problem! Just tell them they’re Republican Nazi meanies if they don’t allow ‘compassion’ for ‘patients’, which is code for let us sell our ‘medicine’. They should zone it into areas of the city where most of the residents don’t bother voting. We’ll threaten to sue if they ban dispensaries. That will force them.

This is very tongue-in-cheek, but you get the picture.

Some cities haven’t fallen for it. Fresno’s ordinance doesn’t allow any business that isn’t compliant with state and federal laws. Since marijuana is still illegal under federal law, no dispensary can open. They do anyway, and law enforcement shuts them down.

State courts are starting to issue decisions that gut the dispensary model. The city of Claremont passed a ban, and closed down a dispensary. The operator sued, and lost. He appealed, and lost again. The Appeals Court ruled that nothing in the state laws compels cities to allow dispensaries.

In People v Mentch 2008, the California Supreme Court said that “primary caregiver” has two components: they must be designated by the patient, and must be a person “who has consistently assumed responsibility for the housing, health and safety” of the patient. “A defendant asserting primary caregiver status must prove, at a minimum, that he or she (1) consistently provided caregiving, (2) independent of any assistance in taking medical marijuana, (3) at or before the time they assumed responsibility for assisting with medical marijuana. The Compassionate Use Act “does not provide protection from prosecution where the provision of marijuana is itself the substance of the relationship.”

Thus dispensaries can be prosecuted even if you sign a piece of paper saying they’re your primary caregiver. It’s reasonable to conclude that patrons of the dispensary are similarly at risk of prosecution if the relationship between a patron and the dispensary is only for procurement of marijuana.

The District Attorney of Los Angeles and the City Attorney of Los Angeles also recently came to the conclusion that retail storefront dispensaries, are, in fact, illegal. Los Angeles law enforcement is moving aggressively to shut down all their dispensaries.

Some dispensary operators here are nervous about the backlash that is starting. A dispensary littered the sidewalk with pro-marijuana flyers and passed them out to elementary and junior high kids protesting along “The Marijuana Mile’ as they passed the storefront. Why didn’t they hand out something showing how they’re serving compassion? Sick patients step aside, please, in favor of recruiting future users.

Other operators are sweating about too much competition - a serious red flag to anyone still believing dispensaries are in the compassion business. Competition is no issue in a true collective or cooperative organization. Businesses worry about competition when they are nervous about erosion of profits…the biggest clue that dispensaries are in it just for the money.

Regulation of dispensaries via zoning laws, as is done in Santa Barbara, is hopelessly inadequate. City planning staff just doesn’t have the person-power or breadth of expertise needed to handle the bigger issues around dispensaries. These regulations would be provided by federal agencies, but since marijuana is illegal under US law, they can’t help. For example, can dispensaries sell hashish from Afghanistan? US Customs would handle that. Is it legal to truck it here from out of state? Congress would regulate that. Is it legal for doctors to recommend marijuana for any illness? The American Medical Association probably has some strict views on that, but refuses to touch the subject since it’s illegal under federal law.

It’s not possible to achieve end-to-end regulation over growing, distribution, doctor recommendations, and appropriate use through city zoning provisions. Dale Francisco has been making this case lately.

Dispensary owners see a creative solution to that problem – self-regulation! They’ll form an association, and regulate themselves. No oversight by a city or law enforcement needed.

Someone should check on the recent national debacle within the finance industry in that regard. Leaving the foxes in charge of the henhouse is never a good idea.

When we passed Proposition 215 in 1996, no one foresaw pot shops overrunning our neighborhoods. No one thought that kids would bring it to school, and tell shocked school administrators that it’s legal. No one thought that young kids would swallow the propaganda that marijuana is medicine, and good for them. But this is indeed the situation. Ganjapreneurs have now constellated a serious law enforcement and public opinion backlash, which will likely result in crackdowns, closures, and bans across the state. The state laws are indeed vaguely written, but to flout them was foolish, and very uncompassionate to the seriously ill. The unfolding backlash will likely result in dispensaries being made illegal under state law, set the pro-legalization movement back years, and make access for the truly ill much more difficult.

The ordinance committee, consisting of Das Williams, Dale Francisco, and Grant House, are continuing to wade through tightening of the ordinance through zoning, even though this won’t solve the larger regulatory issues. Francisco is questioning the legality of the retail dispensary model, and wants to take it back to Council.

In the meantime, the Planning Department is approving more dispensaries to open. Soon we’ll have double the number of dispensaries that we do Starbucks.

That’s saying something.

We're moving to medical marijuana

Though traditionally, we tend to post about women's issues, we're now moving to an issue that is rocking California and other states, and overrunning our beautiful Santa Barbara.

I am talking about medical marijuana, which is the semi-legal front for dealing marijuana in our fair city. With 16 open dispensaries, and more in the pipeline, my beautiful beloved city is becoming the toker capital of the Central Coast.

Keep an eye on this blog as we continue to watch this issue.

And soon there will be support for American women to don the burkha

Geez, check out this story:

Obama Praises Islam as 'Great Religion'

President says Islam is "part of America," hails the religion's "commitment to justice and progress"

Are you kidding me???? Commitment to justice and progress? With women on death row in Iraq for crimes they didn't commit? With women being forced to have cliterodectomies in Africa, and wear burkinis in the UK?

Americans, wake up.

We need more rogue women

Palin was accused of going 'rogue' by Republican handlers when she wanted to go off-script. Jonathan Martin at Politico remarks that when one makes the speech the media thinks one is going to make, and notifies the media ahead of time so that bylines are ready before the speech is even made, why that makes one a savvy politician. When a politician goes off-script, says what they really think, and is honest about choices they've made, they're erratic, incoherent, rambling, and nuts. Or rogue.

I like rogue women, women who follow their own script, and don't care what others think. HRC was rogue in that she decided she could be as powerful as her husband. She didn't feel she had to make cookies to be a good mother. Why is being a high-powered career woman and equal to her husband the antithesis of a good mother? As a career woman with no husband raising a daughter, I count myself in the good mothers set. My daughter eats organic, lives in a nice home, goes to a good school, travels, gets plenty of love and care, and seems to be thriving. I didn't subscribe to the notion that a career means sacrificing the child. Later in life, when I attained higher management positions that brought with them travel and very long hours, I began to see how corporate workplaces were structured in such a way that it became extemely difficult to be an ideal mom and successful executive at the same time, but I still wouldn't wish women back into the home to care for children. I think we need to push in the opposite direction: better maternity leave programs, more ability to work at home without sacrificing pay or position, and watching corporate fathers pick up more 'daddy duty'.

But Clinton was treated as a rogue woman - how dare she try to have it all! We seem to have passed that issue...until she tried to run for president. Then the smackdown for 'woman get in thy place' came out in earnest. It seems she would be stopped at being the full equal to her husband in terms of power by the boyz. Most of the rage and criticism directed against her pointed to her power-hunger, as though this was a bad thing.

It isn't for men, apparently. Power-hungry men are often well regarded.

Power-hungry women, though, are to be stoned to death. Or at least relegated to some lesser post, like Secretary of State.

Shirley Chisholm was a rogue woman. Running for president in the 70's as a black female. She was deemed 'nuts'. However, she was the first black congresswoman in the US. She was the first black and first black female to run for POTUS in the Democratic party. She said being a woman threw more impediments in her path than being black ever did. She was laughed at, but she dared to be herself, dared to reach for power.

That's rogue.

I love it.

Palin is also rogue. She doesn't conform to any feminist stereotype, yet she had a power position, a manly hubby that supports her ambitions, children, and a frontiersman lifestyle. She was the second woman EVER to be tapped as a VP candidate, and the first in the Republican ranks. She makes her decisions, doesn't apologize for who she is, and doesn't try to live up to whatever the prevailing image of women is, according to gossip / fashion / homemaker magazines.

Thank God.

For this, she is deemed as a rambling, incoherent rogue. Hmmm. Seems to me like the real problem here is that women who reach for power, women who don't fit in nice pigenhole stereotypical boxes, are considered power-hungry, crazy, attention-grabbing, rogues. Why won't they get in their place? Disappear into oblivion? Get lost? The blogs whine this sort of thing all day long, and op-eds positioned as 'news' do the same thing. Woman, get back.

The rogues don't, God love 'em. They do what they want, and don't conform to the images society has set for women. I think we need more rogues. In fact, I'd love to see women go rogue as a whole, and stick their thumbs up the patriarchy's butt as a collective. I'd love to see women assume that abortion rights are here to stay, and move on to the next frontiers: levelling that playing field once and for all. Only rogues can do this, because they are being real, as opposed to conforming to images that women as a whole try to sign up for, and then apologize for falling short. Rogue women, in short, don't give a damn, and will mow you down to pursue their goals, while not apologizing in the slightest to you for not conforming to your image of how they should be.

Here's to being rogue, and proud of it.

Palin steps down, now let the media tell us all why (cause she's so bad)

Sarah Palin resigned as governor, and my mouth hangs agape.

But part of me responds - that inner part that knows enough of life to know when a woman might just be tired of fighting a never-ending tidal wave - oh yea, I get it. I look at my 12 year-old daughter, and think, is my fight, my principles, my wish to do good, more important than your childhood, and our happiness and survival as a family? Do I really need to put us through hell for me to prove I can do things as a woman?

I think sometimes you have to make hard choices, and this might be one of them. I know that certain skeletons in my closet keep me from trying to run for office because I don't want certain family members' past actions brought to harsh limelight, when those actions have been dealt with and amends have been made. Are my ambitions worth the price my family would pay in media glare to sell some newspapers?

Maybe. But maybe not.

So maybe Sarah has had enough of her family being smeared, her state being smeared, and maybe she is thinking that it's time to walk away from this fight, so the state can continue its business without CNN and every blogger who can create an avatar reigning insults down on them. Maybe if I was facing that much hit-piece work, that much smear, that much attack on my family, and felt my state was getting trashed because of it...well maybe I'd ask if it was so important to cleave to my career by staying on this track, and destroying my family's chances at any sort of life because of it. I might ask if there were a better place I could do my bit to change the world, a better platform to operate off of, where my family is more shielded, and my charge (Alaska, in her case) were able to operate without a million judgmental journalists looking on.

Yea, maybe I'd walk away to live to fight another day too.

I don't know that this is actually what she is doing, but reading her speech, it feels like it.

Something else comes to mind as I read opinions of what she's doing, mostly fabricated by media trying to find a reason to justify its banal existence by putting out spin pieces which have little to do with actual events, but everything to do with propagating as much judgment as possible. So here we have op-ed replacing actual journalism, and no one seems to have noticed, but everyone's now converted. But I digress. I am thinking of how in this supposed post-modern, post racial, post feminist age, the image of two particular politicians, as constructed in the media, have supplanted the reality of the people themselves, and how disturbing this is to me, because it means that people can do whatever they like in the background, for good or ill, but their image is being constructed to do something else entirely. This is dangerous because while we are busy focusing on the image, we will miss the reality.

Let me explain a little.

People bought into the image of Obama representing the 'new kind of politics', being a different kind of leader, going against the status quo, etc. Many people, when listening to his speeches, felt he 'spoke to them' personally. He touched them. He'd accomplished little as a new US Senator, other than penning two memoirs, and running for President. No one seemed to have a problem with this, though they do with Palin leaving office early.

Yet, as president, Obama bailing out the enormous banks who backed him, with our tax dollars, while in this economy, many of us can no longer pay those banks for our mortgages and credit cards, though we still have to pay our taxes. The banks are getting paid twice, by us, in this case. How this isn't fraud, I don't know. Yet, there is virtually no reaction because, hey, Obama is going to save the economy. That's the image - it's why people voted for him in droves.

Obama's election and now presidental image is that he's getting us out of Iraq, he's closing down Gitmo, and he's our personal emissary to the Muslim world. He delivered the amazing Cairo speech, which ought to fix everything that nasty Bush did. This is the image.

The reality is that Obama is continuing Bush's policies in Iraq & upholding the Patriot act. The reality is that getting out of Iraq before they can really stand on their feet leaves them vulnerable to invasion by Iran, a longtime enemy. Obama, as our leader, decided to act as an apologist for the US to the Muslim world, and praised them for having achieved the height of culture (while they live in bombed out rubble today in a downward spiral of a fundamentalist religion that stultifies them).

He lets the Democratic Congress have its way entirely, so they can design Mega Stimulus Act II, while we have no way of paying for Mega Stimulus I, which hasn't proven itself to be working. To ease fears on the economy, he spins that we aren't losing jobs, nor creating them. We're saving them, though there is absolutely no way to measure this, and hence no way to say if he's been effective at saving them...or not. But it sounds good.

He nominates a Hispanic judge, who's stated that as a Hispanic female she has better judgment than a white male, which is essentially a racist statement. However, because we're all post-racial now, the image is put forth as a statement of enlightenment.

In a striking act of supporting feminism (NOT), after setting a new standard in misogyny by having his campaign malign and trash Clinton in the primaries, and Palin in the general, he tells the Muslim world that Muslim girls in our country have the right to wear the hijab, if they want to.

For this, he is hailed as the new Messiah.

Feminist love him. Liberalz love him. Europe loves him. He's The One.

That's the image.

Case 2: Sarah Palin
As a governor, she bucks corruption within her own party, and makes a deal with Big Oil to put money back into Alaskans' pockets. So...I rather like the idea of a governor protecting her state's assets this way. We all know corporations are going to exploit what they can where they can. Most governors take a payoff and turn a blind eye, because hey, it provides jobs, and we'll deal with the environment one day. No, she got that company to pay the citizens of Alaska for the right to exploit their assets. Smart.

She fights smears against her family, stands up to liberal media Boyz (aka, Letterman), works across party lines to get things done in Alaska, and had an off-the-charts approval rating. She's appointed a pro-choice judge to the Alaskan Supreme Court, thus showing that her personal politics don't get in the way of who she thinks is best for the job.

Her image is that of a weak, know-nothing, barbie-doll that can't form complete sentences. But is it weak to tell the press off when they're basically doing the British tabloid dance of making up news, or pitching gossip as 'news', or hunting celebrities, even political ones, to death?

The media has this sort of laissez faire love affair with Obama. Praise him, worship him, assume that he is The One, question nothing, and everything will be heaven soon. With her, they assumed a witch-hunt stance from the get-go, and nothing she does, no matter how innovative, tough (such as standing up to them and calling them on their crap) can ever be seen as anything other than 'she's a stupid cunt'.

She seems to have achieved the feminist dream of 'having it all, baby'. She's got a family, a gorgeous supportive hubby, and she looks good. She's a kind of embodiment of the feminism that first existed on TV in the 70's, with Charlie's Angels and Police Woman. These were women who looked hot, kicked butt, and lived life on their terms. For some reason, because Palin was this kind of woman, feminists went into mental vomit spasms across the country. Not all, certainly. But the ones most often open-minded to Palin were the same ones shocked at the witch-burning antics aimed at one extremely bright and talented woman who also had ambitions of national office: Hillary Clinton. You can find these feminists at sights like Reclusive Leftist, the Confluence, and No Quarter. For those feminists, Palin was a woman to be supported as an empowered woman, not as a pro-lifer, or Republican. The details of political position didn't matter. These feminists got it that we need to actually get to the place where Republican women can argue with Democratic women because they are both competing on the same stage for the presidency. Right now, women can't even get on that stage to compete, and it doesn't matter what party they're in. But for the vast majority of feminists, Palin was the Anti-Christ to Obama's Messiah figure, and they constructed an image and narrative so strong that even Tina Fey lines (I can see Alaska from my backyard) began to be attributed to Palin, and couldn't be disputed, no matter that an actress playing Palin had said them, and not the woman herself.

The image being constructed of Palin became more important and real than the actual Palin herself.

She speaks like a real American to real Americans, lives a kind of embodied survivalist Alaskan life to the extent that she hunts and eats what she skills, and doesn't bother with trying to sound clever, or pretend she has all the answers. So we have to spin this to cleave to the image of bimbo, carribou barbie, and ignoramus.

Do you see how this works? No matter what Obama does, he is Enlightened, The One, The Savior Who Will Fix Everything. The man could jerk off in public and people would find some way to say he was spreading holy seed or something.

No matter what Palin does, she is the Anti-Christ, the Anti-Feminist, the Ignoramus, the Ditz, The Bimbo You'd Like to Hate-Fuck, and the family values bitch that can't manage a family. She could be running the most prosperous well managed-state in the Union, adopt little black babies aka Madonna and Angelina, attain a PhD, win a Nobel Prize....and she'd still be a Cunt. The image is more powerful than the reality.

In short, I feel that we are in a major decline in Patriarchal organization, with Obama becoming the new God-image, while witch-burnings for Palin (and Clinton and Ferraro before her), are the new norm for politically ambitious women. The intent is clear. The methodology is to craft an image for men that exalts them, and an image for women that renders them incapable of being human. These constructed images completely eclipse the truth of the woman Palin is, and how she really does represent a new kind of politics, including stepping out of her office because the media is so busy doing hit jobs on her, and throwing mud at her and her state, that she doesn't feel she needs to put her family or her state through it any longer. The image of her as bimbo carribou barbie has completely supplanted the reality of the woman she actually is.

Obama and Palin are inverse mirror images of each other, with her living the reality of a new kind of politics and being damned for it, and him speaking the fantasy of the new kind of politics, and being hailed as actually embodying it...even though he is actually a very old-style Chicago politician. In both cases, the greater audience is not perceiving the truth, but is content on letting the images stand as reality. In fact, the image has become more real...than...the reality of either Obama or Palin.

Believing in the image is the cultural norm, and so it becomes very easy to manipulate the image to achieve one's ends, to put propaganda practices into play, and control people. Or attempt to annihilate them, as was done to Clinton and Palin.

This is bigger than just feminism, or women in politics, though the key to seeing how images supplant reality is easily done just by using the particular lens of what happens to women in national politics versus men. I think we'd better wake up soon to how much our image-celebrity culture could be masking some very dangerous activities, because the people behind the image can move about undetected, in Obama's case, or scrutinized and beaten down, in Palin's case.