While signature trolling this morning at a local coffee shop, I asked a woman for hers, upon which she asked me how I felt about a bill presently on Boston’s Beacon Hill about nurse staffing. She felt the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should tell hospitals how many patients nurses should be responsible for, while adding that hospital CEOs make too much money.

At some point, after I officially make the ballot, I’ll have to bone up on more state issues like this one. The woman, who it turns out is a nurse, kind of threw me for a loop and I had to think quick.

I responded that I didn’t feel the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should be telling any business how it should staff. Once you open that door, it’s very hard to close it later. Also, I don’t believe the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should be regulating the pay of a CEO, or minimum wage worker for that matter.

I’ve previously argued that just because one is a politician, doesn’t make one an instant expert on any given topic. I’m sure a lot of you remember Hillary Clinton’s personal crusade to institute universal health care nationally. One would think she would know all about the topic, given the size and scope of her undertaking.

But contrast her apparent expertise on the subject with her highly publicized visit last summer with Michelle Estrada, a nurse at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Henderson, Nevada.

According to Susan Page of USA Today,

The nurse's 12-hour shift at the hospital's Siena campus started as usual at 7 a.m. but at mid-afternoon Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived. The New York senator spent more than two hours shadowing Estrada in the fourth-floor medical/surgical ward before heading to Estrada's home for dinner with her and her three children.

"I'm following Michelle around today to see what a nurse does," Clinton explained to the patient in Room 471.

Now, I may have missed something here.

Save for the fact she’s a politician, is thereby granted expert status on every topic, and was very close to crafting legislation for every hospital, medical school, insurance company, and patient in the United States, if she was THAT qualified to do so, why did she need to follow a nurse around all day just to find out what she does?  Continued...

One would think, after all the years of being lectured to by the left when it comes to social decorum, that the Democrat presidential campaign would be conducted with the utmost in civility. However, reality is another thing.

Campaign 2008 has all the dreamed-of, potentially historical, liberal elements. On one hand, we have a woman. On the other hand we have a Black (African-American) man. Of all the possible candidates that have made it to the primary finals, we have representatives of two of America’s premier oppressed classes. Under normal circumstances, this would be a golden opportunity for progressives to show us all how it’s done. No gender bias; no racism. Just a campaign run on the issues.

However, that’s far from what we’ve gotten to date.

The Woman

After all the years of being instructed how women should be respected, how women can do whatever a man can do, how women can compete with men, how women are strong, Hillary Clinton has done little to support these long-standing protocols.

Hillary Clinton entered the race with beaucoup negatives. Many in America have still not forgiven (or forgotten) her declaration that a “vast, right wing conspiracy” sought to bring down her husband’s presidency, while knowing all along that he was guilty of almost all he was accused of. With that, half of the nation’s voters polled said they’d never vote for her under any circumstances. So any slip-up would be used against her, and they were.

When her campaign decided she needed to be humanized, we got “the cackle”. Yes, many made fun of her laugh as it just didn’t come off as sincere. When that didn’t work, she committed a big time, feminist faux pas: she cried… more than once. We’ve been told women are strong. Crying is a stereotypical sign of effeminate weakness, even though there are some in our society who think it revealing and sympathetic when men publicly sob.

We’ve been told that women don’t need the assistance of any man. When Hillary began her campaign, she was out there all by her lonesome. Her candidacy was considered “inevitable”. But when she actually found that this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, she was told to utilize her greatest asset: her man.  Continued...