In a few days we launch the beginning of a new decade and close the book on the ’00s — the first 10 years of the second millennium. As a full-time cultural critic and follower of women’s issues, my first thought was that women have not made much progress this decade, certainly not as much as some of us would have liked to have witnessed.

Sexism was clearly more acceptable than racism in the ‘08 campaign. And while I’m thrilled we’re starting to conquer racism, I’m saddened by the fact that sexism is still alive and well in American media and culture. There was ample evidence in the presidential campaign when then-Sen. Hillary Clinton was called a she-goat and all manner of sexist insults without fellow partisans protesting the abuse. There was the chorus of Democrats calling on her to give up her campaign before she was ready to do so. Nonetheless, she became the first woman to win 20 state primaries.

On the GOP ticket, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became the first woman to run for vice president on the Republican side. She, too, has suffered sexist treatment in the media.

There were other indications women have not achieved basic indicators of success that many of us assumed we would be beyond at this point. A report by Catalyst just this month found five years of stagnation in terms of women being appointed to Fortune 500 corporate boards. The percentage has remained at just above 13 percent since 2003. And so on.

On the national front, early in the decade the brouhaha in Congress over the death of Terry Schiavo prompted conservatives to push through the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. This was the first time federal law recognized personhood for fetuses and a major blow to women’s rights.

But there are also areas in which we’ve made real and substantive progress. One area is in the military, which is often first to break down barriers. The decade began with the closest presidential race in history, resulting in a win for Republican President George W. Bush. Less than a year later the country witnessed the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. As a result, the country launched two wars, with thousands of women, more than 190,000 in fact, joining the services. No longer behind the scenes, today’s female soldiers are taking on jobs once labeled men-only.

Hurricane Katrina, as devastating as it was to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, had the indirect effect of helping to elect the first female speaker of the U.S. House. The Bush administration’s delayed reaction to the catastrophe caused Republicans to lose control of both the House and the Senate. The architect of the Democratic congressional victory, Nancy Pelosi, became the first woman Speaker of the House.

In 2006, Katie Couric became the first and only female anchor of a nightly newscast, the “CBS Evening News.” This year it was announced she would face female competition from another network anchor. Diane Sawyer took over the anchor seat at ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

This year President Barack Obama took office filling his Cabinet with a number of women, most notably former rival Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama also selected Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court justice, making her the first Latina and third woman to sit on the highest court in the land.

The first bill signed into law by Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Act, adding strength to equality laws, and just in time, as women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce. That in itself is historic as working women at the end of the decade about equaled, due in part to the recession, men in the workforce. Increased female participation in the workforce is a side effect of the recession, which hit male-dominated fields particularly hard.

So as the ’00s draw to a close with some major ups and major downs for women’s advancement, let us hope we make up some lost ground in the second decade of the new millennium.

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Why McCain Lost

Making Sense, by Michael Reagan

Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States because the Republican Party and John McCain handed him the presidential election on a silver platter.

The Republican Party and the Bush White House walked away from Republican ideals and they walked away from Republican values.

George Bush allowed the Republican Congress to overspend in the first six years of his administration without once using the veto pen, blindsided the conservative Republican members of Congress on many occasions, and walked away from the base of his party on immigration reform and other issues such as Medicare and No Child Left Behind.

He refused to sit down and break bread with the conservative members of his own party on Capitol Hill, yet believed that he could break bread with the liberal Democrats in Washington the way he did with the Democrats in Austin, Texas. And when he discovered it didn’t work in Washington, it failed to stop him from trying and trying and trying over again what was obviously impossible.

Finally, the coup de grace was Dick Cheney’s endorsement of John McCain in the waning days of the campaign, which gave Barack Obama the final nail to put in the coffin of McCain’s campaign, which was striving mightily to distance him from the Bush administration.

Then there was McCain’s campaign itself. It was the worst campaign since Bob Dole’s on the Republican side, and the best campaign since Ronald Reagan’s on the Democrat side.

The McCain campaign was a campaign out of the 20th century, while the Democrats were running a campaign in the 21st century.

We need to understand that this was not a referendum on Reaganomics and Ronald Reagan. This was a referendum on George Bush, and Bush-ism, and Bush’s lack of leadership.

John McCain wouldn’t stand up against the Democrats in Washington D.C. on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scandals, against expanding government, a $700 billion bailout, and going against the traditional values of conservative Republicans.

The economic collapse was the Democrats’ fault. Yet John McCain never bothered going after them on that. He let the burglars walk away with the loot because those were his friends, and with George Bush failed to point the finger of blame at the people who caused the financial collapse that has plunged the nation into a certain recession. Bush had the bully pulpit but failed to use it, and the Democrats walked away scot-free.

Shockingly, John McCain failed to use the most potent weapon in his arsenal — the culpability of Barack Obama and his friends in the wholesale looting of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current debacle. McCain had the goods, but wouldn’t exploit them.

The McCain campaign made inadequate use of Gov. Sarah Palin, who had enormous crowd appeal. A lot of people voted for John McCain because of Sarah Palin. There were bigger a crowds because of Sarah Palin. Yet some of the functionaries in the McCain campaign are trying to point the finger at her for McCain’s defeat.

John McCain lost because of his lack of a clear message. He needed more than the fact that he is a maverick. His answer to the economic crisis was a $300 billion bailout for delinquent mortgagees. He was offering welfarism, while Barack Obama was offering socialism.

People laugh at me when I tell them the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans take a week longer to embrace communism.

This was not a referendum on Ronald Reagan. As a matter of fact, my dad might well have voted for Barak Obama just based on what he was seeing his party doing.

Finally, I hope that when Barack Obama was making elaborate and extravagant promises about what he was going to do, he was flat-out lying.

I hope Barack Obama will not be what he has promised to be. I hope he doesn’t have a civilian security force. I hope he doesn’t raise my taxes. I hope he doesn’t spread the wealth. I hope he doesn’t raise taxes on corporate America. I hope he looks at nuclear power. I hope he allows us to drill. I hope that there will be no revival of the fairness doctrine.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

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Barack Obama pals around with a terrorist, you know.

CBS News quotes Joe Biden talking about my last cartoon today:

(LANCASTER, OHIO) - Joe Biden says an editorial cartoon he saw in a local newspaper best summarized his feelings about the McCain campaign’s negative attacks on Barack Obama.

The cartoon, drawn by Daryl Cagle, appeared in the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette today.

“There’s a cartoon, I don’t know if you guys saw this,” said Biden at a rally at Ohio University, “It’s John McCain and Sarah Palin standing on the corner of a building that has on the bottom corner written ‘BANK.’ And it has a group of people, businessmen dressed in suits standing on the ledge, some of them jumping off into the street. And it has Sarah Palin saying to John McCain, “You know, Barack Obama pals around with terrorists, you know?”

“I think it best captures anything I have seen,” declared Biden.

“While the economy is going to hell in a handbasket, while people are losing their jobs, while things are going under, they’re running the most scurrilous campaign in modern history trying to tie a decent honorable man raised by his grandparents and his mother who worked his way up — who fought in a way that few people have to fight to make something of himself.”

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Obama Implodes

Making Sense, by Michael Reagan

Once upon a time it was inevitable that Hillary Clinton would be the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. It didn’t work out that way.

A few weeks ago, it seemed inevitable that Barack Obama would win the presidency handily. It isn’t working out that way.

A few weeks ago, it seemed inevitable that John McCain was in for a drubbing. It hasn’t worked out that way.

In political campaigns things can always change, of course, but as of now it appears that John McCain is headed for the White House. That’s not inevitable, but at the moment it looks as if he’s headed for the winner’s circle, thanks largely to his choice of a running mate who has electrified most of the electorate.

The Obama campaign’s stunned reaction to this totally unexpected development has been at first to ridicule McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, then to underestimate the effect she was having on the McCain campaign, and now to go all-out in attacking her.

Obama’s reaction to this sudden turn in his fortunes has been nothing less that sheer and visible disorientation. It’s obvious that he simply doesn’t know which way to turn, and his confusion has led him to launch a sleazy campaign to destroy Gov. Palin’s reputation — no matter what it takes — before she destroys his presidential hopes.

A prime symptom of his disorientation was the ill-advised comment about putting lipstick on a pig. The old self-confident, sure-footed Barack Obama, safe in the cocoon woven about him by a worshipful media, would have understood the consequences of making such a remark and the almost certain probability that it would be a boomerang that would smite him on its return trip, and would have thus avoided it.

This disaster, however, is nothing compared to the catastrophe that is waiting in the wings as a result of his scorched-earth attack on Sarah Palin. Unable to grasp the obvious fact that the media’s ongoing effort to slander Palin is backfiring, he has allowed his campaign to dispatch an army of lawyers and private investigators to Alaska to dig for dirt in Palin’s backyard.

Obama must understand that Gov. Palin, with a favorability rating in excess of 80 percent, is unpopular among the old-boy’s network she has uprooted, and has easily fended off their attempts to damage her reputation.

Turning to these malcontents for ammunition, when their arsenal of anti-Palin weapons has proved worthless, is a massive waste of effort that is certain to backfire again. They haven’t made a dent in her popularity.

Nor will Obama’s scandal mongers. Try as they may to make a mountain over the so-called “troopergate” molehill, for example, they will have a hard time explaining why it would be wrong to want to see a four-times married and divorced law enforcement officer kept on the job when he had tasered his 11-year-old stepson, illegally shot a moose, drank beer in his patrol car on one occasion, and told others his father-in-law would “eat a f’ing lead bullet” if he helped his daughter get an attorney for the divorce.

According to the Anchorage Daily News: “Col. Julia Grimes, then head of Alaska State Troopers, wrote in March 1, 2006, ‘The record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession.’”

She warned that if he messed up again, he’d be fired.

“This discipline is meant to be a last chance to take corrective action,” Grimes wrote. “You are hereby given notice that any further occurrences of these types of behaviors or incidents will not be tolerated and will result in your termination.”

This is the man the media and the Obama gumshoes want to pillory Sarah Palin for wanting to have stripped of his badge and gun, and portray him as a victim of heartless Sarah.

Talk about panic.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

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The first presidential debate is going to be held at the University of Mississippi, which hired me to do an illustration for the event - here it is on their current “Ole Miss” magazine cover. They will be using it for other stuff associated with the debate too, probably the programs or a poster or something. It would be fun if they would blow it up big as a backdrop (somehow I doubt that they’ll do that, but thanks, Ole Miss!)

My book publisher (Que/Pearson Education) liked it too, and it will also be the cover of our upcoming BIG Book of Campaign 2008 Cartoons, which is slated to be in stores in a month. Today, my loyal assistant, Stacey, and I did an urgent, last minute edit to fit more Palin cartoons into the book.

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Fight or Die

Making Sense, by Michael Reagan

Republicans have their backs against the wall, facing a bloodbath on Election Day that will leave the party in shambles and the nation in the hands of the worst conglomeration of demagogues, scoundrels and loony leftists ever put together in our nation’s history.

When you’re fighting for your life, you have two choices: whimper about your plight while the other side cuts you to pieces, or fight as if your life depends on it, which of course it does.

Dark as the outlook for survival may seem, there is a ray of light that if taken advantage of can not only save the GOP, but turn it into a rout of the Democrats that could make Election Day a victory celebration for the Republicans instead of a mournful wake.

The Democrats, who have long shown a shocking talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of near certain victory, are now trying mightily to commit political suicide, yet the majority of elected Republicans are either too blind to see a golden opportunity handed to them on a silver platter, or too stupid to take advantage of it.

Think about it, the vast majority of Americans — almost 80 percent of them — are angry and demanding that Congress allow drilling for oil here in the mainland United States, offshore and in Alaska, and the Democrats are thumbing their nose at them and adamantly refusing to lift the ban on drilling.

Their leadership is so committed to preventing the commonsense, long-term solution to the energy crises that they not only refuse to allow a vote on the measure, but skip town without addressing the crisis, with the speaker of the house gadding off to Florida and elsewhere to sell her worst-selling book (a pitiful 2700 or so copies sold thus far, according to Matt Drudge) while her fellow Americans groan under the burden of $4.00 a gallon gasoline.

Her motto isn’t Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” — it’s more like let the people buy my book and keep shelling out $4 a gallon for gas.

That’s a gift from the gods, a life-saving issue that puts the pro-drilling Republicans on the right side of the year’s hottest political controversy, and provides them with a weapon they can use to draw the majority of voters to their side and save the party from an impending electoral disaster. Pushed to the limit, it can make Election Day 2008 a banner day in the party’s history.

That was obvious to me the minute I saw which way the wind was blowing. Here was the issue that puts the GOP solidly in league with the American people. When I talked with Texas Congressman John Carter on the phone I told him the media was not going to present the GOP’s position on the matter, so the Republicans had to do the job themselves in a way the media could not ignore. They had to dramatize their stand.

I told Rep. Carter that with the Democrats fleeing town in droves the Republicans in both houses needed to get back to the Hill and by their presence there in the empty House and Senate chambers demonstrate the Democrats’ shameful refusal to respond the demands of the American people,

I said they should demand that the vacationing Democrats come back now and respond to the people’s wishes for a solution. I also said that the president needed to call the Democrats’ back to deal with the crisis.

I added that the media would have to cover the event, thus dramatizing the Democrats’ flight from Washington in the middle of a crisis facing every American. He agreed with me and went to the leadership and they agreed, and the resulting GOP response is getting the media’s begrudging attention.

It’s not enough, however. This needs to be a party-wide strategy. The entire Republican House membership and all their Senate Republican colleagues need to be on the Hill now, making the case for Congress to reconvene now as loud as they can. And the president needs to call the Congress back into session and demand that the Democrats act to put an end to the crisis now.

This is a golden opportunity, and if the GOP fails to take full advantage of it they will deserve it if the voters go with Democrats in November. The American people are with the Republicans on the most important issue of our time.

The question is, are the Republicans on their side and willing to lead them in the fight to use all the oil resources the Lord has given us in such great abundance and which now are untapped beneath our feet because the Democrats won’t allow us to drill down to get it.

Republicans can unite to fight and win. Or they can do what they seem to do best these days, cringe and surrender.

It’s up to them.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. E-mail comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com.

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