Thursday, January 22, 2009

It's another blog for choice day

And the anniversary of Roe V Wade.

The question this year is: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

My wish (said in total Pinky and Brain speak) is the same one I have every day. I want bodily autonomy to be as much a right as freedom of speech. No one should ever be allowed to control what I do to my own body or how I do it. And no one, not a rapist or a nurse with a godbag agenda or a bunch of old white male politicians in ugly blue suits should ever be able to take that away from me or any other person.

I want that in the constitution cause these dudes should never be allowed near a uterus again.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

What now?

Micheal Lind has been running a series on Salon about how to fix the economy, and while I disagree with him on some things (complete elimination of corporate taxes, for example) I think there is a lot there to be impressed with. There's also a lot of things that I've been saying since forever- so yay me.

Today he writes about an economic bill of rights based on FDR's plan.

Check out the rest of the series. It's pretty good. And I hope our new dear leader is listening, cause so far his plans don't do anything that we really need.

A tisket, a tagging

The lovely Susan from That's Me On The Left has tagged me with the 6 things meme. I think I've done this before, but I'm sure there's more than 6 things about me in the world.

1. I was a magazine cover girl at age 4. Just one small trade magazine, but there ya go. I was also in the newspapers a couple of times and on tv twice, once for cheerleading and once in high school being interviewed by the local news on HIV testing for high school seniors (I was all for it)

2. At the moment I have the world's most gnarliest hangnail. And I'm a giant baby about it.

3. I gave my kid the name he has because every guy I ever met with his name was hot. Seriously. I was 19 though, so I should be given some leeway for picking that name for that reason.

4.I make up twisted lyrics to songs all the time. All. The. Time. Grandma got run over by a reindeer has been Bambi got run over by a John Deer for years.

5. Ruth likes watching cooking shows with me because of the faces I make when they cook something awful. Paula Dean, Sandra Lee and that doochebag with the scary bleach blonde hair are the main focus of my wrath. And I will totally scream at the tv if they start to burn their garlic! (PS- we also totally think Tyler Florence is gay gay gay. And closeted. But gay.)

6. The older I get, the more squeamish I get. I have to hide my eyes when anything gross happens on tv and the other day I had to leave the room when someone was describing their bloody mucus. I used to be much better about that kind of stuff, but now I get all nauseous and woozy.

So who to tag?

I tag you if you're reading this since I think I've tagged everyone and then some all ready. Drop me a linky in comments.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Chicago Dyke at Corrente

sums up exactly what I'm feeling. And it ain't good.

Sacrifice? Be the change?

What more do I have to sacrifice? We have no money. Every month it's another round of pay rent or eat (this month both lost to some extent). I have no health care, so I can't give that up. I was kinda hoping that I might actually get healthcare from a Democratic government, but that got pushed aside for banking reforms.

I've sacrificed finishing my education. There's no money for that. Next year I'm sacrificing my kid's public education. There will be one less child sucking on the educational teat. A special needs kid at that. Is that enough sacrifice?

And I've been the change, since I was a tiny girl stomping her feet in patent leather shoes. The only thing left for me to change into is a Republican. And no body wants that. Or do they?

I want to see billionaires sacrifice their private jets to taxes so that schools can have smaller class sizes. I want to see Halliburton and KBR sacrifice the Iraq war cash they've disappeared like Pinochet's prisoners to their rape victim employees. I want to see health insurance sacrificed to make room for healthcare.

I want to see Wall Street bankers be the change by giving their bonuses paid with TARP money back to the government. I wanna see the Big 3 car makers be the change by developing green cars and green jobs.

I am the change, I've been the change. I've given up 5 years making sure that students go into the world knowing how to use computers and get a job without a raise or benefits for myself. I don't have anything left to give, except my voice. And I've been giving that away for free since I learned to talk.

Monday, January 19, 2009

What can make a political junkie say "meh"

My email box is full of invites to inauguration get togethers, but not even the end of the Bush cleptocracy can get me excited about tomorrow.

I am having a really hard time with it actually. I can't get past the fact that the dude giving the invocation hates me and people like me, and that our shiny new president thinks that's reason enough to give him a national platform. Hell, I'm a slutty single mom whose had abortions (Nazi!) and called the police on my Kid's dad instead of heading to church to get counseling. Not to mention that I'm pretty flexy on the Kinsey scale. Rick Warren would tie me down and perform an exorcism if he thought he could get away with it.

But it's not just Obama's choice of national preacher that has got me down. I keep looking at the stimulus package, desperately combing through the details to find some tiny thing that might make my life easier. Some kind of funding that will go to jobs that I can do. No luck. No national healthcare either. Food stamp amounts are supposed to go up, but since I've been waiting for over 3 weeks for the local welfare office just to schedule an appointment to see if I'm eligible for them, I don't know that it's going to do me much good.

There is one bright spot, Hillary. I am tickled that women in the rest of the world will finally have a tough American ally standing up for them. But it's bittersweet when at home we won't be getting the same advocacy from our president. We are just a footnote for him. A secondary thing that he thinks about only rarely. Secondary. Woman may make up 52% of the population, but we are just a note in the margins to Obama. Perhaps he feels that if he does things to help out our husbands then we will benefit by proxy. Unless you don't have a husband, or don't sleep with men.

There was a line in The West Wing once about how "You're not just the president of the people who voted for you". But what I've seen so far is that Obama is the president just to people who never vote for him. Godbags and Milton Friedman die hards.

But at least I'm used to having a president who couldn't give a rats ass about people like me. I do have 8 years of experience with that. The only difference is that I never expected a right wing Republican president to speak for me, but I do kinda expect the Democrats to. I mean, that is the reason for their existence after all.