More lies

Turns out Sarah Palin, while pro life, is also pro contraception:

Palin said last month that no woman should have to choose between her career,
education and her child. She is pro-contraception and said she’s a member of a
pro-woman but anti-abortion group called Feminists for Life.
“I believe in
the strength and the power of women, and the potential of every human life,” she
said.

http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/elections/governor06/story/8049298p-7942233c.html

showing again that McCain made a good choice.

And cut me the "Match .com would have vetted her better" and other Kos talking points.

She has more experience than Obama- working with the canadian government constantly as opposed to the guy who didn't do his job in the Senate and did nothing about foreign policy, and never went to Europe before his rock star tour.

But this is not about that. Even if she had been an ambassador for 20 years it would not have been enough for the Obamazoids.

Because this is not about her. It's about the fact that regardless how much a woman does, it's never enough.

Dear Hypocrites:

Choice goes both ways. Feminists get this.

I have chosen at different times in my life to stay pregnant or to not stay pregnant. I was barely older than Bristol Palin, at 19, when I decided to have to have the kid. I had enough pressure from everyone around me not have him. But despite the supposedly well meaning pressure from friends, despite being absolutely pro-abortion right down to my bones, I wanted him. I can't explain it without using crappy metaphysical reasons. But I knew I was supposed to be his mom. And so I choose to stay pregnant. At other times in my life, I have chosen not to be pregnant.

I would hope that those of us who call our selves "pro-choice" would give Bristol Palin the benefit of the doubt about her own choice. And for the love of pete stop picking on a stressed out teenager. Those of you who continue to make her pregnancy an issue are hypocrites and assholes. Her individual choice is exactly that. Hers. Not yours to second guess or make political fodder out of.

So kindly STFU.

(And seriously- I know I am not the only one who is already sick to fucking death of having to defend a fundy godbag and her family from people who are supposed to be allies. Dear god could you people hate women any more?)

Stream of consciousness blogging

In the beginning, this was called The White Papers. It started from a comment made by a former blogger here who was a friend in real life. We were talking about healthcare and I said i had been turning the problem over in my head for so long I could write a white paper on it. He said "then why don't you?"

Well it turns out that I am more of a pamphleteer than a wonk writer. Much like with fiction, I get bored out of my skull about 20 pages into writing anything. But I still love me some political theory.I mean love.

Ruth, a mathematician, and i were talking about the different ways we learn things. She sees things from their smallest parts up. I see them as a whole and then tear them apart. The best way I can describe it is that the Kid was talking to us about how there is a mathematical way to take a solid sphere, cut it into small pieces, then rearrange the pieces so you get a much larger sphere. Immediately in my head there was a sphere getting blown to bits, twirling about and rearranging itself like a 3d puzzle. Ruth saw it as a graph and started talking about line segments. Neither of our methods were wrong, and we could both get to the same result.

So I am thinking about the different ways that we see problems and solutions and how to overcome my boredom at writing more than 20 pages on a single topic. I am also thinking about how fucking awesomely democratic the internet is and what a wonderful thing that Wikipedia exists.

I am also thinking that maybe all my struggles to do things the established way is a complete load of shit (for me anyways). I've never been happy doing things in the order I was "supposed" to do them. See- having a child at 19 and refusing to marry his father (or any of the other perfectly respectable men who came after).

And somewhere in this mess of thoughts I also need to find a way to support my kid and myself. Theory is all well and good, but I can't feed the kid a theory sandwich or tuck him into a theory bed at night. There must be a way to do the things I want to do while obtaining the things I need. I just don't know how yet.

Gustav

More proof our government isn't doing its basic job of protecting the people is the atrocious way we "help" poor, brown people during natural disasters.

Via BFP comes links to get real help to low income WOC in New Orleans right now.

Kate Harding has some quotes from people who can't evacuate the city.

And Redstar brings us the Katrina pain index.

If I was a praying person, I'd have my eyes shut tight for the residents of the gulf coast as well as those already hit in the Caribbean. My thoughts are with them regardless.

The parties (and therefore the government) no longer give a rats ass about you

I was reading Quin's fabulous piece Good Cop Bad Cop about the police actions at both the Dem and Rep conventions.

It's official- there is no government for us lowly citizens.

So my little chickadees, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to take back what is ours and force politicians to be responsive to us mere voters? I know I keep asking this, but until some brilliant idea strikes me I am going to be painfully redundant.

How do we get our politicians to do the right thing and look out for the people?

Now I've made more than a wee bit of a stink about the fact that Obama is anti-Keynesian. There is a reason for that, other than my increasing dislike for the guy.

Keynes had this radical idea that governments should protect people not just from the physical violence of war but the economic violence of downturns. Huhm, imagine that? A government that protects its people. Keynes' rational was that you temper the boom times a bit with higher taxes in order to cushion the busts. A very moderate idea. He certainly wasn't some radical commy. But recent governments have fucked that whole idea up. They temper the bad times, sure. If you happen to be wealthy the government will do everything in its power to keep you that way through a recession. But the little people, the regular people, are fucked. In all the talk about the current housing crisis, very little is being done to help the actual homeowners. And the it's about to get much worse. It's been easy so far for the PTB (powers that be) to blame the current foreclosures on bad people with bad credit who should have known that the American Dream of homeownership was not meant for them. But people who have good credit and didn't get subprime loans but got ARM (adjustable rate mortgages) are next on the foreclosure block. Where is the government now? Is it freezing interest rates on these loans? Is it putting a temporary halt on foreclosures? Is it doing anything to fix the people's problems? Or is it too busy figuring out which bank it's going to bail out next?

That's just one example. I am sure you peeps can think of a thousand more where the government is not acting in our interest. (healthcare, tuition costs, food and drug safety, clean air and water- take your pick).

So how do we make them listen to us now? How do we make the people we elect responsible to those of us who elected them? Old methods are failing, we need new and bold ideas for holding their feet to the fire.

"Progressives" piss me off too

I keep having the same stupid arguments with "progressives" who have swallowed a few bits of upper class lefty "common sense" without ever having bothered to check what they put in their mouths to begin with.

I am sure I must have bitched to you all about how those earth lovers bitching about overpopulation are generally privileged white folks complaining about brown people in the world. Haven't I? Well if I haven't, next time someone starts talking to you about overpopulation take a good look at the color of their skin, their class and their nationality. Are they white? Are they middle to upper class? Are they from a "developed" nation. Then their arguments are a boat load of racist crap. They use more resources as a single person than those large families in the developing world use all together.

Next- market corrections. Today was the first time I heard a proggy pit poor Americans against poor people everywhere else. But when it happens once it is bound to happen again. Besides, whatever the arguments in favor of "market corrections" are, the argument against them is always the same. What stock brokers and bankers think of as the markets balancing themselves out is code for screwing poor people. Always. Screw them out of pensions, mortgages, savings, 401ks. Screw them out of jobs and healthcare and housing. Always the result of a market correction is an increase in the strain on the poor.

So the proggy's argument in favor of this recent economic downturn a bunch of us are calling the Second Coming of the Great Depression is that we poor people can't keep expecting to pay slave wages to poor people in other countries to feed our Wal-Mart habits. Seriously.

First, it's not increased wages that has driven the cost of food up by 25% in the last year. Really, we'd notice if we were getting paid more. It's not increased foreign labor costs either. We know that companies just move to the next starving job market to keep costs low. But it makes the tiny men of the progressive movement feel better knowing they overpaid for organic free range eggs at Whole Foods so they can blame us poor people who have to by cheaper eggs, probably imported from China where they were collected by prison labor.

The market does not need a correction because poor people are so damn greedy they want to have their mac and cheese at the cost of other poor people. The market is fucked up because our government is acting irresponsibly towards us, the people, in favor of passing bills helpful to corporations who want us, the people, to buy their products at any price but are not willing to give us, the people, a living wage that would allow for the kind of crap consumption they desire to meet their income projection,

(FTR- the last time I was in a Wal-mart was at least 2 years ago.)

of lies and classism

One of the things you will hear lobbed at Sarah Palin is that her husband works for "Big Oil".

The truth? Her husband, who is blue collar, used to work as an oilfield technician. In Alaska, a place where blue collar jobs are limited.

A certain blogger, who is a feminist and considers herself to be one, went on a mad rant at me when i pointed that, together with the fact that accusing a woman for her husband's choices is sexist. She made it a point to note on her blog that all sexist attacks on Palin were off limits except for those about her husband's career choice.

Wtf? The guy was an oilfield technician and is now working as a fisherman. So, are now all the poor people who have to gain a piece of bread working for oil companies horrible monsters that do not deserve to live, on par with lobbyists and Dick Cheney?

So, it is better to not work than work a blue collar job, just because you work for an oil company? The classism of this leaves me breathless. Does this mean that it's better to not work than work for an HMO because they are what they are?

If Todd Palin's job means that he works for big oil in scary quotes and thus his wife is not to be trusted since she would be more friendly towards big oil interests, do we get to call Obama on his wife's employer? Michelle Obama works for University of Chicago Hospitals, where she has a symbolic vice president role. Does this mean that she is in the HMO's pockets and thus so is Obama ( thus explaining his aversion to UHC)? What about her work for TreeHouse Foods Inc?

It's not nice is it?

Or is it just a lie packed in a nice sexist and classist envelope from the same people for whom Hillary wasn't good enough? Or is it that sexist attacks on women not allied with us are OK?

They aren't

Some other blogger went so far as to compare Sarah Palin with Elena Ceausescu. So, because she is pro life, she deserves to be compared with someone who, as my country's history tells, was a sadistic murderess? Wow.

Amazing.

A note on Palin: she seems to keep her beliefs and her job separately. When the alaskan senate wanted to remove the benefits allowed to same sex partners of state employees, she vetoed the measure. I know loud alleged LGBT friends who have done a lot less.

I am not even sure I can call myself a feminist anymore. The word has become dirty.