Yes, I agree with him when he asks, as he did on Friday the 11th, why President Obama doesn't stand up for the 70% of us who aren't crazy. I wish our president would stop trying to make deals with the small minority who are destructive and insanely oppositional with no intention of ever cooperating, and get to work doing something for the majority, who could really use the help.

But my appreciation of Maher goes straight down the toilet every time he adds a statement like this--and he always does:
"The Democrats just never learn. Americans don't really care which side of an issue you're on as long as you don't act like pussies," Maher said.

I've got news for you, you mewling media canker-boy. Us pussies are too smart to continually flip off our functionally allies by talking like major league, Numero Uno, USDA Prime asshats. Even when we agree with what the asshat might be saying.

or, the things you learn while working on MASTIFF.

The problem's too big for me to describe, so this:

Free the Slaves in the U.S.

or in the U.K., this:

Anti-Slavery

You can donate to either projects if you simply purchase A CRIME SO MONSTROUS: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner, which I'm reading now. But brace yourselves. It's not a nice book, and the stories it tells branch out into so many areas of horror for people today, like poverty, the rapes in Sudan and the never-ending civil war there, the unending legacy of the Bosnian War, and the fate of women and children in India and Pakistan. I haven't seen yet if Skinner gets to slavery here in the U.S.: forced labor in sweatshops to pay off debts to which new charges--food, broken equipment, medicine--are constantly being added, sometimes with threats against family at home. This is the slavery that leads to the dead in desert graves and cargo containers, and girls and women held in brothels without escape except for what's offered by drugs.

And as far as I can tell, the U.N. is absolutely worthless when it comes to this area.

I don't know if it can be eradicated. But we can make a dent in it.

edited to add:
thanks to kallaneboi, here's a link to Belief.net's list of organizations fighting the slave trade--Free the Slaves is one of them. Just scroll down the page and you'll find each site.

For two and a half years the feral cat we've named Cloud who has taken over our back yard and come to live in our basement for the winters has existed at a wary distance: first 10 feet, then 6, then in the last 6 months or so, 2. In the last couple of months, he has left my assistant Cara and me breathless by coming onto the back porch with us and standing so close we could sneak in a fingertip brush of his back. (A move sometimes requiring a blood donation.) Then, a month ago, Cloud began to rub himself against and between our legs, as he purred. We've been just plain giddy, because he's such a hard case.

Two Sundays ago, Cloud allowed me to pet him. I mean a full goose head, neck, and both ears scratch. He purrs loud when I do it, leaning against my shins. It's as if the part of him that's always known to use the cat box we left for him in the cellar suddenly woke up and said, "Hey, we remember this! We used to like this!"

So now I pet him when I take him his breakfast, and his dinner, and when he follows me to the garage, where I feed the outdoor feral cats. Lately I'll go to the cellar during the day just to pet him some more. I think he's making up for lost time.

Cara's disappointed because he's only let her pet him twice, briefly. I think he's got to decide that if it's okay with me, it'll be just as okay with her.


I read Laurie Halse Anderson's CHAINS over the weekend. It was very good. Her details on daily life are gritty, but there's still beauty in slave girl Sal's hard-working world. Now I have to grit my teeth and wait for the second book. Ah, the hard life of a fan! ;-)


And all day yesterday on the blogs I was reading pieces of Bush's last press conference. Then, last night, I saw more of it on Keith Olbermann's and Rachel Maddow's MSNBC shows. And I ended up sobbing on the phone with Tim, who was still at his office. Sobbing with rage because this stupid, arrogant, heartless, self-centered fratboy had done his best to destroy our economy, and New Orleans, and the Constitution. He's responsible for the deaths of nearly two million people in the Middle East and Central Asia, our own soldiers as well as those who live there. This clueless little shit did so much that was bad, and the best he could do at his last press conference was pout and thump the podium.

Vale, George Bush. Don't let the portcullis his you on the head on the way out.

Stolen from Andrew Sullivan's blog:

"The African in him is the one who is making him ask, 'What is the consensus?' That’s the African way at its best. The good leader in Africa is the leader who keeps quiet and lets others speak and then says at the end, 'I have heard you all, and this is our mind,'" - Desmond Tutu on Obama.

I hate to disagree on even the tiniest point with Bishop Desmond, but I don't think this is just a quality of good African leaders. I think it's a good quality in any leader.

This second thought comes from the novel EXODUS by Leon Uris:

"International law is that thing which the evil ignore and the righteous refuse to enforce."

If anyone saw these remarks as part of the previous entry: I realized I wanted to highlight the gassing--and ignored in the mainstream media--attack on the Dayton mosque, not make it part and parcel of election dirty deeds. So here are the other dirty deeds I've learned about, in addition to that inflammatory DVD:

In Philadelphia, an anonymous flyer is being distributed in black neighborhoods, informing readers that anyone with outstanding arrest warrants or unpaid tickets will be arrested when they go to the polls to vote.

According to the AFL-CIO blog, "The Republican county clerk in El Paso County, Colo., admitted sending incorrect information to out-of-state Colorado College students, telling them they could not register if their parents listed them as dependents on their tax returns." The NY Times reported the Virginia Tech registrar who twice told students that if they voted, they could not be claimed as dependents by their parents.

And of course most of us have heard by now that Michigan is trying to exclude every voter whose home has been foreclosed upon from voting. Since it's the Obama campaign that's fighting this, I guess we can tell who is pressing for this, who thinks to gain.

What bit of nastiness is next, do you suppose?

I wish I could let this go, but the more I learn of Sarah Palin's behavior in Alaskan politics, the more she frightens me as the heir apparent to a 72-year-old president with health problems. Salon.com posted this piece today which adds to the picture of Palin's behavior in town politics--and it's very disturbing.

I would post all of this material if she were a man. I do think Palin would try to move this country toward a theocracy if she were president, and we've gone too far in that direction already, propelled by cynics and believers in our government alike. History has given us no reason to expect decent treatment from theocrazies. When will the American people wake up to the dangers to their rights?

Now favoring and bailing out the rich, deregulation, and God citation in government have brought us to the worst financial crisis in government since the Great Depression of the 1930s. John McCain, stumbling through his lines, tells us that small business and the American worker and strong. Strong? STRONG? When home foreclosures are at an all-time high and jobs are at an all-time low? When food prices for basics like wheat are rising (white bread costs 20 cents more this year than last) and far too many Americans have no health care at all? When small businesses are folding everywhere?

The man who can say this is not even paying attention to the workers and the small businesses. They aren't even blips on his map. He only cares about the White House and the moneyed people and corporations who will help him to get there and to keep him there, and he will do whatever he thinks it will take, including jamming a disastrously underqualified person of questionable methods of governance into the ticket, to get him there. Has he stopped to think of the fate of anyone, including those workers and small businesspeople, should anything happen to him after Inauguration Day?

I don't believe he has. And I think we must.

An old friend from high school sent me a link to an article from my hometown newspaper that is being reprinted across the country. I got the reprint from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and I wanted to share here, because it gladdened my soul. I spent 13 of my growing-up years in this county, among people like this, and I am thrilled to see they are just as hard-headed and clear-sighted as they were when they were demanding that I stop screwing around and start making sense:

_________________________________________
In Uniontown, Palin's maternal grit won't sway all undecideds toward GOP

Some initial signs not entirely positive for reinvigorated Republican ticket
Monday, September 08, 2008
By Faye Fiore and Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times

UNIONTOWN -- Trish Heckman, a 49-year-old restaurant cook and disappointed Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter, watched last week as the country's newest political star made her explosive debut.

Ms. Heckman followed the news when Arizona Sen. John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, paid attention to the raging debate over her qualifications, even tuned in to watch her dramatic speech at the Republican convention.

But when it came down to the issues Ms. Heckman really cares about -- sending a daughter to college on $10.50 an hour -- her desire to see a woman reach the White House took a back seat to her depleted savings account.

"I wanted Hillary to win so bad, but I saw Sarah, and it just didn't work for me," said Ms. Heckman, taking a break in the empty courtyard of J. Paul's restaurant in a downtown struggling to revive. "I have no retirement. Obama understands it's the economy. He knows how we live."

Ms. Heckman, like many others in this former coal-mining town at the western foot of the Appalachians, is the type of voter that both presidential campaigns will target in the two months leading up to Election Day. Polls show that working-class women have emerged as one of the most critical categories of swing voters at a time when Mr. McCain and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, have galvanized their party bases but still need more votes to win.

Ms. Palin, a little-known 44-year-old mother of five, burst onto the scene just days ago, presenting herself as the woman to finally shatter the glass ceiling cracked by the historic candidacy of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic New York senator.

But now, after a chaotic introductory week that sparked national debates on Mr. McCain's judgment, Ms. Palin's experience and even her teenage daughter's pregnancy, some initial signs in this town are not entirely positive for the reinvigorated Republican ticket.

Interviews with about two dozen Uniontown women after Ms. Palin's convention speech found that these voters were not swayed by the fiery, dramatic speeches or compelling personal biographies that marked both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Instead, they are thinking about the price of milk -- nearly $5 a gallon -- or the health-care coverage that many working families cannot afford.

Even if they admire Ms. Palin's attempt to juggle political ambition, an infant son with Down syndrome and a pregnant unwed daughter, these women say that maternal grit is not enough to win their votes.

Waitress Judy Artice, "Miss Judy" as she is known at Glisan's roadside diner, declared Ms. Palin "the perfect candidate" after watching her Wednesday speech. That said, Ms. Artice had decided earlier that her vote would go to the first candidate who mentioned gasoline prices.

"And I'll be danged, it was Obama," Ms. Artice, 46, said between servings of liver and onions during the lunch rush.

Both campaigns have signaled that these blue-collar communities could be where the election will be decided, a conclusion made even more likely when the nation's unemployment rate hit a five-year high for August. Mr. McCain dominates among white men, and Mr. Obama, who would be the first black president, is all but sweeping the black vote, most polls show. That leaves white women, the so-called Hillary base, as one of the most persuadable voting groups left on the table.

Republican strategists hope Ms. Palin's middle-class roots, union-member husband and love of hunting will help her connect with rural and small-town voters in battleground states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

This is, after all, a place where schools close on opening day of deer hunting season, abortion makes people uncomfortable and racial bias still beats under the radar.

Uniontown was very much in the McCain campaign's sights throughout a convention that showcased Ms. Palin's small-town roots while portraying Mr. Obama, who lives in Chicago, as a big-city elitist.

Republican delegates and activists in the convention hall delighted in Ms. Palin's snarky jabs at the senator from Illinois, such as when she poked fun at the columned backdrop for Mr. Obama's stadium acceptance speech or mocked him as intent on "turning back the waters and healing the planet."

For many Uniontown women watching closely, though, that portion of Ms. Palin's speech was all they needed to hear.

When Ms. Palin belittled Mr. Obama's history as a community organizer on Chicago's south side -- suggesting he was a do-little activist while she, as the former mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, had "actual responsibilities" -- Sandy Ryan, 59, changed the channel.

"That's enough of that. I switched over to 'Househunters,' " she said with some disgust over dessert with a group of women from the senior housing complex she manages.

One of a dwindling number of coveted undecideds, Ms. Ryan gets a first-hand view of retirees forced to choose between food and medication. She is not convinced Mr. Obama has the experience to be president, but Ms. Palin only reinforced her concern that Mr. McCain means four more years of divisiveness and gridlock.

Patty Tobal, a 63-year-old retired nurse and lifelong feminist, shut off the set and went to bed. The promise of a woman on the ticket had piqued her curiosity, but she found Ms. Palin's sarcasm offensive and her priorities out of touch.

"We don't need any more fighting in Washington," Ms. Tobal said while having her hair done at a little shop on Route 40. "Women are not for women just because they are women. We are intelligent enough to make a conscious decision."

If these women are any indication, the threat to Mr. Obama's camp is not that they will side with Mr. McCain, but that they will stay home, as Ms. Hackman, the restaurant chef and single mother of two, says many people on her block plan to do.

But those disenchanted voters could be balanced by newly inspired ones, such as Jennifer Glisan, 23, an emergency medical technician who saves lives every week but cannot afford health insurance. Mrs. Clinton's gender was enough to awaken her political interest, but Ms. Palin's failed to hold it.

"I think Palin is a fake. She will run the economy into the ground," Ms. Glisan said after catching glimpses of her speech between emergency calls. "I have to kill myself every day at work to earn enough to pay for gas to get there. I think Obama is sincere. I think we need a change."

First published on September 8, 2008 at 8:58 am

into the hands of everyone but the woman concerned part 3

nanashi_jones posted this very useful piece of information in part 2, which I am now re-posting so everyone will see it!

Here's the bill in all its glory:

45 CFR Part 88

I find having the words on hand lends extra venom to responses.

The bill itself directs "electronic comments" to go through Regulations.gov, so if anyone wants to go that extra mile, that option is open.

One way that can help is citing the specific broadening of words like "sterilization procedures" so that it is not left vague. Telling government officials to change something gives them wiggle room and leaves them asking "What something?" and a terrifying space to rewrite and claim compliance. If we can call them on a specific word or phrase, they have all the wiggle room of a steel box.

Thanks, nanashi_jones! This is a big help!

into the hands of anyone but the woman concerned, Part 2.

This AP article provides more information about the new rule, exactly what it says, how it can be stretched, and when we should worry.

I say we should really worry, right now.

If you haven't signed the NARAL petition or the we'll-ask-you-for-money-first Planned Parenthood petition, I ask that you consider doing so. We have to move fast--September 30th isn't that far away.

kallaneboi has also thoughtfully provided us with a link to MoveOn's petition.

G. Gordon Liddy, a right wing talk radio host, had this to say:

LIDDY: Yeah, I don't suppose you've, by any chance, have seen the cover of the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine, which is, you know, a huge thing. It's got Obama in his Muslim dress with a turban, and he's there with his wife. His wife has a "mad at the world" afro, circa 1968, she -- she's got bandoliers and an assault weapon, and there in their fireplace is burning the American flag. The New Yorker finally got it right.

Oh, yeah. It's harmless.

Why don't we ask the Danes about harmless cartoons, shall we? I wonder if their economy has recovered yet, and if it's still safe for Danes to travel and work in the Middle East?

Edited to add:

Thanks to tekanji, I got to read this wonderfully stated look at the New Yorker mess by Latoya Peterson in herRacialicious blog that hits exactly on all the things I was fumbling to think about this. I think she puts her finger right on the many fails in what the New Yorker editorial staff claims it was trying to do.

Original post:
BuzzFlash.net just posted this about that damned New Yorker cover. I'll use this post to add any other links I think are interesting.

Such as:

this one: McCain doesn't like it, either.

and this one from globeandmail.com, an extension of the AP story with more details and responses, including the title of the piece, "The Politics of Fear." So now I have to ask, "Whose fear, do you suppose?"

Jeff Leiber of Daily Kos had this to say. WARNING: this is actual satire. Don't try this at home. (Unless you have a knack for it.)

kitmf has just given us links to the writing behind the cover: the New Yorker's big story on Obama, and
the New Yorker's editorial on the Obama campaign. More chances for us to read and decide for ourselves what in hell they were thinking (which begs the question, were they actually thinking?)

I was already angry over the June 23rd issue ("Competitions among gender grievances do not ennoble, and both Clinton and Obama strove to avoid one"--but we're going to go right ahead and do a competition, saying "there is no gender equivalent to the nightmare of disenfranchisement, lynching, apartheid, and peonage that followed Reconstruction." Why no, canker-blossom, there are only mass graves of women in Juarez, 14 dead engineering students in Canada, and endless women murdered by husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers, step-fathers, names on police blotters and in the logs of mental institutions who don't count to this writer and don't count to anyone but those who cared about them and now I'm going to stop). But this--this--the cover of the current issue of what used to be an intelligent magazine:




I have a book to finish. I can't rant endlessly, though I would really like to. But sometime today I'm going to let the New Yorker know what I think, including the fact that I''m never going to buy another copy.

They're going to claim it's satire, you know. But for it to be satire, there has to be an element in there to show this is what someone else thinks, not the magazine--and there isn't. This is playing to the pit at the very worst. It is shameful, racist, and it perpetrates a vile lie.

These people used to be classy. Since when did they turn to peddling lowdown lies?

Folks, I didn't do the Obama post to start a war between Clintonites and Obamites. If Clinton had finished last night as the clear winner, I still would have made the post I did, because either way I would have been happy at this groundbreaking election year after so many years of the same-old, same-old.

I do not want this lj to become a presidential politics battleground. Too many other blogs and ljs are doing just that, and I don't want it here.

Please--if we differ, let's agree to disagree, and discuss something else. If you really need to argue who's better, please take it elsewhere. I get enough of the yelling in my RL.

With thanks,
Tammy

It ain't over--I think Hillary is going to take the fight all the way to the convention, and I can see why she would (what surprises me is that people wonder why she hasn't quit by now)--but just the fact that we have come this far has knocked me flat on my ass, and I've been an Obama supporter for the past year.

This article from MSNBC.com explains why. It explains the world I grew up in and the reasons I thought this country wouldn't support a black presidential candidate (or a female one, for that matter) all the way to the convention floor. I said as much two years ago, and I was dead wrong.

Who knew! Who knew people were ready to vote for someone based on merit, not color?

Next stop, next milestone: the Democratic convention.

I don't know how many here know this, but kitmf is active in party politics in Virginia on the local and state level, as is her spouse-creature. Some of you may have noticed in past threads that Kit knows quite a bit about the behind-the-scenes workings of peculiarities like superdelegates and who gets seated at conventions.

I suggested that she blog about some of this, and she has. Political Process or How to Become a Local Power is her post on how to get involved in party politics and maybe run for President in the state of Virginia, where she is a party member.

Politics: If You Hold an Election and No One Comes is about what happens when you really, really care about the delegates you send to the district and state conventions but you just can't be bothered to show up for the vote.

I don't know about you, but I'm liking it. Kit's not trying to make you vote for her candidate--she's just making our murky politics a bit clearer. She's bright, she's funny, and she includes the important stuff, like who brings refreshments.

Politics is concocted by real people who take over this woman's living room. Take a look!

I don't support Hillary Clinton for political reasons: her past support for the war in Iraq (face it, folks, she and a bunch of other folks are against it now that it's unpopular), and her continuing support of the original, renewed, and amendments to the Patriot Act. I also feel she continually backs down from previous positions in an effort to court the center and right wing votes. I don't feel I can rely on her to stand firm on, well, anything. But at least I feel my objections to Clinton are based on good reasons.

MSNBC online is running this article on feminist support of Clinton. Reading of those who support her, I discovered some people are voicing THESE "reasons":

But some feminists object to Clinton's decision to stay with her unfaithful husband, former President Bill Clinton,

WHAT IN BLUE BLOODY BLAZES????

What on earth did we do all that yelling and marching for if a woman can't decide for herself whether or not to stay with her husband? How can anyone think they have a right to judge a woman's decision on her marriage? We may not like it; we may discuss it among ourselves (I wish by all that's holy we wouldn't discuss it in the media, but that is our times); we may sit the woman down and talk with her about it (though this never works--personal experience here), but it's not out call to make. This decision is even harder for political women, who know darned well the bulk of the American public doesn't take well to single women in political life, and is downright jaundiced about divorced women. Yes, it's a double standard. It's also reality, and political people must be realists. Whether Hillary was being a realist, whether she still loves Bill, or both, it's HER choice, and feminists shouldn't be gauging her feminist commitment by it. We leave this sort of thing to right wing hate mongering political opinionaters with nothing better to do than spread their own shit on the public brain.

and others argue she fails as a role model by riding his coattails.

WIBBB???? (see above)

John Adams/John Quincy Adams. T. R. Roosevelt/Franklin Roosevelt. John Fitzgerald Kennedy/Robert Kennedy/Edward Kennedy. George H.W. Bush/George W. Bush. The Lodges, the Rockefellers, God knows how many other political families in lesser offices.

In other words, ladies, if she were a man, would this have even come up? Shame on you! SHAME!

How many women have stepped into their deceased husband's offices as governor, senator, representative, and gone on to elected office in those positions? How many women have used their husband's presidencies to accomplish great works? (Eleanor, I love you!) Does anyone question their feminism? Or do they just appreciate the hard work they do?

For shame!

And then there's this last tasty little tidbit:
"Women who do nothing to enact feminist policies will be elected and backlash will flourish," she wrote. "I can hear the refrain now: 'They've finally gotten a woman in the White House, so why are feminists still whining about equal pay?"

So? How is this different from any other time we've made a visible advance? How is this different from any other time women who aren't feminists become public figures railing against feminism? Does this mean we should just drop to the floor and roll over because of what might happen? Or should we just prepare our counter-arguments to deal with this dubious line of debate when it happens, and find more good feminist candidates who can work with men to put into office? Stop whining, for crying out loud! Instead of worrying about what may happen, go out and work on the issues that are happening, and stop giving smug critics ammunition with which to say, "They're scared of their own shadows! This is an easy win!"

I swear, we're our own worst enemies, sometimes.

I was reading through the blog entries on When Fangirls Attack just now and clicked on a link to a blog called Scrutiny Hooligans (http://scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com/2006/12/testing-state-of-your-knowledge.html). Its banner includes this quote from the Revolutionary War rabble rouser Sam Adams. It's not one I've ever read before; its vitriol burns as if it were brewed fresh in Faluja this morning, and I'm still riding the rush from reading it, so I have to share. I don't often talk about the way I feel about how things have been in this country in the last six years, because I upset people. Suffice it to say Keith Olbermann is a god to me; I don't think the Democrats have the intestinal fortitude to come in out of the rain; I think our executive branch is populated by war criminals who should be tried in the world courts; I would like our soldiers to come home; and well, Sam Adams sums up what I think of the majority of my fellow Americans:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. -- Samuel Adams