Obama, Marijuana, Braces, and the Issues Voter

I was catching up on some of my favorite blogs today and ran across a friend's entry that really bothered me for a lot of reasons. First of all, it demonstrates one of the divides many of the comfortable middle class don't realize is a divide, and second of all, it furthers the message that only appearance is a valid measure of worth. Here's the shortened version of the story:

About three years one of my friends wanted to move from a neighborhood that wasn't a good place to raise her daughter. It was a serious downgrade from a house to a tiny apartment but it was a safe middle-income neighborhood with a good school and she felt it was worth the sacrifice.

There hasn't been any money for extras. My friend is too proud to ever accept any kind of public assistance. She shops at garage sales and thrift stores for school clothes each year. Her daughter always had a lunch to bring, even when dinner was Top Ramen and a box of frozen vegetables. They've managed to squeeze by in three years with their power being turned off twice, and their phone once. They've survived. And they feel safe in their home.

But something happened the other day that sent my friend into a depression that she's having trouble shaking. As I said, they moved into a middle-income neighborhood, the kind of place where the standard of living is just a bit above what my friend raising her daughter alone can afford. It was fine until her daughter started middle school this year and became quiet and even sullen at times. At first my friend thought it was just the normal adjustment period of a new school, but then she began to understand it was more than that.

Her daughter who never asked for anything, who never complained about having to wear used clothing and live in a tiny apartment, came home one day and asked if she could have braces. Her daughter's teeth are not horrible by any means. She has the engaging grin of a young, pretty girl. But her teeth aren't perfect and now it's an issue all of a sudden.

It shouldn't matter but suddenly it's a big deal because all her classmates have braces. And being kids, they make fun of her lack of them. They tell her she will always have ugly crooked teeth if she doesn't get braces NOW! They make this lovely young girl feel ugly because her mother can't afford to have her teeth straightened until they resemble perfect little white picket fences.

It was heartbreaking for my friend to have to tell her daughter she can't afford to buy her braces. It was heartbreaking to watch the previously confident girl with perfect grades suddenly lose all confidence in herself. And it was especially heartbreaking for both of them to realize that no matter how smart a girl is, no matter how much she sacrifices along with her mother so they can both have a better life, she has just received her first lesson that she will go through life judged on her appearance.

There is nothing that can be done to fix this. My friend does not have the money and her daughter's classmates will never understand how something they take for granted--their perfect teeth, will one day be a symbol of class division to those who grew up in homes where braces were a luxury their families could not afford.

It is my sincere hope that by the time my friend's daughter goes to college,  she will have learned her advantage in life is what lives inside her, not what others see and judge on the outside. But I also know she will never forget how she was judged by her classmates who simply didn't understand there were some things that not everyone could afford, and in many ways their very appearance was a privilege others didn't get a chance to have. This lack of understanding is just another brick in the wall that continues to divide the people in this country from each other.

My other issue today came after a discussion with a man who has several post-graduate degrees. He was a radical in college, always up on the latest world events, always engaged and aware of the issues. He went on to the professional career he always dreamed about. His entire adult life has been a comfortable one where he buys a new car each year, upgrades his home about every five years, travels, and has a secure retirement in his future.

But he hasn't read a book in years. He only reads the local Republican rag in his very Republican neighborhood and each year begins to sound more and more ridiculously conservative, spouting talking points that he would have laughed at just a few short years ago. He only uses the internet to check sports scores. He doesn't care enough about the rest of the world to even bother checking to see if it's still there.

The only thing he watches on television is sports. He hasn't even seen a movie in a couple years. He has no interest in anything but coming home from work, plopping himself in front of his TV and watching all the sporting events that dutifully recorded themselves while he was at work. And he smokes marijuana. Lots of marijuana. In his 50 some years of life, I don't think he's ever had a problem finding marijuana. After all, he's a respectable, white middle-class American. No cop has ever stopped him and harassed him for being high or getting high or trying to get high. He buys it from other white, middle class smokers like himself. There's no slumming needed to get his weed.

And yet, he refuses to vote for Obama because he's done nothing to legalize marijuana. Yup, that's his entire reason for not voting, even though nothing has yet to interfere in his desire to get high. He would rather stay home and risk a president getting elected whose religion won't even let him drink coffee, much less ignore people who want to smoke weed or drink,  and he thinks there is no difference between the candidates. This is your one issue voter from the other side, folks. This is your no information voter. This is who will never go to the polls because he won't even educate himself on this one policy that he claims matters so much to him.

And no, I don't believe it's the weed that made him this way. I believe it was working to accumulate all the toys he feels he needs to have on hand to impress people who don't give a crap about him. I believe it's because he quit reading books. I believe it's because he watches nothing but sports. I believe it's because at heart he is a selfish, callous shit with hardly any friends. The weed is just something he uses to mute the tedious boredom his life long ago became. And it's all Obama's fault that weed isn't legal. He says this all the time as he's toking on the other end of the phone, as he talks about the great bud he scored, as he defines his life according to the sporting events he watched and how high he was.

The thing is there wasn't that much difference between him and my friend's daughter. They both had the same beginnings. They were both brilliant with a great future ahead of them. The only thing that got in the way were things like braces, and summer camp, and vacations, and cars. It divided him from them just as my friend's daughter is being  divided from her life and theirs because of her imperfect teeth.

Neither of those are things I can do anything about. Both fall under the this is the way life is category. I can't say my daughter's friend will end up like this man just because of her teeth, but if there's one thing that can stifle her as a human being, it's that pain of realizing that no matter how smart she is, how educated she becomes, until she deals with that horrible pain of childhood, that pain of being excluded because of something beyond her control, her personal growth becomes stunted forever.

 

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President Obama's Speech

After eight year's of cringing every time the poster child for faith-based education--as in throw the little bastard to the hyenas and see what comes out the other end--blathered his idiocy,  President Obama's press conference was an awesome reminder that things are different these days. Listening to him fend off the purveyors of dying dinosaur talking points disguised as journalism was a delight I've never really witnessed with such a personal interest. It was like watching the smart sheriff ride into town and start kicking stupid people's ass.

He took the "are you still beating your dog" type questions and turned them into quick lessons dumbed down so anyone who cared to listen would understand, all the while twisting the knife of his intellect into the spineless backs of his obstructionist colleagues. He did this with the stimulus package where he carefully explained what it would do and not do, and then he mocked those who complained that it was a spending bill when the very word "stimulus" meant spend.

He did this with careful explanations of how there was a difference between earmarks and funding for essential programs, at the same time as he portrayed the obstructionists as failing to understand how building roads and green buildings was putting people to work--an idea so simple and clear only an ideological moron could fail to grasp it.

He did this with everything, with every question. He answered them honestly. He poked at himself for not playing the game of Washington ego well enough when dealing with petulant Republican demands. He showed how the process of being President works as if he were a reality show we were tuned in to watch.

And he made it real by describing the moment he realized he was President when he had to sign a family death notification for a war casualty, and how each signature was a reminder of his responsibilities, the consquences of decisions he made and will make.

It was an awesome look at a man speaking to us as human beings, as equal citizens, as co-owners of an amazing country in need of a lot of work and TLC. Listening to our President made me feel that maybe we can fix things, maybe things will get better, maybe things aren't so totally and completely bad after all. Maybe we really are one people, one vision, one dream, one truth, one heart. Maybe we can finally make the world we've always wanted in our hearts.

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President Obama's Speech

An Open Letter To President Obama

Dear Mr. President:

I followed the story of your grandmother with heartfelt interest because mine was also a huge influence on me. She was the one constant in a dysfunctional family with a father who was absent most of the time and a mother who worked all of the time. As the oldest child it often fell to me to take care of my younger brother and sister and the household too, especially since my grandmother was already a senior citizen when she came to live with us.

My grandmother immigrated to America a couple years after we did. It took that long to save the money to sponsor her, and during that time she struggled to survive until we could send for her. As I was growing up, she was my support, my encouragement, my source of hope. And she had endless stories of what it was like to live through two world wars, how she managed to stay on the safe side of political struggles that redefined the boundaries of her home every few years, and all the ways she escaped the horrors of the Nazis and the Fascists.

But there was one story I did not learn until after her death, and it was about one of her sisters who remained behind. In retrospect, she probably suspected her sister was a Lesbian, but in the period of time that extended from the turn of the century through the 1960's, it was not a topic one discussed lightly in any of her homes: the former Yugoslavia, Italy, or the United States. But it is a story that haunts me because it is one that is far too common even today.

My grandmother's sister lived with her partner for most of her adult life. I can only imagine what it was like to live openly with her "roommate" all those years. I'm sure they had friends. I'm sure her partner had family. But we never knew any of them. We never knew if she was safe, if she was fed, if she was afraid. She disappeared into a world where secrets are kept for life. She disappeared into a world where it was impossible to immigrate as her sister had done, as just about everyone who was related to her had done. She was left alone with only the woman she loved, a woman we could never bring here because she was not related to us by blood. In the eyes of the law, she was not family, no matter how many years she lived with my grandmother's sister as her life partner. The law would let us bring her but not the woman she loved. The law would make her abandon her partner. She chose the path of her heart and stayed behind.

I think of what my life could have been like with more than one granny, more than one adult who could nurture me, who could help me grow, or who could just help me in the many small ways that left me exhausted when I should have been playing with all the other kids. And I think of how lonely my grandmother's sister was when her partner died, how alone she must have felt. I can't even think of this without breaking into tears. I can't even begin to comprehend the unfairness of it in any way that would sense.

Mr. President, I tell you this story because this story is still being played out all over the world. I have American friends who are gay, who fell in love with citizens of other countries. In so many cases these other countries have afforded them citizenship rights and recognized the legality of their marriages. I have friends who have lived in other countries with their partners for many years and now they want to come home to the America that has new promise, new hope because of your Presidency.

But in order to do so they still have to make the choice my grandmother's sister had to make. I want to believe we are a better people than that time. I want to believe that we no longer split up families, people who love each other because of bad laws. But all the evidence says we still do and will continue to do so.

That's why I'm asking for your help in passing the UNITING AMERICAN FAMILIES ACT. It's time to bring home your citizens who want to help make America realize it's true potential as a beacon of hope and promise to the rest of the world. They want to be part of what we're creating together. But please, Mr. President, don't make them choose between love of country and love of their partners. Please help pass this vital piece of legislation for all Americans, no matter what their sexual orientation.

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An Open Letter To President Obama

President Obama

This lifelong night person is tired from getting up so early to watch the Inauguration, drained from all the tears of joy, relief, and sense of awe, and still I can't get enough. I've been dancing around the internet tubes to try and take in as much as I can and there were several times that I lost it and just starting sobbing. One of the images was of people in Kenya celebrating:




(AP Photo/Sayyid Azim)


and the other was this row of TV's in a store window in Palestine.


(Associated Press)


To me, these two images are the essence of what this election is all about and the most heart-wrenching.

But then there are these:


(AP Photo//Sayyid Azim)

Kenyans say goodbye to Bush by throwing their shoes at the TV.


(Associated Press)

I think Bush should have this one on his front lawn.



But this one from Cake Wrecks with the crotch-grabbing, cigarette smoking (or flipping someone off?)
Obama just says it all, whatever the all is they meant to say.

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President Obama

The Hope Thing

I was raised on hope. It formed the foundation of a childhood  built on a precarious ledge that could break off at any time. Most of the time I'd wake up in the morning relieved we were still in the same house, apartment, or motel room. Hope was defined as a small wish, an unvoiced plea that we could stay this time,  that we didn't have to sneak out in the middle of the night because the money was gone again, gambled away by my father when he managed to hold a job for more than a couple months, or just gone because there was never enough to last more than a couple days, no matter how hard anyone worked.

Hope was the sucking in of my breath and thinking if I was completely quiet, if I never cried, if I was just invisible enough, my father wouldn't notice me and I could escape his wild rages, the beatings that he inflicted on everyone unfortunate enough to be in the same room with him. Hope was sometimes wishing he'd get hit by a truck so all our bruises could finally heal and I wouldn't have to wear long-sleeved shirts to school in a 110 degree weather anymore.

Then there was the kind of hope that wished I didn't live with a grandmother who spoke no English, a mother whose accent was so thick she might as well have been speaking Martian. Or the even more unreasonble hope that I would no longer be short and dark but tall and blond and thin. Or those days when I was so exhausted I'd wish I didn't have to be the responsible adult so often, and that someone would take turns  being the grownup so I could finally get enough sleep.

When I left home at 17, it was a home I'd only lived in for a couple months. I'd never gone to the same school for an entire year in my whole life. I had penpals I was closer to than the temporary friends I made before we had to move on again. But every time we moved, every time we arrived in a new town, every time I was the new kid in a room full of strange faces, I hoped that it would be different, that the pattern of my life would change, that the paradigm would shift, that I'd wake up safe, secure, and living in a stable, loving and constant never-changing life.

And for a few days, for a few weeks, and in some extremely rare occasions that I remember well because they were so rare, I realized my hope through the sheer act of hoping. I lived it and knew it, however brief it was. Maybe it was because I knew it was only temporary,  and so I had to jump in and indulge myself completely before it went out like a candle flame burning in the momentary lull of a hurricane.

My life is made up of those patchwork moments, those times when I let myself believe and dream and hope that no matter how bad things were, they would always get better--even if only for a few days or hours at a time. I learned to let that be enough, to settle for the moments because they were better than no moments at all.

I write this to explain what is happening to me now with the upcoming inauguration. I find myself afraid to hope, afraid to believe until Obama takes that oath and officially becomes President, that the Bush years are finally over. This is how deeply that bastard has stolen hope from us, from me, from someone who had it dashed over and over in my life and yet still believed enough to move forward until Bush came along and did what a lifetime of shit couldn't do: he took my hope.

And on Tuesday I'd like that evil, shit-faced, smug little son-of-a-mean-ass-bitch to know that I'm taking it back. I'm taking it back along with the belief that America will never be anything but a racist, ignorant country. I'm taking back my hope that once again we will be a nation of adults and those of us who are always stuck being the responsible adults can finally take a break. I'm taking back the hope that we will become the kind of people who draw strength from what we do for others instead of from what our armies do to others. I'm taking back the hope that we will stop letting the greedy powermongers divide us so they can more easily pick our pockets, empty our bank accounts into their own, and then blame us for what they did to us. I'm taking back my hope that together as one people, one planet we can build a world that builds dreams instead of destroys them.

And no, it is not President Obama who can do this. It is me and you. It is us. It is being the change we wish to see in the world, because more than anything it was the small bits and pieces of hope  Bush didn't kill that elected Obama President and if we combine them again, who knows what we will do with that much power next. I can hardly wait!

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The Hope Thing

Paradigm Shift

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Paradigm Shift

Making History

Making History

A Lesson in Racism

From today's mailbox:

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said 'I do' to?
What if Obama were the candidate who cheated on his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama were a member of the Keating-5*?

* The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis
Savings and Loan Scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

PS: What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter? What would people be saying?

You are The Boss... which team would you hire?

With America facing historic debt, 2 wars, stumbling health care, aweakened dollar, all-time high prison population, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc.

Educational Background:

Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science. Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

VS:

McCain: United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Now, which team are you going to hire?

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A Lesson in Racism

I Became Part Of History Today

I voted today. I opened my absentee ballot, filled it out, signed my name, put a stamp on it and then I cried. The emotion of casting such a history making vote opened up something in me, a feeling that I'd shut down in the 60's with the assassination of JFK when I was twelve, and followed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy. Politics from that point on became an act of voting against someone more than it was an act of voting for someone.

My vote for Obama was based on many things, the primary one being my belief that the President is more a symbol than an action. He or she, as we came close to being able to say, represents the face America presents to the world. Congress is what creates the America we live in, and the President is the person who carries the will of the people to the world.

In the last eight years we've had as a symbol a man whose intellectual capacity was limited to comic book heroics and grade B movie acting. His face is what the rest of the world saw when they saw us, no matter how horrible that seems. And it was reinforced by a Congress so bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists they had no room left to legislate for the American people. And the American people under eight years of a brutal thug and his henchmen, had no will to fight back and demand equal representation.

As I was growing up I read about countries whose people were beaten down by the horrible circumstances of their existence and by the complete intrusion of the government into their miserable lives. I read about people in countries who were afraid of the police, who cynically understood everything on the television, radio and in the newspapers was carefully orchestrated propaganda by a government who didn't care if you believed it or not. It was the party line and there was no coloring outside of it.

Under the Bush regime I watched the number of poor increase as the number of wealthy grew even wealthier. I watched the middle class become the servant class. I watched the poor become the homeless. I watched religious fanaticism and dogmatism take the place of liberty and intellectual discourse. I watched a love of ignorance, a joy in stupidity, a disdain of intelligence take over the country like a well-designed plague. And I watched a government terrorize and spy on its own people. I watched people disappear into prison camps never to be heard from again. I watched America go from a country admired the world over to one hated for its warmongering stupidity. I saw America become a country that  the rest of the world saw as one of ignorant, warmongering savages oppressed and controlled by their own government.

That is why Obama is such an important symbol. He makes America once again the leader of new ideas, new dreams, new visions. He makes America once again be the country where we are one people presenting a uniquely American face to the world. Once more people can point to this country and say in America anyone can grow up to be President, no matter the color of his skin. Once more people can point to this country and say this is what freedom is all about, this is what Democracy means. Once more people can point to America and say when a government is bad and does not honor its people, they vote them out and replace them with one that will honor the traditions this country was based on, the visions that created it, the courageous who dared to act upon their dreams.

Barack Obama is a symbol, true. But he is also a symbol of something far more important. He represents a shift back to America as a land of human beings instead of mean and fearful little creatures to be manipulated for political gain. Those who are casting their ballots for him are also saying it's time for America to return to its roots, to transform the cruel existence forced on it by Corporate rule and once again become a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The Republican lie that was spread through bought and paid for stooges and blackmailed weak-willed patsies was that Liberal was a bad word, that Progressive was a bad word, that Democrat was a bad word. The lie was spread at the same time the myth of Republicanism was portrayed as responsible, grown-up and sensible as compared to the upstarts that dared to have a say in how their lives were run, who dared to care about the poor, the elderly, and who valued education and conversation that was meant to share knowledge instead of defame it.

Hate became the drug mainlined into the bottom layer of society so it could spread up and infect everyone. But to control someone with hate, you have to give them someone to hate. So the puppetmasters created bad Liberals, Arabs, dark-skinned scary people. And because the groups were so completely separated by ideology, skin color, religious beliefs, one group was blissfully unaware of the other group steadily losing all their rights, all their freedoms, all their democratic right to exist side by side with the other groups.

It is an old tactic used by every dictator throughout time, by every totalitarian regime and banana republic that cares nothing about human beings but everything about money and power. And this time it was inflicted on America and Americans opened the doors to their homes and welcomed it in willingly.

But the greedy went too far this time. They stole too much. They let too many crazies out of the box. They became drunk on power and believed their own mythology. They forgot, if they ever bothered to learn, that they were falling into the same trap that brought down every corrupt government throughout time who believed the same thing.

And that's why I cried today, because with so many people voting for Obama, it isn't really about race. It isn't really about the color of his skin. It is about taking back our country and that's why I cried. People woke up and are continuing to wake up and that's what it takes to sweep the last of the old guard out the miserable doors they built for the rest of us.

It's time to present a new face to the world, one of a people united in a common dream that decency, respect, intellectual discourse, and taking care of each other matters because we are all children of the same mother. Only in this way do we once again become the golden land that the rest of the world admired and strived to become.

But please don't get complacent. You MUST show up at the polls because once and for all we must stop these corrupt corporate sleaze bags from defiling our elections as if we were some forsaken banana republic. Only huge numbers will keep them from stealing it. Only huge numbers of people casting the most history making vote in history will take our country back. VOTE! It's far too important to leave it up to the other guy. This time we are all the other guy.

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I Became Part Of History Today

Get Off Your Ass And Vote

I could only stand to watch a few minutes of the debate because there's something about McCain that sums up what bothers me about the last few years. He has that stench of entitlement to him, that arrogance that comes from living a life where no matter what happened in the past, the present becomes this insulated cushion against the outside world. And I'm the outside world he wants to be isolated from.

And please stop with that war hero stuff. No true hero wants it used as a political or other means of manipulation. I was raised by a war hero. He, like McCain, was forever destroyed as a human being by his war experiences. He nearly killed me several times as I was growing up because his war experiences only taught him how to go off and not how to stop. He was never able to ever fit into the normal world again. He was too messed up, too destroyed by what he had to do to stay alive. He was about as fucked up a human being as there is in this world, but the one positive thing I can say about him is never in his life would he allow his war experiences, his medals, his wounds to be used in the political arena. He would have rightly felt that sullied what was left of his honor. That's something that really creeps me out about McCain, how he allows what little honor he has left to be used up and frittered away as if it was meaningless.

And another point. I knew the man who raised me was messed up. He knew he was messed up. Everyone he met knew he was messed up. No one in their right mind would ever want him making a decision for them. There wasn't enough left in him that wouldn't go off on its own and start some shit somewhere. He had this look in his eyes, that look people get when they've had all the proof they can stomach that human beings sometimes really suck at being human beings. I see that look in McCain's eyes, that disgust, that barely disguised hatred of human beings.

And the man who raised me had another trait I saw tonight, he couldn't look anyone in the eyes either. He looked at them sideways like McCain did to Obama. Never once did McCain look Obama in the eyes. It was that evasive I hate humanity glance that revealed how little compassion the man truly has for anyone. The only consolation is that he probably hates himself equally. If not, then he really should. At least the man who raised me made no secret that he hated people. He felt he had earned that right. And there was no one he respected enough to look in the eyes. He was an equal opportunity hater. "I hate everyone equally," he was fond of saying.

So when I saw McCain I saw  a man who was unfit for most of the things in life that require a level head, an ability to reason outside of emotion, and compassion for fellow human beings. These are qualities that make a leader and McCain didn't show anything that I perceived as leadership. He came off as mean, evasive, sloganistic, and part of a political machine that cares about nothing except the win.

For a few minutes I felt sorry for him and then I realized how frightening it was to feel that way about him because he truly does represent his party. It's not inconceivable to me that he would vote to bail out rich cronies who gambled and lost and then justify it as saving the country, and yet at the same time refuse to extend unemployment benefits and the means to save their homes for the very victims of those whose hands he would fill with unaccountable tax dollars from me and you. He's cruel that way just as his party is cruel that way. It's all a money game to them and people are shit.

But what I also saw in his eyes was a stark ruthless win at any cost mentality that is so much a part of the Rovian politics he embraces. He and his party are dangerous because they care nothing about people, about law, about the country, about the constitution. It's all about them, about winning, about rewarding each other with keys to the piggy banks filled with our hard earned dollars. I don't doubt they will do everything in their power to disrupt the voting process, to disenfranchise voters in districts that won't go as Republican as they demand. That's why this year it is more important than ever to register to vote NOW and then get out and vote. There's too much at stake to let the bad guys win again. It's time for good to triumph over evil or the world gets out of balance forever.

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Get Off Your Ass And Vote

Voting with my brain not my vagina!

Yeah, sure the Republicans have seen the light of shrinking poll numbers and are grabbing onto any rope they can use to hang themselves with some more. But you have to give it to them. They've set aside their fascination with big plastic boobies and now are focusing on our vajayjays for votes. Here's my response to the perennial dickheads that make up the Republican Dinosaur Party:

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Technorati Tags: anti-Palin, anti-McCain, vagina vote, election 2008, vice president, presidential campaign

Voting with my brain not my vagina!

The Sudden Sexism Conversion

If it wasn't so ludicrous and hypocritical I'd be laughing my ass off at the Republicans' sudden awakening to the idea of women as something more than baby-making machines for Jesus. Instead I remember back to just a few weeks ago when they were still caught up in the throes of evil feminazi terrorists who wanted to lesbianize their virgin daughters. Now remind me folks, who was it who portrayed Hillary as some frigid ball busting devil-tongued beast just because she dared to be something more than Bill's long-suffering cookie baking sidekick? Who made horrible comments about Chelsea's appearance numerous times over the year? Who accused Hillary of pimping her daughter for politics with the same breath they gushed over Palin's pimping her entire family, including the infamous baby daddy at the Republican convention? And who in this newly awakened and suddenly reformed Republican party thought it was okay to refer to Michele Obama as Obama's baby mama? So excuse me you hypocritical assholes if I don't buy your sudden conversion to the side of truth and justice and equal rights for women. You're no more suddenly un-sexist just because you're running someone with a vagina for VP then I would be an un-atheist just by walking inside one of your hate-filled churches. So quit the fuck pandering to me because I ain't buying your crap.

ceramic ornament available at my new store Strong Women.

Technorati Tags: anti-Palin, anti-republican, anti-gop, sexism, feminism

The Sudden Sexism Conversion

Flies On The Wall #50

Technorati Tags: anti-Palin, Sarah Palin, sexism, obama's baby mama, republican hypocrisy, anti-gop, anti-republican, election 2008, ursinelogic, flies on the wall

Flies On The Wall #50

Shame On John McCain

In the past I didn't agree with McCain but I perceived him as an honorable man who didn't stoop to the sort of gutter politics made famous by the Bush-Cheney-Rove win at any cost slime. But after seeing him accusing Obama of things so far beyond the truth, such as claiming he would inflict sex education on babies, spreading lies that he's some kind of radical Muslim after all the crap spread trying to tie him into the Christian pastor of his Christian church, and a whole long list of sleazier accusations that have nothing to do with issues facing this country, my respect for him has disappeared. He has sold his honor for political gain. Shame on him. Shame on those who allowed this to happen. And bigger shame on those who vote for him because it will make your honor a weak and false thing just like his has become.

Technorati Tags: anti-Mcain, dishonor, swiftboat lies, election 2008, campaign lies, sleaze, anti-gop, anti-republican

Shame On John McCain

Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

In 1968 I was seventeen years old in Las Vegas. My best friend, my strange and romantic and poetic buddy who didn't have a mean gene in his entire body, died in Vietnam. As a quiet and horribly shy kid whose family spoke with funny accents, he was my only friend those first few years in the desert. His family was neither Mormon nor Catholic. That made him an outcast just like me in a community that demanded you be one or the other for acceptance. Or you could be rich. Money erased all social taboos, but we were both from dirt poor families.

We ate our sack lunches together every day on the far corner of the playground, away from everyone else. We couldn't afford school lunches and often we could only afford one lunch between us. We shared the meager contents of our bags with each other. We bonded over stale bread and supper leftovers. Without him, without his acceptance, I don't know if I would have survived those early years. He gave me life and war took him from me.

It devastated me even though I was a child of war. I knew that's what war did. It took away those you loved. I was raised by people who survived horrors most Americans will never be able to wrap their minds around. No matter how whole their bodies were, their minds, their ability to feel, their ability to love, their ability to live a normal life was taken from them by war.

But before he died, we shared politics and peace. We and a small handful of social misfits like ourselves, formed a club in school that worked for civil rights, for equality, for world peace. The other students saw us as odd and quirky and mostly avoided us.

And then the unthinkable happened. Dr. King was assassinated. In the midst of our grief a small change started to occur. During the assembly where the entire school came together to mourn, students who previously avoided us now welcomed us and started to come to our meetings. Something woke in them. Something became important that had previously lain dormant inside them.

In May of 1968 we signed up to work on Robert Kennedy's campaign. We watched him that June evening with the pride, the hope, the power of our dream starting to take shape. And then as quickly as the moment came, it went with his assassination.

Life became this awful series of shocks to our hearts and spirits. It didn't seem that things could possibly get worst, but they did. Almost a week later David was drafted, and by September he was dead.

I was young and I was angry. That is why I didn't just bury myself away and run away from the wounds of the past few months. I was raised by survivors and I wasn't going to let war defeat me either.

I don't remember how I went to my first anti-war demonstration. I suspect it had to do with David because part of that first day was camping out with a group of students on the steps of the federal building in Las Vegas. We read the names of those killed in Vietnam up to that point. It was already a long list and it took us all night to read the names with people coming up and offering to read for a while. I remember a nun came and they still dressed in black robes. She read for half hour and then left without saying anything to anyone. About 3 am, a police car pulled up and we thought we were going to be arrested, but instead he got out of his car and offered to read a few names. He had lost his son in Vietnam six months before. It was that kind of night.

It was also the kind of night when cab drivers spit at us, when people with engraged, red faces and bulging veins screamed insults at us, called us Communists, traitors, appeasers. I found my voice that night when I learned I had to read loud enough to be heard over the insults.

Those years shaped and defined me as a pacifist. I have spent my entire life since then writing about peace, making art about peace, being part of organizations and groups that worked for peace and the victims of war. In all those years I never lost hope, never gave up my dream that one day the world would know peace and reject war.

But the last eight years knocked something down in me. I fought but it was from despair instead of hope. I often felt as if an overwhelming evil had taken over America and was spreading outward. I began to understand how tyranny grew, how it fed on the dispirited souls of people too beaten down to object anymore. I understood how the Nazis happened, how the Fascists happened, how petty dictators hung on to their ill-gotten dictatorships.

That dull sense of merely existing instead of fighting back is finally starting to melt. No matter what people think of Obama, the important thing to understand is that he is a symbol of a change that is already taking place. We created him, our mass consciousness, our despair, our frustration with a world growing more cruel and more mean and more intolerant, created him from our own dreams. He is us and so is Hillary and so is Biden and so is everyone who was in that stadium tonight and who watched on television screens all around the world.

I don't know what will come of it all but I do know that for the first time in eight years that feeling of oppression is starting to lift. And because of my experience with war, with death, with survival, I know that's all it takes sometime, for someone to lift the edge of the fog and show us the way forward. Tonight I finally see the glint of daylight on the horizon and like millions of people around the world, I am daring once again to dream of a better world.



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Me, Politics, and the Hope Ghost

Getting Used For Your Love

We've been hearing a lot about Hillary's Pumas lately and will hear even more because they are an easy target to exploit as are most people who are inflexibly attached to anything. As someone who originally supported Hillary and was driven away by the nasty politics she engaged in, it wasn't that big a step to go from one Democrat to another. I know what's at stake here and I'll vote for any Democrat to rid the country of the parasitical Republicans who care only about lining their own pockets at the expense of people like me and you.

But I do know two women who are so inflexible over Hillary not getting the nomination that they will put the future of their daughters in the hands of those who will take away their right to choose, who will almost guarantee they'll be sent to fight in some war for the next line of Cheneys, and who will let lobbyists and arms merchants dictate foreign policy. This is just plain selfish.

But setting that aside because after all, these are only two women and I believe, because they are intelligent women, they won't allow themselves to remain trapped in an abusive relationship. They'll probably end up voting Libertarian once common sense kicks in and they realize their emotions are being played by the McCrazies, or they will suck it up and vote for the perpetual candidate of the disaffected, Ralph Nader. That's their right and I honor it.

Having said that, I am one of those people who remembers what I read a few months ago about some of those primary votes for Hillary. Here's a typical article on the "phenomenon" read more. I remember how hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh encouraged his listeners to go vote for Hillary, not because he had any love or respect for her or them, but because the Republicans wanted to manipulate the primaries and get rid of what they considered a serious contender: Barack Obama.

And the Republicans are so desperate right now that they will grab hold of anything to exploit. Of course with their compliant whores in the media, they will exploit exploit exploit the passion these voters feel and turn it into slime like they do everything they touch. Those two women I mentioned will be magnified into a huge division within the Democratic party. They will be featured over and over again as something to fear, to use, to manipulate, to convince voters that the Democrats are fractured and can't agree on anything. They will do things like pile a bunch of closet Republicans (that GOP sure does love closets, don't they) into a hummer and claim they are Pumas. Check out this and tell me that any decent Hillary supporter would show up in something as blatantly symbolic of Republican excess than the hummer. It's a sad, pathetic attempt to manipulate a handful of Hillary supporters and it comes off as sad, pathetic and desperate: read more

While I would have loved a woman President, I'll settle for Obama because I truly do feel he represents me and my interests. Unlike the GOP meme that gets passed around to discredit him, he does stand for much of what I believe in. I went and read his website early on in the debate instead of listening to the bought and paid for media try and convince me he stood for nothing. Shame on those who didn't and still ask in that quasi-rhetorical meme zombie tone of voice: but what DOES he mean by change? Go read for yourself and quit letting the state run media tell you what to think and believe. Then you'll understand why more than anything America needs not just someone promising change but someone who is a symbol of that change. After eight years of Bush and his idiocy, I want someone who can talk to the entire world and not just a bunch of mindless GOP cheerleaders. That to me is a real leader.




Click on image to visit my political shop for progressive voters.Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Pumas, Hillary Clinton, Election 2008, Democratic convention, mainstream media, anti-Republican

Getting Used For Your Love

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

So it starts. Home-grown terrorists climb out of their shit pile of hatred with plans to assassinate Obama. Here's a link to one of the stories read more.

Maybe Homeland Security, with the help of their ignoble asshat co-conspirators--hate radio and propaganda TV, should start going after loony white guys instead of focusing so much attention away from them by making us scared shitless of Arabs, Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims...anyone who isn't a white Christian lunatic. Last I recall McVeigh, the creepfest who blew up the Federal Building, was a crazy white guy.

Really, it's time to focus more on what's already within our borders--white Christian lunatics who are easily manipulated by the likes of Faux news and Rush "let's stir up some drug-induced hate monkey" Limbaugh into committing the kind of crimes they claim only those with brown skin commit. Those guys are the real threat from within, not some poor Mexicans trying to feed their families, or some Muslims who came to America for a better life and ran into the most intolerant fucks this side of Saudi Arabia.

Better yet, maybe the so-called mainstream media should focus less on car chases, celebutards, missing spouses, runaway children and actually report the news so America will quit holding the title as the dumbest, most poorly educated idiots on the planet.

Here's an idea for news that won't leave anyone with more than a third grade education gasping in astonishment of the collective ignorance that passes for "information" these days:

1. Darfur
2. World Hunger
3. Global Warming
4. Government policy shaped by Arms Merchants
5. Greedy fucks who don't care about people but who are playing some perverse game of who can accumulate the most money in a lifetime. (cough cough Cheney cough cough)

The list is endless and nowhere near the top are there any blond bimbos, sex lives of the white and boring, rehab tales of the rich and famous, and television "personalities" who can't even read the script tossed in front of their blank stares without gagging on their own irrelevance.

But I won't hold my breath that anything will change anytime soon. Hate is big business in America. It's the fuel that drives our politics, defines our consciousness, and makes us no better than schoolyard bullies with a vocabulary no bigger than fuck you well fuck you too you fucking fuck. And for that we need a media filled with cocaine blonds and insipid necktied young Fascists making us all very afraid and suspicious of each other so the bastards in charge can rob us blind. Nice legacy to leave the grandchildren, eh?

Protecting us from the white lunatics within our borders

Flies On The Wall #49

Flies On The Wall #49

Flies On The Wall #45

Flies On The Wall #45