I wrote this tonight:

Scared to Debate?

John McCain has proposed “suspending” the campaign and cancelling Friday’s scheduled debate to “concentrate on the economy.”

Problem is, he’s spent almost no time doing his job as a Senator since the campaign started.

Chris Dodd, on the Rachel Maddow Show, said he hadn’t seen “hide nor hair” of John McCain while Congress has been busy trying to agree on a bailout plan to the tune of some $700 billion dollars. McCain has spent the least amount of time in the Senate, a job he is still collecting a taxpayer-footed paycheck for, of anyone outside of Tim Johnson, who nearly died last year.

Among the things McCain did not find important enough to suspend his campaigning for: the Webb GI bill, which was the biggest chunk of “Support the Troops” legislation to make it through Congress this year. Also, the economic stimulus package, which fell one vote short of the 60 votes necessary to stop debate. READ THE REST

I also have had some fun with Tumblr. And of course, Twitter (available in sidebar).

Posted: September 25th, 2008 under Bullshit, Politics, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: none

It seems interesting to me that many people have just blown off Palin as a throwaway choice, a stupid move, a bad idea for McCain that will obviously backfire. It also amuses me to see everyone trying to decide if Palin was a sop to the right or a play for Clinton voters, and I see very little acknowledgement of the biggest thing about her: she’s BOTH.

She’s a smart, pretty, accomplished woman that most of us would like if her political views weren’t so damn odious. Moreover, she’s bound to attract the kind of sexist media attention that got a lot of the Clinton base so angry (and so convinced that Obama stole something from them).

She is likable in a way McCain is not.

And yes, she believes in all the things that most of us despise about the Christian Right, and is an oil junkie to boot. So really, while McCain may well have undercut his best argument, he’s also played to both areas of his base–the social conservatives and the oilmen–and at the same time made an attempt to reach out to the gender-essentialist wing of the Clinton fanbase.

I agree with many people that yes, McCain is “doubling down” here, taking a risk on an unvetted candidate with two years of high-level political experience. He’s undercutting his main anti-Obama argument for identity politics and hoping identity politics works because he may well think that Americans only vote that way. He’s condescending, and taking a huge risk.

But to laugh off Sarah Palin because she’s unvetted and inexperienced is, as M. LeBlanc noted, is to assume once again that Republican strategists are stupid. They aren’t. If they were so damn stupid, they wouldn’t have had power for all of my lifetime except the Clinton years, and let’s face it, the Clinton years weren’t bastions of progressive activism either.

Never underestimate your opponent.

McCain may well have shot himself in the foot–Palin could say something dumb (dumber than “what does the VP do all day?” which, well–can YOU answer that? I mean, in Cheney’s case I assume it involves lots of devilish cackling and roasting little babies alive, but…) or the scandal could blow up in her face.

But it could also have the opposite effect–energizing the religious base AND attracting just enough PUMA-types to swing the election his way.

I don’t know if there’s been a case in which the VP choice actually swung an election for a candidate. I know there have been times where they hurt a candidate–McGovern comes to mind, and maybe even Gore (don’t we all wish we’d known what an ass Lieberman would’ve become?). I guess we’ll have to see.

Posted: September 1st, 2008 under Feminism, Politics.
Comments: 3

Up at GlobalComment, thanks to Natalia.

John McCain waited until after Barack Obama’s speech to make a superbly-timed announcement of his vice-presidential pick.

Unfortunately for him, he undermined what were his best arguments against Obama with that choice.

Sarah Palin is the first-term governor of Alaska, a large, oil-rich state with a small population, and she’s even younger than Obama. Her only political experience before beating the previous Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, in a primary in 2006 was being mayor of Walsilla.

Palin is a mother of five, including one son who’s off to Iraq and another, just born, with Down syndrome. She is staunchly pro-life and considered a Christian conservative, but, rather obviously, is a high-profile working mother.

She campaigned on ethics reform and is considered (much like McCain) a party maverick. She is also seen as a break from ethically-challenged Alaska Republicans like Senator Ted Stevens. However, Palin is under investigation herself for possibly having abused her office to get her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, fired from his job as a state trooper, according to the Wall Street Journal. She supports drilling as energy policy, and her husband is a longtime BP employee, but he’s a blue-collar type. Palin has also threatened to evict ExxonMobil and its partners from their drilling rights to publicly held oilfields.

This woman is quite a contradiction, seen at once as a sop to the religious right who have not quite come around to McCain and as outreach to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who value biological sex over a record on the issues.  Read the rest

Posted: August 30th, 2008 under Feminism, Politics, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: none

me.

John McCain. (Thanks, Sondra! You rule. you have a blog you want me to link?)

Posted: August 20th, 2008 under Lipgloss, Politics, Shameless self-promotion.
Comments: 3

Well, really, Keith Olbermann made me laugh.

Posted: August 19th, 2008 under Politics.
Comments: none

It’s been a bit since I’ve done this, since I’ve been unholy busy, but here it is.

1. La Lubu has a comment on Octo’s Feministe post that says a lot of what I was trying to say below far better than I did. Octo also linked to this post at La Lubu’s blog that, well, yeah. Because without the basics, we can’t do any of it.

2. And Octo yet again has a thought-provoking post, this time on individualism. She’s seriously on a roll over there, and instead of freaking out because she’s violating lefty dogma, take a minute to think about it. Then think about what La Lubu said. Then…synthesize?

3. Hilzoy on why John McCain gets scarier every day.

4. A post at Racialicious about the true purpose of satire.

5. Emily about the latest round of trans wars (do we really still have to have this discussion, people?) but more importantly, again: A woman is dead, and her killer got off.

6. Debi has a round-up of things you can DO. She has lots of other goodness, too, including a big kiss-my-ass to everyone who’s treating her like a wayward child. Rock on, Debi. And thanks for the Arcade Fire.

7. The Jaded Hippy actually went to see Tropic Thunder to tell us all about it. Frankly, no matter how much Robert Downey, Jr.  was involved, I wouldn’t have been interested in that movie before I heard anything about protests about its racism and ableism. And she’s aware that she’s white and able-bodied. Something to think about, especially in terms of the successful-satire post above.

8. Finally, I’m stealing this quote from Pop Feminist.

“We have lost the relative strength and security that the old moral codes guaranteed our loves either by forbidding them or determining their limits. Under the crossfire of gynecological surgery rooms and television screens, we have buried love within shame for the benefit of pleasure, desire, if not revolution, evolution, planning, management–hence for the benefit of Politics. Until we discover under the rubble of those ideological structures — which are nevertheless ambitious, often exorbitant, sometimes altruistic–that they were extravagant or shy attempts intended to quench a thirst for love. To recognize this does not amount to a modest withdrawal, it is perhaps to confess to a grandiose pretension. Love is the time and space in which ‘I’ assumes the right to be extraordinary. Sovereign yet not individual. Divisible, lost, annihilated; but also, and through imaginary fusion with the loved one, equal to the infinite space of superhuman psychism. Paranoid? I am, in love, at the zenith of subjectivity.”

- Julia Kristeva (1987)

Posted: August 16th, 2008 under Feminism, Love, Movies, Politics.
Comments: 3

You ain’t president yet. And after seeing your incredibly shortsighted response to the crisis in Georgia, I hope more than ever that you never will be.

Read This. (h/t LGM)

I must confess that McCain has crept into an elite group of assholes who cause me to turn the radio volume down when they are on NPR. Most of this campaign season, I’ve had no problem with listening, but after the third replay of his asinine declaration that “I know I speak for all Americans, when I say we are all Georgians now” or something of that ilk (I know both clauses there came out of his mouth, but I’m not sure which order, so don’t kill me), I can’t take it anymore.

Anyone who supported or supports now the Iraq war has precisely zero moral high ground to discuss the territorial integrity of sovereign nations. Absolutely none. And the fact that McCain’s attempt to look tough (and against Russia, too, to add to his salivating dream of becoming the Second Coming of Reagan) appears, as noted in the linked post, to actually be affecting Bush’s policy…well, let’s hope that Condi has more sense than her bosses, shall we?

Because I mean really, if we’re bound and determined that the “international community” should be doing something to “punish” Russia, well, what should the international community do to us?

And I think I’d rather, if I’m going to be unilaterally assumed by a presidential candidate to be in solidarity with another nation I’ve never been to and that most people couldn’t find on a map, that it be Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or Sudan. Y’know, places we might actually be able to help.

But, well, they’re WHITE people in Georgia, right? And not Muslims? (Please excuse my sarcasm. It’s early and I have a vicious head cold.)

But can you imagine how McCain would react if Obama perhaps declared his solidarity with Iraqis, or Sudanese?

Oh yeah, and Natalia has more.

Posted: August 14th, 2008 under Bullshit, Politics.
Comments: 1

Which presidential candidate do you think was running that ad?

Nope, the other one. McCain. Running an ad in which he claims to have stood up to the president and led the fight on global warming. Yeah.

Political ads are just funny. Does anyone actually believe them? It seems so farfetched.

But I guess most of the world isn’t geeks like me.

Such a big geek that I blog from my blackberry while waiting for my car repair.

Posted: June 24th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

So after getting my first official troll (and I’m assuming that this isn’t another incarnation of that girl from SC who still hates me for reasons I just don’t get), I have to think about my own reaction to this primary process.

All of us Obama people have been accused of being “sheep” and just in love with the way the man speaks. Being a white feminist, I’ve also been told that I’m disloyal to women and that I cannot be a feminist if I don’t vote for Hillary Clinton on top of that.

Even one of my friends was arguing with me last weekend that many people voting for Obama are voting for him for stupid reasons (as if millions of people in every election don’t vote for “stupid” reasons like which candidate they’d rather have a beer with). This of course insulted the hell out of me, since I like to think that I’m smarter than that and that my friends know me better than that.

At the beginning of the primary season, I made this chart for one of my other gigs. Did the research on almost every single candidate from each party running for president, and lined them all up next to each other and looked at it. While doing that research, I read the issue positions on each candidate’s website and looked at their voting records.

I was tempted by Bill Richardson, really, I was. But in the end he was an ineffective campaigner and money-raiser, and I’d like a Democrat to win in November, thanks. So I stuck with Barack, whose Dreams From My Father I read and loved and identified with. Whose policy proposals, particularly on foreign policy, were closest to what I myself felt. I don’t want any more saber-rattling. I want negotiation. I want understanding that other countries are not just “with us or against us.” (I want single-payer health care too, but only Kucinich was talking about that, and again, I’d like to win in November.)

But ANY of those Democratic candidates would get my whole support–which doesn’t mean just blogging, it means putting my money and my free time where my big mouth is and donating and volunteering and harassing those nice people who aren’t nearly as partisan as me–in November, because the shit we’re up against is scary. (See last post for reference.)

Hell, I love the idea of a woman president. But the nastiness of this campaign wore on me like it did everyone, and even though I am a white feminist who recoils at sexism like it’s a personal slap in my face, I just didn’t see the sexism as coming from the Obama campaign. Most of the people on the ground for Obama were women, young women of all ethnic backgrounds (and men, too, but I’d have to say that in my personal experience with several different offices, all but one has had a woman in charge).

By contrast, I did see race-baiting coming from the Clinton campaign, so much so that yes, at several points I joined the crowds of people saying they’d vote third party rather than for Clinton.

I think that by November I’d be over it, though.

I was pissed in 2004 when Howard Dean lost in the primaries. Pissed at John Kerry because of stories of push-polls that implied that Dean beat his wife or reminded people that Dean’s wife was Jewish.

But come November, I was on the ground a 12-hour drive from my home, helping Kerry win Pennsylvania (only for him to lose Ohio, and the race, but whatevs).

Because what we were up against was scary. I don’t like voting against things, really, I don’t. I’d much rather vote FOR someone that I believe in. But when it comes down to it, I’d like to keep my reproductive rights and maybe get some help with health care because as a freelance writer, my ass is screwed as soon as I leave my cushy (ha!) grad school.  I’d like to get out of Iraq and have my friends home. I’d like to not see any more tax cuts for the rich that screw over broke people like me, and I’d like to go to the wedding of my gay friends.

So I know that some of y’all think us Obama people are sexist and sheep and stupid and mean and taking away the election from Hillary Clinton. I admit to some of the same feelings at times myself.

But I’d vote for her if she won. And I’d campaign for her and work my ass off to get her in office. Because it’s much more important now than it seemed back in 2000 when I voted for Nader, when I could barely see a difference between what George Bush was pretending to be and what Al Gore was pretending to be.

I want a woman president. I’m really hoping that Obama chooses a woman as his VP candidate. I think that could be truly revolutionary for this country. I think it’s amazing that the Democratic primary came down to a woman and a black man, and it surpassed all my hopes (frankly, I thought we’d end up with Edwards as soon as Iowa voted, and they proved me wrong and made me happy).

But we need to turn this country back in the right direction, and I hope that if Obama lost, I’d be able to look past my distaste for the race-baiting I saw and realize that we needed a candidate who believed in my reproductive rights, the rights of the GLBT community, who wants to get us out of Iraq and hopefully prevent future wars, who wants to give immigrants more rights (and maybe some fair pay too?) rather than throwing them out and bolstering xenophobia, who knows the difference between Sunni and Shiite, who wants to fix our broken health care system and invest in our schools.  And that I would vote for and work for that candidate. Whomever he or she may be.

Posted: May 27th, 2008 under Feminism, Hope, Politics.
Comments: 3

US Casualties in Iraq: 4082.

Total US Wounded: 29,978.

Total suffering PTSD and other mental health problems: Unknowable, probably everyone who’s been there.

Iraqi Civilian Deaths: Unknown, documented estimates between 84,050 and 91,713.

It’s time to stop fighting within the Democratic Party or more broadly, the American Left and come together to elect a president opposed to this war, as well as senators, representatives, governors and the rest who are opposed to this war. This is bigger than whether or not the media likes one candidate better. Real people are dying.

And just to note: John McCain was one of three senators not there to vote for the Webb GI Bill. One of the other two was Ted Kennedy, and we know where he was. I don’t know where McCain was, but considering that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are still actively campaigning and McCain’s got his primary in the bag, his ass should’ve been there. Even if it was to vote against it, he’d at least be on the record. This is what’s at stake, people. Look at it.

Posted: May 26th, 2008 under Bullshit, Fighting, Politics.
Comments: none