Knock it off already

Dear News Media,

When will we start getting to see all those images of Barack Obama's pant legs and stylish shoes? I hear John McCain sports some Ferragamos. What about getting us a look at Joe Biden's shapely calf muscles?

After all, I'm sure you're taking loads of those pictures--getting those pant legs in the side while you go for a shot of a faux-handmade sign that shouts "We Want Change!" or "McCain for my future!" or some other stirring slogan. Right? I'm sure it's just a standard way to frame the shot and has nothing to do with Sarah Palin's possession of a vagina, right?

Look, I don't quite know how to say this, so I'll just say it straight. I don't like defending Sarah Palin against sexist treatment, because frankly, she stands against pretty much everything that feminism stands for. I feel a bit like those justices who had to find in favor of Larry Flynt--you know they didn't really want to do it, but they rose above their personal squeamishness to do their duty. So knock it off. There's no point in taking these pictures.

Treat Sarah Palin like you do Joe Biden, which is only fair. Ignore her.




It's not the nihilists

Bunny: That's Ulee. He's a nihilist.
The Dude: Must be exhausting.






Eliot is not impressed with Republicans who argue against corporate fatcats.

Ummm Stanley?





















RIP Paul Newman

He was a hell of an actor, and as this piece notes personified "cool" for a generation. He was Cool Hand Luke after all.

But so far, and I'm sure this will change in forthcoming stories about his life, there's been only passing mention of his activism, especially in the way he made organic food popular. I was a teenager when he started his Newman's Own brand, based on the premise that people would pay a little more not only for a better product, but also if they knew the profits were going to charitable works, as opposed to the pockets of shareholders. And he was right. Newman's Own has been tremendously successful, has sent a lot of money to a lot of good causes, and has done a good deal to improve the quality of a lot of foods. The chocolate-mint Newman-O's and Fig Newmans are perhaps my favorite cookies of all time.

He was 83, and that's a good run for anyone. He did some good in this world, and that is perhaps the highest compliment we can give anyone.

Edit: I post this, then turn on CNN and they do an entire obituary based on this facet of his life. Glad to see it, and if I can find the video, I'll post it.

No rest for the weary






Debate wrapup




Not that anyone who reads this blog needs reminding--John McCain's diva-like turn has been in the news almost as much as the WaMu collapse, after all--but I know how us Democrats are. We imagine Barack Obama will have a moment where his answer isn't as strong as we'd like, the mediator will ask a question about an irrelevant subject, and the post-debate spin will make it look like McCain stomped him into the ground. And that all may happen. But just remember--Barack Obama has battled entrenched racism, and overcome a lack of name recognition to build a machine like no one has ever seen to get to this point.

Or in other words, this:

Of course he's not worried!





Obituary Writing

The NY Times has a Q&A with Bruce Weber, one of their obituary writers, on what obituary writing is all about. Most of the Q's are fairly straightforward and the A's are short and interesting. For example, how do living people react to being asked to contribute an interview to their own advanced obituary? (A: not always all that well!), and what is meant by the frequent euphemism "after a long illness"? (A: a combination of ailments too complex or vague to put to print).

The longest answer was for this question:

Q. I have been reading The Times daily since I was about 10 years old. I love the autobiographical obituaries. It is interesting to me that 14 out of 15 are about men who have died, and the 15th is about a woman of note. It is amazing that so few women who die are interesting enough to write about. Tell me about this.
— Bernita Hassall Fadden, Palm Coast, Fla.

A. It's hard to deny that a disproportionate percentage of our obituaries are about men, though I think 14 out of 15 is an exaggeration. (I counted my own recent obituaries, and 8 of the last 50 have been women, including Helen Galland, Mila Schön and Barbara Warren.) I certainly hope this isn't about gender bias, and I don't think it is. For one thing, our departmental discussions about who is and who isn't deserving never touch on a subject's gender, unless it's to note that for a woman (or a man) to have accomplished such-and-such was unusual, as was the case with Mary Garber, whose obituary was written by Richard Goldstein. For another thing, the editor who does most of the daily assigning, Claiborne Ray, is a woman. Prompted by your letter I asked her about the disparity, and she confirmed my instinctive response, which is that the majority of people who are dying these days — that is, older people — grew up at a time when achievement and fame were far more accessible to men than to women. Writing obituaries often makes you feel as though you're reporting on a world that doesn't exist any more, and I can only assume that as time goes on, the number of women who appear on the obituaries pages will grow significantly.

Does the obituary writer protest too much? I don't know: I can see some reason behind his ultimate answer, that the people dying today came from an age when notable courses of life were more likely for men... but only if you define "notable" in a traditionally male way: movers and shakers who stayed movers in shakers all their lives, no matter if they had kids at home. There are many women who did extraordinary things in nursing and teaching, women who did extraordinary things during WWII on the "homefront" working in factories or participating in the ways available to them. But those women were very often absorbed into "home-life" at some point. Does that make what they did early in their lives disappear? "The editor who does most of the daily assigning, Claiborne Ray, is a woman" is such a bad, bad argument, you wonder what has him grasping so. Is it that they know they don't put in the work that would be required to find the exceptional women who, in their third decade, "became wives and mothers" (and stopped being "people"?) ... This makes we think me need a Women's Project, similar to the project to find Holocaust survivors and interview them about their early lives. We need to find older women, women who have been seen as fertility objects for most of their lives, who did amazing things and went amazing places in the 20s, 30s, 40s... and then "disappeared" into motherhood in the 40s, 50s, 60s.

If someone shakes the world at 25 and dies, she is honored in print. If someone shakes the world at 25 and marries at 30, she disappears. The hero's path is different from the heroine's path, but I'm not so sure we ought to regard it less. And the unusual length of this particular reply makes me think that Weber knows it.








Authority Song: John Cougar Mellencamp
Genius Ten:
1. She's a Beauty--The Tubes
2. Stand--R.E.M.
3. Our Lips Are Sealed--The Go Go's
4. Roll With It--Steve Winwood
5. Squeeze Box--The Who
7. Walk of Life--Dire Straits
8. Shock the Monkey--Peter Gabriel
9. Hungry Heart--Bruce Springsteen


Part 1: Bush's address to the nation came across as a terroristic threat. "Give us all your money, OR ELSE."

Part 2: John McCain is scared out of his mind. He wants to postpone the first debate because "the economy is in trouble," and, despite the fact that the topic of the debate was supposed to be security issues, there's no way it won't now be about the economy, something about which he knows nothing. If there's going to be some terrorizing going on, I'm glad that at least one of the culprits is himself terrified.

But we ordinary people know that the "Bush Recession" began in 2001 and never let up. All the so-called "growth" in the economy was built on debt, inflated prices, and worthless paper. That didn't help the ordinary person, but it let some rich people get much, much richer. Now that those super-rich are taking it in the nads, they want "we, the consistently recessed" to pay their bad debts? Nuh uh, motherfutcher. You made that mess, you are going to lie in it. (And if the congress gives any other answer, we all should move to New Zealand)

If you're actually scared that something bad might happen if we don't hand over all our present and future wealth to the bu$h-buds and greedheads of Wall Street, you just need to take a step back and see the clear outlines of this con job.

Read the Arun Gupta letter, as seen in Business Week, and Wired.

EDIT/ADDED: Tell all your NY friends to be at Wall Street TODAY at 4pm -- this show of opposition takes place at the same time as the Bush-Obama-McCain-Congressional Leaders meeting at the White House. It looks like they're actually going to go ahead with the bailout plan, and we need to be united as one loud voice shouting, NO.

Annette Taddeo's new ad



P.S. There's also a Spanish version of the ad.






When I started this blog series about three weeks ago, I planned to do a couple of quick posts, but other issues got in the way. They're still in the way, but if I don't do this now, I won't get to it, and with Campbell Brown's righteous rant thrusting sexism back into the spotlight, even for a moment, I felt it was a good time to talk about some of these images.

The collection had more sexist than racist images in it. Part of that is no doubt due to the unreasoning, visceral hatred that the right-wing has for Hillary Clinton expressing itself in sexist ways, but it also has a lot to do, I think, with the fact that sexism is still more socially acceptable than racism is now. There's no contest on this, by the way--people who refer to themselves as progressives will say sexist things or buy into sexist memes that would make them blanch if the subject were a man of color.

But the images that came out during this election cycle were largely from right-wingers, so they tended to fall into a few basic categories: 1) Clinton as male/lesbian; 2) Clinton as emasculating woman; 3) Clinton as sexually unattractive (which informs some of the right's love of Sarah Palin); 4) Clinton stepping out of her assigned role as woman. There's also a set that just wishes to visit violence upon her.

In this first set of images, I think we have examples of 1, 3 and 4. I'm assuming that the "Hillary is a Fembot" is meant more to paint her as unfeeling than as a sexually attractive sex doll with guns in her boobs.

I think these two are examples of number 2. The first obviously plays to the group of men who have been divorced, most likely because their wivesgot tired of putting up with their shit. These men feel entitled to a dinner-cooking, house-cleaning, child-rearing fucktoy, and when women decide they'd rather do anything else but stay married, they become bitches. Hillary Clinton would presumably have become bitch-in-chief. The second image could also be a number 4, because it plays into the notion that women don't have anything to say that's worth listening to, since that's the man's job in this world.

And then these are the ones that wish violence on her. There's a sick glee to these images, and I think it comes from the same attitude that the last set comes from. Senator Clinton's success proves to all women who are stuck with inadequate, hateful men that they don't have to be stuck with them. She's become a very powerful person, more powerful than her husband is these days, and that scares the hell out of these men who can't stand the idea of losing their dominance.

That's why Sarah Palin appeals to these men. Her husband is manly, studly, and the impression that comes from every news story that shows he was intimately involved in the day-to-day of her mayoralty and governorship reinforces the idea that she's really just a figurehead, that she takes orders from him.

The collection is still up, and will be through November 1, on the FAU campus in Boca Raton, the Ritter Gallery. I've really only scratched the surface in this series. Go check it out if you're in the area.

Who are these people?





BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are there any other examples of that?





BROOKE GLADSTONE: How is this possible?





and she's not even a cleaning product. Enjoy:

Beware the dishonest lede

Oh CNN, why must you vex me so?

Here's why it's dishonest. Biden doesn't mock Palin for her desire for federal money the bridge. He--and just about everyone else with any sense--simply points out that her line "I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks'" is a lie. Biden and Obama have never come out--to my knowledge--and talked about the project itself. The funny thing is that the rest of the article points out exactly why Biden wouldn't mock an earmark project. He's asked for plenty of them himself in his many years in the Senate.

As for me, I've never had problems with earmarks. I look at them as the "honest graft" side of politics, and the dollar amounts are a pittance compared to the real budget items, and the local projects often do some good.

The article also neglects one other part of the story. It takes Biden and Obama to task for voting to kill an amendment by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma that would have diverted money for the bridge to Louisiana to fix a bridge down there destroyed by Katrina, but it only tells part of the story. When Coburn offered that amendment, Senator Stevens of Alaska denounced him on the floor of the Senate, and threatened to offer similar amendments to every other earmark that was up for approval. Stevens's fellow Senators, not wanting to lose their pork, killed Coburn's amendment, but the damage was done and the bridge specifically died later on.

Why does that matter? Because earmarks are the grease that gets legislation passed. You want someone to vote on your pet bill, and he or she isn't motivated, you trade them a rec center in their hometown. So Obama and Biden protected their earmarks by siding with Stevens, as so many other Senators did, and you can hardly blame them. A big part of any legislator's job is getting back some of the federal tax money that goes to D.C.

But that's not the way CNN framed the story. They framed it as "Obama and Biden are hypocrites on the Bridge to Nowhere" when that clearly isn't the case, because again, the issue isn't the bridge--it's Palin's lies about it.

A Kind of Looting














Is there a less expensive solution?





Nerdcore Rising

Obviously, I'm a little behind on this, since the teaser for the film has been out for over a year and a half, but let me jump on the bandwagon now. This is a movie I want to see.

Here's how cool it is--it's being screened at the Red Vic in San Francisco this November, and if you can't get behind seeing a documentary about a band who does nerd hip-hop at a worker's collective co-op movie house that serves popcorn with wheat germ on it, then I don't know you.

I read about this film last night on (can't currently find the link), and downloaded MC Frontalot's labum from emusic almost immediately afterward. Listened to it today on the train, and with the exception of one track, a horrible song titled "I Heart Fags," loved every second of it. Trust me--that song is an aberration on an otherwise wonderful album. It's funny, it's scatalogical, it's disgusting and disturbing in places, and it's got a Dalek saying "Exterminate!" on one track. You have to find it for yourself--that's the fun.

If you go here you can request a screening in your area. I assume that if they get enough requests from a location, they'll find a way to get it there. Give it a look.

Financial Crisis













Stupid Quote of the Day




Question of the day

With all this talk of the bailout, the $700 billion to $1 trillion to make the system solvent, I've started to wonder, what if no one will lend us the money? It's not like the US has a credit score worth a damn anymore.

Update: Miami Dade Dems has video.






I Love Bernie Sanders










Weird Day




Selection 2:





I've been good lately

I really have. I haven't been going on curse-laden rants or suggesting that certain members of American society ought to be dangled by their most sensitive parts over pits of erupting magma infested with mutant piranhas (mutated to withstand the scorching temperatures of the magma, of course) which leap to nip at their tenderest areas. But not any more.


He added that it's going to be no easy task.

Fuck off and die, y'all. Seriously. If you are so out of touch that giving up the private jet is the worst thing you've ever had to deal with, then you just need to die, because you're not a human being anymore. You're the enemy of humanity, and a big part of the reason for the massive suffering that many of our fellow humans endure every fucking day. And I don't want to share the planet with you anymore--you're taking up too much room.

Via John Cole

so that at some undetermined point in the future, I can reward this Congressperson with a campaign contribution.


Via Atrios. And first thing Monday, call your Representative and your Senators, no matter whether they're members of your party or not, and tell them that to give a blank check to the most incompetent Presidency in history when they only have 4 months left in office is not only wrong, it ought to be criminal. Emailing is fine, but calling is more effective--shows more of a commitment.

I'm back


From the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins




So I'm on Facebook and my friend Tony mentions that Pat Buchanan said something about "capitalist pigs having destroyed an aspect of American capitalism." So I went to the Morning Joe website, since that's the only way I get to watch MSNBC (and I watch Rachel Maddow pretty regularly now that way), and what did I find?

It's at 5:20 or so into the feed, and worth seeing with your own eyes.

More from Lilly Ledbetter




Killing Amendment 2



But the numbers on the Amendment are distressingly close.


McCain on Health Care

Shorter John McCain (warning: pdf file): "Let's do for health care what we've done for banking!"

This ought to make people shudder on multiple levels. Health care is already messed up in this country, so making it more innovative like we did the banking system is equivalent to making an engine more innovative by putting a stick of dynamite in the manifold.

But the best part of this whole thing is the date on the article--it's the September/October 2008 issue of the magazine. Sort of puts the lie to McCain's claim that he was calling for reform of the banking industry two years ago, doesn't it? Not that McCain has a stellar record in accuracy these days.

Subtle Movement






Great News!







That's from Sarah Talalay's blog--she's a reporter who focuses on things like sports deals and stadium finance, which is why the rest of her post talks about local sports team owners and how they moved up and down on the list. The image is from the front page of today's Sun-Sentinel, and I grabbed it because it seemed so incongruous. I get her point--that the wealthy didn't really increase their wealth in the past year--but it seems really tone-deaf to me to suggest that they're not doing any better than we are. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I'm still a week from payday and am effectively broke, and won't be doing much better once payday comes. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my car--a two-door, 1999 Hyundai Accent--doesn't have one fully-functioning door handle and that's not likely to change anytime soon. And I know it has a lot to do with the fact that while I'm sitting here grousing about the situation, there are a whole lot of people a whole lot worse off than I am, financially speaking. All I'm asking is that you choose your words with a little more care, even if it is a blog post.

Here's the Random Genius Ten--for the moment, I'm taking advantage of iTunes' new Genius button and creating a list based on the next song to come up on my party shuffle. It reduces the wild swings in musical type, but makes it far more likely that "I Ran" by A Flock of Seagulls will come up. That song seems to go with everything, at least according to iTunes. Here we go.

Random Song: Why Can't I--Liz Phair
Genius Ten: 1. The Remedy--Jason Mraz
2. Inside Out--Eve 6
3. Lovefool--The Cardigans
4. The Way We Get By--Spoon
5. Your Love--The Outfield
6. Blister In the Sun--Violent Femmes
7. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic--The Police
8. Our Lips Are Sealed--The Go Go's
9. Good People--Jack Johnson
10. Who Are You--The Who
Wow. That's the whitest list I've had in a long time. I may have to go back to the old way if this keeps up. Leave your lists in comments.




I think it looks like this:




Why? As the article explains, it is in large part because other countries don't actually like and admire us anymore. It's also in part because the US Supreme Court doesn't mine the wisdom of other countries in its own decisions -- that makes it an isolated island of ideas in an otherwise interconnected world, and therefore one which is rapidly falling behind.

The article doesn't mention Bush v Gore, but it's hard to imagine that doesn't have a lot to do with it: the US Supreme Court, in 2000, took a shit on democracy itself and decided an election -- the only decision it's ever written which included a warning against using the decision as precedent (wah-?): How do you use a court that does THAT as an authoritative source of legal reasoning?

In the end, the Supreme Court of 2000 will be held to blame for the decline of the USA. Let those jackasses live with that -- we all have to live with the mess they made. The Supreme Court that resulted from the mess (today's court) is even worse. And should McCain actually win this thing, we are one retirement away from the end of Roe v Wade, from a decline not just of US power and authority and economy and civil rights and privacy rights and everything else we've lost, but the absolute loss of the single most important freedom out there: the right to make, without government intervention, the most personal choices about what happens or doesn't happen inside your own body. If there is a woman in this country who is planning to vote for that, she ought to be slapped.

It's going to be really hard to rebuild this country. Time to get started. Obama is our start, people. No dithering. We need this, now.


Have I lost my mind? Not really.



The bounce is over





And this I found particularly interesting:



Dear Chris Matthews

I don't know what you had for lunch, but please have it again every afternoon from now through November 4.

Making a Deal on Drilling




The Democratic bill also would:


Via Paul who got it from some website no one's ever heard about.

Just a helpful note to conservatives--you do satire like Spock does cursing. You just don't have the knack.

And in the local news...

While the markets are trying to decide, as my dad used to say, whether to jump up or go blind (don't ask me what that means--my dad was a Texan in the mold of Ross Perot, and often censored his aphorisms for us kids), we're dealing with some issues of our own down here in Florida. We've got a huge budget hole to fill, and with tax revenues coming in lower than projections and the state economy not looking like it's going to recover before 2011-2012, that hole seems like it's getting deeper and wider. But never fear, Floridians--there's one thing you can count on from this legislature. The people in charge are clueless.

But the Republican-led Legislature has no interest in raising taxes, even so-called sin taxes on cigarettes, alcohol or gambling, said incoming House Speaker Ray Sansom of Destin. Sansom said the Legislature is living within its means and that there's an advantage to the budget cuts: Smaller government.

"Today really is a good day for Florida," Sansom said. "I have three [children] in public school. They're getting as good or better an education this year than they've ever had. They're as safe in their schools as they've ever been."
You know something I've noticed about countries that have small governments? They tend toward the banana republic style of government--a dictator at the top who cedes all real authority to whatever corporations are busy exploiting the country's natural resources. I can't say I'm a fan of that style of government. It's a little lax on the regulation side, and I think the last year, if nothing else, shows that we could use a touch more of that in the financial markets.

There will come a point here in Florida when the citizens will decide that they're tired of having the roads stay unmended, of having to wait half an hour for a cop or the fire department to show up, or of seeing 40 students to a classroom because teacher salaries are so poor that the school boards can't keep positions filled, and when that day comes, they'll put people into office who understand that government can actually do some stuff, and do it well, if only you put people in charge who actually believe that. Until then, this is what we have, a government that can't decide whether to jump up or go blind.

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