One of the most interesting things to come out of this election cycle, for me, has been the level of hostility shown by some venerable feminists toward the idea of women choosing to vote for Obama rather than Clinton. As a feminist myself who is supporting Obama, it hurts a bit when women you grew up admiring turn around and criticize your choice of candidate. I recently came across an interesting piece by Michelle Goldberg in the Guardian (via Ezra Klein) that helps explain some of the anger.
My husband and I are approaching political estrangement over these two candidates. We're both as liberal as it possibly gets, but he wants to keep fighting the GOP until they're dead, basically, and then kick them a couple more times to make sure.
I have no problem with that, but they're doing that to themselves right now, so they don't seem to need our help.
What's dividing us is that Kevin thinks Hillary brings the big fight and Obama's all talk.
Our planet is mostly ocean, and although we humans like to think we dominate every single known corner just because our portion is above water, there are actually some amazing creatures who live amazing lives underwater.
Sometimes they catch our eye for their peculiarities, like migaloo, the albino humpback who lives off the coast of Australia.
In today's column Rich takes a look at his paper's endorsements of Hillary Clinton and John McCain and wonders if this match up doesn't work to the GOP's advantage. As usual, I think he's absolutely right.
In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again.
This lovely Pacific NW afternoon I was enjoying a few moments to tidy up my front yard. Actually, I was wiping slime off the side of my pond insert with my bare hands when I look up to see a handsome young fellow walking up my driveway with a clipboard. "I'm running for your State Rep on the GOP ticket," he says, "and I hope I've got your vote."
Oh my dear boy, did you ever just walk up the wrong driveway.
I have 3 kids under the age of ten, and like a lot of parents right now, I don't really understand what it means for each of them to "owe" $30,000 to the government. Do they really have to pay that amount, as if the government's been running around with credit cards taken out in my kids' names? Isn't that called identity theft?
But what really pisses me off is thinking about what that $30,000 could have bought.
I've been a liberal democrat my entire 39 years, and have pretty much always discounted, dismissed and disrespected anything any republican said. Classic knee-jerk liberal, that's me.
I used to think Bob Dole was okay, until he came out in support of the swift boaters against John Kerry. He said something completely idiotic about how so many people wouldn't be coming out against Kerry if there weren't some germ of truth in it. How pathetic was that.
This article (or press release?) from Sierra Club, via Raw Story is very interesting.
The Senate Appropriations Committee removed earmarks for two controversial "bridges to nowhere" in Alaska: the Gravina bridge, which would connect Ketchikan to an island of 50 people, and the Knik Arm bridge, which would link Anchorage to a sparsely populated area. The projects have been the subject of strong criticism because of the general backlog of existing roads and bridges in desperate need of repair, especially those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The only problem is, I'm not entirely sure what this means.
I just watched a riveting program on PBS called Independent Lens. It profiled a family who'd lost a son in the Iraq war. The father was a military guy, and seemed pretty accepting of the loss, but the mother was NOT. She was pissed and looking for answers.
Caught this off Raw Story. I'm not a lawyer, but married to a good one. Regardless, these people are getting shafted, as usual, and anyone who files lawsuits on their behalf will be stigmatized as ambulance chasers. Blame the victims, and then blame their lawyers.
On a lark, I just checked FOX news' website to see if they run a daily poll like CNN, and they do via Greta Van Susteren (scroll down the page a bit). Today's poll question is how would you describe the Bush Administration's response to the hurricane.
And I've never even come close to it. But as an American citizen, it belongs to me as much as my own hometown does. I had the right to someday visit New Orleans, and I had the right to know that even if I didn't, its jazz and cuisine and Mardi Gras were carrying on just fine without me.
And its people are my people. My sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers. The republicans have been working very hard for many years to divide this country into the haves and the have-nots, but it didn't work. We all watched in stupefied horror as this miserable, inhuman transgression against our fellow Americans played out on live TV. I don't know a living soul in New Orleans, but I felt like I should get my butt down there and help somebody, even just one person.
I was wracking my brain tonight trying to come up with anything worse than Bush invading Iraq in response to 9/11, even googled 'missteps in history,' but to not avail.
Then I remembered The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, sitting on my bookshelf steps away, and one of my favorite books. Published in 1984, it examines from "Troy to Vietnam," the "pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest."
I was just channel-surfing through the "news" networks and caught a snippet of some blowhard on Fox demanding that everyone cancel their subscriptions to Newsweek. I didn't catch his name, but he immediately made me think of Kos' post some weeks ago declaring he was canceling his subscription to Time.
And, it made me think: are we always reacting to them, or is it the other way around?
I need help. I no longer trust any of the 3 main networks - ABC, NBC, CBS - gave up on them long ago. Cable news was my refuge for a little while in the 90's, but CNN has obviously gone fox-lite. Public TV and radio now has to lick the hand that feeds them. My local newspaper is good (Seattle Times), but almost all of its national news is AP or NYT/WP. For the last six months, I've really only gotten my news from Raw Story and dKos. I'd love to know where everyone else goes for news, since I'm kind of a junkie and my reliable sources are getting more and more limited.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the Bush family while trying to put together a diary about 3 generations of war profiteers; when another idea emerged - the difference in this family between men and women.
The men in this family go to Yale to be groomed for leadership roles, but the women can go to any local school they choose because they're not being groomed for leadership roles. The women will marry well, become fundraisers, society mavens, good wives all.
Various things - the Social Security piratization debate, KO's excellent front page post on the Great Depression, a novel I just finished (The Corrections - I highly recommend it), and learning yesterday that my younger sister just applied for food stamps, has me wondering: is the American Dream still at work? Are we better off than our parents?
A photo in tonight's open thread of Time magazine's Man of the Year has opened a floodgate that I really had a pretty good handle on up to now. But realizing that I was going to have to look at that smarmy bastard's face in the grocery store checkout line all week reminded me of a few reasons why I hate him so damn much.
