season of the bitch

To Democrats:

GROW A PAIR

Seriously? At this time last year not only did we just have a new president that we were all excited about, we also had a brand-new super-exciting majority in the Senate. 58 votes! SO COOL!

Oh yeah, that’s right. We’ve had 60 votes for a couple of months, after Arlen Specter switched and Franken finally got his seat. While Franken’s made the most of that seat, the rest of the party has been mostly fucking spineless, undisciplined, and too busy worrying about the center.

The center didn’t elect Scott Brown. The tea party crowd elected Scott Brown with the help of a depressed Democratic base (gee, let me think, a boring law & order prosecutor type who doesn’t campaign and makes John Kerry look like a raging populist is gonna get them all fired up? Plus, um, Liebercare looks a lot like MassCare, which is not exactly popular with a lot of the Dem base either.)

Lesson we SHOULD learn from this shit? The teabaggers have the strategy right. Make a whole lot of noise, throw some money around, and bend the party to YOUR will instead of folding your hands and giving it the benefit of the doubt. (Also, candidates matter. A lot. Just ask that guy…what was his name again…Obama?)

But come the fuck on. With 60 votes we were going to get watered-down shitty health care reform that would mandate us giving our hard-earned cash to the people who’ve been fucking us for years. Can we stop pretending that we lost anything valuable Tuesday night? We lost the myth that any seats are safe. That’s GOOD news. Let’s have some real campaigns now.

Greenwald has an excellent piece on Sonia Sotomayor (and as usual, rips Establishment media a new one for using anonymous sources in the process).

I know far, far less than he does about Sonia Sotomayor or about the relative fitness of judicial nominees for the job. I was far more qualified to talk about Sarah Palin and the attacks leveled at her for being an affirmative action hire, a pretty dumb chick whose appeal was solely prurient.

Rebecca Traister pointed out the obvious gender bias to the TNR piece in question, a bias that is only multiplied by her being of Puerto Rican descent, as Adam Serwer notes. She’s bossy! She doesn’t shut up! She’s not that smart–Obama is prioritizing diversity! (The Clarence Thomas arguments, of course, are too obvious.)

When Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Court, we heard similar arguments about her intellectual ability–and we didn’t argue. When Sarah Palin got the Republican VP nomination, we giggled and made our own jokes. Now Obama’s nominees will face the same kind of criticisms, ones that would never be leveled at a white guy up for the same job, and what do we say?

It’s a double bind. We don’t want to be unable to criticize female nominees or people of color (*cough cough* Gonzalez–or closer to home, Roland Burris) but we need to be consistent in noting the difference between substantive attacks and gender or racially motivated ones. It’s entirely possible that Sonia Sotomayor is not the best choice for the Supreme Court, but I very much doubt that she’s any less “smart” than Thomas, Alito, or any number of federal judges that the Right (or the nominal left as represented by TNR) would have no problem with–because they’re white and male.

The fact is, when it comes to the Supreme Court, there are probably many lawyers and judges and law professors who would do as good or better jobs than the people already on there. There’s no one best person for the job, and it’s also fairly difficult to predict how justices will rule once confirmed (note that the retiring Souter was nominated by George H.W. Bush and became one of the reliable liberal members of the Court). So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking a qualified justice who comes from a different ethnic and class background than the rest of the Court for the sake of diversity.

I don’t think that anyone who reads this blog needs a reminder to vote on Tuesday, if you haven’t already, but just in case you need one: DO IT.

I probably won’t be updating much because I’ll be out knocking on doors and hanging out at the polls watching for shenanigans.

Also, go download Greg Palast’s “Steal Back Your Vote” investigative comic, because Palast is my hero and protecting our democracy is both his and my passion.

I’ll try to toss things up on Tumblr as they happen, and no doubt will be twittering.

Colin Powell was always one of those Republicans I had some respect for (like McCain used to be, but I digress). Powell seemed to have at least some awareness of the world around him and especially of the importance of diplomacy. Like everyone else, I was disappointed when he went before the UN and, well, lied. When he stepped down in the wake of Bush’s re-sort-of-election, I was really angry, because I felt that residual respect and affection for Powell in this country could’ve swung the election for Kerry if he’d resigned before the election. He wouldn’t even have had to make an explicit endorsement–his leaving the ship would’ve been a sign.

Powell was head of the State Department–the department that relies most on performative language, according to Cook. The Secretary of State and his underlings do their job mainly by making statements. Approval, disapproval, etc. are expressed through the media as well as through direct diplomacy.

Powell, then, knew exactly what he was doing when he took to Meet the Press to make his endorsement of Barack Obama.

He didn’t appear on stage with Obama and probably won’t (though you know the ad people are working overtime to cut his words into a spot). He sat in a chair, comfortably, and spoke honestly. He didn’t invoke race once. He prefaced his statement with both respect for and criticism of John McCain, and especially of the choice of Sarah Palin, and then spoke of Obama as a potentially transformational figure.

And most importantly, he called out the Republican party on scare tactics and fearmongering, on xenophobia and hatred. Powell of all people has tremendous power to make the comments that there’s nothing wrong with being Muslim. As a general, as one of the architects of several of our recent wars in the Middle East, he will be accused by no sane person of being a terrorist sympathizer. When he spoke of an American Muslim soldier who died in Iraq, he sounded sincere, unlike McCain’s phony invocations of a bracelet from a soldier’s mother.

Implicit in those statements was an endorsement of Obama as the better leader on Iraq. He didn’t have to say it outright. He invoked Iraq and a fallen soldier in a way that if I didn’t know better I’d call a left-wing dogwhistle. I felt for just a second as if Powell had whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry about that, guys. I’m trying to fix it.”

Powell’s appearance on a news talk show was itself the top headline on the New York Times and the third headline on the Washington Post today. While I’m not going to go into what that says about canned news events and the corporate media here, suffice it to say that once again, we can see that speech is itself a form of action, especially in the executive branch.

So I have 8000000000000 things to do right now, but I’m going to take just a moment to comment on something because I think it’s important to note.

The New Yorker’s Obama endorsement makes many excellent points. You should read it. But to my mind, the most important point it made was this one:

Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

See, the presidency is largely a symbolic office. Congress is the body that’s going to have to actually make and pass these tax cuts and health care policies–all the president can do is encourage and sign. One of the reasons I was an early Obama supporter was that he seemed to have a much better grasp of and less warmongering slant on foreign relations. And foreign relations are carried out by, yes, talking. Words. Speeches.

There’s a huge place for performative language in all of this. Timothy Cook outlines this whole process expertly in Governing With the News. The president makes a speech, and policy changes. Need an example? Remember the “Axis of Evil” comment, and how suddenly after that we seem to be dealing with North Korea and Iran increasing their nuclear capacities?

Every time the president makes a speech, it is news. Even now, when the candidates make a speech, it is news. That news gets carried not just to voters, but to other countries and other governments. The reason McCain keeps harping not on Obama’s willingness to go into Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, but his willingness to talk about it, is that he knows that by making a statement the president has to back it up.

A popular president’s speeches could buoy Wall Street just by pledging support; it is a measure of Bush’s lame duckitude that he can’t. Any president can screw foreign policy up majorly just by mistaking the names of countries or leaders; just ask Richard Nixon about Mauritius and Mauritania.

The president has to know when to speak and when to shut up, what to say and what not to say, and yes, be willing to talk to other leaders. Talk doesn’t prevent action, or require some sort of soul-selling to Ahmadinejad like McCain seems to think it does. But it does indeed have an effect on what happens.

So having a president who is a man of “mere” words, as opposed to one who regularly mistakes one country for another (or one Supreme Court Justice for another–ask Justice Breyer if he’s slightly insulted at being confused with Alito this morning) is actually rather important when you think about it.

And after watching those debates, which candidate do YOU think is more likely to shoot himself in the foot while attempting diplomacy, whether it’s face to face or through the press?

Hah. Because I’m slacking on my political work, and I’m about to get back on it with a vengeance.

So Patrick Murphy is adorable (just got done, it’s 8:32). And now we’ve got Madeleine Albright. Nice intro music, Maddy.

“An assault advertised as a strike against terror,” eh?

» Read the rest of this entry «

So I know everyone stayed up all night waiting by their phones for their Obama text message about which old white guy experienced, vetted foreign policy expert he was going to choose for his VP.

Yep.

Joe Biden.

I was dancing to New Order, Bel Biv Devoe, MIA and Madonna (yes, all by the same DJ) so I missed my text. Well, more accurately, I fell right asleep after dancing for a couple of hours, so I missed my text. But of course my phone had blown up with texts and emails by the time I woke up this morning, so here we go.

Joe Biden. Reasons I think this is a bad idea are legion: he voted for the partial-birth abortion ban and abstinence education, and to loosen restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. He has a tendency to say stupid things. He’s from DELAWARE. He’s yet another old white guy who’s been in the Senate forever, and his campaign was DOA after Iowa. And his whole partitioning-Iraq plan just sounds like colonialism to me–if the Iraqis decide they want to split their country up, great, but the U.S. taking the lead to separate the country into ethnic regions? Um, yeah, fail. Kind of makes me doubt his supposed mountain of foreign policy expertise.

Why it’s a good thing? Well, he was really funny on the campaign trail, and he will call John McCain out on his shit. He is in fact an old white guy, which I guess is what they really need in terms of balancing this ticket. He does have foreign policy ‘experience’ in spades. And maybe this means that Obama’s saving Richardson, Sebelius, Napolitano, etc. for positions in his administration where they’d actually get to do something?

I have no answers this morning, only snark. I think Biden does little for the “change” message, but I think we’re beyond that stage now anyway–especially since Obama’s recent bobbing and weaving has taken him to the center.

I studied boxing (and muay Thai) for a bit, so I know about ducking and slipping punches, and you have to move away from your opponent’s strong side and yet keep ‘em guessing. I don’t know what Biden does to counteract McCain’s supposed strengths, and I wonder when we’ll hear McCain’s own announcement.

Yeah, catchy title, eh?

I started to think about this stuff the other day when talking with my mother about Michael Phelps. See, I love to see people excel at things. I like athletic competition of many sorts because I like to see what people can do when they really put themselves to it, and yes, I believe that some of that is innate–I don’t think that everyone could be Michael Phelps. Or Georges St. Pierre. Or Serena Williams.

I tend towards socialism in my personal philosophy not because I want to see everyone exactly the same–the “vanilla world” argument or the Harrison Bergeron one, depending on which angle  you come from–but precisely because I think humans are such beautiful, individual things and I think that with the basics provided for, we could all be free to develop in whichever ways we wanted to. I want to see everyone able to reach their potential. And I think that if we didn’t have to worry so much about making a living, we’d be able to.

Octo has an excellent post up at Feministe about being a capitalist. I agree with many of her points, and of course disagree on the basic one–I’m not a capitalist. I’m in graduate school in part because I fled the retail world because I hated working for nothing but money. I made good money for a while. I could be running the entire business by now, and I could own my house and be well on my way to financial security, but I gave it up for a job I love (as a grad assistant) learning about things I love, writing all the time, and living in a city I love (while cheating on my city with THE city, NY).

I beat myself up constantly because I’m 28 and I’m already interviewing people who are younger than I am and already have what I want in life. I wish that I hadn’t made decisions based around money. I wish I’d been able to just hole up somewhere and write until I was good enough at it to make a living at it.

And I’m privileged. Most people wouldn’t have even been able to make the choices I did. Capitalism tends to tell us that if we’re good enough, we’ll get what we deserve. It just takes work, right? Yeah, George W. Bush is a good enough argument for that system being completely broken (though one could say that Barack Obama is a good argument for that system working, but we’ll see how November turns out, eh?).

There’s been plenty of talk about the Chinese athletes and the Chinese system leading up to the Beijing games, and hell, we can even look back at the parable that is the Miracle on Ice (posited of course as the victory of Us over Them in the Cold War, because the Soviet hockey team was supported by the state and the US team was a rag-tag bunch of athletes who hated each other–and a bunch of privileged college kids). Read this mostly-related post about the relative ages of women gymnasts, too.

This post isn’t really anything but me thinking out loud. It doesn’t offer any coherent arguments, so please don’t even try to poke holes in it. I just think…governments would serve us better providing things that we need, rather than trying to control what we do and say, and certainly better than blathering about what other governments shouldn’t do.

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.

So you’ll have noticed that I’ve been leaving politics alone for a bit. Other than commenting at other people’s blogs, I’ve been giving myself a break–posted a guest column at KB a couple of weeks ago and had to scrounge for this week’s option.

I feel  like we’re in the eye of the hurricane right now and I’m allowing myself to be semi-oblivious (my oblivious being still ten times more informed than most of America, but far less than the blogosphere). Don’t get me wrong, I’m still thinking about it–Napolitano for VP, please!–but just  not to the all-consuming level that I was.

I’ve got an addictive personality, not with drugs or drink, but with people, politics, and art. I will go through phases where I see three movies a week and phases where I don’t bother with the movie theater at all. Phases where I drop $30 a week on comics and months at a time where I don’t buy anything. And of course, times where I’m polishing off three thick books on arcane political, feminist, or media theory that no one in their right mind reads for fun, and times when I’m re-reading Francesca Lia Block novels.

A chance opportunity sucked me right back into comics-obsession-land, and I’m actually taking a creative writing course in the fall (along with Communications Law and Journalism and Politics, so never fear), so I’m reading novels again as well. In the past two weeks, I’ve demolished all the issues of Northlanders, the first 24Seven trade, Wanted, Cross Bronx, the first Vinyl Underground trade, the most recent two Fables trades, Preacher: Dixie Fried, and re-read every Garth Ennis Hellblazer trade that I own. Oh, and most recently, Local #12, which is so damn good that it gets its own two sentences. If you ever thought about giving comics a try but weren’t sure where to start, Local would be an excellent place. Mmmm. Comics.

So bloglandia has been treated to lots of my thoughts on sex and sexuality, desire, monsters, and pop culture. And to quote Madonna, “I’m not sorry.”

I realized over dinner and drinks with my friend last night that you know what, I DID help Barack Obama win the nomination, as the Facebook group said, and that feels pretty good. So I’m still working, still thinking, still planning for later in the summer and in the fall when I’ll gear up to put Barack Obama in the White House–and then switch modes to watchdog. Because yeah, I’m a supporter, but I know that there’ll be pressure for him to move right, and all of us who did help put him in that spot have to make sure that we hold him to our ideals. That’s the other half of democracy. It’s not just vote and go home. It’s make sure the guy you voted for does what he said he’d do, and responds to new problems in the way that we want. And if Obama does make it to the White House, he’s going to owe a lot of little people more than a few big people, and that makes me optimistic about his possible administration.