winding road in urban area

Ellie Smeal is fundamentally against Free Speech

I read my email today, oh boy.

Ellie Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority admonished me to write to the New Yorker and DEMAND they pull their cartoon cover of the Obama Oval Office.

How is her demand any different than protesting Islamic fundamentalists yelling at newspaper editors to pull their cartoons depicting the image of Mohammad?

Well, in all fairness, Ms. Smeal did not suggest that the editor of the New Yorker or the cartoonist be murdered.

But Ms. Smeal has forgotten that there is something more important than Obama, the New Yorker and her hurt feelings.

The First Amendment is much more important than all of this.  The New Yorker can print whatever it chooses. Ms. Smeal can say whatever she chooses.  She cannot really expect the New Yorker to pull their cover?  What?  Buy back their magazine.

 

They can have mine when they pry it from my well manicured fingers. 

There are some estimates that place a woman's chances of being sexually assaulted at or about 25%.  Can Ms. Smeal worry about something more important?  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are much more important than the cover of the New Yorker or Senator Obama's inability to get or take a joke.

And Ms. Smeal is playing into critics hands when she lacks a sense of humor about something so small and she jeapardizes being taken seriously over important issues like the rights of women.  You cannot promote women's rights and argue against the First Amendment right of everyone's free speech.

I also didn't see Ms. Smeal complaining about Hillary Clinton's treatment by editors, cartoonist, or opinion makers.  Why are Obama's feelings about a satire depicting him dressed in traditional African-Muslim dress more offensive than depictions of Hillary as a Lady Macbeth, shrew, ball busting, strident woman, Marion the Librarian, the ex wife at probate court, the ambitious woman, the bitch, the nutcracker?

Are you thinking, Ms. Smeal that the New Yorker should not be making fun of the Obamas?  The magazine didn't use racially charged images--they used the rumors circulating by vocal and disturbing people.  Is Ms. Smeal really more interested in protecting gun toting militants in combat boots than protecting women?

I would like to know how much my subscription to the New Yorker, that I have enjoyed since childhood, would be if I got a lifetime subscription.  I can use the money I would have sent to the Feminist Majority.

Too bad Obama doesn't have Franklin Roosevelt's sense of humor.  Roosevelt was satirized in the New Yorker by Peter Arno who had a group of rich people inviting the homeowner to come with them and "hiss Roosevelt at the Trans-Lux,"  Does anyone really think that Roosevelt was using class warfare?  Well, may be the upper classes did and that is exactly what the cartoon satirizes.

I wonder what George Carlin would think of this nonexistent issue?  Elaine May said once she loved a moral dilemma so much more than a real one.

another reason Obama doesn't get my vote

Obama told Relevant Magazine this:

I have repeatedly said that I think it'€™s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don'€™t think that "€œmental distress"€ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.

Now this from The Swamp

In saying that, it appeared that Obama was placing himself at odds with Roe v Wade and subsequent Supreme Court rulings which have upheld the constitutionality of mental-health exceptions.

But in a press availabilty on his campaign plane today on the flight from Butte, Mont. to St. Louis, Obama clarified what he meant.

Here's a transcript of the interchange as provided by the campaign.

Reporter: You said that mental distress shouldn't be a reason for late-term abortion?

Obama: "My only point is this -- historically I have been a strong believer in a women's right to choose with her doctor, her pastor and her family. And it is ..I have consistently been saying that you have to have a health exception on many significant restrictions or bans on abortions including late-term abortions.

In the past there has been some fear on the part of people who, not only people who are anti-abortion, but people who may be in the middle, that that means that if a woman just doesn't feel good then that is an exception. That's never been the case.

I don't think that is how it has been interpreted. My only point is that in an area like partial-birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously. It can be defined through physical health, It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue. I don't think that's how pro-choice folks have interpreted it. I don't think that's how the courts have interpreted it and I think that's important to emphasize and understand."

The Courts have said that the mental health of a woman is the health of a woman. And I say "fuck him." 

Is that clear enough?

I am not voting for Obama.  I am not voting for someone who is so cocksure he can evaluate what feeling "blue" is.  I am not voting for some ignorant bastard who has fallen for the "partial birth abortion" nonsense.  A late abortion is a medical necessity, not a little pick me up when you are down and troubled.  It is the medical death of a fetus that is a danger either to a woman who actually wanted to have the baby or a danger to another fetus--like a dead fetus poisoning another fetus.

Hillary Clinton wouldn't be parsing words with a reporter--changing her mind when talking to a religious magazine reporter or to a general news reporter.  This man is not a friend to American women. This man is dangerous. He is a liar, a cheat, a fraud.

We are really going to miss Hillary.

And don't let someone guilt trip you into voting for Obama because the fear is McCain is worse or will put a "nut" on the Supreme Court and end abortion rights.  The United States Senate has considerable say as to whom the president appoints via their power of advice and consent.  If McCain sends up a nut, then it is the Senate's duty to keep him or her off the Court.

Obama shouldn't be making that decision, either but I would rather not be lied to and expect something than know exactly what I am getting and have no expectations.

I am going to be unavailable for voting this year.  Unless the voting machine allows me to write in Hillary Clinton for President, I am just not casting a vote for president.

And every one of you who just had to have Obama win the nomination can kiss my ass. 

 

nellie

This is Nellie.  She is our Boston terrier.  We raised her from puppyhood with her sister, Zelda.  Nellie has cancer.  She has polycystic kidneys and liver.  She has a mass in her bladder.  We are treating her to reduce the size of her tumors.  She is also getting pain medication.

We love her very much.  She is happy and playful.  She is snoring peacefully beside me now.  Her sister died three years ago this month.  Zelda had diabetes.  When Zelda died, Nellie was so depressed that she wouldn't play or eat.  She had pinched a nerve in her neck.  We took her to the vet for a complete work up and that is when we discovered the in operable kidney and liver tumors.  We got her two new friends from Boston Terrier Rescue.  Jasmine and Hanna have been terrific dogs and the three girls have helped each other with their health and happiness.  They have helped me with my various health problems, too.

yet another reason to dislike Obama

Pandering.  Yes pandering.  He is either trying to win middle American support by backing the death penalty  for child rapist so he doesn't come off like Mike Dukakis or he really thinks that children are so damaged by sexual violence that they can never recover. 

Child rape is horrible.  It is unspeakable.  But suggesting that they are so violated, such damaged goods, says that they might as well be dead since they have been raped.  We don't hold that to be the case with women who have been raped.  Why hold it because of a child who has been raped? 

But Obama says the Supreme Court is wrong which is terribly interesting for a constitutional lawyer to say.  He is saying that the conservative Gang of Four, a bunch of knee jerk reactionaries if there ever were any, is correct and the liberal, more reasonable, more constitutionally based five members of the majority are wrong.

Any bets on what he will do on a woman's right to choose?  Since children's lives are more important than the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, then one might think that Obama would find that children's lives are more important than the right of grown, existing women's right to choose whether or not she is going to carry a fetus to term.

Who knows what he will do?  Who would have thought that a man who evidently taught constitutional law for ten years, who had to be aware that the Supreme Court struck down laws that executed women's rapist as unconstitutional and violative of the Eighth Amendment, who must be aware that the court does try to follow stare decisis and evolving standards of civilized societies--could say that the court was wrong today.

It will be interesting to see how people who support Obama twist and contort themselves to support him in light of this decision.  Can they hold two separate and opposing ideas in their heads--that he is not principled, that he thinks an intelligent and non-emotional decision is wrong?  That if he is serious about being "new" and "improved" if not "different" he might be more genuine in his opinions than a panderer?  No one who ever opposed the death penalty ever got elected president. Americans like the death penalty.  That is why we have it.  He cannot hope to attract independents, swing voters, and those not otherwise committed if he opposes the death penalty.  It certainly would take a brave candidate to agree with the Supreme Court on an unpopular but otherwise sound and correct decision.

men on my mind

I told my long suffering husband, the man that tolerates me with a gift of patience somewhere between a saint and kindergarten teacher, that we don't need any new FISA legislation if we would just follow the law we have that Bush couldn't, wouldn't, didn't want to follow.  Why does Congress need to pass new legislation if not to give the telecoms immunity.  That probably is the purpose of the legislation. I don't know, I suppose I could read it but that isn't what modern blogging is about, is it?  Journalist don't actually do any research so why should I?  It really cuts into blathering about something we don't know anything about if we don't just blog and blah, right?  Research is at least as overrated as experience is in this Brave New World of Obama.  Go over to Bats Left, Throws Right and read what he says.

But Obama says we should trust him because he is going to monitor the need for wiretaps and he is going to fight to remove telecom immunity from the bill.  We don't need to trust President Obama.  That is why we have a Fourth Amendment--the one that says that the government needs a warrant to search and seize and that means wiretap, too.  Government is not your friend.  That is why the Anti-Federalist insisted that James Madison include a Bill of Rights with the Constitution.  It started out as a side order, but now it is the main course. 

Last night, when I gave up on making sense of the senseless news, I did enjoy watching an episode of Law and Order:  Criminal Intent with that rock Alexander Eames and her not so solid partner Robert Goren. Law and Order is comfort food.  When all is wrong, just watch an episode because all will be righted in 50 minutes plus commercials.  Adult bed time stories.   If you don't watch the program then you don't know how Eames tolerates the men in her world.  She is in a snit right now because her partner did some undercover work and didn't tell her.  He isn't on even bubble, but she usually is and due to the male gaze, she doesn't get the attention she should. 

But I must own this:
   

A t-shirt from Glarkware which is mysteriously closed today.  I hope they won't be out of shirts before I get paid Monday.

Eames gets the job done, Goren gets the gaze. 

It is the story of being a woman.

George Carlin is dead.  He opened more minds than LSD and his love of words and his hatred of manipulation is more culturally significant than all the Beat the Press shows ever hosted by Tim Russert.  Carlin called Bullshit! on everyone and everything that smacked of fraud.  I recall the first time I heard him and he said spoofing weather casting that it was silly to give the temperature at the airport because no one lived at the airport. (Just like standing in front of the courthouse during a live shot during the newscast is ridiculous because no one is there at 10 and hasn't been since 5 that afternoon) I was introduced to questioning the authority of television and conventional thinking.  Many newspapers are calling him "irreverent."  That word probably better describes them than him.

He struck me as sad person but as a free person, too.

dew off the rose already?

Skimming the posts on the ol' Internets last night, I couldn't help finding reports that some bloggers were (sigh) disappointed that their "new" and "improved" candidate Senator Barack Obama had "turned" on them.

Turned like sweet cream to sour milk?

Well, he voted like an old style politician in a pro MA BELL sort of way. He voted for immunity for the phone companies in the FISA legislation that passed yesterday.  (Correction:  that is up for consideration next week.  See WaPo Blog.)  See, he voted for wire taping via the phone company without a warrant and against the ability of consumers to sue the phone company for cooperating with the government.  Obama promised that when he is president he will do whatever he sees fit to wire tap, open and read your mail, and all those other pesky authoritarian things that Bush is for and Obama is supposed to be against if he is "new" and "improved."

Say hello to the new boss, the same as the old boss.

I don't want to say it, but of course I will, I told you so.

David Brooks said yesterday that there are two Obamas.  I never agree if Brooks, unless of course I do.  I don't think there are two Obamas.  I think there is one.  The one that David Brooks said would throw you under a bus for a vote.

Somehow in today's twisted logic, in order for Obama to show that he is tough enough to be president and he isn't post racial because he himself said that John McCain would use race against Obama which is interesting because McCain has a black daughter, and he isn't post gender because his campaign was sexist having surrogates call Hillary names and have a nearly naked Obama girl cooing his name, (no she isn't connected to the campaign, right?  like that first anti Hillary video Obama knew nothing about except that he had a friend make the ad,) and he isn't the first female president as some idiot said on their free blog website, he has to be pro wire tap in the war on terror that he was against when he was a state senator in a state that wasn't attacked on 9/11.

So he is tough enough to be president because he was against the war in Iraq but pro wire tapping Americans at home.  He may have opposed sending troops to Iraq, but it is the expansion of the president's powers in the guise of a war on terror of which Obama approves.

I am sure his fans and I mean "fans" and not "supporters," are disappointed that Obama can triangulate like a old pro pol. And he has no problem with the expansion of presidential power under Bush because it will be more power for President Obama, too. 

But of course this news that he isn't any different than Bush, dare I say he may be the Democrats version of George W. Bush, wasn't nearly as news worthy as that tacky new Obama seal.  The new and improved version of the presidential seal.  That is as silly as a wanna be cop's fake badge, a decoder ring from a box of cereal, playing cards in the bicycle spokes. It is like a genuine minister's license from the back of Rolling Stone Magazine next to the ads for pre-written term papers.  It is a kind of plagiarism.  It shows a kind of raw use of political propaganda, which says, "I am new but get used to me in this capacity."  It adds a sort of surreal symbolism and glibness to the campaign. It is legitimatizing without the authenticity.  Why have it?  Why not wait for the real seal? Critics will suggest it mocks the seal of the presidency but like a good magician's trick, it diverts the attention away from the more important issues.

It was a visual for the news straight out of the Reagan Administration own created reality and the lasting image on the news rather than the warrantless wire tap issue that is more complicated to grasp.

Update:  Obama says he will fight to strip telecom immunity from the new FISA bill.  He supports the bill but he wants to remove the immunity clause.

Okay, why not vote against the bill?  Is his dislike of immunity strong enough to outweigh his support of the entire bill?  That must be one hell of a bill to get to this sort of triangulation.  How is he going to please everyone?

Our Top Story Tonight: Tim Russert is Still Dead

How can I miss you if you won't go away?

Tim Russert is still dead.  And frankly he was not Edward R. Murrow.  Hell, he wasn't even Dan Rather.  But he was au currant and as far as this brain dead generation is concerned not a goddamn thing has ever happened unless it happened while they drooled on themselves in front of the television.

Who will replace Tim Russert?  Anyone who is more interested in personalities and not issues.  How about reading a book on a quiet Sunday morning without a bully yelling at someone like they are on the set under subpoena?  How did that further anyone's knowledge of the public debate?  He bullied people because that is what we have become.  A nation sitting ringside, hoping the blood and sweat will get on us.  He was a bully because he could be.  And his pro-Obama NBC/GE connection is being celebrated as journalism.   Could he ask Obama about being soft on nuclear power?  No because GE is nuclear power.

The revolving door between journalism and politics just simply isn't healthy.  Either be a journalist or be a political figure. But the line between the two is so blurred.  He was a flak for politicians until it didn't pay the bills and then he got into the ring and swung at them because it paid better.  Not smarter, just better. It doesn't pay well to serve the public in an elected persons' office.  It makes much more hay to try to assault them. He did not raise the debate to the level of discourse.  He took people to task for things they often said under fire, in the sound bite, in the glare and did not turn those bites into anything digestible.  He wasn't probing or interesting.  He was just another barker selling something tacky under the tent.  How does asking people when they quit beating their wife inform us about spousal abuse? 

Public discourse has become unwatchable and nearly unparticipatory.  Talking heads ask "gotcha questions" and the public watches the heat and not the light.  They know even less about the issues when the program is over but they know who scored meaningless points that only matter because the networks insist that they do matter.  How did Russert's questions about drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants do more than push Hillary down on the playground?  It certainly didn't elevate the discussion about immigration or the dangers of unlicensed drivers or people with no automobile insurance or how we have truck drivers crossing the borders with little safety training.  How about talking about deregulation of the trucking industry, oh mighty Russert.  Too pedestrian.

Today on Rush Limbaugh, a caller said, say what you will about Tim Russert but at least he kept Hillary from being president.  Wow.  A television desk jockey could do all that?  Don't think that he isn't the Bernard Shaw, oh you don't remember him, of his day asking Mike Dukakis if his wife Kitty had been raped and murdered would Gov. Dukakis finally support the death penalty?  Will someone please ask Obama if voting present instead of yes or no takes courage or just a high profile?  Please ask if he thinks the American people are really that dumb.

Russert wasn't Ed Murrow.  He wasn't Huntley-Brinkley and he sure as hell wasn't the Press.  One would think that the entire Fourth Estate died last week.  This was worse than coverage of Peter Jennings, high school drop out and foreign correspondent and anchorman who reads to us the news as he sees it for millions of dollars a year, dying of lung cancer. I could have sworn that the press thought that he took journalism with him.

The truth is it has been dead longer than that.

News is about how we live, how we are affected by public events, not the death of those who tell us what the events and the debate is.  Tim Russert worked for GE, not for you, not the ethics of journalism and not the calling of an informed citizen in a democratic society.  He did not seek to educate, which is the role of the press in a democracy, he played "whose got the ratings point" and made a profit for NBC.  He will be replaced with someone with no concern for the public mind but rather someone who can take a sentence uttered by a public figure and build an empty 20 minutes minus plugs for constipation medicine and retirement investments around it.  And never touch the actual topic the sentence was about.    

hiding in plain sight

At the most, he said, the 14-year-old thought she was having a miscarriage.

A Baytown junior high school student who gave birth in a school toilet may face capital murder charges because police say she tried to flush her new born infant son down the commode.

The baby suffered blunt force trauma to his head and neck and had toilet paper in his throat.  The infant’s mother, a 14 year old, who’s parents say they did not know their daughter, the mother of the dead baby was pregnant because the young woman wore baggy clothes. The girl sat on a school toilet and delivered the infant and expelled the placenta and umbilical cord.  She had used toilet paper to stop the bleeding, saw what her lawyer described as “goo” in the bowel, and had spent two hours in the nurses’ office with a heating pad suffering from what the school nurse thought was menstrual cramps.

The girl told her counselor that she feared telling her parents that she had sexual relations.

The school sent teachers to the young woman’s home until school classes were over in May.  It seems that teaching physical science which is about weights and pulleys to a 14 year old who gave birth after effectively concealing her pregnancy successfully from her teachers, her friends, her school nurse and her parents is not so much an issue now.  Usually, young girls learn about sex and where babies come from in high school health if they didn’t have an all girl’s assembly in the fifth grade.  The criminal justice system is a subject for high school or even college civics and government classes.  This young woman is already doing field research by being a possible defendant.

Her parents were probably busy, hard working people.  Her mother may or may not have purchased the girl’s clothing.  Her mother may or may not have purchased the girl’s menstrual necessities.  Did the girl hide the unused items?  Did the girl visit a medical doctor in the last year for a cold, an explained weight gain, perhaps she vomited in the mornings but it stopped so no one followed up with a doctor’s visit.

She had help hiding this pregnancy.  The help that comes from busy parents who work so many hours or under such pressure they don’t particularly notice physical changes in their children.  A school system that doesn’t notice students.  A school nurse who doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  Friends and their parents who look at a young woman but don’t really see her.  It isn't a conspiracy to hide the pregnancy unless we think of it as the way we collude to ignore reality, ignore the need to educate without judgment, deny that if we don't teach the reality of birth control we truly believe that kids will not figure out how to have sex and then hide it from their parents.

Many young women have sex and hide it because they know their parents will throw them out of the house.  Because the parents promise to do just that.  Many young women hide their pregnancies because they believe that their parents will throw them out of the house, or beat them, or "kill them."  No, really kill them.

If the State of Texas can prove she had intent to murder her son, she can be convicted of capital murder—taking the life of a child under the age of six—and receive tremendous attention in court.  Then she may return to relative anonymity in the state’s criminal juvenile justice system. 

and no it isn't a good thing

Please watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke64670GkZ8&watch_response

And read this:

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/woman-in-charge-women-who-charge/

Election Coverage with Jackal and Hyena. Back to you, Jack

Awake at 4:10 a.m. because the election news wound me up.  Two Hydrocodine and an Ambien later and the pain in my upper back, under my shoulder blade, and neck is so intense I don't know if I can blog this.

Watching the talking hairdos talk about Hillary Clinton tonight was like watching jackals and hyenas eat a gazelle. Their eyes were shining,glowing like wolves' eyes,  their teeth were bared, their lips curled over their teeth.  With every smirk at her voters, I felt smaller, angrier.  When she said, "I want those 18 million voters respected," I literally burst into tears.

And I am the most cynical political observer I know.  But the commentators were watching a different show.

When an abuse victim hears another victim's story, it isn't uncommon for body memories to flair, old wounds to ache.  It isn't odd to me that I am keyed up having a somatic experience of tonight's election returns.

What the commentators were saying was abusive, disrespectful, hateful, savage.  It was horrible.  I hurt for Hillary and because I have had the same comments made to me and it never failed to trigger a migraine.  I started having them at 5 years old.  In all the years of watching political returns, I cannot recall this type of savage violence.  My husband asked me the difference between the coverage of Hillary and a competing broadcast of Law & Order Special Victims Unit.  I replied that the news commentators were talking about Hillary so freely because she wasn't there and on Law & Order the victim in the case in chief was there.  Other women who had been raped were telling the police their stories.  No other women candidates are talking about the treatment they have received.  Oh, some will later, may be.  It is a blood sport and the anchors seem to enjoy hurting the loser's supporters.  When the bones are cleaned and the media wants new blood.  It will be like being raped or eaten alive all over again.

I have played some street fighting politics.  I have called people down for ripping up my yard signs, for being hurtful, but never would I ever think that someone in my own party was either a witch or the anti-Christ because they supported someone I didn't.  I have yelled at reporters over stupid stories and television technical directors about commercials they didn't run when they should have.  The most importing aspect of a tough fought campaign is to come together when the competition is over. 

Well, it ain't over.  If it isn't nasty, tacky comments from Obama supporters in emails, phone calls, and just remarks to my face it is attacking my candidate to get a rise out of me.  Never have I had a somatic response on the level of abusive body memories like I have had tonight.

Come together.  Not likely.  I don't think Obama will pick Hillary but actually the delegates have some sway in the nomination process.  Does he have to pick her?  First he would be lucky to have her.  Second it is the only way he gets my vote.  Third, it is the only way they keep several million defections to John McCain because Clinton supporters are furious at how they have been treated like second class citizens when it is the voter that makes the whole process possible.  These are dedicated Democrats who put out yard signs, make phone calls, give money, work for their woman.  And to ignore them or say they don't matter when it is true that Hillary got more popular votes than Obama who got more caucases is beyond comprehension.

So get this mental picture if you can?  Me, bent, bowed, hurting, angry, holding onto my religion so as to not lose it and throw the nice Obama campaign worker off my porch and out of my yard.  I need to buy two cars, my salary hasn't kept up with inflation, my health care is more expensive, my house needs repairs, I don't make enough to buy gas and food and pay my bills, and I teach school.  And I am supposed to have hope.