Fact not fiction

Twenty-six years ago, my mother sat waiting for a bus near San Francisco's Russian Hill. She was in her third trimester and her body hummed with anticipation and anxiety. This was her first child. What sort of future lay in store for it? She waited and daydreamed.

When she looked up, Dianne Feinstein was sitting next to her. Mom wasn't a shy person, and soon she and the young politician were engaged in an animated conversation. Before they parted, Dianne patted my Mom's belly and told her she'd be a great mother. I know how much that moment meant to my mom because every time she tells it, she glows a little, like she's still in her 30s and turning to a fresh chapter, like someone's just reached out again and let her know that everything is going to be new and different and good.

Maybe growing up with that story explains why I am so sad about this, why I won't even ask my Mom if she's heard the news -- in case she hasn't -- even though I've never met Senator Feinstein myself. I don't understand her decisions lately, especially to back the cowardly Mukasey, but I don't have the same level of distaste for Feinstein that I might feel for anyone else in her position. I just keep thinking of those two young women, both in the midst of extraordinary lives, sharing a moment of joy and hope together in a world where the two can be hard to find.

New reasons to keep vomiting

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!

I'd heard they were doing this, but I really didn't believe it...And I just love our smug president and his, "Golly gee, I don't pronounce words so good anyway" garbage. The leaders of the free world, ladies and gentlemen!

Left-wing in multiple countries

Guess I'd be on John Howard's detainee list, too.

What the fuck is happening to my country?

Please, if you don't do anything else political in your life, read this story and think about where we're headed. Thanks to Dr. B for the tip. Here's part of it:

An incident late Tuesday night in which a UCLA student was stunned at least four times with a Taser has left the UCLA community questioning whether the university police officers' use of force was an appropriate response to the situation.

Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, was repeatedly stunned with a Taser and then taken into custody when he did not exit the CLICC Lab in Powell Library in a timely manner. ..Community Service Officers had asked Tabatabainejad to leave after he failed to produce his BruinCard during a random check at around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
....
A six-minute video showed Tabatabainejad audibly screaming in pain as he was stunned several times with a Taser, each time for three to five seconds. He was told repeatedly to stand up and stop fighting, and was told that if he did not do so he would "get Tased again."

Tabatabainejad was also stunned with the Taser when he was already handcuffed, said Carlos Zaragoza, a third-year English and history student who witnessed the incident.
....
During the altercation between Tabatabainejad and the officers, bystanders can be heard in the video repeatedly asking the officers to stop and requesting their names and identification numbers. The video showed one officer responding to a student by threatening that the student would "get Tased too." At this point, the officer was still holding a Taser.

I couldn't even finish watching the video the first time -- I was shaking too hard and had to stop. It took a long time for me to finish it. Oh my God, his screams...they kept shocking this kid. SIX minutes worth of shocks. I don't think I've ever in my life felt so disturbed. This is what democracy looks like? Being TASED because you can't produce a goddamn LIBRARY CARD in time? Jesus, the reason he couldn't stand up is because he'd been tased! While wearing handcuffs. Because he didn't have his student ID on him. Who the fuck trained these guys?? And how awful is it that the students had no choice but to sit and WATCH because the officers had guns and so no one could help this kid? I don't really care if he was committing an act of civil disobedience, which is what some people say -- you should not be assaulted if you aren't being violent. Is that suddenly a radical proposition??

This is the symptom of a sick society. Why don't we just call this "war" a failure? We've already destroyed the way of life we supposedly set out to defend.

I don't know who to write about this or what to do, but I will find out. This is too sick and wrong to write off as "just one of those misunderstandings" that happens in a time of war. Fuck the war. If this is what we're fighting to preserve, I'd rather just quit.

I've emailed tips to the NYT and every other media outlet I can think of - please do the same with your local paper.

Update: UCLA's student paper does a much better job of analyzing the incident than I did.

Rummy resigns

The rats are leaping from the sinking ship.

The morally upright party accepts responsibility

NOT.

Some of the linked blogs would be funny, if they weren't seriously that delusional. Blaming the losses on ignorant voters who are too stupid to do anything but lie around and wait for some nameless throat-cutting terrorist to come along? Come on, guys. This is *why* you lost. Because deep down, you think the public is just as stupid and malleable as any of those elitist liberals you criticize. Got news for ya: the public is sending you one hell of a message right now. If you really don't want to listen, it's fine...but don't kid yourself into thinking that "conservatism did not lose." A handful of anti-gay marriage amendments and a smattering of potentially reasonable property rights bills don't sound like a roaring victory to me. More like a squashy, low-lying fruit falling off the tree.

The best part

Do you want to know how paranoid I was last night? I was convinced that the epic floods in Washington are part of a cosmic plot to keep west-of-the-Cascades voters from getting to the polls, thereby allowing certain pro-I933, anti-Cantwell contingencies to reach out from their dry deserts to deliver the blow of the righteous.

Whew. Glad I was wrong.

I woke up this morning, and it feels like Christmas. Except for the Virginia marriage amendment part. But here's my favorite sign of the times so far -- Fox News, forced into the "no spin" zone because there just isn't a way to spin this time:


Yeah, that's right. Not much else they can say, is there?

Aw, and President Bush is really disappointed in the results. I'm sure the failure of the South Dakota abortion ban and the failure of a gay marriage ban in Arizona aren't helping his morale.

If you're curious about how the world is interpreting the outcome, check out Simon Tisdall of the Guardian, the BBC's coverage, and additional Guardian commentary. I hope Tisdall is wrong -- we have to turn around our foreign policies and regain a modicum of global respect, or else all of this electoral fanfare is for naught.

Also, based on what I heard on the radio yesterday, a lot of people in other countries didn't understand that we weren't voting for the president. I hope they aren't disappointed when they see he's still in office this morning.

I wish I were home to celebrate in the middle of a jubilant crowd. I lost my political appetite in the 2004 election, and the conservatives have been in charge since long before I could vote. It would have been great to experience serious group optimism again...I hope we still feel this good two years down the line.

At least for now, life feels pretty good. It's about damn time.

It ends tonight

(we hope)

(we especially hope the Dems have a plan after the celebration parties)

...At least, it should end tonight. However, indications are that today's just business as usual in the wonderful world of dirty politics. (Scroll down the pages for posts on election-related problems around the country.) The phone call-instigated voter intimidation in Virginia is reportedly under federal investigation. Electronic machines are going haywire in several states -- apparently, elections officials didn't think it would be prudent to check the machines (and learn how to use them) before the morning of the big vote...which means many people are reportedly waiting in line for an hour only to leave or risk being late for work.

Yay.

Haggard fails to make good

Sure, you could use the opportunity to admit that repressing your gay identity your whole life can lead to a lot of pain for everyone...but why bother when you can call homosexuality what it is: dark and repulsive?

The sad part is that his flock appears to buy it. Note that while I link to this article, I do not endorse the headline. Haggard didn't bare his soul -- he trashed the souls of people who are brave enough to be who they are regardless of what hate-mongering preachers say.

Proving why Virginia should perhaps be drummed out of the Union

Please, please read this article. Then, go join the ACLU.

An excerpt, discussing Ohio, which has a law in place like the one which Virginia may enact tomorrow:

In two appellate courts, judges have struck down the state's domestic-violence law, which protects against battery from a "family member, spouse or a person living as a spouse." The courts found, not unreasonably, that the words "living as a spouse" give an unconstitutionally marriagelike status to unmarried couples.

So, is it safe to say that the voters, legislature and judges of Ohio, as well as potentially those of Virginia, believe that:

1) If you are an unmarried hetero couple, you are immoral; therefore
2) You deserve whatever you get, including having your ass beat by your abusive partners; and
3) We are under no obligation whatsoever to protect your unrepentant selves (see 1).

Are you still convinced that gay marriage issues only matter to gays?

Isn't it ironic...

I feel a little sick and a lot guilty for being elated at news about the leader of New Life Church...but I can't help it. I hope this is true. If you devote your career to condemning behavior in which you participate behind closed doors, maybe it's time for a job change. It's really unfortunate that his life is so screwed up, but how exactly do you garner sympathy by using your fame and power to make other people miserable when all they want to do is live as they see fit?

Noooooooo!

John Kerry, you stupid, dumbass elitist idiot! You open your big clueless mouth ONE WEEK before the biggest election in the last couple of decades...and you come out with a statement that could single-handedly swing elections back to the conservatives???

Why??? Why can't you just crawl back under the from from whence you came and stay there until the people who *can* win elections are done with their work?

The airplay over here is not good. The BBC's been interviewing our troops in Iraq, and they are understandably (and quite rightly) pissed. Talk shows at home are on this like rabid dogs on rancid meat. Kerry played right into the out-of-touch, elitist liberal stereotype, and a halfwit apology isn't going to fix it. Oh lord...every damn time it looks like victory's in sight, they sabotage it. It's like they want to lose. They're starting to remind me less of national leaders and more of a certain purple and gold football team I won't name out of sheer filial love.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Feminism needs a comeback

Oh, the Uppity Woman is pissed tonight. In addition to Rush Limbaugh's jaw-dropping remarks about Michael J. Fox (don't worry, I'm building up a slow burn on that, too), this little gem just slipped out the mouth of a major figure in Australia:

"If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem....If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she's wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don't happen."

Just in case anyone out there wants to argue that the battle of the sexes is over, that feminism is pointless and that equality has been achieved: half the world has just been compared to a piece of meat. A PIECE OF MEAT. The rest of the speech is just as lovely. If you feel like throwing things, you can read it here.

I'm glad that so many people in Australia and around the world have condemned his remarks; it doesn't take much to figure out the speaker's religious affiliation, but it's heartening that most people seem to recognize that this has less to do with religion than it does with misogyny, a misogyny that transcends religion and culture. A misogyny that's as at home in America as it is anywhere else.

It's a point Bob Herbert makes well in his recent column on the execution of several Amish schoolgirls. Herbert points out that, in all the coverage, no one batted an eye about the fact that the killer targeted women. "Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews...None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected."

It's true. The only information we heard about the Amish shootings over here was a little surprise that it happened in an Amish community. Never mind that the killer released the boys before he shot the girls.

It all fits into a picture painted by Ariel Levy, the whipsmart author of Female Chauvinist Pigs. I read the book over the summer; some of it is a little "well, duh," but it is nonetheless an important book because it finally connects the dots between all of the little things which degrade women in society: our voluntary participation in shows like Girls Gone Wild; the hypersexualization of Halloween costumes, music videos and makeup ads; the ridicule you receive if you dare suggest that Eminem's wife-beating lyrics are hateful and disturbing.

Individually, sure, they aren't that dangerous. But that's the thing, and this is what makes me so angry: we aren't receiving them one at a time. We are living in a world which is saturated by misogyny. We are drenched by audio and visual stimulation which suggests that women are nothing more than hypersexualized boytoys who exploit and enjoy being exploited. We're told that we are pieces of meat. And we should celebrate it.

I can't stand it when I see girls grinding each other on bartops. Correction: go on and do it, if you want to. Hell, I have. But don't insist, between hip thrusts, that you're doing it because you're so Liberated, that somehow this ability to participate in your own sexual exploitation means that you've come a long way, baby.

Here's what matters. We still make a quarter less in our jobs than men. We are still raped and beaten and murdered every goddamn day at rates that should make us scream. Yet, how many of us would call ourselves feminists? Don't we all think feminism is a joke, something that went out with burning bras? Funny. I'm not laughing.

Pieces of meat, going merrily off to market. Just remember that when someone gives you a hard time because something just feels wrong about GGW, Marshall Mathers, Abercrappie t-shirt slogans, or women who say equality means getting to act as raunchy as frat boys. Aren't we a little tired of being on the menu?

Very unapologetic and possibly nonsensical rant

So I just finished watching The Constant Gardener for the second time with a couple of friends who've never seen it...and not five minutes after the film ends, one turns to the other and says, "So, are we still going clubbing tomorrow night?"

How anyone can watch that film and not sit silently devastated by humankind afterwards, or at least sit there and question everything about how you choose to live your own life, is beyond me. Like the first time, I still don't really want to talk to anyone. I just feel completely overwhelmed, and at the same time I don't like admitting it because I've been criticized in the past for being too sensitive or too bleeding heart...but what am I supposed to do? Shrug it off and go about my life thinking that it sucks, but what can I do? Shut my mouth because no one wants to hear it? Fine. Don't read this post.

You just feel so futile afterwards. The filmmakers did an amazing job with the whole movie. It doesn't preach, and yet it just fills you with this sense of anguish, this all-too-concrete realization that the way our lives play out depends in part on the fortunes of where we are born. The understanding that most of these kids, if they make it through adolescence, are going to die decades before us because because they don't have elemental things like food and education and fucking basic health care. Meanwhile here I am, bitching about how I need more this, more that, how I'll never have enough cash to buy my own house...

I think what really destroys me about the film is that, for whatever reason, it's the one thing that really makes me feel like I can't ever do anything big enough or effective enough to alleviate one miniscule piece of the suffering in this world. And I want to, but like so many people I'm too paralyzed to even begin. What the hell could I possibly do anyway? Rent for the rest of my life and save the rest to start yet another foundation pushing yet another solution with yet another plan that never works? Move somewhere else and be the good little developed-world white martyr who thinks that just because she "gets" the problem, she's somehow got the right to put herself in the middle of it and fight the system in ways that aren't necessarily helpful, let alone right? Sit around and moan about how awful the world is without doing a damn thing about it because I can't think of anything that feels ethically okay?

I just keep thinking about fate, fortune, timing. Why I'm here, why someone else is stuck in a brutal world they didn't ask for. Why everything I want to say comes out sounding cliched when what I'm feeling is anything but. It tests my faith, this knowledge that so many people in the world are screwed from the day they're born. What kind of god would do that? What kind of world would allow it? What the hell is wrong with us?

Being a martyr's no good. If you don't get killed, you burn out, wind up sacrificing everything for nothing, a grain of sand tossed by the storm. But the whole reason we seem to need martyrs is because we can't develop the collective will to do something about it, to each move one brick and rebuild the foundation. Instead, we sit around looking at the bricks, muttering about the bloody bricks, grumbling about how someone should do something about the bloody bricks but how there's no sense in throwing your back out because what good would it do if all you did was put one more brick down for a stupid project that will never be completed?

I just don't know what to do. About any of it. If I look back and feel like I never did a damn thing about it, I don't think I could accept my life. But what am I going to do, and why haven't I started yet? Look at me: I'm a bloody student. Whoopee. I supposedly have all this great potential to change the world because that's why I received this bleeding scholarship, but what am I supposed to do with that potential and how on EARTH can I even begin?

The worst part of it is that I don't think I'm going to find any answers to those questions. I just hope I don't waste all my time thinking about them instead of just slogging forward and hoping somehow, some way, I'm doing something that actually matters, something that actually remedies even one iota of everything that's wrong with the world.

An Open Letter to the United States

Dear America,

Why must you try my patience so? Here I am, overseas, enjoying the dearth of religious rhetoric in daily political life, and yet I still resolve to come home to you. And then you had to go and let Ann Coulter publish another book, in which she shrewdly notes that "liberals just want to kill humans." (Side note: Damn it! Who let our secret slip? Now I have to hide all the bodies.)

I can accept your questionable literary tastes, America. Hey, at least you're still reading, or at least everyone but those 40 million functionally illiterate people. But reading is an admirable pursuit, particularly now that you've officially made it impossible for us to ever see anything interesting on network television again. Look. In Britain, after 11:00, they start running documentaries about the world's largest penis, or breastfeeding five year-olds in public, or kicking a heroin addiction on live television. None of the Brits seem particularly traumatized by such fare; in fact, they've developed a revolutionary technique to defuse the situation called Turning Off the Frigging Television. Then again, in our Puritanical culture, I suppose the lingering aftershocks of Janet Jackson's boob merit more legislative attention than other piddling matters like impoverished American kids or global warming -- after all, how can we even think about bigger issues when our minds are forever being assaulted with the image of that super-sized offense?

But America? It was a BOOB. Half of you have them. It seems a bit odd to be so utterly offended by one's presence, particularly when one could argue that little kids perhaps should not be watching the Superbowl anyway, what with its scantily clad cheerleaders and ubiquitous beer commercials. But now? Now you're offended by gay MANNEQUINS?? Those creepy plastic dolls actually sparked enough outrage for a national campaign? Why doesn't anyone complain when the female mannequins are topless, huh? Or freaking naked? Why do only male mannequins dressed to be "gay" raise eyebrows? (And why the hell do any of you care enough to launch a campaign about it?)

America, your obsession with all things homosexual is beginning to disturb me. I'm beginning to think that perhaps those of you who express such revulsion are, in fact, closeted, and simply cannot accept your own feelings towards people of your gender. In the meantime, while you deal with those repressed urges, could you please, please fixate your attention on something that's actually remotely important enough to be considered national news??? No, I don't mean campaigning to prevent kids from getting a vaccine that might save their lives someday.

Look, America. Let's make something clear. I want to come home. Your efforts to turn this entire country into some sort of weird religious safe haven for straight, white illiterate virgins are not making me happy. Don't you hear the entire rest of the world laughing at you? Don't you know how many people are, like some of my friends in Mexico admit, waiting for us to take ourselves down so they can finally get out from under our thumbs? Hasn't it ever occured to you that now is the time to start acting like a little less of an ass?

When I come back, there'd better be a gay mannequin on my front lawn holding a television that's broadcasting something involving naked people. That is all.

Disturbedly Yours,

A Concerned Citizen, courtesy of her sources at The Stranger

Rove going down?

The blogosphere is afire with word that Karl Rove has been indicted -- and that dear old, trigger-happy Dickie might be next.

Do you think this means we'll actually dip below 29% on the approval ratings?

Seriously, peeps, how many people in this administration need to be indicted before we wake up and see that there's no imaginable way for Bush to be innocent in all of this? Unless he is as stupid as some of us think...key officials in multiple positions are now being or have been brought up on charges that make Clinton's little tryst pale in comparison. (...And yes, I still stand by my argument that his lie is A LOT LESS OFFENSIVE to the American public than Bush's lies about the war. Hello, how many people died because of Monica Lewinsky??)

Take down Rove and Cheney, and that White House is going to lose some of its most important people. Sure, those two have been operating under the radar lately, but you know they're still instrumental in running the show. Can you say "Worst President Ever"??

FYI

Just in case any of you are registered in Snohomish County, don't forget to vote to renew the school levies this month. They're the same ones we've had for several years and they already failed once because no one turned out for the vote...

I think those of us from the Class of '99 remember the aftermath of the '94 levy failures all too well (those cascading sheets of rain coming through the overpass, the heat they only turned on occasionally, the absence of kleenex, soap and textbooks dated past the 1980s...). This time, the district would lose most of its sports, the pool, new books and a lot of staff, so here's hoping SHS doesn't have to go through that again.

I love Keith Olbermann

I don't know, I personally think the guy gives Jon Stewart a run for his money...and Keith's the only cable news anchor who actually covered the very legitimate problems with the 2004 election. He's great.

Watch this one all the way through, and then feel for poor CNN's Paula Zahn, who really doesn't deserve to be ridiculed by O'Reilly:

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002814.html#002814

Rage, rage against the night

There'll always be a few things, maybe several things
That you're gonna find really difficult to forgive...

We're gonna commandeer the local airwaves
To tell the neighbors what's been going on
They will shake their heads, and wag their boney fingers
in all the wrong directions, and by daybreak, we'll be gone.
--The Mountain Goats, "Up the Wolves"

I really hope you're happy, you 50+ percent who put the same administration in office twice.

Yeah, I know. You don't care. This is a great day for you: now, finally, you can smite the evildoers who dare suggest that all people ARE equal and merit the same treatment from us because who the hell are we to know what's better in the eyes of whatever god may or may not be watching us? (For the record, I'm Catholic and believe in the same God, supposedly, as a lot of people back home. Sure doesn't feel like it most days.) You can kick people out of schools who teach ideas that you find too liberal (sorry, but since when has it been established that something labeled "liberal" suddenly means it can't possibly be correct?) Screw the poor because they should have worked harder in the first place to overcome the insurmountable cycles of poverty and inadequate resources and screwed-up, self-righteous public policies that enable some of us to sit easy in Belltown and Manhattan while others wade through the streets of New Orleans. Enact abortion laws that throw up a dozen hurdles for impoverished moms while retaining all sorts of loopholes for people who can afford to drive to clinics, rent hotel rooms for mandatory 24-hour stays, take time off work. Screw the environment and anyone still willing to wear the "environmentalist" label: what value could Nature have unless we can exploit it? Why preserve a meager shred of frozen "wasteland" that gives us at least some idea of what the world was like before we left our tracks on every last mile? After all, we can turn it into oil! Because an oil-based global economic system clearly makes us free, financially secure, and able to gift our children with a great future.

I can't write anymore. I'm too tired and too angry. Except, I'm not even angry. I'm heartsick. You want to call this a victory? Fine. Have a freaking parade already and rub it in my face a little more. I have news for you: we won't quit. I'm not talking about being a self-righteous martyr. Martyrs don't fight back. Maybe the entire purpose of my existence is to serve as a thorn in the side of those self-aggrandizing people who think they're fooling anyone by preaching about less government oversight while pushing for the same governments to regulate every last, microscopic aspect of our personal lives. So be it. I'll be the sharpest thorn you've ever encountered, and I'll dig down deep until nothing will root me out -- not a Supreme Court appointee, not a presidential win, not a moral majority.

Just try to stop us.

Now back to my other purpose in life

The political rant (sorry for all of you who don't enjoy these, but I have to get them out of my system once in awhile).

'Tis the season, and what a season -- we're reeling from earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, wars, famines, environmental crises. You know what we really need right now? Screw that peace on earth and love your neighbor crap: we need wine baths.

Oh, you wish I was kidding.

I mean, how are we supposed to relax and enjoy the holidays when all of those annoying hurricane refugees are still huddling around FEMA tents and Red Cross shelters? Shouldn't they get off their asses and get jobs so they can rebuild their swampy excuse for a city themselves? It's not like they don't have time to job-hunt, right? And I'm certainly not going to spend my god-given, hard-earned cash on them when I can be smothered in cab sauv and left to bask beneath the rays of the indulgent desert sun. All those homeless people should be clamoring for jobs so they can enjoy the same delights - plus, the ingredients in wine are supposed to make you look younger, and I'm guessing that more than a few wrinkle lines have been left by those irritating forms they have to fill out every day.

I'm not saying that we should sell everything we own and give all the money to the poor (noble as that is, I'm too scared to do it myself, as I would then be relying upon someone else to do the same for me...). Seriously, though, would it kill us to forego flat-screen televisions, wine jacuzzis and state-of-the-art auto technology if it meant we could direct the money to something a little more important? Just a little??