I weep for womanity

JESUS CHRIST ON A CRACKER.

Watch CBS Videos Online
Hat tip: Shakesville.

Criticizing a female candidate based on her experience and beliefs is NOT sexist, folks.

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.

Read the rest here.

If we don't laugh, we'll cry, right?

"Vote for the guy with one house...he's afraid of losing it."

Wanda and Dave in '08!

ALSO WATCH:
Letterman PUMMELING McCain.

A Leader Who Loves Us - an essay by Alice Walker

Just read it. My favorite paragraphs:

The present administration and too many others before it have shown the most clear and unapologetic hatred for the American people. A contempt for our minds, our bodies and souls that is so breathtaking most Americans have numbed themselves not to feel it. How can they do this or that awful unthinkable thing, we ask ourselves and each other, knowing no one in power will ever bother to answer us. I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power. Our suffering not making a dent in their pursuit of goals that almost always bring more tragedy and degradation to our already fragile, disintegrating republic.

When we are offered a John McCain, who is too old for the job (and I cherish old age and old men but not to lead the world when it is ailing), or a George Bush, or a Sarah Palin, how unloved we are as Americans becomes painfully plain. McCain talks of war with the nostalgia and forgetfulness of the very elderly; Palin talks of forcing the young to have offspring they neither want nor can sustain; both of them feel at ease, apparently, with the game in which their candidacy becomes more of a topic of discussion than whether the planet has a future under their leadership.

This essay was published in the British Guardian; it should be on the front page of every American paper in the nation.

Turns out that Sarah Palin and I do actually have one thing in common...

...she's a freak magnet too.

Hat tip: Politico

"Remember - if you give your bathtub spout a handjob, it doesn't increase your number!"

Yeah, more politics

But it's a fantastic Monday morning read. My favorite part:

GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Hat tip: Feministe.

I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.

Here's an oldie but goodie. I promise, I'll have more freak stories soon. Wish I could say I've run out, but that just won't happen.

You know what the difference is between George W. Bush and Sarah Palin? LIPSTICK.

Friday funny, feminism

Weird Al - Amish Paradise and White and Nerdy. Videos not embeddable - sorry!

Sarah Palin might want to watch this clip:

RH Reality Check: Does Personhood Start At Fertilization? from RH Reality Check on Vimeo.
Hat tip: Pandagon.

The state of our union

I'm just feeling cynical and fatigued today.

Suicide Attempts for Vets Jump 500% in Five Years, and Government Ignores It.

U.S. Military Is Keeping Secrets About Female Soldiers' 'Suicides'

"They keep telling the lies so that eventually people will forget the truth, forget that we're still fighting two wars. We haven't won anything, not peace, not resolution, not honor."

"It's like a bad Disney movie...I really need to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago." Matt Damon on Sarah Palin:


I'm with you, Matt. I'm sick of the spin, spin, spin. At least Chris Matthews finally took the Refugs to task for their bullshit:


I want America back.

Sorry for my absence!

I traveled back east last week to visit friends and family, and decided to make my trip as technology-free as I could. No checking my email, no blogging. I needed a break. I got to see and stay with various friends and family members, traveling from the Hudson Valley to Long Island. I got to see my 7-year-old godson, and take him to the bus stop on his first day of second grade.

GS (godson) is so tall now that the top of his head reaches my shoulder. He says he loves the second grade so much that he's going to have dreams about it. His mom Suzi and I took him to play miniature golf, took him hiking on the Appalachian trail, and played lots of Wii golf and bowling with him. He read books to me before going to bed and says he likes to sweat 'because then I can spike my hair out.' He has Queen and Madonna on his MP3 player, loves showing me tricks on his Razor scooter and cuddling on the couch. I'm enjoying the attention while it lasts; I figure I've got six or seven more good years, tops, before he's a teenager who wants nothing to do with me. Of course I adore him, but running around after a 7-year-old all week, even one as cute as my adorable golden-haired GS, will make anyone contemplate sterilization a few times. Kids are work, people. Props to all you parents out there, and especially to Suzi, who runs a household that includes her son, her husband, her mother-in-law, her husband's nephew and a 12-year-old Siberian Husky named Aida.

I have to say that kids do provide many of life's more entertaining moments. Suzi, her husband and I took GS to the local Dairy Queen one night after dinner. GS is a big fan of DQ's Cotton Candy ice cream (it's blue!). On our way back, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was playing on the radio. I sat in the back seat with GS, who kept his left arm wound through my right and leaned his head against my shoulder as he finished his half-eaten cone. Suzi and I were having a conversation as her husband drove, and she turned the music down so I could hear her better.

GS stopped eating and sat up. "Who turned the music down?"

"I did, bud," Suzi said.

GS was indignant. "You don't turn down the music while I'm rocking out!" he exclaimed.

I just about died.

A few days later, apropos of nothing, he got exasperated and asked, "What kind of a world are we living in? I need to move to another one," followed by a big sigh. I repeat, the kid is 7.

Hurricane Hanna hit the northeast on Saturday, and it was insanely humid for the entire previous week. I suffered some very bad hair days, readers. It was like a cross between one of those little Troll dolls and the Bride of Frankenstein. I had a constant slick of oil on my face. We all felt as if we were melting each afternoon. When you're perpetually soaked through to the skin with your own sweat, a costume change is in order, sometimes twice in one day. If humidity were a threat to national security, we would have been at DEFCON 1. I am completely spoiled by the omnipresent central air that Angelenos cannot live without.

All of my hosts, who know very well that I use my own oven for storage, generously fell over themselves to provide me with home cooking, which I of course appreciated; however, I had forgotten how much New Yorkers love their red meat. As wonderful as it was to be waited on like an empress of Rome, grilling steak every day in that humidity, without air conditioning, made makeup, deodorant and even clothing almost pointless. My very determined uncle, who is not happy unless I am eating, had planned to barbecue filet mignon for me, and Hurricaine Hanna did not deter him. He grilled outside in a downpour with a handheld umbrella. Best mignon I ever had. I needed some Crisco and a shoehorn to get into my skinny jeans on Sunday morning.

I know I sound like I'm complaining, but I'm doing it with a wink. Sometimes, when work is overwhelming and I'm dealing with some unimportant drama, I forget that my life is an embarrassment of riches. I get to go home and spend my time with some truly wonderful people. I get to have New York pizza and cheesecake!

Yesterday I called Suzi to jokingly ask what they'd had for dinner that night. It was pizza. I was jealous.

GS grabbed the phone from his mom when he found out that I was on the line. "I love you," he whispered very softly, a secret just between us. It made me ache to hug him again. He handed the phone back to his mom before I could reply and ran back to his Wii.

I won't miss the pounds I'm going to lose now that I'm home. I will miss the people, though.

NEWS FLASH: Republicans have discovered sexism...

...but it's only bad when it happens to them.