Officials in charge of voter registration in Virginia seem to be asking for Federal investigation… According to this press release from this extremely important battleground state, students are being told that they risk losing their scholarship and tax dependency status if they register to vote in their college, as opposed to home, state. And surprise, it appears all these warnings are bogus and have one impact and one impact only: to suppress voter turnout among college-aged people, who are overwhelmingly supporting Obama this year. Memo to Virginia: that’s illegal.
Ohio election officials are sending out a mass mailer stamped "do not forward" to all registered voters today (Sept. 5) with an absentee ballot application and other important notices for Nov. 4.
What's important here is not so much what's going out as what's being returned to sender.
Unbeknownst to the would-be recipients, the same mailer - just 60 days before the election - has the potential to determine their eligibility to vote, challenged not by election officials but by partisan opposition.
A similar mailer in March netted nondeliverable mail from almost 600,000 registered voters in just five Ohio counties who could now have their ballots thrown out for voting under the wrong address.
The National Voter Registration Act prohibits any state from purging names from the voting rolls within 90 days of an election.
More at the links. (Note: the Ohio vote caging isn't necessarily a Republican shenannigan. Vote fraud is bullshit, Democrat or Republican.) We've got to keep an eye on this, and stop vote fraud.
Update: Space Cowboy and I were sharing a brain. Note that this is all happening in key states.
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.
And so our failed experiment with democracy continues. What a great role model we've become. Instead of targeting folks with purple fingers, Republicans would like to target those who have suffered most at the hands of their failed economic policies.
Not like I needed one, but these past few days have really been a pointed reminder of why I've loathed John McCain with the passion of ten thousand suns and why he has been one of my most frequent targets since I started blogging. Check out this other new advert from the McCain campaign:
Voiceover:Education Week says Obama "hasn't made a significant mark on education," that he's "elusive," on accountability. A "staunch defender of the existing public school monopoly." Obama's one accomplishment? Legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama: Wrong on education. Wrong for your family.
McCain: I'm John McCain, and I approve this message.
Of course you do.
For those of you who can't view the video at work or wev, let me give you a couple of screenshots that really capture its charming tone.
That Obama—not only does he want to teach SEX!!!1!!11!!! to kids, but he probably wants to molest them himself! Just look at the way he leers at them, the pervert!
VOTE FOR MCCAIN: HE WON'T RAPE YOUR CHILDREN!!!
The reality—that insignificant thing with which McCain doesn't much bother these days—is that Obama supported "'age appropriate' sex-education for children as a means of teaching them what was proper or inproper touching," which is not unusual in public schools (I had lessons about "stranger danger" and "inappropriate touching in 'bathing suit areas'" when I was in first and second grade) and is an extremely useful tool for communicating to children that if something feels wrong, they should tell an adult they trust, even if they've been warned that it's "normal" and "okay."
It's about protecting children—not in the generic "we'll protect your children" way that is the centerpiece of Republican rhetoric, but in a real, practical, necessary way. But McCain turns it on its head and accuses Obama of trying to teach 5-year-olds about sex, practically implying that Obama personally wants to walk into every kindergarten class and put on a live sex show.
And, beyond the overt messaging, there's the little problem of the juxtaposed imagery of Obama, whose skin looks darkened in at least one picture to me, appearing to gaze longingly at white children (maybe one of them is Asian) and then ominously grinning while casting his eyes downward; there might as well be a note to "insert your child here."
I would say it's unfuckingbelievable, but, of course, it's not.
Palin: Do you know they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.
Barack Obama On: Sarah Palin
Obama: But, you know, you can't—you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.
Katie Couric On: This Election
Couric: One of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life.
Obama Ready to Lead? No. Ready to Smear? Yes.
This is absolute, unmitigated bullshit.
I believe my credentials on being willing to take Obama and his campaign to task for sexistdogwhistles, overt sexism, and failure to defend against sexism are well-established and unassailable. I have no reason nor desire to give him a free pass on anything—because, quite frankly, though I want him to beat McCain, I don't want him to do it on the back of misogyny. I have called it out when I've seen it, and I will continue to do so.
But this isn't one of those times. Obama was categorically not calling Sarah Palin a pig—which is easily discernible by viewing the original part of the speech in its entirety.
John McCain says he's about change, too. And, so, I guess his whole angle is: Watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics, we're really gonna shake things up in Washington. That's not change. That's just calling something, the same thing, something different. But, you know, you can't—you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.
Sarah Palin is not mentioned, or even alluded to, except insomuch as she's part of the McCain ticket. But Obama didn't even say "the McCain ticket"—he said "John McCain." And he was talking about John McCain's policies.
If anything, the immediately following line, which was not included in the video, "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink," is the genuinely offensive one. It's not a commonly used expression, as "lipstick on a pig" is, which makes it more suspect. "Stinky old fish" could be construed to be an attack on McCain, with the emphasis on old, or an attack on Palin, with the emphasis on fish; either way, it's a nasty turn of phrase to use against the McCain-Palin ticket, and Obama ought to strike it from his stump speech immediately.
But that line isn't what the McCain campaign is complaining about, and it's not the one they stuck into a campaign advert. Instead, they plucked out the "lipstick on a pig" line, so they could juxtapose it with Palin's "lipstick on a pitbull" line, and then label it "Barack Obama On: Sarah Palin," despite the fact he quite evidently was not talking about her.
The thing about dog whistles is that they have to make some sort of sense. In the context of Obama talking about McCain's policies, and how they don't deviate at all from Bush's policies, suddenly implying Sarah Palin's a pig makes no fucking sense. It's a total non sequitur. However, implying that McCain's dressing up the same old shit as change is like putting lipstick on a pig, well, that makes sense.
Look, if Obama had been talking about Palin being added to the ticket, and how, even though she's a woman, she embraces the same anti-feminist policies as every other bloody Republican, and that's no more real change than putting lipstick on a pig is, that would be a dog whistle. If that's the context we were talking about, this post would be very different indeed.
But that's not what happened.
And the thing is, McCain knows it. He's not so stupid that he could watch the source video and utterly fail to see the real context of Obama's use of the phrase. But he is disingenuous enough to nonetheless stick it in a campaign advert and mendaciously accuse Obama of saying it about Palin.
And what really pisses me right the fuck off about McCain's erroneously playing "the gender card" is that the next time Obama genuinely uses a sexist dog whistle (and pray to Maude that he doesn't, for a whole lotta reasons), there's just going to be one more layer of bullshit that feminists have to plow through to convince our allies that, yes, in fact, that was a dog whistle.
The Right co-opting feminist rhetoric, and twisting it into some funhouse mirror version of feminism to be used as a weapon against the Democrats is just a fucking nightmare—and deliberately so. That they will further discredit feminism in the process of destroying Obama is not a bug of this strategy, but a feature.
The Dems and their partisans left themselves wide open to it. That doesn't make it any better. Especially because I fear the lesson they'll take away is to distance themselves further from feminism in the future.
And, for the record, I really, really don't give a shit that "a couple of conservative men [you] know have mentioned that they've been having sexual fantasies about the Alaska governor."
Also, for the record, that's not "politics," under which this story is filed.
Though I grant it's more succinct than "douchebag fever dreams."
Tune in tomorrow, Shakers, Ron Paul is planning a Major Press Conference™ in Washington. According to the WSJ:
With a range of third-party candidates at his side – including the Libertarian Party's Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader, the Constitution Party's Chuck Baldwin and the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney – it's unlikely that Paul will pick just one to support. But his spokesman said to expect "something of an endorsement," with "a real effect on this fall’s election."
What's he gonna say? Who cares. I just want to know what Cynthia McKinney will be doing there. I was kind of under the impression she had higher standards. Strange bedfellows and all that, I guess.
Self-proclaimed "Herald of Truth of the Gospel," Dr. Voddie Baucham of Voddie Baucham Ministries, appears on CNN with anchor Kyra Philips and "Evangelical Speaker" Margaret Feinberg, in a segment called "Palin and the Pulpit." Baucham tells women that they should get busy being the keepers of their homes, instead of running around hogwild like that crazy liberal Sarah Palin. THE BIBLE SAYS SO!
Thanks to Petulant, as always, for the video. The transcript should be here when available.
I am getting royally ticked off with this shit. I mean, I really can't even begin to explain how much it pisses me off that I have to defend someone who evidently has no problem charging rape victims for investigating their fucking rapes, but it pisses me off even more that a woman cannot enter the public sphere without being subjected to wanton attacks just because she's got a cooter.
And I don't really give a good goddamn if Sarah Palin herself doesn't care; I do—because the people engaging in this horseshit don't reserve misogyny for women who engage in it themselves. If this election, and the spectrum of political womanhood bookended by feminist Hillary Clinton and "feminist for life" Sarah Palin, hasn't established beyond all reasonable doubt that no women who dares to have a public life is safe from misogyny, I don't know what will.
Enter the Sarah Palin Action Figure, which is being sold in a variety of outfits, including Naughty Schoolgirl and—I dunno—Killer Stripper-Spy, or something:
I refuse to name or link to the site selling this piece of shit, but you can find it with the help of Google, should you unaccountably be so inclined.
Meanwhile, the AFP photo of the adorable dolly has already made it into Yahoo's "Most Emailed Photos" section:
I don't even know what to say anymore. I would say it's like feminism never happened—except this blog is testament to the fact that it has, and we are its witnesses.
Our recipe this week comes from Shaker Karinna A. who says: "It's good (German) comfort food, and given the election season thus far, I think about everyone I've read at Shakesville could maybe use some comfort food." Indeed!
Snickerdoodle Cake
2 cups and 2 Tb flour 1 cup milk, with 1 Tb vinegar added to sour 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1/4 tsp cinnamon 1.5 cups brown sugar 1/2 cup white sugar 2 eggs 3/4 cup oil Chocolate chips
--Preheat oven to 350.
--Add vinegar to milk and let sit for a few minutes to sour. Meanwhile, mix all the dry ingredients together. Add oil, eggs, and sour milk. Mix.
--Pour into a greased, floured 9x13 inch pan. Sprinkle as many chocolate chips as desired on top. Bake 35-40 minutes.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me (include a blog link!) at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
In a skillet, over medium heat, cook cumin and coriander seeds, stirring constantly, until they release their aroma and just begin to turn golden. Remove pan from heat and transfer seeds to a mortar or a cutting board. Using a pestle or a rolling pin, crush seeds coarsely. Set aside.
In a skillet, heat butter or ghee over medium heat. Add onion, garlic and ginger root and cook for 1 minute. Add cumin and coriander seeds, cinnamon, cloves, salt, mustard seeds and cayenne and cook for 1 more minute. Remove from heat. Let cool.
Place pork in a mixing bowl. Add bay leaves and now-cooled spices. Add vinegar and stir to combine. Cover and marinate overnight in refrigerator.
The next day, transfer to slow cooker, cover and cook on Low for 8 to 10 hours or on High for 4 to 5 hours, until pork is tender. Discard bay leaves, cinnamon stick and whole cloves.
Nutritional Information Per Serving (1/8 of recipe): Calories: 181, Carbohydrate: 4 g, Fiber: 1 g, Protein: 26 g, Fat: 6 g, Sodium: 225 mg, Cholesterol: 82 mg
While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.
"In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," Fannon said.
Implicit in Fannon's comment is either a belief that most women who report rape are liars, or a genuine apathy that women are raped—because the taxpayers who suffer the "burden" of paying for rape kits have a vested interest in ensuring their community is free of rapists. Only someone who thinks rapes don't really happen, or doesn't care, would ignore the value to every taxpayer of an investment in convicting rapists.
As regards then-Mayor Palin's complicity, Bitch PhD quite correctly notes that it's fair to assume Palin supported the policy of charging victims (or their insurance companies, when possible) for the rape kits, considering that Fannon was a Palin appointee and "in a town of that size, the mayor doesn't get to plead ignorance of policies or public statements of her own chief of police."
Frankly, given that Palin doesn't support legal abortion even in the case of a pregnancy resulting from rape, and that she raised the sales tax to pay for Wasilla's clusterfucktastrophied $15 million sports complex while victims paid for rape kits, I'm not inclined to believe that she has much sympathy for rape victims at all.
A student GOP leader has resigned after the Pennsylvania Progressive blog publicized racist rhetoric he'd posted on his Facebook page:
The leader of a statewide group of college Republicans has been forced to resign after posting racially insensitive comments about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on the Internet.
Adam LaDuca, 21, the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, wrote on his Facebook page in late July that Obama has "a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)"
LaDuca, who previously had called Martin Luther King Jr. a "pariah" and a "fraud," also wrote: "And man, if sayin' someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we're ALL in trouble."
Said as if there's no qualitative difference between "he has large lips" and "he has lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami," and as if there's a relevant reason to comment on Obama's appearance, and if there's no historical context in which making exaggerations about African-American features was used to demean African-Americans, and if it's not factually untrue in the first place.
I mean, I looked through hundreds of pictures of Obama to try to find the fullest-lip image possible, and the above is what I came up with. He's not exactly Gina Torres or Angelina Jolie or Rosario Dawson—
—each of whom provide a lovely example of luscious lips. Obama's not in the same league, which just serves to highlight the racism of LaDuca's comments. (When Obama's smiling, as he is in most pictures, LaDuca's comments seem even more absurd.) Anyone looking at Obama objectively wouldn't see lips so strikingly large as to warrant comment. Only someone looking at Obama through the lens of racism sees the big-lipped caricature their bigotry has taught them to see.
Just to be perfectly clear, LaDuca's comments would have been totally inappropriate, even if Obama's lips were extremely full. But the fact that they're not underscores the real motivation for these asinine and intolerable comments.
Currently on the front page of "progressive" webzine Salon.com:
The graphic takes you to this story, which includes passages like:
Republican strategists have made it clear that the GOP's only chance to win is by reframing the election as a battle of images. And right now, Palin is the pinup queen in that war. She's feisty, she's a mom, she's from a frontier state, she guns down wolves from the air, she's a devout Evangelical, she poses as a reformer, and she insults the Washington elites.
And large numbers of Americans think she's hot.
This latter point cannot be underestimated. Iraq may be a quagmire, a new cold war may be looming, the economy may be tanking and the world may be heading toward environmental doom, but the presidential race may be decided by the perceived doability of the governor of Alaska.
Really? Are there lots of lesbians and bi wo/men who are going to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket, just because they find Palin attractive? Are there tons of centrist straight men, who were leaning toward Obama-Biden…until McCain put that hottie on the ticket? Are there bucketfuls of progressives who are going to abandon Obama-Biden or the Green Party to vote for Palin based on her looks?
I find that hard to believe.
In which case, I wonder on what basis Gary Kamiya can make the claim that the election might hinge on Palin's "perceived doability."
Of course, by the time he makes his way through an entire playbook of sexist tropes—
"The GOP is working the id and the gonads … [T]o anyone who isn't a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix … You could practically feel the crowd [at the GOP convention] getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them … Strict biblical literalism, trying to ban books, denying human responsibility for global warming and launching nasty vendettas against foes may put lead in the pencil of unreconstructed Bush supporters, but for those who haven't already signed up for the extreme GOP agenda, they're about as seductive as a great white shark in Victoria's Secret lingerie … Her bitter reactionary taste is disguised by tasty female flavoring, but after the first few sips, you know exactly what you're drinking … Joe Voter may think Palin is a babe. And at first glance, she looks like the girl next door. But on closer inspection, that house next door turns out to be the Mansion of Mistress Palin (rhymes with 'pain')."
—he concludes, "But in the end, I suspect most Americans will be driven by their pocketbooks, not their pocket rockets," thereby undermining his own premise.
The only point in raising it in the first place, then, was to provide a reason to disgorge a sticky splatter of misogyny all over the page. Must have been satisfying. I can practically smell the smoke of his post-release cigarette from here.
Did you hear that the real love story in the Palin family isn't between Levi Johnston, the "f*in' redneck" and Bristol, the Palin's 17-year-old daughter? It's all a cover-up for the truth; it's a Brokeback Mountain Alaska-style romance between Levi and Track, the Palin's oldest son who's about to ship out to Iraq: the soldier and the hockey stud. The baby story is just a cover for the love that dare not speak its name.
You haven't heard it? Well, I'm not surprised, because I just made it up.
Not a day goes by since the emergence of Gov. Sarah Palin on the national scene that I haven't heard some rumor or story passed on through e-mails or the internet and even published in some blogs or blogfeeds, the next story more sensational and weirder than the last, about the real story of Ms. Palin or her family. They aren't as ludicrous as the one I just cooked up, but they're close, including a detailed list of the books that Ms. Palin wanted banned from the local library when she was the mayor of Wasilla, that she was a card-carrying member of a secessionist party, or that she was a Pat Buchanan booster. Some of them may have a microscopic grain of truth in them, but by the time you check the facts, it's too late; the stories are already out there.
It may seem like ironic justice that it's happening to Gov. Palin after all the stories that went around -- and are still out there -- about Barack Obama being a Muslim, that Michelle Obama is really an Angela Davis-style radical, that Sen. Obama holds dual citizenship in Kenya, and any of the other patently false stories. What's even more ironic is that the people who are now furiously trying to bat down the Palin stories are the some of the same people who were pushing Barack-in-a-burnoose stories last winter and spring.
There are enough documented and corroborated stories about Gov. Palin's time in office in both Wasilla and Juneau to call into question her qualifications as Vice President and the judgment that John McCain used in picking her. However, the unsubstantiated rumors, as delicious and outrageous as they are, don't add any light to the campaign. In fact, they may backfire, generate sympathy for her, and give her an opportunity to play the victim, something the Republicans excel at.
So when I see these stories, I give them all the scrutiny I can muster: Google and Snopes come in very handy. And if the story is bullshit, I say so.
Having said that, I'm wondering how long it will be before I get an e-mail with all of the details about the trysts between Levi and Track and the massive cover-up that's protecting them until after the election.
After reading this morning that Stephen Colbert's DNA is to be shot into space to " be preserved so that aliens can clone him," I thought this would make a good question of the day: If humanity were to become extinct, and aliens attempted to resurrect us in a 'Homo Sapiens Park' type of scenario, whose genes would you want them to use?
"Cat fight." If I need to explain why the New York Times speculating over a "cat fight" between Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin is colossally inappropriate, you're probably at the wrong blog.
This is your daily reminder that 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling is still not enough to mean you won't get talked about like a dumb bitch whose primary function in this world is entertaining men.
Sarah Palin Sexism Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine. We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
I am getting royally ticked off with this shit. I mean, I really can't even begin to explain how much it pisses me off that I have to defend someone who evidently has no problem 
