What one person who has never held public office would you like to see run?
It can be any public office (though you're not required to specify which), and the person you'd like to see run does not have to be someone famous. Obviously, we'd all like to see Chuck Norris run for president (no, we wouldn't), and those sorts of answers are very fun, but please feel welcome to answer that you'd love to see your mom or your brother or your BFF run for office, too.
Given the political make-up of the coming 112th Congress (which will convene on Jan. 3, 2011), I have a suggestion for you Democratic members of the Disablist-Slur-Involving-Poultry Session of the 111th Congress:
Make Sweeping Campaign Finance Reform Job One!!!!!eleventy-one!!!!
Personally, I'd prefer the following (for a start):
The president held a press conference this afternoon to discuss the relationship between his hat and his hands. I give Obama a zero for stealing off of other people's papers.
There were so many highlights things that happened that it's hard to focus linger, glassy-eyed at one of them. That said, I'm really fond of the part where Obama said the economy wasn't going well in part because the mean old Democrats professional left somebody or other had made businesses feel like the "bad guys." He used BP as an example.
NPR followed coverage of the press conference with a story about the Department of Labor's efforts to shut down a coal mine in Kentucky because the dudes who run Massey Energy are, in fact, bad guys. The web version of the story includes a photo of what I presume is President Obama contemplating the deaths of 29 workers at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine. Oops your timing position sucks.
So Obama and other Democrats have responded to their worst drubbing since Benjamin Grumbles was vigorously matriculating at Emmett Q. Crumblecorn's Preparatory School for Fancy Lads. But what do you think?
This blogaround brought to you by wheat-ear pennies.
Recommended Reading:
Andy: Lesbian Couple Challenges UK's Ban on Gay Marriage
The Advocate: Obama's Latest DADT Promise
Angry Asian Man: On DVD: The Goonies 25th Anniversary Edition
Digby: Reflexive Hippie Bashing For A Thousand
Archie McPhee: Bon Appetit
Leave your links in comments...
Greg Mitchell just tweeted that Rush Limbaugh feted the outgoing (and first female) Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, by playing "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead."
Stay classy, Rush.
Wandering through Baltimore Sunday night, I happened upon The Baltimore Holocaust Memorial. It's stunning, and harrowing, and in the coldness of the Fall night air, it enveloped me, as each piece of the memorial revealed its significance.
At the front, facing Lombard street, is the sculpture I photographed below. I started reading the words cut into it, "Those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it" nearly wrapping around the entire piece. I wasn't much looking at the top of the sculpture, focusing instead on the words. When my eyes finally went up, I froze, as the full horror of the work settled into my consciousness.
(N.B.: the image below the fold (for most browsers) may be upsetting to some people.)
Not too far away is a quote, taking prominence over the square, from Primo Levi. And somewhere between that, and the sculpture, is a plaque with a short essay on the Holocaust.
It's unflinching, unforgiving, perhaps as it should be. Here is the text in its entirety:
THE HOLOCAUST
The German attempt to annihilate European Jewry between 1933 and 1945, took the lives of six million Jews. Although genocide was not unprecedented, the Holocaust was unique not just in its numerical magnitude. Never before had a state government attempted to annihilate an entire people who were not military enemies but a defenseless civilian population. Gypsies and German handicapped were marked for death as part of the holocaust. Nazi Germany tyrannized homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish nationalists and resistance fighters. Millions died as a result.
Elected by the German people in 1933, the Nazi party quickly instituted a totalitarian regime built on pseudo-scientific racial and anti-Semitic principals. The German people ardently supported the Nazi regime until the latter stages of World War II, when defeat was imminent. Hundreds of thousands of German citizens and nationals of other countries allied with the Germans were involved in the killing process either as guards at camps, members of mobile killing units, architects who designed gas chambers, engineers who built crematoria, railway personnel and bureaucrats who oversaw the distribution of the victims possessions’ including the gold in their teeth. Although many perpetrators claimed they had no choice, there is no record of anyone being punished for refusing to participate in the killings.
Though the Holocaust occurred as part of World Was II, it was in fact something distinct. Its objectives often directly impeded the military effort. Trains, materiel, soldiers and munitions needed for the war were used instead to deport Jews and kill death camp inmates. During the last twelve months of the war, when it was obvious that Germany was going down to defeat, the pace of killing continued and in certain cases increased in intensity.
Many countries and neutral international agencies were aware of what was being done to Jews and other victims. Few, if any, were willing to speak out in protest. To compound the horror, most countries closed their doors to those who tried to escape the Holocaust.
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies
Emory University
There is more information on the memorial here.
"There was a spirited discussion in my office elevator this morning about inequality and injustice, but unfortunately I think it dealt with who got bounced from Dancing With the Stars. So we've got another four years of GOP leadership (term loosely defined) in Texas."—Shaker norbizness, in comments.
When the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which granted corporations, unions, and nonprofits the latitude to donate freely to political campaigns and thus effectively bankroll federal elections, I grimly mused: "It is not hyperbole to say this decision is paving the way for America to become a fully-fledged corporatocracy, which, depending on your perspective, is a sibling to fascism or a version of it. ...This decision further diminishes any voice that isn't backed with a fuckload of money. Someday, we may look back on this day and realize it was the day our democracy died."
Last night, three-term Democrat and stalwart progressive Russ Feingold (Wisconsin) lost his US Senate seat. And even the conservative Wall Street Journal notes the terrible irony that Feingold, who co-authored the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation that made accepting and making unlimited soft money contributions a federal crime, was defeated by a Republican opponent on whose behalf outside groups spent nearly $3 million.
A WaPo analysis shows 92 percent of the outside spending has supported the Republican. The impact has been obvious: The Wesleyan Media Project said there have been more commercials about the Senate race in Wisconsin than in any state outside Nevada.The untold story of this election is that the Tea Partiers are nothing but useful tools for corporate interests and conservative billionaires. It's just the Moral Majority/Religious Right/Conservative Christian and other alliterative religious euphemisms repackaged for an era in which Jesus isn't playing in Peoria like he used to.
"I've always been a target in this stuff," Feingold said during a recent campaign stop. "And this year, I'm getting the full dose: over $2 million in these ads [criticizing him] that used to not be legal."
Trevor Potter, a former FEC chairman who was the attorney for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaigns, said there was already a "boatload of spending" by corporate interests in elections before Citizens United. But the ruling made clear that there were no legal obstacles to their participation, he said. "Citizens United put a Supreme Court Good-Housekeeping-seal-of-approval on corporations being allowed in elections."
Iowa voters oust justices who made same-sex marriage legal. Sadface.
Of course, that's a dishonest headline from our dishonest media (CNN, in this case). It's not "Iowa voters" who ousted the justices, which disappears all the progressives, including the very people whose marriage equality was granted by the justices, who voted to retain them. It's "Homophobic Iowa voters." Or "Anti-Gay Iowa voters." Or "Anti-Equality Iowa voters." Or any variation on that theme which doesn't seek to turn bigots, whose bigotry was fueled by a hate group special interest group pouring money into a campaign to vote the justices off the ballot, into The Voters while erasing the existence of everyone else.
This is how it works. Privileged people are normalized, and non-privileged people (and their allies) are marginalized.
By the simple exclusion of an adjective. Over and over.
No one even bothers to question it. And then we wonder why the Protectors of Privilege keep getting voted in to run the nation, despite their overt antipathy for so many of its people.
[Trigger warning for body policing, fat hatred, heterocentrism, ciscentrism, misogyny, racism, disablism.]
Another awesome entry from repeat offender Psychology Today: The Truth About Beauty.
I'll just quote a short passage from the opening paragraph to give you the flavor (Spoiler Alert: It's garbage-flavored!):
If you want to snag a fish, you can't just slap the water with your hand and yell, "Jump on my hook, already!" Yet, if you're a woman who wants to land a man, there's this notion that you should be able to go around looking like Ernest Borgnine: If you're "beautiful on the inside," that's all that should count. Right.I'll also note, one again, that it is feminists, of course, who have the terrible reputation, but it isn't we who consider all men to be mindless servants to their reproductive parts.
I thought we got rid of this guy, but here he comes again, to haunt us with his sneering visage and petulant whinging, like some kind of ornery specter.
President George W. Bush says that when he heard Kanye West say, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," "it was one of the most disgusting moments in my Presidency."In fact, according to his his forthcoming memoir, Decision Points, he told Former First Lady Laura Bush at the time that it happened that it was not "one of the" worst moments of his presidency, but THE worst. Which is interesting, because, let us recall, Kanye West famously uttered that criticism after Bush's catastrophic megafail responding to the Katrina disaster.
Bush has taped an interview [to promote Decision Points] with Matt Lauer that will air on a special prime time Matt Lauer Reports on NBC Nov. 8. ... The subjects of the interview are wide-ranging, but the former President is very passionate on the subject of West's criticism of the way Bush handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. NBC has released some quotations from the interview.Charming as ever.
"He called me a racist," Bush tells Lauer. "And I didn't appreciate it then. I don't appreciate it now. It's one thing to say, 'I don’t appreciate the way he's handled his business.' It's another thing to say, 'This man's a racist.' I resent it, it's not true."
Lauer quotes from Bush's new book: "Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust." Lauer adds, "You go on: 'I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low.'"
President Bush responds: "Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt 'em when I heard 'em, felt 'em when I wrote 'em and I felt 'em when I'm listening to 'em."
Lauer: "You say you told Laura at the time it was the worst moment of your Presidency?"
Bush: "Yes. My record was strong I felt when it came to race relations and giving people a chance. And it was a disgusting moment."
Lauer: "I wonder if some people are going to read that, now that you've written it, and they might give you some heat for that. And the reason is this — "
Bush [interrupting]: "Don't care."
Lauer: "Well, here's the reason. You're not saying that the worst moment in your Presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You're saying it was when someone insulted you because of that."
Bush: "No, and I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There's a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple."
The GOP has recaptured the house, in what (anti-choice! and anti-gay! not that THAT has any relevance, ahem) Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine describes as "a message that change has not happened fast enough."
"Victories Suggest Wider Appeal of Tea Party" says the New York Times, which the Democrats should be reading as: "Victories Suggest Widespread Disillusionment with Republican-Light Policies, and, Hey, Don't a Lot of Those Tea Partiers Show Up in Videos Actually LIKING Medicare and Social Security, Which Suggests They're Really in Favor of MORE PROGRESSIVE Policies, and Are Really Just Enamored With a Movement That Appeals to Their Sense of Frustration, Irrespective of the Actual Policy Positions, So Maybe We Should MOVE FUCKING LEFT FOR A CHANGE?!"
Naturally, they will not read it that way. Right, Evan Bayh?
Have at it.
UPDATE: Greg Mitchell's got a shit-ton of good election links here.
[H/T for Kaine quote to Shaker Kevin Wolf.]
What is your favorite non-political blog?
I realize there will be a lot of blogs that are borderline political, and discuss politics and/or political/cultural issues even if not explicitly or regularly, so don't be too concerned about exact delineations. If you don't think of a blog as "a political blog," it counts.
