The Republic Windows and Doors workers who locked themselves in the factory to get their back pay and benefits have won!

I wonder if i should stage my own little sit in at the lab here?

Myers (former Clinton Press Secretary- remember when press secretary didn’t equal dancing clueless monkey assface?) on the Favreau nastiness

“I can’t stop thinking about this picture, and I confess I find it really upsetting. And, no, it’s not because I don’t have a sense of humor. I like to think I have a well-earned reputation for often irreverent, sometimes ill-advised humor. But I’m not laughing now”

And to Obama- how many of your lackeys are going to keep making sexism part of your schtick? Cause I’m bored to tears by it. Really, dudes. Bush was/is HORRIBLE for women, but at least he never treated his attempts to put us little ladies back in our barefoot and pregnant place as a humorous endeavor.

Some of you may have heard about Republic Windows & Doors. For those who haven’t, here’s the short version:

Republic Windows and Doors went out of business, giving their employees only 3 days notice instead of the federally required 60 days. Then it came out that Bank of America, the great socialist institution known recently for getting a piece of the cushy federal bailout, told the company that they wouldn’t extend their credit so they could pay the workers the 60 days of wages plus back vacation and sick pay that was owed to them.

So the workers took over the factory and refused to leave until they got their pay. Yay! Workers of the world unite!

But now the state of Illinois is refusing to do business with Bank of America until the extend the credit and pay the workers. From Il governor:

On the one hand, powerful special interest get the money to bail them out, the banks, and yet the purpose of that money was supposed to be to provide a line of credit to businesses like this to keep workers working and keep people employed, and yet the Bank of America has yet to step up and say they’re going to be helpful to this company

Hey BofA- you fuckers! Please eat shit and die. And to the Republic workers, I am right there with ya.

I had one of the most happy making phone conversations today with Ruth.

Ring!

Me: Hey sugar plumb! What’s up?

Ruth: Do you want leftover veggie stew for dinner?

Me: Oh hell yes!

Ruth: Ok, I’m going to pick up some rice. Oh you need rice for fried rice too, don’t ya?

Me: Oh yeah.

Ruth: Do you need anything else?

Me: A winning lottery ticket. Oh and soda. I will clean the nastiest thing in the world for you if you buy me soda.

Ruth: Sure thing.

Now this may sound like a simple conversation between roomies who happen to like each other, but for me this is the first time since I was little that the day to day responsibility of dinner isn’t always mine. And Ruth has an esp like sense for when dinner is just too much for me to deal with.

Dinner seems like a simple thing. People gotta eat. They like to eat. But feeding yourself (and a growing boy-man, and often a large hairy boyfriend) is not exactly simple. Especially when you are super poor. I probably spend an hour everyday just planning for meals.

First- there’s the money part. Ok so I have $40 bucks till the 15th, I also have $13 on a Safeway giftcard, but Safeway is an hour out of the way by bus, plus I need an extra $3.75 to get there and back (by bus). Let’s see, $40. I need 8 days worth of dinners plus breakfast and lunch for the weekend. That’s $5 a day. Not gonna make it on that. Fuck. So let’s see what I can do that will get us close.

Second- What have we already got? There’s a leftover ham bone in the freezer. $2 worth of split peas and you’ve got soup. That’s 2 dinners. There is the dregs of a pork roast (mainly fat with a bit of crackly bits in it). If Ruth buys rice then I just need a couple of bucks worth of veggies and we’ve got fried rice. That will only do one dinner. But we’ve got 3 down and I’m at about $10 bucks. Oh and there’s frozen chicken enchiladas in the freezer. That’s 4 dinners. And leftover veggie stew tonight. That’s 5.

And that is as far ahead as i can think right now. And I’m ignoring one big problem. I need lunch and caffeine. Ugh!!!!!!!!!

Now having money makes this problem only slightly better. You still have to spend way too much time thinking about, planning, and shopping for food. It is tedious. Yet it is a job that most women do everyday for their families without anyone giving a second thought to the time and effort that goes into it. I mean we eat every day. Something that you do everyday shouldn’t be that difficult. But I have been known to snap when the Kid asks me for the millionth time at 3pm “What’s for dinner?”

Sometimes, I just want to live in a world where food shoots magically out of a tube and no one ever has to do dishes or scrub pots. In lieu of that I would like credit reflected in my social security check when I am older for all the hours that I have spent ensuring that the next generation doesn’t die of malnutrition. Just cause it’s women’s work doesn’t mean it’s not real work.

Ouyang Dan asked me today if I ever imagine the voices of of bloggers while I read them. Sometimes I do, if they have a particularly strong and personal writing style, but not always.

It turns out OD does hear voices (hahahaha) and that my writing voice is very stern and serious.

HA!

In real life- I sound like Minnie Mouse on crack. Or at least I think so. I spent years as a wee girl in speech therapy because i was so nervous when speaking that my voice would squeak and they were afraid I’d break a vocal cord if I kept talking that high. I’m not, by any means, a nervous speaker now, but my voice still sounds like a little girl’s. Which is one of the reasons for the smoking and drinking, I’m trying to get a boozey, raspy, grown up sound to my voice.

So peeps- what about you would shock us on the internet?

But I love Alison Janey as a sodomizing prop 8 proponent! And The Kid looks like a miniature Jack Black.

A letter sent to Dan Savage at the Stranger (yes- Savage is a doochenozzle):

I was wondering if you or any of your readers could exaplin why so many women are so defensive with compliments.

I’ve on several occasions been at the store and have seen some very nice looking women of all size, shapes, color, age, I think you get what I’m so meaning, and I’ve said to them you have great hips, or other tastefully ways of complimenting them and it seems that a lot of them are offended by it. Now I’m a guy who really likes women, Period, I’m happily married 30 yrs. And my wife and I both flirt and expect it to go no further and if it is invited by the one flirted to we kindly decline as has happened only once to each of us and we flirt even when with each other. We mean no harm in this and we feel if someone is looking at the one your with they must be pretty good + you should be happy about it. We have often complimented the same sex as we are and see nothing wrong with it but it’s all the same.

If anyone can answer this it would be appreciated. Enjoy your work.

Roy

Here’s the thing Roy, women were not put on earth for you to oggle. Our sole reason for existence is not to be fucked. Actually, we spend a whole shitload of our lives doing other things.

So when you go out of your way to creepily leer at some woman and then get offended when she thinks you’re a misogynistic asswipe for “complimenting” her by letting her know exactly which part of her body you are going to use for wank fodder later, you’re the wrong one. Not the woman who is acting rationally to a strange dude turning her into body parts to rub one out to.

And this holds true to you fuckwads who think you are being friendly when you tell women you don’t know to “smile”. I have a very carefully crafted, stompy city girl walk and scowl that I do JUST so I don’t accidentally encourage unwanted attention from every shitface on the street who wants to comment on my tits or ass. I am not smiling because I don’t want you to think that I like you. It’s a conscious thing, my not smiling.

I have never, not even once, gone out with, flirted with, or given my number to, a random wankstain who thought that “complimenting” me as a stranger was the way to my heart. I don’t know any women who have. So let’s end that little fallacy now. “Complimenting” strange women is viewed by most of us as the threatening behavior of a dude who wants to wear our skin later. So stop it.

Is this parochialism, this timorousness and lack of imagination, inevitable in a period like our own, when the unknown looms menacingly and one natural reaction is certainly to draw back, to find refuge in the familiar? Here, the New Deal years can be instructive.

Neo anythings have not yet proven themselves to be good. NeoCons are simply old Cons who want even less responsibility for the messes they create. NeoLibs are no better, having been slapped silly by the invisible hand of the market into believing in it’s all powerful righteousness.

So why is Obama so keen on replaying old broken NeoLib records? If shock doctrine capitalism is really the most effective weapon of economic change, why can’t we use NOW to New Deal ourselves into more stable and just future? Why are we going to go back to methods that have gotten us into this problem to begin with? Why is a man so determined to be audacious so timid when it comes to real audacity?

We need a New Deal. We need the income inequality between the vast numbers of us and the tiny numbers of them (with money & power) to be fixed. We need jobs. And healthcare. And education. And to fix the environment and the banking system and so much more.

So what’s with the same old same old from the Obama camp? Why are we using some of the architects of the current crisis to fix the problems they created (and that many refuse to acknowledge were even problems to begin with).