More proof that I was right all along.
Speaking with reporters, Obama disputed that he is altering views.
“I get tagged as being on the left and, when I simply describe what has been my position consistently, then suddenly people act surprised,” he said. “But there hasn’t been substantial shifts there.”
Now will you all kindly go fuck yourselves. He ain’t no progressive folk hero.
Mostly from Shakes cause I’m lazy
Hurray! After 6 years in captivity, Ingrid Bettancourt is finally free.
Go Read Liss and Zuzu’s fabulous two parter on Destroying Hillary in the Guardian
Part one
Part two
Reason number 874 why I am writing a book about a teenage girl who gets pregnant and has an abortion- because if we were to go by the crap that counts as entertainment in this country you would think abortion never existed.
I’ve rewritten this post in my head about a zillion times now. It’s one of those swirling ideas in my head that really needs more time to properly set up, but I’m impatient as all get out. So you get the raw brain bits.
I told Deek in one of our email spats that “I am the canary in the fucking coal mine” but that’s not it exactly. The canary at least gets to die off early. Instead, I think that I (and quite a few angry Anti-Obama Dems) are the frogs that feel the hot water first. We’re swimming around in a pot that looks like a jacuzzi and everytime we complain that the water just keeps getting hotter, the other frogs say “Get over it. Chilax. It’s a jacuzzi baby. It’s supposed to be warm”.
Thing is, we still boil with the other frogs, even if we know it’s coming.
Those distinctions that once made the Democratic Party better than the Republicans are gone. We say “hey, what about being the Big Tent Party. You can’t be the Big Tent party if you’re kicking people out for being working class or brown” and the other frogs say “Ahh we don’t need them”.
So we say “Hey we can’t be the party of equality if we’re insulting millions of women” and the other frogs say “Get over it you angry bitches”.
We say “What about privacy and freedom” and the other frogs swallow hard and try to pretend like the FISA vote never happened.
Then we say “What about separation of Church and State?” and a few of the other frogs throw a tantrum thinking they’ve been had. But we didn’t really think it was a surprise. The water’s been getting pretty hot in here for awhile.
Obama’s turning up the heat on the pot of water that is the Democratic Party. And we all boil together. We can leave the party, we can vote for someone else (or not at all) and we can hold our noses and vote for him. The result is still the same. We all boil together.
Obama wants to expand Bush’s faith based program funding.
Not a surprise to me. I never thought Obama was a progressive. Actually I’ve been calling him a Republican on economics for a long time. Now I have proof that he really is just a Black Republican.
I wonder how many back bends the Koolaid drinkers will have to do to make this policy fit in with their idea of Obama as the Great Progressive Uniter! THough they do think of him as a messiah. Perhaps faith based programs just continue the expansion of the cult.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea that Obama is not responsible for the behavior of the screaming misogynists who support him. I mean, who can control internet creeps anyways, right?
Except that there is a bigger problem. You are responsible for the kind of environment you create. That is why I am diligent about screening out misogynist and MRA comments. I did allow a comment through on the trans kids post that was obviously transphobic (play acting?) to refute it. It’s a delicate choice sometimes between allowing for discussion and giving room to refute arguments, and just letting the asshole take over. Judging from the numbers of repeat comments from misogynists who are banned and sent to permanent comment moderation, I have been pretty good at choosing correctly so far.
Obama may not be personally trolling blogs that don’t support him. But he has created an environment where stifling the opposition and harassing women are seen as appropriate tools for political gain.
Last week Redstar and I did an email interview with the Black Snob about my anti Obama feelings. She’s got the post up now.
Go check it out. And peruse the Black Snob’s site while you’re at it. She funny and erudite with a good mix of pop culture and politics.
Last night I watched the Barbara Walters special on transkids with my Kid. These kids were so cute and so brave, I just wanted to bundle them up and keep them from everything mean in the world. And I’m not even *that* maternal. Kid, as usual, handled it exceptionally well. He hated that people were mean to them, and he was all “If I had a trans kid, I’d let them pick who they wanted to be”.
Contrast to a few friends from the other night who think “it” is the appropriate pronoun to use for people who just won’t pick a gender and stick with it. Ughhhh. When I pointed out that it is just good manners to use the pronoun that the person uses for themselves, they seemed to get it a little. But with exceptions.
“Except for V_____, it doesn’t know what it is.”
“It” is not a word used for human beings. “It” is the ultimate in othering. “It” is how we describe lifeless things like toasters and sweaters. And when you turn a human into an “It”, it’s no wonder that violence and murder of trans people is high. Can you murder a toaster? I hate “It”.
Is it so hard to ask? If someone is skewing the gender binary, and you are not sure how to address them, I am pretty sure that they would prefer to be asked rather than to be treated like a household object.
Words mean things. And how could anyone ever want to hurt this sweet, sad girl is beyond me.
Since there are growing numbers of Pro Hillary blogs getting locked out as spam I went ahead and created a backup blog at wordpress.
I am not ready to move to Word Press entirely (though I love love love their comment mod system)because A. this started as a group blog (and sometimes still is) and I haven’t figured out how to change the post authors over there yet. So far it looks like i wrote everything- and I don’t want to take that kind of credit. Also, I don’t have the money to pay to upgrade Haloscan comments so I can export them to WordPress (and I’m not 100% sure that can be done. ) and I don’t want to lose them.
So I’ll keep posting here for now. But should something horrible happen, plan b is in place.
That giant pork roast is still alive and kicking, though I think for just one more day. By the time payday rolls around next week I think the kid and I will be so sick of pork products that we may even eschew bacon for a while (Not Bacon!!!!).
When I was in high school I learned a super easy recipe for fried rice that I have modified over the years so that it can be made with damn near anything that is left floating in the fridge (including bacon!). The trick, for the meat eaters anyways, is to cook everything in some kind of meat fat if you can. Bacon grease works very well. I used fat from the pork roast.
First, start the rice. Basic white rice is fine. I throw in a tablespoon of this Croatian soup starter that I have called Vegeta, but you can substitute some chicken of beef bullion (or leave it plain) if you like. While the rice is simmering you cook everything else.
So I took some of that congealed jelly/fat stuff that’s coating the bottom of the roast pan and melted it in my giant skillet/wok. Mix with a little regular vegetable oil (olive oil is too strongly flavored) to keep from burning. Then add your chopped veggies. Carrots (sliced on the diagonal so that there is more surface area getting heated and they cook fast)go first cause they are hardest. Then white onion sliced into long thin strips and some celery. You can also throw in whatever other veggies may be near death in the fridge, even thin strips of cabbage. Just remember that the veggies go in the pan in order of hardness so that nothing gets over cooked. Lastly I added some shredded bits of the pork roast and a few dashes of soy sauce. Then I turned the pan to low while waiting for the rice to finish.
If you have an egg or two, now is a good time to give it a quick scramble. If you have the space in your pan- just push all the veggies and meat to the side and scramble the eggs in the middle. If not, use a separate pan and add back into the veggies when they are cooked. Or skip the eggs if you’re out of them or don’t like them (we were out).
Once the rice is done, add a little extra fat to the meat and veggies, turn the heat up and dump the rice into the mix. Stir and heat till the rice gets that lovely brownish fried color, adding a bit more soy sauce to help the process. The viola, poverty fried rice. You can garnish with some chopped scallions if you like.
(When I learned to make this in high school it was with bacon and scallions and Chinese 5 spice. I don’t like the combo of 5 spice with savory dishes, so I changed it. But if you want to try something a bit different, give it a go)
ETA: Yes, you could even put cauliflower in this if you are an evil evil bastard.
They are power washing the outside of my house. It’s very very noisy. Teeth grindingly noisy. It was okay at first, but it’s been going on for hours now and I have a headache and I’m cranky.
Noise pollution sucks.
That is all for now. I am going to go hide my head under a pillow and weep until it stops.