To help people who were harmed by last week’s tornadoes while we were arguing politics.

American Red Cross
Mid-South Chapter
1400 Central Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
901-726-1690

United Way of the Mid-South
phone in a donation at (901) 433-4300.

h/t random babble

I think it’s almost time to lighten the mood around here a wee bit. I still want you boys to come up with my one example from the post below, but when you’ve become massively frustrated trying to find one, here’s a game to pass the time.

I have a lot of musician friends, and musicians are in bands. And bands are always breaking up and reforming. So we spend a mountain of time think up new band names. So much that it has become a party game. But with political season upon us, we’ve got a more timely game going.

Name the imaginary cabinate post.

For example:

Mike Huchabee, Secratary of: Wifely Submission, Biblical Constitution, Fundie Rednecks

Mitt Romney, Secretary of: Animal Cruelty, Flip Floppery

John Mccain, Secretary of: Toilet Paper (he’s spent years wiping off his brown nose, he’s an expert).

Have at it and you can include Dems to. Like Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of Selling Out the Poor

With a working computer- IN MY OWN HOUSE! It has been exactly one month since I sat in my chair, feet propped up on my desk and keyboard in my lap typing away. Damn it feels good.

Now I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe I’ve been too hard on you boys. So I have a proposition. You find me one instance of a main stream male politician or media figure complaining about the sexist tactics used against Hillary. Just one. It can be print, blog, video, a transcript. Whatever. And I’ll take back telling you to go fuck yourselves. Just one guy who publically decries the misogyny corps Hillary bashing, and I will be impressed.

Just one. If this is an election that really isn’t about sexism, it should be easy to find a male public figure who thinks that Hillary nutcrackers are disgusting. Just one.

Just one. I would love to be proved wrong. I would love to be told that all this hate that is spewed towards women isn’t real. I can fix that. But without some people with penises who are willing to publically cry bullshit, we women can’t fight sexism by ourselves.

Just one.

I would still be supporting John Edwards. Hearing him talk made me think I was back in church – but in a good way. He’s the preacher I wish I was.

And for a while, even though I was bothered by supporting the “white guy” in this particular contest, he was my candidate.

Then I realized he didn’t have the chops. All his pretty speeches couldn’t cover up the fact that he had no real plan to get us out of the mess we’re in.

When it became apparent the voters were aware of this fact, he changed his tune to “electability,” and I knew what he was really saying was: “you can’t trust the VOTERS to elect the GIRL or the BLACK GUY”

And if the Democrats as a party are going to distinguish themselves from the Republicans, I think TRUSTING THE VOTERS is a damn good place to start.

So I’ll work to elect whichever candidate gets the nomination.

I think Hillary Clinton is the the BEST QUALIFIED to be president.

She’s been doing this work for decades, since college, years before she met her husband.

She’s faced some of the worst slime the right can throw at a person and, not only survived, but come out a winner.

This is a woman who, as First Lady, stood up to the Chinese government on their own turf and said “Women’s rights are HUMAN RIGHTS” despite pressure from the world’s other remaining superpower to soft-pedal her remarks

She is a brilliant, savvy, negotiator, and one. tough. lady.

Barack Obama is young(ish) and idealistic, and there’s something appealing about him, and he’s got a lot of people out voting in the primary who maybe wouldn’t have come out to vote otherwise.

He’s worth some consideration, and I’m more impressed with him than I was initally.

I share his opposition to the Iraq war, but I’m tired of his carping on how he “opposed it from the beginning”   He wasn’t in office to vote for or against it, for one thing. And the lecturing threatens to alienate voters who initially, if reluctantly admitted our involvement might be a necessary evil, myself included. Now we ALL know it was just evil.

Please go fuck yourself.

I’m voting for Hillary. For the first time in the history of this country, there is someone running who understands how much different it is for girls. Some who understands that we spend a whole hell of a lot of time between the ages of 12 and 50 worrying about getting pregnant, being pregnant, having a baby or not having a baby, taking care of our children and all the other stuff we are saddled with for less money and no power.

I totally understand why African Americans would vote for Obama for the same types of reasons. And I don’t begrudge them that. Actually- HALEFUCKINLUJA. For the first time in history the presidential election won’t be all about the old white men when November comes around, regardless of who wins the primary.

But you white male dems piss me off. You say it’s not about gender. You say it’s about electability. Of course, you said it was about electability last time. That’s why we got Kerry- who lost, btw. And we won’t even talk about you big fucking whiners who voted for Nader in 2000. While you were all bitching that there was no difference between dems and reps, those of us with ovaries know exactly what the difference is since it impacts us so much harder than it does you.

Hillary has her flaws. She tends to run towards the center, she’s a free trader, she won’t admit Iraq was a mistake. But she is also a hell of a fighter. She’s been through damn near close to 16 years of national scrutiny, humiliation, slander, and every kind of rank sludge that can be thrown at her has been. She can’t win for losing, she’s too cold or too emotional. She’s too dowdy or she’s showing her cleavage. She’s a ball breaking bitch who controlled all of her husband’s decisions when he was president or she’s a whimp who can’t keep him in line. If there is another person out there who is capable of taking that much crap and still being elected to dogcatcher- I’d like to see them. We white women are pulling for Hillary cause we are impressed. We go through minor versions of that shit everyday of our lives, but to see someone handle it with such grace and strength in the public eye is awesome.

So back to you boys. I would understand if the white male vote split 50/50 between Obama and Hillary, but your running to Obama just proves how much sexism there still is on the liberal side of the party. The code phrases of electability and likability don’t fly anymore. We’ve bought into that so many times so you could have a candidate you were comfortable with. We women make up the majority of the democratic party. We are the base. We count. And Hillary is plenty electable to us, it’s about time you all shut up and do what we have done for years, suck it up and vote for someone who doesn’t share the same sex parts as you. It’s only fair.

And for someone who says it all way more elegantly than I- GO READ THIS NOW

In all the hullaballo surrounding the very important question of WHO gets to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. next January, let’s not overlook who we send to DC to work with her(or him)

The following senators’ terms expire this year.
Check them out & see who’s worth re-electing, and who needs to get fired.

Democrats
Baucus, Max (D-MT)
Biden, Joseph R., Jr. (D-DE)
Durbin, Richard (D-IL)
Harkin, Tom (D-IA)
Johnson, Tim (D-SD)
Kerry, John F. (D-MA)
Landrieu, Mary L. (D-LA)
Lautenberg, Frank R. (D-NJ)
Levin, Carl (D-MI)
Pryor, Mark L. (D-AR)
Reed, Jack (D-RI)
Rockefeller, John D., IV (D-WV)

Republicans
Alexander, Lamar (R-TN)
Allard, Wayne (R-CO)
Chambliss, Saxby (R-GA)
Cochran, Thad (R-MS)
Coleman, Norm (R-MN)
Collins, Susan M. (R-ME)
Cornyn, John (R-TX)
Craig, Larry E. (R-ID)
Dole, Elizabeth (R-NC)
Domenici, Pete V. (R-NM)
Enzi, Michael B. (R-WY)
Graham, Lindsey (R-SC)
Hagel, Chuck (R-NE)
Inhofe, James M. (R-OK)
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY)
Roberts, Pat (R-KS)
Sessions, Jeff (R-AL)
Smith, Gordon H. (R-OR)
Stevens, Ted (R-AK)
Sununu, John E. (R-NH)
Warner, John (R-VA)

You can find your Representative here
The House website wasn’t as cut-and dried easy to find who was elected when, but when I get a chance to do some looking, I’ll try to post a link.

This is awesome news. I must admit to being a wee bit of a geek about cell workings. My favorite part of science class was drawing cell diagrams and I love finding out about the awesome things our cells can do. (Yes I am a dork, shut up).

A few years ago (in a botany class of all places. I have the world’s largest black thumb but for some reason I thought botany would be like a romantic Merchant ivory film where we spent hours drawing pretty pictures of plants and their parts. Instead we had to ACTUALLY GROW THINGS! I can’t do that.) I saw a film about how cancer and HIV are the flip sides of the same coin. Normal, healthy cells will kill themselves when they’ve outlived their usefulness. This is called Programed Cell Death. In cancer, the suicide mechanism gets shut off and the cells that should be dead build up into tumors. In HIV, cells that are healthy commit suicide for no reason. So it makes total sense that cancer and HIV research has a lot in common.

But HIV is a smart virus. It adapts so that drug therapy becomes less effective and it acts a bit like a cancer when it gets into microphage cells, making them live much longer than they are supposed too rather than killing them off so that there is always a residual pool of HIV in the body.

So along comes the drug miltefosine, which is already used to treat leishmaniasis, an parasite infection caused by sandfly bites. Miltefosine kills microphage cells and may work to deplete residual HIV pools. Because miltefosine is already approved for use in humans, testing can be fast tracked to see if it will work in HIV patients. Yay!