After seeing an Army recruitment commercial tonight the conversation went like this:

Me: Dude, McCain is going to be the next president so you HAVE to do well enough in school to get a scholarship and go to college or you will be fighting in whatever war he starts next.

Ms. J: Really, you think McCain is going to win?

Me; Yeah, that’s a given. The only person who consistently beats McCain is Hillary. Obama occasionally beats him, but that’s before the Republicans and media start tearing him to shreds. Obama’s toast. But Kid, I’m serious. If you don’t have perfect grades you are going to get drafted into a war. Do you understand?

Kid: Yes Mom. But is there any chance Hillary could be the president?

Me: Realistically, only 1 in a thousand. But we’ll keep fighting for her.

A McCain presidency is going to cost me way more than it will cost most of you. We are already at the bottom of poverty. And I have a child who will graduate high school in 2013. He is prime war fodder.

I don’t want things to get worse for us, but i am willing to sacrifice in the short term (hell, what’s another 4 years of struggle after 8)in order to have real improvement. Real democracy. Real equality. Real opportunity. Not some dog and unity pony show without a chance of winning the White House of of making things better if they do win. The Democratic party is starting to remind me of the pigs in Animal farm. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, but they were blue instead of red.

is what one of my students said today.

That’s not true for most of us. The student happens to have hit the privilege lotto, he’s an able bodied white male. He can create his own reality. He doesn’t have to see racism, sexism, homophobia, abelism, and since he’s still young, ageism, or classism.

But for a large portion of us, we don’t get that option. Regardless of whether I am a feminist or fundy Christian housewife, if I forget that my reality is that I am a woman, I can be hurt. Killed even. I don’t get to make sexism not part of my reality. When I try- something will happen to throw my femaleness back in my face as if I am less than, other, outside. I’ll be chased and threatened when I don’t respond to cat calls. I’ll be stalked and harassed when I try to have my own political opinion.

That is my reality. I put myself in peril to imagine otherwise.

But I do imagine it can get better. That’s why i fight. Thats why I will turn and confront the cat callers. That’s why I don’t shut up even when stalkers get close.
That’s why I end up in repetitive arguments with people to get them to someday come around to the idea that sexism is bad. And in tiny amounts, it works.

I can’t create my own reality, but someday maybe I won’t have to imagine a world where a walk to work or the grocery store isn’t fraught with peril.

There seems to be some misconception that pro-Hillary means anti-Obama by default.

They are two separate issues. If I was JUST pro Hillary, I would do what I do every time my preferred candidate loses a primary election (see Jerry Brown, John Edwards, etc) and vote for the Dem in the GE, even if they weren’t my first choice.

But this is beyond all that. This has become a fight for what the meaning of the Democratic party is. Are we the party of inclusiveness, of voting rights, of level playing fields and equal opportunity.

Or are we the party of snobbery. of vote hijacking, of back room deals and hate of those who are less (women, the poor).

I believe that Hillary represents the best of the Democratic party. She is inclusive. She is Roosevelt. She is the promise of better days ahead for everyone.

I believe that Obama will do more than just ignore people like me. I believe that faction of the Democratic party will work to silence the one way that I have any kind of political power – my vote. My state already has the problem of an undemocratic caucus that gets all the delegates and a democratic primary that gets none. I don’t want to see that kind of problem spread. I don’t want to see other states disenfranchised like Florida and Michigan. I don’t want our only protection from political forces to be silenced.

And that is why I will not vote Dem. if Obama is the nominee. Not because of the way my candidate has been treated, but because it means that the party has become something that I can no longer support.

Two different issues.

Go vote already.

Here’s what my letter to Gov. Gregoire and Rep. Jim McDermott said:

I urge you to switch your Convention voting pledge from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton.

I have been a yellow dog Democrat my entire life, but the sexism and classism coming from both the DNC and Obama are forcing me to support Cynthia McKinney instead. I refuse to support a party or a candidate that does not have my best interests at heart, and as a working class, single mother, the party has shown that people like me don’t matter at all. Only Hillary has shown concern and real plans for fixing the state of the poor (of all colors), of women and of the economy.

I also will not be voting for any candidate that supports sexism, and that includes super delegates that vote for Obama. While this may mean little to Rep. McDermott, Gov. Gregoire is going to be in another tight race with Dino Rossi and needs every vote she can get. Mine won’t be one of them.

Some people say that I am betraying my party by refusing to vote for Obama, but a Democratic party that uses sexism and exclusion of the working class and ALL other races besides black and white (sorry Latinos- you may be that fastest growing demographic in the country, but the Dems don’t want you) is no longer the Big Tent party. If there is no room for me in the tent, then you don’t get my votes.

Sincerely,
RQ

Links Here to write your own Super D’s.

Via Hoyden About Town comes these graphic novel type drawings of the earthquake in China.

I was sobbing at my desk. Fair warning.

Ok, I am scared. I seriously am.
I knew for months now that the fix was in for Barack Obama to become the nominee . I articulated some of that here, but I guess I never really believe that it would actually happen in such a brazen way. What we witnessed last Saturday was the ugly truth setting aside its mask and revealing what it is.

I guess we all knew in 2000 that America was no longer a democracy, but preferred to think that it would go away. How naive we were to think that once the powers that be got their hands on something they would just let it go willingly. How stupid of us. We actually thought it would be over in 2004. Boy were we wrong.

After that night in 2004, I knew. I heard people say “it’s just 4 years” and realized they.didn’t.get.it.

Why would they?

Most Americans have lived all their lives under democracy. Some if not most believed it to be the natural state of things. I am pretty sure none thought that their democracy was in any way at stake.

“The sleep of reason breeds monsters”

The sleep of a nation breeds them too.

The lack of rioting in the streets in 2000 showed the powers that be that the Americans weren’t THAT worried about their democracy. 2004 was just the logical following. And people took it.

However, someone stood in the way. The DNC. The people who were regarded as having integrity and not stooping that low.

But they had their weaknesses. The DNC had stopped being a progressive and people party a long time ago.

Their urge to elect one of their own, which I would call an elitist jerk should that not be an insult to the rather useful elitistjerks.com has made them get exactly 2 presidents in the past 40 years. One of them is Jimmy Carter, who left America in a mess of Bushian proportions. The otehr one was a hick from Arlansas who won the presidency twice despite not being one of said elitist jerks ( the bad ones not the WoW ones).

The term “liberal” always evoked that to me, the attitude of a kind yet superior someone who deems to help those lower on the societary ladder (poor people) out of the goodness of his heart. It is the school of thought that says “If poor people knew what’s good for them, they’d do it”, where “good for them” = “what we think it’s good for them”.

Of course, that also implies that said poor people whould be fuckign grateful for being even considered worthy of interest and damned if they dare to have their own opinions about their own lives.

Me, I grew up under communism. I know what it’s like to be poor, and I know a bit what happens when you don’t have democracy.

People who lived their li9ves under dmeocracy have no idea what a frail thing it is, that it is not set in stone but has to be permanently protected. They also have no idea of the many pre requisites for a functional democracy… like economic stability amongst other things.

And thus we come to the matter at hand, namely what happened last Sunday and its context within the current situation of the American primaries.

I see a lot of people, Obama supporters, peole who think of themselves as progressive, who have no problem with the fact that their candidate stole the nomination.

They feel the”rules are rules” and that it is for the greater good of getting Barack elected.

This scares the shit out of me. If Democracy is not important enough for Barack Obama, what else isn’t important enough?

I’m very scared.

Insomnia is fun! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

So I’ve just been tortured by the worst movie in the world, maybe second worst. Hard to tell. They are both ridiculous “thrillers” set in Venice starring very distinguished actors. The plots blow, the direction sucks, the dialog is stifled and horrid, and there is always some stupid supernatural element and lots of soft focus love scenes.

So the movie tonight was Night Train To Venice with Hugh Grant and Malcolm fricken McDowell. Something about neonazis and dead wives and cross dressers singing Ma Vie En Rose.

I have no idea what the point of this movie was.

The previous most sucky movie in history is Don’t Look Now with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. We spent the whole movie going “Don’t look now- it really is that bad”. I’m pretty sure the entire movie was made so that Sutherland could get a free vacation to Venice and spend a few days rolling around naked with Julie Christie. In the end, a homicidal dwarf did it. No one knows why.

There ya go peeps. News you can use.