Some fun things I have discovered while checking out our Sitemeter info

1) If you search msn for hot girls wallpapers we show up as the 7th site. You’d be amazed at how many people get directed to our little site because of that. Little do they know they are actually getting Lovejoy’s piece about Macho Vs. Girly. Guess it’s one way of fighting the patriarchy- haha

2) If you search Yahoo for thankyoustevencolbert- we are #3 of 3 sites that shows up

3) My little post on ladyquakes also seems to draw them in – especially since Sister Nancy Beth Eczema linked back to our site) (scroll down to everyone gets a holiday but Jesus- we are the to speculate part of the link

4) Despite Mephistopheles tendency to be long winded- his posts on immigration vs environment and intelligence being linked to income have drawn in their own little following. Good for him!

And the number one thing I noticed while writing this post- we have to stop using vs. some much in our titles- macho vs. girly, income vs. intelligence, immigration vs environment

from the NY Times:

Cable and telephone companies that provide Internet service are talking
about creating a two-tiered Internet, in which Web sites that pay them large
fees would get priority over everything else

So us poor bloggers would have to take a back seat to corporate bigwigs with fat wallets once again? I don’t think so. The best argument I’ve heard against this is that telephone companies don’t get to decide which phone call you make goes through faster- they shouldn’t get to decide which pages you click load faster.

Shakespeares Sister has a good list of actions to take to save the internet– go do something good.

The other day Mephistopheles brought me a print out of rules for husbands and wives from the late 1800’s. I’ve seen similar things before and I love collecting old books on how women should behave. I currently have a sex manual from the 1930’s and I used to have a revolutionary book called “What every young woman should know” from 1905 (my whack-ass mother has a tendency towards cleptomania and it’s been gone for a while).

There is one main theme through these books- it assumes that the reader is of a class where the wife can stay home. It’s a pretty steadfast delusion that until the the 1970’s women didn’t work. But it was only certain women that didn’t work. Poor women have always worked- it was never a choice to stay home or to to earn a living- it was work or starve. Even today, the argument over women working outside the home only applies to a small minority of women who have the financial resources to actually have a choice. But the arguments and condescension from women who have the ability to choose not to work really piss me off. If they think more women should be barefoot in the kitchen- then maybe they should pay women to be barefoot in the kitchen so we all get a choice.

In my family, where women have always been what was previously called high-spirited (or independent) everyone works. I was fortunate that I could take a year or so off when The Kid was born, but that is because childcare would have cost more than a 20 year old can generally make.

Mephistopheles comes from a family that has been securely lodged in the upper-middle class for a long time. The women didn’t have to work. He sometimes forgets that this may have been the social ideal of the time- but it is not really the whole truth.

So, I thought I would give you all Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” to remind you all that women work and always have. We haven’t always been paid for it, but it’s never been bonbons and soap operas for most of us.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain’t I A Woman?Delivered 1851Women’s Convention, Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

Next time someone says something about when women didn’t work- ask them when in the history of the world have women not worked?

Willie Nelson has an article up at alternet about saving family farms, and it’s the perfect excuse for me to launch into one of my favorite topics- eliminating farm subsidies.

In America, we tend to think of the people who grow our crops and raise our meat as the struggling family farmer who is doggedly perusing a noble cause and spartan existence. When the topic of removing farm subsidies comes up, images of Willie Nelson on stage at Farm Aid in the 1980’s are trotted out to pull our heartstrings. But most farm subsidies in America go to large agri-business firms. From Welfare Farming at Fortune Small Bussiness:

“America’s farmers are among the most cosseted constituencies in the
country. In the past five years alone, they have soaked up a record $99
billion in subsidy payments…But it is the biggest farms that get the most,
turning subsidies into a particularly gross kind of corporate welfare. The
largest 10% of farms get about 70% of the loot.”

Huhm- sounds familiar. Once again the wealthiest 10% are taking off with most of the government cash. Just to give you an example- the subsidies on cotton are equal to the actual market output and America has 40% of the worlds cotton exports- yet struggling West African produce cotton much more efficiently until you factor in US subsidies. Another example- it cost a farmer in 2001 $5.31 to produce a bushel of wheat which was then sold on the international market for $3.50 after US subsides were applied. That’s a subsidy of about 34%.

On a positive note, the small organic farms the Willie is talking about are experiencing the fastest growth and innovation as well as being able to set above commodity market prices for their goods. So I can absolutely get behind Wilie’s call to help the small farmers with legislation to keep land, food and water healthy.

There used to be a time when any wingnut who started souting buffoonary in my direction would get the courtesy of me actually listening to why they are wignuts and then a careful, thoughtful, reasoned explanation of why what they think is ass backwards. This behavior has, on a few occassions made people question their choice of talk radio hosts, realize that public funding of private schools would actually decrease the quality of education, and once convinced a former boyfriend to vote for Clinton the first time (ok- that didn’t involve reasoning, but more an offer of a blowjob if Clinton won).

But I am done reasoning with the idiots- and that includes the self-proclaimed libertarians who are jumping on the bandwagon like Paris Hilton on tiny dogs. Sure, you want freedom and small government and think the free market works better than government. What a crock of bullshit. The free market gives us things like downwardly spiralling wages, upwardly spiralling gas prices, rampant pollution with no environmental controls, and a society that is more deeply segregated by class than we’ve seen since the boom bust cycles of the late 1800’s to the great depression.

What I have discovered is that the wingnuts are always spoiling for a fight, not a discussion. And the more reason you throw at them the more ridiculous and offensive their arguments get.

I know, there are marches in the streets and some of you are bitching about your inability to get a taco- but I thought I’d remind you all what today is all about.

This little calculator has just told me that the average CEO makes my hourly wage in just over 30 seconds.

Some other fun facts about my job: I am not allowed to work over a certain number of hours per week- even though the committee that funds my position has paid for more hours- because then I would qualify for benefits. If I go over a certain number of hours in a 6 month period- they have to fire me.

I wish my little employment misfortunes were unique, but sadly they are not. I also wish I got the benefits that working for a state government (or in my case a regional community college district) are supposed to provide in lieu of private sector salaries- but again, sadly no. I do have a job where I get to spend many hours glaring at students and playing rebel typist with a cause, but that doesn’t make up for a lack of dental care or full time salary.

Que sara, sara. Happy May 1st

On Saturday, John Kenneth Galbraith, the architect of the new deal, social security, and the guy who instituted Keynsian economics in America, died at the age of 97.

Mr. Galbraith was an unabashed liberal who thought that the military industrial complex that made war profitable was a very bad thing and would prefer to see our economy to ” respond to welfare, to a kindness, a humane need, not to sending soldiers into battle or, nowadays, sending airplanes to bomb innocent people”.

While Hayek’s ideas may currently rule the day, I can only hope that Galbraith is rediscovered as an economist who was capable of incorporating humanism into the discipline and gave us ideas for how society should be – so we know what to aspire to. Next time someone tells you that all progressives do is bitch about the problem, you can point to Galbraith as someone who gave solutions. And hopefully his son, James K. Galbraith, will continue the tradition.

So for the major theory geeks- there has been a bit of an academic battle between the theories of Francis Fukuyama (End of History) and Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations). My poly sci proff is a Huntington freak- so Fukuyama was barely skimmed over in my international relations class and I didn’t pay much attention. I preferred to bitch about Huntingdon’s eurocentric bullshit (for the record- I am a die hard fan of Emmanuel Wallerstien’s structuralist theories, which puts me on the far left).

Then I read this and watched this. Fukuyama is steadfastly based in free market liberalism (trade=democracy=more trade=more democracy=more trade) but he deftly explains the neocons ‘realism” of creating an enemy in order to gain more power. I remember the attempts to make China the most feared nation (while Clinton was giving China most favored nation trade status). I have often wondered if the neocons were really that paranoid or if they were trying to instill fear where none was needed. Turns out they are all about exploiting the fear.

So now that the evil empire is Muslim instead of Soviet- you can bet your ass there will be an invasion of Iran. They could not possibly let diplomacy do it’s job because diplomacy defeats the image of the scary Muslims with nuclear weapons and without an image of an enemy to fight against and protect people from, the neocons haven’t got a thing to keep us in line with.