Up all night? What to read if you’re not snoring

Watch The Beautiful Protest and Rise

Monday in the Park with PUMAs

Watch the video

Bill’s Got a Question and NewHampster’s got some answers at Alegre’s Corner. Are you Over It?

Have you been to Camille’s place?

Why NOT a role call. Could it be fear? BlueLyon’s got some thoughts about that.

And Charles Lemos (my blogging hero) at By the Fault has compiled recent stories about P.U.M.A.s in the news. Charles posts nearly a dozen stories some days. He covers campaign ads, world news and politics.

Want a laugh? P.U.M.A. fire.blogspot.com/”>Joseph Cannon sometimes talks about popular culture.

In a bombshell story my secret love, Lambert wonders Were Eric Boehlert and Bob Somerby separated at birth?

DonnaDarko has her take on Bill Clinton’s speculation.

kenosha Marge Isn’t Going to Fall in Line.

MountainSage speaks for me.

Need I say it? THIS is an Open Thread.

[UPDATED] I left out Sugar! Thanks MABlue

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit

Reprinted from a former life at DailyKos:

There I was on Thursday night, letting my Sandstone Pearl toenails dry while I reread one of Rebecca Wells Ya-ya books and trying to decide whether to watch Steel Magnolias or Terms of Endearment on the DVD, when I heard a familiar word coming from the background noise of the Democratic Presidential Debate that I use to relax. “Campbell”, it said. Hmmm, there was something very knowing and mysterious about that voice. So, I backed up the DVR and replayed it. There was Hillary Clinton in her light gray tweedy jacket and asbestos pants (and great makeup, by the way) gently chiding the gravid Campbell Brown. And it suddenly occurred to me: Karl Rove must be sweating big time. It will be so much harder to suppress the female voters than the African-American voters. Someone *might* notice.

I mean, sure Campbell Brown is married to former Iraq CPA official, Dan Senor.  Sure, she’s bought into the Villager cocktail party circuit, where they are no doubt planning her baby shower complete with Peg Perego stroller with a mini-bar, reclining seat and internet connection for the little tyke.

But when Hillary said, “Campbell”, we women instantly recognized the voice of authority of the high priestess reminding the backslid acolyte of her obligations to her sex.  (Note to self: buy new candles for the altar and perform the rites tonight in the nude.)

I sipped my Cosmo pensively.  I’m very concerned about Tweety.  He will be so exorcised over this in the next week that if he doesn’t speak fast enough, he will surely drown in his own spit.  The “He Man Women Haters Club” has no place for an upstart girl who will want to come in and reupholster the chairs in a Laura Ashley floral. There is no room in the tree house.

But Tweety has nothing to fear, really.

No, just because every woman can remember some time in her life when she was given a little less attention than the boys in math class or got less praise than Raymond C. Persic in Organic Chemistry (Nyah-Nyah, scored higher than you on the ACS exam), that doesn’t mean anything.

Or all of the times when our ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands called us “bitch” and “c$^t” when we dared to assert our rights.  Or the times that our bosses gave the one raise in the department to a guy with a newborn- year after year after year, there’s no reason to think we might want to level the playing field.

Or the fathers who preferred our brother’s company after we became adolescents.  Or all of the family members who told us we could never succeed in science or medicine or law because we were the first in our families to want to go to college and it was too much money to spend on a girl who was probably going to get married anyway, perish the thought of righteous indignation.

Or the husbands who questioned our expenses, by saying, “What did you spend your allowance on anyway?!”  (You women my mother’s age know what I’m talking about.)  Or just because of the men who said, “*I* make the money, I make the rules!”, we are not looking for a champion.

Or the church elders who chastised our skirt lengths while we were going through a growth spurt, simultaneously staring at our shapely calves and thighs. Or the priests and bishops and fundamentalists who condemned us to hell for having SEX out of WEDLOCK while setting the terms of that wedlock to be perpetual obedience to our husbands, does not mean that we have any expectation that a manly God will exact justice on our behalf.

No, Tweety, you have nothing to worry about.  Do not be troubled that we might want to exercise a little authority, assert our rights, seek vengeance or see one of our own, who seems to know what the fuck she’s doing, succeed to the most powerful position on earth.

It’s not like Hillary Clinton is a personification of a pagan moon goddess who is going to re-establish our supremacy through some matriarchal social system, even if that did kinda work out for us.  Ha-ha-ha!, that is so silly of you. I mean, there’s no reason to vote for her because she’s a girl

No, that would be petty and anachronistic and un-Christian and speaks of gender identity politics and that is soooo outre.  We aren’t out to settle the score for the millenia of mistreatment and disrespect. Perish the thought!

Then again, I did detect a little glisten in Campbell’s eye.  Just a little one.  I saw it.  And if I’m right about these things, Dan will completely miss it as Campbell gently kisses him on the lips and pinches the baby’s cheek just before she steps into that voting booth next year to worship at the Temple of the Sisterhood.

BTW, sisters, make sure you update your social security cards, driver’s licenses and voter registration ID to be consistent before going to vote.  Karl’s not finished yet.

Delegates Mad As Hell: Scramble for Floor Vote

Clinton Delegates are pissed. The Clinton National Delegate Network, a grassroots movement of delegates is on the streets of Denver collecting signatures from Hillary delegates. This eleventh hour effort is being organized to ensure that delegates who were elected to represent the voters of each state can and will vote for the candidate they were pledged to.

The DNC and Nancy Pelosi, the Chairman of the Democratic Convention, are doing everything in their power to make sure that does not happen. With Obama’s flagging support, according to the polls, running neck and neck with McCain, they are very worried that Hillary will get the nomination if a roll call vote takes place on the convention floor. That is why they are making the delegates have a secret hotel vote, instead of the floor vote that’s been done since forever. The hotel vote will purportedly take place on Wednesday morning, August 27, 2008.

However, there is a DNC rule that says if 20% of a candidate’s delegates sign a petition for a roll call vote, it must happen. This means that Hillary needs 826 of her delegates to sign this petition. I visited their headquarters along with BettyJean, Pagan, Hill08, and BrendaLynn. As we set out on our mission, we got three signatures in less than one block. They headed for the Pepsi Center to collect more, and got about 40 in an hour, and I came back to Puma Headquarters to blog. Last word I got was there were over 400 signatures gathered.

Pagan reports that he talked to a delegate who originally supported Hillary. The delegate declined to sign or divulge the delegation he was from. He said he would vote the way his state party told him to vote and that Terry McAuliffe had instructed them in how to vote. When Pagan asked if he’d mind sharing what that way of voting would be, he also declined, and then just turned his head and refused to engage in the conversation anymore.

Delegates have reported to us that Obama supporters are stationed outside of each delegation’s room with clipboards, ready to make sure that once again, despite their best efforts to represent their constituents (approximately 12,225 voters per delegate in the case of primaries, and 2,110 in the case of caucuses), that Hillary delegates and voters are ROBBED of their democratic rights.

As recently as this afternoon, we knew that the hotel vote would take place in each delegation on Wednesday morning, and that Hillary would have a special luncheon with her delegates at 1pm. Rumor had it that she might release her delegates then.

However, we have an unconfirmed report coming from someone inside the Pepsi Center that Hillary Clinton will make a special announcement tonight during her speech. Although I’m ever the optimist, call me paranoid: Will she try to pre-empt this grassroots effort by releasing her delegates tonight?

I can’t even imagine the pressure she is under by party leadership. We even heard that President Clinton’s speech would not be televised live in prime time.

Oh my, is the DNC running scared or what? We need divine intervention. If you’re a praying person, give it your all.

Please Note: I don’t mean to cut in on LadyBoomer’s brilliant post but Sheri Tag says that NO WE WON’T will be on after Hillary’s speech.

[cross posted from Lady Boomer NYC]

Hanging out at the Scratching Post (Part 2)

Starting after Hillary’s Speech

Drambuie anyone? Rico’s stocked the bar and we’ve got all the favorites.

Scratching Post DNC Tuesday – Hillary speaks! 10 pm EST (estimated time) Plus DNC “Caption this moment”

RISE, HILLARY, RISE!!!

WE LOVE YOU HILLARY!!!!

Conflucians, Senator Hillary Clinton will speak tonight at the Democratic National Convention at 8pm EST.  Our first viable female candidate who won more votes than any candidate in our nation’s history, is being forced to relinquish her votes on the 88th anniversary for Women’s Suffrage.  We know that she’s going to ask us to unite, to come together as she’s graciously asked us to do since suspending her campaign on June 7th, 2008, but everyone who reads the Confluence knows that we cannot unite as we have in the past when the DNC stole votes and delegates, thrwarting the DNA of Democracy itself: our right to have our votes counted and cast as they were intended.   

Esteemed Senator Clinton, we acknowledge you are between a Mt. Everest of rocks and a hard place.  But we will march and fight until every vote is counted and reported, and when Democracy comes back to the Democratic Party, so will we.  Until then, PUMA!

While Riverdaughter, Mawm and Gary go with their PUMA packs to PUMA headquarters in downtown Denver or prowl in the PUMAmobile, Rico’s got his Pink PUMA & Mountain Lion Martini glasses chilling in ice, while Flo’s got her catcher’s mitt ready for unwelcome words.  If you didn’t have any dinner, we have Denver Bison (or Tofu) mini-burgers and fresh popcorn for all the action that’s going down in Denver.

Speaking of action, just like RiverDaughter said here, and BostonBoomer said below, PUMAs are the news story!  Here’s this little nugget from Rebecca Traister from Salon.com:  Rebecca’s not exactly a PUMA-friendly reporter, but at last she gives Tweety a good slap: 

Aug. 26, 2008 | DENVER — “This is where you see the civil war!” burbled Chris Matthews, experiencing near-asphyxiatory pleasure on an outdoor stage in the sweltering Denver heat, while behind him two competing groups, Obama supporters and the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) backers of Hillary Clinton, chanted “Obama! Obama!” and “Hillary! Hillary!” at each other. Matthews looked as though he might wet himself as a camera panned the crowd, and he declared, “We’re at ground zero!”

…

Talking to these women, I began to believe that the threat of PUMAs, or aggressive Hillary supporters who planned to take over the convention, was a full-blown myth. I couldn’t find any; I hadn’t seen any. I half suspected that they were the creation of a media anxious to gin up a story in which the villains were a bunch of grumpy old white chicks.

But that was before I left the confines of the official indoor events and stepped out into the wide world of public protest and freedom of expression. And before the news of Monday’s shifting policies on the roll call vote began to leak out, and before Hillary supporters lining the streets of downtown Denver heard convoluted versions of what was likely to happen.

…

“You mean Reverend Wrong,” Mar interrupted. “Look, I know about the race card. I know about race. I’m African-American. And it was Obama who played the race card, and it’s going to come back and bite Obama in the butt.” African-American supporters of Obama, in Mar’s view, “are proud. Yes, I understand that. But you want someone who can lead America, not because he’s African-American, or because she’s a certain gender, but because she can lead.” But what about the woman they wanted as America’s leader? Clinton has been leading her supporters, or trying to lead them, to vote for Obama. “We want Hillary,” said Novacek, with the fingers-in-her-ears insistence of an implacable toddler. “She can stand on her head and plead with us, and I still will not vote for him. I want her. She is best for the country.”  

Caption this DNC moment!  Add your Conflucian Savoire-Snark to these photos:

PHOTO 1:

PHOTO 2

RISE, HILLARY, RISE!!!

¡QUE VIVA LOS PUMAS!

(Long live PUMAs!)

What’s going on? Day 2

[UPDATE]

Watch the Video!

It’s been a very busy day. I rushed to the meeting place in the park for the march and passed a phalanx of riot control police cocking their rubber bullet guns at a crowd of loud and active protestors (not our group). One of them turned to me as I was trying to get to my group, his gun pointed my way. “Um, I’m looking for the peaceful protest?”, he pointed me in the right direction and I scurried away as quickly as possible.

I was just in time for the march with 18 Million Voices and Rise Hillary Rise. As I was marching through Denver in my suffragist white, someone handed me a purple sash commemorating the Vote for Women. I was so happy and stepped it up shouting for Hillary at the top of my lungs. It was a great day and there were a lot of marchers. The line of Hillary signs seemed to increase as time went on. But afterwards, I still ran into women who were just a smidge too late. Damn, they’re punctual around here. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures. But that’s OK because there were dozens of reporters and photographers along the route. Darragh took a picture of me in my “uniform”. I’ll see if I can get it from her later.

LadyBoomerNYC attended some of hte women’s caucuses today and got to sit in on the one that Donna Brazile attended. She’ll fill us in a little later.

Echinopsia is presently at the Emily’s List Luncheon where Hillary is scheduled to speak. We hope to get a post from her later as well.

We are following up on a report from a superdelegate who was replaced last minute.and couldn’t get her credentials for the convention. Reports are still coming in of delegate intimidation. We also met two Texas delegates this afternoon who confirmed that they were told to submit their votes in writing to their state delegation by 4:00pm Wednesday and they were told that they should consider their votes final at that time before they get to the floor for the roll call vote. If you haven’t contacted your state attorneys general and demand that they no longer extend couresy to the DNC if the party refuses to play by tis own rules. No more taxpayer funded primaries if they aren’t going to count.

Ok, I will update as I can. There are many events and we are covering as many as we can.

Obama Camp in Snit Mode Over Carville’s Comments

Incipient puma James Carville let it all out last night on CNN, criticizing “Obama’s Convention” for offering no positive message or even going a little negative on Bush and McCain.

“The way they planned it tonight was supposed to be sort of the personal — Michelle Obama will talk about Barack Obama personally, Ted Kennedy was a very personal, emotional speech,” Carville said. “But I guarantee on the first night of the Republican Convention, you’re going to hear talk about Barack Obama, commander-in-chief, tax cuts, et cetera, et cetera.”

“You haven’t heard about Iraq or John McCain or George W. Bush — I haven’t heard any of this. We are a country that is in a borderline recession, we are an 80 percent wrong-track country. Health care, energy — I haven’t heard anything about gas prices,” Carville also says. “Maybe we are going to look better Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. But right now, we’re playing hide the message.”

Oh dear! I guess Carville forgot that Clinton backers are supposed to STFU and spout the Obama party line. Will Obama order CNN to dump him again as they did during the primaries? The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama’s campaign is a bit PO’d at Carville right now.

Obama strategist Robert Gibbs pooh-poohed such talk Tuesday morning.

“What we set out to do last night I think was accomplished in a very, very big way,” he said, pointing to Michelle Obama’s well-received speech that touted Obama’s biography and her own.

We’re here, we’re likeable enough, and dog-gone-it, we’re crossing party lines.

Hi everyone. We finally made it to Denver late last night and met up with Betty Jean and others.  It was a long drive and I discovered that there is warp in the fabric of space time that makes time in an RV go slower than regular time.  But now we’re here and we are about to head over to the 18 million voices march and then to the celebration of Hillary’s candidacy in Chessman park.

I wanted to show you this clip of Indigo Girl, our newly commissioned colonel in the PUMArmy.  She is an amazing person, and we should all feel lucky to have her in our corner.  You all saw the wonderful job she did on the PUMAmobile.  Here she is talking about something that I have heard over and over again from women.  Maybe it is just because I am a man that I didn’t hear this particular dog whistle.  I mean, I heard it, and I thought, “What a jerk”, but I didn’t know how much it would strike a chord in women.

Also, I thought I would share this with you.  How many times have we been accused of being nasty Republicans?  I’ve never voted for a Republican, but I also never dreamed of demonizing someone for just being one, but that has been standard fare for the Obamans for some time now.  Whenever they grow tired of calling us racist, it seems they pull out “Republican” as if that word carried as many negative connotations.

However, aren’t they supposed to be behind Obama and his post-partisan world?  Wasn’t Obama supposed to  be able to get Republicans to crossover and vote for him?  Oh and I mean in the general election, not just as a way to scuttle Clinton. 

Lately, Obama has been taking the positions of Republicans.  This does not seem to upset his supporters.  I would guess because they want to work with Republicans.  Although,  I would think that if you really wanted to get Republican support for your positions, and work across party-lines, demonizing people for being Republican would be counter-productive.

So while Obama supporters are talking out of both sides of their mouth, PUMA is actually building bridges.  It was morning, and I was just coming from the campground office, and a man was standing next tp the PUMAmobile and looking at its banners.  He turned to me and put out his hand as if to shake mine.  As I went to shake his, I noticed he was handing me a $20 bill.

“I want to thank you so much for what you are doing”. he said, “Neither the Republican nor Democrat party are listening to the voters”.  He said he saw what the party did to Clinton, and was wondering how many Democrats would get really pissed off.  Here he is in his own words expressing his PUMAness.

Thanks John.  We’ll put your $20 to good use.  PUMA is fighting for Democracy in America and that includes Republicans.

Find the PUMA (Open Thread)

Photo taken by Jeralyn at TalkLeft

Tuesday: Happy Anniversary!

What was the role of The Press this year?

On this date in 1920, the United States granted women the right to vote.  They had been voting in several states before then.  In fact, I was surprised to find that my state, New Jersey, had given them this right in 1790.  A woman could vote as long as she was sufficiently wealthy or owned property in her own right.  But it seems that the idea that a politician might have to acommodate the demands of women was so distasteful that the right to vote was rescinded in NJ a couple of decades later.  The more things change…

The amendment to the constitution was introduced to Congress in 1918.  President Wilson lobbied for the bill throughout the next year until it passed out of Congress to be ratified by the states.  Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment 88 years ago.

It doesn’t seem like the battle is won though. What is your right if you are expected, intimidated, bullied, shamed and demanded to turn over your vote to the men you didn’t want?  What right is there when the woman you *did* want is treated no better than an early suffragette, insulted, demeaned, stripped of some of her victories and “left to the violence of the mob”.  Sylvia Pankhurst, a leader of the suffragist movement, wrote about the hostility she and others encountered in their struggle:

We were not afraid.

A small, hostile group had established itself by the plinth, prompted by the organisers of the disturbance, whom I recognised as old hands at such work; poor, shabby public house loafers, they shouted without pausing for breath till their red faces were purple. I continued in spite of them, by taking pains to speak clearly and not too fast. From the north the disturbers hurled at me roughly screwed balls of paper, filled with red and yellow ochre, which came flying across the lions’ backs and broke with a shower of colour on anyone they chanced to hit. The reporters on the plinth had drawn near me to listen; thus, inadvertently, they intercepted the missiles aimed at me, and were covered with red and yellow.

They sprang back to avoid a further volley, and Mrs. Drake’s twelve-year-old daughter, Ruby, received a deluge of red full in her eyes. Crying, she buried her face in her mother’s dress, while the “patriots” raised a cheer.

We were naive to think that the struggle ever ended.  What we have witnessed this year seems to have set back the clock for the rights of women by 40 years.  Not only have we seen that the political power we thought we had was vapor but our social advances have been threatened as well.  Last week’s executive order regarding Health and Human Services treatment of reproductive services for women puts at risk whether a woman will make reproductive decisions on her own or whether she will encounter a phalanx of individuals who will substitute their own moral judgment for hers.

The struggle continues.  As long as a woman does not get credit for her own accomplishments and for her own personhood, there will be no equality.  Today, we meet in Denver and will don our white and sashes to march and demand that the country give us Bread and Roses.

Update: NOW is a little late to the party.  Emil Jones feels free to call a delegate an “Uncle Tom” and only when it is almost too late does NOW remember its mission and take up the gauntlet in her defense.  If we don’t hold the DNC and the Obama campaign accountable immediately, we can expect more of this stuff in the years to come.  These are Obama’s friends.  These are the people who “made” him.  Their attitudes and behavior are his attitudes and behaviors and I will not believe otherwise until the candidate himself denounces and rejects Jones and Jesse Jackson Jr and every other disrespectful man who gave him a boost to the top.  The buck stops with Barack.  We are holding him to it.