As a woman, I have been told various things by various factions in the feminist movement. One claims that gender is a social construction. This faction, in my opinion, falls into the category of denying reality. In fiercely and falsely asserting that women and men are the same, we open ourselves up to what I call the “Oh, Shit!” moment.
The “Oh, Shit!” moment is that pause before a woman realizes she is outnumbered by men who can do her physical or professional harm, and that there’s no way to fight them on equal ground. It’s that feeling when the cortisol rushes to your brain, your heart takes an express train to the bottom of your stomach, and the “fight or flight” instinct takes over. And what can you do at that point? You must flee, or be overwhelmed. And you understand that the myth of female/male equality has been nothing but a well-intentioned lie.
Let me share my own “Oh, Shit!” moment with you. When I was 17, I worked at Wendy’s in the summer to make some extra money. I had done the same the year before, and had enjoyed it. A lot of kids my age were working with me, and I like the service aspect of the work. (One woman told me, when I took her order at the drive-thru window, that mine was the first friendly voice she had heard all day.) However, this year, things were different.
This year, Wendy’s had decided to participate in an “Inside Out” program. This meant that convicts who were eligible for working outside the prison were invited to work at Wendy’s, to make their transition back to civilian life a little easier. It might have been a good idea for them, but for me, it was a nightmare.
There are three must read posts from two of our friends and one satellite sister today. I’m calling these posts “What they did to us”, “Why they’re doing it” and “How to start fighting back”.
The first, What they did to us, is at PUMAPac and is an update and second teaser for the film, The Audacity of Democracy, The Hillary Flashpoint and Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party.
Darragh is still raising funds to finish the film, scheduled for around inauguration in 2009, though if it’s finished earlier, doesn’t it get counted in the Academy Awards category of documentary? I dunno. Anyway, if you contribute now and pre-order your copy of the film now, you will get a DVD of clips from various PUMA events in Denver, including the one where Sheri Tag and MarylandPUMA tag teamed the reprehensible Tommy Christopher, “journalist”. Not to be missed!
The second post that I call, “Why they’re doing it”, is from our satellite sister, who isn’t a PUMA, Anglachel. Her post, Where the Shadows Lie, will put a chill up your spine and not merely because the title refers to Tolkien’s Mordor. It’s because you come away feeling like a Clinton Democrat is one of the most reviled creatures on earth to the Unity Democrats. We’ve all experienced this irrational hatred towards us. For example, I can now spot an Obama troll from a mile away by noting the condescension dripping off the page. They assume that we are just barely literate even though many of us have advanced degrees or no degree but are self-taught BS detectors. If we’re so stupid, how is it we can trace their IP addresses back to the Humanities departments of so many (formerly) prestigious universities, like Boston University and Columbia? But I digress. Here is the money quote from the scary smart Angachel, Clintonista Divine:
To cut to the chase, the push in 2004 for a “Unity Party” has been realized with Howard Dean delivering the Democratic Party into the hands of the High Broderists who value unity for unity’s sake more than any other political cause or virtue. They don’t even want to claim to be part of their party, hoping people will forget and just vote for those nice clean, articulate fellas. This is part of internalizing the Reagan assault on the legitimacy of the Democratic Party as such. Psychologically, to them, the Democratic Party is the remnants of the uneducated, racist, white South and rust-belt north, who vote for Bubbas like Clinton and reject above-partisanship technocrats and idealists like Bill Bradley, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and Howard Dean himself. The nerve of them people! And thus, this year, we have the Unity Democrats, non-partisan to the end.
The dark underbelly of this move is the presumption that the people who have been told their interests must wait will always be there for the Democrats because we have nowhere else to go. Specifically, this means African Americans, women voters and GLBT voters.
…
The focus of the Unity Democrats is on the winners of the economic realignment, those who managed to win a place in the white collar upper-middle class. People like my family and my husband’s, who leveraged the affluence of the post-war era to vault from being immigrants and farmers to being professionals in various government bureaucracies, law, finance, and new, white collar industries like high tech and bio-tech. The other part is to minimize the damage the losers of that realignment can inflict, which mostly means refusing to commit to policies and plans that will defend their interests. Or even their lives. Obama’s campaign is not about social goods and resources, but about cultural markers of class inclusion, such as your level of education, where you shop, whether you live in urban or rural environments, etc. He has difficulty addressing the failures of an economic system contiguous with his own class and which is deeply invested in his candidacy, and I don’t just mean the campaign contributions. He is the exemplar of a mode of life that, while not as unreachable as that of Bush’s base, is still out of reach of those who do not have the education, acculturation and business contacts to climb up that economic ladder.
The ultimate shadow of Reagan is that you don’t win by defending losers, only by securing the interests of the winners. That is the dark heart beating in the chest of the Unity Democrats. They are done with the losers.
Yep, we are the LOOOOSSSERRRSSS according to the Chris Bowers types even if we are for the most part indistinguishable from them. The resentment comes down to people who still require something from government, like equal rights for women, African-Americans, the GLBT community, the elderly. If you need something from the Unity Democrats, forget it. You are now being set adrift on your own little ice-floe. Of course, they still need you to win, as evidenced by the 63 branch offices that the Obama campaign has set up in PA. But here’s the message that must be delivered to those Pennsylvanians like my mom, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins: The Obama Democrats do not care about you any more than the Bush Republicans did. Just vote for every woman on the ballot and hope that someday we’ll get to a 30% Solution.
The last post is from our friend, Heidi Li Feldman. Her post is Want to fix the Democratic Party? Steps you can take now is full of short term, practical actions that will yield long term results. Heidi is a cockeyed optimist too. Never say die. There are still things you can do to make sure you the party has a core that will survive the massive meltdown it is headed for in November by stupidly putting Obama at the helm. For example:
You can donate to the Denver Group and Democrats for Principle before party. The funds will be used to buy ads in Capital Hill newspapers to let Congress know we’re still out here and there is strength and numbers in the Clinton wing of the party.
You can contribute to a slate of Democrats who are in unexpectedly tight races this year and whose presence in Congress will shore up that wing of the party. We recommend Linda Stender, Kay Hagen, Kirsten Gillibrand, Al Franken, for example. See out ActBlue page for other suggestions.
You can call your Senator and urge him/her to elect Clinton as Senate Majority Leader. Heidi tells us that now is the time that the political jockeying for positions is done. In a week or so, they will be ordering their inaugural ball gowns and putting aside business for the year. Strike while the Iron is Hot.
Now, a lot of the actions require you to make a donation. Please take the money you might have sent to the DNC this year and donate to the downticket Dems of your choice, then to the causes that will help you re-establish your party. The Denver Group has a plan, PUMAPac has activities and a movie. It’s an investment in your future and the future of the country.
I’ve been getting some interesting mail in the last couple of days that I thought are worth sharing with the rest of the class. There’s a bit of tea leaf reading involved. Let’s have a crack at it.
The first bit of news comes from a PUMA in PA. We’ll make her anonymous for right now. She has the following news flash about what took place at last weekend’s meeting of the PA State Committee. As it turns out, the meeting had to be adjourned for lack of a quorum:
The lack of a quorum prevented any business from being discussed at this past weekend’s meeting of the PA State Committee. No yard signs because all the money is going to something like 63 offices being opened across the state http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/PAFieldOffices/ for the big O. Those headquarters are over-run with college kids but the political pros who get Democrats elected avoided the meeting where they’d be urged by paid DNC operatives to get out and support the ticket. (They won’t. The delegation is still getting over the scene at Denver, and the directive to not sign the petition of 300.) With a democratic registration edge of 1.1 million in the state, they think they can win the General when Obama lost to Clinton by nearly 10% in the primary! Don’t they realize that a lot of those registrants and switchers from R were supporting HRC?
Ruh-Roh, doesn’t prime canvassing time happen right around midterms? If I am reading this correctly, there is a bit of a sticky wicket in PA. There isn’t enough money for yard signs and the delegates are in no mood to lift a finger to help Obama. Any predictions on what will happen next in PA?
This next one is from Michele Thomas of 300 Delegates. She found a blurb in Commentary about who is backing Obama and why:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac survived scrutiny by manipulating, cajoling, and lobbying politicians and hiring board members who were politicos (e.g. Jamie Gorelick) rather than mortgage gurus. They hired lobbyists, gave massive donations, obtained nice tax breaks, and sailed below the regulatory radar screen.
Of the 354 lawmakers who received money from Freddie and Fannie between 1989 and 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd received the most. But next was . . . drumroll . . . Barack Obama. Yup. And he was only there for three years. Not too much went to John McCain, about a sixth of what Obama received (h/t Glenn Reynolds.)
But, you say, maybe all the Fannie and Freddie employees who gave money just “liked” Obama. That might make sense with ordinary institutions. But these two had a game plan to influence and sway lawmakers for the purpose of keeping them on the government gravy train and out of the regulatory line of fire. It’s no coincidence that they “liked” Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd best of all.
So it would appear that this is precisely what Obama has been railing against: Washington insiders lining the pockets of other Washington insiders while the taxpayers ultimately have to foot the bill. The Agent of Change, it seems, didn’t exactly walk the walk on this one.
Actually, Hillary herself received slightly more than Obama but then, she’s been in the Senate twice as long and in her case, there is very little evidence that she trades her support for money. Can we same about Barack “I was against FISA before I was for it for my Invesco Field speech” Obama? It’s interesting that John McCain isn’t getting much money from them.
Obama’s got a bit of a credibility problem when it comes to blaming the Republicans for the crappy economy, seeing as he admires Ronald Reagan and wants to work with Republicans in a post-partisan world. If you want to hold them accountable, you may have to say and do things in committee that will cause them not to like you very much. But confrontation is sooooo unpleasant and partisan and stuff. We musn’t have that. Well, it’s not like I trust him anyway so I will not be shocked when he caves to Republican obstinancy the first time he tries to work something out with them. In the Senate, that is. No way is he making it to the White House with the way New Jersey and New York are shaping up.
One more thing: Tune your cat channels to Conflucians Say on PUMA United Radio (PURrrr). We’ll be talking about the 30 Percent Solution, Barbra Streisand, Penis Years and a whole lot more. That’s tonight at 10PM EST on Conflucians Say.
In a sign of just how nervous senior Democrats are about Barack Obama’s situation, top Democratic Party operatives are privately urging the party’s major donors to get serious about putting big money into outside groups looking to attack John McCain in key battleground states.
Several senior Democratic strategists unaffiliated with Obama’s campaign convened a private conference call late last week with at least four dozen of the party’s most prolific donors to progressive causes and outside groups — a call designed to instill a sense among donors that things are “pretty damn urgent” right now, one of the organizers of the call tells me.
The call is yet another sign that donors and outside operatives — who had earlier gotten the message from Obama that he doesn’t want such activity — now recognize that Team Obama is privately hoping for such efforts to gear up in earnest.
On the call, Stan Greenberg, who did polling for Bill Clinton in 1992 and now partners with James Carville to run the Dem polling firm Democracy Corps, gave a presentation to the donors that painted a somewhat bleak picture of the struggles Obama is having with aging white women in battleground states.
Oh, man, that is the funniest thing I’ve read in days! Gee, I wonder why a sweet guy like Barack Obama would be having trouble with “aging white women?” Oh, those wacky old women! What on earth is their problem? Continue reading →
When I read Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s book, “Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” I felt as if I had been sleep-walking through the past twenty years of my life. (I hope that soon I will have the long-promised interview with the Congresswoman for your reading pleasure, but she is obviously quite busy on her book tour!) Through a devastating, methodical collection of facts and figures, the Congresswoman builds an airtight case for her premise: American women have NOT come a long way, baby.
Sexual harrassment suits are still routinely filed at places that are designated by female-led organizations as woman-friendly. Women still make 77% less money than men for doing the same job. Although many other countries, including the not-so-forward-thinking Pakistan and India, have had female heads of state, we Americans are still not quite able to bring ourselves to elect a female president, although many qualified women have tried and failed. Our business community has little to no support for women who want to participate in the workforce; no places for breastfeeding, no help for those who need daycare, and maternity leave for most is a thing of the past, having been replaced by “disability pay” – as if having a child were a disability! And as for a woman’s right to control her own body, although 6 years of Republican control over Congress, the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court has not led to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, certain factions within the Republican Party never seem to stop trying to chip away at reproductive choice. Just recently, HHS Secretary Leavitt put forth a proposal erroneously declaring some forms of birth control as abortifacients, thus opening the door to more “conscientious refusals” by anti-choice health professionals to prescribe them. Finally, the ERA has been dead in the water since it failed to pass in the 1970’s, the last time that a demonstrated, concentrated push for womens’ rights occurred.
Maloney’s excellent book offers practical, real-world solutions for many of these problems; among them, lobbying for specific legislation and networking with women in business to get more females into the top slots in Fortune 500 companies. But when all is said and done, the overwhelming thing we all must do is to elect more women to local, state and federal government. Why? Because of the 30% Solution.
There is an article in the NYTimes this morning about the human ability to approximate numbers of items and how this is correlated to the ability to do more abstract math. There’s a little test you can take that will show you how good you are at this. (I scored a 88%. Nyah-Nyah!)
Can we apply these same skills to electoral vote maps?
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m seeing more red. My sense is that Obama is going to lose. Not only that but the lightening up of PA, NJ and NY is not a good sign.
But what do I know? I’m just a girl and everyone knows that girls are not good at math.
BTW: Today is primary day in Massachusetts! If you live in MA, go out and vote for Ed O’Reilly for the US Senate and send a message to John Kerry and the DNC.
The WayBack machine takes us back to March 2007 (H/T Dyhana) She gets going good at about 6 minutes in on the sub-prime mortgage crisis and its potential impact on the economy:
Oh, by the way, Senator Clinton is sponsoring a bill that will provide $1.7 Billion dollars ro mass transit projects around the country (H/T Downticket). Of course, it is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars we as taxpayers will be forking out to banks and investment companies to cover the losses of their disastrous get-rich-quick schemes. Would it be too much to ask those guys to give back their enormous bonuses they made in the last couple of years? Yes, I guess it would be too much.
Well, a paltry $1.7 Billion for a worthwhile bill is better than nothing but it only scratches the surface. At least she’s doing something about it.
NEW YORK – When Wall Street woke up Monday morning, two more of its storied firms had vanished.
Lehman Brothers, burdened by $60 billion in soured real-estate holdings, said it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after attempts to rescue the 158-year-old firm failed.
Bank of America Corp. said it is snapping up Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. in an $50 billion all-stock transaction.
The demise of the independent Wall Street institutions came as shock waves from the 14-month-old credit crisis roiled the U.S. financial system six months after the collapse of Bear Stearns.
The world’s largest insurance company, American International Group Inc., also was forced into a restructuring.
But are we panicking? Heck no! The Murkin economy is strong and secure! The fundamentals are sound! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
Well, maybe we’re panicking a little bit.
And a global consortium of banks, working with government officials in New York, announced a $70 billion pool of funds to lend to troubled financial companies.
The aim, according to participants who spoke to The Associated Press, was to prevent a worldwide panic on stock and other financial exchanges.
Ten banks – Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS – each agreed to provide $7 billion “to help enhance liquidity and mitigate the unprecedented volatility and other challenges affecting global equity and debt markets.”
In a way, I think this was the point of globalization – to get us all so dependent on each other that no large country’s economy could be allowed to fail. Unfortunately, there is a lot of good faith assumed under this idea – good faith which we, as a nation, did not practice. We allowed our banking institutions to make extremely risky investments and deregulated our credit industries, and now both our economy and the economies of other nations around the world are being adversely affected.
This is my favorite photograph from a compilation of photos taken during The Great Depression. The photos were commissioned by the US Government as part of a FSA-OWI project.
Hauling Peaches in Colorado During the Great Depression
There are ominous signs on the horizon. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy today. Other financial institutions are failing and a great majority of middle income households have their savings tied up in 401Ks and investments where the investment professionals themselves don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They were able to structure “instruments” to get around government regulation. Women have seen a sharp spike in unemployment in the past quarter. And we have two candidates who are both ill-equipped to handle what is about to happen. One is committed to his party’s ideology but seems to possess the personal mettle to withstand a crisis. The other has spurned his party’s ideollogy and has no practical experience in dealing with tough situations with any kind of personal fortitude.
It will take a Depression to get the Democrats to focus on what is important.
Here is the link to the FSA-OWI site at the Library of Congress with more pictures of the Depression because those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
I’ve been getting some interesting mail in the last couple of days that I thought are worth sharing with the rest of the class. There’s a bit of tea leaf reading involved. Let’s have a crack at it.
The Confluence 