We’re about to crack open our 3rd 5 gallon drum of drylock as we are finishing our first bottle of Beaujolais. There’s a low fat cassoulet in the oven waiting for us to finish the second coat of drylock.
I just have to say for the record that drylocking a basement sucks, er, is of low quality. But we are almost done. Pretty soon the contractor can move in and finish this baby up. Will we finish by Christmas? I doubt it but fir sure I’ll be watching the Superbowl from down here.
TAKE THE POLL AND HAVE YOUR SAY! What were the top, most offensive/outrageous sexist actions occurring during the election of 2008? (If you’ve forgotten any, there are helpful links below the poll!)
Write-ins can be submitted via the comments section and will be tallied if there are sufficient for any specific item. Vote up to 10 times.
After the passage of California’s Proposition 8, I’ve been shaking my head over why many religious institutions are virulently against gay marriage. This interview with Richard Rodriguez, an author, fervent Catholic, proud Hispanic, and “out” gay man, has a very interesting take on the subject. According to him, it’s all about the family and the wimminz, and how the church is afraid of losing its power over them both. I have to admit that I’ve never heard of this theory before, but Rodriguez makes a convincing case for his point of view.
The first couple of paragraphs pack quite a wallop.
For author Richard Rodriguez, no one is talking about the real issues behind Proposition 8.
While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.
Rodriguez goes on to say this about how the feminist movement and the gay rights movement are linked, in the minds of those who are invested in religious institutions:
American families are under a great deal of stress. The divorce rate isn’t declining, it’s increasing. And the majority of American women are now living alone. We are raising children in America without fathers. I think of Michael Phelps at the Olympics with his mother in the stands. His father was completely absent. He was negligible; no one refers to him, no one noticed his absence.
The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. I think the pro-Proposition 8 movement was really galvanized by an insecurity that churches are feeling now with the rise of women.
Monotheistic religions feel threatened by the rise of feminism and the insistence, in many communities, that women take a bigger role in the church. At the same time that women are claiming more responsibility for their religious life, they are also moving out of traditional roles as wife and mother. This is why abortion is so threatening to many religious people — it represents some rejection of the traditional role of mother.
In such a world, we need to identify the relationship between feminism and homosexuality. These movements began, in some sense, to achieve visibility alongside one another. I know a lot of black churches take offense when gay activists say that the gay movement is somehow analogous to the black civil rights movement. And while there is some relationship between the persecution of gays and the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, I think the true analogy is to the women’s movement. What we represent as gays in America is an alternative to the traditional male-structured society. The possibility that we can form ourselves sexually — even form our sense of what a sex is — sets us apart from the traditional roles we were given by our fathers.
N.O.W. posted a “Media Hall of Shame ‘2008 Election Edition.’” Their most recent edition, posted today, decries the sexist nature of the September 2008 US Weekly article alleging Sarah Palin’s sordid details of “Babies, Lies and Scandal.” Somehow their Suzy-Come-Lately’ routine fails to impress me. In fact, my initial reaction was to blurt out loud “Who the heck do they think they are?” Many of us have figured out that N.O.W. is NOT an organization that promotes women.
What’s the matter N.O.W.? Donations down? Have all of the ‘bitter knitters’ kept their coin purses zipped tight? Well guess what? This ridiculous attempt at defending the honor of this year’s female candidates will not change that. Your faux outrage at the horrific behavior of your endorsed candidate’s bought and paid for media is transparent. You should have denounced every sickening incident at the time it occurred – and not waited until these moral crimes against women had their intended effect.
Members were then allowed to ‘nominate’ future awardees — How big of you NOW. I’m still not impressed. Your one and only defense of Sarah Palin concerning remarks about her abilities to juggle motherhood and a political career were tempered with commentary that Palin “scoffed at Clinton” for even raising the issue of sexism. Your silence on the vast majority of attacks has been deafening.
So, OK — I’m not going to eat between meals and I’m not going to take seconds and I’m going to walk for 3 miles. And yes, doing this regularly does work. The trick is in the “doing this regularly” part. And that’s where blogging helps. When I actually do my daily thought pieces (which kind of stopped during the election-season) I’m more committed. And my commitment has more power if I write down what I eat and do.
Weight Watchers is where I first learned to “Journal” what I eat. And the Weight Watcher food diaries are still helpful. It’s really nice to tuck their diary into my purse and write down my meals no matter where I am. But the written format has serious limitations compared to the computer tools that are now available.
With online and desktop diaries you can create charts of your progress, track exercise (and the calories burned) and in some — menus of regular meals and recipes.
I can’t seem to stick to just one journaling tool. I like the colorful charts of one tool and the ability to record recipes and log them as single servings in another and I love the moving-weighted-average weight chart of another. So, getting back on track is a little complicated for me as I get each of them set up for my renewed commitment. Luckily one of them has updated the software to make it easy to adjust goals (I thought I was going to have to create a New-Fake-Me.)
Some Obots are taking to stand-up. In this video clip of Blogging Heads TV at The New Republic, Matt Continetti does a brilliant parody of an Obamaphile who has finally come to grips with the fact that Obama is not a liberal and instead puts all of his eggs in the basket of the liberal paradise that is the new Congress. He’s hillariously funny when he enthuses about how now that Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, she is going to get those new Blue Dog Democrats to roll over just like she did last session.
Eve Fairbanks plays the cynical smirker as Matt tells us all about Liberalism on Steroids. I don’t know who wrote this material but it’s brilliant!
What’s that? Not a parody? REAlly?
Nevermind.
Other curiosities:
The ugly truth hatches out about the recent economic collapse. Amity Shales in the WSJ takes on Krugman in The Krugman Recipe for Depression. What was it about The New Deal that drives capitalists absolutely nuts? It’s the effect it had on labor. Yeah, with Social Security insurance and strengthening of the country’s labor laws, workers had greater autonomy. They started getting paid real wages and had health insurance too. I’m of the opinion that those New Deal fixes lead to one of the greatest periods of entrpreneurial spirit and prosperity that the country has ever seen. Well, Shales will have none of that. Shales believes that a job, ANY job, is preferable to a job with insurance. I’m not sure about that. I’m listening to Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, on the Dust Bowl of the 30’s and he tells the story of one schoolteacher who worked in Oklahoma for a whole year without pay. Yep, the school district offered her a warrant that she was supposed to be able to redeem for cash at the local bank. Except the bank wouldn’t accept it. Niiiice. What Shales seems to be missing is that the reason so many people are defaulting on mortgages or are in debt up to their eyeballs is because real wages have actually eroded over the past 40 years. The social safety net of the New Deal is in tatters. And when people fall through it, they can’t pay their bills. It’s really very simple cause and effect, Amity Shales. If there is a solution to this current morrass, it *has* to have a strong labor component. We are the bulk of the taxpayers in the country and if there is no taxbase, there is no recovery. It’s really too bad this doesn’t fit with Amity Shales worldview but this is America. Love it or leave it.
Dr. Violet Socks’ brilliant compilation of the consequences of electing Barack Obama is reprieved in #13 from early November. Keep this in mind when you hear more about Hillary, Samantha Powers and Christina Romer. But I think her recent post on taxation is something we should all be asking ourselves. We have taxation without representation. Our votes for Hillary last year during the primaries were completely disregarded. What is the meaning of suffrage if your vote doesn’t count? And why are we paying taxes into a system where our representation in the general population is greater than 50% but our representation in elected office is only 17%? It’s just nuts.
Murphy at PUMAPac pointed me to this article in the NYTimes by Alex Kuczinsky about her struggle with infertility and her hiring of a surrogate in Her Body, My Baby. Unlike a lot of the commenters on this piece, it doesn’t bother me that she paid for the treatment or the surrogate instead of adopting. The money she threw into the system is benefitting someone. It’s her money and she has the normal reasons for doing IVF- eleven times. And I think the pictures are a hoot! Only the most arrogantly unaware wouldn’t see the unsubtle classist overtones.
Alex and Max....and the baby nurse?
No, what strikes me is the incredibly cold account the author gives of her relationship with her surrogate. Cathy Hilling, the vessel, loses her identity as soon as she gives birth to the author’s nearly 11 lb baby. As Murphy notes, enough of the nurturing, mother stories already. It’s a part of life but not the only meaningful part of a woman’s life. But the story as written shows Alex Kuczinsky as probably one of the most selfish, insensitive, catty, snobbish, pseudo-intellectual and heartless women I’ve ever read. Nature unfortunately didn’t bless her with a working uterus. It’s doubly unfortunate that she seems to be missing a soul. Pray for the poor kid.
I worked off the last of the gravy today. B. and I went to the local Y and did elliptical, weight machines, 10 minutes of treading water and sauna. Ahhhhh. Feels great. What did you do to work off the peck of food you ate yesterday?
R!$@#%#!$%!!! Get me out of here! They’re driving me crazy! My mother is talking about wills and affadavits and family friends who are swindling each other over property. I am being forced to watch The View and defend why I don’t like Joy Behar and why I DON’T CARE ABOUT BARBARA WALTERS’ INTERVIEW WITH OBAMA! I DON’T CARE, I DON’T CARE, I DON’T CARE.
My sister is going to rescue me and take me to the YMCA for two hours of exercise followed by sauna. Then I might hit Circuit City for a new LCD TV for my basement. Meanwhile, here is the latest installment of the “Who could have predicted?” series. Today’s entry is from Paul Krugman in Lest We Forget. Actually, it is The Shrill One who is saying No $#@% Sherlock to his buddies:
A few months ago I found myself at a meeting of economists and finance officials, discussing — what else? — the crisis. There was a lot of soul-searching going on. One senior policy maker asked, “Why didn’t we see this coming?”
There was, of course, only one thing to say in reply, so I said it: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
…
Why did so many people insist that our financial system was “resilient,” as Alan Greenspan put it, when in 1998 the collapse of a single hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, temporarily paralyzed credit markets around the world?
Why did almost everyone believe in the omnipotence of the Federal Reserve when its counterpart, the Bank of Japan, spent a decade trying and failing to jump-start a stalled economy?
One answer to these questions is that nobody likes a party pooper. While the housing bubble was still inflating, lenders were making lots of money issuing mortgages to anyone who walked in the door; investment banks were making even more money repackaging those mortgages into shiny new securities; and money managers who booked big paper profits by buying those securities with borrowed funds looked like geniuses, and were paid accordingly. Who wanted to hear from dismal economists warning that the whole thing was, in effect, a giant Ponzi scheme?
Well, there were *some* people who saw it coming but they were laughed at. Peter Schiff is the classic example. Of course, he comes from the Austrian School of economics, which is as austere and uncompromising as it sounds. For Schiff, it’s all laissez faire and all natural law all the time. It must be a legacy of the Hun invasion. Who knows? But this little clip that has gone viral is a thing of beauty:
Who’s laffing now?
Still, Krugman is indulging in a bit of wishful thinking of his own:
Now we’re in the midst of another crisis, the worst since the 1930s. For the moment, all eyes are on the immediate response to that crisis. Will the Fed’s ever more aggressive efforts to unfreeze the credit markets finally start getting somewhere? Will the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus turn output and employment around? (I’m still not sure, by the way, whether the economic team is thinking big enough.)
No, Paul, it will likely not be big enough. *Someone* spent $600,000,000 to install Obama over our objections (BTW, Gov. Jon Corzine was a former CEO at Goldman-Sachs. Fancy that!). Obama has been running from The New Deal like it was the ebola virus. But he sure has a lot of nice things to say about Reagan. Ah, yes, the Reagan Era. Those were the days. I was a student, Pell grants dried up, tuition skyrocketed, there were no jobs to be had… Those were the days when a person who was the first in her family to attend college could build her character by mopping floors in a fast food joint at 2am, stay up until 4am studying and fall asleep in psych 101 at 8am the next morning. It made me the old, bitter, uneducated (with a degree in a hard science) working class (professional researcher) sino-peruvian lesbian I am today!
Some Obots are taking to stand-up. In 
The Confluence 
