You Solve It, Pass the Chips

The Prez wrote me an email today. You can read it below. Did you get one, too?

Riverdaughter suggests that we PUMAs host our own party and contact the new DNC Chairman, Governor Tim Kaine, directly. We can let him know what we think about the President’s placation of Republicans in removing the birth control funding from the handout that doesn’t solve anything and still leaves out homeowners, women, and longtime unemployed stimulus package. Thanks for the direct link to new leader’s helper, RD.

I’d like to underline the insidious Big Brother notion of these house parties. Now, I’m as much a party-lover as the best of you. However, this house party meeting model with email and web sign-ups is taken directly from moveon.org’s organizational tools to influence the government they just helped put in power. It was also adapted by the DNC to host parties during the 2008 campaign season. If memory serves, the DNC even used a similar web-based organizational tool to promote Obama events on their website during the Democratic Primaries in April 2008 when Hillary Clinton was still in the race. The house party model consists of a central, piped in speaker, by video and/or phone, with question and answer period to go along with meet yer neighbors, let’s have food, and get to know each other and who’s in our camp.

I’ve been touting the effectiveness of this model for nine months after seeing how an org of which I was a charter member used it to help put Barack Obama in power. In doing so, moveon.org members were subsequently used and thrown under the bus. I wonder if they’ll ever awake to find that they’re in intensive care?

Our PUMA movement could use this model to start cooking up recipes in the kitchen. Obama said we’re the ones he was counting on for change and that the American people need to get involved. I guess he hopes we’ll come up with some pretty good ideas after Big Brother tells us what’s good for us about spending our money.

Lady Boomer —

The economic crisis is growing more serious every day, and the time for action has come.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will jumpstart our economy and put more than 3 million people back to work.

I hope to sign the recovery plan into law in the next few weeks. But I need your help to spread the word and build support.

It’s not enough for this bill to simply pass Congress. Americans need to know how it will affect their lives — they need to know that help is on the way and that this administration is investing in economic growth and stability.

[IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS: And about that stimulus plan . . . You can read Puma PAC’s decoding of it here. Our community and the whole country owe a debt of gratitude to Puma PAC members who devoted their time and noggins to bring to light what the people who run our government are trying to shove down our throats.]

Governor Tim Kaine has agreed to record a video outlining the recovery plan and answering questions about what it means for your community. You can submit your questions online and then invite your friends, family, and neighbors to watch the video with you at an Economic Recovery House Meeting.

Join thousands of people across the country by hosting or attending an Economic Recovery House Meeting this weekend.

The stakes are too high to allow partisan politics to get in the way.

That’s why I’ve consulted with Republicans as well as Democrats to put together a plan that will address the crisis we face.

I’ve also taken steps to ensure an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability. Once it’s passed, you will be able to see how every penny in this plan is being spent.

You can help restore confidence in our economy by making sure your friends, family, and neighbors understand how the recovery plan will impact your community.

Sign up to host or attend an Economic Recovery House Meeting and submit your question for the video now:

http://my.barackobama.com/recovery

Our ability to come together as a nation in difficult times has never been more important.

I know I can rely on your spirit and resolve as we lead our country to recovery.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

P.S. — If you can’t host or attend an Economic Recovery House Meeting, you can still submit your questions for Governor Kaine and then share the video with your friends and family this weekend. Learn more here:

http://my.barackobama.com/recovery

Party to solve the country’s problems, anyone? I know! Soon there’ll be a fundraiser component to it, where we just raise money flat out for the government, instead of the DNC, RNC or moveon. You in?

Oh, and speaking of which . . . Excuse me, is it weird to have the New DNC Chairman appearing in a supposedly neutral role to the whole country at these parties? Perhaps, then we can become more familiar with our Party leaders, so they’ll become just like all the other neutral people in power who are unselfishly interested in bettering our lives? What the ????

[cross-posted from Lady Boomer NYC]

Getting through to the idiots in charge

As I mentioned below, the White House press office does not respond to questions regarding the removal of reproductive health benefits for poor women from the stimulus bill.  So, what to do?

Well, if you’re like me, you just received some stupid email from PBO himself asking you to pressure friends, family and politicians to support the stimulus package.  Sort of like a jock strap.  Ya’ know, I’m just not into it.  Put back the birth control and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and maybe I’ll think about it.  The kind of stimulus I can believe in includes preventing women from having to to take care of children they didn’t plan for or using the extra money in their paychecks to spread some of their own personal wealth in the marketplace.

But how do you get through to these nitwits???  Well, PBO *did* mention that Governor Tim Kaine would be recording a special message about the economic plan explaining it to our wee little pee brains.  Maybe we could contact Governor Kaine.  Maybe we could skip the DNC filter and send email and faxes directly to his office in Virginia.  Hey, look here!  There’s a contact form on his website.  Ooo, Ooo!  Maybe he’d be more impressed with fan mail by the truckloads.  He’s got a snailmail address too:

Office of the Governor
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219

Phone: (804) 786-2211
Fax: (804) 371-6351

Of course, you could just host an economic recovery house party like Obama suggested. And while you’re at it, you could patiently explain that the reproductive health funds were taken out of the bill as requested by Republicans and then not a single Republican in the House voted for it. Or you could mention that no restrictions will be made on how the bankers compensate themselves with our money. Or you could discuss the lack of funds directed towards homeowners struggling with mortgages. Or you could muse on the creation of a “bad bank” where we would own the toxic assets but none of the future profits!

Fun, fun!  Remember to stock the bar.  If you have any other suggestions for PBO, you can contact his band of deceitful droogs in his cwack propaganda unit at mybarackobama!  They even have a toll free number you can call to tell them how much you appreciate how they are looking out for women, that 51% of the population that pays their taxes and keeps getting screwed.

Here’s the number:  Organizing for America toll-free at 1-877-922-4264

Monday: Feminism’s Lack of Leadership

Alegre gives us a heads up this morning about the Fem2.0 conference going on in Washington DC this week.  Feminism’s lack of leadership is on her mind this year:

We met for coffee this morning and spent 3 hours talking about the lack of leadership from the folks in the women’s rights movement.  The fact that none of them have taken the White House to task for that stunt of theirs last week regarding the Medicaid funded reproductive health services…   Silence is one thing, but when a group ignores this sell-out by entirely re-writing the story of what went down it’s quite another.

Kim Gandy from NOW will be there.  Ooohh, to be a fly on that wall.  Go get’em, Alegre!  Someone needs to ask these women what they got for their endorsement of Obama when a woman was running who would have met all of their needs.  And if the answer was they were afraid she couldn’t win, then they need to have their feminism credentials stripped.

Lest we need more proof that Obama has no intention of listening to women, a new “special interest group” that comprises 51% of the population, check out this little bit from Jodi Jacobsen of RH Reality Check (H/T Lambert):

Apparently, bi-partisanship and the new politics means never having to have your own House Majority Leader’s back and that the White House spends more time making “common ground” with Republicans than figuring out what they stand for with their own party.

The White House signals they are ready to take the contraceptive piece out.  Because it is all about bipartisanship, right? This will get them the votes to do “more important things,” right?

Phone calls placed to the White House Press Office Monday night are not returned.

OK, to recap: Barack Obama is not a liberal or a Democrat.  Barack Obama is a political opportunist.  His principles operate on a sliding scale and he signaled *during the primaries* that everything was on the table with his post-partisan shtick.  His campaign made a big deal about abortion rights but the people actually running the party, ie Obama’s people, made sure that most downticket Democratic candidates scrubbed any mention of reproductive rights and abortion from their web sites.  And if you weren’t on his Blackberry contact list before the election, there is absolutely no reason to expect him to want to hear from you now.

This should have been pretty clear to the feminist leaders out there.  There was no excuse for everyone caving to Obama without extracting one concession- publicly and loudly so that the whole country could hear it.  Without that, you got nuthin’.

As far as I’m concerned, feminists HAVE no leaders.  We have a few promising ones emerging, like Amy Siskind of The New Agenda and Heidi Li Feldman of 51%.  And we have some very talented writers like our own madamab, Reclusive Leftist’s Violet Socks** and action powerhouse Darragh Murphy of PUMAPac.  We’re out here and we are keeping things together.  Had I known about this conference, I might have gone down there myself to give the a leaders piece of my mind and a dope slap or two. Leaders LEAD.  They don’t ask for someone to pass the Kool-ade.

Snap out of it, women.  Four years is a long time.

** Whoo-hoo!  Violet has a hair singeing rant from yesterday that shouldn’t be missed.

Here’s what I’d like to do to the *leaders* who sold us out: