And the problem is? What? The end of Murder-By-Spreadsheet?

Hilarious: The Wall Street Journal thinks that a public plan costing 18% – 32% below what I’m paying now for Health Insurance is “Free” (laughing) Only a Wall Street resident could call a $600 – $700 per month bill “Free”

Also? If that’s the best the Democrats can do to make Health Care affordable, then we’re in trouble.

I’m hoping we can do better.

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And who knows? Maybe we can . . . . (It’s starting to look like we might get something)

BAUCUS AND KENNEDY SET THE PACE.

In a letter to Obama today, Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Ted Kennedy, chair of the health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, not only outlined a timeframe for health reform but also put forward a strategy for overcoming the turf warfare of years past. The key bit:

Since our committees share jurisdiction over health care reform legislation in the Senate, we have jointly laid out an aggressive schedule to accomplish our goal. Both committees plan to mark-up legislation in early June. Our intention is for that legislation to be very similar, and to reflect a shared approach to reform, so that the measures that our two committees report can be quickly merged into a single bill for consideration on the Senate floor.

Believe it or not — THIS is an open thread!

Afrocity Says…Lets Hang up the Chick Habit and Riot Grrls!!!!

I try not to show it much but being recognized as a PUMA is very important to me.

I imagine myself standing in a room filled with PUMA women of all ages, colors and backgrounds. We are a circle of sisters who will not be treated like shit. A moral and intellectual force and we have all just been through hell.

I step forward and say.

My name is Afrocity and I am a Republican (there I said it) and I want to be a PUMA.

It is March 2009 and I was thinking this scene out for sometime as I awaited surgery at a local women’s hospital. I had uterine polyps. I was bleeding and in pain.  Nevertheless, I felt special because it was a women’s specialty hospital- only us girls and everything was trimmed in breast cancer awareness -pink.  I saw an older woman being wheeled into the OR, her daughter behind her with an OBAMA tote bag. Hmmm I did not vote for the man but matter what, we are still women. No one can change that. She pees sitting down and so do I.

I put my Ipod on. I have a PUMA playlist you know. It is all Riot Grrl music. The third wave feminist girl bands. Bratmobile, April March, Jack Off Jill… The drugs they gave to me were kicking in. The nurse looked at me and smiled. I wondered if she would still smile at me if she knew I was conservative. The last song I remembered before they wheeled me into surgery was April March’s “Chick Habit”.

hang up the chick habit
hang it up, daddy,
a girl’s not a tonic or a pill
hang up the chick habit
hang it up, daddy,
you’re just jonesing for a spill

oh, how your bubble’s gonna burst
when you meet another nurse
she’ll be driving in a hearse

you’re gonna see the reason why
when they’re spitting in your eye
they’ll be spitting in your eye

I thought yes we need to hang up the chick habits, all get along and PUMA will be spitting your eye.

You may have noticed that I have been absent from The Confluence.

After a long and stressful election year I needed some time to myself.

I was tired of the Rasmussen polls and Obamabots. I felt overloaded by the imagery of sexism, race baiting and misogyny. I lost my race, my color, my gender. The thread I hung by was PUMA and that thread was breaking I felt, because I was a conservative.

During the election I really had no where to turn. I frequented Jake Tapper’s Political Punch Blog at ABCNEWS.com. There I experience a daily forced fed diet of Kool Aid and Hillary Hate Bars, full of energy with hope and change, packed with the extra fiber of racial pandering and humiliation. Hillary lost the primary. I felt personally defeated.

What was I going to do? Vote for McCain? It was almost impossible to comprehend. I had been a Democrat my entire life. I was an African American woman- it was craziness. I wanted to vote for John McCain. I had always admired his service to his country, his time as a POW, his maverick stance. It did not help that the left had fallen from grace in my eyes. For some time they had metamorphosed from dutiful donkeys to hypocritical assholes. “Hmmm which voting block will we pimp this time?” I’d had enough. Hillary was my last hope in the DNC and now she was gone. I wanted to go Republican but all the force of my racial sensibility told me not to. The only thing liberal about me was my pro-choice position. How could I? I would sit out the election.

One day, I went to the blog to pass the time away. Expecting the same ol’ Obamabutt garbage. Quick! Here come the sheeple. Get the Kool Aid! Fetch and Carry.

Today I was wrong.

Someone posted.

JUST SAY NO DEAL!!!! PUMA. NOBAMA,

Catchy phrase I thought. Just like the Howie Mandel game show. A week went by and I saw it again and again.

One lone poster: PUMA PUMA PUMA PUMA

I Googled it and saw sneakers…athletic gear…then a gem…It was Riverdaughter. THE CONFLUENCE.

At first I lurked and laughed. It was the epitome of estrogen and political snark.

Dare I post? I put a toe into the pool, then a leg, a body.

Afrocity was in, AngieNC grabbed my hand SOD was there, Madamab. Hi there Mr. Clown and Fuzzy, Simonfish. The water was refreshing and clear of Kool Aid.

Through PUMA, I gained unlikely acquaintances. Women I would never meet in real life. Along the way the wounds were terrible. Gotcha interviews, pigs with lipstick, Sarah Palin open debate threads, our PUMA eyes wide and keyboards tapping to her defense. We were like dolls in a museum, stripping off our gingham and corsets. We would no longer allow ourselves to be political ornamentation.

We were honing a message. Whispers from “Camp Chosen One” turned into threats and slurs. We were demonized as Menopausal Mollies who hated Obama. We were called the “R word”. Yes even me… We marched together on Election Day and cast our ballots. Many votes were in protest, others in earnest, a few mentally at home. The un-vote. Still, no matter how we voted, no matter how difficult it was that the vote was not for SHE, there was an undeniable bond of unity and we all found ourselves NOT VOTING FOR OBAMA.

I am a Republican but to me and the many other conservative and independent voting women that I know- we admire the PUMA cause as we lurk here. We watch with much interest as the PUMA question is answered. What is your mission. Will it include us?

Women of all political parties need to look for ways to simultaneously embrace women’s rights. Defiant political posture is a means to an end in the face of rising discrimination on the basis of our sex.

What happened during the election happened to both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

We should come together and avail ourselves of liberal and conservative tools- every divisive tool of patriarchic propaganda. Let’s widen our base and broaden our message.

Ceilings must shatter at the White House. As women, we should challenge the concept of the executive branch as ONLY masculine and the congressional branch as tolerably feminine.

We need collaboration to overcome the current divide. This past election told us much as ourselves not only as conservatives or democrats, blacks, whites, gays or straight but as women. Together we can advance in parallel directions. We can combat the horizontal fraternization between the patriarchy and the media. We can unburden ourselves of critical surveillance and revisionist History i.e. SHE IS STUPID, ONLY A ROOM WHERE HE COMES OUT, SHE IS PERIODICALLY DOWN.

Otherwise our work is in vain. Hidden in plain sight and the gendered assaults will continue.

Please lets hang up the chick habits. Let’s RIOT GRRLS

Then my operation is over and I have opened my eyes.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

http://afrocityblog.wordpress.com/

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Getting back to those tea parties . . .

(I never heard of Cody Willard before but I had a haircut like that back in 1978)

There’s something wrong when we edit people’s words in a way that changes their meaning.  Distorting the views of our opponents for shitzengiggles doesn’t help fix anything.

Monday: Getting the goods on Harman

Remember when Pelosi took up the Speaker’s gavel and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief because finally *something* was going to get done in Congress to curb the Bushies worst instincts?  We waited and waited while congresscritter after congresscritter did absolutely nothing but cave to the Republicans demands for, well, just about everything.  And we all started scratching our heads and got all tin-foily thinking that Karl Rove must be surveilling our reps and senators and had evidence of dead girls and live boys?

hahahahah!  That would be CRAZY!  We were just letting our paranoia get the better of us.

Well, you’d better sit down for this one.  It turns out that the Bushies *were* doing high tech surveillance on Congress members and one who got caught was Jane Harman.  Here’s the basic story:  Jane wanted to lead the House Intelligence Committee.  She had the seniority.  But she needed support so she made a deal with AIPAC.  She would try to do something about charges of spying against Israeli agents if AIPAC would lobby Pelosi for the job of head of the committee.  As part of a “routine” wiretap investigation on the spying allegation, the Justice department had Jane’s phone conversations tapped (how conveeeeenient) and learned about the deal.  Now, apparently, this quid pro quo arrangement that Jane was trying to swing crossed the line legally (I’ll say) and she could have faced some serious charges of a “completed crime”, meaning she made the deal and there is evidence she tried to fulfill her part of it.    But the Bushies protected Harman because…

(wait for it)

… they needed her support for warantless wiretapping.

What’s that about karma?

Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.

Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat.

But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.  Amazing.  There have to be dozens of stories like this that explain weird voting records.  The Bushies were very, very busy.  Of course, Harman should have known her phone would be tapped so maybe she wasn’t cut out for a leadership appointment anyway.

(BTW, as I was searching for an image on wiretapping, I found this interesting post about Skype.  Apparently, it’s harder to crack the encryption on Skype.  Good to know.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Bushies were busily waterboarding.  They did it 266 times.  On 2 people.  Now, that’s dedication to the job.  You’d think after the first 3 dozen times of getting faulty information they might have moved on to something a little more effective.  You’d be wrong.  But Obama is willing to let this all be so much water under the bridge. It’s all in the past.  Let us not quibble over a little drowning.  It would require a fight and potential loss of political capital, which he will need when he goes to Capitol Hill to fight the members of his party who are in the majority for the things he wants.

Changeity! Change! Hope! Change!

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