Tea “Party”

I think it’s a little unfair that the Tea Party gets to categorize themselves as a third party when all of their candidates are running as members of the Republican Party.  If they want to call themselves a party, the need to see if they can stand on their own and win on their own.  I don’t think they can, and I think they know it.  I wonder why the media has not called attantion to their differences from the GOP while mentioning that they are still running AS the GOP.

Discuss…

How do we convince people who do not derive power from it or lose out as a result of it that the White Male Privilege does exist and that it would be almost universally beneficial to eliminate it?

Change the Label, Change the Law

I have decided that I will no longer refer to the man I married as my husband.  From now on, he will be referred to as my life partner.  I have made this decision in support of my gay and lesbian friends who cannot legally call their partners their husbands or wives, yet those people deserve no lesser title.

We are so hung up on titles and labels and the definitions of one thing or another.  We want to be able to categorize each other into neat little boxes.  We forget that people are complicated.  Life is complicated.  Let’s just decide to make this one thing less complicated.  What is a husband or a wife but a partner in all things?  If we have made a committment to someone and invited them in to every part of our lives, does their gender truly matter? 

Maybe if we change the label we can change the law.  If we allow the words “life partner” to mean the same thing as “husband” or “wife”, we take the power away from the words, lessening their meaning, and enabling people to feel less defensive toward them.

Arizona

I haven’t posted about the Arizona shootings because I wasn’t quite sure what to say.  I have been grately affected emotionally by the tragedy, and considering I don’t personally know anyone involved, I’ve been trying to figure out WHY it bothered me so very much.

Blaming Sarah Palin seems easy, and as much as I dislike her, I don’t really think that she can be blamed.  Her Crosshairs ad was certainly inflamatory, and many commented about the wording and the visual image.  It does SEEM to promotre violence against members of the government, but more importantly, it makes a pretty strong statement about the nature of politics in America.  “Eliminate the competition” seems to be the accepted solution to political tumoil for the Republican party.

Maybe this guy was influenced by extremist rhetoric.  He was certainly insane.  But we have to take a good look at the media and the extreme way politicians communicate when a mass shooting happens in Arizona and the general response is, “Well, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later”.  Is that really where we are right now?  Are we seriously at a place where we can’t blame an insane man for being crazy because the outside influences are so extremist and violent that it’s possible he might have been influenced by a game, a TV ad, a movie….  Is this the world we want to accept – a violent. extremist, society in which this very thing can happens and we shrug our shoulders and keep our heads down?

Indirect Censorship

The Parent’s Television Council has decided to “scold” various TV shows for their representation of teenage sexuality.  Most of the shows they chastised were geared towards adults, shows that young teens shouldn’t be watching anyway.  Of course, whether or not a child should be watching a particular show should depend on the maturity of the child and the decision of their parents, not a Parent’s council.

Indirect censorship groups are gaining way too much power.  Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club are censoring the release of Jon Stewart’s new book, Earth, for unknown reasons.  Blockbuster and other video stores decide what they want to release to the public, and it’s usually based on the owner’s morals rather than actual inappropriate content.  The rating system for movies in the US has absolutely no rhyme, reason, or rubric.

American’s are allowing their information, their books, their TV shows, and their movies to be censored with no knowledge of why or how.  They put bling faith and trust in an agency without knowing the true purpose of the censorship.  I’m so tired of being told what to watch, what to read, what to think…  Even though I choose not to listen to these agencies, I find it more and more difficult to gain access to the information they don’t want me to have, even if it’s just a little sex on Glee.

Effin’ SCOTUS

10 years ago this week, SCOTUS made one of the worst rulings in recent US History with Bush v. Gore. Things have only gotten worse from that day, and it is continually proven to us by our political and judicial leaders just how unimportant we actually are.  I think that’s all that really needs to be said today.

Invoking 9/11

I tried to have a discussion with a few friends of mine about the Wikileaks scandal and Assange’s arrest.  My argument was against censorship and the slow errosion of our freedoms for the past 9 years.  A Republican friend’s argument was that she would rather have to jump through hoops at every turn if it prevented a terrorist attack.  I countered with the Benjamin Franklin quote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” and said that I would almost rather there be another terrorist attack then slowly lose my rights one by one.  That’s where she invoked the third rail of debate: 9/11.

The conversation immediately descended into the depths of hell, with several other Republicans coming to her aid.  A few of my more liberal friends came to mine, and it turned out that NO ONE was really discussion the issue at hand: Is what Assange did really illegal?  If documents written by the government of and by the people are taken by one of those people, is it really stealing?  How do documents become “CLASSIFIED”?  Who decides on the Constitutionality of that classification?

The important thing is this: If every time we attempt to have an adult conversation someone decides to end the discussion by screaming, “REMEMBER 9/11,” nothing will ever be discussed, let alone agreed upon.  The constant steering of political discussions to the irrelevant (especially since the wars fought and most of the security decisions made since have NOTHING to do with the terrorist attacks) makes us all sound like children and does not further discourse in any way.  A nation divided we definitely are, and I fear, a nation divided we shall remain.

A-T-T-A-C-K

I’ve noticed that the McCain campaign doesn’t really have anything to say about itself, its policies, or how it will differ from the Bush Presidency.  As a result, they seem to wait for Obama to come out with a plan for the environment (remember the tire gauges), the economy, or some other issue and attack his idea as well as his character.  I wish the American people weren’t stupid enough to be bullied into voting for McCain, but since he continues to attack rather than discuss, it seems that they will have little substance on which to base an opinion.

If I weren’t already diametrically opposed to the McCain Campaign, the Bush Presidency, and everything they stand for, the fact tha he and Sarah Palin have been attacking Obama’s experience as a community organizer and calling it virtually worthless would have turned me off completely.  It’s a slap in the face to those who try to improve their communities by gathering their neighbors together and doing things like forming neighborhood watches (a VERY Republican thing to do, by the way), PTA’s, clean-up crews, truancy action committees, after school programs, and forming a hundred other groups that people like Barack Obamahave organized and created.  The Republicans and all those who give credence their tactics and anything they have to say disgust me completely. I feel the rift in our country growing by the second.  I hope we survive.

Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten: 4,168 US soldiers dead and 30,634 US soldiers wounded in a mission that was accomplished 5 years ago.  589 US soldiers dead in Afghanistan

Humanizing the Right

So, McCain’s Vice Presidential pick (what’s her name again?) has a teen daughter who’s pregnant.  I think the campaign leaked this to the press so that Republicans can be seen as caring, compassionate people who accept young people who make mistakes.  She’s 17, but she’s going to keep the baby and marry the father.  Vote for us.  We’ll raise your child in a nice, Christian church and teach her that she only has one option when it comes to pregnancy, but neglect to mention that because we only teach abstinance, she’ll be afraid to discuss birth control with her parents and this might happen to her, too. I feel bad for the girl.  Not bad enough not to be cynical about the reasons why her pregnancy is being discussed, but  that’s usually something people want to keep quiet, and her mother’s political choices made her youthful indiscretions fodder for the media frenzy.

They’re Gonna Kill ‘Em

I was watching the Democratic National Convention(which isn’t quite Democratic, or national) on Monday night and they cut to a picture of where the Democratic Nominee will be speaking from on Thursday.  That’s when it dawned me.  They’re going to kill him.  It may not be on Thursday night, though a “plot” has already been disrupted, but I think there’s a reasonable chance that they’re going to kill him.  Don’t ask me who “they” is.  There are so many people who feel they have a reason to take his life that I’m sure the list is days long, but my guess it that we’ll never really know and the idea will have originated in the highest levels of the government.  I’m going to guess that the attempt will be blamed on a “lone nut” racist who works in the stadium (noticed that the stage lends itself to triangulated crossfire) and has recently talked to someone about how much they hate the man.  Blaming a national disaster on a terrorist has already been done.