Povertybarn

Conservative Paper Backs Obama

Whoa! I had to read this endorsement of Obama by the very conservative Stockton Record several times before it sunk into my brain. A sample of the opinion:

And that brings us to McCain's most troubling trait: his judgment.

While praiseworthy for putting the first woman on a major-party presidential ticket since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, his selection of Palin as a running mate was appalling. The first-term governor is clearly not experienced enough to serve as vice president or president if required. Her lack of knowledge is being covered up by keeping her away from questioning reporters and doing interviews only with those considered friendly to her views.

They question McLame and his choice of that broad, Sarah. She gives a bad name to women. Tina Fey nails her again. I wish that she would stop comparing herself to Hillary Clinton -- an insult to Hillary!

Let the Schlepping Begin!

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Letterman Blasts No-Show McCain

Plan for Palin

I love this idea and post, stolen from Katherine Goldstein. I am donating $25 per week until the Election, please join me!

From the get-go, I've been pretty Machiavellian about this election. "Do what you gotta do, Obama, Axelrod et al. I won't criticize too much as long as you make it to the White House." Winning campaigns are a lot like sausage, I figured. While you enjoy the tasty finished product, you don't always want to see what happens to get there. But unlike in 2004 where my enthusiasm for Kerry was really just motivated by distaste for Bush, my happiness with Obama was much stronger than my dislike of McCain.

And Then Sarah happened. And it got personal.

On the night she gave her acceptance speech and the RNC, like so many devoted liberals, I couldn't contain my rage. She really got under my skin.

Oh, it's on.

And then I jumped off the deep end.

I don't just want Obama to win. I want this woman to lose. Badly. I want her destroyed. Publicly. And I want her to suffer.

As I told my boyfriend this the day after her speech, (in the interest of self preservation he hadn't even watched it) he rightfully looked at me like I was a lunatic.

Maybe I was.

Reading about her all day as I edit blogs here at HuffPost probably didn't help with my anger. I started to tell friends and family outside of work that in the interest of my mental health, wecouldn't talk about her.

I tried to let my feelings mellow, but the woman has the ability to get my blood pressure to rise instantly.

Then a couple days ago, my friend Alex Leo sent me an email:

This has been going around. I think it's fabulous and thought you would too...

Instead of (in addition to?) us all sending around emails about how horrible she is, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin's name. And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. Blogger John Neffinger gave me the following pertinent info:

I heard about this from someone else today and we were discussing this: The problem is the McCain campaign is run by contemptuous little anti-choice staffers -- no one who cares will ever see those cards. A better address might be the Palins' home, where at least her local postal workers and neighbors will notice:

PO Box 21

Wasilla, AK

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online"

A couple of bloggers have since mentioned this idea, including Patt Morrison who started this trend of donating in "honor of" Bush to Planned Parenthood 8 years ago. But with Sarah it feels like an even more appropriate place to donate since she's the newest poster girl of anti-feminism.

And today in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton and Cecile Richards made the urgent case for why we need to support women's reproductive rights now because of new rules the Bush administration is proposing that could greatly limit women's access to reproductive services.

I'm not sure how exactly to calculate a dollar amount that I should give in honor of Sarah that would appropriately counteract all the aggravation she's caused me. The formula might look something like this:

Number of times she's lied about the bridge to nowhere + number of nights I couldn't fall asleep because I was thinking about her + number of blogs I've read about her + one quarter of the cost she charged victims for rape kits in Wasilla + number of times she's compared herself to Hillary Clinton = ????

The idea of giving to Planned Parenthood seems like a healthy channeling of my frustration. I have, in fact, noticed that everyone is worried about money since we are in the middle of a massive financial crisis. But sometimes you just have to do something nice for yourself. And for Sarah.

Happy donating everyone!

            

Happy Park(ing) Day

 

Enjoy more parks today!!

Cindy McCain Is an Out of Touch Whiner

Inside voices

I just posted this on the keyboard of a person who sits near me! Let's see if she gets it. Wish me luck!

Behar Calls Out McLame; Walters Losing It

You can watch it here. There may be a bright spot on the View after all. Barbara Walters is losing it and makes a very bad mistake. She needs to apologize now!! Her appalling video is below.

whoopi slavery

You Might Be An Elitist . . .

From Mark Mumford at SFGate, enjoy!

1. You don't talk like a normal person. Only normal people talk like normal people. Sarah "no questions please, I'm Alaskan" Palin, according to House Minority leader John Boehner, she talks like a normal person... if by "normal" you mean "chillingly antagonistic toward anything resembling progress or political insight or women's civil liberties."

2. According to the GOP, lower-middle-class voters with minimal educations really like it when people who thinkk they can run the most powerful nation on the planet and steer massive military juggernauts and immense economies and affect the destinies of millions, don't actually speak like they have any idea how the hell to do it. Honey, if the Bush years proved anything, it's that the dumber you sound, the more effective you are at leading the country. Into the sewer. Did you know this already? Typical elitist.

3. You are on a first-name basis with the sushi chef at Whole Foods.

4. You have been to Whole Foods.

5. Look at you, Mr. Fancypants, with your snobbish notion that not every piece of furniture in your bedroom must look like it came from the same 1978 Levitz fire sale.

6. The impressive dimensions of the strap-on system in your dresser would make your average Alaskan redneck hockey player scream in horror even as it openly titillated a dozen Republican senators from Colorado Springs to Idaho, though it would probably still get you arrested in Alabama.

7. You know what a strap-on is. In a good way.

8. Barack Obama's oratory power, strength of character, and subtle understanding of complicated issues have actually served to dissolve a venerable portion of the acidic pessimism that's been eating into your very soul for eight solid years, causing you to actually begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, nuanced intellectual acumen and the nearly bankrupt American experiment do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Only elitist snobs know what "venerable" means. Or "acumen." Or "you."

9. When selecting an effective inebriant with which to numb if not completely drown the searing oatmealy dread that rumbles deep in your core after eight years of Bush and which has now been harshly rekindled by the offensive McPalin nightmare, you skip right past the beer and even the wine and go straight for the absinthe.

10. You arrive at a dinner party at the home of a friend-of-a-friend whom you don't know very well. What's the first thing you notice? A) The quality of the stemware, B) the origins of art on the walls, C) the titles of the books lining the shelves, D) The hugeness of the head of the giant dead polar bear whose face you're nearly sitting on. Answering anything but D makes you an elitist snob. Obviously, that's a grizzly, not a polar bear.

11. A "real American" is A) an obese deer hunter/blue-collar millworker with a giant truck and a gentle smile and a thing for origami B) a tattooed yoga-loving urbanite intellectual hipster who loves A.S. Byatt and red meat C) The Muslim chef/mother of three who was born in Fort Wayne and went to Burning Man for the first time this year and dropped Ecstasy and was struck to giggling wonderment by the gorgeous silliness of all existence, D) the nice family of Sikhs living next door, E) What is this, f--ing alphabet day? Enough with the multiple choice already, elitist hippie.

12. You find it profoundly unfair that, while cretinous Fox News charlatans get to sling "elitist" at anyone of nuanced or open-minded intellect who happens to care about the world, the media refuses to pick up "Karl Rove's toe cheese" as a clever counter-epithet.

13. The hammer with which you often consider striking yourself in the face when listening to Bush speak or when observing McCain's creepy grin or hearing Palin's embarrassing answers to simple questions of policy has never actually been put to use for any "real" work, and has only ever really been used to tap down a few loose nails on the deck of your Martha's Vineyard summer cottage or tighten some planks in the fetish dungeon.

14. You prefer spirituality to religion, fluid self-determinism to Biblical dogma, premium sake to sacramental wine, devising new sins instead of merely indulging the old ones, swallowing instead of spitting, back door to front, Shakti to Mary, and floating instead of kneeling.

 

15. You speak a foreign language. This implies you might understand something of the world, have an interest in a culture other than your own, or have perhaps even traveled to some exotic foreign land that isn't Texas or New Jersey or Hawaii, a place where they like weird cheeses and don't fear gay people and ride bicycles to the opera.

16. You recognize and appreciate more than 50 percent of the references and enjoy at least a quarter of the featured profiles in the New York Times Arts section. Also, you read the New York Times. Also, you read.

17. You are, for some godforsaken reason, absolutely convinced all the way down to your most profound sense of what is divine and truthful in this strangled world that violence and bloodshed are rarely the answer, that the irrefutable spiritual laws of the universe confirm that like attracts like and even at a quantum level there is a profound pull toward a divine, benevolent dynamic equilibrium, and therefore constructing a malicious national policy of torture and surveillance and pre-emptive aggression merely shames the better nature of the human animal and invites a particularly violent energy into the national bloodstream and poisons the human heart as it creates nothing but more turmoil and unrest and hate in the world. Man, only an elitist jerk would tolerate a ridiculous run-on sentence like that.

18. Your most treasured pieces of writing don't feature Muggles, Hobbits, glossy centerfolds of Dale Earnhardt Jr., dogs named Marley, or an angry and omnipotent patriarch who demands unquestioning subservience and strict adherence to often cruel, arbitrary laws of behavior from on high, who forsakeths thou for months and years at a time and never writes or calls and then suddenly reappears without warning only to rain down hellfire and frogs and locusts and totally inconvenient plagues on everyone, and never even apologizes. And then you're supposed to feel all guilty? For like, 2,000 years? Whatever.

Palin's Book Banning Wishlist

Since most of you are familiar with the Palin book banning business. Does anyone know where she acquired the list?   I can't believe she read any of the books. This is 2008, is it not?            

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time       by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying       by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous       Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales       by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph       Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques       Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel       Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by       Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by       Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter       Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by J ohn       Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy       Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve       Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry       Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the       Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire       by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies       by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas       Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird       Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night       Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

      

It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and       the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H.       Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by       Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is       One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes s
More       Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by       James Lincoln Collier and Christopher
Collier
My House by Nikki       Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean       Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane       Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander       Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One       Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by       Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health       Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald       Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin       Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace       by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by       Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar R ice Burroughs
The       Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom       Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the       Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color       Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick       Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of       Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine       Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid       by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible       by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William       Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles       Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by       Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald       Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't       by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by       William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the       Merriam-Webster
Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning       Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
Symbols by Edna       Barth