If there's one thing we've learned from science fiction, it's NOT to fuck with the space-time continuum. Sure, time travel sounds like a great idea, in theory. But think about it. Was Sam happy? Yes, Sam from Quantum Leap. Was he? No, he was miserable, bouncing to and fro through time and space, all in an attempt to correct the wrongs of the past. Remember when he leaped into the body of that retarded kid? Do you really think that's what he hoped for when he started experimenting with physics? I seriously doubt it. He was the Sisyphus of String Theory. Learn from his example.
2. Single Moms
We're total fucking badasses. We get more done before 9am then you can muster in your entire pathetic day. We can make breakfast AND lunch simultaneously in less than six minutes. We are always prepared with snacks, wet wipes and succinct answers to our childrens' existensial quandaries. We own the PTA, the grocery store and we're goddamn professionals at reusing, reducing and recycling. If the world were to whither away in a crushing apocalypse, the only people left standing will be single moms and their resourceful-as-fuck children, with a death grip on Glad zipper bags full of tiny tubes of toothpaste, safety pins, band-aids, trail mix, extra pairs of gloves and underwear, and, of course, enough legos to build a brand new house out of.
3. Israel (aka The Jews)
I have to say, I laughed my ass of when, before the election, people started spreading rumors about how Obama was anti-Israel. Ninja, please. Do you really think a Harvard-educated, liberal elite, Smarty McBrainypants like Barack Obama is gonna fuck with The Jews? Hell to the no.
Why?
Easy. He's smart. And smart people don't fuck with Israel. Especially when they're running for president of the United States. And, no, I'm not trying to say that people who fuck with Israel are stupid. I'm not even saying Israel doesn't deserve to be fucked with. I'm just sayin' Israel has guns and bombs and money. Lots and lots of guns and bombs and money. And those resources are all pooled for one cause-- protecting their faith (which, is in fact, their culture.) In America, we have guns and bombs, yes. But is our nationalism as strong as their shared faith? Nope. That's why you don't fuck with The Jews. Because a flag is not as valuable to anyone as a ticket to heaven.
4. Omar
I'm only into Season Two of The Wire, but I know this much: Don't fuck with Omar. This dude carries a shotgun, robs drug dealers and sucks dick. He don't give a FUCK. He will ice you down.
5. Crack cocaine.
Whitney and Bobby, Amy and Blake (Formerly) Incarcerated, Pete Doherty and his cat. Their stories are all cautionary tales. Crack is whack. It is not something you "dabble" in. It will, in a short amount of time, turn you into a paranoid-delusional, manipulative, pathetic freak with bad skin and crazy eyes. Put down the pipe. Or better yet, don't ever pick it up.
Remember that Dave Chappelle sketch? Well, these white people are really fucking up. Now, I'm a card-carrying Democrat, I worked a Democratic caucus in my district on Super Tuesday...I attended the state of Missouri's Democratic Convention when I was 11 years old. So this blurb comes from a boiling-over frustration with my own party. Here we are, poised to realistically, triumphantly, finally bring our party out of the gutter and get our agenda moving in Washington...and we're fucking up.
The Democratic presidential candidates are feeding the other side all kinds of ammunition for the race to the general election. By tearing each other down, they're doing McCain's job for him. And Republicans across the nation are sitting back smugly, watching our party make a mess we'll be digging out of (again) for years. And there's nothing that pisses me off more than a smug Republican.
I'm an Obama supporter, and I've been pleased up until now with how he has not allowed himself to be engaged in this kind of destructive campaigning. I also feel like he's not being given a choice when such a relentless attack is being waged against him from the Clinton camp. Yes, ultimately, it's my belief Hillary is to blame for the series of embarassing in-fights over the last week. (Incidentally, Jonathan Chait from the New Republic agrees with me.)
Just in case you haven't been following, let's take a look at the poo being flung, shall we?
The only silver lining to all of this is this fuzzy video of Senate proceedings yesterday where, it appears, Hill and Barry may be ready to hug it out. One can only hope. (Oh, hope. I'm so punny.)
2. Italy's high court says if you're a woman wearing jeans you can't get raped.
Um, yeah... Italy isn't built on the foundation of a patriarchal institution that oppresses women. Not at all.
is doing life without parole in Alabama. Oh, hell no. 4. The war in Iraq is costing the U.S. 12 billion dollars a month.
From ABCNews: The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.
Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.
Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.Full Story
What we could have bought with this month's Iraq tab instead:
A nuclear power deal with France that comes with two European pressurised water reactors (EPRs) and a supply of more than a decade’s worth of fuel. (Times Online)
24 brand new public schools for every state in the nation.
a month's supply of generic antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of AIDS/HIV and malaria for 1.3 billion Africans. (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report)
a tank of gas for every registered vehicle in the United States.
Are you pissed off yet? What could make this worse? An average of 60 American soldiers die each month in Iraq. Add to that an average of 2500 Iraqis every month. (iCasualties.org) Yep, I'm depressed now.
5. That damn Head-On commercial.
I've got something you can apply directly to your forehead.
Behold, the anti-viral video of the election season. The great juxtaposition between this poorly made, ill-advised video and the gracefully crafted, Obama-supporting "Yes We Can" video shows the gaping disparity between a candidate who "gets it" and a candidate who, despite being a millionaire, can't buy a clue. I'm even a little suspicious this video is a clever job by an opponent camp to undermine Hillary's "cool factor." Because, seriously, if this was the work of a Hillary supporter, they need to take it down. Promptly.
2. Newsflash! Hillary is not the feminist candidate. Unless you're still thinking like a feminist of the 60s.
I have actually heard from the mouths of women in Kansas City--tough, ambitious, ball-busting women who most likely identify as "feminists"--that their support of Hillary Clinton boils down to her gender--as if supporting a man in favor of a female candidate is akin to supplying arms to Al Qaeda. I'd just like to point out to them a few opinions published on the matter in recent days.
The old-guard feminist establishment has also rushed out of cold storage to embrace Hillary Clinton via tremulous manifestoes of gal power that have startlingly exposed the sentimental slackness of thought that made Gloria Steinem and company wear out their welcome in the first place. Hillary's gonads must be sending out sci-fi rays that paralyze the paleo-feminist mind -- because her career, attached to her husband's flapping coattails, has sure been heavy on striking pious attitudes but ultra-light on concrete achievements.
Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.
Well said, ladies.
My two cents: Since when is there a feminist law that says we have to stand by each other no matter what? Men don't stand by each other just because they all have testicles. They dog each other out on the regular. In fact, their competitiveness with each other is rooted in their DNA. I, for one, am perfectly okay with women being at odds with each other. There are a lot of unsavoury characters out there, men and women, and no one should have to play nice with anyone who gives them the heebie jeebs on a gut level.
Also, if a woman candidate wants to say that she has had to fight to get where she is because of her gender and uses it to "connect" with a constituency, I am not okay with her then going on and on about her 30 years of experience being the wife of a politician. It's pandering and it's disingenuous. If you're running a campaign built on the fact that you're a woman who has fought to get to the top in a man's world, you're NOT going to impress me by telling me about all the great things your husband did.
And I'm also not impressed that you're still married to a guy who cheated on you in the most public way possible and made a string of poor personal choices that led to a conservative takeover of our government. I might vote for Bill Clinton, I might even sleep with him...but I would absolutely not MARRY him. Or stay married to him in this case. Or maybe, if I was so disturbingly bent on gratifying my political ego by running for president one day, I would blindly "stand by my man." But then, I don't pick out my clothes according to what a poll says either.
I think this all just brings up a lot of interesting points about the "old" feminist establishment (to which I believe Hillary belongs) and how they've, unfortunately, positioned themselves as victims for so long. This has ultimately backfired, spurring the post-feminist feminists who want to embrace being "females without limits" minus the chip on the shoulder of the previous generation. I'm not necessarily saying one is stronger than the other, it's just an evolution of the movement. And, personally, I'm ready to move on.
"We have greater income disparity in this country than we've seen since the first year of the Great Depression," he said.
He's totally playing from the Clinton '92 handbook. How ironic. Except we're in deeper shit now than we were then AND we're trying to undo EIGHT years of Bush instead of four. Which is why it's good he's recognizing the strength of this issue. Even though WJC brought the country together with the same message during his campaign in 92, he went on to divide us so brutally over the next 8 years, it hardly seems like the impact is withstanding.
Obama then called out McCain on how ill-equipped he is to even approach the issue with the following slam-dunk...
"if John McCain wants to debate the specifics of how well the economy has worked for ordinary families over the last seven years, that is a debate that I am happy to have, because the American people know that Bush’s policies have not worked for ordinary Americans."
5. Is the delegation half-empty or half-full? It's interesting to me how the candidate you support has become an indicator of your tendency towards optimism or cynicism on the Democrat side. At least, that's the way it's being framed by the campaigns.
Or maybe I should rephrase.
Depending on who you're supporting, you're either an optimist or a pragmatist, according to everybody who comments on political blogs.
I think this is horse shit. To reduce one's political leanings down to something as subjective as their tendency to have a positive outlook vs. a realistic approach is ridiculous. Why does there always have to be an US or THEM category? Can't we all just agree that we all exercise our critical thinking skills in different ways and leave it at that? Disagree all you want, debate til your face turns blue...but don't assume just because someone supports Obama that they're a crackpot hippie optimist or that anyone supporting Hillary is a crotchedy old cynic. Unless, of course, you're making a parody of the situation. And then, by all means, generalize your ass off. It makes me laugh.
1. Update mah blog. Obvsly. I've spent the last several days preparing, organizing and rocking faces off, so I've been a little busy. How does one prepare and organize to rock faces off, you ask? The only thing I can tell you is that it does not involve updating your blog that focuses on being unfocused. Focus was a big part of the last week for me. And faces were rocked. Completely off.
Example A: Stayed up til 1:30am Monday night(really late for me because I'm Queen of the Lame)working on a presentation for work. Gave presentation yesterday. Humbly accepted compliments on it throughout the day. *ahem* Essentially, what I had to do was break down what social media is, why it's important and how it can be utilized by my company and our clients. And I'm sooooooooo not an expert, just a person who has passion for media, sees the abundant opportunities within this new realm and wants to find a way to move the company forward. I think I accomplished what I set out to do, so it felt great.
Example B: The other thing I've been focused on is our caucus in the 6th senate district in Kansas last night. I got handed a leadership role in my district by the Kansas Obama campaign and took it very seriously. So, in addition to rocking faces off at my job, I've been pulling people together, buying supplies and preparing for the caucus. Last night, our team spent 3.5 hours herding 800 people into a tiny foyer of a middle school so they could register/sign-in for the caucus. Then we became cheerleaders once we got everyone into the caucus room, keeping them fired up while they waited. And then we counted. And we won. Faces rocked right off. And I got to keep this nifty button:
2. Clean my house. It's gross. Like First Apartment gross. You'd think I was on some kind of crazy David Hasselhoff-style bender with all the crap piled in the kitchen and everywhere.
3. Grooming. Hairy werewolf legs, half-assed attempts at not smelling like a pile of dirty clothes, eyebrows rebelling wildly from lack of attention, and I haven't applied a stitch of makeup in three days.
4. Sleeping. It's for pussies anyway.
5. Be a mom. I've had to hand Mason over to his dad three of the last four days because of my schedule. This is the part I hate most of all. I think I'll take him on a Laundromat Date tomorrow where we can play arcade games and eat junk food and laugh at ourselves. But, and I love this analogy, just like the safety announcements on airplanes, you have to adjust your oxygen mask before your kid's in a crisis situation. So, tonight I will be bubbling in a bubble bath where no faces will be present. Your face is safe. For now.
Presidential election primaries and caucuses are two very different methods of accomplishing the same basic thing. Simply put, they are both a means for each political party to let voters nationwide select their party's presidential nominee. More specifically, primaries and caucuses are means of selecting delegates (representatives of party members in each state) to send to the party's national convention.
At the Democratic convention, the number of state delegates is proportional to the number of votes received in the state primary or caucus. The total number of delegates each party can send to the national convention is again dictated by party rules. Usually the party determines the number of delegates through a formula factoring in state population, the number of elected officials in office, and that state's past support of party candidates.
Federal law doesn't dictate how states choose their delegates, so individual states decide what system to use. Most states use the primary system -- where voters statewide simply cast a vote for the candidate they support -- but some use the older caucus system.
5. Participating in the democratic process is cool. You might actually meet your neighbors and find out you have something in common. Or they might glare at you and mutter under their breath like they always do. Whatever the case, you'll be spending an hour of your life in a crowd of people who care about the direction their government is going. And that can't be all bad, can it?
1. There were lines. I arrived at Municipal Auditorium around 4:45 pm (an hour after the doors opened) and there were lines of people pushing through the doors to the building.
2. There were Republicans. Once inside, it was a massive crush of people in the foyer all trying to squeeze into a stairwell to get downstairs where the entrance to the event was. This waiting stage lasted about an hour. The guys behind me were Republicans who voted for Bush in 2000...and they were talking about how if Obama could change things, it didn't matter what party he was from. They were mostly pissed about the war and the economy.
3. There were white people. Once on the auditorium floor, I took a look around at the diversity in the crowd. It wasn't something I noted because I feel like his race is a factor, just something you don't see that often...in KC, that is.
4. There were people who didn't get in. I came out of the auditorium around 7:30pm, unprepared to find more than a hundred people gathered across the street at Barney Allis Plaza who were unable to get into the event. They had been outside waiting for him for 2 hours...and they were chanting his name. They couldn't feel their toes, but they stayed until he came out to deliver an abbreviated speech to the crowd. As he left, people on the street cheered him and people ran after his motorcade like he was a rock star, excitedly telling their friends, "I shook his hand!!"
**Before you ask, no, I did not get one good shot of Obama. I left my good camera at home like an idiot and had to use my camera phone, which is why all my pictures suck. Thank you very much.
2. Obama is in town today. And the weather is frigidly unwelcoming. I *really* hope I don't have to stand outside it in for too long to get in. This is where he'll be speaking. Capacity is said to be 11,000. I have a feeling people will get shut out.
3. Um, did anyone else catch Dr. Drew's totally rockin biceps bulging from his t-shirt on the last ep of Celebrity Rehab? He needs to get interrupted on the weekends more often. Bring Jeff's skank back! I need more bare flesh from Dr. Drew.
4. This might actually be hot if she ate the entire cake along with a sandwich and started all over.
I'm a single mom of a feisty 6-year-old. I work in Public Relations. I process information like a machine and I'm afraid if I didn't blog my head would explode.
