As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…because nerds are good
Let’s Be Smart This Time America: Our Economy 101?
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Monthly Archives: September 2008
Republicans Want to Sterilize “These People”: Nazism Anyone!
Brian Labruzzo is a big fat piece of shit racist passing himself off as a legislator…
Rachel Maddow weighs in…
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…because men like Labruzzo still exist
The Obama’s Loving Relationship
I love seeing the love between these two beautiful people. It makes me envious, but envious in a good way. They make you want to strive to reach the level of love, trust, communication and respect they have for each other. The photo below is a prime example; they just look blissful.
One of the greatest benefits of an Obama presidency is hidden in plain sight: the relationship between Michelle and Barack. They provide a great role model of a healthy relationship, at a time when such models are sorely needed.For example…
Imagine having a president who is not distracted from the nation’s business by the stresses of secrets in the presidential marriage.Imagine having a president who likes his partner and values her as an equal, a president who touches his wife affectionately in public and actually listens to her when she talks!
Fortunately we don’t have to imagine it, because we already have that potential at the tip of our voting fingers. For Americans, one of the most important aspects of an Obama presidency is being overlooked: the model of a healthy relationship. In the 28 years of our own marriage, we’ve worked with more than 4,000 couples in our office and seminars, so we have a reasonably good idea of what kinds of behavior one sees in a healthy relationship. For example, Michelle and Barack do something we’ve never seen before in a presidential couple: they actually look directly at each other when they’re speaking to each other. They also laugh at each other’s humor, and they allow their sexual attraction for each other to be visible. Contrast that with other presidential marriages, in which the sexual attraction to each other was not visible but their sexual attraction to others became highly visible. Michelle and Barack talk openly about their feelings for each other. They’re real.
Why would their relationship be a benefit to the American public and the world at large? The main reason is that it would be genuinely useful to have a visible, public role model of what a healthy relationship looks like. Over the last fifty years there’s been a parade of not-so-great relationship models in the White House. They range from idol-worship (Nancy’s perpetually-adoring glaze, oops we mean gaze, at Ronnie) to the sternly maternal façade of the first Mrs. Bush. We’ve witnessed White House marriages strained to the breaking point by secrets. The country lost 50 million dollars and a year of the government’s focus because one president actually did have sex with “that woman” but wouldn’t tell us the truth until he was outed by DNA.
How about Camelot? Many of us were fooled into thinking the Kennedys were the very picture of a Perfect Relationship. There was a handsome, rich Prince with knockout hair, coupled with a doll-Princess whose faraway smile and breathy, little-girl voice made her seem heaven-sent. Unfortunately, it was all just a fantasy. In reality, John was a serial philanderer and Jackie was a chain-smoker who swore like a sailor and dropped the little-girl voice the moment she walked off-stage. There’s no way to measure the productivity that was lost because the president’s staff had to earn part of their government salaries ushering women in and out of the White House, all with exquisite timing (and with the look-the-other-way collusion of the media.)
However, you don’t have to go back in that far in history to see a strange or strained White House marriage. Have you ever seen the current occupant of the White House speak, much less listen, to his wife in public? For example, do we ever get to hear from the real Laura Bush, the one who disagrees completely with the far-right views of her husband on such matters as women’s reproductive rights? No, because she’s been muzzled, like most of her predecessors, and sealed off behind the glazed smile of the Perfect Presidential Wife.
It’s high time we got to see an honest, loving, real relationship in the White House. If you’re like us, you probably don’t want to spend the next four years hearing how much the perfectly-coiffed Mrs. McCain has spent on her outfit, which of their nine houses they’re weekending at or which of their thirteen cars they’re wheeling around in. There’s something bigger to worry about, though. If the actuarial tables have any predictive value, a McCain presidency would soon become a Palin presidency, and that is a scenario truly frightening to contemplate.
President Palin would be desperately trying to comprehend and handle business during one of the most trying times in our nation’s history, while taking care of a special needs baby, riding herd on pregnant teenagers, foul-mouthed hockey-jock son-in-laws and other household dramas. On the brighter side, a Palin White House would provide one exciting possibility for our increasingly tabloid-obsessed culture: the perfect capstone for Jerry Springer’s career! He would make an ideal Chief of Staff or Sergeant-At-Arms, charged with keeping the gun-totin’, hockey-stick-wielding clan from wrecking the furniture (and each other) or blowing away a moose for sport on the White House lawn.
Here’s a better idea: Elect Barack Obama. That way, we get the gift of seeing two people having an easeful friendship with each other. We get as a role model two people who communicate with each other as equals and stand beside each other as true partners. If we elect Barack Obama we are electing a new possibility in our relationship lives as a nation: respect, affection and authenticity. Michelle and Barack speak clearly and openly. You know she won’t bullshit you or embarrass you by playing the demure little wife. We’re ready to see that kind of relationship, and we hope you are, too. The question is: are we as a nation ready to end our national addiction to duplicity, phony adoration and Stepford wifedom in the White House? If not, we’re going to get what we deserve.
We have a chance now to make a real difference in the world. If we elect Barack Obama, we can all focus on the critical challenges that must be met now. Speaking personally, we feel a sense of warmth and pride when we think about the support and love the Obamas have for each other. We breathe easier when we see how they live their lives with balance, honesty and clarity. They’re the real deal. In November, let’s give ourselves this new mirror of our own value.
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…and get to see a healthy, equal, loving marital relationship in the White House.
As always, be well CF “Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, kindness in feeling creates love.” — Lao Tzu Watch me on YoutubeChris Rock on Larry King
Another intelligent black man expressing his views.
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah
Here is a great post about Sarah Palin from our friend Ta-Nehisi Coates over at TheAtlantic.com
Sarah, we are not that different, you and I
26 Sep 2008 10:13 am
I think Rod basically nails it:I remember the morning I woke up in my college dorm room and went in to take my final exam in my Formal Logic class. I knew I was unready. Massively unready. And now I was going to be put to the ultimate test. I sat down in Dr. Sarkar’s class and resolved to wing it. Of course I failed the exam and failed the class, because I had no idea what I was talking about. I wasn’t a bad kid, or even a stupid kid. I was just badly unprepared, and in way over my head. Seeing the Palin interview on CBS, I thought of myself in Dr. Sarkar’s exam. But see, I was a college undergraduate who had the chance to take the class again, which I did, and passed (barely). I wasn’t running for vice president of the United States.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this nomination and rewatching the videos of Palin’s interview. Honestly, it’s all made me tremendously sad. There are lot of us lefties who are guffawing right now and are happy to see Palin seemingly stumbling drunkenly from occasional interview to occasional interview. I may have been one of them. But I’m out of that group now.The Palin pick was the most crassest, most bigoted decision that I’ve seen in national electoral politics, in my–admittedly short–lifetime. There can be no doubt that they picked Palin strictly as a stick to drum up the victimhood narrative–small town, hunters, big families and most importantly, women. Had Barack Obama picked Hillary Clinton, there simply is no way they would have picked Sarah Palin. To the McCain camp, Palin isn’t important as a politician, or even as a person. Her moose-hunting, her sprawling fam, her hockey momdom, her impending grandmother status are a symbol of some vague, possibly endangered American thing, one last chance to yell from the rafters “We wuz robbed.” Lineup all your instances of national politicians using white victimhood to get into offices–Willie Horton, White Hands, Sista Souljah, Reagan in Philadelphia etc.–they were all awful no doubt. But I have never seen a politician subject an alleged ally to something like this.
Let us take this story seriously for a moment. I have watched this whole Palin thing with some twinge of personal recognition. I come from a family of seven kids by four women. As I’ve said before, I’ve got brothers born in the same year, and brothers born to best friends. My father was a high-school drop-out. I am a college drop-out. I was a father by 24–my father had kids when he was 22. I come to books and learned things in a hard, organic way. I was watching Palin explain to Couric how it could be that she just got a passport last year, and I was thinking, “Shit, I don’t have a passport now.” What can I say? Azeroth was always a foreign country to me.
My point is that, Sarah Palin never struck me as stupid. When she talked about not backpacking across Europe and working her whole life, beneath the dumb anti-intellectual dig, I saw a gem of truth. I wish she had have mined it, instead of trying to score a cheap point. Rambling aside, she simply isn’t ready. Maybe she would be eight years from now, but she isn’t ready now, any campaign worth its salt would have known this.
In election season, there is a price for being turned into a symbol. When actual journalists, with a rep to protect, show up, they are going to do their job. Which brings me to the sexism of John McCain. He knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they’d quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves. Think on that for a mement. For one last run at the White House, he risked a future star of the party he claims to call home. How do you do that? I don’t meant to rob Palin of agency, certainly she is also a victim of her own calculations and ambitions. But where I am from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you’ve gone too far, when your head has gotten too big.
Of course the irony of all this is how conservatives have, for years, lampooned the liberal pursuit of multiculturalism/identity politics. But here’s the thing, even when done haphazardly, awkwardly, and imprudently, the fight against bigotry and ignorance has rewards. But when you decide to not be a leader in the fight against sexism/racism and simply criticize those who do, you rob yourself of political experience. Put differently, there is a price–bigger than the black vote–to be paid for disengagement. You become ignorant of a growing sector of the world. They expected Hillary. And if it were a black man, they never even knew it could be someone like Barack Obama. So these guys go to the well one more time, and ressurect the old spectres of “Us against Them.” But the fools haven’t been paying attention–the”Us” has changed. This isn’t Alabama, and it ain’t 1968. There is a whole class of educated, working women, themselves, the children of educated working women. And this is what McCain has to say to them, “I don’t care if you know a thing about foreign policy. I don’t care if you know a damn thing about the economy. Here is what you are to me–breasts, hair and a lovely smile.”
Turns out it helps to actually care about the fate of women, to know something about them, beyond your own lust, when going for their votes. Who’da thunk it?
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…McCain might nominate you
As always, be well
CF
“Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, kindness in feeling creates love.” — Lao Tzu
Watch me on Youtube Sarah Palin: Charging Rape Victims for Rape Kits
This woman’s story just gets more troubling by the day. According to an editorial in the New York Times, as Mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin instituted a law that charged rape victims and their insurance company for the rape kit used to gather evidence in their case.
This is really outrageous since Alaska is the Rape Capital of the United States; there are more rapes there than anywhere in the US.
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…or Sarah Palin will make you feel raped twice
As always, be well CF “Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, kindness in feeling creates love.” — Lao Tzu Watch me on YoutubeFinally, A Joke About Obama That Works and is Funny
I don’t normally care for Sarah Silverman, but she pulled this off without a hitch.
The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…or I’ll make you watch The Sarah Silverman Show
Sterilizing Poor Women: Are We Reverting Back To The 1900s
There was a time in American history when this country regularly sterilized black and poor woman. They were actually preventing low income women from having too many babies. White men are feeling the demographic squeeze in this country and because the complexion of this country is changing so rapidly, white men have been again reduced to suggesting forced sterilization.
They just make you want to shit.
Below is an article from our friends over at Feministing.com about a couple of bozos one in Louisiana and the other in Texas who actually suggested that in order to stem the new emerging demographics of this country, these women need to be sterilized.
The White Dude Knows Best approach to women’s health
White Dude Knows Best! Men who want to control the bodies of women they deem unfit
mothers. Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo (right) and Texas state District Judge Charlie Baird (far right).
It’s been quite a week for government violation of the bodily integrity of poor women and women of color. First, there was the judge in Texas who set “not having children” as a condition of a woman’s parole. (I just linked in the WFR on Sunday, but Cara discussed it at length. Go read her post.)
And today, via several readers, comes the news that John LaBruzzo, a state legislator from Louisiana, wants to pay low-income women $1,000 apiece to get sterilized. Everything about this is so incredibly offensive, I don’t know quite where to begin. Let’s start with a quote from LaBruzzo:
“We’re on a train headed to the future and there’s a bridge out, ” LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. “And nobody wants to talk about it.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Low-income women having children is a “dangerous demographic trend”?! Sounds like the recent round of racist propaganda we saw related to the “Demographic Winter” movie. (Film summary: You should be panicked because brown people are reproducing at faster rates than white people.) But LaBruzzo protests that he is not a racist — he’s a problem-solver!
LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he’s a racist, ‘ ” LaBruzzo said. “The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions.”
It’s not as if this country has ever done a good job providing low-income women with the tools and information to make their own decisions. Programs that aim to do that have been consistently underfunded and poorly implemented. So no, we haven’t tried all other options. And even if we had, his idea is still completely appalling.
LaBruzzo is correct that it’s very easy to say he’s a racist. Because, um, he’s espousing a historically racist policy. What he clearly deems to be a new and creative solution has unfortunately been around a long time. Compulsory or coercive sterilizations for low-income women, disabled women, and women of color were extremely common up until the 1970s, and slightly less common but nevertheless occurring with regularity the the decades since. The paternalistic attitude that “certain women” cannot be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions is still an underlying theme of a lot of backwards legal and policy decisions. LaBruzzo and Texas judge Charlie Baird are part of this despicable tradition.
I’m in the midst of reading Jeanne Flavin’s soon-to-be-released book, Our Bodies, Our Crimes. In it, she explains the early-1900s roots of how sterilization became the common way of dealing with poor women’s sexuality:
Birth control was ruled out due to fears that should it “catch on” among the white Protestant middle classes, their birth rates would be even further reduced. So it came to pass that sterilization emerged as a eugenics strategy.
How far is this attitude, really from LaBruzzo’s worries about “dangerous demographic trends”? Flavin also writes,
What is questioned here is the notion that a judge has the right to order them, or anyone, to be sterilized or not to reproduce. This is arguably one of the most difficult premises for the general public to accept: that a woman’s reproductive rights–including her right to procreate–are distinct from whether or not she might be a “good” pregnant woman or a “good” mother. These rights reside in her existence as a human being, along with the rights to control her body.
(Emphasis mine.) In her post on the Texas court case, Cara breaks it down further:
If the government has the right to demand that people stop procreating, it means that the government has the right to control our consensual sex lives. It means that the government has a right to decide who is and is not worthy of the right to control over their own bodies, and who is and is not worthy of the right to give birth. It means the government has a right to decide what medical procedures people undergo — from birth control, to sterilization and/or temporary sterilization, to abortion.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then that LaBruzzo also opposes any woman’s right to choose abortion. This is a Daddy Knows Best approach to women’s health. In this case, as is often true, the paternalism has a disproportionate effect on low-income women and women of color. Let’s hope his proposed policy does not go through, and the Louisiana legislature instead rededicates itself to providing low-income women with the tools to determine their own reproductive futures.
Check out National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which does great work on these issues. I also recommend Flavin’s book, and Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body.
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…if you don’t, it may be a vote against your reproductive rights.
What The Hell Did She Just Say?…
…Sounds a lot like Sarah Palin. No wonder McCain wants to cancel the VP debate as well. They’re idiots!
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!…or we will make you sit through 2 hours of incomprehensible babble
Finally, The MSM Is Talking About | THE KEATING FIVE
Here is a video from the Jed Report for the HuffingtonPost
As always, be well
CF
Barack the Vote!
As always, be well
CF
“Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, kindness in feeling creates love.” — Lao Tzu
Watch me on Youtube