Democrats, Independents, and Moderate Republicans: The Hard Right Wants You to Run for the Hills. Run to the Polling Booths Instead.

November 2010 is a referendum on Republican obstruction extremism.

Keep repeating this phrase when dangerous nonsense happens, like...

This weekend, when rodeo-clown Glenn Beck and his Neo-Westboro Baptist Church, sure to be given wall-to-wall coverage by the cable tv Nonstop Carnival of Evil/Stupid, arrive in Washington, DC. Last August, it was nonsensical "death panels" pushed by a cheeto-stained Facebooker that managed to get everyone into a stir. It's amazing the damage one mean person in her pajamas can do from the basement of her home in the outer reaches of Wasilla.

Let's face it, while August may be the "silly season," ever since about March, 2009, the hard right has done nothing but drag the GOP in a more conservative direction. Like bad cosmetic surgery that pulls too tight, any further right and the GOP's ears will meet behind its head like a clasp on a cheap purse--any further right, and Pol Pot will be wondering why he didn't think to burn some Qu'rans first.

Dear MSM, Mock Us and Ignore Us at Your Peril

The media love to mock women in the political world by using sexist terms that demean us and make us out to be something not worthy of serious consideration. We saw that time and time again during the 2008 presidential election as talking heads not-so-subtly suggested that Hillary Clinton was only a viable candidate for national office because we felt sorry for her after Bill cheated on her. And instead of focusing on Sarah Palin's qualifications, or lack thereof, as John McCain's running mate, the media focused on her looks and questioned whether a mother of five with young children still at home was up to playing with the big boys.

There's still plenty of that when it comes to powerful women -- one of the most recent examples is an article in the Washington Post about Elizabeth Warren, where they question whether she is a "zealot" because of her passion to help middle class families in these horrible economic times. When I see things like that, it's hard not to wonder whether a man in that position would have been described differently -- I'm betting a male counterpart would be described more positively as something like a "devoted advocate" rather than a "zealot," which has such a negative inference. (Not to mention the fact that the article was, yet again, another story about a politically powerful woman that got placed in the Style section. But that's another post for another day.)

Another increasingly common phenomenon I've been noticing is that some news outlets just act like we don't exist, implying through omission that it's just the big ol' menfolk who are out there trying to make change, with hardly a woman to be found!

The most recent outrageous example is a Politico article entitled, More Bloggers Throwing Hats in Ring.

Netroots Nation: Day One Highlights

Last weekend, MOMocrats Cynematic, LawyerMama, PunditMom, Julie and I traveled to Pittsburgh to take part in the annual Netroots Nation Conference. We spent four days attending panels, plenary sessions, and  parties, and participated as speakers on two panels.  It was an exhausting and exhilarating time, and we could go on for days about the great people we met and the stories we heard.

I wanted to share some of the highlights of my first day at Netroots.

The Myth of Post-Racial America Panel

This discussion, led by Keith Kamisugi, focused on the myth that since America has elected an African-American President, we are now in a "post-racial" period.  The first part of the panel was a screening of a part of the film "9500 Liberty," made by panelist filmmaker Annabel Park, whose documentary delves into a community initiative in Prince William County, Virginia to allow racial profiling, specifically of anyone suspected of being in the United States illegally.  She said that when they started making the film, she and her co-producer, Eric Byler, thought that they were making a film about illegal immigrants, but it turned into a film about race and the incitement of fear into a community.  The film illustrates how misinformation and agitation can take control of an issue and lead to disastrous ends. 

When Does Political Satire Cross the Line??

We can make fun of whether Cindy McCain is a trophy wife, John McCain's age, Hillary's pantsuits, Bill's love of women, George's mental prowess and big ears and Al Gore's stiffness.  Everyone seems to laugh at those jokes, no problem.

But apparently we can't make fun of those who think Obama is a Muslim and or who believe that a fist bump is a terrorist greeting.

The uproar over this New Yorker cover entitled The Politics of Fear has been deafening. Should we laugh because the cover suggests that it's just silly to think of the Obamas as political and religious extremists?  Or should we be offended that a major magazine would depict them like this, even in jest? 

Clearly, no one was suggesting that the Obamas are what is shown in the cartoon, and the point was to poke fun at those who still harbor concerns about their backgrounds as Americans.

It's certainly OK for any person to say this was not funny to them.  I admit -- it was not the New Yorker's best cover ever.  But is our collective sense of humor so small that we can't handle this?

Thanks for the Subprime Meltdown, Phil Gramm! Part 2

Keith Olbermann on Phil Gramm's conflicts of interest lobbying on behalf of UBS Bank while advising McCain on his economic platform: listen at around 4:06 in.

Back in March, I opened up a can of whupass with former senator Phil Gramm's name on it in a post laying the subprime mortgage crisis largely at his feet. Gramm was one of the main architects of the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act under the Bill Clinton administration, which undid a law that kept a firewall between the activities of commercial banks and investment banks. Gramm was responsible for loosening regulations spurred by the Great Depression that kept banks and their customers from being subjected to the dangers of banks collapsing. Gramm-Bliley-Leach threw the doors open wide for banks to issue junky subprime loans (often using fraudulent, questionable tactics to calculate the risk for buyers and close home loans at all cost) and then to make Frankenstein-monster investment products by rolling these dicey loans into Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) vehicles that other entities--like giant pension funds--then bought.

You know how E. coli will sometimes cause a recall of tainted beef because manure gets into a batch of ground beef made up of thousands of cows? Well, let's just say that Gramm helped unleash investment vehicles flecked with bad loans that were no longer secured by the properties that were supposed to act as collateral. Yes, I'm comparing Phil Gramm's legislative, lobbying, and McCain economic input to poo.

Tomorrow We Can Breathe

One more day.

Just one more day.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Primary will be over tomorrow and maybe then, to quote Gerald Ford's speech writer who passed away this weekend, "Our long national nightmare will be over."

Wishful thinking you say?  Maybe.  But I'm sensing that even though there are many who believe this will play out until the convention in Denver, my gut says something is going to happen in Pennsylvania that will change all that. 

Maybe we're all just too tired to keep listening.  Maybe each candidates' supporters are beating each other down and we're just too weary to continue.  But I'm sensing there will soon be a shift in this campaign.

While some have not believed me when I've written that my farming parents in Pennsylvania still are on the fence about who to vote for, I spoke with them this weekend and they are still undecided about whether they're going for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.  But they'll have to choose tomorrow.

I realized after a quick yoga class this morning, though, that no matter what happens tomorrow, we can all get through it if we just breathe.

14-Year-Old Feminist Explains Why She Supports Hillary Clinton

Common wisdom these days has been telling us that the youth vote is going to Barack Obama. 

That may be mostly true,  but I came across this post over at Girl w/ Pen! entitled, Feminist Awakening at 14, which I found very interesting, especially in terms of some preconceived notions that at least one high school boy has about why he wouldn't want a woman leading our country.

The good news?  Fourteen-year-olds are thinking about politics in a new way -- they're actually thinking about them!

I don't know about you, but at 14, I was the only geek who cared about politics, Watergate or "Woodstein."  Most of the other girls in my class at that stage of the game were more worried about what color nail polish they were going to wear to the Friday night dance in the gym.

Whether you agree with this high school girl or not, you've got to give her credit for thinking for herself and deciding what's important to her, even though she can't even vote in this election.

You can also find Joanne mulling all this political stuff over at her place, PunditMom, as well as at BlogHer, where she is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News.

Mark Penn: Finito With the Clinton Campaign...Or Not?

I'm an Obama supporter who went from feeling all kumbaya about our two history-making candidates in the Democratic Party after Super Tuesday, to wondering how Clinton came to be so Republican Lite. To think I actually once proclaimed myself "bi-candidate", in Margaret Cho's words, and contemplated a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket! Sadly, I'm not the only one to watch in disbelief as Clinton plummets in reputation and credibility.

Phil Gramm: Thanks for the Subprime Meltdown, Dude!

It took me lots of digging and puzzling it out to connect the dots: Glass-Steagall 1933's repeal leads to Gramm-Leach-Bliley 1999, which leads to former Senator Phil Gramm as economic advisor to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign.

Basically, a law that kept commercial banks separate from investment firms (Glass-Steagall) was repealed and replaced with a law that enabled both banks and investment firms to offer "financial services" (Gramm-Leach-Bliley)--and this gave us an economic climate ripe for sketchy mortgage backed securities and other iffy investments that recently necessitated a $30 billion credit line from the Federal Reserve to Bear Stearns. A credit line of taxpayer money. You. Me. Wallet opening, dollar bills fluttering out and flying away, never to be seen again.

Phil Gramm stood by John McCain in his worst days last summer when his campaign went broke and his candidacy was all but written off by political observers.

Photo: AP--caption and photo courtesy of Politico

Now the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 isn't the *only* reason we have the mess we have. But it's a large reason. And it was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton.

Politico has more on the Gramm/McCain relationship: "McCain Guru Linked to Subprime Crisis".

So if you vote for John "I'm Kinda Fuzzy on the Economy Thingamajingy" McCain, you'll probably be getting more Phil Gramm economic policies. Can we put this vampire Gramm to rest, for once and for all, before our economy is totally sucked dry? I mean, the subprime meltdown with its misery-inducing, credit-wrecking foreclosures and bankruptcies (and abandoned pets) was enough, thanks. No more of your genius wealth-redistribution policies from bottom to top, please.

Otherwise, it's tent cities and soup lines, everyone.

Clinton and Obama Speeches on the Economy

  Conventional wisdom repeated often enough gets mistaken for truth--take for example the hoary old chestnut that Clinton and Obama offer almost the same proposals. Well, I've gone through their speeches addressing the economic fallout from the subprime mortgage mess which has metastasized into widespread financial market meltdown, and found distinct differences in approach and emphasis.

It's true that both candidates support passage of the Dodd-Frank bill (more here). But in terms of their identification of solutions, the two differ widely.

First a summary of each candidate's speech, then a discussion of the differences.