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Super Bowl = Patriarchy
I’m not really paying attention to the Super Bowl news, seeing as how I’m still busy with my secret new women’s group thingy. Actually I wouldn’t be paying attention even if I weren’t busy, because jesus, who gives a shit? In fact, I was surprised to realize today that the stupid game hasn’t happened yet. [...]
Ten million people could march on Washington dressed as Che Guevara, and the Democrats would interpret it to mean that Americans want the party to move right
A little over a year ago, Americans elected Barack Obama by a landslide. They elected him because they wanted an end to Republican government. They elected him because they wanted to see a genuinely progressive agenda enacted. True, they had absolutely no reason to expect that Obama would do those things, but still: that’s what [...]
Libertarians and evangelicals explain the problem with Haiti
My ex-husband spent some time in Haiti during his brief career as a semi-Marxist semi-revolutionary. He told me that the most shocking thing about the country was the disparity between the visiting rich and the resident poor. In the countryside and on the streets, it was nothing but dirt-eating poverty. But on the beach in [...]
Thank you for saving my life! Also: what the hell is going on?
Hallelujah! That’s what I said when I woke up this morning. Actually I didn’t say it, because if I had it would have come out “Ahh eh ooh ah!” But I was thinking it. This morning, I actually feel human. A human with a sore swollen jaw and some throbbing pain action, but nevertheless: a [...]
It’s that special time of year, when we celebrate the birth of the Cosmic Jewish Zombie
I was skimming around the blogs and news sites this evening while waiting to hear if Martha Coakley won in Massauchussets, when this post from Riverdaughter made me snort-laugh. She quoted the following Urban Dictionary definition of Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever [...]
The female Andrew Jackson
(And now, a brief digression from our ongoing Diocletian working session, which continues here and here.) Someone emailed me last night about Sarah Palin. “Do you think she’s going to run for president?” my correspondent asked. Of course she’s going to run for president. She’s already running for president. I knew that the day she [...]
Why right-wing populism works
(This started out as a paragraph in the working session thing I’m knocking together, but it got so big that I decided it needed its own post.) Why does right-wing populism work? Short answer: because left-wing populism is dead. Or, to put it another way, and more accurately: Republican cultural populism — which is all [...]
About that non-vacuum in which Stupak happened…
Kate Harding has a good piece in Salon that captures the PUMA-a-year-later zeitgeist we’ve been talking about here (to recap: A year later, world suddenly gets what PUMAs were talking about, House Democrats pass healthcare reform for men, and Rachel Maddow is becoming post-rational). Harding’s piece is called Face it: The Democratic Party is not [...]
House Democrats pass healthcare reform for men
Isn’t it exciting? I know I’m excited. Earlier today, before the House began debate on the historic vote, President Obama delivered a pep talk to Congressional Democrats: “I’m absolutely confident we’ll get this done,” Obama said, according to the aide. “And when I’m in the Rose Garden signing a piece of legislation to give healthcare [...]
A year later, world suddenly gets what PUMAs were talking about
So it turns out that the Democratic-sponsored health care reform bill will officially treat women as unpersons: freakish beings whose bizarre, non-human needs cannot possibly be considered part of basic health care. Perhaps we’re extra-terrestrials: None of the bills emerging from the House and Senate require insurers to cover all the elements of a standard [...]
