owlmoose | Entries tagged with politics

Robert Levy of the Cato Institute signs on to co-chair the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization behind Perry vs. Schwarzenegger.

The Cato Institute. The Cato Institute. An ultra-conservative think tank stepping up to support the cause of same-sex marriage. This particular organization identifies as libertarian, so this isn't shocking on the level of, say, the Heritage Foundation or Focus on the Family getting involved on this side of the issue. (Or Ted Olsen. Oh, wait...) But other libertarian organizations haven't gotten involved en masse, and it really shows how the usual alliances have broken down in the face of the future.

In other news, gays marry in Iowa, Iowans shrug and move on to other things.

Hat tip to Shakesville for the links.

Current Mood: hopeful

Health care reform: passed. Even if it turned out to mostly be health insurance reform, it's definitely a huge step forward.

This bill is flawed. For awhile, I was ready to declare it worse than nothing and wash my hands of the whole thing, thanks to the Stupak Amendment and the lack of a public option. Fortunately, I was talked down from that position: the expansion of Medicaid, the insurance exchanges, and most especially the new regulations that will block the insurance companies from dropping people once they get sick are all good and important, and we will be better off to have them.

This doesn't keep me from being irritated at how the Democrats let Obama's stubborn hope for "bipartisan support" (support that the Republicans were never going to provide) take over the process for so long, not to mention their total inability to get their message into the media (but what else is new?). And of course the whole Stupak/Nelson/abortion-as-political-football aspect of the negotiations makes me see red; please, Michigan Democrats, somebody please mount a primary challenge against this guy! It seems likely that history will judge this a victory for Obama and the Democrats, although how the voters will feel in November is anybody's guess.

But we can worry about that later. For now, we can thank Nancy Pelosi, and hope that the GOP's plan of total obstruction screws them over as badly in the long term as David Frum seems to think it will.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Tears for Fears - "Woman in Chains"

Why do I love Barbara Boxer?* Because she does things like back petitions to overturn the Stupak Amendment.

Earlier this month, the House passed the Stupak Amendment to their health care reform bill, which would be one of the biggest setbacks to women's health in recent decades — unless we stand together and stop it.

That's why we're launching this petition, because women must not be denied access to safe and legal medical procedures.

Join us by signing the petition and help build pressure to remove the discriminatory, extreme, anti-choice Stupak Amendment from the final health care reform bill!

Link to the petition here, which you can bet I'm going to sign right now.

Rumor has it that Stupak has no chance of surviving the Senate, which is encouraging. As is this report on the 10 votes (not 20 or 40, as Rep. Stupak keeps claiming) that would likely need to be found if the amendment isn't in the final bill. Assuming one-man wrecking machine Joe Lieberman doesn't bring the whole thing crashing down regardless. But no matter what comes next, I'm still glad that Senator Boxer is willing to actively stand up for women's rights.

*I do have another senator. We won't talk about her right now.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Oh Well" - Joe Jackson

Stayed home sick from work today. Perhaps that's why I didn't remember until after noon that today was Election Day. I considered dragging myself off the couch and away from my Gilmore Girls DVDs to go vote on the half-dozen stupid local propositions on the ballot (nothing statewide for us this year, and all the city officials were running unopposed), but ultimately I decided against it, mostly because I hadn't prepared myself on the issues at all. I only knew what one of the propositions was even about, hardly an informed voter making thoughtful decisions about the future of my city. Not that I delude myself that most of my fellow citizens are. But I like to hold myself to a standard, at least.

It looks like they're all passing, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing egregiously stupid, so that's something.

Speaking of egregiously stupid... as of this writing, Question 1, the Maine initiative that would block the legalization of same-sex marriage, is too close to call. On the other hand, things are looking good in Washington, which may be poised to create domestic partnerships at the ballot box for the first time ever. I'm not ready to get excited yet, though; I'm afraid I got too badly burned last year. We'll wait, and we'll see.

(The song that was playing as I was writing the title down was "Hope Fails" from the Return of the King soundtrack; before I finished typing, the next song came on, and it was "Beautiful Day" by U2. Perhaps iTunes is trying to tell me something...)

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: "Beautiful Day" - U2

A sad day. Even though we knew it was coming. He will be sorely missed.

So okay, can we please stop screwing around and get this health care reform thing done already? For Teddy? Please?

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: "Signs of Love" - Moby

Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.

From this really lovely smackdown of a loony town hall protestor by Congressman Barney Frank, in which he also invokes Godwin's Law (although not by name). About time.

Current Mood: amused

Association Meme, via

wildejoy: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

My responses to

wildejoy's associations with me:

( Nooj/Paine )

( Politics )

( Libraries )

( Writing )

( Feminism )

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: "Valley of the Fallen Star" - FFVII Piano Collection

We haven't had a good political rant in awhile...

Check out this Eric Boehlert column on Obama, the press, and "bipartisanship" (quotation marks his):

Virtually all the news accounts are stressing the same story: If there's little or no bipartisan support for Obama's stimulus package, then it's Obama fault, and his fault alone. (No surprise, the media narrative echoes the latest GOP talking point, as dutifully pushed by RNC writers like Peggy Noonan.)

A bit ironic, isn't it? While addressing the issue of bipartisanship (i.e. "involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties") the press holds only one party accountable: the Democrats. Apparently, that's how the press now views the issue of bipartisanship -- it's something Democrats must bring to fruition.

In fact, the press has set up Republicans with perhaps the easiest short-term political victory on record. All the GOP has to do is oppose Obama on the stimulus package, and the Beltway media will proclaim Obama the loser. (Heck, they already have.) Does it get any easier than that? Republicans literally do nothing and then get crowned the winner.

One of the reasons I voted for Obama was his apparently sincere belief in bipartisanship. Most of the time, I don't think anything meaningful gets done in government without some level of compromise, and sometimes the system demands it. But there is such a thing as going too far, and I think we've reached that point, and then some. When Obama and the Congressional Democratic leadership go out of their way to court Republican votes, and are rewarded for their efforts by not receiving a single one, bipartisanship has failed, and it's not the fault of the people who reached out.

All that would be bad enough without the media painting Obama and the Democrats as the obstructionists. That's just the icing on the ever-more-rancid cake. The article has many examples and is highly recommended. Eric Boehlert is rapidly becoming my hero.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: "Quiet Life" - Japan

T and I were watching some of the videos generated by the latest Stephen Colbert remix challenge (now there is a man who knows how to harness the power of Web 2.0 to his advantage), and I mentioned that I think the ultimate speech-to-music remix is the Bill O'Reilly flip-out dance remix from a couple of years back. (Which, if you haven't seen it before, you really ought to do so, although it's helpful to watch the original Inside Edition outtake first.) This led him on a search for similar content, and thereby to the Political Remix Videos blog. The videos on there are of varying quality, but I found this mash-up of the three 2008 Obama/McCain debates to be particularly fascinating and well-done:

A few really telling moments in there, but my very favorite comes just at the end.

Current Mood: impressed

Just one more day, and it will be over.

I can hardly believe it.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: "Baker Baker" - Tori Amos

Roger Ebert is accused of refusing to review "eXpelled", Ben Stein's documentary on creationism, because he believes in evolution.

In response, Roger Ebert pwns Ben Stein.

"Expelled" is not a bad film from the technical point of view. It is well photographed and edited, sometimes amusing, has well-chosen talking heads, gives an airing to evolutionists however truncated and interrupted with belittling images, and incorporates entertainingly unfair historical footage, as when it compares academia's rejection of Creationism to the erection of the Berlin Wall.

Hilariously, the film argues that evolutionists cannot tolerate dissent. If you were to stand up at a "Catholic and mainstream Protestant" debate and express your support of Creationism, you would in most cases be politely listened to. There are few places as liberal as Boulder, Colo., where I twice debated a Creationist at the Conference on World Affairs, and yet his views were heard politely there. If you were to stand up at an evangelical meeting to defend evolution, I doubt if you would be made to feel as welcome, or that your dissent would be quite as cheerfully tolerated.

The more you know about evolution, or simple logic, the more you are likely to be appalled by the film. No one with an ability for critical thinking could watch more than three minutes without becoming aware of its tactics.

The sad thing about this is that I used to like and respect Ben Stein, speechwriter for Nixon or no. His game show, "Win Ben Stein's Money" (referenced to hilarious effect at the beginning of Ebert's article) was one of the most entertaining things on television in its day. But like so many other conservative commentators, he seems to have descended into bitter incoherence in recent years. A shame, really.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: "Sledgehammer" - Peter Gabriel

It's Proposition 8: The Musical!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

A not-to-be-missed bit of political satire with an A-list cast, even if you usually hate musicals.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "One by One" - Chumbawumba

Check out this overlay of two maps: cotton-producing regions of the South circa 1860, and 2008 presidential election results by county.

The correlation is remarkably strong, and becomes even more apparent when you take a look at some of the maps here, particularly the map that shows the population density of African-Americans about halfway down the page. You can also see tinges of the same pattern on maps showing results by county for all the presidential elections going back to 1860 (!) -- the pattern doesn't hold that far back, of course, but you can see it to varying degrees in every election since 1968 (although Jimmy Carter's being from Georgia dulls the effect somewhat in 1976 and, to a lesser degree, in 1980.

If you want to take the effect back even further, here are maps showing how ancient geological forces laid rich soil in certain areas of the South, thereby creating prime cotton-growing areas and, eventually, counties that went heavily for Barack Obama in2008.

On a related note, here's a complete national map of the African-American population density, which I also found really striking. I hadn't realized just how much of the US black population was concentrated in the South. Look at the West, and how empty it looks, even in the more urban areas. There are maps for other ethnic groups, too. Now that would make for all kinds of interesting overlays.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Music: "Lost!" - Coldplay

Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly, arguing about whether the nation is a "center-right" country:

O'Reilly: The problem with you is... that you see it through a prism. A prism...
Stewart: Of rational thought.

Watch the whole thing here.

Current Mood: pleased

But for now I still have a few cool things to share (from the happy joy part of the election this time, which definitely occupies plenty of my mindspace along with the sad side).

First,

bottle_of_shine pointed me toward these presidential election maps that are altered to reflect voting percentages and population. The county-level maps are particularly interesting, and a good reminder that the red/blue divide in the US isn't really East versus West or coast versus central; it's urban versus rural. And also, that there's a lot more purple going on than we truly realize.

I remember looking at the maps from 2004 back at the time, and it's especially thought-provoking to compare the last two maps in this election and the last. Fewer bright red areas, and those that still exist are far more squeezed by various shades of purple around them. Quite a change for just four years. There are a lot of reasons for that, and many reasons to believe that the trend will shift back, eventually. But still interesting, and heartening for a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat like me.

Then, for some warm fuzzies, check out some photos that are worth several thousand words and a huge collection of newspaper front pages announcing Obama's victory

And finally: http://www.change.gov

Somehow, just the mere existence of this site makes me happy. 75 days to go.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: "Modulator" - Neuroticfish

My votes are cast. Now we settle in to wait.

I was at my polling place for about half an hour, which I know is nothing compared to the waits other people are facing, but I've never seen a line even half that long at my precinct before. And I know I'm seeing a higher percentage of "I Voted!" stickers than usual. So vital signs are strong.

Still, as I was waiting to fill out my ballot, two guys who had just finished ran off together, chanting "Obama! Obama!" Another guy standing in line pointed out that this is not exactly a courageous statement of conviction in San Francisco. Still, it warmed my heart. Not going to make any strong statements yet -- this article explains why. But this thing could really happen. Wow.

Current Mood: hopeful

I continue to follow this story really closely and collect lots of links. Some recent interesting ones:

The celebrity endorsements are starting to roll in. Two notable ones: Project Runway's Tim Gunn and Ellen DeGeneres.

Interesting blog post on the "Yes on 8" campaign's tactics. It includes some of the most thoughtful commentary I've seen on the charge that teachers will be "forced" to teach about same-sex marriage in schools. A claim, by the way, that the CA state superintendent of schools has gone on record to refute.

Speaking of campaign tactics, I didn't think it was possible for Yes on 8 to go lower than the blackmail attempt I posted about earlier (which, on reflection, was not only despicable, but stupid -- I suspect these companies will get way more good publicity than bad from their donations, because history has shown that pro-gay-rights boycotts have been far more effective than anti-gay-rights ones), but I was wrong:

My husband is a phone banking coach for the local No on 8 campaign. Tonight, at an update meeting, they confirmed a rumor that was circulating around the phone banking session last week: Yes on 8 supporters are calling members of gay and lesbian communities and telling them that if they support same-sex marriage, they should vote yes.

It's been clear all along that this is a campaign based on lies, but this... I don't even know what to say.

This is one of the most fascinating videos on the subject I've seen: a Morman man talking about his church's involvement in the effort to pass Proposition 8.

It's part of a small YouTube channel devoted to Mormon's speaking against Prop 8. Some of the other videos there are also thought-provoking, even if I'm not really the intended audience.

Election polling maven Nate Silver (of fivethirtyeight.com) wrote about the polling on Prop 8 yesterday. He analyses most of the polls he can find on the subject (excluding internal polling -- he finds them untrustworthy because campaigns tend to cherry-pick the polls that they will tell the world about) and concludes that the proposition has about a 45% chance of passing. Which is far too close to my comfort, and so...

Jed posts information on volunteering for the No on Prop 8 campaign. And I think I'm going to do it. I've never volunteered for a political campaign before, but then I don't know that I've ever felt this strongly about a campaign issue before, either. Strongly enough that I'm willing to talk to strangers on the phone? Yeah, I think I do. (So if any locals are interested in going to the SF office this weekend or next, drop me a line.)

So, the sharp-eyed among you have probably noticed that I've posted a lot about Proposition 8, and about same-sex marriage in general. This might lead you to suspect that I feel strongly about this issue. And you'd be right. Marriage equality, and gay rights in general, and tolerance and equal rights for all kinds of people across the board, are the causes that raise my passion. I may even care more about this proposition than I do the presidential election. It might seem odd to say that, when so many other states have already passed constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage. But this isn't just another "defense of marriage act". Not just because it's my state, my home, although I'm sure that factors into it. But same-sex marriage is legal in California. If Prop 8 passes, it could nullify legal marriages -- 11,000 of them at last count. Including those of friends, co-workers, family. If that's not a reason to get personally, emotionally involved, what is?

I still believe that history will prove us right, and that we will win marriage equality in the United States, probably in my lifetime. But if this measure passes, it sets the struggle back, quite significantly. And I've already been to two wedding receptions for my aunts; I'd really rather not have to make it a third. So I write, and I work, and I'll hope. And I'll cross my fingers that we'll have many reasons to celebrate on November 4th.

Current Mood: thoughtful

By now, you've probably all heard that Colin Powell went on Meet the Press today, where he endorsed Barack Obama and said a lot of really stirring things about McCain campaign and how we treat Muslims in American society.

But maybe even better are the statements he made outside the studio door, afterwards. He goes after the idea that dissent is "un-American" in a really forthright way.

It's about time someone said these things. I only hope it's the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

Current Mood: pleased

Like everyone, I'd thought that Sarah Palin looked a great deal like actor and comedian Tina Fey, but I never really realized how uncanny the resemblance was until they appeared together on SNL yesterday.

So it's no surprise that it only took twelve hours for the Tina Fey or Sarah Palin quiz to make its world debut.

I did get them all right, but I had to think about some of them. If nothing else, I am entertained by the concept. Thanks to Jed for the link.

Jed also gets the thanks -- or perhaps I should say "blame" -- for linking me to Dicewars, which is a lot like Risk, except it plays a lot faster, and is way more addictive. Don't start it unless you have a little time to spare, and by "a little" I mean the next few days.

Current Mood: enthralled

As you might expect, the election has been much on my mind lately. Despite promising myself I wouldn't go crazy with poll tracking, I find myself at Five Thirty-Eight at least once a day, as well as Slate, and the New York Times map (although that one is surprisingly slow to update -- they haven't changed it since October 3rd). I know way more about various Senate races than ever before, and watching the swing states (and not so swing states, hello Indiana!) slowly grow more and more blue has been quite cheering, although I'm not officially optimistic yet. I've seen too many Democrats yank defeat from the jaws of victory to really let myself be too hopeful.

Closer to home, I'm more worried. Not about any particular candidates -- no Senate or Governor's races this year, and I live in Nancy Pelosi's district, which is just about as blue as it gets. No, my worry is in the realm of propositions. Proposition 8, to be exact: the proposition that would un-do the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. It's been down in the polls for a month, but the Yes on 8 team has a huge war chest, and they're starting to run ads -- nasty ads, ads full of lies, but despite that (or perhaps because of it) powerful ads. And so the measure is starting to gain. Not above 50% yet, but close. In comparison, the No on 8 ads are fairly bland, presumably in hopes of offending as few people as possible, but I'm not sure they're at all effective. Especially not in comparison to this one by an independent group:

Now, who knows; maybe this approach would turn off the moderates, the people who aren't so convinced this gay marriage thing isn't just a little bit icky. But maybe it would make them laugh, and then it would make them think. An approach worth trying? Maybe. No matter what, it's gonna be a nailbiter.

In other political news, I recently learned that John Hodgman has a blog, which does make the world seem a little brighter.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Leonard Bernstein - "Chichester Psalms"

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KJ

Entries tagged with politics

More strange bedfellows

Yay! (kinda)

I love my Senator

Bad Citizen

RIP Ted Kennedy

Quote of the day

Associations meme

Oh hello there, liberal media

Dated but cool

Almost free

Smackdown!

It's all over the lefty blogs, but I can't resist posting it...

Neat bit of post-election anaylsis

You can say that again

Eventually, I will stop posting about the election...

It Is Done.

Prop 8 Round-up

The new McCarthyism

Fun and games

More election spam