Women and Political Blogging

I've been doing political commentary, occasional reporting, and general old rabble rousing with forays into political analysis for about 7 years. This blog has been going for 6 years.  My political commentary actually extends further back into the late 1990s if you count my pre-blogging Late Boomer blogs about the later half of the Post World War II Baby Boom. As Jimi said, "Have you ever been experienced?"


F*ck Erma Bombeck type blogs, I wish more women writers would take just a slight dip in the political commentary blogging world and get experienced.  Actually, I love a good humorous home oriented blog.  But we need you intelligent, liberal, progressive, thoughtful writers.  Unless I'm seriously misinformed BlogHer this year isn't even having a political track at the annual conference for women bloggers.  So... what does this mean? 


I don't know what it means – okay, everyone all together now, "Awwwwwww!"  But I know that lots of male readers expect a political blog to be about nothing but politics, but to give off an air of being able to descend into sports or WWII talk at any moment.  Women integrate topics more than men in conversation, thanks in part (according to my belief system) to women having a, statistically speaking, larger corpus callosum than men which allows greater cross talk between the hemispheres of the brain. 

I actually think it is very important to have cross-talk, crossover, cross-fertilization whenever reality is being discussed.  It would be nice to be able to analyze aspects of human interaction as discrete components, but life doesn't work that way.  So I happen to appreciate political conversations that cut away to include related aspects of school lunch program anomalies, car-pooling, and elder care as that is how women live long portions of their lives, simultaneously attending to children, parents, home, work, and semi-subconscious algorithm maximization to keep on top all this ---- hmmm.... maybe that is why so many women can't add political commentary to their blogs.   Actually, what we have to do is drop something so as to be able to add political awareness and discourse to our lives.  The thing I dropped was in the area of home. My house will never be clean, totally homemade dinners are an extreme rarity, and I gladly welcomed any and all of my husband's parenting skills in the parenting mix, even though the way he parents is nothing like how I parent, because I did not want to give up my avocational affair with political thought just because I became a parent.  So something had to give.  It was house work beyond basic hygienic standards.  If anyone in the house didn't like it they were free to take up the slack. 

But most folks are not like me. Understatement!  But I would like to figure out a way to get more women blogging about our government, elections, what public servants need to do, and the like, well before next year, a presidential election year.  I'm thinking about creating an every week event from now at least through November 2012.  Stay tuned.  More information about this will be coming soon. 

Watch this!

So if our votes no longer count for anything... what next?

Just a quick question?

If our participation in the governance of our lives and property has been usurped, and:

• we know the 2000 election vote count was subverted before it was complete in Florida and we've also verified the massive illegal suppression of voters who were statistically favorable to Gore in that state in that election.

• we know that significant impropriety occurred in the presidential election voting in Ohio in 2004. And other likely tampering abounds.

• we're now hearing about super delegates having been given the ability to overrule the ballots of delegates so as to make sure an "electable" candidate is chosen to run as a democratic Candidate

• we hear that statistically impossible vote distributions were found in New Hampshire and York primary balloting,

does anyone really think they can make the case that the American people have any voice in their governance any longer?


I believe our Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."


When I was in school all students were required to memorize the Declaration of Independence. We did not have to memorize the constitution.

Conundrums, Quandaries, and Feb 5th

What's a progressive girl to do? Feb 5th approaches and I'm facing a question that hundreds of thousands (I'd like to say millions, but I don't think there are that many thinking people actually involved AZ Democrats) of other Arizonans are facing , do cast my initial approval, my primary vote in the AZ Democratic Primary for the woman, the black man, or the white man? Crass way to look at it I know, but at first pass that is what it seems like. It isn't a horrible situation to be in compared to what we've had in the past. White man, white man, white man... ad infinitum. It isn't a great situation to be in either.

Can't get real information on the candidate via the media, just talking heads flapping their jaws about polls and such. As has been the case for far to long, the media is making the news and not reporting information to be interpreted by the masses. I do not care much for Tim Russert, he gives the impression that he isn't framing issues and asks hard questions, but he misses the big glaring issues about corporatism, fascism, voting fraud and the farce elections have become in this country. His interview with Hillary Clinton this past weekend allowed me to remember why I think Hillary is a very bad choice for President.

Time after time yesterday when I watched Meet the Press I was absolutely floored by the false impressions she created when she spoke.

Hillary Clinton on Barack Obama, "He gave a very impassioned speech against it and consistently said that he was against the war, he would vote against the funding for the war. By 2003, that speech was off his Web site. By 2004, he was saying that he didn't really disagree with the way George Bush was conducting the war. And by 2005, '6 and '7, he was voting for $300 billion in funding for the war."

Via omission of the political climate of 2003 she misdirects people into assuming he pulled the speech from the website because he no longer believed in it. In 2003 there was near hysteria in this country about "you are either for us or against us." and the absolute cut and dried false picture that the administration and the media painted and piped into peoples homes 24 hours a day was that any criticism of the the invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq was akin to treason. It would have been political suicide to leave that speech up on the website at that time.

She goes on to say a bit later in the interview, "I have been working on behalf of civil rights, women's rights, human rights for years and I know how challenging it is to change our political system and I have the highest regard for those who have put themselves on the line."

That is utter poppycock! Unless those people who are putting themselves on the line this time happen to disagree with you, as she has repeatedly shown in her disdain for the women of CODEPINK. Rather than answer questions about her support of the war in 2003 and stay and discuss the concept of the pink slip Jodie Evans attempted to present to her, she marched out of the room, and when she authorized her staff to call for the arrest of women engaged in demonstration in her outer office rather than meeting with them to answer hard questions they posed she showed no respect for those on the front lines of protest and change.

I can go on and on with statements she made yesterday that paint a completely false picture. Most times it can't be said that she lies in an outright fashion, but she is deceptive and judiciously picks through contradictory snippets to create depictions that lie. She is a consummate politician just as is her husband.

"Look, this is up to the voters of our country to determine. But I want them to have accurate information about our respective records, what we've accomplished, the working that each of us have done when given a chance to serve." she later stated. With election integrity being a missing component in the last several elections, anyone who speaks about voters determining anything without addressing the need for clean and fair elections conducted via paper ballots, then what they are saying is just balderdash. For AZ election integrity info check out Blog for Arizona

Can't support her -- she is all about what she can do for the country --- and changes her depiction of herself as necessary per shifting understanding about that for which the country may be looking. She plays old school politics with the big boys where the game is all about getting elected and not about having a vision that you support and strive to make real.

That brings us to Barack Obama. Geesh, he has a good presence and his diction and polished demeanor are everything that the top schools, colleges and universities promise to their well heeled clients, the parents of their students. He epitomizes a new diverse elite class that is coming into existence in the U.S. White men will not rule for much longer. Shifting demographics alone tells us that. I have been in the same room with him and he is , from my gut assessment which I trust most of the time, a sincere, intellectually sharp, and artfully well spoken. It does worry me that he has not been a successful leader in getting the war stopped.

Edwards. I really like him because of his wife. I won't vote for someone just because of a spouse. I heard her speak at the BlogHer conference in Chicago this past summer and was awed by the direct uncensored manner in which she spoke. Stage IV cancer had not up to that point diminished her presence, drive, or the courage to speak her mind. She said that her blog is uncensored much to the occasional chagrin of her husband's campaign coordinating publicity staff. I think I could relate to a man who has such a life partner. Now about him. I suspect that having a mill worker as a father gave him a very different life from Obama and Clinton. He was the first in his family to attend college. He started out in a private college, Clemson, and transferred to a state school, North Carolina State where he got a Textile Technology degree. When I transferred from private to state it was because of money. I suspect the same sort of thing played some role his transfer. Eventually he became a trial attorney and fought for individuals against corporations. So far so good. Blue collar. Worked for his education. Married an intelligent woman. Self made wealth. Knows what it is to lose a child; and understands health care concerns and adversity. I'm leaning in his direction -- the only real concern I have about him is his cushy cosiness with the banking industry -- the bad guys.

However, there’s one highly significant chapter in his Senate career omitted from Edwards’ campaign Web site. Edwards, who comes from a state where banking is big business, played a critical role in brokering legislation to allow banks to sell mutual funds and insurance, and to engage in other speculative ventures. This law, worth hundreds of billions to the banks, blasted a gigantic hole in the Glass-Steagal banking law’s firewall of protections designed to prevent the kinds of bank collapses that marked the Great Depression of the ’30s — meaning that it put the money of Joe Six-Pack depositors at risk. Such a gigantic boon to the banking lobby can hardly be classed as a populist victory. - LA Weekly 1/29/04

So what is a girl to do. Guess I will wear a clothes pin on my nose when I go to vote in the February 5th AZ Democratic Primary. I'm serious, I'm wearing a pink clothespin on my nose when I vote... even while I show my ID, and restate as I have the last few times I have voted, that requiring me to show an ID is unconstitutional.

So What Happens The Day After The Election?

I haven’t blogged in a while. I had to take a break so I could turn on the old wisdom crock pot and attend to healing after a year of ill health, personal loss, family upheaval, and near constant political action. So I ruminated and allowed myself the utter luxury of doing whatever the hell I felt like for a few months so I could have the energy and inspiration to face whatever situation presented itself the after the election.

This is basically the same thing I did before the 2004 election. I just started gearing up for the long haul of what would be needed AFTER the 2004 election so I could jump in with whatever was needed when most folks were burned out from putting all their energy into the election.

Here I am again.

So what are we going to do if votes actually cast next Tuesday have no relationship with who “wins” in these U.S. elections?

What are we going to do if token Democrats win but no Progressive voice travels with them to D.C.?

So what are we going to do if U.S. people start being “disappeared?”

We must not lose high-level, integrated focus and descend into a mire of liberal bickering over petty details.

Last week’s approval of the use of military force against our own citizens just before the most critical elections in our country for almost a century is a very dark cloud on the horizon. We have to work together.

The following is from an email I received this morning from The People’s Email Network:

If there were ever a more urgent reason to replace each and every member of Congress virtually without exception, one need only look at the breathtaking new martial law powers granted to the Bush administration this month. It has always been a sacred tenet of our Democracy that the U.S. military should not be deployed AGAINST American citizens. But literally in the dead of night and almost without comment, an amendment to the Insurrection Act was slipped into the just passed Defense Authorization bill stating, and get this:

"the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when . . . the President determines that domestic violence has occurred"

So let's just say for example that the electronic election results in 8 days are so far out of line with pre-election and exit polling data so as to defy credulity. And let's just say that people organized massive peaceful protests of the theft of their elections. And let's just say that the Bush administration provoked "police" riots, or even had their own provocateurs commit violent acts so as to justify a military crackdown. Voila . . . now you have American soldiers shooting at otherwise peaceful political protesters. And you thought Kent State was a party!

And if you don't think that could ever happen, then why the hell have they pushed for such changes, which are now the law of the land?

The whole concept of the president as an unaccountable determiner, or "decider", insulated from any kind of oversight by Congress or the Courts has been the hallmark of the Cheney/Bush executive coup, which just keeps steamrollering along while our presumptive protectors in Congress are asleep at the switch, or cowering in their cloakrooms.

Some of you will who know me personally will remember when I spent several years on a project in which I attempted to salt our cultural milleau with real information about the various cohorts that comprised the boom in births that occurred after WWII. (Yes, I’m digressing, but stay with me…) I coined and forwarded the term Late Boomers to describe the last half of the Baby Boom Generation. Another person, Jonathan Pontel (sp?) forwarded the term Generation Jones to describe this same group. I felt that Jonathan (a child-roofing safety latch tycoon) was doing this, I felt, for some sort of financial gain or personal aggrandizement. This morning I became certain of it when I saw him on FOX. He was spouting about how a surprise win by the Republicans next week will show the power and conservatism of Generation Jones. My disgust meter went haywire. I suspect he is making these statements so that he will be credited with foresight if the elections are stolen again. But it reminded me of how important the Late Boomers, who have really never shown their strength, will be in the next few months.

How history remembers the various cohorts within the Baby Boomers will probably hinge around this election. That much is true. My take on this is totally different from Jonathan’s. I happen to believe that THE test of the moral fiber (not to be confused with religious faith) of the Woodstock Generation, the Late Blooming Late Boomers, and Generation X sll will be tested in these next few months. How history remembers us will be determined by next summer. In these next few months I need to be writing on my blog about how to undermine the DLC death grip on the Democratic Party but I fear I will be writing about the manifestation of fascistic Bushist doctrine into military coercion and the use of military force against our own people.

The activist community has been abuzz about detention centers being built by KBR for almost a year now. It is quite likely that if force is used against our own people those forced and fired upon by our own military in our own streets will be sent to detention centers that have supposedly been built to house “illegal aliens.”

That is right, the“Detention Centers” are ready. (Built by KBR.)

This of course can only be achieved if the People of the United States allow and enable it. But
collaborators are already proudly wearing their brown shirts and acting as though they were military police. Remember when folks in a taxpayer funded event in Denver last year were removed from the gathering because of some printed slogans? They were removed by some political hacks masquerading as secret service agents under the direction of event organizers (The White House).

“Leslie Weise and Alex Young, two of the three people removed from the taxpayer-funded event, are suing two Denver men for actually ousting them. But they believe a White House official gave the order.”

These are the type of cases that must be pursued. Only by establishing locally grown and based enclaves of sanity and justice will democratic principles survive when and if elections are stolen again. These enclaves must be able to stand up to being labeled as "Fifth Columnists."

Just a reminder. I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Communist. I’m not a Terrorist. I’m a life-long registered Democrat whose ancestors met the Puritans (who comprise another part of my ancestral tree) as they arrived in this land almost 400 years ago. I oppose not only this goon squad of a Republican Congress, but also the DLC’s usurping the guidance of Democratic Party and the lame response by the DNC. The Republican Party that is largely composed of honest, albeit misguided, folks. Same can be said of most Democrats.

My own take on why this is happening (which I like to think of as network theory, not conspiracy theory) is that Al Gore wasn’t the only politician aware of global warming and the dramatic changes our human culture will experience in the next few decades. Policy makers, scientists and social theorists have known about the degradation of Earth’s current biosphere for decades. We discussed, diagramed and debated aspects of it in my university classes in the late 1970s. The powers that be have been incorporating it into planning strategies for decades. Remember when Jimmy Carter promoted the use of solar energy and energy conservation? That was right before Papa Bush negotiated with terrorists in Paris (arms for hostages) and thus insured the hostages would not be released during the Carter term of office.

Those with the money and position to shape society (real political power) who understood this coming time of global change seem to have a couple different strategies dependent upon whether they are good or evil. (Sorry, but it does boil down to that.) Gore represents one group, and Bush represents another. (Remember --- Grandaddy Bush traded with the Nazis during WWII -- a treasonous offense.) We can work with each other to create the best response we can to environmental degradation and political instability in our vastly over-populated and divisive world (Gore’s strategy); or, those with power and global network access can consolidate their power and wealth within their very small clan before the “apocalypse” (the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld Rove response.)

I have come to classify this dichotomy as Gaia versus God. Friends tell me not to use the word Gaia as it is a parochial concept. I vehemently disagree with many of the assumptions required to make that statement. Gaia is a semiotic concept of the process that is reality, life, and the World as we know it. The time for preoccupation with things is coming to an end. Being and Becoming as it was called by one great mind (Dr. Earl Count) by which I was fortunate enough to be given undergraduate instruction, is what we do. Focus on “what we are” is based in illusion as “are” implies orientation from a static point in time that does not and never has existed. We can accept our growing understanding of interconnection and simultaneity or we can focus on “things” which are no more than deathly slices of being.

Acceptance of Gaia is acceptance of the Earth, our Mater Terra, as a living system. It says nothing of worship, or omniscience, benevolent or otherwise. It also alludes to a feminine wisdom. In my mind we could use a little bit more of that… no matter what the outcome of next week’s U.S. election.

So what do I suggest we do with all this? I have to Laugh Out Loud, as this is what we always face in planning for any future. We can be Luke and Leahs, or we can align with their father. (Sorry but I had to put in some popular culture reference and it was either Star Wars or a John Water’s reference, so I chose Star Wars.) We can be pie eyed optimists backed by fierce, righteous knowledge, or we can submit to evil. Doesn’t really matter how you do it, the thing is that you do it. It is much better if we don’t all do the same thing.

So I will keep on doing my more or less independent, silly little metaphoric actions and writing. That is what I’ve always done and I doubt I will change at this point.

I’ve endowed Pederson with the balls to stand up against the Iraq War (Pink Balls of Courage) – and I’ve told Gabby Giffords, in person, on more than one occasion that we need her to stand up against the war and gett our troops out of Iraq now even if that means withdrawing all funding for the war. All I’ve gotten are mushy canned responses in return. I’ve given Pink Balls to Gabby’s staff too.

I’m just an iconoclast. I’m also an intelligent woman and a fairly good researcher who is well-trained in social theory as well as several methodologies for evaluating (not measuring—I really don’t give a rat’s ass about quantification) patterns of behavior. I’m relatively harmless… just like the man in the following story:

Steve Howards says he used to fantasize about what he’d say to President Bush or Vice President Cheney if he ever got the chance. That opportunity arrived on June 16, the same day he says he read about U.S. fatalities in Iraq reaching 2,500......... “I didn’t even know he was in town,” Howards says. “He was walking through the area shaking hands. Initially, I walked past him. Then I said to myself, ‘I can’t in good conscience let this opportunity pass by.’ So I approached him, I got about two feet away, and I said in a very calm tone of voice, ‘Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.’ And then I walked away. Howards says he knew the Administration has a_ “history of making problems” for people who protest its policies, so he wanted to leave off at that. But the Secret Service did not take kindly to his comment. “About ten minutes later, I came back through the mall with my eight-year-old son in tow,” Howards recalls, “and this Secret Service man came out of the shadows, and his exact words were, ‘Did you assault the Vice President?’ ” Here’s how Howards says he responded: “No, but I did tell Mr. Cheney the way I felt about the war in Iraq, and if Mr. Cheney wants to be shielded from public criticism, he should avoid public places. If exercising my constitutional rights to free speech is against the law, then you should arrest me.” Which is just what the agent, Virgil D. “Gus” Reichle Jr, proceeded to do.

I guess we should keep on exercising our rights to free speech after the election next week. Loudly. Publicly. That is the best and most important thing we can do. (But you may want to wear your best running sneakers and have a vinegar dampened cloth to put over your face when the pepper spray comes out.

Peace my friends, I bid you peace.