In the beginning, this was called The White Papers. It started from a comment made by a former blogger here who was a friend in real life. We were talking about healthcare and I said i had been turning the problem over in my head for so long I could write a white paper on it. He said “then why don’t you?”

Well it turns out that I am more of a pamphleteer than a wonk writer. Much like with fiction, I get bored out of my skull about 20 pages into writing anything. But I still love me some political theory.I mean love.

Ruth, a mathematician, and i were talking about the different ways we learn things. She sees things from their smallest parts up. I see them as a whole and then tear them apart. The best way I can describe it is that the Kid was talking to us about how there is a mathematical way to take a solid sphere, cut it into small pieces, then rearrange the pieces so you get a much larger sphere. Immediately in my head there was a sphere getting blown to bits, twirling about and rearranging itself like a 3d puzzle. Ruth saw it as a graph and started talking about line segments. Neither of our methods were wrong, and we could both get to the same result.

So I am thinking about the different ways that we see problems and solutions and how to overcome my boredom at writing more than 20 pages on a single topic. I am also thinking about how fucking awesomely democratic the internet is and what a wonderful thing that Wikipedia exists.

I am also thinking that maybe all my struggles to do things the established way is a complete load of shit (for me anyways). I’ve never been happy doing things in the order I was “supposed” to do them. See- having a child at 19 and refusing to marry his father (or any of the other perfectly respectable men who came after).

And somewhere in this mess of thoughts I also need to find a way to support my kid and myself. Theory is all well and good, but I can’t feed the kid a theory sandwich or tuck him into a theory bed at night. There must be a way to do the things I want to do while obtaining the things I need. I just don’t know how yet.

More proof our government isn’t doing its basic job of protecting the people is the atrocious way we “help” poor, brown people during natural disasters.

Via BFP comes links to get real help to low income WOC in New Orleans right now.

Kate Harding has some quotes from people who can’t evacuate the city.

And Redstar brings us the Katrina pain index.

If I was a praying person, I’d have my eyes shut tight for the residents of the gulf coast as well as those already hit in the Caribbean. My thoughts are with them regardless.

I was reading Quin’s fabulous piece Good Cop Bad Cop about the police actions at both the Dem and Rep conventions.

It’s official- there is no government for us lowly citizens.

So my little chickadees, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to take back what is ours and force politicians to be responsive to us mere voters? I know I keep asking this, but until some brilliant idea strikes me I am going to be painfully redundant.

How do we get our politicians to do the right thing and look out for the people?

Now I’ve made more than a wee bit of a stink about the fact that Obama is anti-Keynesian. There is a reason for that, other than my increasing dislike for the guy.

Keynes had this radical idea that governments should protect people not just from the physical violence of war but the economic violence of downturns. Huhm, imagine that? A government that protects its people. Keynes’ rational was that you temper the boom times a bit with higher taxes in order to cushion the busts. A very moderate idea. He certainly wasn’t some radical commy. But recent governments have fucked that whole idea up. They temper the bad times, sure. If you happen to be wealthy the government will do everything in its power to keep you that way through a recession. But the little people, the regular people, are fucked. In all the talk about the current housing crisis, very little is being done to help the actual homeowners. And the it’s about to get much worse. It’s been easy so far for the PTB (powers that be) to blame the current foreclosures on bad people with bad credit who should have known that the American Dream of homeownership was not meant for them. But people who have good credit and didn’t get subprime loans but got ARM (adjustable rate mortgages) are next on the foreclosure block. Where is the government now? Is it freezing interest rates on these loans? Is it putting a temporary halt on foreclosures? Is it doing anything to fix the people’s problems? Or is it too busy figuring out which bank it’s going to bail out next?

That’s just one example. I am sure you peeps can think of a thousand more where the government is not acting in our interest. (healthcare, tuition costs, food and drug safety, clean air and water- take your pick).

So how do we make them listen to us now? How do we make the people we elect responsible to those of us who elected them? Old methods are failing, we need new and bold ideas for holding their feet to the fire.

I keep having the same stupid arguments with “progressives” who have swallowed a few bits of upper class lefty “common sense” without ever having bothered to check what they put in their mouths to begin with.

I am sure I must have bitched to you all about how those earth lovers bitching about overpopulation are generally privileged white folks complaining about brown people in the world. Haven’t I? Well if I haven’t, next time someone starts talking to you about overpopulation take a good look at the color of their skin, their class and their nationality. Are they white? Are they middle to upper class? Are they from a “developed” nation. Then their arguments are a boat load of racist crap. They use more resources as a single person than those large families in the developing world use all together.

Next- market corrections. Today was the first time I heard a proggy pit poor Americans against poor people everywhere else. But when it happens once it is bound to happen again. Besides, whatever the arguments in favor of “market corrections” are, the argument against them is always the same. What stock brokers and bankers think of as the markets balancing themselves out is code for screwing poor people. Always. Screw them out of pensions, mortgages, savings, 401ks. Screw them out of jobs and healthcare and housing. Always the result of a market correction is an increase in the strain on the poor.

So the proggy’s argument in favor of this recent economic downturn a bunch of us are calling the Second Coming of the Great Depression is that we poor people can’t keep expecting to pay slave wages to poor people in other countries to feed our Wal-Mart habits. Seriously.

First, it’s not increased wages that has driven the cost of food up by 25% in the last year. Really, we’d notice if we were getting paid more. It’s not increased foreign labor costs either. We know that companies just move to the next starving job market to keep costs low. But it makes the tiny men of the progressive movement feel better knowing they overpaid for organic free range eggs at Whole Foods so they can blame us poor people who have to by cheaper eggs, probably imported from China where they were collected by prison labor.

The market does not need a correction because poor people are so damn greedy they want to have their mac and cheese at the cost of other poor people. The market is fucked up because our government is acting irresponsibly towards us, the people, in favor of passing bills helpful to corporations who want us, the people, to buy their products at any price but are not willing to give us, the people, a living wage that would allow for the kind of crap consumption they desire to meet their income projection,

(FTR- the last time I was in a Wal-mart was at least 2 years ago.)

One of the things you will hear lobbed at Sarah Palin is that her husband works for “Big Oil”.

The truth? Her husband, who is blue collar, used to work as an oilfield technician. In Alaska, a place where blue collar jobs are limited.

A certain blogger, who is a feminist and considers herself to be one, went on a mad rant at me when i pointed that, together with the fact that accusing a woman for her husband’s choices is sexist. She made it a point to note on her blog that all sexist attacks on Palin were off limits except for those about her husband’s career choice.

Wtf? The guy was an oilfield technician and is now working as a fisherman. So, are now all the poor people who have to gain a piece of bread working for oil companies horrible monsters that do not deserve to live, on par with lobbyists and Dick Cheney?

So, it is better to not work than work a blue collar job, just because you work for an oil company? The classism of this leaves me breathless. Does this mean that it’s better to not work than work for an HMO because they are what they are?

If Todd Palin’s job means that he works for big oil in scary quotes and thus his wife is not to be trusted since she would be more friendly towards big oil interests, do we get to call Obama on his wife’s employer? Michelle Obama works for University of Chicago Hospitals, where she has a symbolic vice president role. Does this mean that she is in the HMO’s pockets and thus so is Obama ( thus explaining his aversion to UHC)? What about her work for TreeHouse Foods Inc?

It’s not nice is it?

Or is it just a lie packed in a nice sexist and classist envelope from the same people for whom Hillary wasn’t good enough? Or is it that sexist attacks on women not allied with us are OK?

They aren’t

Some other blogger went so far as to compare Sarah Palin with Elena Ceausescu. So, because she is pro life, she deserves to be compared with someone who, as my country’s history tells, was a sadistic murderess? Wow.

Amazing.

A note on Palin: she seems to keep her beliefs and her job separately. When the alaskan senate wanted to remove the benefits allowed to same sex partners of state employees, she vetoed the measure. I know loud alleged LGBT friends who have done a lot less.

I am not even sure I can call myself a feminist anymore. The word has become dirty.

In comments, Jovial asked me about McCain picking Palin as his veep. My friend Nardo had a discussion about it too. Both used the word “token”.

Token- for sure. But still brilliant as far as political moves goes. She shores up the right wing fundys with her forced pregnancy ideas. She brings in right leaning independent women. She may even pull a section of PUMAs, especially since the neo-dems and Obamabots are already unleashing the same misogyny the used on Hillary. The Republicans can now actually say they are less the less sexist party (if you ignore all the slut shaming they do). As far as veep picks go, this is the one of the most amazing choices I have ever seen.

I’m still not voting for McCain. But damn. I am impressed. My question is this- are the Dems going to finally wake up to the misogyny in their own party when they are called out on it by Republicans? Or will they stay willfully ignorant to their own abusive behavior in the name of winning (which will surely make them lose).

And will Obama continue down the every sperm is sacred road now that there is no way in hell he can win the Evangelicals? Or will he wise up and realize that women do get to have complete control of their own bodies, just like men do?

I have little hope for our party. Really, if 18 million of us screaming at them about misogyny didn’t penetrate their tiny brains, can the enemy actually teach them the error of their ways?

Guess we’ve got 2 months to see what happens.

and by they I mean just about anyone talking about the “angry, bitter” Hillary supporters. Hillary is great, awesome even. Would have made a hell of a president. But if we spent our entire lifetimes being angry that wishes don’t come true then everyone who has ever bought a lottery ticket would be too pissed off to function.

The reality is that come next January we are going to have a fuckwit in office, no matter who wins. We are going to have someone who thinks women aren’t quite full human beings, who has no idea what it’s like to be poor or struggling or working class at a time when vast numbers of people are poorer, struggling harder and lacking meaningful work. We are going to have yet another executive branch brought to you by some giant corporations instead of by the people, for the people (cough* AT&T*cough). That is what we are pissed about. Hillary wouldn’t have solved all of these problems, but we saw in her our best chance at fixing some of them.

And the more they turn this into a a battle between cranky old ladies and everyone else, the less attentions those big things like poverty, healthcare, education, bodily autonomy, etc. are going to get.

And it’s not an accident that they are framing it in a way that makes us seem like jilted first wives (cough*Amanda Marcotte*cough) left old and alone because our party left us for the younger voters who don’t demand so much and aren’t mistrustful (yet) of the party’s sweet words. I mean if they actually got what we are fighting for, most people would agree. We want our government to work for us, not against us (telecom immunity). We want accountability and the constitution to be upheld (impeachment). We want healthcare for everyone (there is no one-word description for Obama’s pathetic healthcare plan, sorry.)

We’ve seen just recently Elizabeth Edwards turned into a blamemobile cause her husband coudn’t keep his zipper up. it’s funny that she becomes a scapegoat just after she becomes someone recognized by large swaths of the country who actually knows some shit about healthcare reform and doesn’t buy Obama’s version of.

That is how we frame powerful, smart, fighting women in this country. We either use the metaphor of the jilted wife or we dig up dirt so metaphor becomes literal. Either way, it diminishes their power, our power, to affect real change and influence. Our voices can be dismissed cause we are just angry, bitter, irrational creatures who are pouting over something.

We are not angry because our candidate didn’t win. We are angry because our best chance at fixing the country was shot down with misogyny and election fixing. We are angry because we see that the next four years won’t be much better than the last eight. We are angry because the real problems of this country are going ignored while the press and the politicians turn to soap opera style dramatics to subdue the populace.

But if the acted like they fucking understood that, then things might actually have to change. And then wouldn’t have us angry, bitter, old ladies to blame for their failings anymore.

Since the climax of this little crisis I have had to do something I’ve been avoiding for a while, namely talking to people that I don’t know. And it hasn’t been too bad, actually.

I found out that I may have some legal recourse after all. It’s not a big chance, but at this point there really isn’t anything to lose and much to gain.

And yesterday I had to pick up the kid from the airport. I was waiting outside, smoking (now is not the time to give me grief about my one bad habit people) when a woman asked me for a light. Then she asked me about my purse, which I bought in the Yucatan a few years ago from a Maya lady. I love this bag. It’s red and pink and has the classic Maya multi-designs. It has embroidered roses and that lovely striated weave to the fabric. The woman was Guatemalan and we started talking about the Mayan

pack and clean anymore. I just want to wave a magic wand and be done with it all. I want magic powers.

The kid and I have an ongoing conversation about what superpowers we would like to have. Sometimes they are the expected like being able to fly, and I have always said that I wanted the ability to be fluent in every language. But we’ve come up with a few not so standard ones too.

The cleaning snap: Kid and i wish that we could just close our eyes, snap our fingers, and have all housework be done. No muss, no fuss, no hours of mindless labor. I really really hate to clean. And I really really hate that because I was born with ovaries it is expected that I will be more tidy than someone without them. I already cook and decorate and make stuff by hand. Adding cleaning responsibilities on to that just seems like housewife overkill.

The bubble of no harm: This one isn’t so much a shield or a weapon. It’s more the idea that anyone who would want to cause us harm (like say 3 grown up thugs who think robbing children is a career path) would experience crippling regret and shame for having those thoughts before they could act on them. It means dealing with a lot fewer assholes and saving our strength for the doochebags that morals don’t work on.

And of course, we want teleportation now. Right now.