As part of the I Believe series, I propose the following:

With proceeds to go to providing frogs for biology classes.

Unless ET objects to the frogs, in which case I suggest home chemistry sets for every kid.

Regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (S. 1843), which the House passed last year and upon which the Senate is set to vote today, I had to ask yesterday what reasonable person could possibly oppose it.  The New York Times was kind enough to give me an answer today:

 Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Senate Republicans, of course!  The esteemed Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell is on record with the Times as saying "We think that this bill is primarily designed to create a massive amount of new litigation in our country."  He is not on record as complaining about uppity women trying to screw the white menz out of their rightful place in the hierarchy and take away their jobs and emasculate them with pixie sticks, but that's probably not far off.

Meanwhile, the right-on Senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe, a co-sponsor of the bill, resorted to very strong language against the Republicans who wish to deny the bill the floor: "unfortunate," she said.  McConnell had better be careful, from Ms. Snowe that's tantamount to pulling out the pixie stick.

Majority Leader Reid has delayed the Senate's convening today until 5:00 PM so that all of the presidential campaigners can be on hand for this critical vote.  Maverick McCain is not expected to attend.  He's too busy with his It's Hip to Be Poor Tour of the Downtrodden to be bothered with actually doing anything to, you know, help them or crazy stuff like that.

If you believe, as I do, that the ability to do the same job as well as or better than one's counterparts merits a salary at the very least commensurate with theirs, then get on the horn and call your Congress Critter (by phone at 866-338-1015 or email) - 'specially if he's a weasel who runs at the sight of pixie sticks.  Wankers.

UPDATED, From WaPo, the Senators aren't the only ones askeered of letting the great unwashed have their day(s) in court, our wonderful Weasel-in-Chief has threatened to veto the bill should it somehow make it out of the Senate.  To put this in perspective, it's not just a women's issue.  The original court decision has already had an impact on other kinds of discrimination suits:

the bill is a needed remedy for a ruling that is already having far-reaching and unexpected effects, limiting access to the courts by female athletes seeking to compete in a male-dominated sport, disabled people seeking to enforce fair housing laws and workers pressing claims of age discrimination, as well as women who are paid less than their male co-workers, according to a survey of federal court cases.

So now it's not just the uppity women who need to be quashed, but also the disabled and the old.  Of course, the disabled have always been a thorn in our national sides, demanding ridiculous things like wheelchair access or braille in elevators.  And don't get me started on people over 25 - completely useless, senile quacks, all of 'em.

"The impact of this decision was enormous," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a national association of civil rights, women's and consumer organizations, which conducted the survey. "It's not just American workers who are affected, but those seeking redress to remedy all kinds of discriminatory actions."

Say it with me, class:  Wankers.

UPDATE 2: Shame on you, Johnny Isakson (R-GA) for suggesting this bill will unfairly "allow people to file discrimination suits against employers for deeds decades old." (AP)  The bill will do no such thing - unless that discrimination is still ongoing, decades later, and at least one instance occured within the last six months.  Your obfuscation borders on a lie, sir, and shoves a knife in the back of every working person who ever voted for you. 

Saxby Chambliss, the other R-GA - not to be confused, however temptingly, with Zaxby's the Chicken Place (Zaxby's at least peddles something tasty, unlike the Senator who got himself elected by calling Max Cleland a coward) - also voted against.

Weasels.

UPDATE 3:  It's over for today.  42 Senators voted to block the debate.  57 voted in favor of debate, falling short of the magic number 60.

 

For more on this, see Happy Equal Pay Day.

I have no wish to pollute Lance's place with partisan-within-partisan politics, so I'll do it here.  A commenter over there says:

From the tears to the whining to the employment of the bludgeon of fear as if Rove himself were creating [Clinton's] campaign ads, she's made me queasy. The queasiness began, actually, about 2 years ago, when her presidential ambitions were first being whispered about, and she suddenly appeared at a Congressional hearing without her traditional neck scarf but with a honking great gold cross around her neck. Can anyone say "pander"?

And from that moment onward I think that she has been about as naked a political animal as it's possible to be. Even more naked than Bill (whom I loved), because she lacks his compensatory charisma. And when, recently, she pulled out that "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" line on Obama, as if none of us remembered that a scant month or so ago she was kvetching about unfair coverage in the middle of a freakin' debate--to the point that SNL parodied it--that was pretty much it for me. That's when I decided that I couldn't in good conscience support her. Because she disgusts me.

Oh, if she ends up being the candidate against McCain, of course I'll vote for her. But it will be with me holding my nose. If Obama becomes the candidate, I'll vote with bated breath, too, but it will be from anticipation, expectation, and a touch of anxiety.

1) As if Obama's anti-war speech weren't somehow politically motivated?  Please.

2) As I recall, Clinton wasn't kvetching about the debates, nor the fact that she received most of the pertinent questions first, until after SNL offered the junior Senator from Illinois a pillow, at which point she did, admittedly call attention to that fact.

3)  Both the president and his current SecDef Robert Gates have shed actual tears in recent days.  Unless one is prepared to castigate them for womanish emotionalism, one should probably refrain from beating up Hillary Clinton because her voice broke while on the campaign trail.

One would think women would be done with calling other women to account for tears of frustration, but apparently such is not always the case.

4) As far as the bludgeon of fear, I assume we are directed to the ad depicting national and international crises faced by our current Raggedy Andy during his administration.  I may have mistakenly believed his bumbles fair game for our party to question; I may mistaken have believed that a woman could claim equal ground with men in terms of being prepared for such disasters; I was not aware, however, that calling the man's experience into question was automatic grounds for dismissal. 

If Obama wins, so be it, but one has to wonder at his doing so through typical dog-whistle politics.  Can't he beat her without the crap?  And if not, doesn't that put the lie to the idea that she *only* wins when stoopid, old, dried-up white girls vote for her?  I mean, I'll admit I'm not alone, but there just aren't that many idiot racist old white crones out there.

Oh, and by the same token, if Obama wins, I'll hold my nose and vote, but I won't like it.  Not like I once hoped, anyway.

 

Senator Obama is, without doubt or reasonable debate, an inspiring speaker.  Most politicians could only dream of his facility with words, or the firebreak it seems to buy him.

Congrats on Pa.

 

    We love you!

In case you couldn't tell, I like Hillary Clinton.  I always have, from the moment she brazenly suggested that first ladies could be more than window dressing, to the moment she acknowledged the "vast right-wing conspiracy" anyone with half a (left) eye had already seen, to the moment she decided "standing by your man," could be the better part of valor, to the moment she announced her candidacy for this nation's highest office.  I have sent contributions; I have written letters.  I genuinely like the woman.  I even like Bill.  I wouldn't want to be married to him, but he was a good president, if not a good husband, and based on his politics, I like him.

Which is why this is difficult to say.

The two biggest problems with the Senator's campaign have been her husband and her staff.  Bill's re-dust-up over the South Carolina comments do his wife no favors.  He's not actually running for president, mind you, but it is difficult for the population at large to separate the two.  And he is larger than life; he throws a long shadow.  I would hope the former president would start being as careful of his wife's campaign as he was of his own - if not for her sake, or ours, at least for the sake of his own legacy, which has admittedly been tarnished of late.

And then there is Hillary's staff.  Whoever suggested she use the word "obliterate" on air should be fired.  The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction worked during the Cold War, and the idea of preemptive threat (as opposed to preemptive war) is well-established as both acceptable and tenable.  Couching it in such, forgive the pun, explosive terms, however, is not. 

Senator Clinton went on, of course, to explain her position in detail (via TalkLeft, with worthy commentary), but the detailed, cogent, viable explanation doesn't make for the headlines "obliterated" does.  This is campaign 101 - don't let the soundbite overpower the actual message.  It should enhance and entrance, not smash and grab.

I still hope to be able to vote for Hillary in the general, but such mistakes make this more difficult than it ever needed to be, particularly given the proclivity of certain segments of our population to always assume the worst of any Clinton, irrespective of anything as niggling as facts.

The Bush White House doesn't believe ordinary Americans are entitled to much, if any, privacy: they flag library books for government inquiry into those who read them, they tap wires without warrants, they reserve the right to read our mail and pruriently wonder at what goes on in our bedrooms.  And none of this even comes close to touching the ongoing outrage of suspending habeas corpus and actively promoting torture.

The pattern has become such that one wonders what, if anything, this White House would hold as off-limits.

In terms of off-limits to their own insatiable hunger for absolute power, the answer is obviously "nothing."  Yet the AP reports that, while average citizens are entitled to exceedingly little personal space free from unreasonable search, seizure and subjugation, the White House does believe something sacrosanct - the Secret Service White House visitor logs.   The American people, it seems, are not entitled to know who sees our president, on company-time, in the building which we have generously provided.  Apparently such knowledge would grossly impair the president's ability to "gather advice."  Evidently, public knowledge of the President's visitors would be so damaging to the President that he could no longer have the kinds of visitors he likes to have without people getting all nosy and up-in-his-business and snotty about having stupid things like "rights."

Meh.  Stupid people, wanting to know things like who has direct, personal access to the leader of our country.  Don't they know that's not important?  Not really.  Not as important as anything really important - like muppets.  Or pop-tarts.

"You have a real choice in this election. Either Democrat would be better than John McCain," [Senator Barack] Obama said to cheers from a rowdy crowd in central Pennsylvania. Then he said: "And all three of us would be better than George Bush."  AP, via Google

No.  McCain would not be better than George Bush.  McCain would, perhaps, be even worse - precisely because he's managed to cock up a veneer of credibility that Bush couldn't even dream of at this point, let alone manufacture.  This thin coat of synthetic authenticity would allow McCain to further solidify the authoritarian leanings of the neo-con cabal and to play Al Capone to Bush's John Torrio, a surface Robin Hood with all of the emotional depth of Tony Soprano, doing whatever needs to be done to protect the rackets.

Perhaps What Obama Really Meant^TM was that Senator McCain would be better than Bush at hoodwinking most Americans while actually giving them the finger in a code only the faithful could understand.  That much is likely true, if that is indeed What Obama Really Meant^TM.

I would very much like to claim shock and and incredulity over the New York Times article exposing the links between network military "analysts," the government, and the military-industrial complex.  Really, I would.  I would like to think my government above such things as trading lucrative access for favorable press, and cutting those who offer even the mildest of criticism out of the loop.  I would like to think our corporate news media at least aspired to pretend to hold to the tradition of Murrow and Woodward and those others who risked everything to tell us the truth, instead of those who risk nothing to pander to an increasingly stultified audience.

I would like to believe our news isn't pre-packaged, Americanized for American tastes, freeze-dried crap vomited up on cue by an army of willing slaves, eagerly lining up to thank this administration on behalf of the deluded population and requesting if we might, pretty please, have another.

I'd like that very much.  But then, I'd also like world peace.  So now, as Mom suggested, I shall spit in one hand and wish in the other, and see which one fills up first.

...that portrays all who would prefer otherwise, given a choice between a white woman and an African-American man, as de facto racists - as if the woman had nothing to bring to the table outside of her race.

...that would assume anyone who had another first choice was a bigot.

...that believes that all who do not support it from the outset are either stupid or uneducated.

...that states that supporting an alternate in the same party means holding onto religious mythology for dear life - particularly when some are of the much-despised atheist non-class of quasi-citizenry (moi, merci beaucoup, vous le morceau de merde).

...that suggests that only stupid, willfully ignorant, racist idiots could possibly find any other candidate in the same fucking party even remotely attractive.

...that believes that 30 minute meals are inherently less satisfying than Chef Ripert's.

I love Ripert, and what's more, I can actually make his recipes - to a tee, fuck you very much. It just so happensI don't make my living as a chef, so I'm also very well acquainted with the 30 minute stoup.

Guess which recipes get used on a more regular basis, you high-and-mighty so-called "progressives?"  I'm a pro-choice, opposed to the death penalty, all for single-payer health care, firm believer in a progressive (if ostensibly flat-) tax, anti-torture, pro-liberty, motherfucking patriotic, salute-the-flag, father-in-law Vietnam (2 tours) and-proud-of-it (him and me) Marine, American.

I'm also a work-outside-the-home mother of two, with one of the boys needing therapy twice a week, who also needs to get dinner on the table.  I'm enamored of Ripert and Bayless and Colicchio and Desauliniers, but it's Ray and Deen and and Joy of Cooking, and my own mom, who make it onto my table more often than not - because they speak to how I live.

And I have a fucking college degree.  So bite my degreed, Nascar-hating ass.

...this has been a Public Service Announcement from Kiosan, who is fed up to *here* with the Obama mythology, merci beaucoup monsieurs et mademoiselles, so sayeth the toothless rube.

From IndyRobin and GeekLove, a video on blatant media bias:

   As IndyRobin notes at Shakesville:

Reading through the comments and want you to know that this video was NOT just about sexism ... it is about

Character assassination:
[it] is an intentional attempt to influence the portrayal or reputation of a particular person, whether living or a historical personage, in such a way as to cause others to develop an extremely negative, unethical or unappealing perception of him or her. By its nature, it involves deliberate exaggeration or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person. For living individuals, this can cause the target to be rejected by his or her community, family, or members of his or her living or work environment. Such acts are typically very difficult to reverse or rectify, therefore the process is likened to a literal assassination of a human life. The damage sustained can be life-long and more, or for historical personages, last for many centuries after their death

I think most of us even reasonably aware of the world around us know by now that the Chinese government isn’t terribly enamored of protests, much less those protestors who have the gall to show up, live and in color, and suggest that perhaps the government has made a bad decision. More than simple annoyance, the Chinese Powers That Be tend to react with violence, and captured protestors have a nasty habit of disappearing for some time.

So it is no little surprise that Chinese officials got a little miffed over French protests during the Olympic torch relay in Paris yesterday. From all reports I’ve read, the icing on the cake was the banner hung outside Paris’ City Hall – a banner claiming support of human rights, hung there by French officials.

While many regret that the athletes’ bus had to suffer the slings and arrows (or at least eggs and soda cans) of outrageous fortune, I have to wonder what the International Olympic Committee thought they were doing when they awarded the games to Beijing. If an ill wind bodes no good, and the human rights wind out of China is almost universally acknowledged to be ill, then what good could come of it? Do the members of the Committee lack thumbs to prick when something wicked approaches? Do they also lack all common sense?   

More after the jump... »

Senator Clinton has come out with a new NC Ask Me ad in North Carolina.  I like the premise - eschewing all of the punditocracy and blogospheric hype and getting down to brass tacks, as it were:

So, how do you think Clinton Rules will apply here?  Does she actually say something evil if you play the video backwards in a tornado while sucking on a pudding pop?