Plangere Day 4

This workshop is not only teaching me a lot about how to use new media in my scholarship, but it's giving my creative mind a boost...

Plangere...day one

There are lots of really smart people in this room...I'm feeling a little stupid...but glad to have the opportunity to draw from their well of smart

They're going to go Completely Bonkers

If (When) President Obama is re-elected, it will be a clear vote against the status quo, the old rich white man running everything way we have conducted politics for the last 236 years.  And when this happens, the rich, Koch brother types, conservative people in this country (as well as the huge number of racist redneck voters who continue to vote against their best interest when they vote repube) are going to go apeshit crazy.  While I want the president to win, and I think a Romney presidency would be the absolute worst thing for this country, I am also afraid that if the president does win, someone may assassinate him.  They will not be able to stand the fact that he will be in power.  It frightens me, because you think about transformational politicians of the last half century.  JFK-Killed...Martin Luther King JR. Killed...Bobby Kennedy-Killed.  The powers that really run this country, the military industrial complex, the corporate interests, the oil companies, will not stand for their will to be overturned.

I know this sounds really conspiracy theory, but there is a dark underbelly in this country and I'm afraid it's going to show itself soon.

Sorry They got Caught

Republicans all over the country have been calling for Todd Akin to get out of the race for U.S Senator from Missouri.  This has to be the biggest turn around in political party policy ever!  The problem with all the republicans calling for Akin to stand down is that the majority of them completely agree with everything Todd Akin stands for...they are not sorry for the content of what he said...they're sorry he got caught saying it out loud.

The religious right republican party idea about rape and abortion is, if you have been raped, you have probably done something to bring it on yourself...wearing suggestive clothing, going out and getting drunk at a bar, walking to your car in a dark parking lot.  Good Christian upstanding women don't get raped.  So if you get raped and get pregnant, well, that's just too bad because you need to carry the spawn of the demon who raped you for 9 months, forever being reminded of the fact that you were obviously doing something you shouldn't have and got in trouble.  In the larger discussion about personhood or abortion, there can be no retreat from the idea that there should be no abortion because, quite frankly, the republicans are more about controlling people's sex lives than they are about protecting unborn babies (as most of the unborn they are trying to protect, those of poor women or african american women, will get little or no support once they actually draw breath).

I had a republican tell me one time when I asked how she could reconcile the idea that if her daughter got raped, the republicans would force her to carry the baby to term.  She said, "She could always get a DandC (or however you spell it)"  Unfortunately, the republican party platform would not allow for any type of protection against a pregnancy after rape, including the morning after pill which would only keep a pregnancy from happening in the first place.

Todd Akin needs to stay in the race...the republicans need to dance with the ones who brung them...they shouldn't be allowed to hide behind their regret that they got caught telling the truth about themselves.

Chic Fil Hate

this whole Chic Fil A thing has just depressed me.  First of all, some of my best memories growing up are of my sister, Mom and I going to Tyler to shop at the Broadway Square Mall.  We would always say we were going to eat somewhere other than chic fil a, but every time we would walk by and it would smell so good we would end up eating there anyway.  A few years ago, I worked for the advertising agency in Dallas that handles Chic Fil A.  In fact a friend of mine was one of the creators of the cow ads (which I think have run their course but they keep flogging them on us).  Then I heard that Chic Fil A had been donating to anti gay and gay reparative therapy groups.  I decided not to eat there anymore after that.

Then one day last year, I was in Dallas about to meet my sponsor, and was hungry.  I thought I would try the chic fil a at the corner of Northwest Highway and Skillman in the new shopping center there.  I thought, "What could one chicken sandwich hurt?"  As I sat down to eat, I noticed several managers sitting at a table talking to a young African American woman.  I overheard the managers saying things like "you are always absent and you didn't call in the other day when you were going to be absent blah blah blah"  It was almost as though they were hectoring her; they just wouldn't let it go.  Now, I have managed in a retail situation before, and I understand that there is a huge turnover in those jobs, mainly because they don't pay much.  When an employee no showed/no called, the next time they came in, we would just quietly tell them they were fired and allow them to leave.  But this group of managers seemed to be hell bent on humiliating this girl.  Then, as she walked out with her boyfriend, the boyfriend got angry because, turns out, she was pregnant.  He was white, she was black, they weren't married, she was pregnant.  I can just imagine what the good Christian company thought of that.  The managers ended up calling the police because they were afraid the boyfriend was going to go fed on them I guess.

I ended up writing a letter complaining about what I had seen, the manager sent me an email apologizing.  But what I also noticed that day was how unhappy all the other employees of that restaurant looked.  They looked like dogs who had been kicked over and over and were cowed down.  Even if I could stand their political and religious stance, I can't financially support a company that treats its people like shit.

so those of you who ate at chic fil a Wednesday, enjoy your shit sandwiches...

PC Wars

reading some of the posts last night by people about the chic fil a appreciation day, one person wrote that she was tired of always having to be politically correct.  My thought about that is, so you'd rather go back to the time when it was okay to say disrespectful things about women, racist things about minorities?  You really think the world would be better if we all were able to make fun of people who are disabled?  If that's the case, that's not the world I want to live in...

The President's Club

I've always been interested in Presidential history.  One of the earliest books I read about the presidency or the White House was a book by a former White House usher, Upstairs at the White House which provided a view of how the White House was run and behind the scenes of taking care of the president's family.  So when I heard a book about what is informally called "The President's Club" was coming out, I knew I had to read it.

In 1953, when President Eisenhower was sworn in, Herbert Hoover suggested to Harry Truman that they form a President's club.  Yet the foundation for this "club" had already been built when Truman worked to bring Hoover back into public life after Truman took office.  For twelve years during FDR's three terms, Hoover had never been invited to the White House and was essentially ignored.  Roosevelt had even gone so far as to rename the Hoover Dam  "Boulder Dam" because of his dislike of Hoover.  Seeing how Truman worked to bring Hoover back into public life, how he assigned Hoover the task of setting up food aid for the millions of starving people in Europe after World War 2 makes me respect Truman even more than I already did.

I haven't finished the book yet; I just finished the section on Richard Nixon's torpedoing of the Paris peace talks in 1968 just before the presidential election so that Hubert Humphrey wouldn't win the election.  It's amazing to me that Johnson never told the country what Nixon and his people did because he knew that the presidency was more important than destroying Nixon (who ended up destroying himself without any help from Johnson).

If you're interested in history like I am or if you're interested in the presidency, read this book.  I will have to say that it has given me insight into how many more things can be accomplished when politicians work together rather than against each other.
The President's Club