Yeah, that’s right, I’m voting for the Oprecious …

Posted: October 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: | 89 Comments

I live in a bright red state that gave John McCain his biggest margin of victory of all states. I grew up in states where Republicans won in almost all circumstances. If any one knows about symbolic voting, it’s me.  That’s about all I’ve ever done. I’ve spent a lot of time voting for folks based on knowing my vote won’t do a damn thing. I just have always tried to vote for the right person as much as possible. Yes, in a lot of cases it’s been the marginally right person because the alternative is just stinky.

This time out, the alternative to the OPrecious is so horrible that I can’t even imagine how any one could fall for his shit, support his shit, or stand to be in the same room with his shit. This does not make me an Obot.  No, I’ve not forgotten anything about 2008. I know his drone program and kill list program and gosh knows what else program having to do with our so-called war on terror is not “optimal” or consistent with my values. But, a vote fro Romney only makes that worse and it makes ABSOLUTELY everything else worse too.  I’m not into voting based on giving a chance to making absolutely everything worse . I am all for making a statement to the people that are orgasmic about making absolutely everything worse.

Matt Stoller–who is taken seriously for some reason–has never written anything based on common sense, research, data, or reality. I hate to even write on this because he’s such a lightweight that calling him a pseduo intellectual is a kindness. This article is all over twitter and the web so it’s hard to ignore it. Thankfully, I don’t know any one that’s not making fun of it so that’s really soothing to my worried mind. I still can’t believe how so many people can confuse random variation with Romney Momentum so I know that the punditry is dense, but calling Stoller dense would be a kindness too. Matt Stoller shows that even a privileged upbringing and education are lost are many folks and not just Dubya Bush.

I know a lot of folks who are voting for a third party and I really do not begrudge them anything at this point. But, I will say that it’s not a good decision  because Romney/Ryan represent nothing that I’ve ever worked for and fought for as a feminist and civil rights activist. They also represent everything I know is wrong via my education is a financial economist.  I’m sorry Stoller, but you are really wrong and if any one takes you seriously, our country will surely pay for it.  If we wake up to another Florida 1999 I will be really pissed and I will be forced to think of you.

So why oppose Obama? Simply, it is the shape of the society Obama is crafting that I oppose, and I intend to hold him responsible, such as I can, for his actions in creating it. Many Democrats are disappointed in Obama. Some feel he’s a good president with a bad Congress. Some feel he’s a good man, trying to do the right thing, but not bold enough. Others think it’s just the system, that anyone would do what he did. I will get to each of these sentiments, and pragmatic questions around the election, but I think it’s important to be grounded in policy outcomes. Not, what did Obama try to do, in his heart of hearts? But what kind of America has he actually delivered? And the chart below answers the question. This chart reflects the progressive case against Obama.

No third party candidate has a snowball’s chance in hell of doing anything but bringing down one of the two duopoly candidates.  If you’re responsible for bringing down Obama at this point, you are really really really going to live to regret it.  Well, no you won’t because you’ll still have a job and then you’ll just write about how horrible Mitt Romney is, and how did this happen?  You won’t be the one worrying about all the consequences of a rape.  You won’t worry about paying for birth control or praying that your job would  just paid you what it pays the guy sitting next to you.  You won’t be an unemployed teacher, firefighter or police man.  You won’t be sitting in some middle eastern hell realm with a bunch of folks who want to kill you and you won’t be  lying in your bed at night thinking about some you love that is.  You won’t be the one who looses his mail service, his social security payment, or his medicare.  You won’t be the one who has no recourse when they lose a job or a school slot due to racial discrimination.  You won’t be the one  continually asked for a birth certificate or an ID card to prove your citizenship.  No, you won’t so just stay up there on your imaged high horse and spew shit without consequence.

Here’s Joshua Holland’s cogent argument for not voting third party this year.  My emotional argument as a long time advocate of reproductive rights, women’s rights, and survivor of violence and rape advocate is that I want to see the Republican Party of and each of its candidates sent to a political oblivion hell realm so deep and so far that they will never get out.  For that, I’m willing to happily vote and support Obama.

Daniel Ellsberg makes the case for this strategy here. If, on the other hand, you agree with  Matt Stoller  that Romney would be no worse for progressive America than Obama – a position that I find ludicrous – then do what you think is best. I won’t tell anyone how to vote.

The reason this is a terrible idea in 2012 is simple: there is now a non-trivial chance that Mitt Romney could win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College to Obama. It’d be like 2000 in reverse. Right now, Romney holds a small, 1-point lead in the popular vote, according to TPM’s polling average . But in TPM’s electoral college vote tally, Obama is leading 261-206 (a candidate needs 270 to win). Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model gives a 5.3 percent likelihood of this scenario coming to pass. That’s not exactly a winning-the-lotto-type long-shot.

Now, in a perfect world, this wouldn’t matter. We have a quirky system, and the winner of the popular vote is, for better or worse, a matter of trivia. We select presidents according to the Electoral College tally, not the popular vote. And if you think Republicans would greet this news rationally, understanding that George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and acknowledging that we should be consistent in these matters, then by all means, vote strategically for Jill Stein or whomever if you’re in an uncontested state.

I think a more realistic view is that they’d precipitate a crisis, as the conservative media howled about how the people had spoken and their will must be respected. A concerted effort would be made to persuade members of the Electoral College to become “ faithless electors. ” Efforts would be made to split the electoral vote proportionally in any states Obama wins that are controlled by Republicans. We’d see more “ Brooks Brothers riots ” unfold. It’d be a huge mess, and I don’t think the outcome would be certain.

Again, I’m not holding a third part vote against any one.  I am holding voting a Romney/Ryan vote against every one except my 90 year old father.  The rest of you will be dead to me.  PERIOD.  But, any chance at ushering anything but complete obliteration of today’s Republican party during this election is a wasted opportunity.

I’m just going to quote the NYT’s editorial for Obama in making the case against voting for anything to encourage Mitt Romney or the party of assholes that he represents.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas. Voters may still be confused about Mr. Romney’s true identity, but they know the Republican Party, and a Romney administration would reflect its agenda. Mr. Romney’s choice of Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate says volumes about that.

Yes, this is what he represents.

An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives. Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us. Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.

Mitt Romney and the current crop of crapmiesters in the Republican party represent everything that could possibly be wrong in this country.  Nothing about them should be left standing after this election.  Matt Stoller would rather self-promote his ass-holiness than actually look at what kind of possible reality his ramblings and mental midget masturbations would bring.   My belief is he’s an Ayn Rand groupie who just doesn’t want to hang around with the creepsters with radical right social agendas because their anti-intellectual ickiness might reflect on him.  He should be ignored.

My vote is not going to Obama and everything and every person that is NOT a Republican because being a Republican is basically being everything I stand against. At this point, everything I value is so under threat that I’m not going to go on some third party suicide watch list.  Btw, if you know any libertarians … get them to vote Johnson.  I’m encouraging every one of them to know to stand up for what they believe knowing full well he’s economic policies would tank the country  …. Guess why?

So hate me.

Reframe, Reform, Regroup

Posted: November 12, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Human Rights, PUMA, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

j-miller-we-can-do-it-rosie-the-riveterThere is a general consensus out there in the Pumasphere that we need to regroup and continue to voice our issues.  I have found that it is much easier, at this point, for me to list the issues that made me a Puma.  It’s much harder for me to suggest a blueprint for the regrouping.

Our political process needs reform.  Both parties have now won elections by perpetrating ugliness, fraud, and lies. Tactics used by Democrats this year were the source of much frustration and anger in the past when used by Republicans.  How can you claim higher ground while stooping to conquer?  We have to find a way to stop the parties from using the deep pockets of special interest constituencies to game an election.  I’ve been amazed at how the same blogs that howled at Rovian tricks have borrowed some of the same plays and chortled in glee when these nasty strategies work in their favor.

One of the nasty strategies is the hyperpartisanship that allows candidate surrogates to demonize opponents and their supporters.  This year’s Judas goat appeared to be women candidates and women in general.  I was horrified at the level of misogyny given a pass by the DNC.  I was even more horrified that much of this was done by women.  I now have a list of women’s groups and women’s activists whom I no longer consider feminist.  This includes NARAL, Emily’s List, Gloria Steinham, and many others.  We cannot allow the parties to use us to beat up on women who disagree with us on an issue or so.  The progress of women depends on not allowing any one to define the weakest ones in the herd so that the predators can weed them out for destruction.  My guess is that women’s rights as well as GLBT rights will not achieve anything with the new congress and the new president.  We will be used once more to place the usual suspects in power so they can enrich themselves and further legislation that has nothing to do with anything we value.  Yes, I will be happy to see all those nasty, birth control phobic executive orders go away.  I doubt we will see legislation, however, demanding insurance providers cover all forms of women’s reproductive care let alone laws enabling federal funding.  So how much are marginal differences worth to us?

 To further the Obama cause, we will see more Prop 8s.  As long as it advances Obama’s status, they will support laws that winnow out the least powerful among us.  We need to reframe what it means to be “for” us and “against” us.  Lip service and proxy misspeaks should not be so easily forgiven or forgotten.  We need to reframe them so that folks see them for what they are–nonsupportive of women’s rights and a disservice to our self-esteems and our causes.

So, can we reform either party?  Will the Republicans give up their love of controlling women’s bodies while curbing corporations that run amok?  I don’t think so.  Now that the Democratic Party has learned they can fool enough of the people enough of the time, will they show some respect to those of us that loathe this new process and their new flunkies?  Dream on.  We can choose to be a segment that can select a few kings or we can try to coordinate with others to forge a new independent way that could possibly lead to a third party.  I’m still drawn to the latter as a long term strategy.  I think Bloomberg may take a run at the presidency in 4 years and he’ll need some voting blocs.  We should keep all of our options open because I have no doubt we will be in exhile for some time.

It is likely for election reform we will have to work state by state.  If we want more women’s voices in the process, we will have to run or put women candidates into office.  The blogosphere continues to be our best weapon.  We can connect, reframe the issues, demand reform where we can, and look for the best possible structure to regroup.  I think that’s all I can offer up for debate at this point.  I will say that I am willing to stick it out and work for it because the problem is at the very heart of all that is the promise of democracy.

NOTE:  This is my contribution to the The Confluence’s The Way Forward Series: Pondering our future as P.U.M.A.s.  If you follow this link and look in the upper right hand comment, you will find the ideas of others in the PUMA movement.

I want my money back! (AND my country!)

Posted: August 28, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, No Obama, PUMA | Tags: | 7 Comments

The U.S. taxpayers provide $50 million per party for these shams called conventions. After watching the chicago version of a staged roll call and what amounted to a real deathblow to democracy, I want to ask every one to write their congressional representatives and senators and demand their money back!  I don’t feel like I need to pay for advertising rigged elections, false unity, and forced results.

I didn’t blog yesterday on Hillary’s speech and I’m really reluctant to do so on Bill’s speech because they both did an excellent job doing exactly what the party demanded.  They were brilliant speeches making the case against McCain and any continuation of the Bush 43 policies.  This was supposed to make the case for Senator Obama.  I felt they tried, but since the case FOR Obama is basically nothing BUT the case AGAINST McCain, even the brilliant oratory of skilled politicians couldn’t do it for me.  I’m glad that many AA’s will get the chance to vote for a black presidential candidate, but there has to be something going for a presidential candidate other than an opponent that doesn’t share your views and historical opportunities.  That candidate has to have a proven record that shows he’s up for the job.  Senator Obama falls woefully short on that account and I cannot turn my country over to another President that requires training wheels and is so obviously over his head on issues regarding the economy and national security.  He may get to appoint a Supreme Court Justice, but he also has to decide what to do with the resurgence of Russian Aggression, Osama Bin Laden, and a stagnant economy that is not providing equal opportunities for all Americans.

I am so damned tired of feeling that the Democratic Party has offered us the lesser of two evils and I just need to fall in, I could scream.  I want to feel inspired by a presidential candidate, not feel like I have to reluctantly go along with whatever the party insiders offer up.  I think, PUMAS, it’s time for a party of our own making.

I’ve spoken about this election to what I consider typical Americans.  I asked several of the women I teach with at the University if they’ve been watching any of the convention.  I’ve talked to my dad and sister in Seattle.  Every one pretty much agrees, once again, we have two choices that none of us really want.  Dad–a Republican–doesn’t want McCain.  Most of the folks I speak to, other than my young students, really don’t want Obama.  I hear so many folks saying that this is the worse choice they’ve had for a long time and they feel like staying home rather than exercising their most sacred duty and wonderful gift from our ancestors, the right to vote for who will lead us.

So what I want to know is why do have to pay for this sham upfront if I’m going to spend the next four years paying for this Hobson’s choice?  Why do I want to scream and say, not again!  This is just another set of mediocre politicans that have pandered to the worst of their party’s interests.

Something has to be done about the two party system.  Since the birth of the televised convention, democracy is becoming less and less vibrant.  It is more a televised attempt at giving us what they want. I even felt that the primaries and caucuses this year were a complete waste of money.  They’ve been fixed and gamed to produce a desired result.  Caucuses need to be eliminated.  Primaries need to be held on a rotating calander and a regional basis with a very short election cycle.  Iowa keeps creating these losers and needs to be put into a pack with the rest of the heartland and no state should have any kind of special status.

Last presidential election cycle, I felt I got stuck with John Kerry by the time Louisiana had it’s primary.  I knew he was a complete loser but went along any way.  By that time, I had no choice in it.  My vote was meaningless.  I also felt that when I voted for him, I knew I was voting for a predestined loser.  This time, I refuse to do it.  Obama cannot win and I refuse to put any effort into pretending he will.  I’m frankly expecting a repeat of the McGovern-Nixon election.  Have any of you ever heard of a situation where a candidate gets a negative bounce with a vp selection and during a convention?  The DNC is too caught up with itself to stop this disaster in process.

I’d like to put my two cents in for the future of the PUMA movement.  It’s something I’ve been putting forward here for some time.  We need to spend the next four years building the infrastructure for a viable THIRD party.  One that is based on the American people.  One that removes itself from corporate control and the control of those loud and obnoxious interest groups we see every convention time.  I don’t want to pander to evangelicals, I don’t want us split up by skin color,  and I definitely don’t want to obsess on wedge issues.  I just want a party that is interested in the economic issues and the safety issues we face every day as americans.  I want to focus on our shared interests.  I want to focus on  our health, our safety, the future of our children, jobs, and an equitable tax system.

Is that too much to ask?