I'M GOING TO NETROOTS NATION!

Good news/bad news. Mostly good.

I did NOT get a Netroots Nation scholarship, despite receiving 45 votes and being somewhere in the top 10-15 votegetters (from a field of 30 scholarships awarded).

However, the support I received from ya'll simply blew me away. The things you said about me, the folks who turned out to stump for me -- it was jolting and made me take another assessment of myself. All in the most positive way.

And: I'm still going to Netroots Nation.

How? Because Jesse Wendel and the Robinsons (Sara and Evan) have come forward to pay my way. This includes the conference fee, which was offered a reduced rate by Democracy for America (THANKS, DFA!), rental of a power wheelchair for four days, transportation to and from the conference site, and all my meals. It's a done deal. I'm going.

Which means more than I can ever know, much less express. But I'll try, nonetheless.

When I began my own blog, I became interested on a whole other level in what other bloggers were doing. I became a critical consumer of writing, thinking, and strategy as it is presented on the web. I was looking for people who knew how to express themselves without negativity or denial, who researched and made deep connections, who believed in the goodness of humanity and allowed that to come through even when they were reporting on our worst behavior, and who were capable of addressing multiple (all) issues simultaneously. I wanted to read the thoughts of someone who meant to change the world but not from an ego-driven perspective.

Eventually, I found Orcinus and Sara Robinson. Every time I read one of her essays, I felt bells go off inside my head and I wanted to call all my friends, say "You GOTTA hear this". She invariably took on the fear and distortion present in fundamentalism and this country's Right with calm, intelligent, bold clarity. She wrote and thought better than I did. (I don't suffer from false modesty, just to be frank, here.)

Finally, I wrote her a fan letter. She, in her deliberate way, checked me out and passed on the information to her colleague at Group News Blog, Jesse Wendel, who also began checking me out.

All I can say is, thank g*d I didn't throw up a post about how scared I am of alien abduction or Sasquatch. (Just kidding.) (Kinda.)

At any rate, after a while Jesse came after me. See, Jesse is someone who has put in the time to sort through his male conditioning, deciding what makes sense to retain and what is counter to his best interests. He's figured out that being direct and assuming responsibility are admirable human traits, when scraped clean of self-righteousness, gender myths, and power grabs. It's a relief to be around in any form, male or female.

And I, on my part, have put in the time to sort through my working class conditioning, weeding out my fear of exploitation and distrust of my instincts. So, when he came after me, I said "Sure, let's talk." When a powerful equal approaches you and offers to work in tandem, you have everything to gain by saying yes.

I've had nothing but growth and increasing liking since. Don't underestimate liking; at my age, I think it's the most important outrigger of love, along with respect.

So, these folks are building a bridge from me to who knows what. (In an almost literal since: The route from my apartment to the convention site is almost a straight shot down Congress Avenue across the Ann Richards Bridge, as good a symbol as my poet heart could wish for.)

Please send them your thanks, your energy, your attention. Their writing and works are making an untold difference out there, as well as in my life.

And, heartened by this possibility, this turn of events, I've finally taken the step to add a Pay Pal button to my website. I can now accept donations. I'm not a tax-deductible entity, just needy. If you do make a donation, please tell me who you are and let me thank you directly.

Thanks for reading this far. You'll be hearing a lot more from me about this conference in the coming month. Summer is now officially launched, and so am I.

Love, Maggie

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WHAT SHE SAID

Take me to the river, Shakesville.

Melissa McEwan's post For The Record has been seconded many places on liberal, woman-respectful blogs in the last week, so you may have already seen it. But if you have not, I say "Read it" and then "Me, too".

I have never voted for Hillary Clinton. (Though I did vote for Bill, twice, and am not a bit sorry for it.) I even wrote once that I agreed with Molly Ivins when she said she was giving advance notice, she would NOT vote for Hillary for President. But I had to publicly take back that blustering statement when Hillary became an equal contender for the nomination because, the fact is, if Spongebob Squarepants turned out to be the Democratic nominee this time around, I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR HER/HIM. The alternative is unthinkable. I found Hillary and Barack equally acceptable and equally unacceptable, although I do agree with Howie Klein's assessment that Hillary is/was demonstrably more liberal than Barack.

Yet any time I commented on a so-called progressive blog to protest hate language which was being aimed at Hillary on the basis of her being a woman, a wife, an older female, I was assumed to be a Hillary supporter. Not just that, a Boomer identity-politics-troglodyte racist C**T of a Hillary supporter who could not understand change or hope or vision if it bit me on my white, fish-smelling ass.

Yep, that's me to a tee.

Despite my best efforts, it got to me. And I've been sick inside as I've watched the testosterone-fueled fist-pumping victory dance. Because for some of these guys, too many of them, it was not just Hillary who was going down in flames. It was all the uppity bitches who ever denied their male superiority. We really can tell the difference, you know. You asswipes fool NOBODY but each other. And your exalted candidate did not lift one fucking finger to interrupt it. Which means when it's time to let YOUR values get assaulted, he'll choose silence if it serves him in the long run there, too.

PUH-LEEZE don't begin with your lizard-brain rebuttal of all the things Hillary's campaign did or said that were racist. I've read them. I agree. One does just not justify the other. Can you fucking understand that much? It's not a goddamned football game, nobody is keeping score of racism vs. sexism (except for you morons). I have and will continue to speak out just as much against racism, in all its forms. It's completely unacceptable.

And so is woman-hating.

I'm going to excerpt one part of Melissa's post here:

"...these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies' casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn't like.

"And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.

"And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.

"And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they'd called home for years.

"(But don't take that personally.)"

You have all shit in your beds, and you are too dumb to understand how. But nonviolent, steadfast refusal to cooperate with your cherished machinery will eventually get your attention. I'm asking all my sisters, mothers, daughters, and our allies to ELECT THIS DEMOCRAT, we have no healing option otherwise. He'll do some good, and he'll stop some of the death and destruction that's eating us alive. Boycotting this vote is suicide, and if you hint such a thing my way, I'll consider you self-destructive and unreliable.

After the election, though? The bot-boys are OUT. Lock the door. We know who we are, we know who stayed clean in the blogosphere, we took names and paid attention. Jesse Wendel, Lower Manhattanite, Shakesville, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Orcinus -- at the top of the list of those who can manage to fight injustice without resorting to racism or sexism. (Feel free to give praise to others in the comments here.)

Playing fair means, eventually, that only other fair players will sit down at a table with you.

But you'll always have Bush to whine with.

---------------------------

For those of you with energy to deal with denial, recommended reading to help you not feel crazy:

From Dave Neiwert at Orcinus, How right-wing crap polluted Democrats' political waters

Shakesville keeps a simultanous Hillary Sexism Watch and Barack Racism Watch. The latest I could find are Hillary Sexism Watch #104 and Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Forty-Goddamn-Six.

A request by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville to provide concrete evidence of posts and comments on "progressive" blogs of woman-hating directed at Hillary produced this depressingly long and detailed list:
List of Leftie Misogynist Hate Against Hillary

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESSE WENDEL!

CROSSING THE BEARDMORE

We're drawn to the stories whose characters
are unmistakably heroes, no snarky take-down
will be done of them in revisionist history
We know the phrases, even if we've never
left home: South Col, rounding the Cape,
Donner Pass, crossing the Ohio

We can hear the screams of drowning mares
in the horse latitudes. We finger our gums
and eat an orange. We tell our children about
the Latin phrase on the collar of a dog
found with his boy in the ruins of Pompeii

We cry for those who died in a blizzard.
Run down by a wave. Choking on Zyklon B

We cry because we can, it is enough
to cry. We find room in our lungs for breath
after we grieve. Room in our minds
to think of other things.

While all around us are legends
Too close to leave us room

The woman in a wheelchair whose hands
cannot push her forward, so she smiles
and waits, says "Thank you" with emphasis
for the 3000th time.

The paramedic who leaves crying children
with a frightened mother because they've
survived the main tremor, but the freeway
has collapsed. He will not come home until
he's pulled too many bodies to count
from cars crushed like beer cans.
She'll divorce him because he can't talk
about what's inside, because he isn't
reliable.

The mother serving bare macaroni with salt
and a little tabasco. For dessert last summer's
red plum jam. She tells stories about the
Superstition Mine and Jim Bowie, tomorrow
at school they will have a full tray, maybe
she can borrow from a neighbor again.

We believe what we are taught when argument
can mean shunning or death:
Raping a baby brings good fortune
PTSD is the refuge of a sissy
An unwitnessed rape means death by stoning
Homeless people are addicts who wouldn't stop
A woman who dresses like a man just wants
a dick, one way or another
Hard work always pays off
Changing your mind means you were wrong
to begin with, why should we trust you again

We pull out the worn wooden box and sort
one more time. It's late.
The pain med is not kicking in.
What was I born for, again? Oh, yeah
Fake it until we have another minute
of pure belief. Sometimes
as good as it gets is
as good as it gets.


© Maggie Jochild, 19 May 2008, 7:37 p.m.
For Jesse

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MUDDIED WATERS: BLOG AGAINST THEOCRACY

Friends, I am participating in this weekend's Blog Against Theocracy event in the blogosphere. If you click on the link, you'll find a list of all the other blogs who are likewise participating, and discover some very fine reading, I'm sure. I'll be keeping my post on this at the top of my site all weekend, despite posting other essays later.

**************

When I was thirteen years old, I became an atheist. I was definitely not pressured into this decision. My father's parents were fundamentalist Baptists -- Bible Baptists, as they are known in that part of Oklahoma. My father was not quite as vehement as them, but definitely carried their DNA. Mama had become a convert to Hinduism and the teachings of Edgar Caycee after our return from India, which certainly made her unique in the small Texas and Louisiana towns where we lived, but she was not an atheist. I had been pursued by the local Baptist Church in one town, where I prayed, learned missionary skills, and attended revivals.

Until I changed my mind. It was an honest comfort to give up on g*d and accept I was alone with things. Alone with all of humanity and nature and history, which was plenty. I had to keep my atheism secret, of course, except from my mother who was astonished but not upset with me.


(Easter 1967, Dilley, Texas: Maggie, age 11, and her little brother Bill, age 8)

As my adolescence progressed, so did my social conscience. By the time I was 20 and an official bleeding heart revolutionary, my ethics and morality were at fever pitch. I explored and became comfortable with other spiritualities -- wicca, Judaism, Buddhism, the Society of Friends -- but as cultures, without an accompanying belief in g*d. I liked being an atheist. It gave me freedom, especially of the mind.

Things began changing, again without an outside influence I can trace, when I was in my early 40s. I began, slowly, to have creeping tendrils of what, for lack of a better word, I called faith. Faith in something immense, unknowable, which loved me (in an abstract way) and all the universe, something which was the universe and yet also distinguishable from it. At that point in my life, I had a good job, a strong community, my health and a sense of hope. I didn't need g*d, but there she appeared.

I was enormously upset by this internal change. It was akin to giving up being a lesbian, that cataclysmic an identity change. I didn't talk to anyone about it for a long time. When I did confide in friends, a few were upset with me. Some didn't see what the big deal was. One or two were going through a similar experience, which was a relief.

I found I wanted to talk over -- well, deism -- with people for whom it had always existed. The faithful, as it were. But I was terrified of being preached to again. Eventually, I found two women at work, both friends, who became trustworthy confidants. Both of them were devout Christians, one from a scarily Baptist background, the other German Catholic. But, to their everlasting credit, they each absolutely resisted any urge to proselytize. They listened, explained concepts and terms when asked, and, repeatedly, affirmed that it was fine for me to doubt. One friend held me on a beach as I wept, looking up at the stars and freaking out about the very idea of g*d. She never said one word I could construe as a push.

That was 1997 or 1998. A decade later, I'm still feeling my way. Most days, I'm a deist, though not every single day. I have intermittent faith, idiosyncratic definitions, and no conviction there is an afterlife. I do not believe I am made in g*d's image, I assign a female gender to g*d only to make a fucking point, and I don't think g*d is looking out for me (EVER) in an individual way. I resist egotism and arrogance as part of faith, to the best of my ability. And I am definitely not a Christian.

A couple of years after I had to give up being an atheist, my world crashed and has not stopped deteriorating. I lost everything I listed above as my assets, except my inner strength and self-love. I even lost my brain for a while. I'm grateful that my shift in identity occurred before this crash, so I have no doubts about why I might have changed. I didn't have to find g*d, I wasn't driven to it by desperation. That's important to me.

But the point about the timing of it all that I want to make for this essay is: I am not convinced my coworkers would now be able to resist the temptation to preach at me. Nor can I imagine myself now feeling the same degree of trust in conversation with those who are practicing Christians. We have, as a culture, been shoved toward theocracy so hard, so contemptuously, that polarization has crept into personal relationships everywhere.

Freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion.

The idea that our governing institutions must include religious ideology is an ancient one, suited perhaps to small homogenous groups whose culture was also governed by geography. We outgrew its utility long before we finally adopted another way of doing things, just as we've outgrown economies long before they stop enslaving increasing numbers of the citizenry. It's manifestly clear that those who advocate a return to theocracy do so for either emotional (fear-based) reasons or its advantage in wielding power, or both.

It isn't enough to simply tell them No at every opportunity (which we still have not done). We have to refuse to allow them to frame the discourse. The change in atmosphere as indicated in my own personal life above reveals how successful the theocrats have been in subverting our belief system in this country. Fortunately, I don't have to explain here how this was accomplished and how we can change things: Someone else, Sara Robinson, has written it far better than I could in her series on Learning From The Cultural Conservatives at Campaign for America's Future (hat tip to Jesse Wendel at Group News Blog for promoting these essays and gathering the links together). Read them with enjoyment at --
Part I Messing With Their Minds
Part II Talking Up The Worldview
Part III Taking It To The Street

I'm going to focus, instead, on advocating the removal of existing theocracy from our current government, and that's the institution of marriage. As a lesbian-feminist, I have absolutely no interest in trying to make the definition of marriage as it exists stretch to cover me and mine. I of course comprehend the need for all the tax breaks, legal protection, and validation of our families that occurs with state-sanctioned definitions. But "marriage" carries a residue of religious meaning that taints it, in my opinion.

What I want is for the government to stop conferring legal value to ANY marriages, anywhere; to switch the definitions and support to civil unions, without discrimination as to how those unions are formed; and leave marriage to religious institutions. It's a relic, like baptism or many funeral services. We bury the dead without necessarily invoking g*d, let's do the same for those creating loving commitments that they wish to have legally recognized -- just as we grant divorces without church interference.

And, while I feel concern for all those children being raised in toxic religious environments, kept from public schools or association with those whose belief systems differ, indoctrinated with fear and judgment -- and I do worry about their eventual dysfunctionality when unleashed upon our real world out here -- still, I know the best and brightest of them will find a way to independent thought, reality-based ethics, and love amongst us heathens. After all, I did.

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POLITICS AND POETRY FOR $400, ALEX

I made cornbread stuffing with broccoli florets and two cod filets for dinner tonight. Well-fed, I took the Online Jeopardy Contestant quiz, 50 questions with 15 seconds to answer each. We'll see how I do if they contact me in the future. It was a lot harder than watching it on TV, even without having to buzz in or phrase it in the form of a question. I also didn't have Dinah beside me chirruping inquisitively every time I shouted out an answer.

My number one choice for Presidential candidate dropped out today -- no, NOT Guiliani, you scalawag, I meant John Edwards. I'm disappointed, mostly at the treatment he received for talking about issues no one else is, but I still have two grade A candidates to choose from and I'm contented with either.

I bring this up particularly to contradict the hydrophobic spew of so-called pundit Dick Morris, who announced on Faux News today that Edwards' supporters "are those that can’t decide which they don’t like more—a black or a women getting elected". Yep, that sums me up to a T -- me who wouldn't object if all U.S. property got returned to people of color and at least 80% of ALL positions of leadership were held by women.

As a momentary aside, I seriously don't understand how these sorts of people get named "pundits" or why their opinions are ever sought. It's clearly a WBC (White Boys Club) for the most part, and they of course always choose each other -- you don't even have to watch Survivor to know that. But why do we let them get away with it? I remember in the early 70s, there was a commercial for some product which was introduced by "celebrity Rula Lenska". The first time it came on, my mother, the queen of pop culture, turned to us and said "Huh? Celebrity? Have any of you ever heard of her?" I guess she was the forerunner of Fabio and Ryan Seacrest alike, Gumby figurines they can pose however they want.

John Edwards, I believe, would have taken on both the wealthy elite and the corporate media, with somewhat of an insider's understanding. He was willing to utter the words "poverty" and "class", and didn't have to a cleansing palate rinse with kiwi sorbet afterward. Furthermore, he was an enthusiastic parent from a relationship which had survived the death of a child. That either makes you or breaks you (if you don't pawn it off onto someone else). I believe it had made him. Everyone always talked about his hair and his boyish grin -- the same morons who claimed Dubya looked friendly and "fit". (Dubya may have toned muscles but he still looks like shit on a stick, and his eyes are the deadest in the world except for maybe Gunner Dick's.) What I saw on John Edward's face, however, was maturity and the kind of compassion conservatives can't even acknowledge existing, the compassion that Buddha refers to: the compassion of grief.

Yes, even rich white boys can be good leaders for us. You know, in that 20% I'm willing to allot them, which is likely more than they karmically deserve. As a group, they've been running on empty for a couple of millenia.

(Image by Amelie Chica)

There's some good writing out there in Cyberia today. I'm going to snag the juiciest of it to share with you. First, over at Daily Kos, DHinMI posted in It's A Change Election a message so short and powerful, I'm copying the whole dang thing (it's homage, DH, please don't come down on me for theft!):

"Next time you hear someone extol the virtues of "traditional family values," or call on the country to seal the borders and not allow in new immigrants, or declare that we need to go back to the good old days (that often weren't very good), there's something you should remember. Something that demonstrates the profound changes in this country since the 1950's, before the civil rights movement and the feminist movement helped to greatly advance the cause of equal opportunity for ALL American citizens, something that demonstrates that we will not go backward, that America has irreversibly changed, and that we have changed for the better:

"Never before in the history of the United States of America have the voters and delegates of a major political party had to choose their nominee for President from a field that did not include a white male.

"We may or may not win this election, but in the greater social and cultural conflict fought out in this country for the last 50 years, we have won. Democrats liked all our candidates when John Edwards was still running for President, and we still like our candidates now that we no longer have a white male to choose. We are not threatened by having to chose between a woman and a man of color. We not only accept this as our current American reality, we embrace it as our future. WE are the party of tolerance. WE are the party of diversity. WE are the party of solidarity. And WE are the party of change."

("Blue Rudder", photo and copyright © 2007 by Liza Cowan)

Over at Digby, Dday in The Legitimate Change That Should Come From This Primary explains in easily understandable language why our current primary system is BROKEN:

"If 1-2% of all voters can whittle the field down to two candidates, and deliver a nominee on the Republican side, we have a serious problem and everyone knows it...It needs to be reformed in a big way. The fact that Florida broke the rules, moved up, delivered no delegates on the Dem side, but obviously succeeded since they PICKED THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE, should tell you something. We need a spread-out process and maybe earlier conventions to end this bad front-loaded system. It's terrible for democracy."

("Field Labor #5", woodcut by Michele Ramirez)

Back at Kos, Markos himself delivers two excellent commentaries on anti-Hispanic racism playing out in this election. First, in Bashing brown people to the electoral abyss, he begins with quoting Tim Dickinson's article in The Rolling Stone, Blame Pedro:

"Back in 2005, when Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee fought against an 'un-American' and 'race-baiting' proposal to deny undocumented workers access to health care and other government services, he declared that the bill 'inflames those who are racists and bigots and makes them think there's a real problem.' Impugning the piety of the bill's state-senator sponsor — like the governor, a Baptist preacher — Huckabee quipped, 'I drink a different kind of Jesus juice.'

"That was then. Today — with the nation bogged down in a disastrous war, oil prices at $100 a barrel, climate change cooking the planet and the economy veering into recession — the geniuses vying to lead the Republican Party have decided what's really wrong with America: Mexicans. Even the Rev. Huckabee is chugging the GOP's nativist Kool-Aid: In December, the same man who two years ago called on America to 'be a place that opens its arms, opens its heart, opens its spirit to people who come because they want the best for their families' unveiled his 'Secure America Plan,' which would target 12 million of these good folks for mass deportation 120 days into his first term.

"The immigrant-bashing had the desired effect, winning Huckabee the coveted endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, leader of the Minuteman Project border vigilantes. Gilchrist — who, in a nod toward moderation, clarified to Rolling Stone that his group does not believe that undocumented workers ought to be 'mowed down with machine guns at the border' — has high praise for Huckabee's plan. 'It appeared to me that I had written it myself,' he says. 'It was that strong.'"

Markos goes on to explain how and why racism came out from under its partial wraps in the Republican camp.

In a second post, Immigration issue killed Romney in Florida, Markos quotes Simon Rosenberg:

"According to the exit polls Mitt Romney and John McCain tied 33% to 33% among the 89% of the Florida voters last night who were not Hispanic. Among Hispanics, who where 11% of the Florida GOP electorate last night, the vote was 54% McCain, 24% Rudy and 14% Romney. So it was the vote of Hispanic voters who put John McCain over the top in Florida, and gave him the most important win of his fight for the GOP nomination.

"Thus, John McCain, the candidate who championed immigration reform, may have had the nomination delivered to him by those Hispanic voters he has been fighting for. And Romney, who has led the anti-immigrant crusade in the GOP field this year, saw this strategy explode on him - as it has virtually every other Republican who has invested in it - last night."

If you ask me, the explosion wasn't big enough.


In a related story, Alternet reports:

"The National Council of La Raza, which includes nearly 300 affiliated organizations, will launch a new initiative on Thursday titled 'We Can Stop The Hate,' aimed at curtailing the influence of CNN's Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck as well as MSNBC political commentator Pat Buchanan. In addition, the organization is petitioning for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to renounce the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, a cofounder of the Minuteman Project, an anti-immigration group."

This is a good place to remind us all that when we are addressing the lies and malignancy of hate speech, "la raza" translates to "the people", NOT to "our race" as the xenophobes are prone to claim.

("Tuberculosis Ward, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island 3", photo by Stephen Wilkes)

Also at Kos, BarbinMD reports on today's Justice Department oversight hearing in The Nuremberg Defense, including a chilling exchange between Sheldon Whitehouse and current Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Thank g*d there's SOMEBODY in our government who understands that "I was only following orders" is not a defense. Check it out.

("Rhino in Fog" by Geert Goiris)

Other enjoyable reads right now include:

Jesse Wendel's insider understanding and predictions concerning the WGA strike, along with a definitely provocative video from Speechless, at "We've Got Everything We Need".

Kat at her new blog BitchCraft has been grabbing my attention with her musings on the disturbing youth of figure skaters, and defense of the "healthy choice" that divorce can be.

LaDoctorita at Unconventional Beauty outlines another example of Nobody Listens to Women, Part 2.

To close, a little Judy Grahn, from her book Confrontations With The Devil in the Form of Love:

I only have one reason for living
and that's you
And if I didn't have you as a
reason for living,
I would think of something else.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(Brown crowders, black-eyed peas, purple-hull peas)

Ya'll won't have good luck this year if ya'll don't eat field peas TODAY. This dish was brought to the American South from Africa. Traditionally served with a side of collards or other greens.

HOPPIN' JANE

1 cup field peas, traditionally black-eyed but could also use crowders or purple hulls if you want to live a little dangerously
5-6 cups water OR -- canned/frozen peas instead of making your own
Bacon, sausage or ham hock
1 Vidalia onion, chopped
1 cup brown rice
Lots of freshly-ground black pepper or other versions of heat (tabasco, peppers, etc.)

If you're making the peas from scratch: Wash and sort them. Put them in a saucepan with the water and remove any peas that flat. Bring to a boil, turn down to gentle boil, add the pork and onion and cook uncovered until tender but not mushy, about 1.5 hours. You sholuld have 2 cups of liquid remaining. Add the rice, cover and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes, never lifting the lid.

If you're using canned peas: Put in a saucepan, add the pork, onion and pepper. Add enough water to make about 2 cups of liquid (probably need to add 1.5 cups). Add the rice, cover and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes, never lifting the lid.

Remove from the heat without removing the lid and allow to sit, steaming, for another 10 minutes. Pour into a bowl, fluff the rice, and serve immediately.


While ya'll are eating, here's some good news to chew over as well:

David Letterman's production company, World Wide Pants, has made a deal with the Writers Guild of America giving them EVERYTHING the guild was requesting. A fair deal for all future writers. This is going to put enormous pressure on other producers, and means the Letterman show can go right back on the air.

To read a wonderfully uplifting account of it all, check out the post at Group News Blog by Jesse Wendel, complete with moving Speechless videos.

And if you want to start off the year with a mitzvah, take five minutes to write a letter to these folks thanking them for doing such a good thing. World Wide Pants can be reached at:
1697 Boradway, Suite 805, NY, NY 10019; phone 212-975-5300, fax 212-975-4780.
I couldn't find an e-mail address for WWP, but you can write CBS (which airs the Letterman show) with the same message at CBSmailbag@aol.com.

Celebrate your victories twice as hard as you mourn your losses.

Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar
Nouvelle Année Heureuse
Glückliches Neues Jahr
Καλή χρονιά
Nuovo Anno Felice
Ano Novo Feliz
С Новым годом
Feliz Año Nuevo
Akemashiteomedetougozaimasu
Zuri Pya Mwaka
Glad Nytt År
Щастлив Нов Година
Iloinen Veres Ikä
Heldig Nytår
Boldog {j Évet
Hamingjusamur Nýár
Maligaya bagong taon
Szczęśliwego nowego roku
Fericit Nou An
Srećan Nova godina
Srečno novo leto
Glad Nyåren
'n ddedwydd 'n Grai Blwyddyn
Mutlu yeni yıl
Gauisus Novus Annus

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UPDATES REGARDING CLASS WARFARE AND "THE WAR"

(Cave painting discovered this week at Djade al-Mughara, a Neolihic site northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, believed to have been painted 11,000 years ago)

There's a lot of us, hopefully a critical mass, talking and writing almost collaboratively about similar topics, some of which I've created posts for on this blog from my own experience. I'm now going to link y'all out to some of these tasty essays.

First, I want to direct your attention to a recent article from the AFL-CIO by Tula Connell titled U.S. Income Inequality Is Growing. And It's Not A Temporary Blip. This article has some excellent charts and figures demonstrating our slide into Rich-Poor Nationhood, worth copying and saving.

It quotes from Center for Economic and Policy Research Economist Heather Boushey: "Boushey notes the corporate tax burden of top earners has declined by two-thirds since 1962, even as most of us are working an average 13.3 weeks more per year compared with the previous generation. Yet, as the CEPR study shows, these longer hours aren’t benefiting millions of working people.

"Boushey also points out why most of us feel a disconnect between claims that we are living in a sound economy and our own paycheck-to-paycheck reality. When mainstream media describes the economy, two contradictory points are made: How rich we are as a nation and how we as a nation are unable to afford a robust safety net.

"Reconciling these two themes, says Boushey, is the fact that the nation’s growing economic benefits have been funneled to a small group of the already wealthy, depleting the nation’s tax base and effectively defunding programs such as those that would make a difference for the working poor. When we hear the government can’t 'afford' such programs, Boushey says, what that translates to is: Let the wealthy take a bigger piece of the pie while telling the rest of us that’s the way it is."

The reality is on the bumper sticker of my van which states "We all do better when we all do better" -- originally a quote from Senator Paul Wellstone.

Just breaking is a story from the London Financial Times, We Are Overpaid, Say U.S. Executives, which states "Four out of six chief executives or company presidents polled by the National Association of Corporate Directors in July and August said the compensation of top executives was high relative to their performance. Nearly 60 per cent of the directors polled by the NACD said the reason for excessive pay packages was the absence of objective ways to measure an executive’s performance. Nearly half criticised the use of options and equity awards that reward executives when the company’s share price goes up, rather than when its operations improve."

In another article referencing class, Kos posts today about Why Republicans Oppose SCHIP Expansion. He quotes from Bill Kristol back in 1993, when "the Clintons prepared to roll out their new universal healthcare plan, ...Kristol wrote a memo to fellow conservatives and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill warning them that their goal must be to 'kill,' not amend, the Clinton plan. 'Healthcare,' Kristol wrote, 'is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative ... . It will revive the reputation of the ... Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests.'" (Emphasis mine.)

Which becomes even more significant when you know that most working class people mistakely believe they are middle class, indicated earlier on this blog.

As Kos concludes "Democrats can't be seen as helping the middle class. They'll actually agree to help Democrats help the lower class (the Bush position), since that helps the GOP brand Democrats as the party of welfare queens and brown people. But anything that helps the middle class (often perceived as 'white')? Unacceptable and must be opposed at all costs." Check it out.

Two days ago, Ian Welsh at FireDogLake also wrote brilliantly about class (suddenly, the topic is everywhere -- can we finally be ready to discuss this in America?) in The Underclass. He addresses "what makes you poor and keeps you poor": The Parents Argument and the Education Argument, The Modeling and the “Right Crowd” Argument, The Credit Argument, and what he calls "the elephant in the room", Racism. Yeah, sister.

Digby at Hullaballoo in her post titled Spitting on the Troops points out ways that the Right is who is currently "spitting on the troops", including denying the reality of PTSD and blaming it on "The liberal mindset is what causes PTSD. Boys being raised to men without a strong male role model, and having a false sense of what life is about is causing our young men to go to war and come home freaked out." Ah, yes, we don't have quite enough masculinity YET in our camouflage-wearing, boy-obsessed culture.

Digby replies to this absurdity by quoting from "The War", a quote which Shadocat already referenced in one of her comments on this blog, and which Jesse Wendel has eloquently spoken to dealing with firsthand also on this blog: "One out of four Army men evacuated for medical reasons in Europe and the Pacific suffered from neuro-psychiatric disorders. There were many names for it – 'shell shock,' 'battle fatigue,' 'combat exhaustion.' The office of the U.S. surgeon general sent Dwight D. Eisenhower a study by two soldier-psychiatrists that found 'there is no such thing as ‘getting used to combat.’ … Each moment … imposes a strain so great that men will break down in direct relation to the intensity and duration of their exposure. Psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds.' Army planners determined that the average soldier could withstand no more than 240 days of combat without going mad. By that time, the average soldier was probably dead or wounded."

Digby says "I don't think all those soldiers in WWII had liberal single mothers who didn't know how to raise proper children, do you?"

Hubris Sonic replies to the "fake PTSD" smear at Group News Blog with his article Camp Followers and PTSD Fakers. Good reads, both of these articles. From people who know that compassion has a well-known liberal slant.

And, there's more discussion going on over at Maoist Orange Cake with Shadocat's personal essay about Living Uninsured.

In a post that addresses both class and "The War", Tula Connell (again -- third time I've referred you to one of her articles recently, remember that name) at FireDogLake in her post Stick Figures Don't Make Waves outlines some of the many problems with Burns' documentary scope, including its failure to mention FDR's Second Bill of Rights, which wanted to guarantee for all Americans:
A job with a living wage.
Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies.
Homeownership.
Medical care.
Education.
Recreation.

The silencing of "The Greatest Generation" was a temporary means to damming this current, but their children absorbed it through our placentas, it seems like. And the wheel is about to hit the road again, I believe, as those who are now adolescents and pre-teens face realities that have nothing to do with sex or personal style. Wish I could hit the streets with 'em.

(Leafcutter ant.)

Lastly, in a review of Paul Krugman's book "The Conscience of a Liberal" by Andrew Leonard at Salon.com, he says "its most important message is that, after years of Republican ascendancy accompanied by rapidly growing economic inequality in the United States, the point at which the pendulum finally starts swinging in the other direction has arrived. The year 2006 was no blip, argues Krugman, but the turning of the tide....It's a good time to be a liberal."

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IMAGINE MY SURPRISE

When I awaken to start my day, after I fire up the rockets on my PC and hit warp DSL, the first thing I do, of course, is visit Emailandia. Then spam dump. Then, most of the time, I hop on over to Orcinus or Group News Blog.

Partly this is because the two blogs I write for have a notification feature so if someone has posted a comment, I've been informed by email. And if I want to answer, I need to think about it a bit.

But mostly it's because what's a-hoppening at Orcinus or GNB is going to engage multiple layers of my brain, not just the political gecko but also my wobbly g*d interface, my funnybone, my "whoa I hadn't thought about that" child wonder, and my human gang loyalty. All at once. Their snark doesn't make you laugh meanly, and they have kickin' graphics.

I like waking up to my Lieutenant Ellen Ripley persona. Ripley rides my perimeter.

"I thought you were dead?" "Yeah, I get that a lot."

See, here's the scoop about me:

I don't take the pain meds prescribed to me. I don't smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs. I drink caffeine once a day, if that, and chocolate maybe once a week.

I don't use terminology that others have told me is oppressive. When someone confides in me the ways in which they hate themselves, I am not persuaded that they are right in their self-doubt. I listen to children, always.

I have forgiven the people who failed me and tortured me as a child. I have forgiven myself for allowing them to fail and torture me.

I sleep eight to ten hours a night, when possible. I mute commercials. I buy halogen bulbs and brown eggs. I let myself cry.

When I masturbate, I don't fantasize about anyone I've ever known, even someone I haven't known personally. (Because I don't have their consent.)

I resist being pissed at g*d. I write my whole truth, but my ethic insists I try to inject balance and hope into it.

Somewhere early on, I decided to stay present, to move through this life awake and alert, and mostly I've stuck to that decision. Yeah, there were those episodes of leaving my body when he was lying on top of me, when I was 9, 10, 11. And a few tries at getting stinking drunk as a teenager. But those flights never became habit.

More than one person who believes in past lives have told me I am an "old soul" and that this is my last time driving down the block, this existence. First of all, I don't know how they can tell such things -- is there an expiration date stamped on my aura somewhere? And second, it's sad to contemplate. I like being alive and in a body. Yes, the ways we are oppressing each other is horrendous. Yeah, pain sucks. But being able to draw breath, to notice light and shadow, to feel air on the hairs of my arms, to speak a sentence out loud, to have a child climb confidently into your lap, to make pan gravy and then it over fresh biscuits -- heavenly. I want every second of it I can get.

As Terry Galloway once said, "It's a good life, if you can stand it."

My long-ago mothers left the trees and caves, exposing their small, fleshy bodies to savannah risk, building houses of clay and straw, planting grain, inventing grammar and nouns in unending torrents, and I feel like I owe it to them to keep on truckin', evolutionarily-wise.

So anything that bring out Ripley in me is a drug I allow myself. Those two blogs are Ripley friendly.

You can perhaps imagine, then, what it felt like to discover two posts referencing my recent post here about "My Knees, Part Three" and "Crip Ward Tango" -- amazing, eloquent posts, quoting me at length and going on from there to make dazzling connections. By Jesse Wendel and Sara Robinson (who writes for both those blogs).

Like Jesus, I wept.

What can I say? KTHX doesn't really cut it. I could sing something I bet Sara's heard often, "Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know", wo-wo-wo. But then what would I sing to Jesse -- "I wish I was Jessie's girl..."? Alas, I'm an unreconstructed bulldagger. And I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus.

Still, sloppy smooches to you both. Let's keep cross-fertilizing, shall we?

And ya'll, go read the posts there, give 'em some sugar. While you're there, be sure to read the Are You Saved? post and follow the link back to Sara's article at Orcinus about the good news for modern (hu)man. I was going to write about it, but she beat me to it and, as usual, did an awe-inspiring job.

See ya at the sockhop. Bring yr flamethrower.

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