Friday, April 27, 2012

Uniting against the very real war on women



Tomorrow, I'm setting aside all my other plans and I'm exercising my right to free speech, to peacably assemble and to redress my grievances by participating in the March Against the War on Women. Why am I doing this? Well, because of this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this.

This.


My wonderful husband is coming with me, and my kids might come as well. They support the cause, but they're teenagers, and they have better things to do on a Saturday morning, like sleep. But I truly want them to come. I want them to see what kind of rights they have as American citizens (while they still have any rights!).

I want them to know that they don't have to take discrimination lying down. That they have a voice. That our officials work for US, not for their corporate sponsors. Our elected (and unelected) officials are behaving like pro athletes. Prima donnas who kowtow to their corporate sponsors *coughKochBrothersALECcough*. And that is unacceptable.

But mostly, my sons are becoming men. Men who have amazing girlfriends, who will have amazing wives, mothers-in-law, daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces. Men who have female friends, female cousins. Men who are affected every day by the amount of money their wives can earn, their wives' healthcare, their wives' legal rights.

I imagine my future daughters-in-law. They will be fun-loving, strong women. They'll have a strong sense of self, and of social justice. I can't see my boys with any other kind of women.

I want these women to be safe. Secure. Autonomous. Over their bodies and their lives.

So to protect that, I will engage in civil disobedience. I will exercise my right to assemble, to vote, to yell and scream about injustice.

I hope that the LAPD has a modicum of self-control. But I'll be prepared to be pepper-sprayed, arrested, shoved, pushed, and altogether belittled and patronized.

With my husband and children at my side. Nothing says sexy like a man willing to battle for his woman. Nothing says sexy like a man willing to battle for his woman's rights to be her own person. A man who has a strong sense of social justice, and is willing to do something about it. Just because I want equality and autonomy doesn't make me a man hater. I love men. I adore my husband and children, my brother, my brothers-in-law, my father. I adore them all. But I adore them because they are amazing human beings, and in the case of my hubby, also because he's hot. Yes, I went there. It's my blog. And guess what? I can think my husband is hot and still think I deserve equal rights. Huh, go figure.

I urge you to find the march in your area and participate in the democratic process, with or without a hot man.

So I'm all set for tomorrow. With one exception.

What should my sign say? I need something clever, pithy, biting, and TRUE.

Help a girlfriend out. What should I put on my sign?

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Passage of VAWA in the Senate, or "how many R words can Lori think of"

Thankfully, today the Senate passed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

31 senators voted against it. That is, 31 senators voted no on a piece of legislation that has historically been bipartisan and uncontroversial.

Yup. The usual suspects. All these senators voted no on the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act today. Just so we're clear, the reason they voted no is because it included protection for EVERYONE.

Their opinion was that you shouldn't be arrested or prosecuted for beating the living shit out of an illegal immigrant, a gay person, or a Native American.

I believe that it's not ok to beat the living shit out of ANYONE.

Yes, even those douchebag senators below, who likely most deserve it.

NAYs — 31

Barrasso (Reprehensible-WY)
Blunt (Repugnant-MO)
Boozman (Ridiculous-AR)
Burr (Rancid-NC)
Chambliss (Regressive-GA)
Coburn (Rattlesnake-OK)
Cochran (Ratfink-MS)
Cornyn (Roach-TX)
DeMint (Restrictive-SC)
Enzi (Rearend-WY)
Graham (Rapscallion-SC)
Grassley (Repulsive-IA)
Hatch (Rat-UT)
Inhofe (Revisionist-OK)
Isakson (Reb-GA)
Johanns (Refuse-NE)
Johnson (Rude-WI)
Kyl (Reactionary-AZ)
Lee (Revolting-UT)
Lugar (Rheumy-IN)
McConnell (Rabid-KY)
Moran (Ruthless-KS)
Paul (Resentful-KY)
Risch (Reductive-ID)
Roberts (Recalcitrant-KS)
Rubio (Ripoff-FL)
Sessions (Racist-AL)
Shelby (Reviler-AL)
Thune (Rotten-SD)
Toomey (Reckless-PA)
Wicker (Redneck-MS)


House? On to you. Please pass this unanimously. I can't come up with any other R words to describe you.

ETA: Dammit. I checked at least a brazillion times, but hubby found a duplicate. So now I declare that Inhofe is a revisionist.


Friday, April 20, 2012

Being offended and other ramblings


There are many things that offend me.

The insinuation (or outright statement) that women cannot choose what is best for them and their families.

The blatant disrespect for the office of the President of the United States.

The blatant racism that has come completely out of the shadows and is now accepted in mainstream society since President Obama took office.

The knowledge that too many of our elected officials (and our non-elected ones!) are there for the power trip and not attempting to provide the best support for their constituency.

The idea that a presidential primary race could have gone on in the manner which we've seen the Republican primary this past year.

The knowledge that the rest of the world thinks we are backwards, uncaring, assholes here in the states.

Someone else attempting to force their religion on me.

Calling anyone you don't like or agree with, a Nazi.

Nazi jokes.

Let me reiterate.

Calling anyone you don't like or agree with, a Nazi.

Nazi jokes.

I've already discussed how angry I get with the media for allowing politicians and spokespersons to call people Nazis, compare them to Hitler, and generally undermine the importance of the Holocaust.

Sidenote
I admit to being an education snob (hello, Rick Santorum!). I can't understand why grammar isn't important to learn anymore, and while on the one hand, I blame spellcheck, on the other hand, the lack of resources and commitment to funding our education system at all levels makes me furious. There are so many people out there who simply don't know how to spell and simply do not know how to write effectively. I take blogging off the table, unless you blog for a media outlet, in which case all the rules apply. If you blog for your own pleasure (as I do) then you should still know how to spell, for crying out loud. If you ever need to write a letter, or a job application, or a resume, or an email, or a paper you need to know how to spell. Spellcheck only looks for words that don't exist in the dictionary. It doesn't look for proper usage.
End sidenote

So... back to my original topic. There are a lot of posts, graphics, etc on social media making fun of those who can't manage to understand the difference between homonyms. The most common one that I see is the "there, their, they're" comparison. A huge pet peeve of mine, to be sure.

Yesterday, which was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, a graphic seemed to be getting a lot of "airtime". It's an adorable picure of Charlie Brown and Snoopy (my personal fave) and the text reads: "When comforting a grammar Nazi. I always say softly, 'there, their, they're'."


First of all, please note the grammatical error above. If you are going to make fun of people for incorrect grammar usage, perhaps you should ensure that your grammar is correct when you make fun of them.


Another sidenote
I couldn't find the above image at first in my Facebook or my Twitter stream, so I Googled "Grammar Nazi" and looked at the images in order to find it. Apparently, this is a totally amusing way to pass the time for some folks, because here is page 1 of image results:

Click the image to see it all...
End sidenote

I think it's obvious how I feel about using the term Nazi for anything other than to refer directly to the Nazi party in Germany or the neo-Nazis or anything that is specific in nature and directly references the actions of actual Nazis.

So yesterday, I posted this on Facebook:
While I love the "there, they're, their" sentiment in the grammar cartoon making the rounds on FB & twitter today, I think circulating it on Yom Hashoah is a tad offputting. We have Soup Nazis, Grammar Nazis, etc. Everything perceived strict, uptight, and punitive is nicknamed "[fill in the blank] Nazi". It totally diminishes the atrocities committed and the importance of the Holocaust. Just my opinion....
I posted the equivalent on Twitter, of course in spurts of 140 characters.

I got some backlash from that. Apparently, being sensitive to irrelevant and irreverent Nazi comparisons on Holocaust Remembrance Day is surprising to some. I had a few people (all on twitter) tell me that I was too sensitive, that they couldn't believe that would offend me, that I should "get a life" (you know - like all those murdered Jews and their families should get a life). Not one of those people was Jewish. I know, because I asked. They all self-identified for me as Christians. Perhaps it takes being raised in a Jewish household during the tail end of the first post-war generation. But the idea that anything is a "Nazi" simply because it is strict, militant, punitive, or otherwise unyielding is abhorrent to me. It completely diminishes the importance of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed in the name of the Nazi party and in particular, Hitler.

I was in charge of the email program at my company when all the relevant legislation was passed, specifically CAN-SPAM. It was my responsibility to ensure that all outgoing emails complied with CAN-SPAM and any other relevant legislation, as well as email best practices. Because I frequently had to make changes, or deny an outgoing email, I was gifted with the moniker, "Email Nazi." I can already see you nodding. You know where I'm going here, don't you? Yes, me. The token Jew. I was named the "Email Nazi." And the sad part is that nobody even understood that there might be any sort of discomfort generated by that.

We are 70 years past WW2 (60 at the time), and so many of these kids I work with really have no sense of WW2, or the Holocaust. If they know about it at all, it's because it was a war their great-grandparents fought in, or it was one of those wars they learned a little about waaaay back in high school (all of 5 or 6 years prior at the time). I grew up learning about it. I grew up hearing about it. In temple. At religious school. In my home. My grandfather was in the Army during WW2. My husband's grandfather was in the army during WW2. My parents were in elementary school, and once what happened over there became widely known following the war, it immediately became a topic of importance. I can't count the number of folks I know who lost relatives to the Nazis. And we aren't talking about great-anythings here. We are talking about parents and grandparents. Siblings. Cousins. Friends. To this day, my mother dislikes anything German. It's not likely that kind of passion or sentiment is present in so many of my coworker's homes.

So I complained. As a Jew. And as a human being. Please. Do not call me a Nazi. In any sort of way. I know that my coworkers meant it to mean that I was strict about the rules. Then they should say, "Damn, Lori's really strict about the rules." Don't say, "The Email Nazi has spoken."

Anyway, I complained. And got the expected response. First: "You're Jewish? Wow." (relevance?) Second: "I had no idea you'd be offended. It's all in good fun."

First: does it matter that I'm Jewish? I'm not some museum piece to be looked at, pointed at, and studied as a rare specimen.
Second: I really don't care if it's meant as a joke. It may be good fun to you, but it sure isn't to me.

The desensitizing of our society to the atrocities committed during WW2 is a source of major concern to me, and it should be to all Americans. We have politicians comparing one another to Hitler. They casually compare things like mandating that birth control be a covered expense in insurance policies to Nazi Germany. Mind you, nowhere does the policy mandate that women be PUT on birth control. It simply states that if a woman WANTS birth control, then it should be a covered expense.

To compare that to Nazi Germany, where Jews (and blacks, and homosexuals, etc) were systematically pulled from their homes, hunted down, and murdered by gassing, by automatic weapon fire, by biological weapons, by medical experimentation, by starvation, with the intent to rid the earth of them is, yes, offensive.  To compare our President to the mastermind behind all of the above is yes, offensive. To call someone who enforces the rules a Nazi is, yes, offensive.

To not teach WHY this is offensive in schools is, to me, also offensive. The information age is a wonderful thing. However, we get so desensitized to atrocities being committed around the world (such as in Sudan, Rwanda, and other nations); we get so desensitized to outrageous rhetoric, that it barely registers. And frankly, it's exhausting to hear the bad news all the time.

We are well on the path to repeating mistakes of almost a century ago. Because we don't remember. We don't teach about it. We don't emphasize its offensiveness and enormity and world impact or importance.

What we are doing? We're making it completely acceptable for that desensitization to happen, and therefore tacitly acknowledging and condoning its acceptability.

Both NCLB and the new Common Core standards for schools have 2 areas of emphasis: English/Language Arts and Math. Where is the History? By not including history as a core subject in school, we grow a generation of adults who believe that Nazism is acceptable, that Nazi jokes are funny, that the Holocaust never happened. We get a generation of politicians who have no concept of history - either American or global, distort it, and don't believe in its importance. We get presidential candidates who tell America that to be educated is to be a snob. Compared to a global community that DOES remember? That IS educated? We seem like irrelevant, uneducated, incompetent buffoons. When our President is obviously well educated, he is labeled by the media as "too scholarly", and therefore alienates voters. When did it become en vogue to be fricken stupid? Ahhhh yes. I remember.

I'm disappointed in our government (at both the state & federal level) for the decision to deemphasize history in the curriculum. And scared at the path our country is taking in accepting that history is not important for our children to learn.

So yes. I'm offended by Nazi jokes.

Just. Stop.




Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Quote of the day: courtesy of Ted Nugent



“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
—Ted Nugent, who apparently has contracted Cat Scratch Fever and has gone completely batshit crazy (or is that "catsh.....")

One would certainly hope that the Secret Service could begin investigating this as a viable terrorist assassination threat in between their visits to hookers.



On another note, I have so many posts begun but not finished. I needed to step back a little before my frustration level jeopardized my health. But trust me, I'm working on it - we sure do have some doozies to talk about, no?

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Quote of the day

From pizza mega-godfather, sexual harasser, failed candidate Herman Cain, trying to explain the seemingly unexplainable ever-widening gender gap between President Obama and Mitt Romney:

Yes, President Obama is very likable to most people, if you just look at him and his family. But if you look at his policies, which is what most people disagree with, it’s a different story. And I think many men are much more familiar with the failed policies than a lot of other people, as well as the general public.

First of all, if anyone is familiar with failed policies, I have to admit, it's likely Herman Cain, whose major policy aside from his policy of trying to feel up his employees, is 9-9-9. Which we all know, is 666 upside down, making Cain TEH DEVIL. And also, the king of failed policy.

Next item...

Ladies, be sure not to worry your pretty little heads about those complicated things like government policy. It's awfully advanced for such pretty little things like us. Men are so much more familiar with policy. Why don't we just go back to the kitchen and make Mr. Cain some pizza? Or at least get in the backseat and let him grope us?

We are now "a lot of other people", which is apparently the opposite of "men", and not the general public. I assume that makes us, what, caterpillars? Apparently uninformed, stupid, incapable of understanding policy, non-people caterpillars.

We may be "other people" (and hey - at least Cain thinks we're people, not livestock), and we may not be members of the "general public", but we are excellent caterpillars. Caterpillars who vote. Please - get out of your cocoons and vote in the upcoming elections!

Plus, President Obama? He's super hot. I just loooove his smile, don't you?  I know that's how I decide for whom I'll vote.

Watch as Cain spouts his misogynist theories on women's intelligence on - duh, where else? - Fox News:


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

UPDATED: Activist judge makes DOJ attorney write classroom standards

I have a hard time with the far right complaining about "activist judges". They make this complaint because some judges have ruled in favor of the Constitution rather than ruling the way that the far right would like. This prompts people like Newt Gingrich to remark that he would simply ignore judicial rulings that he didn't agree with. Oh, goody.

Well, I would contend that there are truly some activist judges out there. Those ruling completely based upon partisanship (and who is lining their pockets). Take the last two days, just for starters. Yesterday, the Supreme Court basically told the 4th Amendment to take a hike, and ruled that anyone entering jail for any reason may be strip-searched. To be blunt, that means that if you get arrested for not paying your traffic tickets and go to county lockup, they have the right to look up in your anus, your vagina, your mouth, etc just to see if you have contraband or (according to the court) a gang tattoo. (Because everyone knows that gangs put their tattoos in the most visible place - right up their butt). Even though there is no probable cause to think that you might.

Justice Kennedy, on whose shoulders every decision that affects our democracy rests, said that "courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security."

Ummm, correct me if I'm wrong, but for 220+ years, it's been pretty much the other way around. The courts get to second guess the correctional officials, if what they are doing violates the Constitution.

The case actually was about someone who was wrongly arrested on a warrant for not paying a fine (which, by the way was an error - the fine had been paid, so they stuck an innocent man in jail). So not paying a fine gets you strip searched.

Also, not paying parking tickets can get you strip searched. And writing bad checks. And shoplifting a chapstick. And engaging in civil disobedience.  Oh, goody.

What other gems are there to discuss? Oh, yes. Today, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, while hearing an appeal on a case where the lower court upheld the Affordable Care Act, decided to take the DOJ attorney to task because President Obama said he was confident that the SCOTUS would uphold the law, and that it would be unprecedented for them to strike down a law that was passed by a majority of both houses of Congress.

Basically, Judge Jerry Smith held a DOJ attorney liable for comments made by someone else (President Obama) and gave her the equivalent of making a disruptive student write classroom standards - a 3 page letter, single spaced stating the DOJ position on judicial review. That had absolutely nothing to do with the case before the court. Nothing. It was a petty, mean, partisan thing for the judge to do. Cementing his place in history as a huge dickwad.

Make sure to read the entire text of the conversation at the link above.

Listen here (audio only):


Little story. When I was in elementary school, my parents were both unable to come to open house one year. My dad was working and my mom was in nursing school and had class that night. The next day, my teacher assigned an essay to me (and another girl) the content of which was to explain why my parents felt something else was more important than open house. Of course, my parents (activists that they were) refused to let me complete the assignment, but the premise is the same. "I don't like that someone thinks their opinion is more important than mine, so I'm going to punish you." It's a ridiculous bullying power play, meant only to belittle and demean the punishee and show the bloated self-importance of the punisher.

The fact that the judge called the Affordable Care Act "Obamacare" already tells us what his political leanings are, and how he will rule without even hearing the case before him. Also, if you ask me, and you didn't, but you get to hear my opinion anyway, cause it's my blog..., just the fact that the DOJ attorney didn't, in that long pause at the end there, say what she was thinking, which I'm sure was, "Are you out of your fucking mind?!?!?!", should get her some serious brownie points. Because me? I was sure thinking it. Likely along with every other person in the room, save the other judges.

Let's not even get into the whole "activist judge" debate. No, actually, let's. I'm pretty sure that Romney, Santorum, Gingrich have all complained about "activist judges", and by that, they mean any judge who doesn't agree with them. They are actually complaining about judges who are interpreting the law according to the constitution.

Too bad for them that they don't like that the Constitution guarantees us all equal protection.

And too bad for us that they have the ear of the media and all the uneducated idiots in America. Oh, and their set of activist judges.

UPDATED: Apparently, Jon Stewart agrees with me. He did a segment on this on his show last night.


And even Greta Van Susteren agrees. And you know when Fux News agrees with me, the apocolypse is imminent.