Lucky White Girl

The Florida primaries

So I temporarily switched my party affiliation from Green to Democrat just so I could vote in the primaries for the first time EVER (I never thought much enough of a Democratic candidate before to care who their nominee was) and what do they do?  They get penalized for moving up the primary date and lose all their delegates!  LOL...   So Florida has no say in who the Democratic nominee is. 

But I have to do something because this is the first time a truly progressive candidate has a shot at the White House.  THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE IN MY LIFETIME! Here in DC I walk past the White House sometimes and wonder what it would be like to not feel ashamed of who lives there representing us to the rest of the world.  I wonder what it'd be like to actually be proud of the President of the United States.  I never thought Obama would actually compete with the Clinton dynasty but when he won in Iowa I started to feel something I never felt before.  It's not just rhetoric.  Maybe after eight years of Bush people are ready for change.  There is hope.  Now he's won in South Carolina and momentum is building.  Let's keep it up!
 
If you're a Democrat in Florida your vote for who the Democratic nominee should be won't count.  So do something else.  I've pledge to help fundraise instead and this is my appeal.  Listen.  I've never donated money to a presidential candidate before but now I'll tell you all that I gave Obama $250! (wow, I know! I was shocked too!) but that's how much I believe in this.  I'd give more if I could.  Because we can do this.  Really.  Obama is as good as Bush was bad.  (well, maybe not quite; Bush was pretty bad and Obama would have to be Mother Theresa to compare but you know what I mean!)  I tell you all this because I want to encourage you to do the same if you agree. 

If you click this link you can donate to his campaign and it'll count towards my fundraising goal of $1000.

Si, se puede!  Yes, we can!

Only One Candidate can say this

“When I am this party's nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq; or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; or that I supported Bush-Cheney policies of not talking to leaders that we don't like. And he will not be able to say that I wavered on something as fundamental as whether or not it is ok for America to torture — because it is never ok… I will end the war in Iraq… I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. And I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century: nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. And I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.”

    — Barack Obama, Des Moines, Iowa, November 10, 2007

OMG!!! He did it!

Iowa wasn't a fluke!!

What would Chavez do?

My roommate woke up this morning to me talking back to the radio announcer informing us that the United Farm Workers had endorsed Clinton.  What???  I shouted a little too loudly.  Nooo...... why would they do that?  It's like seeing a good friend of yours passing up the perfect date --the cool, good-looking idealistic young man ready to fight the good fight-- and going out instead with a ho-hum bloke who doesn't stand for anything.  Like I said I don't hate Hillary.  I just think that she's not the most progressive candidate in the race.  I could see the UFW endorsing her if she were the only reasonable candidate in the race but she's the establishment candidate!  Why endorse the establishment candidate when for the first time in recent memory you have a real blue blood progressive who didn't support the Iraq war and didn't go along with an inflammatory vote meant to provoke Iran and pave the way for a war with that country as well.  For the first time we have someone like Barack Obama! Why, oh why would they endorse Hillary???

I'm not too far off in my thinking here apparently.  Randy Shaw of San Francisco's Alternative paper, BeyondChron uses history to make the point that this is NOT what the iconic labor leader would've done: 

"[Again and again] Chavez and the UFW defied the Establishment candidate to back a more progressive Democratic insurgent. And Chavez did so even when this meant bucking most of organized labor, and supporting an outsider against an incumbent Democratic President. [full article here]"

What a shame to break with that history now; to play it "safe" instead of daring to push forward a bold new agenda for a more progressive US!  This is our day!  Don't they see?  The Republicans are divided, their candidates suck and yet still some on the left seem to be unable to shake that old habit of wanting to be as conservative as possible because they feel the country doesn't really support progressive values such as human rights and equality for all.  We do!  They have to believe in the people of this country!  Have faith in us!  We are not really a confederacy of dunces, despite the past two elections.  We can do better than a blue dog Democrat.  And --someone please tell the UFW-- we can do better than Hillary.

Sometimes I wonder.

You ever watch Spanish telenovelas?  Well, you know how there's always the villain --this woman who is so quintessentially evil so as to provide a foil to the pure-heartedness of the heroine?  Well, even though I know it's true that people aren't so one-sided in real life I also think it's true that these caricatures represent some fundamental truth about human nature, just isolated and concentrated and drawn out for emphasis.

Sometimes I wonder why it's so difficult for me to be good.  I have to try so hard NOT to be that villain!  It takes much conscious effort on my part to remember NOT to hate everyone; to remember to love; to remember to forgive; to remember to be kind and magnanimous and think about others before myself.  I shudder to think how awful a person I'd be if I didn't put so much work into it!  And heaven forbid I get busy with a new job and a new life in a new city and suddenly have much less time to devote to the cause!

I forgot a friend's birthday.  And not just for a little while.  For nearly a week!  And not just any friend!  A friend who went out of his way to help me through one of the most difficult times of my life when I was looking for a job and not finding anything and was more depressed than I had been in years and years and years!  That's what kind of friend he was!  And I thank him by completely forgetting about his birthday because I was so wrapped up in myself and my life and figuring out the idiosyncrasies of cascading style sheets!

And it's not the first time that I realize I've been rude, forgetful and thoughtless lately with other people's lives and other people's feelings.  I think the only difference between me and one of those villains on a telenovela is that they consciously *try* to hurt other people and I do it absent-mindedly because I forget!  But it's the same effect.  (I know intent is supposed to count for something but I don't really understand why.  A drunk driver might not intend to kill someone but the end result is the same as if they'd plotted murder so what's the difference?)

I know I've said in the past that I think human nature is fundamentally good and it's society that messes us up but now I'm beginning to wonder.  Maybe institutionalized religion exists for just this purpose.  Because we all need a hell of a lot of help to not hurt each other so much!

Aspen, CO: Meet a black person!

Bob Herbert speaks of the big pink elephant

Check out Bob Herbert's column this morning.  No bones about it: we live in a msyogynistic society, he says, and that needs to be a major issue in 2008.  Kudos, Mr. Herbert, brave man!

Who needs the Golden Globes? LWGs short list of the best movies of 2007!

Forget all the hype about the Golden Globe Awards being canceled; let's just get right down to it.  The best films of 2007 were Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse and the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men.  That's according to yours truly of course and what other movie critic's opinion do you value more than mine?  Okay, if you said Roger Ebert I won't kill you but he and I are cinematic soul-mates anyway so it really doesn't matter.

But seriously, if you see no other films from 2007 you must see these two.  Both need to be added to my Great Films List.  I didn't have time to write up anything about the Coen Bros film but here's my reaction to Grindhouse.  The Coen Bros film is definitely their best film ever.  No Country is the crown of achievement for these guys who never do the same thing twice, but after this one, probably should.  They're obviously very talented at a variety of genres but this one really soars head and shoulders above the rest.  Their portfolio includes O Brother Where Art Thou --cute but disappointing if one expects too much of it being a Coen Bros film; Fargo --which I used to think was their best; the Big Lebowski; Raising Arizona and the one perhaps closest in atmosphere to this new one, way back in 1984: Blood Simple (it's been awhile since I've seen it but I do recall it being particularly grim portrait of humanity as a whole).

I also have a new favorite actor from No Country.  If I ever meet Javier Bardem on the street, though, I would probably have a heart attack and die of fear at his feet.  This is a man who could kill you just by looking at you. It might've been a bad career move for him, though, because he played Anton Chigurh so perfectly that I will never be able to watch him in another movie without anticipating him whipping out an air gun and shooting someone through the head! (but I see he was in El Mar Adentro which is a really good movie from Spain that came out a few years ago --good thing I saw that one first!)

Anyway, just thought you'd want to know these things in case you still needed your fix of movie-focused year-in-review lists!

Great idea for cities to improve bike safety

Portland has come up with the idea of clearly marked "bike boxes" at intersections which cars must stop behind

By allowing cyclists to wait in front of motorized traffic, the bike boxes are intended chiefly to reduce the risk of “right hook” collisions, the kind most frequently reported in Portland, in which a driver makes a right turn without seeing a cyclist who is in his path.

We should have a national campaign to ensure that every city does this.  It's literally a matter of life and death.

GOP worried about Obama

Interesting article in the Washington Post today about how the GOP is worried about Obama's mass appeal; he might "I'm concerned he could push through some policy things that I fundamentally disagree with," said Rep. Jim McCrery (La.), the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee".... um, yeah, that'd be the idea! lol...

Case in point: Joseph Palermo on Obama v Clinton

Part of a longer commentary on Obama versus the horrifying spectacle of a Huckabee presidency...but here's the interesting part to me:

The good news of the night is that Barack Obama won the election. There is the audacity of hope that the Democratic Party might, after all it's suffered in recent years, has the good sense NOT to nominate another mealy-mouthed "moderate" who will "triangulate" against the grassroots base of the party. The simple fact is that President Bill Clinton left the Democratic Party in far worse shape when he left the White House than it had been in when he entered. Hillary Clinton promises more of the Rahm Emanuel-type betrayal of the progressive wing of the party. She is the Establishment's choice and she will betray progressives on behalf of Wall Street just as her husband did in the 1990s. We are light years past that being a desirable outcome for our nation today.

In contrast, Barack Obama has the potential to unify the party and energize its grassroots, which remain far to the left of the party's national leadership. What's more, Obama appears to understand that there is no such thing as "risk free" politics, and that to be successful a candidate must be willing to fight, and fight hard, especially against the post-Rove Republican Party. The Democratic Party must keep its base motivated and alive going into November to counteract the single-minded purpose and grassroots energy of the right-wing Christian nationalist evangelicals.

Strange new feeling

Whoa, what's this?  I feel something... strange...a stirring inside... a very subtle tremor of something greater to come... could this be --no, dare I say it?  yes!  yes, why not?  I think what I feel is real HOPE in US politics! 

Could this be true?  Obama came in FIRST??!!  All this time I just assumed that Hillary would win the nomination and then the presidency and I would feel sorta okay with that, (relieved at any rate to be rid of Bush and to have a Democrat in the White House again) but not jubilant. 

Because even if we got at least a few more concessions towards progressive political values, it'd mostly still be business as usual.  I'd be glad to have a strong, smart woman in charge but I'd probably spend the next five years writing a lot of posts about how feminism doesn't require that women simply take on the values traditionally associated with men and achieve positions of great political power (and y'all are sick of hearing me say that by now).  The world's already seen women do that (Madeleine Albright; Margaret Thatcher) and we've seen that this doesn't necessarily result in real progressive change.  So would Hillary really be anything other than superficially different from the rest?  In the end, if she won, I'd feel like it would just confirm that presidential elections are not the path to real change in this country.  (Unarmed revolution through creative protest, however, is another story!)

But what if Obama wins the nomination and then easily trounces the Republican wingnuts?  Wouldn't that be just perfect?  I feel like it would be appropriate, even natural, coming after a Bush presidency.  This world seems to seek out balance, in the big picture.  The bad never outweighs the good, even if we humans can't always see beyond the next four years.  As bad a president as Bush was, as embarrassed as many of us were of our country while he was in power, we deserve a president as good as Obama, don't you think?  We deserve to feel --dare I say it?-- proud! as we walk past the White House, knowing that there finally resides someone who really represents the country we are: multi-cultural, strong, progressive, honorable.  Not sleazy, not criminal, not a greedy capitalist.  Don't you think it's in the cards that this year we get a president as equally good as Bush was bad? 

I do.  I really do. 

Is having Obama in the White House going to revolutionize the country and immediately solve all our complaints of injustice in the world?  No.  But it's gonna get us a hell of a lot further than we ever have been before.  And that's no small thing.  No small thing at all!