One of the neat things about having infants is that they reach developmental milestones almost daily. My little Mark is really good with his eyes. He loves to follow things, and last week he found someone he really likes….

Yes, he found himself. He doesn’t know that baby in the mirror is Mark, but he sure likes to look at that baby. Actually, he likes to look at the baby until the baby frowns then he gets mad and starts crying.

It’s awesome, I tells ya.

You can see the full cover image — as well as read most of the story (which is just as written with a sledgehammer as the cover implies) — at scans daily.

Via Renee and WOC PhD, INCITE!’s New Orleans branch is helping women of color prepare for Hurricane Gustav. And they’re asking for help.

August 30, 2008

Dear INCITE! friends and supporters,

On the eve of the 3 year anniversary of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and subsequent government criminal negligence and assaults on the low income people of color on the Gulf Coast, our sisters from INCITE! projects in New Orleans (including the local chapter, the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative, and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic) are bracing for the potential landfall of Hurricane Gustav, which is currently projected to hit the Louisiana coast on Monday or Tuesday at a category 4 or 5. Voluntary evacuation of New Orleans has already begun, and mandatory evacuation could be declared as early as today.

INCITE! organizers and supporters in New Orleans have made over 700 phone calls to women of color and their families that make up the constituency of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic, working to prepare and implement evacuation and safety plans.

Your assistance is urgently needed to help low-income women of color and their families evacuate safely if need be, stay safe for the duration of the evacuation, and return to the city as soon as possible so as not to fall prey to the pushout that has kept so many folks from being able to return to New Orleans since Katrina. Local organizers are using whatever resources and funds at their disposal to help women and their families evacuate, bond people being held in Orleans Parish Prison out, and support those who make the choice to stay in whatever way they can.

Your support is urgently needed: financial donations of any size are needed and would be greatly appreciated.

Donations online are preferred because we can more quickly send the funds to our folks in New Orleans.

You can send your donation to INCITE online by clicking the button below and putting “New Orleans” in the “Purpose” line:

Or you can write a check directly to WHJI and send it to:
PO Box 51325
New Orleans, LA 70151

Your donation will go directly to supporting the hundreds of low income women of color that are the constituency of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic.

Once again, the particular vulnerability of low-income women of color and single female-headed households (including folks with disabilities, seniors, undocumented immigrant women, and incarcerated women) has been erased in the face of disaster and overlooked in the days leading up to the storm. Folks in New Orleans women’s prisons are being evacuated to the Angola men’s prison, with little thought for safety. With few resources, facing challenges and concerns for their families of their own, INCITE! New Orleans and WHJI have stepped in to fill the gap. Please send all your support, solidarity, sisterhood and strength their way, and join us in hoping for the safety and well-being of the people who are already suffering from Gustav in Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti, and willing the storm to subside or veer off safely before it strikes the Gulf Coast.

We will keep you posted as things develop.

peace,
INCITE!

I’ve had a very positive impression of INCITE! over the last couple of years, and this seems like a very worthwhile cause.

When I first started teaching I taught a class called “Prejudice and Discrimination,” in order to get my students to examine race, class, gender, and sexuality issues (later I added disability) I gave them an assignment where they had to watch a TV program, and analyze it from a sociological perspective. Basically, I wanted them to apply a theory from sociology to the program they chose. It was 2000, and one student did his analysis on the Olympics. He decided to use what I’ll call a functionalist multicultural perspective. In sociology, functionalism is a conservative theoretical view that argues that society is made up of interrelated and interdependent parts, which work together to create stability harmony, and order. Functionalists generally want to minimize change, and they tend to see everything having a functional purpose. The competing theory is conflict theory. Conflict theorists see a society that is driven over competition for scarce resources–in particular they see conflict stemming from the competition between society’s haves and have nots. Since conflict theory is inspired by some insights of Marxism, conflict theorists believe that social change is necessary.

In my student’s view, the Olympics were great because they brought all the people of the world together. Furthermore, everybody was competing on an equal playing field. He also felt that the spirit of the Olympic movement wiped out race, class, gender, and sexuality issues. In other words, the Olympics made all of these things moot, and nobody cared about any of these things when watching the Olympics.

Sarcastically, I asked myself–is this student watching the same Olympics as I am. I suppose when we take a functionalist view, the Olympics is a sample of stability and harmony, but I don’t see how we can watch the Olympics without noticing the haves and have nots of the world. While one can see some functionalist elements at the Olympics; you have to be deliberately obtuse to miss how Olympic competition is just as much about the social inequalities between groups.

Let’s start with gender. If you watched careful, there were a few occasions when I saw events for men labeled in a neutral way–i.e. the basketball finals– but events for women were labeled as women’s events–i.e. the women’s basketball finals. Isn’t it interesting that even though women participate in most sports at the Olympics, the men’s events are still central in most of those sports. I’ve also noticed that some countries have significantly fewer successful women athletes, and that is often related to the limited number of opportunities for women to compete in those countries. Think about those Kenyan and Ethiopian runners–it has only been recent that women in those countries have been recruited and trained to run like their male counterparts. I also couldn’t stand looking at yahoo during the Olympics where butt shots of women’s beach volleyball players were consistently in the top 10. Don’t get me wrong these women were talented, but it was obvious that their skimpy uniforms were part of the reason the networks had them in primetime.

What about Patriotism and ethnocentrism? As a very public sociologist noted in the thread last week, the US media listed the medal count as opposed to the gold medal count. China ran away with the gold medal count, but I guess it makes us look better to note that we won more over all medals. You could also see the bias in coverage. For the most part if the US wasn’t doing good in an event, then the coverage of that event was either non-existent or relegated to a sound bite. I’ve always felt that the Olympics is largely about Patriotism; it’s a way for countries to feel good about themselves and their people, a way to show strength (quite literally). In the 1936 Olympics, Hitler wanted to prove how great the “Aryan” race was, but he was upstaged by the great African American athlete Jesse Owens.  This was the classic example of the political clashes that often occur at the Olympics.  Don’t get me wrong, there are events that symbolize coming together in spite of our differences–this year the Georgian and Russian competitors in the Women’s air pistol certainly would be an example.  But overall, the examples of countries trying to upstage each other or athletes coming to be representatives for the social and political causes of their nations are probably more numerous.  The Olympics are a competition after all.

The other issue that I’m reminded of is global inequality and its connection to immigration.  I was struck by how the US and China dominated the competition, but one thing I noticed in particular is how many top athletes representing the US were born in other countries and, in many cases, competed for those countries in the past.  I noticed a former Chinese ping pong player, a former Kenyan distance runner, and a Trinidadian sprinter.  Under the 1965 immigration Act, these immigrants are given the fast track to citizenship because of their special skills.¹  The US obviously benefits, as do many other Western countries.  These athletes are able to leave poor countries and head to wealthier ones.  When we are talking about science and occupations, this is called the brain drain.  Perhaps in sports it should be called the “muscle hustle.” ; )  Wealthy countries siphon off the top athletes from poor countries; moreover, many of the athletes from poor countries train, compete, and live in wealthy nations.  I don’t know how many people noticed how many of the West Indian (such as Trinidadian, Jamaican, Bahamian) sprinters attend college and train in the US.  I’d be curious to know how many of these athletes are able to stay in the US because of their skills.

Now I haven’t even touched on racism in this already long post, so I’ll keep it brief.  Sport is often used as a way to reinforce racial stereotypes.  Rather than connecting the racial make-up of an Olympic sports team to social opportunities, many try to assert biological distinctions between races, ignoring those who defy racial stereotypes and ignoring economic and social factors that result in racial differences.  (Feel free to share your own examples for this one.)

What do you think? How does conflict theory play out at the Olympics?  What ways do you think the Olympics represents a functionalist world view?

1. This is also applied to scientists, artists, and people in some high demand occupational fields. (back)

So Hurricane Gustav looks like it’s going to suck. As of tomorrow, New Orleans will be under a mandatory evacuation order. Gustav has already decimated western Cuba, and hurricane-force wind stretched as far east as Havanna itself. The storm appears all but certain to bulls-eye Louisiana, with most of the models taking it in just to the west of New Orleans — which is the worst place for it to hit, as the highest winds and storm surges are to the north and east of a hurricane. It should hit as a Category 4 storm on Monday afternoon.

We have, one hopes, learned a bit in the past three years about how to deal with a hurricane in the Gulf, and one can hardly imagine that the state, local, and federal governments could possibly do worse than they did in 2005. But one immediate concern is the fact that there will be no shelter of last resort. Yes, that means there will be no Superdome, no concentrated focus of misery. But that also means for those left behind in New Orleans, there is nowhere for them to go; the state is, to their credit, mobilizing to evacuate absolutely everyone from the city, spending millions on busses to get people out. But it’s foolhardy to think they will get everyone out, and I’m very worried about the people who get left behind.

New Orleans is what it is, a city 10 feet below sea level — and nature, in its impassive wisdom, will try to fill that. We don’t know if the levees, which have been shored up since 2005, can hold. We don’t know if the evacuation will work as planned. We do know that FEMA can’t do worse than they did three years ago, but we don’t know if they can do better.

The one thing that is certain is that the Bush administration will not ignore the disaster this time. Katrina ended George W. Bush’s ability to effectively lead the nation; after August 29, 2005, George W. Bush had no credibility, and was treated like it. The Bush administration will try to use this to undo the damage of their neglect. Sorry, it’s too late for that — 1800-odd people are dead, and they aren’t coming back. But if they want to prove that they’ve learned their lessons, good — prove it. Because I want New Orleans to get the support it deserves from its government. It’s the least we, as a country, can do. And if George W. Bush getting credit for it is the price it takes to get that governance, well, that’s the price we pay.

Stay safe, Louisiana. We’ll be hoping and praying you come through okay.

T’was hard the woeful words to frame
To break the ties that bound us.
But harder still to bear the shame
of foreign chains around us.
And so I said the mountain glen
I’ll meet at morning early.
And I’ll join the bold united men
While soft winds shook the barley.

-Irish folk song

James Larkin (click on pic)

James Connolly (click on pic)

If you want to listen to some related Irish and Scottish songs (see below for titles) click here (around 8 minutes, it’ll be worth it).

Gur Tu Mo Ni’N Donn Bhòidheach (Old Songs of Scottish Women at Work), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem), A Fhleasgaich Ùir Leanainn Thu (Old Songs of Scottish Women at Work), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Dolores Keane)

Ann Friedman makes the case:

Palin’s addition to the ticket takes Republican faux-feminism to a whole new level. As Adam Serwer pointed out on TAPPED, this is in fact a condescending move by the GOP. It plays to the assumption that disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters did not care about her politics — only her gender. In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them. As Serwer noted, it’s akin to choosing Alan Keyes in an attempt to compete with Obama for votes from black Americans.

I can’t help but be, oh, a little bit skeptical of Republicans’ sudden interest in the glass ceiling. After all, this is the party that threw women like Lilly Ledbetter under the bus, in favor of businesses that practice wage discrimination. The party that stymied the Equal Rights Amendment. The party that not only wants to force women here and abroad to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, but also wants to deny them access to a range of contraception options.

Not to mention hypocrisy at play. Republicans directed an inexcusable amount of sexist vitriol at Hillary during the primary. As Michelle Malkin said on Fox News about Hillary, “If that’s the face of experience, I think it’s going to scare away a lot of those independent voters that are on the fence.” At National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez blamed polling that said America isn’t ready for a woman president on the failure of Geena Davis’ TV show (in which she played a vice president who was elevated to commander in chief after the president’s death). And Kristol credited Hillary’s brief, misty-eyed moment for propelling her to victory in the New Hampshire primary: “It’s the tears. She pretended to cry, the women felt sorry for her, and she won.”

It’s clear that Republicans believe that what made Hillary Clinton such a good candidate was her gender, not her political experience or positions on the issues. And McCain’s decision to pick Palin shows he took this message to heart and chose to add her to the ticket primarily because of her gender. In so doing, McCain has turned the idea of the first woman in the White House from a true moment of change to an empty pander.

Back in ancient history, oh, a month or two ago, when it became apparent that Barack Obama would indeed win the Democratic primary, a number of Clinton supporters objected to the idea of Obama picking a woman other than Clinton for the ticket, derisively calling it the “any boobs will do” theory of picking a veep. I always thought this was a bit unfair to clearly qualified candidates for the vice presidential slot, like Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-Kan. But I understood the point, and it made sense — just picking a woman, any woman, solely because she was a woman, was unlikely to win over Clinton supporters. Indeed, it would be far more insulting than picking a qualified man, which is ultimately what Obama did. Clinton supporters, you see, supported her not solely because she was a woman (though of course, that was a part of it), but because they believed her to be a solid leader, to be a person who would be a good president. They backed Clinton not because of her ovaries, but because of her guts; not because of her breasts, but because of her mind.

Palin is the “any boobs will do” pick to the nth degree. Not only does Palin lack the qualifications of Clinton, but she lacks the ideological bent, as well. Clinton supporters might have objected to, say, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on the ticket, given that McCaskill’s experience is not what Clinton’s is. But at least McCaskill’s pro-choice. She’s liberal on economic issues. She’s a feminist. She’s on Sen. Clinton’s side of the aisle.

Palin is a reactionary conservative, one comfortable with supporting Pat Buchanan. She’s opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest. She’s got absolutely no international experience, unless you want to count her trying to run an oil pipeline through part of Canada. And her experience pales compared to Clinton’s. Indeed, it pales compared to Dan Quayle’s in 1988. Even Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-N.Y., had been in the House for six years when Walter Mondale tapped her as his running mate, had served as chair of the DNC’s platform committee, and as secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.

Palin is the most cynical of picks, a woman selected because women just want to vote for women — a pick that fails to recognize that women actually believe things, that they vote on issues, that they care about having a woman in office not because any woman will do, but so that women advance in American society.

This isn’t to say Sarah Palin is stupid — you don’t rise from the PTA to the governor’s mansion if you are. But she lacks the experience of a Vice Presidential candidate. Not since Spiro T. Agnew has a major party placed such an inexperienced candidate on the ticket. And Agnew ended up being an unmitigated disaster. Then-President Richard Nixon considered ousting him before the 1972 race, and Agnew ended up becoming the second vice president to resign the office in 1973, ultimately pleading no contest to bribery and tax evasion charges.

That the candidates we compare Palin to are Quale and Agnew and, at best, Ferraro are not good signs for her. None of the three had distinguished careers; while Quayle and Agnew did win, they certainly did not acquit themselves well in office. Ferraro was on the wrong side of one of the worst electoral blowouts in American history, and while that wasn’t her fault, her historic pick certainly didn’t help Mondale avoid a shellacking. She followed that up by losing a race for Senate in New York and ultimately offending all of Barack Obama’s supporters and many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters by arguing that Obama faced no racism in the campaign. Agnew left politics in disgrace. Quayle became a national punchline and made an abortive attempt at the presidency in 2000, only to drop out before voting started. None of the three have had the careers of Al Gore or Walter Mondale or George H.W. Bush or, heck, even Tom Eagleton.

Palin isn’t ready for the vice presidency. And she wouldn’t have been selected if she was Steve Palin, radical anti-choice first-term governor of Alaska. Unlike Hillary Clinton or a dozen other Democratic women (or indeed, many other Republican women), she’s not remotely ready to assume the duties of president should John McCain die in office. In short, she’s not capable of carrying out the most important duty the vice president has. I’m glad that McCain picked a woman to serve on the ticket. But I wish she’d been one that was on the ticket because she was a strong, capable, prepared leader. Maybe, after a few more years and some more seasoning, Palin could be that leader — I’ve certainly seen nothing to indicate that she’s anything other than intelligent and capable of growing as a leader, and one would hope that she does. But she’s not ready yet. And because of that, her choice is an insult — to women, to men, to the American people. And to Palin herself — for she deserves better than to be picked for her reproductive organs, rather than her ability.

Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, has a number of problems in her background. The guy she fired for not firing her ex-brother in law. The fact that she’s been governor of her state for less time than Kid Johnny Mac has been running for president. But the most serious problem for her — and for John McCain — is that she was a staunch supporter of Pat Buchanan’s 2000 presidential campaign.

This was not Buchanan’s 1992 insurgent campaign against then-President George H.W. Bush, nor his bloodying 1996 campaign against then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan. No, this was Buchanan’s run as the National Socialist Worker’s Party Reform Party candidate, a fourth-party bid that, had history bounced a different way, could have cost Bush the election in 2000. Would that it had.

This is not a trifling problem. Buchanan ran in 2000 on a platform of ugly nativism, isolationism, and social conservatism. As Think Progress notes, Buchanan has come out against free trade, has stated outright that there is a culture war going on in the country, and has a…well, let’s just say it’s a complicated relationship with Judaism. And by complicated, I mean he’s a raving anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, a man who in 1990 said of Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor:

If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O’Connor of New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him “there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic”…he speaks for himself. Be not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests ready to assume the role of defender of the faith.

A man who in 1977 said of Adolf Hitler:

[A]n individual of great courage…Hitler’s success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.

Buchanan is a raving bigot, a homophobe, a sexist, a racist…pretty much everything Pat Buchanan’s for, I’m against, and vice versa, with the exception of the Iraq War — and even there, Buchanan opposes the war because he opposes all foreign entanglements of any kind.

And it is this man, this bigot, that Sarah Palin chose over George W. Bush in 2000, a man Palin chose to abandon her party for, because Bush was insufficiently conservative.

And so to Sarah Palin and John McCain, I have a simple question: why? Why did you support Pat Buchanan in 2000, despite his long history of bigotry and Antisemitism? Why did you support him, even though his positions were considered radical even by the Republican Party? Is Pat Buchanan who you are, Gov. Palin? And if not…well, why should we believe you?

From How the University Works:

I started my semester at one of my campuses this week (the other started last week). Upon checking my mail for the first time this semester, I found a letter stating that due to a lack of cash flow at the state level, all part-timers are receiving a pay cut. Or, well, not exactly. The money’s just held up, is all, and we’ll get it right after the school year’s over. Except, okay, well, they’re not entirely certain they’ll get the money. You know how state budgets are! So why don’t we just work the school year, especially since they told us after it was too late to find other jobs, and once we’ve done the work, mayyybe we’ll get paid for it!

What’s funny is that only part-timers’ salaries are affected by the state budget crisis. As far as I know, full-timers and administrators are fine. Funny, how that worked out. The union will be taking action, of course. But I refuse to get my hopes up.

This semester, the walls of both my classes were lined with students trying to add the course because so many sections were canceled after registration. These students were desperate; one looked ready to cry when I told her I didn’t know if there was room, and another pumped her fist when I did a head count and announced that I could add a few people. (Right now I’m violating the fire code by allowing students to sit on the floor. There aren’t enough desks. Oh, god, the first batch of papers is coming in a couple of weeks.) My suspicion is that many part-time faculty members saw the pay cut, realized they couldn’t pay their bills, and decided to try their luck elsewhere - either at other colleges (although most semesters have started) or in different fields. I don’t think this is the whole reason why we turned away so many students; enrollment is up because the economy is sending many people back to school, and I also wonder if the administration cut entire classes to save money. But whatever’s going on, it’s hurting both educators and students. And if a system is hurting both the people serving it and the people being served, then what’s the point of that system?

Part-time faculty members make up more than 70% of all college educators - and that’s before you count “visiting” professors, who can spend years going from campus to campus, city to city, state to state, before they find a school willing to keep them for more than a year. As other part-timers have pointed out, we’re no longer “adjunct” to higher education - we are higher education. The system would fall apart without us. We have to use our numbers to do something.

When I got my second job, I was really excited because I’d finally be making 30K a year. I’d been teaching college for three years, but I’d never made 30K before. I’d never known how it felt not to be worried about money, not to feel guilty about eating out or buying something frivolous. Now I’m working more and making the same amount.

When I called HR to ask about the pay cut, they did the calculation, told me my new salary, and then assured me that it was “no big deal.”

Phew! That’s a relief.

Shakesville has started a new series which is bound to be depressing, but which is a really good idea: the Sarah Palin sexism watch which will be documenting instances of sexism against Sarah Palin. Melissa writes:

And I’ll go ahead and put it right in the fucking inaugural post in this series: I will defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because I like or support her, but because that’s how feminism works.

On a separate note, she also has a pair of excellent quotes by Palin about Hilary that reveal the “women’ll vote for any woman! Right? Right. Even if she’s considerably anti-woman!” mindset of this choice:

Sarah Palin, earlier today:

I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of … Senator Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign.

Sarah Palin, last March:

[At the NEWSWEEK Women & Leadership Event in Los Angeles], Palin talked about what women expect from women leaders; how she took charge in Alaska during a political scandal that threatened to unseat the state’s entire Republican power structure, and her feelings about Sen. Hillary Clinton. (She said she felt kind of bad she couldn’t support a woman, but she didn’t like Clinton’s “whining.”)

Shakesville has, in my opinion, done a very nice job of media watching during the past season. I think the blog excels at creating documentation of sexist and racist phenomena, like racism against Obama, sexism against Clinton, or the sheer volume of disembodied women presented as novelties.

People are already handwringing about how the Democrats can attack Sarah Palin. That’s stupid. There’s plenty to attack Palin on. She’s radically anti-choice, she’s a social reactionary, she’s got no foreign policy experience to speak of, and her pick by McCain bespeaks a sort of belief that women are interchangable and that any vagina will do — Palin and Hillary Clinton are as similar as James Dobson and Dennis Kucinich, and only someone who thinks women are too dumb to know the difference between the two would think that Palin’s very presence on the ticket would win over Clinton Democrats.

But let’s state this flatly, right here, right now — where you don’t attack Palin is based on her looks. Based on her femininity. Based on her being a mother. Based on her XX genotype. Sarah Palin is a former Miss Alaska, and conventionally attractive. But that doesn’t mean her mind is irrelevant to the discussion, that her experience as a Mayor or Governor is somehow worthless.

Contrawise, Palin is not immune to being attacked because she’s a woman. Joe Biden is more experienced on national security; he should make that a point of attack. Sarah Palin isn’t particularly experienced; that should be an issue. Palin is extraoridnarily pro-life, way out of the mainstream on the issue; that should be brought to light. Those issues don’t go away because she’s a woman. Those issues don’t go away, period.

Palin should be judged in the same way any other candidate for the vice presidency should be judged — on her merit as a candidate and a leader. Period. Attack her record and attack her experience — those must be on the table. But her gender — that should be off the table, period.

Let’s be blunt: the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, as John McCain’s running mate is a choice made from a position of weakness, not from a position of strength. Palin is a woman, and so her pick is historic, the first woman to serve on a Republican ticket, only 24 years after the Democrats broke that particular barrier. Maybe in 2032, a person of color might even show up on the GOP ticket.

But Sarah Palin is 44. She’s been Alaska’s governor for just over a year; before that, she was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a city of 5,470 people. She has the least significant experience of any candidate to serve on a national ticket in modern history. She has no national security experience whatsoever. Her areas of strength are pushing for drilling for oil, which hardly makes McCain look less in the pocket of big oil, and being incandescently anti-choice, which is not the way to the hearts and minds of erstwhile Clinton supporters, and might indeed serve to highlight McCain’s anti-choice position.

It is the experience thing that will hurt the most, though. Don’t forget, Sarah Palin would be a heartbeat away from the presidency, the heartbeat of the oldest man ever elected to the office. I hope John McCain lives a long, long life, certainly another decade or two. But we all grow old, and we all die, and the older we get, the less time we have. Palin does not strike me as a woman who could slide into the presidency at a moment’s notice. And her very presence on the ticket will undermine any attempt to paint Obama as an inexperienced buffoon; Obama has more national experience, more life experience, and more gravitas than Palin.

John McCain is an ardent craps player, and as anyone who’s played craps knows, it’s a game of fast action, quick swings, high risk, and high reward. McCain’s sitting on the pass line here, trying to roll a six. And maybe he’ll get it. But he’s just as likely to crap out. Sarah Palin’s performance over the next few months will determine whether this was a brilliant or brutal choice. But give McCain this: it wasn’t a safe choice. And it will be interesting to see what the choice brings.

Happy 72nd birthday, Johnny Mac! Here, just for fun I found some pictures from your 69th birthday, which was three years ago, August 29, 2005.

Huh. August 29, 2005. Something else happened that day, I think. But what could it be? What could have been happening right at the same time as this fun event with your pal Dubya?

Oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t anything that would have caused you and George to turn down a chance to party.

Have fun naming your veep today, John. Good symbolism, picking your vice president on the third anniversary of your 69th birthday, and whatever else happened three years ago today. Nice sensitivity. Stay classy.

Fuck you, Karl Rove:

 “The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Yeah, Karl, Hurricane Katrina was so fucking bad for you and the idiot king. Boo fucking hoo. If you would have done something for the people of New Orleans, rather than dither and share cakes with John McCain, that might not have been bad. But that would have required a competent, caring, capable president, which we don’t have, thanks to you.

Not to mention, of course, that global warming is playing its role in this, something you’ve been foursquare against working to solve.

If August weather is bad for the GOP, it’s on your own head. If you don’t feel good about the memories of Katrina — you shouldn’t, you fucking asshole. You failed your fellow Americans. If you didn’t want to feel bad about it, maybe you should have cared for the poor, black people drowning in New Orleans. But you didn’t care then, and you don’t care now — because no matter how bad August weather is for you, Karl, it’s far, far worse for the people of the Gulf Coast, who’ve lost their homes, family members, even their lives. Those people, I feel bad for. You can go to hell.

An article in the New Haven Advocate speculates that the long delay in a gay marraige ruling in the Connecticut Supreme Court — they heard the case in May 2007¹ — may indicate a deadlocked court.

There’s a more plausible explanation for the delay than politics: The justices are deadlocked. Long, a visiting assistant professor at University of Connecticut School of Law, says it’s unlikely a ruling would take so long if the justices were unanimous. What’s more probable is a split decision, and the crafting of dissenting and/or concurring opinions is responsible for the hold up.

Interesting…

In other same-sex marraige news, a new poll in California shows the anti-gay-marriage ballot measure losing 54 to 40. That’s excellent news.

And, sadly, longtime gay rights activist Del Martin has died at the age of 87, just months after finally legally marrying her partner of 55 years, Phyllis Lyon. Ms. Martin died of natural causes, and will be missed. Box Turtle Bulletin has an excellent post describing some of Ms. Martin’s decades of activism.

1. For comparison’s sake, Massachusetts took 8 months, and California took two months, from hearing the cases to issuing decisions. Connecticut has so far taken 15 months. (back)

Via Marc Ambinder, who credits WCCO. Pawlenty is probably the safest pick on the board for McCain — Romney has four houses and several hundred million dollars, which is not what you want if you’re trying to be just plain folks. Kay Bailey Hutchison would be daring, except for the fact that she’s Kay Bailey Hutchison — she makes continental drift look like the 4×400m relay. Pawlenty neither excites nor angers anyone. Whee.

I still think it’s a colossal mistake for McCain to introduce TPaw to the country on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking the Gulf Coast — good times, good times — but McCain has evidently decided that his voters don’t care about 1700-odd dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Sadly, he’s probably right.

Remember when McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm said that the U.S.’s economic woes are “a mental recession” and called the United States “a nation of whiners”? I thought at the time that was the most callous statement we’d see from a McCain adviser this year, but I was so wrong.

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

Do I have to explain how incredibly stupid this is?

You know, it’s funny: when you throw away everything you’ve ever claimed to stand for in a bid to tear down your opponent and secure the presidency, and you get called on it, it sorta stings. Doesn’t it, John?

What do you want voters to know coming out of the Republican Convention — about you, about your candidacy?
I’m prepared to be President of the United States, and I’ll put my country first.

There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.

I’ve read your books.
No, I’m not going to define it.

But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.

[Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.

But beyond the press, sir, just in terms of …
I think we’re running a fine campaign, and this is where we are.

Do you miss the old way of doing it?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Really? Come on, Senator.
I’ll provide as much access as possible …

In 2000, after the primaries, you went back to South Carolina to talk about what you felt was a mistake you had made on the Confederate flag. Is there anything so far about this campaign that you wish you could take back or you might revisit when it’s over?
[Does not answer.]

Do I know you? [Says with a laugh.]
[Long pause.] I’m very happy with the way our campaign has been conducted, and I am very pleased and humbled to have the nomination of the Republican Party.

You do acknowledge there was a change in the campaign, in the way you had run the campaign?
[Shakes his head.]

You don’t acknowledge that? O.K., when your aides came to you and you decided, having been attacked by Barack Obama, to run some of those ads, was there a debate?
The campaign responded as planned.

So yeah, remember the mythical “John McCain” of 2000? The gregarious, open, honorable guy fighting for his country? Yeah, he’s not here anymore. In his place is John McCain, a nasty, snippy, petulant jerk, one who is more than willing to go as negative as possible, to tear down his opponent, to harm his country if it will get him to the White House. It’s a damn shame, and really, it makes you wonder which McCain is the fake one. And whether, in the end, it matters.