Monday, September 22, 2008

Musings...

"All we are saying...is give peace a chance..." This was my ringtone for a few weeks until it started to drive me nuts. Further proof that in times rife with Republican-driven tension, even John Lennon can make a person batty. I remind myself that there are people out there battier than myself, and kinder, and also wiser and more honest, like my mother, and my sister, and Anne Lamott. But as each one of these women have been fond of saying--especially when the herd seems like it's all in a big frenzy, and everywhere you look teeth grit and grip in snarl, and dust billows from thunderous hooves, and foam lathers in the corners of curled lips, ready with the next vociferous reproach--these are the times we have to remember, as my mother, and my sister, and Annie, have all reminded me, that that's the great thign about us all being part of the same tribe: we can't all go crazy on the same day. Or something like that. When one of my colleagues, deeply fearful of the coming election, goes door to door throughout the high country registering voters--or getting doors slammed in her face, which I absolutely cannot believe, and for this reason am glad I am not along with her, because I think that if I saw just one snide, angry, nasty person--or at least snide, angry and nasty for that moment; like all of us, they're probably generally sane, and kind, and good--I would probably beat on their door until they opened it, and then punch them in the face, or stomp on their foot, or throw dirt at them, or enact some other violence that would likely get me arrested and do my colleagues work no further good. And this is why she is knocking on doors, and I am writing blog posts.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Meanwhile...the numbers are in...

While John McCain and Sarah Palin (the bulldog and the beauty queen, respectively or irrespectively...you decide) continue to follow the same party tactic that effectively granted Bush a second term in office--repetition, repetition, repetition--in touting their efforts towards political unity, "bipartisanship" has apparently taken on a new meaning. As in, "we'll say whatever we have to in order to buy your partisanship".

I've been trekking about the web; these numbers are taken from sites for The New York Times, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, and The Washington Post on demographics at the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention:

Women
A colleague of mine recently asked, "How could any woman possibly vote Republican?" Good question. At the DNC women made up 49% of the attending delegates. RNC statistics boast a paltry 32%. Sixty-eight percent of this party's delegates are men. Oh, but I'm sure they have an understanding of women's issues equal to that of women themselves...after all, they're the ones who keep sending our children to Iraq.

Blacks
Even the black Republicans can't believe the dearth of representation in their party. As quoted in the September 4 Washington Post article "In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention": "It's hard to look around and not get frustrated," said Michael S. Steele, a black Republican and former lieutenant governor of Maryland. "You almost have to think, 'Wait. How did it come to this?' "

I almost wish the numbers didn't back Steele up so well: after a decade of strident efforts to reach out to minorities culminating in an almost-impressive 7% of black delegates at the 2004 RNC, the GOP's minority courting seems to have fallen by the wayside in 2008: only 1.5% of the delegates attending the Republican National Convention were black. That's 36 out of 4500. Wow. Apparently their partisanship was a little pricey for the Republicans this year...or perhaps simply unworthy.

Blacks made up 23.4% of delegates at the Democratic National Convention. 'Nuff said.

Hispanics
I was a little bummed at the representation of the fastest-growing minority group in America at this year's DNC, and I don't think my party did this community justice with a representation that only made up roughly 12% of Democratic delegates. I think we can do better.

We still better-than-doubled the representation of Hispanics at the RNC, however, although more liberal estimates are coming in at about 7%. Most news sources report Hispanic representation at the RNC around 5%.

Asians
Asian representation was prototypically low for both parties, although again statistics of the DNC show a greater-than-double turnout than the RNC: 4.1 - 4.6% representation in Denver, and 1.8 - 2% participation in St. Paul.

Overall, whites made up roughly 60 - 67% of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention. The most conservative estimates of white delegates at the Republican National Convention come in above 90%.

Who represents you?

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Sounding Off

Are the pundits, pollsters and proletariat starting to get on anyone else's nerves these days? We live under an oppressive regime, allow ourselves to be controlled by fear and apathy, willfully give up civil liberties in return for greater bureaucracy and repression, and we're going to endorse another four to eight years?!?!?! Jeremy and I are looking into options to work and live abroad should the McCain-Palin ticket actually succeed. We're done. We've had it. As my dear wonderful grandmother, a lifelong Republican who changed her party for this election, said, "Enough is enough."

And what I really don't get about this whole thing is why we are still buying into the same old tired nonsense that's entirely responsible for skyrocketing healthcare costs, massive pharmaceutical influence in politics, the abrupt failure of the housing market and the plodding recession we are, apparently, doomed to wander through until we have a President we can believe in. When's the last time we had one of those? Oh, right, it was a little over eight years ago, when Clinton presided over the greatest period of economic prosperity in the history of the United States.

Don't give me that Republican malarky about how George H.W. Bush was responsible for creating that economy. Like everything else, the global marketplace turns on a whim these days; people sink money into markets they believe in. When there's nothing to believe in, the market fails. Proof positive: George W. Bush's delinquent economy. Clinton's brilliant balancing of the budget and creation of a federal surplus. Oh my God...and it took less than a year to undo, as Bush said, hey, let's pretend to care for the people and "share" the money with them! WHat did we get? A check for $300. Wow.

And I'm sick of the public terror created around the concept of socialized healthcare. Oh my God, they're almost four-letter words, aren't they? "Socialized healthcare"...I was reading the Rocky today, a really stupid thing to do during an election year as they fly their Republican Red like it's Economic Doomsday Pride week and they're celebrating. One more idiot talking about the terrors of a socilized system where doctors are at the beck and call of the federal government and they won't be allowed to practice where they want and healthcare will be sub-standard and...oh, no, my heart pounds just thinking about what terrors may come from a healthcare system steeped in socialist ideas.

And then I remember, oh, wait, all of the systems in this country that are socialized, and that we are so grateful for. Like the fire department. Police services. Post office. The military. And let's not forget the most recent arm of the federal government, created by the esteemed anti-big-government George W., the Department of Homeland Security. That one I'm not so grateful for, but mostly because the passing of the Patriot Act brought with it a mandate on pseudoephedrine, and I now have to take a rectal exam to get my allergy medication from my pharmacist.

But that aside...another comment in today's Rocky instructed us crazy radicals to ask Europeans what they thought of their healthcare, and its petulant tone led me to believe they'd all agree thta socilized healthcare was the modern-day equivalent of the bubonic plague upon their fair societies. Funny, I don't know a lot of Europeans, but one I do know pretty well, who now lives in the United States, owns his own business, and through the growth of his business provides jobs for Americans, laughs when I've asked him if he'd become a US citizen and looks at me like I've lost my mind. All he has to do is start talking about how much healthcare would cost him in this country, when he simply has to fly back to France and be taken care of for free. Now, given the escalating costs of jet fuel, I'm sure it's not exactly "cheap", but when you consider the astronomical cost of US healthcare, I bet that plane ticket is well worth the expenditure.

And let's get to that, there, too. Last night unknown-before-last-Thursday Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, while waxing rhapsodic about running mate John McCain's war buddies, made yet another attempt to malign that great shining beacon of liberalism and intelligence who happens to be running for President and whose win will ensure MY future stake in this country, dropped as low as to rail on him for supporting a withdrawal from dependency on foreign oil AND offshore drilling. As if there isn't another alternative. As if you have to be FOR one, and AGAINST the other, or the equation fails altogether. Give me a break. This kind of logic is, well, it's entirely faulty. Unsecure. Failing. Oh well let's just say it: she's LYING TO YOU, PEOPLE!!! Leave it to the American public to actually buy into such a farce. How about alternative energy expenditures? Exploration of sources of fuel that don't rely on fossil fuels? Well, there's an idea...but it's not enough to invest the American Dream in, even when you throw in the fact--FACT!!!--that any tapping of offshore reserves won't benefit us for at least a decade, and your precious Wallybucks are still going to be grimly parted with to fill your enormous, gas-guzzling SUV. Aren't you glad you bought that Expedition after all?