Sometimes a Dick is just a Dick

Sigmund Freud was the first to describe the phenomenon of transference, in which a subject transfers their feelings for one person to another person, or redirects their feelings toward an event on to a different event. It is not an unusual pathology in a serial killer, for instance, to believe himself to be the victim, and to transfer his feelings of guiltiness and rage onto those he victimizes.

I once had a rather difficult time with a mentally ill woman whose MO was transference taken to a stupefying level. She was assigned to the same precinct as me once when I served as a Judge of Election in Chicago.

Chicago. You don’t have to be crazy to be a Judge of Election here – but it helps!

The voting place was in the lobby of a senior center, of course, and of course the judges were all seniors except me. I was doing it for the cash – then 80 clams for about 15 hours of work – nothing to sneeze at when you normally spend your days pretending to fill yuppie coffee cups with decaf for crappy tips. Also, since I was politically active, I found that if you were working as a judge of election, the campaign office couldn’t make you stand outside the polling place on Election Day holding a goddamn placard or handing out fucking leaflets and taking the abuse of people whose inclinations ran toward your candidate’s opponent. The best part is that when I'd inform whoever managed the volunteers that I could not work outside of the polling place on Election Day because I was working inside the polling place, they were usually impressed and believed me to be an even greater martyr for democracy than they did when I was merely a campaign pawn. But really, all I wanted was to be inside in a semi-heated/cooled room on a semi-comfy folding chair, instead of outside in whatever hellish weather Chicago had decided to dish up.

So what for most people would have been a clear case of “I’d rather stick needles in my eyes” ended up being a win-win for me.

I learned a lot of things being a judge of election in Chicago. For one, candidates would absolutely come right into the polling place and bring you candy or donuts or whatever. I mean, in full campaign garb with aides and balloons and buttons and shit. And when I told them they had to leave because it is illegal to electioneer in a polling place, they definitely give me that “you’re new around here, aren’t you?” look.

Plus, there is, or at least there was, pretty much a cop assigned to every precinct in the city. Sometimes they would actually stick around for their entire shift, too. Yeah, Election Day is probably an overtime bonanza for cops. And cops are great to talk to because they have amazing stories. Unlike the seniors, who never seemed to have anything to say except that the folding chairs were very uncomfortable, and that they couldn’t hear me, and that the huge print on the registration documents was too small for them to read and I needed to read it to them so that they could then tell me again that they couldn't hear what I were saying.

Rinse. Repeat.

One year I worked all day with a younger cop who told me he’d been shot three times and stabbed once. All in separate incidents, too. His beat was in the infamous Cabrini Green housing project. I asked him who at HQ had it in for him and he just laughed and shook his head and told me that that was a story for another time. He was a cool guy, though.

That was the same year I had some asshole looking over the voting booth partition at his wife while she was marking her ballot. He was actually pointing at her ballot and criticizing who she was voting for! So, I told him to stop.

Me: Sir, you can’t do that.

Asshole: What? Are you talking to me?

Me: Yes, sir. You can’t spy on people while they’re voting, and you certainly can’t make comments about their choices.

Asshole: It’s okay, she’s my wife. (he resumes his criticism)

Me: I don’t care who she is, sir. You can’t do that.

Asshole: Oh, for Pete’s sake. (to his wife) Will you tell this girl that it’s okay?

Wife: Leave me out of this. I am trying to vote.

Asshole: (to his wife) What?

Me: Sir, if you’re finished, you need to leave the polling place.

Asshole: Are you kidding me?

Me: No.

Asshole: Oh, come on! Who do you think you are?

Me: I’m a Judge of Election, and if you won’t leave because I say so, then I’m sure this nice policeman will show you to the door.

I swear to god readers, that I said exactly that. And I swear to god that that fucking awesome cop took a step forward at that moment and rested one hand on his holstered department-issued .38 revolver, and with the other hand, gestured toward the doorway.

You know, it’s moments like those that make life worth living.

Another time, the polling place was in a firehouse, and we had to set up right alongside the engines. When I went to use the restroom, I noticed that a picture of Mayor Daley (fils), who was then embroiled in some rather nasty negotiations with the firemen’s union, was posted in the middle of their rec room dart board. Let’s just say that Hizzoner had become quite a popular target. In the middle of that Election Day, the firehouse got a call, and all the vehicle doors suddenly went up in preparation for the engines to pull out, and I had to dive on top of the judge’s table to keep our voting records from blowing out the doors and into the middle of Lincoln Avenue.

Or was it Halsted Street? I don’t remember. But I do remember the year with the crazy woman judge. First of all, she was a Republican judge, which was kind of crazy in itself, because there were no discernible Republicans in Chicago, and you usually had to wrangle some Democratic judge into playing the Republican just so you could fulfill your fairness quota and get your polling place open. Anyway, most of the day this crazy Republican Judge of Election sort of yammered away, kind of to herself, taking a moment out, from time to time, to announce to the entire room what tv show she was missing, and what she thought was probably happening on that show at that particular moment.

Then, for no reason that I could fathom, she walked into the middle of the room and decided to speculate, out loud, on the probable ethnic backgrounds of various candidates, and how their ethnicity would affect their ability to perform their jobs. She started by announcing that she was pretty sure that a particular candidate was a Jew, and that Jews were not the most trustworthy of people.

I was stunned. Several voters stared at her with jaws gaping. Seeing as how there was no sympathetic cop around that year to help me out, I grabbed one of her senior friends by the arm and hissed at them all that they had to stop her. They all shrugged. That was who she was, they said. You couldn’t stop her. After several minutes of absolute mortification, I finally thought to suggest to that crazy bitch that she was neglecting her ballot box-stuffing duties, and that seemed to bring an end to her discourse.

The next day, I called the Republican ward office and told them what happened, and said that I wouldn’t want that woman representing my party. I thought it was nice of me, considering how she was making a jackass of herself whilst where a large badge that said “Republican” in bold red letters. The woman on the phone thanked me profusely for calling. I thought that was the end of it.

Until I was called in to testify downtown at a hearing to remove her, officially, from ever being a Judge of Election again.

Yeah. I took 80 bucks away from a crazy old lady.

Anyways, during my testimony, her “defense strategy” was to accuse me of everything she had read in the statement that I’d made regarding her actions on that day. So, the crazy lady would stand up periodically and point at me and say, for example, “That’s nothing! You know what she did? She called the alderman a Jew! In front of everyone!” Or she would say “Well, she said that Mexicans didn't even bother to vote!” Or “Well, she said the ballots didn’t have to total up exactly right!”

And each time, I would reply, “No, that’s what you said.” Over and over, I corrected her, until I was so completely frustrated and worn down that I finally actually contemplated, for a moment, just confessing to everything myself, because it would have been easier than having to answer back to every one of her transparent fucking idiotic lies.

So, I suppose you all heard that Dick Cheney this week accused Obama of “politicizing the Justice Department.”

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

Yield

Perhaps there are no better words to eulogize Ted Kennedy than those he used to eulogize his own brother Bobby in 1968. It is a brilliant speech that builds to these famous lines:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

There was a time when we all thought that that speech would be all Teddy would be remembered for.

Poor Teddy. Teddy the baby brother, the fat one, the fuck up. Teddy who came too late to benefit from the press's reluctance to air the soiled skivvies of the Kennedys. But in the end, Teddy reformed himself and became the best thing he could have become: a wealthy man who fought against his own interests and for the benefit of those less privileged than he.

It is a shame that he died without passing health care reform. If all those senators on the other side of the aisle who have occupied themselves today with expressing their affection for their old nemesis, the Lion of the Senate, would only consider how they might more appropriately honor him.

I know that they don't want to pass a bill that would be viewed as a Democratic success story. Social Security and Medicare were both passed by Democrats, and are two of the most popular, ahem, socialist programs in the history of that legislative body. The Republicans don't want a repeat of those victories, plain and simple. And if you think their obstruction of reform amounts to much more than that, then I have a little bridge in Chappaquiddick I'd like to sell you.

But those distinguished senators should consider that instead of obstructing an acheivement that will save thousands of American lives, and impove millions more, they might instead reflect upon some lesser known words of the Lion:

"Surely we can learn to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us, and become in our own hearts, brothers and countrymen once again...Moral courage is a greater commodity than bravery in battle, or great intelligence. Yet is is the one essential vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change."

The crowd goes wild

Some of my longtime readers will remember this post from nearly two years ago, in which I rail against the worship of political unicorns.

It starts out like this:

Anyone out there who still believes in a politician who is without strategic lapses of morality, even his or her own morality, please come and stand next to me.

So that I can kick you in the ass.

Look, baby, politicians compromise. That’s what they do. They can not, and do not, get where they are without compromising. A lot. More than the most jaded among us would like, in fact.

Ad infinitum, in perpetuity throughout the universe, forever and ever, amen.

And ends like this:

Because I am tired of you fucking idealistic Democrats. Because once you find out your candidate is human, you become the most tiresome, whining, petulant, bitter people on the face of the earth. You swear you will never vote again, ever! You issue stern warnings to your friends that even though you do not agree on any issue, you will vote Republican, because at least they’re not stupid Democrats! You are the people I see walking around with a martyred expression and a “Ron Paul for President” button. You are the people standing at those tables outside the grocery store, trying to convince me that Lyndon LaRouche is not a card-carrying loon.

And so people, I hope that this little incident from the Obama campaign drives home my point, which is that there is no magic candidate. There is NO ONE running in this race who hasn’t done some pretty stinky things because he or she thought it would help them politically. There are no fairy tale contenders. No Prince Charmings, no wizards, no vaguely Christ-like talking lions – nothing.

Except for Kucinich, who I’m pretty sure is some kind of elf.

Ha! Ha! Kucinich jokes! Remember those?

But I stand by my post, and it’s more relevant now than ever, as scores of lefties begin their quadrannual migration away from the balmy climes of idealism and into the frigid regions of realization that their candidate is, after all, a politician, and no politician has ever succeeded at being a politician without also being a politician.

To translate this into more prosaic language for those who are too busy donating their old Shepard Fairey t-shirts and deleting Will.i.am campaign videos from their hard drives to be able to catch my drift – to translate this for them – Obama is doing the best he can.

Yes, I understand that it’s not good enough for you. And that’s fine. Continue to push for what you want, of course. In fact, please do, because it’s my personal belief that the leftist agenda is where all, or in fact any, hope for us lies. Please, make a stink. Write letters or emails. Vote in online polls. Give your elected representative a piece of your mind, goddammit. Write smug, long-winded political rants on your personal blogs. Please. Really, please. Because without the left, the middle is in the right.

Know what I mean?

What you should please not do, or at least please not do in front of me, is fucking whimper about how disappointed you are that Obama is not who you thought he was. Because who the fuck did you think he was, and, more importantly, who the fuck are you?

Obama will get a health care reform bill with a public option passed if he can. If he can’t…he can’t. Now, you may not like that. I don’t like it. I think a health care reform bill without a public option is fairly close to being a fucking oxymoron, and I’m not alone, by the way. And you may disagree with what constitutes the “can’t,” but you should also realize that we have only the tiniest crumb of an idea of the stuff of which that “can’t” consists. There are ten thousand ways he tries that we will never know about, not because we shouldn’t, but because that’s just the way our government rolls. He will bargain away things that we would rather he didn’t. He will pay any price he considers worth paying to get what he wants. That’s how it works. And you can argue the value of the chips all you want, but you can’t put the system on Obama’s head. Sorry. It’s not within his power to change that. And if he told you that he could, he was lying.

Is that shocking to you? Really? If so, may I recommend that you give up the following of current events, and instead immerse yourself in the glorious world of science fiction? You’ll have lots of company, and no one will ever make you know the name of another congressperson or cabinet member or undersecretary of the blah blah blah ever again. Sure, you’ll have to learn Klingon, but at least SoH DIchDaq Hegh tlhej quv!

And I swear, you can hate Obama for making you believe that he could change the world if you want to, but it’d be just another foolish action by just another fool. Obama is not the boss of us. He’s not king. He’s not your god, either, he’s just a good player in a very fucked up game.

And besides, who’s not to say that he hasn’t already changed the world? Maybe we’re just not looking in the right place. Obama stepped up and volunteered to be our collective Jackie Robinson. And sure, he’ll be in the history books just for managing, and I’m still not sure how he did it, to get elected president. And if he also accomplishes something in the next four to eight years, he’ll get credit for that, too, and lots of it. But in the meantime, he’ll have to take a few spikes to the shinbone. He’ll have to listen to the taunting, and the name-calling, and he’ll never be able to answer back the way he’d really like. But that’s what he signed up for. He could’ve stayed down in the minors, but he didn’t. And so, the pressure’s on him. I hope he can take it. I hope that he, like Jackie, keeps his head down and learns to shut out the insults and plugs away the best he can.

And you know what? Here’s something I wouldn’t admit to just anyone: I believe he has my best interest at heart. What he can manage to accomplish in this ferkakta cesspool of a rich man’s world, is another story.

It's people!

Look, it’s not ignorance I object to, it’s willful ignorance. Americans have made a religion of elevating their opinion, or their “gut,” to such an extent that it occupies the same rarified strata as the facts, and the worship of this religion of ignorance has gained such a foothold in American culture that its proponents were even able to propel their King of Dumbass Kings, George W. Bush, to the highest office in the land for 8 long, unabashedly and gleefully ignorant years.

But what do you expect from a country in which NASCAR drivers are admired as heroes, and activists like Al Gore are reviled as dorks and losers?

And before the liberal sniggering begins over the admittedly inexplicable worship by one half of this nation of dudes who excel at driving cars fast in a circle, let me propose a less popular target amongst the latte-swilling crowd: Lance Armstrong. Because the hero worship of Armstrong is such a typically American load of horseshit.

I have nothing against Armstrong personally. He seems to be very good at riding a bike. He also survived gonad cancer, which is great for him, but my point is that surviving a disease isn’t a selfless act. It is an act of immediate self-preservation. It may be inspirational for those who suffer from cancer, and perhaps those enamored of brightly-colored formulaic arm accessories, to recall Armstrong’s various feats of strength and stamina, but nothing he has ever done, including enduring the taunts of Frenchmen, will ever make the cancer of a single one of his fans go away. You know who might make cancer go away one day? Some dork. Some long-hour-working, incredibly smart and dedicated dork in a lab – just like the other smart dorks in different kinds of labs all over the world who are, at this very second, calling up Al Gore and saying “You know, this whole global warming thing is looking a little worse than we thought. Could you maybe make another documentary, or win another Nobel prize, because no one seems to give a shit. They’re all too busy watching alpha rednecks drive cars very fast in a circle, or wondering if Lance Armstrong emerged from the mountains with the yellow jersey.”

Maybe the global warming people should come up with their own stretchy colored bracelet. It could be green, to commemorate the color the earth used to be before the oceans rose and our civilization was reduced to the plot of a spectacularly bad Kevin Costner vehicle. I’m not sure what they should write on the bracelet, though. Lance’s says “LIVE STRONG.” Maybe theirs should say “HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!”

Again, I’m not impugning Armstrong’s character. And I don’t mean to pick on athletes in general. Athletes, usually, just want to play and get paid. It’s our culture that worships or condemns them out of all proportion. And ultimately, it’s wrong to blame the fiddle for the incineration of Rome.

And speaking of allusions to the demise of a great civilization, if the McCain/Palin platform wasn’t the very embodiment of Nero fiddling, then I’m not sure what could possibly ever be.

Palin, the acknowledged heir apparent to the Dumbass crown, continues, long after the point when anyone should be listening to her, to yammer on about completely stupid, disingenuous self-serving crap. And her inexplicable worshipers – who apparently follow after her because she’s a mom*, or because she drops her Gs, or whatever stupid goddamn reason they follow her, continue to think that she makes sense. And why? Because – here we go again – they feel it. In their guts.

Well, maybe it’s better if they think back to their school days, back to when education perhaps actually meant something to them, and think what their teachers would’ve made of what passes for acceptable political discourse these days. Yeah, maybe they should ask their old English teachers what they think of Sarah Palin, because I’m pretty sure that the two words that won’t pass their lips in response are “makes sense.”

Goddamn but the whole country seems addicted to dumbassery these days, whether it’s the fucking stupid old people who think that now that Charlton Heston is dead, the US government is finally free to initiate Operation Soylent Green, and euthanize their moronic asses under the guise of healthcare reform, or the comically enraged white dudes who believe all the congressional and radio and TV yammerers who say that Obama and Sotomayor are racists.

Yes, they’re my favorite dumbasses of all, those who refuse to see that an acknowledgment of the struggle is not an endorsement of favoritism. But then, the only thing those old white dudes have to struggle with is to not say the N word when their mike is live.

I dunno, though, we’re all so invested in the ignorant and the dumbass, how can we just give it up, cold turkey? How can we put down the reality television and the Fox News and the “Transformers” franchise just like that? And what would happen to Christianity, if people stopped attributing the outcomes of their lives to a mythical being, and believed that their own actions had the power to move us all forward? Would the world crumble? I mean, more than it already is?

Stay tuned, readers. The pendulum may have reached the furthest point on its dumbass swing, which, if true, means we may finally be on the verge of an age of enlightenment. We may, as a collective human society, finally begin the essential movement forward and away from our own destruction.

Or not. You know. What the fuck do I know? All I know is that I am beat, and besides, all those episodes of “Bridezillas” on my DVR aren’t going to watch themselves.

*Like there's never been an ignorant one of those.

Don't bother, they're here

Every time I think that the Republicans are going to find a way to halt their rapid succession of credibility implosions, they up and prove me wrong.

Granted, I thought that it was smart of them to ultimately not stand in the way of Sotomayor’s confirmation, and then I read that except for Lindsay Graham, who had perhaps mistakenly committed to voting her up before receiving his RNC-issued “no fucking way” memo, the Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee decided to have one last wise-Latina-riffic bitch-out. Whew! And I was worried that the Republicans might shave off some percentage of conservative Catholic Latinos in the next election! No need to fret about that any more.

You know, readers, I was a waitress and a bartender for about ten years of my life, and during that time I was treated just about every way a human being can be treated. But let me just say, if anyone had asked me, in a tone that brought new meaning to the word condescension, “Do you have a temperament problem?” I would’ve been over that bar and swinging my trusty Chicago bartender-issued Louisville Slugger, hoping to teach them what a temperament problem truly looked like. Believe me, in my day, I went over the bar for a lot less.

Also, it might help establish Republicans as something other than racist idiots if they stopped with the Birther stuff already. Even now that it’s clear, as anyone who can read words or understand speech will tell you, what a pathetic empty hoax this whole thing is, there are still lots of Republicans that would rather look like idiots than admit that a black Democratic president is a bona fide American.

It’s a pretty pathetic effort, compared to the last time Republicans sabotaged a fairly-elected commander in chief. That one was well done. Maybe the Birthers should call James Baker, you know, see what he’s up to. He might be available, like, for cheap.

Senator Voinovich of Ohio is upset about his party’s image, make no mistake, and he’s willing to name names, too, regarding who’s responsible. Well, not exactly “name names.” More like “toss around the kind of vague, insulting generalities for which his party has become known.” Voinovich blames, ahem, “Southerners,” and their yammer show version of the Rebel Yell, for the state his party is in.

Republicans like Texas Senator John Cornyn tend to give credence to Voinovich’s argument, especially when Cornyn argues in public that the US government needs to fund expensive planes that don’t work in case we have to bomb India.

What the?

Oh, wait. Did he say India? He meant China. In case we have to bomb China. China. Bomb. China.

It’s a unique way to deal with our largest creditor and the country that holds our financial future in its hands, I guess. I guess if someone offered me a chance to bomb the offices of Citibank Visa, I’d have to think about it pretty hard.

Also giving credence to Voinovich’s theory is Rep. Sen. DeMint of South Carolina, who claimed that the GOP would use the health care issue to “break” Obama, and that it would be his “Waterloo.” I presume DeMint means that health care would be a major losing battle for Obama, and not that it would be the first of his many top ten pop hits.

And I wonder where the outrage is, over a United States Senator who has no qualms about stating publicly that he is going to do everything in his power to crush efforts to solve the problem of 46 million Americans who are sick, dying, or denied basic care for want of health insurance. 46 million Americans who have been, or would be, turned away even from emergency room treatment, because they aren’t one of the lucky ones who has been offered coverage at a price they can afford to pay. It is the shame of our generation that we have allowed Wall Street to flourish while citizens all over this country line up for days for donated medical services at regional fairgrounds where "health care expeditions" provide care for uninsured Americans in the stalls normally reserved for show cattle.

In fact, show cattle receive better medical treatment than most Americans do.

You know who else gets better treatment than most Americans? Members of Congress. Their health care plan is pretty flippin sweet. Just a little something to ponder while they vote to deny you your health care plan.

You know who else gets great health care at government expense? Veterans. Of course no one would deny that they deserve the best medical treatment this country can provide. What surprises me is that Republicans are allowed to state, quite openly and without any ensuing backlash, that the rest of us "do not deserve" the same level of healthcare as veterans receive.

I'm not going to argue that I do deserve the same as them, I'm just arguing that we've proven that we can run an excellent health care system. So why do they get to keep arguing that we can't?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Voinovich, determined to make his point, also called out Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), he of the Ricky Ricardo-esque admonishments to Sotomayor. And while I’ll agree that a lawmaker who calls the “gay agenda” the “greatest threat to our freedom we have today,” is an embarrassment, I don’t think you can really sell Oklahoma as a “Southern” state. Texas, maybe. Not Oklahoma. Also, let’s not forget that one of the most embarrassing fools to ever hold national office, Michelle Bachman, comes from a state north of Ohio. Not to mention western state douchebags like Senator Ensign of Nevada, who wailed from the Senate Floor about the sanctity of marriage even as he was cheating on his own wife with the wife of one of his best friends. So sorry, Voino, but you’re going to have to stop the geographic profiling and face the facts that although not all Republicans are lying cheating dumbfuck clowns, these days, if you come across a lying cheating dumbfuck clown, chances are, they’re a Republican.

You're going to feel some pressure

Jeezy creezy, readers, we suck, and allow me to explain why.

If the next presidential election were to be held right now, Obama would be neck and neck with Mittens and Alaska Spice.

I know, it’s hardly surprising. And I suppose I should be glad that the Republican 2012 field so far consists of the dude who couldn’t out-charisma Gramps McCain in the last primary, and the dumbest goddamn woman to ever hold a political office higher than Chicago Alderwoman or Congresswoman for California’s 45^th District.

But I can’t be glad. Because Americans are so proud of their stupidity that Romney and Palin actually qualify as viable candidates to us. I mean, we elected a “CEO President” who had never been a successful CEO. We thought renaming fried potatoes would make people respect and fear us. And some of us, probably a lot more of us than we would like to think, believe that Obama faked his US birth certificate, and that he is therefore not legitimately our chief executive. I’m not sure how his birth in Honolulu could be considered such an unlikely event that it requires its own conspiracy theory, but let’s just say that the so-called “birthers” bring new meaning to the phrase “sore loser.”

Oh, and also “dumbass.”

Oh, and just for the record, dumbasses, you know who really wasn’t born in the USA? The other one.

Americans are so stupid that it seems as likely as not that we will demand that our elected representatives kill the only chance we’re going to get in the foreseeable future to end the vicious, deadly stranglehold that insurance companies have on our health care system. We’re going to listen to all those Republican and “centrist” Democrats whose voting hands are firmly planted in the pockets of industry lobbyists, and let them talk us out of a decent health care alternative and back into a system that is not only more expensive than a Federal option, but also allows people whose only motive is profit to hoodwink us out of the healthcare we already paid for. Personally, my insurance company just declined to cover a diagnostic procedure that my doctor wanted me to have. And why? They couldn’t give me a reason. Just because. Just because they can.

But hey, if you don’t have your own healthcare insurance horror stories, you can always listen to other people’s. You could listen, for instance, to this woman, who was kicked off her policy the weekend before her double mastectomy. Blue Cross claimed that she had not disclosed to them a previous condition: acne.

I shit you not.

Or you could listen to this dude, a former executive for Cigna, who also testified before Congress after experiencing a swift kick to the conscience about the policies his industry was engaging in. He admits freely that the healthcare insurance industry is primarily concerned with the value of its stock, and they keep the value high by unfairly denying claims and coverage, betting that the vast majority of people will be powerless to fight against them

And they’re exactly right about that.

But go ahead and whine about socialism and the far reach of the Federal government, ya big fucking dumbasses. You probably hate your insurance carrier, but let me tell you, your insurance carrier loves you. They love you, because they can take your money until you start to cost them money, and then they can drop you like a hot tumor, buddy, and there will be not one damn thing you can do about it. They love you because you and your ignorant Republican talking points make this massive fraud they are perpetrating possible. Goddamn but they do love you. They love you to death.

Jonah and the flail

I support freedom of speech. So if Jonah Goldberg wants to write a column suggesting that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wants to kill ghetto babies, and the LA Times, a paper apparently sorely in need of an audience, sees fit to publish his meandering, slack-jawed drivel, then fine by me. I guess since they’re done calling the Obama girls “monkeys” and “whores,” his fans at the Free Republic could use some red meat anyway.

Let’s just jump right in, shall we?:

Here's what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Sunday's New York Times Magazine: "Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe vs. Wade] was decided," Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, "there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

The comment, which bizarrely elicited no follow-up from Bazelon or any further coverage from the New York Times -- or any other major news outlet -- was in the context of Medicaid funding for abortion. Ginsburg was surprised when the Supreme Court in 1980 barred taxpayer support for abortions for poor women. After all, if poverty partly described the population you had "too many" of, you would want to subsidize it in order to expedite the reduction of unwanted populations.

Left unclear is whether Ginsburg endorses the eugenic motivation she ascribed to the passage of Roe vs. Wade or whether she was merely objectively describing it.

Oh, is it? Is it “left unclear”? Perhaps if one excerpted the entire quote (such as we must accept it in an edited interview), what Ginsburg meant might be a little clearer. This is directly from the interview itself:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

How’s that, Jonah? Clear things up for you any?

Having convinced himself that he has successfully associated our only sitting female member of the Supreme Court with eugenics, a movement most notoriously equated with Hitler and the Nazis, Jonah goes on to drop the bombshell that one of the pioneers of birth control and the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was substantially motivated by eugenics. Wowie! Shocking! To find that out, Jonah must have done some serious digging! In fact, he probably dug up a high school level social studies book, because that’s where I read about it.

I think Jonah’s point is that 1, the early proponents of reproductive choice were racists, and 2, maybe they still are.

Regarding 1, I wonder if he’s aware that many early members of the women’s suffrage movement opposed voting rights for African Americans?

It’s true. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, if maybe it was feminists, and not all those good ole boys down South, who were responsible for all that Jim Crow nonsense?

And don’t forget about those lily white founding fathers, man. They owned slaves. AND they wrote the Constitution. Does Jonah know this? Because maybe he should do a column about how people who support upholding the Constitution might secretly be trying to bring back slavery.

Regarding 2, Jonah invokes two dudes with absolutely no business representing modern liberals, and tries to imply that liberals want ghetto babies to die because otherwise they will grow up to steal our iPods.

I think Jonah, who has a tendency to infer a lot from things, might want to think twice before entering the whole does-abortion-reduce-crime fray. Because that fray has a whole lot of smart, statics-savvy dudes in it who would not only eat him alive, but would probably also prove to him that, statistically speaking, he sucks ass.

Furthermore, it’s certainly no surprise that Jonah either forgets, or is too stupid to have figured out, that it’s not the children of minorities that probably disproportionately wreak havoc on society, it’s unwanted children. And the well-off have, as Ginsburg pointed out, never especially needed Roe v. Wade. It’s poor and middle-class women who need Roe v. Wade, but especially poor women, who are more likely than others to not be able to afford preventative birth control, either.

Lastly, I think anyone with even a conservative-sized brain can see that modern eugenics is peopled pretty exclusively by conservatives, and not just the extreme, violent skinhead types, either. Take the members of the Quiverfull movement, whose goal is to push out as many fundamentalists whelps as they can in the hopes of keeping their own kind the dominant population in America. And Michael Medved, a prominent conservative, who wrote a column in which he postulated that “American DNA” is choice, because it’s all up-and-at-‘em and pioneer-y, and oh, a certain population that was brought here by force instead of by gumption might just be peeing in our DNA pool. Also, let’s consider everyday conservative dunces like this Fox correspondent, who’s just, you know, a fucking tool.

So, to take the concern that a lot of feminists have for women who have difficulty financing reproductive freedom, and to imply that that concern is motivated by racism, is fairly despicable. To attribute that motivation to Ginsburg, who is clearly not guilty, and then even to Sotomayor, which Jonah shamelessly does, is beyond even the Jonah Goldberg pale.

But, nevertheless, I continue to believe in freedom of speech. I also believe in reproductive freedom. Even Mama Goldberg’s.

All over again

I was walking down the corridor of the place where I work today when I was hit with a powerful sense of the ole déjà vu. I stopped for a moment, as I always do, to see if I could muster forth a premonition of what would happen next, but I was unsuccessful, as usual. I admit that it’s a fairly childish piece of behavior on my part, a bit like crossing my fingers and making a wish whenever I see a white horse, which I still also do, despite my abysmal success record in that area as well. Although you never know. Someday I might still marry David Cassidy.

I read a really interesting explanation for déjà vu somewhere. Basically, it postulated that the feeling could be chalked up to a small, momentary brain malfunction; that a neural misfire could cause a new experience to be routed through the brain on a pathway normally reserved for memory, thus making the present “feel” like the past.

I like that explanation. Now it makes sense to me to that feelings of déjà vu never come at significant moments, but always come at the most mundane of times, e.g., when I am pulling a long string of cheese off a piece of pizza and dropping it into my mouth, or sitting at the interminable red arrow traffic light near my house, or lounging in my backyard on a summer’s eve, plotting the violent death of the Freecreditreport.com guy.

Amazingly, I don’t believe I have ever experienced an episode of déjà vu while learning that some right wing ideologue is actually a miserable lying hypocrite, which just seems like a stupendous defying of the odds, doesn’t it? I mean, I don’t know about you, but it seems like, if I were to estimate the time I spend each day learning of the real-life hypocrisies of the holier-than-thou, it would have to be about 9 waking hours, plus also about 40 minutes of sleep time a day during which I am hitting the snooze button on the clock radio whilst subconsciously absorbing news from our nation’s capital delivered by the soothing tones of Morning Edition’s Renee Montagne. So…call it 10 hours of hypocrite revelations a day, give or take.

So, no, when I hear that another one of the congressmen who stood at our nation’s seat of government and condemned President Clinton to the damnation of eternal hellfire for cheating on his wife, has in fact actually cheated on his wife, I don’t think “Wow. Déjà vu.” I maybe think, “Another brick in the wall, huh?” or “What a huge fucking surprise,” or sometimes even “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT FROM THESE PEOPLE? HONESTY? INTEGRITY? THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THOSE WORDS MEAN.”

Similarly, when I find out that the $1.9 million (she referred to it as “millions,” but we’ll let that one pass) that Sarah Palin’s office estimated the state of Alaska has spent on defending her against scandals, was comprised mainly of the salaried hours of state attorneys who would’ve had to draw a paycheck anyway, and did not, as she so emphatically assured us, divert money from state troopers or education, I do not feel a sense of déjà vu, even though it is yet another Sarah Palin convenient lie in a veritable avalanche of convenient lies from Ms. Alaska. What did divert money from education was Palin herself, as it turns out. Also, just for the record, she didn’t sell the jet on eBay, she did campaign for the “bridge to nowhere,” she and Todd actually did have health insurance during that time that she said they didn’t even though it was pointed out to her by Todd himself that they did, they were involved in the Alaska separatist group, she did fire that librarian and that police chief, she never met with Russian trade officials, her teleprompter did not break, the Branchflower Report did state unethical activity, holy fucking Christ on a cross I could go on, y’all, but I think probably the recitation of Palin’s prevarications have already caused enough of you to drift away from this post and onto less predictable fare.

The thing is, with Palin and Sanford and Ensign and loonies like Bachman and Santorum and all the others is, they know that they can sell their fucked-up agendas to a certain portion of the public. They know that there are people out there who, for reasons past all sensible understanding, think that their wages are shitty because of Mexicans, and not because of Wall Street, and that gay people are disgusting sinners who do not deserve to live like “normal” people, and that the world was a better place before blacks got all uppity, and that if the government offered them health insurance, then our health care system would be in worse shape than it is now, as if that were possible, readers. As it that were even remotely fucking possible. And they sell themselves to those people as champions of their misguided ideals, and they repeat those ideals, and they tell them that those are the only real ideals, the only truly American ideals, and they enable those people, who, by the way, know in their heart of hearts that they are bitter, and they do embrace guns and religion as a way to comfort their own powerlessness; they enable the ignorance of the people who support them, and those people continue to support them, and it all goes on and on as a part of the huge cyclone of shit that American politics ever has been and probably ever will be, amen.

No, there’s no déjà vu here, folks, because that would suggest that the exposure of right-wing hypocrites is some kind of aberration, some kind of fluke, or trick of the mind. No, there is no such luck for us – as long as politicians make their living selling lies, there will be those who eventually become exposed as liars. What frustrates me is that generally, no one yet seems willing to infer that maybe, maybe they’re all liars.

Well, let me put forth, then, that if you are selling a lie, you’re a liar. And let me suggest to CNN and MSNBC and NBC and CBS and ABC and even Fox – let me suggest that if you pretend to us that you believe that the way to present an issue is to balance every truth with a lie, and let the viewers figure it out, then you’re liars as well. Every time you bring out an Ann Coulter or a Michelle Malkin or Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity to represent “the other side,” you’re a big, fat, stinking, soul-stealing, will-to-live-crushing liar, and if there is a punishment meted out after this mortal life to those who sin against humanity, then yours will surely be colossal, but, hey, there’s nothing new about that.

No time is a good time for goodbyes

Well, readers, I’ve spent the weekend trying to make sense of Governor Palin’s resignation speech, which wasn’t easy considering the only thing more fucked up than the content was the delivery. Is this something they teach you in the beauty pageant world, to talk like your speech is written on the bodies of thousands of tiny bats flying around inside your skull?

First of all, I think that her usual M.O. of making her family stand up next to her was an excellent choice to make for a speech complaining about how the media exploits her children. It’s irony so thick and meaty you’ll be tempted to eat it with a fork – but use a spoon, of course, readers, to get every drop.

Drops such as the one in which she asserts that deserting the governor’s office while Alaska descends into perhaps unprecedented economic hard times is what’s best for Alaska. Frankly, I couldn’t agree more, but I had no idea that Palin and I would be on the same page on that issue. Hunter S. Thompson once said that when the going gets tough, the tough turn pro. No doubt Palin will come to appreciate that thought as she struggles to deliver on her 11 million book advance from Rupert Murdoch.

Another drop: Palin compared her decision to the inspiration she found when recently visiting American troops in Kosovo and Germany. And what did she find inspiring about the troops there, you may ask? They “don’t give up.”

Palin also went out of her way to crow about how the Supreme Court had reversed their favorite whipping boy, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, on two recent decisions in which the state of Alaska was defending what Palin describes as “states’ rights.” One decision ruled that a mining company does indeed have the right to deposit slag into an otherwise clean, freshwater lake. The other ruled that the state has the right to deny a defendant access to crime scene DNA to test against their own, even if the defendant pays for the tests.

Hey, way to go, Alaska. Now there’s some rights worth fighting for. No wonder your former governor is so proud. Freedom ain't, as country stars and bumper stickers are so found of reminding us, free.

Palin also quite rightly pointed out that part of the reason she was quitting was because she was, by virtue of the announcement that she would not seek re-election that she had just made 30 seconds ago, now a lame duck governor, and lame duck governors do not get anything done, so she had just as well quit in the middle of her first term anyways. I can’t help but wonder if any of the governor’s aides had pointed out that such reasoning was not very sound, since she could’ve easily not announced that she wasn’t running for a second term, and therefore not given away her lame duck status, if that status was so meaningful that she was using it to justify walking away from the office that the voters of the state of Alaska had elected her to. But I’m nitpicky like that.

And not to get into uncomfortable subjects, but did she really say that the world needed more retarded children? Because, Sarah, darling, no matter how much you love your retarded child, and lord knows I believe you do – the world does not need more retarded children. Nor does it need more blind children or deaf children or children born with bodies that do not allow them to run and play. No one thinks things like that. Jesus Christ, think about what you’re saying once in a while, will you?

Some people will no doubt point out that she didn’t really say the world needed more retarded children. She said, in the context of complaining that people were making fun of her son, that “the world needs more ‘Trigs’, not fewer.” And yes, she did put her child’s name in quotes in the official text of the speech. I CANNOT DEAL WITH HER GRAMMATICAL SHORTCOMINGS, PEOPLE. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME.

So what does “Trig” mean, if not a retarded child? A child people make fun of? The world needs more of those? That can’t be right. Maybe she meant a child used as a political prop, but could never be referred to in that way by anyone else but her?

I bet that’s it.

And here’s the last drop: after an entire speech spent denigrating the “REAL climate change” (ho ho!) that occurred in Alaskan politics, and painting the situation there as one completely unworthy of her considerable attentions and talents, she then went on to state that the dude taking over for her was going to be really good at governing it, and she didn’t want to discourage young people from going into politics. Because it’s so worth it! But not for her. And you can change government for the better! If it were even worth changing, which it isn’t. Public service, people! It’s for losers! Or not!

Overall, I think I was somewhat stunned that the entire speech was delivered in a manner so stammering, halting, and disjointed, and with such poor skill and technique that it was hard to believe that the woman stood on the floor of the RNC last year in front of twenty thousand people and lied her ass off with a straight face and wink. If McCain had won, she would’ve been one cantankerous septuagenarian’s heartbeat away from being president! President! Of the United States! I mean, sure, we’ve succeeded in lowering the bar to a stupefying level over the last eight years, but still. Even George W. at his most mind-bogglingly obtuse would’ve had trouble coming up with this:

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

In other words, only quitters keep trying. Only lazy people continue to work.

OMG, readers, it almost came to be. Remember that, every time you hear McCain prattle on about teaching Iran a lesson or you hear that stupid, bullying, coward of a moron whining on and on about how hard it is for her to stay awesome. Remember. It almost came to be.

Bells On wonders...

I think the only sector of the market that Ed Hardy has not penetrated is women's hygiene products. Is that because an Ed Hardy douchebag would be redundant?

Don't be callin out mercy

I have to admit I am a little relieved Michael Jackson is dead. He was messed up beyond all measure, but he was too famous and powerful to ever be helped by anyone. He only ever made the news when he did something appalling, and come on, he was never actually going to make that comeback or make another good piece of music, so all the "how ironic that he died just as he was about to reclaim his status" stuff is bullshit, and we all know it.

He was the quintessential imploding star, yes, although he took that paradigm to a stupefying level. He was incapable of distinguishing reality from the narrative that he paid people to perpetuate. Whatever it was that had scarred him, he was so frightened of it that he retreated from the responsibilities of adulthood entirely, and that's beyond sad. It's sickening.

He was used by everyone around him, from his parents, to his siblings, to his stunt wife Lisa Marie, who I think took off as soon as she figured out she couldn't secure a nice paycheck for Scientology. The failures of those who purported to care about him were colossal.

I find it hard to even be sad for his devoted fans, because they seem so deluded. He wasn't "innocent," he's not "the prince" anymore, and he only seemed to care about his fans to the extent that they reinforced his self-aggrandizing and self-damaging world view.

When I watch one of his old videos, back before he Frankensteined himself, I just feel sad. What a waste of talent. What a waste of a fortune. What a big fucking waste.

Never did far away charge so close

You know, I find it really touching that the Republicans care so much about the stolen election in Iran. I mean, they care enough that they are demanding that President Obama issue threats against the government of Iran, even though those threats could very well escalate hostilities between us, and cause their government to clamp down on protesters even more. That is a hell of a lot of caring. Good for them. I’m impressed.

I guess they have finally learned their lesson from 2000 - that stolen elections and illegitimate leaders mean dire consequences for the country that allows such crimes to take place. I mean, I'm grateful that they finally have learned, but I just wish they had let us know before BushCo ransacked the fucking country for 8 years, but, you know, whatever. Kudos.

Who'll stop the rain?

I always tend to feel a bit like Goldilocks when I’m away from home. All the different beds. Some too soft. Some too hard. Sometimes, the elusive “just right.”

Spooney and I started out our tour of the East Coast having a pretty good time. Sure, United demonstrated that they really don’t understand the “confirmed” part of confirmed seat assignments, and they seem to be of the opinion that eight rows away is really close enough to sit to my boyfriend on a six hour flight, but we managed a trade and the flight attendant skated us some free drinks and an apology. I love the flight attendants and the cockpit personnel on United. Everyone else who works for that airline can go fuck themselves as far as I’m concerned, especially those completely useless twats on their reservation line. United used to have great phone reps, but they’ve recently outsourced to someplace where poorly enunciated English, and the ability to read words off a screen, seem to be their only marketable skills.

So it was great seeing relatives in New Jersey, and my dear friend Kate in NYC, but once we got to Boston, the wheels started to come off. Yes, we had some great dinners with old friends at first, and everything seemed to be going swell, but then we hit a real losing streak near the end. First, due to my own dumb error, we showed up one night too late for our much-anticipated Red Sox game, and then, after I shelled out additional dollars to a scalper for 2 more tickets, the game got rained out after five crappily played innings.

Then, the seas were so stormy and rough during our whale watch that not only did we not see any whales, but half the passengers were freely spewing chunks. It was a five hour lesson in endurance and self-control. Forget waterboarding, man, if you want to torture a detainee, put them on the Boston Aquarium Whale Watch Cruise with six foot swells and a poop deck full of barfing schoolchildren.

On the morning of our 6 a.m. flight home, we got lost trying to find the car rental return. And then, just to up the anxiety ante, we got pulled over by a cop in Revere, because at 3 a.m., it is apparently difficult to distinguish the way lost people drive from the way drunk people drive. The cop berated us for our infraction, wondered aloud (and definitely rhetorically) as to whether we might be humans of the moron variety, gave us some very rapidly and impatiently delivered directions to our destination, and then walked away without saying a word of farewell, shaking his head in disgust.

And then United lost my luggage.

I was so relieved to be home at that point that I didn’t mind the thought of going to work the next day with my au naturale curly poodle bangs. What I did mind, is that I knew I would have to spend the day telling people that they no longer had a job.

Yeah, I found out right before I left what I was going to be doing the day I got back. And I’m ashamed to admit that it hung over me like a thundercloud the entire time I was gone. No matter how many times I told Spooney that I was definitely not thinking about it the whole time…I was definitely thinking about it the whole time. I was lying awake nights and stewing, constantly stewing and fretting.

I’m even more ashamed to admit that after a day of laying off talented and dedicated employees, I feel sorry for myself, and it’s not because I know that the clock has started ticking on my own job. It’s because it shouldn’t be this way. I shouldn’t be here, doing this bullshit thing. This incredible company, with its brilliant technology, should survive. It’s the new economy! So why does it feel so much like the 1980s?

Actually, now that I think about it, it feels like Carter’s first term. If you were alive and coherent in the ‘70s, you might remember that Carter tried to turn this country around during the fuel crisis. He proposed a plan for energy independence, practically invented industry and consumer conservation, funded alternative power sources, and even put solar panels on the White House.

Then came Reagan, who proceeded to, in one of his first acts as president, very publicly remove those solar panels. His second act was to take all the money for solar and other fuel technologies, and give it to the oil companies so that they could find more freakin oil. They did, they got richer, the price of gas went down, and Americans promptly forgot why they cared about fuel efficiency in the first place. They decided that Saint Ronnie knew best, and if he told us that the man standing behind us with his cock in our ass was Big Government, and not Big Oil, then by god that was good enough for us.

What kills me, is that if we had followed through on Carter’s plan, we’d be energy independent today. Yes, it would’ve been a major expenditure. Solar power is expensive, but you know what? It goddamn works. So does wind power. Think about it - we’d be off the Mideast grid by now, motherfuckers. I mean, can you imagine where we’d be right now, if we didn’t need OPEC? 5000 American veterans and millions of civilians from both Gulf Wars would be alive. There’d be less oil money to support Islamic terrorism all over the world. Also, with no need for a U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, we’d miss being branded as the Great Satan by Osama bin Laden. 3000 people get to go home to their families at the end of the day on September 11, 2001. The war in Afghanistan never happens, but it’s okay because without the US meddling in the Mideast, the USSR never invades Afghanistan, the US never funds the Afghani warlords, and the Taliban never takes hold. So the next time someone is droning on and on about what a terrible president Jimmy Carter was, shove that in their pipe and tell them to fucking choke on it.

And while you’re at it, tell them to shut the fuck up about socialism and the stimulus bill and their fucking goddamn tea parties. In case you haven’t noticed, American capitalist ingenuity ain’t shit right now, people. The profit for the technologies that will save our lives will always be too far away for those greedy fucks and their stupid, stupid short-sighted goddamn Wall Street crybaby investors. The only place where real innovation is taking place around the world is in places where the government is biting the bullet and funding it. Wake the fuck up. Wake the fuck up, people, and join me. Because I tell you, lately, I cannot sleep at all.

Hang on

Sorry. I've been gone, and I've been real gone.

Events developing. Issues mulling.

xoxox
v

Bizarro Jerry

Holy cow, readers, what kind of bizarro world are we living in these days, anyways?

Darth Cheney is supporting gay marriage.

President Obama is refusing to release detainee photos

Michael Moore is a millionaire. GM is bankrupt.

Eminem has a sense of humor. (Seriously, I mean, wow, who’s next? Sean Penn?)

And white men are the victims of racist Latina women.

You know, I remember when the CTA finally put wheelchair lifts on the city buses in Chicago. At the same time, they also tore out several rows of seats in order to make a sort of wheelchair cubby – they’re everywhere now so you know what I’m talking about. But I remember, many years ago now, the first time I saw the new arrangement put to use. Many other riders that day were transfixed by the sight of the man being lifted in his chair by what I must admit was a very slow mechanism. Everyone was kind of staring. And this middle-aged businesswoman standing beside me made a point of looking at me and rolling her eyes. “I don’t understand why they can’t have their own buses like before,” she said. “They slow everyone else down, and if they hadn’t torn out all those seats for them, then we could be sitting down right now.” She paused, and then narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t you think so?” she said, rather aggressively.

“I think,” I said “we should get down on our knees and thank our lucky fucking stars that we can walk onto this bus on our perfectly functioning legs.”

Okay, maybe I didn’t really say that. Maybe I’ve only spent the last twenty years formulating the ultimate trepverte response. Maybe at the time I only glared back in a sullen twenty-something way. But even back in my sneering, snotty, black-clad, self-absorbed salad days, readers, I knew she was an asshole. Even I knew that.

And I feel similarly about the LEGIONS of white dudes who are complaining about the “racism” of SCOTUS nominee Sonya Sotomayor. It’s just so unseemly. It’s just…so fucking obscene that a white man, or a white woman for that matter, would hear the following quote:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

and would have the gall, the unmitigated fucking gall, to call it “racism,” instead of – hey, I’ll say it – instead of…truth.

Because isn’t it true? Isn’t it?

If you’re having trouble with her statement, perhaps it might help if you consider that she might very well have had someone like our current chief justice, John Roberts, in mind when she spoke about that nameless white male. Jeffrey Toobin recently wrote in The New Yorker:

“In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.”

Yes, it’s quite a record. No doubt influenced by his background and his heritage as a proud white male Bush campaign supporter and general legal toady for the right. That kind of influence is apparently okay, however, the influence of an upbringing that takes you from the Bronx projects to the Ivy League to the federal bench – fuckin’ Latina fuckin’ racist, y’all.

And if you buy that, then I got a La-Raza-is-the-Hispanic-KKK to sell you, cheap.

Also, I would just like to state once and for all, for the record, that no matter how many times the yammering idiots on TV say otherwise, you cannot substitute “white” for “Latina” or “black” and prove racism. It just don’t work that way. There are, as I noted previously, LEGIONS of bitter white dudes out there who desperately, desperately want it to work that way. But it don’t. It ain’t so black & white, white dudes. “It’s a white thing, you wouldn’t understand” is not okay. “White power” is not okay. The National Association for the Advancement of White People is not okay. And if there were one, and you called it “The Race” (La Raza), it would be SO not okay that I’m pretty sure the Feds would be knocking down your fortress walls and blasting your compound with Jay-Z (with special guest Ciara) in order to make you and your similarly brainwashed comrades come out with your hands behind your heads, you fucking redneck racist AK-7 totin' motherfuckers.

Deal with it. And while you’re at it, get down on your knees and thank your lucky fucking stars that you were born white and male in a time and place where it remains, by far, the easiest thing to be.