September 24, 2008

Rock, Palin and the Rumors (Reality) of a New World Order

Ministry and Megadeath sang of a New World Order.

“…Joining hands with the wicked one/Revelation has come to pass/ New world order, will hold the mass/A book written by man/Used to control and command/All rights will be denied/Without the mark you shall die/No confession, all is know/New world order, you shall be shown/New world order comes in stages/Currency is obsolete/Feel the agony of defeat/Symbol of society today/A must have or you shall pay/As human flesh leads the mind/Just as a pawn the last martyr dies…”

I couldn’t help think of my angst filled youth draped in black and discussing various conspiracy theories with my teen cohort when I read the recent article by Naomi Wolfe on the Huffington Post warning of the impending police state with Sarah Palin riding at the helm. Click here to read the complete article.

(more…)

September 21, 2008

Sean Penn, the media and lipstick

Filed under: Media,Politics — Tags: , , , , — Melanie @ 7:22 pm

Thanks, Carly!  This is excellent. For Sean Penn’s complete post, read here.

“McCain values McCain. His blood boils every time his integrity is questioned, as though his five-year imprisonment allows him the arrogant assumption that he may tread on all that followed unquestioned. He was one of the Keating Five for good reason. Indeed McCain had abused his power as a Senator in lobbying for Keating. And it was not until he was tipped off by regulators of the criminal investigation of Lincoln Savings and Loan, that he severed relations with Keating. It was a little late. More than 21,000, mostly elderly investors, had lost their life savings. And, Cindy McCain’s bookkeeping was not a thing apart. All the righteous indignation, or prior heroics one wants to advertise, does not change the pattern of self-service by this man of seven houses.

I can’t help but reflect on the issues of health and homelessness that our Vietnam veterans faced for decades, just think of the tidal wave of veteran’s issues about to return to our shores. John McCain claims the surge as a “victory.” Well, it’s no victory for the nearly 5,000 American dead. For the hundreds of thousands of civilian dead. It’s no victory for the veterans who under this Republican administration, it has already been demonstrated, will not be served upon their return. It’s no victory for our country to have a broken and depleted military, a broken and depleted economy, with so much work to be done at home on issues of healthcare, poverty, infrastructure, education, environment, and perhaps, most of all, security. And it’s no victory, that in attacking the wrong country, we boosted Al Qaeda recruitment worldwide 300% (as we stop-loss our own.) Finally, it is no victory for our children, reared in an America of such divisive loathing, enormous debt, and tarnished standing.

Despite recent boasts to the contrary, by the Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, (Bush’s key bumbler of the Katrina debacle) our country is not safer. It is not safer from without, and it is not safer from within. The divisiveness brought on by the policies of George W. Bush and John McCain has created an emotional civil war. We have to ask ourselves, at what point emotions may even turn to violence here at home.

By and large, the media is going to do what’s good for the media. If that means covering the McCain/Palin ticket for fashion, or fraud, assume fashion their more likely target. (While Americans died in the Middle East, Donald Rumsfeld was voted one of People Magazine’s sexiest men.) Palin, married to an 8-year secessionist, has as much as admitted that she has no interest whatsoever in any culture but her own. It is that kind of lacking in basic curiosity and the void of insightfulness that comes with it which embodied George Bush’s folksy failings.”

Hillary Clinton's message re: Planned Parenthood

Hillary Clinton and Cecile Richards were featured in the Opinion section of Friday’s New York Times.

“Last month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.”

Many of you have probably received the mass email encouraging donations in Sarah Palin’s name or came across the post on Feministing.com.

If not:

Go here and donate NOW!

Every time a donation is made, a card will be sent to Sarah Palin informing her of the donation made in her name.  You will need to include an address that indicates where the card should be sent. Use the following address:

McCain for President

1235 S. Clark Street

1st floor

Arlington, VA 22202

September 17, 2008

White Privilege, the Media and McCain/Palin

Filed under: Media,Politics,Violence — Tags: , , , , , — Melanie @ 11:13 am

Tim Wise, author of “White Like Me:Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son,” posted an excellent essay, “This is Your Nation on White Privilege,”  that examines and comments on the media’s  recent coverage  of the McCain/Palin ticket. To read the full post, visit Tim Wise’s blog at Red Room.

“White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.”

September 15, 2008

Jong and Rove (!) call McCain/Palin on their lies

Filed under: Media,Sexuality — Tags: , , , , , , — Melanie @ 11:48 am

In Saturday’s Huffington Post, Erica Jong asks John McCain exactly how stupid he thinks women are and forces the McCain/Palin camp to confront their own peverse sense of reality.  Even Karl Rove brought attention to their advertsing campaigns and the blatant lies contained therein. From the looks of it, the McCain/Palin camp have come to believe their own lies in a twisted postmodern political fairytale.  The current political campaign eerily resembles a reality show wherein the fictional becomes more real than reality. 

Jong in an open letter to McCain:

“We’re not that stupid. Sure it would be nice if the women of America believed that everyone with breasts and a vagina believed in equality. But it ain’t so. Women have differing views — just like men.

Some like beer; some like chardonnay. And some prefer AA. Some like automatic weapons; some don’t. Some think every pregnancy is sanctified; some don’t. Some think presidents should be qualified for office; some don’t care.

But to take the struggle for equal rights that has gone on for two centuries and embody it in the person of Sarah Palin is not just misleading but abusive. Charging rape victims for rape kits is a travesty of equal rights. Insisting that government impose your own views of abortion on others is anti-equality. Cutting funding for black teenage mothers is anti-feminist and racist. Lying to the electorate about your record is insolent. Do you think we’re too stupid or indolent to check?

We have checked. You are lying and so is she. But you must think that a big lie repeated over and over becomes the truth. And it seems that many Americans are with you on that. “

September 10, 2008

Seeing through stupid

Filed under: Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Melanie @ 11:22 am

Jamie Lee Curtis nails it on the head.

“Mr. Obama said it…. “They must think you are stupid.” Stupid to believe that McCain/Palin are “change agents.” Change is becoming this campaigns’ ping pong ball and we are missing the point. Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Be it. Don’t talk about it, don’t pontificate about it. Be It. Action word. Demonstrative. Maybe Nike just drafted off that great statesman and made us all “Just do it.”

Whatever, the call to action is now. Be it…

We are not stupid, but we are gullible, to fear, lies, misinformation and calculated deceit and that is what we are now up against and where we need to demonstrate the real change.”

Voting for a "Rock Star?"

Filed under: Media,Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Melanie @ 9:27 am

Just this morning the Minneapolis-St.Paul Tribune claimed that Palin is a rock star and that liberals are worried.  What’s so striking is the fact that just weeks ago McCain launched a campaign criticizing Obama of being nothing more than a celebrity.  His campaign claimed that the country needs a leader with substance, a leader that has fought and has the “scars to prove it.” Yet, his own running mate is touted as achieving rock star status and that it should give considerable pause to Obama.  Polls claim that Obama is losing support.  What’s interesting is that most of these polls have not taken large samples in order to make these sweeping claims and/or they do not reveal what part of the country was polled or how there were polled for these survey results.

While conservative media outlets and McCain’s campaign celebrates the very thing they criticized in Obama (sound familiar?), actual rock stars have distanced themselves from the McCain/Palin ticket and have asked them to cease playing their immediately.

The official Hart website states:

“Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart have informed the McCain/Palin Campaign that Universal Music Publishing and Sony BMG have sent a cease-and-desist notice to not use one of Heart’s classic songs ‘Barracuda,’ as the congratulatory theme for Sarah Palin. The Republican campaign did not ask for permission to use the song, nor would they have been granted that permission. We have asked the Republican campaign not to use our music.”

They added:

“Sarah Palin’s views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song ‘Barracuda’ no longer be used to promote her image. The song ‘Barracuda’ was written in the late ’70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The ‘barracuda’ represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there’s irony in Republican strategists’ choice to make use of it there.”

Palin’s image is selling even in the face of resistance and disbelief.  Media historians claim that John F. Kennedy’s victory was assisted by the face-value that television provided in American homes across the country.  Palin’s “rock star” appeal in the face of frightening takes on social issues takes this phenomenon to new heights.

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