The Republican Women's Forum held a little gathering last night. It was called "W Stands for Women."

Who thinks these things up?

(You can watch video of this gathering here. Just scroll down and look for it under the C-SPAN video heading in the left hand column. I'm not sure how long it's going to be here, but hey.)

In related news, a federal district judge in New York ruled last Thursday, in National Abortion Federation v. Ashcroft, to permanently block the 2003 law banning Intact D&E abortions (more commonly called partial-birth). It was ruled unconstitutional because there was no exception allowing for the health of the woman. NONE!

Because W stands for women.

Just something to keep in mind:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Goverment..."

"This American government,--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage...Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way."

-Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

Hey, thanks to whatever anonymous person told me the link to True Majority's online voter registration stuffy stuff was not working. That's what I get for not double checking. It should work now.

True Majority has an online voter registration toolkit. I didn't know you could register to vote online, but it's about time. If you haven't done this yet, do it immediately. And then vote. Don't be stupid.

The dangers of television news. Lazy journalism, sensationalism winning out over reportage, sound bites sound bites sound bites.

Ugh.

Why are we anti-Castro, again?

Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival has some very thorough, very interesting background to US interventions in Cuba, and the reasoning behind our anti-Castro actions. There aren't many.

Willful ignorance. Dana Milbank's column points out how Bush's campaign consistently distorts and manipulates other people's words for its own benefit. They hear what they want to hear, simplify complicated statements, and mislead the American people. It's Orwellian in the extreme. They have perfected Newspeak in ways Orwell himself could never have imagined.

Reading Forbes

As a raving liberal living in the city of Boston, it's not often that I come across Bush supporters, and I've had many occasions to ask myself in the past year who in their right mind would vote for Bush this November. I don't get many opportunities to sit down with right-wing Bushites and pick their brains, and I tend to avoid ultra-conservative publications.

That's why I decided to start reading Forbes. It's good to get some kind of idea of what the opposition thinks, right? Reading nothing but Noam Chomsky can only serve to isolate me in my liberal ideas, and further convince me that no sane people could possibly be Republican.

I'm still not sure Republicans are sane, but I am fully convinced that they excel at the art of willful ignorance. I'll take just one column from the September 6 issue of Forbes: Current Events, by Paul Johnson.

Johnson is "keen" to see Bush in the White House because he was "revolted by Bill Clinton's lies and reassured by George Bush's straight talk." I'm not going to say Clinton didn't lie. Of course he did. He's a politician. But "George Bush's straight talk?" Giving the appearance of being a straight-shooting man of integrity does not actually make the words that come out of his mouth true. The tenacious belief in Bush as an honest man reveals how firmly image and illusion play into our politics.

Johnson, further, is "suspicious" of Kerry because he enjoys French support. He asks why the French are "so keen to see Kerry in the White House," but nowhere does he attempt to answer his own question. His distate for Kerry, in this regard, seems to stem mostly from what it appears Chirac expects from the US if Kerry should take office in January. A perfect example of right-wing use of inflated suspicions and rhetoric to paint a picture of something that doesn't, actually, exist.

Johnson then moves on to Kerry's supporters, namely Michael Moore and Goerge Soros.

I'll let Johnson's own words speak for his ignorance re: Moore:

"I haven't seen Michael Moore's anti-Bush movie. But all I have to do is to mentally line up Moore alonside Bush to decide whom I prefer...Bush looks to be a man who keeps himself trim through self-discipline, while Moore is a gross, shapeless, unshaven monument to self-indulgence and gobbling."

Way to judge the issues on their merits.

And finally, in a beautiful bit of irony worthy only of a hard-line fiscal Republican, Johnson complains about Soros's donations to the Democratic party and liberal think tanks. He writes, "No other financier of modern times has made such abusive use of his money to exercise power." Riiight.

Johnson sees in the Democratic campaign "a species of conspiracy by money men, showbiz celebrities, and other self-important pseudo-idealists to hijack the presidential election." He trusts that "ordinary American voters will recognize what is happening and vote accordingly."

So do I.

I'm starting to understand why all my friends are leaving the country.

Is Florida on the way to becoming the next Florida? Here's some stuff.

This is not in the least big surprising, but it is frightening.

I've been waiting for this since the beginning of the "war on terror," wondering when they were going to start including domestic political activists in the definition of potential terrorists.

I don't know what to say.

And something I haven't done in awhile...

What I've been reading: Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift, The Ambassadors by Henry James, The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman, All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve, The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion.

I attempted to calculate how many books I've read since I learned to read. I came up with 4,160. In the "I'm slightly obsessive" category: I wish I'd kept track of every book I ever read since the day I read my first book. That'd be interesting, wouldn't it...

Alright, alright. I'm horrifically embarrassed to admit that I even thought of watching this moving, much less having spent an hour and a half actually doing so, but man. The Mandy Moore phenomenon that is "How To Deal" shored up almost every point I made in my thesis so perfectly, how can I not mention it?

I knew this movie would be bad, but I had no idea just how bad it would really be. I thought bad in a "Clueless" kind of way. Maybe even in a "Freaky Friday" kind of way. Oh no. It was bad in a "why am I watching this shlocky badness?" kind of way. The screenwriters seemed to never have met a teenage person ever in their lives. The predictability factor was off the charts. For the love of buddha, it was bloody awful.

But here's why I'm writing about it anyway: there are some very basic themes that prevade in "female coming-of-age stories written in the past decade." These include divorced, inept parents, who can't teach their daughters how to truly love another person; young girls learning how to trust other people; young girls tormented by popular, bitchy other girls; young girls with fathers who aren't willing to grow up; young girls whose mothers are experiencing the same dating/relationship things (and hence are not much in the way of role models); on and on ad nauseum.

My god, this movie fit into my thesis perfectly. How can I not write about it, despite it's inherent, unacceptable, painful badness?

(And as an aside: After having spent the past few years examining female coming-of-age stories in the past decade in literature, might it be worthwhile to study it in real life, too?)

In the "Completely Pointless Thoughts" category:
Y'know when someone wins a big monetary prize, or donates a lot of money to a foundation, how the exchange of very large fake cardboard checks is often involved? Um, why? Where did this bizarre symb0lic ritual originate? Does the size of the piece of cardboard ever correspond to the monetary value of the donation? Whose idea was this?

Wow. Everything you ever wanted to know about food safety. And crossing the border with meat and poulty.

(Yes, it's USDA day. I'm that bored.)

And in the "Bureaucracy is Confusing" category: the USDA administers food stamps, WIC, the school lunch program, and several other similar programs. Wouldn't you think programs like these would be under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services? I would. The USDA also deals with housing and telecommunications issues in rural America, something I would, were I in charge of these things, likely assign to, oh, say the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

No wonder it's so hard to get anything done.

Hm. Another fun fact: South Dakota has more cattle than people.

Some interesting statistics from the 2002 USDA Census of Agriculture:

"Ninety percent of farms are operated by an individual or family. The number of corporate farms declined by 18.4 percent from 1997 to 2002, which reverses a trend that has continued without interruption since 1974.

Direct sales to consumers increased 37 percent from 1997, totaling $812.2 million in 2002.

The value of organically produced commodities reached $392.8 million in 2002. "

I have been thinking a lot lately about agriculture (call it a side effect of my trip to Iowa), and specifically about sustainable agriculture. I started wondering whether recent moves toward organic farming, and greater publicity of CSAs and farmers' markets, were making an impact on agriculture trends of the past decade. Reading Fast Food Nation a few times certainly instilled in me the desire to know better where my food is coming from. And after eating locally-grown organic produce, and realizing that the difference really is tremendous, I thought a transition away from corporate farms was inevitable.

It looks like maybe, for once, I was right.

(The USDA website is kind of interesting. But maybe only t0 me...)

From Washingtonpost.com:

"While local police were providing security for the candidates at the morning events [in Davenport, Iowa], three nearby banks were robbed within a one-hour period. Authorities provided few details of the holdups and declined to say how much money was taken."

Hee hee hee.