Posts tagged mccain

Where’s the Outrage, Michigan?

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First, yes, there was a debate and Sarah Palin said words like “doggone” and “you betcha.” I want my VP to be smarter than I am. Biden kept his cool even when Palin repeatedly said nothing. Good for him. Palin was less stupid than she usually is. Good for her. Still, Bush is very “dadgum” and “yeehaw” so I think I want to go with a little smarter ticket this time. Check my Shared Items over on the right and I will show you some good post-debate blog posts, if that’s what your interested in.

Anyway, Michigan, are you pissed that McCain just frickin’ abandoned you? I’m inexplicably upset about this. Michigan has no rich people or something so he’s not wasting his time there?

As in national polling, it appears to be Obama’s edge on handling the economy that has propelled him to the top of the polls in Michigan. In the Free Press poll, Obama held a 15-point lead over McCain on fixing problems with the national economy, and he had an even bigger, 20-point edge on the question of which candidate is “more likely to fight
for the concerns most important to you and your family.”

I’ve never agreed with a statement more. I think this is what it comes down to for me with Obama: he takes my concerns seriously. My concerns about paying for gas and groceries and college and a house and speech therapy. I just think Obama knows that we’re struggling here in the middle class, while McCain really has no idea. Does McCain even know anybody in the middle class? Does he know anybody who has had to choose between saving for retirement or going to college or paying for speech therapy or buying a house? Oh my God, I just started crying when I typed that sentence. I think I’ve found my true feelings about this election. I’m not really an economics type of girl; I tend to want to talk about race and gender and civil rights issues, but man, this economy bullshit is kind of a big deal. We’re working really hard. My husband has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a job with a major financial institution. I sometimes get paid to write stuff. We don’t have credit card debt. We don’t have a mortgage that we can’t afford. We don’t have a car payment. We budget a small amount each week for “spending money” and we go to the dollar theater and Subway for fun.  And still we have to choose between several extremely important, quality-of-life things: speech therapy for our daughter, retirement, higher education, and a home. We’re paying for Maya’s speech therapy out of our ever-shrinking 401(k). I dropped out of school because we can’t afford to pay for it without student loans, and my post-college liberal arts job wouldn’t pay me enough to make it possible for me to pay off my loans. Maya’s speech has come a long way, but when we first got her evaluated last year, it was noted that she had a “moderate to severe” speech delay with motor planning issues involved. That sounds worthy of treatment, no? Our $12,000/year health insurance did not agree that it was worthy of treatment. I don’t know, I think basic communication skills are kind of helpful in life, but apparently because she’s able to chew and swallow her food, she does not qualify for health care coverage in this case. Do you want to know how much it costs? I’ll tell you: $58/week for a half-hour each week. Impossible. We have no debt, and still it’s impossible. Why is that? Gas and groceries maybe. The extra-curriculars that we pay for for our homeschooled kids are bargain-basement low-income rec. center prices. Some of them cost $5, none cost more than $25. We are not living high on the hog. We do everything on the cheap. I think the only “luxury” we have is cable and we were even going to get rid of that last year to save some money, but we decided that our homeschool needs make high-speed internet a basic necessity and it’s cheaper to get the internet/cable bundle. For “vacation” we visit our family and stay with them. We live on a budget. Every penny is budgeted. And Obama knows it. That’s exactly why he’s winning Michigan and that’s exactly why he should win this election. It makes me so upset that McCain won’t fight for Michigan because I think that means McCain knows he can’t help Michigan and we should all take that as a sign that he will not be able to help all of the people across the nation who are in the same boat as Michigan.

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I’m Trying, Really.

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I consider myself to be a person of varied interests, but I just don’t care about anything else right now. What could I possibly write about with this election stuff going on?  I didn’t call McCain a chicken. I didn’t make fun of Palin’s interview with Katie Couric (“I’ll try to find ya some and I’ll ‘em to ya!” WTF?) and I didn’t even mention the debates. It was hard, but I restrained myself. See my “Shared Items” over there in my sidebar? I’m even really super trying hard to share items that are not political (FAIL!) I really want to, but I just can’t. Even Kids Know Stuff is getting in on the political posts today.

Luckily, I saw the pic below at Racialicious so I headed over to PunditKitchen to see what else they had to choose from so I could still be political without actually writing a post about how unqualified Sarah Palin is or how awesome Obama is or how old McCain is or how racist America is. I thought I would find another pic just as good as the one posted at Racialicious, but I decided this one was my favorite. So I copied. It’s ok though because most of you don’t click on my shared items anyway, so here it is again, in honor of the post-debate poll bump.

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Now I’m going to do yoga and go thrifting and get on with the rest of my life. Maybe.

White Privilege Defined For Whiteys

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This might be offensive, but only to racist white people who think they’re not racist. (Haha, I just made it so if you flame me in the comments, that means you admit that you’re a racist white person who doesn’t even know he’s racist. Haha, You can’t win!)

First, I can say “whitey,” right? Cuz I’m super white with only white friends in a mostly white community. That’s how I know it’s sometimes difficult to understand white privilege and “benign” racism without reading about it on the internet, so I can say “whitey.” Right? Oh, don’t worry, our white privilege makes racial slurs against us impossible, so you shouldn’t be offended anyway. For real. We’re super privileged, you and me. (Oh, look, I just used an objective pronoun where I should have used a subjective pronoun, but nobody will call me a dumb whitey. It’s cuz I’m super privileged. Whee!)

Ok, so I was reading around Dawn’s Shared Items and found an article that I wanted to share with my (probably 100% white?) readers who probably have mostly white friends and live in mostly white communities. And because I keep hearing from people who are in their 30s, just like me, who really think racism doesn’t exist, or who say with a pout that if McCain wins, “it’ll be blamed on the fact that we’re a country of racists, but we’re not! *sniffle* We just want 4 more years of the same shit, I promise!” Uh-huh. Nobody wants another 4 years of the same shit and there are not enough evangelical Christians to vote for McCain while praying for his death to make a difference in the election. And I think there might not even be enough full-on racists to vote McCain into office. But, I fear, there may be enough people who don’t know that they’re voting for McCain because he’s a big ol’ Whitey McWhiterson, and these people will make the stupid, stupid difference in this election, effectively changing their benign racism into super malignant racism. So, this article is for the people who think they’re not racist, but are voting for McCain based on nothing. Because, are you seriously afraid Obama will give us socialized healthcare and that’s why you’re voting for McCain? Please! He’s going to be so busy cleaning up other Republican messes that he’s not going to be able to do that. At least until his 2nd term.

An excerpt or two or five (they were all so good, and I’m afraid you won’t click over there, so I had to give you five. Go there and read the rest. And then repent of your racism and vote for Obama because he’s the better candidate. Resist racism! Especially racism that thinks it isn’t racism, but it so totally is because, Why Would You Vote For McCain?!?)

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 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.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

Read the whole thing.

Also, this is good:

Suppose you are a hiring manager and have four young candidates to choose from to work in your business. The job involves managing a diverse group of people, having a basic knowledge of economics, politics, foreign relations, education, law, and government. You need someone who is a team-player, is decisive, and has a “get the job done” attitude.
Looking at these four educational resumes*, without knowing their race or their gender, who would you give an interview to?

Seriously, click that link and look at their educational resumes. You wouldn’t even consider Palin and McCain for an interview. LOOK! I’m not lying.

I Don’t Know What CNN is Talking About

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Everybody just calm down! Sometimes Wonkette is just silly, but lots of times, they’re really smart. Like this. I was going to look for something like that today, but it was already in my Google Reader this morning. Yay! Too lazy to click over? Oh, it’s just an electoral map that’s very comforting to people like me after watching CNN freak out about the McCain/Palin bump in the polls. I guess they have to freak out about something. It can’t all be sunshine and puppy kisses. Who would watch that? I would, that’s who. I love sunshine! Puppy kisses are ok if the puppy doesn’t have puppy breath. (Sorry Kathi D. I know I just risked losing you as a reader. Please don’t leave me! I love watching puppies kiss other people, I swear.)

Hm, I wish for your sake that I had something else to tell you. Oh, I know: If you know any preschoolers and you want to try to buy their affection with material things, head over to Kids Know Stuff to win a free dvd of Jim Henson’s The Blue Elephant. That way, you don’t even have to buy anything in order to win the preschooler’s affection. Win-win! Just like the election.

Consumed

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Apparently, I’m consumed with this whole politics thing, as if it mattered a bunch to me or something. I tried to blog about how I made an ass out of myself by spilling red wine on my n1pple at a euchre party with Bryan’s co-workers, but then I read that Sarah Palin is a HUGE racist and I got distracted. She said “Sambo beat the bitch,” when talking about Obama and Hillary. Seriously, go read that shit and then tell me you’re voting for McCain. And then I will tell you you’re dumb. Here’s just a little snippet:

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “f**king Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

Oh, and hey, there’s a giveaway going on over at Kids Know Stuff. Unless you’re a racist McCain supporter, then you’re disqualified.

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