now witness the POWER of this FULLY ARMED and OPERATIONAL feminist

Had to get up really early to be at the state house this morning, but it was worth it. I was testifying against a bill in a committee hearing to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana, and I got to be the first of the opposition to speak (right after the lady from Right to Life, sitting there with her mouth all pinched up tightly as a cat's asshole).

I'm pretty proud of how I did, and I think I helped. One of the Planned Parenthood lobbyists asked me to email her my testimony so that they could use it as an example of How It Is Done (eeeeee!) and so I thought I'd relay it to y'all as well.

My name is [my name], here on behalf of Planned Parenthood, mostly because of how much I owe of my own health and success to Planned Parenthood. I'm the first woman in my family to get a college degree. My parents were supportive, but we're a military family and as you're all aware, people don't enlist for the money.

My parents were proud, but when it came to the financial end of a $120,000 education, that was entirely up to me. I had no money left over for doctors. I literally endorsed my paychecks and physically handed them over to Butler University.

It would have been easy to sacrifice my health for the sake of being the first woman to finish, but thanks to Planned Parenthood it wasn't necessary. They clearly don't believe young women should have to choose between an education and basic preventative care, and Planned Parenthood are the people doing something about it.

I'll be 25 in a month and I've only had one routine pelvic that wasn't provided at reduced cost by Planned Parenthood. For years, that made Planned Parenthood the only place I could afford to get checkups. I had one shot to get a degree, and I was willing to put everything else second.

I still did do it. My late great-grandmother, who was a young woman during the Depression, got to see our family, after almost eighty years, produce a woman with a college degree. We're talking about a woman for whom birth control pills might as well have been magic. I wasn't stopped by poverty. I wasn't stopped by the looming threat of pregnancy derailing this dream for yet another generation.

If not for Planned Parenthood, I might have been. I see in this legislation a clear statement that women in my position should have to choose between our health and our education, that I should have had to choose: either I can have doctors or knowledge but not both.

It's 2011... and we can give women better options than that. Planned Parenthood are the people offering better options.

Reliable access to preventative care and birth control were the difference between the women in my family for the past eighty years and this woman now. When you're asking yourself whether you approve of Planned Parenthood's impact on this state, you are asking yourself about me.

Do you approve of Planned Parenthood's impact on my life? Or don't you?

Because Planned Parenthood gives women access to a legal procedure that some people may wish you could keep them from having, are you really going to let my success story be one of the last?

This bill has to go, and by saying so here today I hope to repay in small part the debt I owe to this organization. I'm proud to give this act of testifying and my tax dollars for Planned Parenthood and the patients who need them. Thank you for your time.

There's a chance the bill will indeed fail, because the Democrats on this committee are people I pretty much trust not to be horrible shits. I also don't think it'll pass because they try this every damn year. However, both the House and Senate in Indiana are controlled by Republicans, so there's no saying for certain what fuckery they'll get up to.

I'm going back tomorrow, and this time the mister is coming with me. I mentioned offhand to the Planned Parenthood people that he's a pharmacist, and they told me the House added a bill regulating a RU-486 in a particular very stupid way to the committee schedule at the last minute. I got an emphatic Facebook message from the Planned Parenthood lobbyist ("CALL ME" and her phone number. "Right now?" "YES."). She wants him to be available to read a statement on the bill written by one of his former professors and answer questions if the representatives have them.

The Planned Parenthood lobbyist who alerted me to all this told him that we're her new favorite couple. We're my favorite couple, too. The couple that cockpunches the patriarchy together stays together, yeah?

screwing it up

Dear Apathetic and Cynical Democrats:

If anybody screws up our momentum and advantage, it's going to be you. You're sitting there, wallowing in your learned helplessness, telling yourself that you already worked hard, and it didn't make everything all better. Can't you just sit this one out? You'll have the bonus of being right about yourselves: you can't do anything, nothing that you manage to do will matter, and nothing that you do which matters will last.

I don't want that. Do you? Maybe. Does it have to be that way? No. You were laying groundwork before, and you were laying it for this. You think it won't make a difference whether you work to get more Democrats in office or not? You think it won't? Why? It did last time. Six months ago we got the first piece of our health care reform passed, and a lot of it goes into effect today. Right before the mid-term election, things have changed.

Health Care Reform Changes Effective Today

Starting today, for example, insurers won't be able to exclude children from coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Rescission, which led to many Americans losing their coverage when they needed it most, is forbidden. Young people can now stay on their parents' plan until age 26. Preventive care -- including colonoscopies, mammograms, and immunizations -- must now be covered without co-payments.

Republicans intend to take all of this away, of course, and will fight tooth and nail next year if voters reward them with a majority.

For more details, the White House has a website dedicated to the new law, and you can probably find some good stuff in there.

I'm posting this as a reminder to everybody that this, new credit card regulations, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Tribal Law and Order Act, and a host of other things are why you guys need to get up off your asses and make sure that the Republicans don't take back the House this November. The few small reforms we've managed to get done are all things that they hate, and they absolutely will take them away if we invite them in the door. You know it and I know it.

Yeah, I know that a lot of Democratic candidates aren't really anything special. Frankly, though, you have two choices. You have one party that's going to pay lip service to your interests, and another part that gets itself re-elected by telling their constituents you are a bunch of greedy, lazy, godless, ignorant, freedom-hating terrorist sympathizers. There's a limit to what the Democrats are going to give us, but learned helplessness is not the answer.

This November, I need you to vote. You remember what it was like when the Republicans got their way. You remember Bush's second term when he could do whatever the hell he wanted, push whatever partisan horseshit came to his mind, and just in general actually do what his insane voter base had put him in office to do?

I want us to have that too. Don't fuck it up. It's about more than the Presidential elections. Some of your Congresscritters are up for re-election, and Indiana, I am looking at you when I say this: You aren't going to make America more progressive by getting lazy and letting Republicans get elected. We're only going to get more truly-progressive Democrats in office if we make it clear that they don't have to play to the radical right wing to get elected. The more Democrats there are overall, the safer it is for the progressives to come out and do what we voted them in office to do.

So do not fuck it up. We need more than a majority. We need a supermajority, because right now, a minority of the house can block things like common-sense election reform. We need there to be fewer Republicans in the House and Senate. This is not a time to rest on our goddamn laurels and say, "Well, we got really close! Good for us!" Now we're close enough that we can see the finish line, so don't fuck it up.

President Obama made a good point last night, and I wanted to close with it.

“The single biggest threat to our success is not the other party,” the president said at the Roosevelt Hotel. “It’s us. It’s complacency. It’s apathy. It’s indifference. It’s people feeling like, well, we only got 80 percent of what we want, we didn't get the other 20, so we’re just going to sit on our hands. We’re not going to go out there. It turns out bringing about change is hard. I thought it was going to be easy. I liked the cute poster of the Obama campaign. I enjoyed the inauguration. It was great when Beyonce and Bono was singing. I didn’t know that we were actually going to have to grind it out, that sometimes we’d have setbacks.”

He's got us nailed, guys. I thought we were proud of finally standing up and fighting for something. Remember how excited we were to use the words "President Obama?" You know why? Because we fought. We fought for something, and realized that we're more powerful than we thought we were. That little voice in our heads telling us nothing we do matters? It was there then, too, and it was dead wrong. It's still wrong.

Remember how Candidate Obama absolutely destroyed his opposition to become President Obama. That was you! What you did once, you can do again. You're no weaker now than you were then. You're no less now than you were then, and you're starting off much closer to your goal. Don't sell yourself short. Selling yourself short is the only possible way that you're going to fuck this up. So don't.

The Gratitude Project yet again

The Gratitude Project was begun several years ago by a LiveJournal user called estaratshirai . The rules are simple. Every day between Lammas (August 1st) and Mabon (the Autumnal Equinox) one must find something to be grateful for in life. No repeats - one can be grateful to people more than once, but it has to be for different reasons.

Friday:

I'm grateful to live in a city where we can get out of a movie at midnight and just sort of go find something to do for another couple of hours.

Saturday:

I think it's awesome that I bought these jeans for five dollars. I'm grateful for that.

Dear Indiana Meteorologists:

This is why we can't have nice things.

Take a wild guess precisely where in central Indiana we are right now.

Things Republicans tell environmentalists:

I hear a lot of oddball stuff at the door from people who don't believe that what Citizens Action Coalition does matters. We generally go for the consumer rights angle with these people, since talking to them about the air they breathe doesn't work (it just reminds them that Rush Limbaugh doesn't believe in global warming), talking to them about the water they drink doesn't work (since most of them have enough money to buy bottled water and do), and talking to them about their rates going up doesn't always work either (because they believe that standing up to the utilities will only increase the cost of doing business and therefore raise their rates in the end).

All that I can deal with. It's really not that unusual or difficult, since it all amounts to one thing. "None of those things can happen to me. I have money, therefore I am invincible."

But there are a few things that they bring up that are really sort of mind-bending. Not all Republicans are dumb like this; there are a lot of them who are far more environmental in their approach than they want to admit (perhaps because it might get them associated with liberals to admit that they care whether we pollute our groundwater). Some of the best logical disconnects I've seen are as follows:

"Wind and solar can't replace coal. What we need is more nuclear." Never mind the fact that wind and solar can and--in some states--do replace coal. The good bit is what often follows. "In France they get all their power from nuclear, and they've even got a way to recycle the waste so that it's clean now, too. That's what we need to do."

That's right! I have heard hardcore Conservative Republicans tell me that America should be more like France. Are you seeing why this totally blows my mind? The appropriate reply to them is obviously that French citizens pay half or more of their income in taxes, a huge amount of which goes toward paying for their nuclear program. Don't believe nuclear is expensive? Then why do nuclear states have electric bills twice as high as non-nuclear states. If Republicans want their rates or their taxes to go up, they should pick which way they want to pay. Either way they will.

AND ANYWAY WHEN DID THEY WANT US TO BECOME MORE LIKE FRANCE WTF

I also love hearing from these people that nuclear is so clean because the reactor only puts steam into the air. What the fuck do they care? These people don't believe in global warming anyway, so it ought to matter to them that the reactor puts out less air pollution, but at the expense of

• contaminated water (and less of it, since nuclear power plants require billions of gallons of water that they're legally allowed to take from nearby cities' drinking water in a drought, since the choice between thirsty poor people and dying crops is cake compared to a nuclear meltdown),
• national security risk (since even a decommissioned nuclear plant is an awesome target for a terrorist attack, and we can't mine all our uranium in the USA anyway, often getting it from countries that don't like us),
• higher utility rates,
• and the use of taxpayers as collateral for everything nuclear-related (see the Price-Anderson Act, which means that if a company wants to build a nuclear plant and defaults on their loan, if a company makes a mistake and the plant melts down, or really anything goes wrong, they're not liable; taxpayers are).

So yeah, it's a little better for the air, but all of those others things outweigh that. They should outweigh that even further for Republicans.

So why are they so pro-nuclear? Because the coal-dependent utility companies who make more money by spending more money (and yes, they're paid based on their expenses, which means their projects don't have to be successful or efficient--just expensive) did an advertising campaign decades ago talking about how great nuclear power was for the environment. These ads stopped because those companies got sued for lying in their ads, but not everyone knows that or cares.

Now, the fact that our government is actually acknowledging that global warming happens means that this is coming up again. They're being more careful not to state that nuclear power is actually environmentally-friendly at all (since now they know they can get sued over it and will lose), but they're still pointing out that this'd be an awesome way to reduce our carbon footprint (never mind that 1% of our coal plants in this country go to power uranium refinement and that'll only increase if we build more nuclear power plants).

This is something I hear a lot. "You guys aren't in favor of nuclear, are you? You've kept them from building any nuclear plants in this state; I don't support you guys."

The appropriate answer is, "Nuclear power is expensive, and if we let utility companies charge you for a nuclear plant, your rates would double. Everyone's rates would double, which is our members don't want. Also, we're not the ones who shut down Marble Hill. The regulators did that because the spending had gotten so high that it was no longer the project they'd approved. We're just the ones who got ratepayers a refund for all the money that had been wasted building a plant that never went online. We keep rates low in Indiana. Is that work you can support?"

At which point I point them back down to our support statement, and if they say no, I walk away and hope their neighbors are smarter than they are. Staying and arguing wastes my time, and only lets people like that think they're important.

Martinsville

Place we canvassed today kind of pissed me off, because I was supposed to walk back to our pickup point along about a quarter of a mile of totally unlit suburb and unlit country road. A couple male coworkers met me along the way and I had a big fucking stick that I'd picked up early in my shift, but it still kind of freaked me out.

Then I found out on our ride home that Martinsville is apparently a huge Klan haven in Indiana. Which explained why the other burb went to Greencastle instead. One of our canvassers is black. According to one coworker, in a place like Martinsville and when it's getting dark now before we finish at nine, "he'd be dead."

And you know what? First off, it just burns me that there are places like this that my employer just straight-up has to make sure his black canvassers do not go. Secondly, if people in Martinsville are that fucking hateful and violent... is a woman alone all that much safer there than a black guy?

The most frightening thing about racist people, at least to me, is not how deeply and insanely they are capable of feeling and acting upon hate. It's how nice they seem when they're talking to a white girl. It's how fucking friendly and fucking concerned for my goddamned safety they are in a town where those very same people would string me right the fuck up if I weren't the same color they are.

God damn this place. I never want to canvass there again. Night left me feeling like shit. As my partner said, "I'm sorry. I know it's not my fault, but in a cold and impersonal universe that will never apologize, somebody should."

To every person of color I know and to every white person with a conscience, please accept my apology on behalf of this fucked-up universe we live in.

Gail Riecken for the Win

Some of you may have heard me going on and on about Senate Bill 89, which I discussed in more detail here. To pull out the bill specifics from that entry as background info:

SB 89 is a bill that the Republican-controlled Senate handed over to the House that originally stated that physicians performing abortions must have admitting privileges at their local hospital. This is ostensibly to ensure that physicians performing abortions have gone through the extensive background checking and whatnot that hospitals do, which is not a bad idea in itself.

The reason this is a problem is that hospitals are loathe to give admitting privileges to physicians who don't live in the area, and most abortion doctors don't perform abortions where they live, because it'll get your family harassed by anti-choicers. The other reason this is a problem is that it isn't necessary. The only thing admitting privileges really gains the woman is being able to have the same doctor at the hospital in case of a complication that she had performing the abortion. (...)

The real reason for handing this over is, of course, to shut down all but one clinic in Indiana that performs abortions by requiring doctors to jump through a meaningless hoop with no penalties for a hospital that refuses them admitting privileges simply because of why they want them. (...)

The House put language in it which accepted the premise that those performing [invasive] surgical procedures should have local admitting privileges as long as we apply it to all [invasive] surgical procedures. (...)

Senator Patricia Miller (R-Indianapolis) evidently doesn't like the fact that the bill would now cover all surgical procedures, and also disapproves of the amendment giving funding for preventative health care for women. That's right! These amendments strengthen the case of SB 89 being a bill about women's health, rather than an attempt to shut down most of Indiana's abortion clinics.

So the very things that make it viable as anything more than an imposition of an unconstitutional undue burden are the very things that might kill it in conference committee. If they want to say it's not germane to apply this to all surgical procedures, and if they want to say that it's not germane to amend other considerations of women's reproductive health, they're going to have to admit that the bill is attempting to do something else--something unconstitutional.

Well, guess what? I don't think they got a report out from committee last night, and those have to be out for 24 hours before they can be heard for the final vote today and... I don't think it was. So now that the bill has died, it was safe for me to talk to a Rep who really really earned my respect and gratitude through this.

I found the session video archive for April 15th (starts at 4:50), and here's what she said. To my knowledge this is the only transcript, but the damn thing is public record right on the State House website if people thought to look.

Let me say first that I am well aware that this bill is popular and will probably pass this evening. My intention in speaking is to put on record what I think is a major flaw in this bill. A disappointment, a great disappointment, to me in my first year in this House. It is the inclusion of the statement that a fetus might feel pain. The fetal pain requirement is simply medically unsound.

I had the occasion to talk with Representative Tim Brown this evening just before we convened, and he told me that he believes that life begins at conception, and I am not arguing that point. What I am arguing is that pain does not begin at conception. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, it is not physiologically possible that a fetus feels pain before 29 or 30 weeks gestation. Medical experts acknowledge that awareness of pain requires the involvement of the cerebral cortex, which is not yet developed at 20 weeks' gestation. Now understand that I am not a physician. But I believe that we must pay attention to good, sound, scientific and medical advice. According to the Indiana State Department of Health roughly 90% of Indiana Abortion patients have their abortion in the first trimester. That same data reports no abortions past 20 weeks.

My fear in this bill is the thought of what lengths we will go as a House to get a bill passed. I am not advocating the use of abortion as a method to halt or avoid pregnancy. I do believe in a person's right to have an abortion, however, I do not believe in abortion. I have raised my two daughters to make responsible decisions and I do not believe that they believe in abortions. I cannot accept this bill that is, under the surface, a pathway to denying women control over their own bodies.

I have seen, I have lived, and served women in another country where authoritarian control over women and their reproductive health produced only two things: shame and guilt. Finally, I believe in this bill we have climbed the hill to a very slippery slope. A slippery slope that will only result to restrict women and our right to be responsible adults, determined with our husbands and our doctors our reproductive health.

I will not be voting for this hypocrisy.

I felt really really good when she said that, because in Indiana those views often don't get heard. So when she said it... I felt heard. I wanted her to know that, and I think it made her happy to get that feedback. This is particularly true since this is her first term and a lot of people were probably urging her not to say anything because it would endanger her re-election prospects if Right to Life starts fanning the fires of misogyny in her district.

I hope she gets re-elected. There are a few Reps that I truly feel have both the insight and the conviction to actually stand up for my best interests as a voter in Indiana. Gail Riecken is one of them, and quite frankly I trust our legislature a lot more with her in it.

You, ma'am, have been counterfucked!

You remember SB 89 that I was so pissed about? I guess you wouldn't if you only read my blog. To recap for those of you who didn't hear me ranting loudly about this on the third reading deadline night...

SB 89 is a bill that the Republican-controlled Senate handed over to the House that originally stated that physicians performing abortions must have admitting privileges at their local hospital. This is ostensibly to ensure that physicians performing abortions have gone through the extensive background checking and whatnot that hospitals do, which is not a bad idea in itself.

The reason this is a problem is that hospitals are loathe to give admitting privileges to physicians who don't live in the area, and most abortion doctors don't perform abortions where they live, because it'll get your family harassed by anti-choicers. The other reason this is a problem is that it isn't necessary. The only thing admitting privileges really gains the woman is being able to have the same doctor at the hospital in case of a complication that she had performing the abortion. This really doesn't make a difference in standard of care as I've had it explained to me, since hospital doctors are just as qualified to take care of her!

The real reason for handing this over is, of course, to shut down all but one clinic in Indiana that performs abortions by requiring doctors to jump through a meaningless hoop with no penalties for a hospital that refuses them admitting privileges simply because of why they want them.

This should never have gone to the House floor for a vote, in my opinion. It should have been killed in committee so that the Democrats whose constituencies are ignorant and backward won't have to vote on it one way or the other. As it was, a lot of Dems had to vote against their own consciences and the best interests of their constituents just because Right to Life will force them out of office in 2010 if they don't. There's no right vote here. Either vote for an unconstitutional piece of legislation, or lose their seat to a Republican who's not even going to consider the Constitutionality of this kind of bullshit.

So of course it passed. The House put language in it which accepted the premise that those performing surgical procedures should have local admitting privileges as long as we apply it to all surgical procedures. Lots of amendments to it passed, including one requiring the woman seeking an abortion to be informed that a fetus can feel pain--despite the fact that one Rep stood up and gave AMA peer-reviewed evidence that this isn't even true for the developmental stage this legislation addresses.

But it did pass. It passed from the Senate to the House, and lots of Reps who understand the notion of "undue burden" as the Constitutional litmus test had to vote for it anyway. A very small number sacked up and voted Nay nonetheless, and they have my gratitude and respect for that. Then it remained to see if the Senate conferred or dissented with the changes that were made to their bill in the House.

I have an update!

Senator Patricia Miller (R-Indianapolis) evidently doesn't like the fact that the bill would now cover all surgical procedures, and also disapproves of the amendment giving funding for preventative health care for women. That's right! These amendments strengthen the case of SB 89 being a bill about women's health, rather than an attempt to shut down most of Indiana's abortion clinics.

So the very things that make it viable as anything more than an imposition of an unconstitutional undue burden are the very things that might kill it in conference committee. If they want to say it's not germane to apply this to all surgical procedures, and if they want to say that it's not germane to amend other considerations of women's reproductive health, they're going to have to admit that the bill is attempting to do something else--something unconstitutional.

Let's hope committee kills it. That way all the Dems will have pacified their constituents by voting to suppress women, but there won't actually be consequences for those constituents' uneducated single-issue voting.

State Politics Recap

It has occurred to me that not everyone reading who is from Indiana is following our state politics. I'm obviously not going to share any insider information (or at least, I wouldn't if I had any), but if you're following various blogs and whatnot, you'll get something like this:

Indiana has a billion and a half dollars it's been sitting on for a while. Meanwhile, our unemployment is a full point above the national average. Democrats are saying, "Hey, let's use that money we were saving for a time when we'd need it. Because that's now."

Republicans are saying, "We may need it more later. Let's continue sitting on it so that we'll still be in the black on paper."

Democrats are saying, "Wait, what, why. We need it now."

Republicans reply, "But we may need it more later, and we'll have spent it all!"

Democrats: "You're damn right we'll need it later. If we don't spend it now."

Republicans: "Uh..... PROPERTY TAX CAPS."

Democrats: "Wait, what?"

Republicans: "CAP THEM. BY THE WAY CHILDREN NEED JESUS IN SCHOOLS. ALSO CORPORAL PUNISHMENT."

Democrats: "Uh... Right. Budget?"

Republicans: "TAX CAPS."

Democrats: "Oh, for Chrissakes."

Mitch Daniels chimes in: "At least we're not Michigan! Or Illinois! GOD THEY SUCK."

Democrats: "So, about that job creation."

Rep. Walorski: "I NEED TO FIGHT PLANNED PARENTHOOD FOR JEEEZUS. GIVE ME YOUR MONEY."

Ethics People: "Uh... you can't ask for money to influence bills."

Rep Walorski: D:<

Democrats: "SO ABOUT THAT JOB CREATION."

Pie Lobbyists: "BY THE WAY. THIS PIE. IT SHOULD BE OUR PIE. HERE HAVE A PIE."

Legislators: "OOOKAAAAY!" =D

Democrats: "Now that we've got that pie thing settled. Jobs are good."

Republicans: "PROPERTY TAX CAPS."

Me: *chucks a shoe at House Minority Leader Bosma on her screen*

State of the State

State of the State was given tonight.

INDIANAPOLIS - Gov. Mitch Daniels cautioned lawmakers about Indiana's fiscal challenges during his State of the State speech Tuesday night, saying that drafting a new two-year budget this session will be full of hard decisions and unwelcome choices.

But Daniels, sworn in to a second term on Monday, said spending restraints and other actions taken during his first term have left Indiana in better shape than many states and in a strong position not only to weather economic hard times, but make progress.

"Thanks in large part to the people here assembled, we can speak tonight of challenge, but not crisis; issues but not emergencies," Daniels said in prepared remarks.

Thank goodness! Here I was worried that rising unemployment was an indication that we were more than a little "challenged." Thank the powers that be we have Mitch Daniels to reassure us that no matter how bad things get, they're not getting bad for people whose fates weigh in, whose success is connected to mine, and his, and yours.

Seriously, this is the thinking you get from a guy who sees state government primarily as a competition with other states. Indiana can have plenty of jobless, plenty of people with no insurance, plenty of people with no food or stable living arrangements. But that's okay. Their crises are not our measure of our emergencies, and their success has nothing to do with Indiana's certain victory.

It makes perfect sense! They're not important anymore, because Indiana is going to win and if these people aren't gonna get with the game and keep Indiana competitive... well, then I suppose they'll just get "cut from the team," won't they?

And then we won't ever have to think about them again. *contented sigh* Doesn't that feel better?

Meme compliance!

Several days back on another journal I asked people to tell me what to blog about. One suggestion was that I blog about local or state politics as a counterpoint to my frantic blogging about national politics for the past, oh... six months.

Interestingly enough, this was a question I was asked during a job interview. I mentioned Hoosiers for Beverage Choices. So I'll talk about them here, too!

If you read the link I just gave, you'll note that Indiana does not allow certain kinds of retailers to sell alcohol on Sundays under certain circumstances. There are problems with this for many reasons. One, it's inconvenient for people who do their shopping on Sundays (like, say, people who work during the week) to be unable to buy alcohol to drink or cook with while they're there. Extra travel means extra gas money, and the likelihood of paying higher prices for cold booze at a liquor store when you'd have been just as happy to buy it warm at the grocery or pharmacy and stick it in your fridge later.

There's also the obvious influence of Christian Temperance-style sensibilities. Don't sell booze in grocery stores on the Lord's day! Never mind that it doesn't actually stop people from drinking on those days since they can still get it in restaurants and bars, or y'know. Buy it on another day so you can drink it on Sunday. But why the hell should I have to adjust my shopping habits to fit the religious sensibilities of a group that--by and large--doesn't really concern itself with "demon rum" anymore?

However, there is another side to this. The guys interviewing me mentioned that there were actually discussions going on in the legislature currently about this issue, and one thing to consider is that hearing from "big box" stores like SuperMegaUltraKroger or TurboExtremeHyperMeijer that they're being discriminated against so that owners of restaurants (which, unless they are franchises themselves, have only a slim chance of staying in business) have an advantage one day of the week is not exactly compelling. However, some liquor store owners don't want those laws repealed either. According to The Evansville Courier Press, "a common contention is that any boost from Sunday sales will be exceeded by the costs associated with staying open an extra day."

So it's not actually as simple an issue as it seems. It's not just Prohibition-throwbacks trying to keep people from drinking on the Lord's day, though it certainly seems to have started that way. There actually are decent arguments on both sides (even if, for the sake of my own ability to buy booze more cheaply and conveniently, I still fall in on the side of HBC).

All in all we had an interesting talk about it at my interview, and I think they were impressed that I actually care about things in the state legislature's sphere of influence. Maybe you'll be impressed, too! Who knows!

Victory and Defeat

As Reed, the head of Butler Democrats said:

"Yes, that's right: the state that at one point had the largest population of KKK members of anywhere in the country, a state whose politics had long been corrupted by racists and segregationists, a state that had not elected a Democrat for President in 44 years, a state that re-elected George W. Bush in 2004 by a 60-40 margin, this same state elected a black, liberal, intellectual Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama as President!"

Indiana: dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world, but by a much wider margin than any of us expected. I think the final count was about fifteen thousand votes' worth of difference.

I'm amazed. We figured Obama would win the presidency, but Indiana? Really?

We waited to start drinking until Indiana's results were certain, but we did it! Guys, we shoved Indiana into the blue. As Suzanne said,

Obama has reminded us that this country was not just founded on the promise of financial opportunity. It was founded on the promise of -ideaological- opportunity. Of liberty and equality.

Until now, it's been fashionable to be cynical. But I think that's been to hide the pain we've felt as a society, for being so let down, for falling so short of our ideals.

And now, suddenly, it seems that this election tells us that the idealists are still a majority in this country after all.

THAT gives me hope.

Me, too. Other great commentary on this follows.

Daughter of slave votes for Obama

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

Historic Election Stirs Homeless to Vote

Frederick Williams, a Marine Corps veteran scraping by on unemployment benefits, describes his living situation as "not homeless but close to it" and says he never cared enough to vote -- until Tuesday.

At age 43, Williams shuffled into a Los Angeles homeless shelter carrying his worldly belongings in a small travel case and a knotted plastic bag and proudly cast the first ballot of his life with guidance from poll workers.

Williams said he voted for Barack Obama, whose message of hope and bid to become the first black president of the United States stirred him like no other politician.

"This is history in the making. I wanted to be part of that," said Williams, who lives in a transient hotel a few blocks from the polling station at the Los Angeles Mission.

"For once in my lifetime ... someone really cares about the small people out there."

Williams was one of hundreds of people -- many first-time voters lacking permanent dwellings -- who cast ballots this year on Skid Row, a 50-block downtown area believed to harbor the highest concentration of homeless in the United States.

Poll Analysis!

Digging through the numbers, we see:

* Obama won self-identified independents (52% to 44%), and self-identified moderates (60% to 39%). I guess no one believed the whole "maverick" thing.

* While Obama did far better with white voters than most recent Democratic candidates, McCain still won every age of whites -- except whites under 30, who strongly backed Obama (54% to 44%).

* Obama narrowly won among men (49% to 48%), and won among women by a large margin (56% to 43%).

* For all the talk about Obama being unable to win over Hispanic support, Hispanic voters backed Obama by more than a 2-to-1 margin. McCain's Hispanic support dropped 10 points from Bush's four years ago.

* Obama won Roman Catholic voters, another group he was supposed to lose.

Fear.

I started making some notes the other day about the presidential election, the turning points, the strategies, etc. And it occurred to me that the entire Republican strategy was based on nothing but fear. Fear of change, fear of hope, fear of a skinny man with a funny name. Fear of socialism, fear of a tax increase, fear of government. Fear of anything that looked, sounded, or might be perceived as foreign. Fear of the light at the end of the tunnel -- it might be a train. (...)

It was striking to see how Americans responded to the fear-mongering. Obama's lead over McCain in the polls grew in the face of the economic crisis, but the lead even more when McCain and his party tried desperately to scare Americans. The more we were supposed to feel afraid, the more voters responded to Obama's message. The more intense the smears against him, the higher Obama's favorability ratings.

There were quite a few messages for the political world yesterday, but one came through loud and clear: We don't want to be afraid anymore.

Photos of Reactions Around the World

But lest progressives get too caught up in our victory, there is still a lot of work to be done. Proposition 8 (the California proposition being pushed by the LDS church to ban gay marriage and probably annul the marriages already performed) is looking strong. As someone with great respect for the establishment of marriage (something I didn't understand until I was in a years-long committed relationship of a my own), this saddens me.

As arctangent said, "I want to celebrate, I really do, but Yes We Can (But No, Gays Can't) is a rather difficult message for me to rally around."

Ballot Measure Results from CNN

The commitments of homosexuals were declared invalid in Arkansas (where they are now forbidden to adopt children), California and Florida (where they are now unable to marry their partners).

Stay strong, guys. This is your country, too. We haven't forgotten you. But here's my question: Where were YOU?

Constitutional ban on same-sex marriages passes by 238,000 votes statewide. (...)

And hey, San Francisco... the entire city cast only 177,000 "no" votes?! What gives? That's less than Pride Day! Where are the other 500,000 of you on this issue?

Help us out, here. We love you guys and we know you love each other. I know it's hard to be told again and again that you aren't capable of the same feelings and commitments that straight people are, and I know it's hard to be an exhilerated newliwed and then to have it taken away by people who claim they "don't discriminate."

But if you don't fight, who will? I know that it hurts to lose out on the Prop 8 battle because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints spread terrible lies about you and about this Proposition.

Right now there's a push to get the LDS church's tax-exempt status revoked because they used a religious organization to influence politics. Some info on that is here. At first I was on board with it, since I think that they were way out of line here. However, they were well within their rights even if they have permanently lost the respect of non-homophobic people nationwide.

So we may not be able to justify stripping them of their status with the IRS, but you can bet that the next time Mormons come to my door, they'll hear from me. And they will have some explaining to do and they will not enjoy it. Because if they're no friends of yours they're no friends of mine.

I know how much this must hurt, even if I probably can't really feel it as keenly as you must be. But I'm here. As long as you're still fighting, I'll be right with you. We'll get there.

Voted!

I am voter number 477 to put a ballot into the machine at my polling location. I voted for Barack Obama, and surprisingly enough did not go straight ticket. No waiting, but I did see the same adorable nun handing out pamphlets about Obama's health care plan on the steps that I saw during the Democratic primaries. She had a little Obama flier taped to the chest of her habit, which is how I first recognized her. I thought that was a hilarious thing to do.

That lady gives me hope. I'm glad to see that the economy, poverty, civil rights, and health care are issues for some classically-termed "values voters." You go, Sister. Those are my values, too.

FiveThirtyEight.com looks pretty favorable. Predicting an electoral vote spread of 348.6/189.4, with Obama winning 98.9% of the 10,000 simulations they ran today. Indiana is--sadly--looking pretty red again by their count, but I think it'll be close.

We'll know before the night is over, though.

Have you guys voted yet? If you have, post a comment here to show my little corner of the internet that you kick ass, no matter whom you chose. The point is that you need to vote.

Even I didn't expect this.

To my brothers and sisters in miserable calling centers across the country: cheers to you. The author of this article linked this to a listserv I'm on, and I had to pass it to you.

Dozens Of Call Center Workers Walk Off Job In Protest Rather Than Read McCain Script Attacking Obama

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says. The call center is called Americall, and it's located in Hobart, IN.

"They walked out," Williams says of her daughter and her co-workers, adding that they weren't fired but willingly sacrificed pay rather than read the lines. "They were told [by supervisors], `If you all leave, you're not gonna get paid for the rest of the day."

The daughter, who wanted her name withheld fearing retribution from her employer, confirmed the story to us. "It was like at least 40 people," the daughter said. "People thought the script was nasty and they didn't wanna read it."

A second worker at the call center confirmed the episode, saying that "at least 30" workers had walked out after refusing to read the script.

"We were asked to read something saying [Obama and Democrats] were against protecting children from danger," this worker said. "I wouldn't do it. A lot of people left. They thought it was disgusting."

This worker, too, confirmed sacrificing pay to walk out, saying her supervisor told her: "If you don't wanna phone it you can just go home for the day."

The script coincided with this robo-slime call running in other states, but because robocalling is illegal in Indiana it was being read by call center workers.

Representatives at Americall in Indiana, and at the company's corporate headquarters in Naperville, Illinois, didn't return calls for comment.

Paid callers are desperate and unhappy with their jobs, only working there if they absolutely cannot make it without the pay from that awful job (and I should know, I've done similar work for over four years now), but even callers have limits. Enough lies and filth and even callers have pangs of conscience.

Perhaps you don't get how important this is. I raise money for nonprofit organizations. This means I will ask you three or four times for set dollar amounts no matter who you are, what your finances are, what terminal illness you have (no really, I have no problem hounding cancer patients because sometimes they do give), or how long you've been on disability or social security. I will ask you for money because I don't care about you, I care about doing what I'm told and making my rent.

But even callers--and the good ones are all as ruthless as I am--have their limits. Karl Rove calls McCain on his dishonesty, and now paid call center workers are saying no.

Congratulations, McCain. You did what cancer patients, sweet old ladies, angry nuns, and impoverished grad students can't. You made callers feel dirty, and you lost them.

Good work, asshole.

Owned.

Thanks to McGrath over at Exploring Our Matrix for linking this. It filled me with joy.

So Obama got a question in Indiana at one point from a guy who read that Obama doesn't think we should say the pledge of allegiance and whatnot, alluding to the bizarre email campaign that states Obama's a Muslim (AKA terrorist, obviously) sleeper agent.

Obama responded that he's been saying the pledge since he was three, and you shouldn't believe everything you get emailed. For example, if someone from Nigeria is offering you a lot of money?

Don't give him your bank account number.

Indiana and North Carolina Primaries

Obama Will Win More Delegates Than Clinton

Early reports show that Barack Obama will win North Carolina, giving the Illinois senator bragging rights in the battle for delegates tonight. Indiana remains too close to call with half of the state yet to report. However, CNN and other media organizations are reporting that Obama has made headway among white blue-collar voters in Indiana, a constituency that played key roles in Clinton’s victories in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and in her claim that Obama could not win a national election against John McCain.

Prior to tonight’s results, the Forbes Delegate Calculator showed that even if the Democratic candidates split both contests, Obama would retain a significant lead in delegates. In addition, a close finish in Indiana and an Obama victory in North Carolina (which appears imminent) will make it very difficult for Clinton to approach victory with only five states remaining. Conservative projections of tonight's results, with Obama winning 55% of North Carolina and Clinton winning 55% of Indiana (both smaller margins than current exit polls suggest) would leave Obama with an overall delegate advantage of 142 delegates. The New York senator’s appeal to unpledged superdelegates also appears to lose steam with an Obama victory, particularly if exit polls continue to show a pick-up among white, blue-collar voters. Further adding to Clinton's woes, the aforementioned delegate gap means the New York senator would have to win two-thirds of the remaining delegates (pledged and super) to win the nomination--a very tall order.

Many analysts held that Clinton would need to net 20 delegates to make her case for a continued shift in momentum after her delegate victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania (Obama won Texas thanks to the hybrid primary/caucus system). But an Obama victory in North Carolina makes it mathematically impossible for Clinton to claim victory by that margin this evening, and it destroys her claim that she has picked up momentum at Obama's expense.

Team Clinton, perhaps sensing the inevitability of an Obama victory in North Carolina, reignited the debate over the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida. The newest proposal calls for a re-vote (of sorts) to take place on August 5 when both states will host primary elections. While the addition of a presidential column to the ballots would offer Clinton the possibility to make up ground in the race for presidential delegates, it is highly unlikely that the state committees would allow such a vote to take place, since national Democratic bylaws would need to be changed for elections taking place during the Democratic convention to be counted.

If Clinton can manage a narrow victory in Indiana, the Clinton spin machine will point to pre-election claims that Indiana marks a turning point in this election. However, the math does not agree with this spin. Obama continues to lead in delegates, popular vote and total states won. Although Obama has struggled to pick up blue-collar whites in the numbers that Clinton has, these voters have traditionally voted Democratic in recent years. If Obama is the nominee in November, he will have to reach this block to defeat John McCain. What is clear, however, is that with over 90% of African-American voters supporting Barack Obama in Indiana and North Carolina, Obama is poised to be the Democratic nominee.

--Paul M. Murdock

Fantastic.

Conspiracy!

A Clinton advisor is claiming conspiracy over a youtube video making the rounds. He claims to have said, "How would you like to be in the White House right now?" But the story is that he called people from Indiana "worthless white niggers."

The video that caused the ruckus has been taken down, and here is the original. It's not getting as much play, but in the interests of giving people something they can actually watch... here it is. The phrase in question is at about 4:47. He definitely says, "Those people are shit/shitting," but it's up to you whom he was referencing and what else was said.

Edit: The more I think about this, the more I think it really is a non-issue. Someone on my LJ mentioned that it does make sense for Kantor to have been talking about the Bush camp "shitting" over the results favoring Clinton in that other Clinton election many moons ago. More importantly, he brought something up that I feel is a pressing concern.

To take such a scenario as credible seems to require having pre-emptively decided that no one associated with the Clintons is a decent human being.

I think there's this drive to turn the petty non-issue bickering back at Clinton, if only to show that Obama's not getting talked about because he's the sleaziest dude around... but because the Clintons are willing to "go there," while taking advantage of the fact no one's doing it to them. So yeah, there's a tendency now to leap on the Clinton camp scratching and tearing, if only as a reaction to receiving huge piles of the same from them.

Still. Saying "they started it" doesn't really excuse it, and this is a tendency that even I'm not immune to (obviously).

It's a high standard and even I'm not living up to it as well as I should. But even having said that, I feel we can do better. If nothing else, I can do better. Props to arctangent for reminding me.

Bitterness in Rural America

Obama's "Gaffe:" Some Perspective

I had to take a second to find an article that wasn't ridiculously biased, and included analysis on both sides of this. This blog entry seems pretty good for that.

We're dealing tonight with a classic Kinsleyian "gaffe," where a candidate says what he means and then is forced to account for it. Let's separate, for the moment, the politics of Obama's words from the argument he is making.

At his San Francisco fundraiser, Obama was sketching out a variation of the Thomas Frank argument about working class voters who seem to choose candidates whose policies cut against their economic interest. In Obama's version, working class voters in the Midwest have been inured to promises of economic redress because both Democrats and Republicans promise to help and never do; since government is a source of distress in their lives, they organize their politics around more stable institutions, like churches or cultural practices, like hunting. The outlet for their economic duress is in lashing out, in giving voice to their grievances; In Obama's formulation, Republicans are especially eager and willing to exploit cultural trigger points.

"But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

There is some truth to this. Even John McCain has expressed a similar sentiment about immigration politics.

But the perilous words for Obama are "bitter," "cling to," "guns" and "religion." Those disinclined to put themselves in Obama's head will read the sentences and see Obama dismissing both religion and American gun culture the opiates of the masses and suggesting that their faith and lifestyle are the product of their bitterness. Voters may believe that one's position on cultural issues is a better reflection of their inner values than one's position on economics.

The substance of what Obama said has the makings of a very good Firing Line broadcast. (Alas...)

The elite media and most Democrats will say... "yeah.. .So? Obama is simply describing world as we know it." His opponents and people who are inclined to view Obama as an elitist will say, "he is dismissing the culture and religion of working class whites."

Indeed, the responses to Obama's words have proven (to Obama allies) a part of his argument. Conservatives are already portraying Obama as liberal, elite, out of touch with the values of ordinary Americans -- exactly the type of legerdemain that Obama was pointing to.

So there's a debate to be had about substance.

But the politics are unquestionably dangerous for a candidate whose appeal depends on him transcending traditional political adjectives like "liberal" or "elite."

Despite his working class upbringing, Obama's hyperconfidence sometimes translates as holier-than-thou, elitist, aristocratic, Dukakis-esque. Republicans know that these attributes aren't popular in middle America, so they will use every opportunity to remind independents and moderates about them.

Obama's professorial disquisition at a fundraiser reinforces in real time these stereotypes. And the complexity of his subject matter does not lend itself to an easy response.

One bright spot for Obama: his campaign's response to the story was quick and strong. Obama himself extemporaneously incorporated a defense of his remarks about an hour and a half after the story broke; the Obama campaign sent reporters examples of similar comments made by Hillary Clinton; the campaign entrusted Tommy Vietor, a mid-level spokesman, to give its official response; had a more senior campaign official given the response, it would have conveyed panic.

Obama's response is as follows:

And for 25, 30 years Democrats and Republicans have come before them and said we’re going to make your community better. We’re going to make it right and... nothing ever happens. And of course they’re bitter. Of course they’re frustrated. You would be too. In fact many of you are. Because the same thing has happened here in Indiana. The same thing happened across the border in Decatur. The same thing has happened all across the country. Nobody is looking out for you. Nobody is thinking about you.

And so people end up- they don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them. So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.

So I made this statement– so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’

Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain—it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I’m out of touch?

No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania. I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.

I've lived in small-town midwestern America since I was twelve. And, uh... yeah. He's in touch with me. He's in touch with the people I know who vote for officials and politicians who don't give a fuck about their economic interests simply because they've stopped trying to find politicians who care about their economic interests. The best they can do is find someone who'll let them keep their guns, who'll let them build churches on every corner so that they can turn to God to solve problems that mortals in office don't seem to be interested in fixing.

It's bitterness plain and simple to label the government as hopelessly and unfixably corrupt, and to take that one step further and deny that anyone should even try to do better. That's bitterness, and bitterness is often a natural reaction to being seriously seriously screwed over. Rather than, oh I dunno, stop screwing people over, Clinton and McCain are just denying that the bitterness is there.

So you decide for yourself who's demeaning and devaluing the feelings and experiences of rural Americans. The candidate who acknowledges that bitterness and traces it back to political injustice, or the candidates who want to hide that people are upset in the first place?

People are bitter. They are upset. Like Obama said, you would be too. Acknowledging that is not disrespectful or condescending to rural Americans. Ignoring it is.