The Silence of Our Friends

Too Little Too Late

Some Clinton supporters are pointing out that Hillary said this:

Clinton was asked by a questioner in the audience here what she would tell frustrated Democrats who might consider voting for McCain in the general election out of spite.

“Please think through this decision,” Clinton said, laughing and emphasizing the word “please.”

“It is not a wise decision for yourself or your country.”

...

“First of all, every time you have a vigorous contest like we are having in this primary election people get intense,” she continued. “You know, Sen. Obama has intense support. I have intense support.”

Clinton stressed that there are “significant” differences between her and Obama, but said “those differences pale to the differences between us and Sen. McCain.”

“I intend to do everything I can to make sure we have a unified Democratic party,” she said. “When this contest is over and we have a nominee, we’re going to close ranks, we’re going to be united.”

Be serious. Clinton, her campaign, and her supporters have been saying that Obama is an empty suit, all he has is one speech in 2002, that McCain is the one with experience, that McCain is the one who is patriotic, that McCain is the one who loves his country. They have somehow managed to make Obama into the worst misogynist who ever was born. After sucking up to McCain for months and talking up how much better he is than Obama, now it was just politics? And her supporters are supposed to vote for Obama after he has been demonized and McCain has been sainted by her campaign? Oh sure, they're going to vote for the shucking, jiving, drug dealing, undercover Muslim (terrorist!), jew hating, anti-American, anti-choice, wanting to start a race war with his reverend, empty suit, misogynist candidate.

Thanks for nothing, Hillary, after you and Bill planted your lips all over McCain's ass now you tell us, "Oops we didn't mean it".

posted by Donna at 8:31 AM | 2 comment(s) |

OMG! WAM!

WAM! is coming up fast. It's this weekend already. I'm getting very excited and just a little...concerned...oh alright! I'm a little scared and nervous! I will finally be meeting the amazing and wonderful Sydette, BrownFemiPower, Sudy, Lex, and Nadia; who are all presenters at WAM! While they are doing their thing you will probably find me hanging off of Octogalore, because she is confident and I am not, regardless of the persona you know on the internet. As I explained in the past, my meds make me a tad airheaded, and I get tongue-tied easily, which is why I love a written medium like blogging so much because I have more time to think of what I want to say than in person. (That doesn't necessarily mean I do use the time wisely to think things through before I begin typing...lol)

I want to thank everyone who contributed to my fundraiser. I have the best readers and friends online. I expect to thank most of the contributors in person, but some will be getting written thank you notes since they won't be attending WAM! Thank you, thank you, thank you again everyone!

posted by Donna at 8:53 PM | 3 comment(s) |

Ok I Went and Did It!

I am registered for WAM! Remember, Octogalore is the one who is making me go, so if you hear on the news that some Native American woman caused a riot in Boston, don't blame me, it's all her fault!

Thank you so much for your donation, Octo, you're a sweetheart!

And now on to begging from the rest of you all...

I only planned on being in Boston for a few hours and budgetted for gas, tolls, and parking for that, but now that I will be travelling back and forth all three days I'll be needing a bit more. This is my fundraiser post for WAM! If you would like to help me out with some of the expenses, there is a "donate" button to Paypal in the sidebar. Whatever you can donate would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know if I will live blog during the panels, I might wait until afterwards, but I'll definitely blog about the goings on at WAM! So keep an eye out for that the weekend of March 28-30.

posted by Donna at 4:47 PM | 3 comment(s) |

People Are Making Me Do Stuff!

OMG! Octogalore has generously sent me some money to go to the WAM! Conference at the end of this month. She is making me go! I was already intending on going to Boston for a day trip to meet her and some of the other bloggers who will be there, but now I will be there for all three days. Take this as fair warning that I will be doing a small fundraiser since I will still need some money for meals, gas, tolls, and parking. I live about an hour and a half away from Boston so will drive back and forth...you all know what gas prices are like! I still have to set up a paypal account first though, I can't even collect Octo's donation until I do. LOL

The other one who is making me do stuff is R.Mildred. She is using my blogroll as her blogroll too, so I felt guilty enough to update and add some important bloggers who I was too lazy to add before. Like that Problem Chylde with her fingers of oppression (Yeah the joke is getting old, but it still makes me laugh out loud, and will continue bringing it up until it doesn't make me laugh out loud!)...and fix broken links or remove some who are no longer blogging or haven't updated in months. Yeah I know there are more in there, some I just can't let go and hope they come back to blogging, like Nubian.

posted by Donna at 5:38 AM | 4 comment(s) |

Further Update on the Harrington/Battle Missing Children

Update: In the comments Elle informs me that sadly the father did take the childrens lives and his own. Their bodies were found today in his car, which was hidden in a wooded area behind an industrial park in their hometown. My own children are my world and from what I have seen of Agena Battle, her children are her world too. She must be suffering unimaginable heartbreak. Please send healing thoughts and prayers out to her.

Also in the comments Donna Darko asks if enough people are checking Black and Missing, since every day up to seven more people go missing. So be sure to check there regularly, you may recognize one of the missing persons and be able to take the necessary steps to have them reunited with their families.

Update: Eddie Harrington sent a letter to his father telling him that he intends to kill the children. It is urgent that these kids are found NOW. The most likely way that will happen is someone driving, someone working at a gas station, or restaurant, or hotel/motel will recognize the description of the car and look in and see Harrington and the children and call 911. That is why it is so imperative that this information be spread far and wide to give the most people possible the chance to recognize what is going on and get help for these children immediately. I am asking anyone who reads this to post about these missing kids on their blogs including the description of the car. Please DO IT! These are just little babies and they need our help to be found and returned unharmed to their mother.

Deidra has been all over this story over at Black and Missing but Not Forgotten. Please link to her site for all kinds of information and updates.

posted by Donna at 9:23 AM | 3 comment(s) |

Children Missing From Georgia

Please take a good look at the following photographs. These children were taken from their home in the middle of the night on March 5th by their father, Eddie Harrington. In a note he left for his girlfriend, Agena Battle, he said he didn't want to live and he also said that taking the children with him would make her happy. Naturally everyone is frightened that he might harm himself and the children. The family had just moved to Columbus, Georgia six months earlier from Indianapolis, Indiana. It is believed that Eddie may be headed back to Indiana. There have been sightings of the father and children in Tennessee. They are travelling in a dark green 2002 Chevy Impala with a cracked windshield and Indiana licence plate number 93-L4740. Sylvia has much more information please go read the post there.

posted by Donna at 12:08 AM | 1 comment(s) |

White Women Feminism - There They Go Again

I got an email from the wonderful Elle PhD to alert me to the latest white women feminist shenanigans being reported at the Washington Post: To Women, So Much More Than Just a Candidate. Of course by women they mean the default women, middle to upper class white women, with some ageism thrown in for good measure since they show little respect for the decision making abilities of younger women too.

The first part of the article tells us that Clinton is not bringing in the crowds. Clinton's feminist contingent is not pleased that all of us vagina owners will not vote for the vagina candidate. Seriously, see if any of them mention any other reason why we should vote for Clinton. Some feminist from NOW says, "There are some people who promote Barack Obama because they want anybody but a woman. Would they like a white man instead of a black man? Of course. But they'll take a black man over a woman. I never thought, in 2008, that we'd still be dealing with this." Too bad the reporter didn't ask why Clinton wasn't running against Edwards instead of Obama then, I mean if all we want is a white penis candidate, we had our chance.

Then WaPo tells us: "As Wagner and other NOW executives toured Ohio last week, they repeated a resounding message: Clinton has been mistreated by an opponent who subtly demeans her, by a mainstream media that ridicules her, by voters too threatened to vote for a confident woman, by young women who no longer feel the urgency of the women's movement, by African American women for whom race is more important than gender." My head hurts. I'll let bark, bugs, leaves, and lizards handle this... and one of those...er...ingrates wants to put a bit of a exclamation point on what she finds important.

I gotta agree with her. I guess I'm an ingrate too. Some dude making a wisecrack for you to get in the kitchen, or worse, another dude pulling out a chair for you, damn, life is so hard! "...they just as often ended up commiserating about how sexism -- "the worst of the 'isms,' " they said here -- continues to thrive." Those middle to upper class, middle aged to elderly, white women have it worse than anyone else in the world. I'm just weeping for their hardships.

And you just gotta love their blatant racist, Moresky said. "I think a lot of women are really in shock about it, and they're going to feel gypped if she loses. Barack will still be another man in charge."

Did anyone else laugh out loud when they read this part? "Wagner said she never expected gender to become a determinant in this election." I don't think they are campaigning on much else lately.

"During the NOW tour across Ohio, the makeup of each audience was almost exclusively white, middle-age women, many of whom had joined the organization in the late 1960s or 1970s." People vote for who they think can best represent them. I understand perfectly well why this demographic is excited for Hillary Clinton, is showing up at her rallies, and is voting for her. But for some of us having a vagina isn't enough, because she will be voting for white, middle aged, middle class interests. Not to mention corporate lobbyist interests, and starting wars to prove she's as tough as the guys, which I hear is her excuse for her Iraq War vote. She would have to...lemme see...how about tell us what she is going to do for young people, to earn their votes; tell us what she plans to do for WOC, to earn our votes; you know, make us believe she gives a shit about us instead of taking us for granted and acting like she is entitled to be President because she is Bill Clinton's wife...and is a WOMAN, did you catch that? She's a WOMAN! It's the bestest reason in he whole wide world to vote for a candidate.

A couple other interesting posts about this article:
Hillary Clinton Feminists

Just Stop Before I Really Get Pissed

The Fierce Urgency of NOW

Oh and here's something else interesting at SeibuOne.

Clinton’s relentlessly negative campaign of the last week seems to have worked. For now. But it looks like Obama’s campaign is ready to answer back. David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager explains:

“We have not hesitated to draw distinctions between the candidates,” he said, ”and we’ll continue to do that. If Sen. Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we’ll join that debate. We’ll do it on our terms and in our own way, but if she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and lawfirms and real estate deals and all that stuff issues, as I’ve said before I don’t know why they’d want to go there, but I guess that’s where they’ll take the race.”

But is Obama willing to go there?

“We’re willing to draw distinctions that are honest and legitimate,” Axelrod said before raising the issue of Clinton’s tax returns and the records from the Clinton library.

The Republicans are loving this.

and from the first time she pulled this:

“I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002.”

This is so utterly and completely self-destructive, short-minded and cynical. You don’t do this sort of thing in a primary.

If Hillary wants to compare her record to Obama’s, then fine. But to flat out say that the Republican nominee is more prepared than the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination is just astounding in its selfishness.

The message here? Screw the Democratic party, screw the election in November, if Hillary can’t be president, then no Democrat should be able to.

but no, she does it again:

Fallows reports:

In a live CNN interview just now, Sen. Clinton repeated, twice, the “Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002″ line. By what logic, exactly, does a member of the Democratic party include the “Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience” part of that sentence?

posted by Donna at 2:57 AM | 12 comment(s) |

There is Both Acceptance and Racism in New Hampshire

Since I've been in New Hampshire I've found the mostly white population to be friendly and accepting. I did my grocery shopping last week and while waiting at the deli to get some sandwich meats two men started chatting me up, which would have freaked me out a few months back, but I have come to see as normal but slightly amusing. I've never known people who are this friendly to strangers, and especially "different" looking strangers. I don't want to leave the impression that people in other states are uniformly hostile because they aren't, but this is different than someone seeing I am ordering a certain brand of meats or cheeses and saying, "I wanted to try that but wasn't sure if my family would like it." or something like that. One of the guys was telling me about his dog, the other was cracking jokes, like I'm an old friend of the family.

Unfortunately, everywhere you go in the US, there has to be racists to taint things and it's no different here. A couple weeks back several black students at St. Paul's School in Concord received threatening letters. The scariest part is that the letters appear to have been sent by someone with access to the school's records since they were addressed to the individual students in their names. The school, the Concord Police, and the FBI are investigating the incident and hopefully soon will find out who did it and arrest them. There is more information in the article at the Concord Monitor.

St. Paul's is at the western edge of Concord and to avoid traffic when I go to my doctor's office I take the highway and then cut through St. Paul's instead of driving through the downtown area of Concord. Traffic is just ridiculous here and certain times of the day (rush hour) it's just plain gridlock. So I know this campus, it's like a small college. The interesting thing to me is that even though St. Paul's is private, there are public schools like this in New Hampshire. We looked at a couple other towns before settling on the town we now live in, and Londonderry and Pembroke's public high schools are both academies and look like small college campuses. There are probably others I don't know about. I guess mostly I have to say that it really saddens me that some ignorant vicious fool is trying to ruin the camaraderie at St. Paul's. When you drive through you can see how diverse the school population is and see the groups of kids walking, talking, playing on the sports field and as friendly and accepting of each other as those two men at the deli counter were with me.

posted by Donna at 1:12 PM | 6 comment(s) |

A History of Racism

Cassandra Says...what I wish I had said!

At least Apostate is consistent. She doesn't want inconvenient history to be acknowledged, whether it is Planned Parenthood's or her own, so she nuked the posts where she was showing her ass.

You still need to read Sydette/BlackAmazon's responses to it.
Know What Fuck Off and Yeah Right No.

posted by Donna at 3:03 AM | 2 comment(s) |