Pinko Feminist Hellcat

The question is, will the bankruptcy bill apply to the Feds?

FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills.

No, SERIOUSLY.

WASHINGTON - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

I laughed.  I cried.  I spewed coffee all over my keyboard.

And another thing. . .

Just following up my reaction to Gloria Steinham's NY Times op-ed yesterday. Here's a nasty example of racist, misogynist crap that gets thrown at Black women. Note the racist rhetoric that Congresswoman Cynthia McKinley had to cope with:

BOORTZ: For instance, or for goodness sakes, jump in and I'm gonna say -- I'm gonna start out with something controversial. I saw Cynthia McKinney's new hair-do. Have you seen it, Belinda?

SKELTON: No.

BOORTZ: She looks like a ghetto slut.

SKELTON: Well, how is it?

BOORTZ: It's just -- it's hideous.

SKELTON: Is it braided? Or --

BOORTZ: No, it's not braided. It just flies away from her head in every conceivable direction. It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. It's just hideous. To me, that hairstyle just shows contempt for -- no, it's not an Afro. I mean, no, it just shows contempt for the position that she holds and the body that she serves in. And, I'm sorry, there's just no other way to -- it's just a hideous and horrible looking --

MARSHALL: Her hairstyle?

BOORTZ: Yeah, the hairstyle. It just, it looks like an explosion. Have you seen it? MARSHALL: Yeah, I like it.

BOORTZ: Oh, jeez.

MARSHALL: It looks better than the braids she was wearing.

BOORTZ: No, the braids had some dignity. They had some class.

MARSHALL: The braids had dignity?

BOORTZ: They had more class than this thing.

MARSHALL: This says, you know, kinda 2000s, you know, stepping up to the plate. Contemporary look, you know?

BOORTZ: She looks like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence.

MARSHALL: OK, so you don't like her hair.

BOORTZ: Yeah, OK, I don't like her hair. I'm sorry.

MARSHALL: That being said, I think a lot of people would say it looks a lot better than those cornrows she was wearing. You can't tell me that's dignified.

BOORTZ: Well, I'm not a big cornrow fan but I got used to her with that. OK?

MARSHALL: So she's staying the same for you?

BOORTZ: She looks like a shih tzu!

MARSHALL: I like Cynthia's new hairstyle.

BOORTZ: Well, there you go. Differing opinions.

Boortz went on to say that she looked like "ghetto trash" on his blog. In her editorial yesterday, Gloria Steinham mentioned the fact that Black men got the right to vote before any women--Black or White. Yet how much of a "right" was this? Black people faced defacto disenfranchisement through intimidation, lynchings, and lately, rather passive-agressive tactics.

In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.

Oh, and then there's this:

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd ''investigation'' that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

The officers, from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which reports to Gov. Jeb Bush, say they are investigating allegations of voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. Officials refused to discuss details of the investigation, other than to say that absentee ballots are involved. They said they had no idea when the investigation might end, and acknowledged that it may continue right through the presidential election.

And you know--not for nothing--in 2000, when Black members of the House of Representatives tried to contest the election, citing the disenfranchisement of their constituents, not one Senator would stand with them. It's not a matter of one group having it better than the other.

It's a lot more complex than one group trumping the other.

And some of them would be invisible

Dear Gloria, Look--your editorial in the New York Times resonated with me. My knee jerks in sympathy with the notion that women have it harder. My knee jerks in sympathy to radical feminism, since the majority of my experience in facing discrimination is sexism and misogyny. Oh, yes.

The problem with jerking knees is that they aren't realistic. You wrote an editorial about sexism and the campaign. And I sympathize with much of it--heck, I don't even agree with many of Hillary Clinton's policies, and I almost want to vote for her out of a sense of self-defense. There's something about sexist BS that makes me want to flip the lever and say "fuck you" to the idiots. I felt the same way during Howard Dean's campaign, where his wife was pilloried for saying that she'd stay home in Vermont and continue her career as a doctor (bitch! you should move to the White House and do all sorts of work for free!).

But again--jerking knees, reality, all that. Although you said you didn't want to start a contest of who has it worse, you did. And I'm really sick of this. Gender doesn't trump race, and race doesn't trump gender. Okay?

You asserted that if Obama was a Black woman with so little experience, no one would take her seriously. I agree. I also agree that you have to be twice as good to prove you are half as good if you are a woman--but I also think that's the case if you're a person of color. Don't mistake a crush, a PR honeymoon, for the nomination.

Don't mistake Obama and Hillary Clinton's campaigns as proof that sexism is alive and well, or that racism isn't an issue.

And if Obama gets the nomination? Oh, we'll see the race card plenty--so many racists and closet racists will wax paranoid about Obama and "the Black establishment" that we could eradicate the national debt by taxing them for their rhetoric. Misogynists have had years to get to know and hate Hillary--not so much with Obama and racists.

If Obama was a Black woman, the vitiriol she'd recieve would be particularly toxic. We'd be treated to the racist cracks made about prominent Black women. We'd be treated to the "nappy-headed ho's" crack Imus made about Black women who were neither (and really, what's wrong with fabulous curly hair? I know women with hair like that, and lemme tell you, they are beautiful, and they aren't "ho's".) If Obama was a Black woman, she'd get racism and sexism thrown her way, a vicious combination.

It's much like the internalized misogyny of women who think it's okay to dismiss rape, advocate for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, and yelp on and on about how they don't think women should be/can handle being the President (or any other powerful figure). If Obama was a Black woman, she'd be pilloried as a welfare queen, a ho, "ghetto," and all sorts of other crappy things. And this would be on top of the misogynist crap ("shrill," "emotional," "manipulative,") and the racist crap ("the! Black! establishment! JessieJacksonandAlSharptonOMG!!1! "quotas!").

But the most likely thing to happen would be the quietest--if Obama was a woman, she'd be invisible. White women wouldn't take any notice of her, and men would take no notice of her. She wouldn't exist to them, because women of color don't exist to us. Let's not jump the gun. Yes, there are misogynists who told her to iron their shirts, and all they did was piss off the voters. And if Hillary goes back to the Obama/Osama crap, you'll probably see the same thing happen for Obama.

And you know? Not for nothing--Hillary did win New Hampshire. It's not proof that sexism is negligible, just like Ohio wasn't proof that racism is negligible.

More thoughts <a href="http://pinkofeministhellcat.typepad.com/pinko_feminist_hellcat/2008/01/and-another-thi.html">here</a>.

Yeah. Bank deregulation was a great idea.

The subprime mess, brought to us by the greed and short-sightedness of our deregulated banking industry, has a new problem to take the credit--or blame--for: a rise in crime. Remember the news story about the Black middle-class neighborhood in Detroit that was decimated by this crap?

How much do you want to bet that people who read about an uptick in crime there wring their hands over the breakdown of the Black family and the lack of morals of those Black people?

Hades forbid we admit that this is a problem of greedy execs, the majority of whom are, um, White.

OC Rape case update

Jane Doe has reached a tentative settlement in her lawsuit stemming from the OC rape case. 

In other news, the scumbag who spearheaded the harassment campaign against her, defense attorney Joe Cavallho, has some legal troubles of his own.

Does it make me a prude if I say that sex with bikes is weird?

Willya lookit the wheels on that!

Seriously--I'm not sure what to say to this, other than the fact that I don't know how this guy did it.  And yes, I'm going to pray that I don't have visuals of this at 3:00 in the morning.

I'M NOT IN UR INTERTUBES, U DOODZ R FINE

I'm a bad blogger.

Let's just chalk it off to general frustration with certain quarters of the blogworld, who are busy reenacting the clique wars of junior high school.  So by last week, not only did I stop posting, I stopped reading.  I just stopped giving a crap.

While we're at it, we can also blame the new job, which keeps me very busy--as in, I don't get home at the san(er) hour I used to anymore.  This is due to some overtime, and the longer commuting time to and from work.   

However, I like the new job. It's interesting. It's fun. It's a little scary since it's pretty new. Bloglandia? Well, lately, it hasn't been so interesting, or very fun. It has been scary at times, but that's because the usual crap I've seen is all so very old.

Burnout, baby. It's just plain burnout. I'll be back. I'm just on hiatus.

It's not an urban legend

. . .these losers really do feast on Cheetos and live in their parents' basement.

Poverty study brings the spin

Over thirty-six million people in the US live in poverty. The administration is trying to spin this as good news, by saying that income is rising in all economic classes.  Problem is, it's not keeping up with the cost of living.  It also ignores the fact that the raise in income for African-Americans was tiny.

Children and African-Americans are the hardest hit by poverty, as well as single mothers.  Over twelve percent of the poor are children.  Over 24 percent of Black people are poor; poor Whites come in at a little over eight percent. 

Granted, I'm sure some folks, who know they can't say that the obvious solution would be to stop being Black, will tout personal responsibility, while ignoring the fact that it's actually very expensive to be poor.  (We already saw this with Katrina.) This is a self-perpetuating system, and it's not because the poor person is so lazy.  It's because when you're poor, you're less likely to have reliable transportation to get to a decent paying job or a grocery store (grocery stores don't tend to be located in poor cities or neighborhoods).  If you have to rely on a convenience store or fast food place for your food, you're not going to be healthy (but it'll be your fault for not buying healthful food from the grocery store that's far away and inaccessible to you).  You likely won't live in a safe area, so going out for a walk or a jog could be dangerous.  Your kids won't have a place to play if this is the case, and even if it's not, your kids will be more likely to get asthma (thanks to environmental racism/classism--we aren't likely to see a medical waste incinerator in affluent areas any time soon).  Lack of exercise plus crappy food equals more health problems.  And if you don't have health insurance, well, then, you can go to the ER of the county hospital that is already overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded and hope that you'll get care.  Oh, and don't miss any work, as you'll get docked or fired.

Some pundits, like those at the Heritage Foundation, repeat the myth of the Marriage/Money Fairy.  It goes like this: if these poor single mothers would only marry the fathers of their children, they would cease to be poor.  The Marriage/Money fairy would come on their wedding night and shower them with good paying jobs, health benefits, decent schools for the kids, safe and affordable housing, and access (either by car or very convenient public transportation) to their jobs and the grocery store.

Problem is, if the father of your child is as poor as you are, marrying him isn't going to solve your problems.  Marriage as a cure all is bogus.  Unless the kid's father is running a private equity firm and is going to marry the mother of his child, I'd say this is about as useful as chilipepper toothpaste. 

You know that actually helps the poor?  Livable wages; healthcare; well-funded, staffed and maintained schools; safe and affordable housing; safe neighborhoods; access to things like jobs and grocery stores; clean air and water; and decent public transportation. 

You can be married and oh-so-responsible and still be poor.

For anyone who lives in or is visiting the Boston area

Hey, everyone remember the posts about New Orleans and how the survivors of Katrina are getting screwed left right and center? Remember Leigh, who gave a lot of good information? Well, she will be one of the people speaking about the post-Katrina Gulf Coast recovery tonight at The Democracy Center from 6:00-8:00. The center is located at 45 Mt. Auburn Street Cambridge, MA.