Women Born Transsexual

Wow… Someone in the Democratic party who dares speak the truth about the mealy mouthed cowardly accommodationist liberals in the Democratic party that think it is more important to be seen as identical to the Republicans except nicer.

I’m tired of having to vote for Republi-Nazi light just because they are a little bit nicer.

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Al Frankin, Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Anthony Weiner, Patty Murry and Barbara Lee are shining beacons of freedom and truth in a bland, stand for nothing party.

From Raw Story:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/grayson-appeasement-cost-election/

By Daniel Tencer
Thursday, November 4th, 2010 — 7:01 pm

‘There is no center left,’ iconoclastic politician says

Alan Grayson, the defeated Democratic congressman of “die quickly” fame, went on the offensive Thursday, telling reporters that the Democrats’ “appeasement” of Republicans cost them the election.

In an appearance on MSNBC and an interview with Salon.com, Grayson argued that the “enthusiasm gap” that prompted millions of liberal voters to stay home Tuesday happened because the Obama administration and congressional Democrats did not fight hard enough for progressive values.

“Our strategy for two years has been appeasement, and look where it got us,” Grayson told MSNBC. “I think Democrats want to see a fighting leadership, they want to see a fighting president — somebody who actually accomplishes good things for constituents.”

He cited immigration reform, civil rights, women’s rights and the Employee Free Choice Act as areas on which the Democrats should have focused.

The result of backing away from these fights was an “enthusiasm gap” that turned into a “voting gap,” Grayson told Salon’s Emma Mustich.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/grayson-appeasement-cost-election/

From Socialist Worker:  http://socialistworker.org/2010/11/04/can-the-working-class-unite

Jen Roesch

November 4, 2010

ONE OF the most common objections to socialism is the idea that the working class is too alienated, too tied to its narrow material interests and too internally divided to play the revolutionary role that Karl Marx envisioned for it.

In many ways, this objection rests on an elitist notion that workers are too weighed down by material concerns to have the ability to fight for broader social change. It also accepts not just that workers can hold racist, sexist, homophobic or other backward ideas, but also that they are somehow more susceptible to these ideas.

For example, it is almost common sense today, on both the right and the left, to equate the right-wing Tea Party movement with the working class. It is assumed that workers are more likely to be duped by the likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. However, analyses of the ranks of the Tea Party have shown that its supporters tend to be wealthier, older, better educated and whiter than the U.S. population as a whole.

Similarly, in the 2008 elections, “Joe the Plumber”–though he was actually a middle-class business owner–was hailed by the Republicans as the icon of blue-collar America, which was presumed to reject tax-and-spend liberalism. However, despite the Republican attacks on Barack Obama as the candidate of “latté-sipping East Coast liberals,” Obama got his highest levels of support from voters earning under $50,000 a year (I have no idea what kind of coffee they drank).

To be clear, Marxists do not argue that workers never hold backward political ideas. They are at least as capable of reactionary ideas and general ignorance as the rest of the population. However, they are not uniquely so–and, more importantly, they are the one class in society with a material interest in challenging all forms of oppression.

The bigotry, selfishness and ignorance of those who run our society flow from their class position. In order to maintain their power, they must foster the idea that ordinary people are somehow less capable, and they must perpetuate all the backwards ideas that help keep working-class people divided from one another. For the working class, however, manifestations of these ideas are at odds with their class interests, and are therefore a challenge to be overcome.

In fact, Marx argued that the working class, a class “with radical chains,” was the one class that in liberating itself had the potential to liberate all of humanity. In abolishing its own exploitation and oppression, the working class also must abolish every rotten aspect of society that is indissolubly bound up in that central axis of exploitation. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Frederick Engels wrote:

Continue reading at:   http://socialistworker.org/2010/11/04/can-the-working-class-unite

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/news/148742/what_obama_can_learn_from_the_social_movements_that_changed_the_world/

History reminds us that any social movement that changes the terms of debate will eventually change the national conversation. Why don’t Democrats have the guts to do that?

By Ruth Rosen*
10/04/2010

In the wake of the election, progressive movements and their members are debating what went wrong. Some say the media amplified the bizarre statements of the Tea Party. Still others argue that Obama didn’t offer sufficient leadership or remind us what he had actually achieved during his first 18 months in office. Many blame no one, knowing that midterm elections bring a backlash, regardless of who is in power.

All of these are basically true. But something gets lost in this wringing of hands or resigned acceptance of inevitable defeat. Barack Obama ignited a hope for change and then squandered the opportunity — right in the middle of high unemployment, terrible economic anxiety, and widespread fear of a declining America — to hold tightly to the terms of debate that vaulted him to power and might have resulted in many fewer Democratic losses.

But he is not alone. Progressives all over the country sat back for 18 months without pushing him to guard those terms of debate, namely those of equality, fairness, decency, and a society that must depend on the state to protect the poor and the vulnerable. During his presidency, FDR confided to unions and progressive activists that they had to “force” him to do things that would be politically unacceptable. Progressives didn’t do that during the last eighteen months. Had they pushed much, much harder, we might have kept more people in their homes, and had a national jobs program that would have softened the terror of having no livelihood.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/news/148742/what_obama_can_learn_from_the_social_movements_that_changed_the_world/

*Ruth Rosen is the author of:  The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, a must read for anyone interested in what actually happened during the Second Wave period of feminism which extended from the mid 1960s through the mid 1980s.

From The Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/11/02/3153347/democrats-hope-to-get-closer-to.html

Anti-gay marriage attorney loses Assembly bid
The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, Nov. 02, 2010

LOS ANGELES — Voters in a Sacramento-area Assembly district have defeated a Republican attorney who became the face of California’s ongoing debate over gay marriage during the fall election.

Andy Pugno narrowly lost to Democrat Richard Pan, a pediatrician and professor at the University of California, Davis.

Prop 8 Trial Tracker: http://prop8trialtracker.com/2010/11/03/nom-effort-panned-yes-on-8-attorney-andy-pugno-loses-campaign/

By Jeremy Hooper

It’s but a scintilla of consolation for the massive, soul-numbing damage that Pugno and the Prop 8 coalition did to civil rights just two years ago. But still: NOM blew some cash and a vociferous voice of civil discrimination was kept out of a state chamber. If a slot machine victory, this may not be a win that’d turn any fellow casino goer’s head in envy. But it is a net gain for the pro-equality player.

The Revolution Starts Now

Steve Earle

The revolution starts now
When you rise above your fear
And tear the walls around you down
The revolution starts here
Where you work and where you play
Where you lay your money down
What you do and what you say
The revolution starts now
Yeah the revolution starts now

Yeah the revolution starts now
In your own backyard
In your own hometown
So what you doin’ standin’ around?
Just follow your heart
The revolution starts now

I am currently reading Ernset Callenbach’s “Ecotopia Rising. I am a fan of Michael Pollin and Eric Schlosser.  I view the McDonnaldization of the world as a major part of the problem.

I don’t want a phone that I can watch videos on because I get tired of the freaking bombardment of psychological warfare aimed at selling me stuff.  There are very few billboards out there that actually improve anyone’s view.

Bombarding children with advertising and bribing them to demand garbage food by giving them toys shouldn’t just be banned, it should be criminalized.

Ecotopia Rising is about taking back our world from the corporate swine.  That it starts in San Francisco and includes Northern California, Oregon and Washington is prescient.

Therefore I was absolutely thrilled when Californian rejected Corporate Fascist money bags who tried to buy their way into power.  I am so glad Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman lost.  Corporations have too big a say in our lives.  I was so happy that the environmentalists defeated the oil industry’s Prop 23 which would have suspended California’s “Global Warming Act of 2006″ which mandated a reduction of greenhouse gases.

Then San Francisco put a smile on my face by banning the sale of “Happy Meals” which used the giving of toys and other junk to children as an inducement to sell nutritionally disastrous junk food to children

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/mcdonalds-san-francisco-happy-meals/

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 — 5:38 pm

LOS ANGELES — Fast food giant McDonald’s said Wednesday it was “extremely disappointed” at a ruling by San Francisco authorities banning high-calorie Happy Meals, which entice children to eat with free toys.

The response came after the Californian city’s board of supervisors voted to forbid restaurants from giving gifts with meals that contain too much fat and sugar.

“We are extremely disappointed with this decision. It?s not what our customers want, nor is it something they asked for,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/mcdonalds-san-francisco-happy-meals/

Awwwah… The corporate scum is unhappy.  Fuck corporations.  End Corporate personhood

The revolution starts now…..

The Tea Bagging minions of the of Big Oil and other Corporate interests don’t believe in Climate change.  How fucking charming…  Of course these home schooled illiterate morons don’t believe in evolution either.

But the really dangerous reality for humanity is that they believe Armageddon is upon us, that they will be raptured before Earth becomes uninhabitable and that son of magic sky daddy will come back and all the people they hate will be killed in a blood bath worse than ever seen before.  Further … and stop me if you’ve heard of some one else with the following fantasy.  This will usher in a thousand year Christo-Nazi Reich.

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/gop-investigate-scientific-fraud-global-warming-report/

By Sahil Kapur
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 — 12:39 pm

Fresh off a dramatic victory in which it retook the House leadership, the Republican Party intends to hold major hearings probing the supposed “scientific fraud” behind global warming.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder related the news in a little-noticed article Wednesday morning.

The effort is a likely attempt to out-step the White House on energy policy moving forward. Legislation on energy and climate change reform, one of President Barack Obama campaign promises, has yet to materialize, though Obama’s EPA recently classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Holding hearings would please the Republicans’ conservative base, which increasingly doubts the scientific basis for global warming — especially human-induced global warming — and provide a reflection of the new GOP’s tenor.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/gop-investigate-scientific-fraud-global-warming-report/