I call in to Blog Talk Radio - She Writes - Women and Humor Writing (AUDIO)

Listen to internet radio with She Writes on Blog Talk Radio

The link for SheWrites is here. I appear at the 25:30 mark. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to fellow funny women writers. I felt it was a bit hard to get a word in, and that there wasn't enough reminders on the whole show as to HOW to call in (which would have increased audience participation), but I'm glad I was able to add my two cents.

I wrote longer pieces on gender and my own writing life in my earlier posts, "But Wait! My Penis Pen is Pink!" and "It's a Man/Woman Thing, We Wouldn't Understand." Enjoy, and feel free to bring the writing/gender conversation to this comment thread.

Instead of watching Bristol Palin in "The Secret Life of the American Teen"...

...may I humbly suggest this summertime rerun from one year ago:

Somebody had to do it. (PHOTOSHOP)

As one analyst put it, re the Kagan Hearings: "There are a thousand ways to say nothing." Only a thousand?

Leave Arizona ALONE! (photoshop)

Now she says everyone coming over the border illegally is a drug dealer and comparing them to Hezbollah. Even McCain won't go that crazy, and that's saying something.

Uh, okay Governor, we'll leave Arizona alone, but not before we thank you for the fabulous boost you've given to "community organizing."

I feel for the family of the man shot by a drug cartel on the border. Very much. That should be an international incident and the National Guard (most of which I expect is in Iraq/Afghanistan) should have been called out immediately. Seriously. Let it be a border war over illegal drugs, and let's debate THAT. But getting papers on everybody? What drugs are YOU on, Guvner?

A prayer for Dick Cheney

Wishing you a speedy recovery, with trust in God that whatever happens, St. Peter's got you covered.

My 7yo discovers photoshop.

And I call it Ella FitzGerbil. Happy Friday Night, folks.

Our Friday Podcast

A very humble thank you especially to Blue Gal readers who listen to this podcast here. You mean the world to me. Thank you so much!

The button below allows listeners to throw five bucks specifically towards podcasting costs; we really appreciate the support.

Stuff I'm too busy to tweet

I hope McChrystal will take some time off to get help for his obvious drinking problem. And yeah, it's enough of a problem to drink Bud Light Lime, but this goes deeper, the end.

I wish for 60 real Democratic Senators under the age of 60 who will do their effin' jobs.

Wanna spend two years investigating whether Sestak was offered a job, and ignore the Americans who don't have a job? Vote Republican.

@Karoli is right, this is worth reading.

I wish we could "accept" Joe Barton's non-apology apology the same way we did McChrystal's.

McChrystal, yer fired!

Sharron Angle proves that the best weapon against the teaparty is a microphone.

Politicians that open their mouths and say the unemployed are spoiled, particularly when the unemployment rate is over the tipping point where The Entitled People (tm) are out of work, deserve to sink into obscurity in the polls and in history.

I agree with Michael Kinsley's prediction: The Tea Party Patriots are destined to be "an answer on Jeopardy or a crossword-puzzle clue." Too bad for milquetoast Democrats like Harry Reid; they can use all the help they can get.

Hope

If you need a pick-me-up, I suggest "A High Hope Happy Plan" over at dottie angel (h/t Do What Now?) Look past the doilies on the blog if you must, and read it. It's about parenting and finding the joy in daily life and it really gave me a lift.

My 7yo was bickering with her brother right in front of me (whoops) and she ended with "hey bro, it's a free country." Then she stopped and said to me, "Wait. Is it? What's a free country?" TEACHABLE MOMENT. Note to Driftglass I'll be bringing this up at podcast this week.

Free Country: People can be idiots if they want.

Not Free Country: Only idiots with the most money behind them get to be heard.

Sigh.

Salon tonight 9 Eastern. Hope to see you there.

Shorter New Yorker Magazine Huckabee Profile (Photoshop)

Anybody seen Michael Steele lately?

A "Scriptural" Reading for Father's Day

So wonderful: "Lamentations of the Father" by Ian Frazier. If you are a dad with small kids, I suggest reading it aloud.

Saturday Song

More Podcast Goodness

To those of you who will or have given five bucks to help us recover our podcasting costs: thank you so much!

Turns out BP stands for "Barton's Pimp"

Even Biden took notice and I which he wouldn't sugarcoat it so much.

Light posting - vacation week

plus I'm busy teaching some skillz around here:

Yo! Rahm Emanuel! Get back to basics!

Dear Rahm Emanuel:

Let me see if I can say this in words you will understand:

It's called the OLD TESTAMENT. First fucking Samuel fucking Seventeen! David and fucking Goliath, remember?

If that's too old fashioned for you, at least go watch Pulp fucking Fiction again and go medieval on BP's asses.

And not to get personal or anything, but how come people over here are wishing you could be replaced by Howard Dean, like between the two of you, YOU'RE the pussy?

Sincerely yours,

Blue Gal

PS. To those publishers who were looking for the next Molly Ivins, but asked for a "young blogger"? Fuck you.

My quick reaction to tonight's speech (not tweeted!)

It was a speech completely directed towards FOX news viewers and those who don't accept him as a legitimate President. He's got to get OVER being the first Black president. That's what's going on here, imo.

Those of us who are over it are scratching our heads, but listening to it thinking "he's the Kenyan usurper" it makes sense. Lots of God talk and we're going down the middle of the road. Safe. I think he's trying to make it easier for future Black presidents. It makes it hard on those of us who don't give a shit that he's Black.

An old joke that isn't old yet.

Don't Tease The Panther (photoshop)

The funniest thing I've read all week is Media Matters' crib notes on The Overton Window.

Saturday Song

The Cars, Moving in Stereo and All Mixed Up

The Real "Lame-Stream" Media

...is at USAToday, but you knew that.

This paragraph just plain pissed me off for its sheer journalistic bias:

Judith Palfrey, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, says family poverty increases many risks for children, including low birth weight, premature delivery, learning problems, asthma and other health problems. But the conservative Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector says the index offers little new information. He says the report doesn't mention that poor children's family incomes are supplemented by programs such as food stamps and housing assistance. "Most of the report is an advertising tool for more government programs and spending, which are pretty ineffective in increasing child well-being," he says.

So you have this article, written during the worst recession and unemployment since the 1930's, about how more and more children are falling into poverty and you have a quote from a leading pediatrician that this is a BAD thing.

But holy shit printing a story like that would not be BALANCED! Call up the Heritage Foundation and talk to the guy "dubbed the "intellectual godfather" of welfare reform by National Review Editor Rich Lowry" (really, and there are still some people who think I use "fuck" too much while blogging) for a quote about how these people aren't really poor and these children aren't really better off with food and housing assistance because ick those are government programs. A reminder that what Driftglass says in our podcast is true: moving to the "center" and "balance" ALWAYS means a move away from common sense truth towards right-wing ideology. Always.

Really, Liz Szabo, you should be hauled out onto the carpet for that paragraph alone. PS If Obama gets a second term I'm working on nothing but campaign finance and media reform.

Nothing. else. matters.

Podcast for Friday -- Down memory lane...

To those of you who will or have given five bucks to help us recover our podcasting costs: thank you so much!

A great YouTube Find

And since some folks don't read me at the big blog, I wanted to share this:



The original "Four Yorkshireman" sketch, with Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Marty Feldman. The show was ITC's "At Last the 1948 Show" which pre-dated Monty Python by two years.

My kid prays about the oil spill

Mom, how is it going with the oil spill?

Still pretty bad, maybe you could say a prayer about it.

[bows his head] Dear God, I hope the government can clean up all the oil and send BP to jail!

Ruh roh...

...I think I went swimming at the wrong hotel...

Other summer travel tips...

(A). As I've mentioned before, a caveat about Mapquest driving times. You must multiply the estimated travel time by the number of children with whom you are travelling.

(B). There is another formula you should remember to calculate the time at which you will first hear "Are we there yet?" :

A x .2y = t in minutes

A is the driving time as estimated above, and y is the age of the youngest child.

Therefore a seven hour trip with three kids the youngest of whom is six...

21 x (.2 x 6) = 25.2 minutes into the seven hour trip you will hear "Are we there yet?" It's scary how accurate that is.


Finally, just a note about 11yo, who after seeing the ad for the movie "The A Team" found out that it is based on a long-ago cancelled TV show. "WHY was it cancelled? Why was The A-Team cancelled?!?"

Sigh. My boy is becoming a man.

In his defense this was after a dinner time discussion of what he called "the problems of the world" in which he INTRODUCED the topics of the BP oil spill, the Arizona boycott, strife in Bangkok and the long term battles between South and North Korea.

Another Emo-Bama

The whole Emo-bama thing started with Balloon Juice, and I decided it wasn't enough to just add Rahm Emo-nuel. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, it's not that they don't feel your pain, dude, it's that they can't feel anything else. :)

Click image for larger.

Chris Bowers finally gets around to burying our bodies.

Chris Bowers declared all the non-A-listers dead back in 2007. Now he once again posts at Open Left, aka Bowers and Sirota's House O' Really Tiresome Self-Congratulation, in an agonizing post "Amateur blogosphere RIP" and its completely unnecessary follow-up, even more endless "analysis" of why anyone not already invited to his personal a-list circle jerk might as well hang it up.

Apparently Bowers is prompted to advertise his obviously constant navel-gazing by the hiring of the 538 blog by The New York Times:

Anyway, kudos to [five thirty eight's] Nate Silver, and RIP to the amateur progressive blogosphere. It provided a regular feeling of revolutionary ecstasy while it lasted, but there was no way it could last very long. It was a transitional period into a new media and political paradigm, not a new paradigm unto itself.

First of all, Chris, fuck you. Secondly, five thirty eight was never actually a blog. It was and is an amazing electoral statistician website published daily. There is a huge difference between what 538 does and what any of us do. They are a niche unto themselves, period, and whoever had the money to buy what they do, it's worth every penny.

And also, Chris, be careful what you wish for. I for one am very worried about this so called "trend" that a-listers are being bought out as activists. Frankly, I smell another payola scandal brewing, like the one that brought down Alan Freed (corrected, thanks commenter Gary) and put rock n' roll radio in the 50's onto the scandal sheets. I got your "analysis" right here:

1. The FTC is already fining bloggers threatening fines to bloggers and companies who promote products on their blogs without disclosing the arrangements they have to receive those products for free. (again thanks to Gary for the correction.) How long before they want to know exactly who is paying the "activist" who blogs about specific progressive issues? It might be great for, for instance, Greenpeace to hire or pay a blogger who has expertise in environmental issues, but if they continue to blog single shingle, and don't disclose the relationship they have with Greenpeace, the feds have precedent to come down hard when their single shingle blog says the Greenpeace bill is the only environmental bill worth passing.

2. The bigger a blog gets in terms of its own PACs, the more transparency is expected of them. Holding fundraisers for stuff like "Tell Blanche Lincoln to go to hell" sure does bring that regular feeling of revolutionary ecstasy Chris mentions, but it harshes the buzz to find out that a lil' ol' blog fundraising shells out over a hundred grand for "strategic consulting" (yeah) including 24K a piece to two of the bloggers. At this rate, it will take me until approximately the year 2311 to make that kind of paypal scratch. But then again I suppose answering memos of inquiry from the Federal Election Commission requires a lot of Strategy and Consult. More of my personal feelings regarding that blog at Rachel Maddow's comment thread.

I don't begrudge anyone making money from political action and advocacy, but if right wing hate radio gets wind of a problem with how progressive "bloggers" earn and spend their fundraising dollars (full disclosure: every other month I use my fundraising dollars to gas up my minivan and sometimes treat myself to an actual latte) it will bring us all down.

3. Finally, let's call "paid progressive activism" what it is, Chris. LOBBYING. There's nothing wrong with lobbying for progressive causes, God knows. But when a progressive gate crasher blogger becomes an inside the beltway paid lobbyist, the blogosphere doesn't die. Those people, you included, are simply not bloggers anymore.

Buh bye.

ps. Here's my paypal button. Thanks to my terrific readers for their generosity. I love you folks.

Helping out John Amato with a little, um, marketing?

He's the best a-lister on the planet, imo, and I'm proud to be associated with Crooks and Liars. His new book looks like a promising read; looking forward to it.

Saturday (Night) Songs - Barenaked Ladies

And the bathroom session, which I just. love.

Driftglass and Blue Gal's Weekly Podcast

To those of you who will or have given five bucks to help us recover our podcasting costs: thank you so much!

And regarding our comments that I am somehow holding Chuck Grassley's grandmother in Obama's secret southern Illinois prison:

No time for blogging today!

I'm stuck in the line of unemployed progressives willing to state that they will primary* an old fart Democrat so that we can be offered an unpaid job by Rahm Emanuel via Bill Clinton!

They say I might even be able to be Dick Durbin's unpaid intern here locally, but I said only if they promised it would be high-profile enough for Liz Cheney to call for an investigation, since I initially said Dick Durbin was the old fart Democrat I was gonna primary*.

*The civilization-ending language rot that is using "primary" as a verb. Don't get me started.

About that Nun....

...the one who saved a woman's life by terminating the woman's pregnancy? And the nun got...EXCOMMUNICATED!?!

She's got a friend in Jesus, and more particularly, his mom:



Really, the Mother of God is fixing to set her "sit in time out" countdown clock on Ratzinger to infinity.

Don't get me started about that homosexual Cardinal Law and the fact that he has a cushy protected job at the Vatican and they won't allow justice for all the victims of all the male priests he protected from rape charges over the years, but it takes two minutes to kick out a nun who saves a woman's life. What colossal Church-destroying criminals they are.

A prayer for today

I realize some of my readers are not religious; if this is not your thing, skip it.

All of us are stressed and frankly, grieving at this point re the Gulf Oil Spill. It's a loss: to the environment, our sense of technology's power, and our own moral certainty.

At the same time, we've been forced to come to the conclusion that the long hard war is not with terrorists in another country or another race; the long hard war is with the savagely greedy and willfully ignorant among our own people. We the people must become the government, and yeah, take back our country from...the greedy few who have so much.

If you want to call that socialism go right ahead. (Click here for larger image.)


(PS David Brooks that's what you should have said yesterday, without excusing corporations.)

There is nothing like the hopelessness of grief to turn us to some power higher and stronger than ourselves. We have lost something, and have a tremendous fight ahead of us. Pray? Hell, yeah. Check this one out:


Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks...And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come...

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances.

Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.


Franklin D. Roosevelt
Evening of D-Day
June, 1944

"David Brooks Nails It"

Two caveats to this post:

One, if I thought for a moment that David Brooks writes the way he does due to brain damage brought on by a claw hammer, at least he would have a valid excuse. Plus it would prove that The New York Times does not discriminate based on mental capacity, but hey, we knew that.

Two, I know that the David Brooks column is the blog property (tm) of my colleague Driftglass, and that by even commenting on a David Brooks column I am trespassing on DG's intellectual property. But those of you who read and listen to both of us know that most of what is written below is stolen from Driftglass whole cloth, and I acknowledge the theft. But the email with the subject line "David Brooks nails it" came into my inbox from a group list which I usually consider thoughtful and considered. He wrote:

As I watch with horror at events in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, the Gulf of Mexico & elsewhere I have become increasing depressed & fearful about our future. Although i often disagree with David Brooks' positions on the role of government, I think this is a very thoughtful piece.

Okay, I totally get the depression and anxiety, I think we all do. And I also attribute the fact that David Brooks has a job to the fact that he is able to place a warm cocoon of "intellectual reasonableness" around that anxiety. The fact that he is full of shit when he does it must never, ever be overlooked.

I had to respond:

I must respectfully disagree. This article is typical David Brooks BS.

well-meaning corporations sometimes take shortcuts when it comes to controlling pollution and protecting worker safety.

NO. Corporations are not designed to be moral agents for evil OR good. They are designed to do one thing: make a profit for their shareholders. As my co-podcaster Driftglass points out in his latest post

Even the most cursory reading of the literature shows that, as machines designed to do nothing but maximize profit, corporations are fundamentally sociopathic and will generally conduct themselves with a sense of public morality no greater or less than the size of the gun the gummint has pointed at their heads.

from

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2010/05/bps-gulf-kill-procedure.html

where he gives LOTS of examples of this...but seriously, the term "well-meaning corporations" should just make everyone in the universe barf simultaneously. Shipping jobs overseas to engage sub-standard wages is the LEAST of their sins, and perhaps raping the entire planet is the greatest. Give me a break.

Those of you who follow David fucking Brooks (his real name as far as most bloggers with a conscience are concerned) you owe it to yourself to bookmark http://driftglass.blogspot.com. DG usually responds to DFB each time the latter dips his pen in the oatmeal of conservatism to pretend that his entire career has not culminated in the party of bigots and fundamentalists.

And these pig-people who drive off to Tea Party Rallies with money cashed from their Social Security checks will NEVER require a rationale for their rage at government other than a black man put his hand on a Bible and took "their country away" plus they're high on the smell of Rush Limbaugh's farts. Really, you think most teabaggers are deeply troubled by the expansion of government? Try cutting Medicare and see how that works out for ya.

Brooks gets paid money make a rationale for a country club rational conservatism that does not exist. In that regard every column is exactly the same.

Then I went and read the article again. I wish Driftglass had warned me never to do that.

the plume exposes the country’s core confusion about the role of government.

CHRIST ALMIGHTY!!!! There is NOTHING CONFUSING about Dick Cheney meeting with his oil cronies behind closed doors and unilaterally setting government policy that deep-water remote shutoff valves were too much fucking government regulation!

Honestly people!! With each reading David Brooks needs to be fired for this one column alone.

Songs for my kids

Last day of school (90 minutes) ma hunnies:









And their summertime blues is, no trips to the bookstore until they declutter their rooms.