Netroots Nation: Day One Highlights

Last weekend, MOMocrats Cynematic, LawyerMama, PunditMom, Julie and I traveled to Pittsburgh to take part in the annual Netroots Nation Conference. We spent four days attending panels, plenary sessions, and  parties, and participated as speakers on two panels.  It was an exhausting and exhilarating time, and we could go on for days about the great people we met and the stories we heard.

I wanted to share some of the highlights of my first day at Netroots.

The Myth of Post-Racial America Panel

This discussion, led by Keith Kamisugi, focused on the myth that since America has elected an African-American President, we are now in a "post-racial" period.  The first part of the panel was a screening of a part of the film "9500 Liberty," made by panelist filmmaker Annabel Park, whose documentary delves into a community initiative in Prince William County, Virginia to allow racial profiling, specifically of anyone suspected of being in the United States illegally.  She said that when they started making the film, she and her co-producer, Eric Byler, thought that they were making a film about illegal immigrants, but it turned into a film about race and the incitement of fear into a community.  The film illustrates how misinformation and agitation can take control of an issue and lead to disastrous ends. 

When Does Political Satire Cross the Line??

We can make fun of whether Cindy McCain is a trophy wife, John McCain's age, Hillary's pantsuits, Bill's love of women, George's mental prowess and big ears and Al Gore's stiffness.  Everyone seems to laugh at those jokes, no problem.

But apparently we can't make fun of those who think Obama is a Muslim and or who believe that a fist bump is a terrorist greeting.

The uproar over this New Yorker cover entitled The Politics of Fear has been deafening. Should we laugh because the cover suggests that it's just silly to think of the Obamas as political and religious extremists?  Or should we be offended that a major magazine would depict them like this, even in jest? 

Clearly, no one was suggesting that the Obamas are what is shown in the cartoon, and the point was to poke fun at those who still harbor concerns about their backgrounds as Americans.

It's certainly OK for any person to say this was not funny to them.  I admit -- it was not the New Yorker's best cover ever.  But is our collective sense of humor so small that we can't handle this?

Thanks for the Subprime Meltdown, Phil Gramm! Part 2

Keith Olbermann on Phil Gramm's conflicts of interest lobbying on behalf of UBS Bank while advising McCain on his economic platform: listen at around 4:06 in.

Back in March, I opened up a can of whupass with former senator Phil Gramm's name on it in a post laying the subprime mortgage crisis largely at his feet. Gramm was one of the main architects of the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act under the Bill Clinton administration, which undid a law that kept a firewall between the activities of commercial banks and investment banks. Gramm was responsible for loosening regulations spurred by the Great Depression that kept banks and their customers from being subjected to the dangers of banks collapsing. Gramm-Bliley-Leach threw the doors open wide for banks to issue junky subprime loans (often using fraudulent, questionable tactics to calculate the risk for buyers and close home loans at all cost) and then to make Frankenstein-monster investment products by rolling these dicey loans into Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) vehicles that other entities--like giant pension funds--then bought.

You know how E. coli will sometimes cause a recall of tainted beef because manure gets into a batch of ground beef made up of thousands of cows? Well, let's just say that Gramm helped unleash investment vehicles flecked with bad loans that were no longer secured by the properties that were supposed to act as collateral. Yes, I'm comparing Phil Gramm's legislative, lobbying, and McCain economic input to poo.

Tomorrow We Can Breathe

One more day.

Just one more day.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Primary will be over tomorrow and maybe then, to quote Gerald Ford's speech writer who passed away this weekend, "Our long national nightmare will be over."

Wishful thinking you say?  Maybe.  But I'm sensing that even though there are many who believe this will play out until the convention in Denver, my gut says something is going to happen in Pennsylvania that will change all that. 

Maybe we're all just too tired to keep listening.  Maybe each candidates' supporters are beating each other down and we're just too weary to continue.  But I'm sensing there will soon be a shift in this campaign.

While some have not believed me when I've written that my farming parents in Pennsylvania still are on the fence about who to vote for, I spoke with them this weekend and they are still undecided about whether they're going for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.  But they'll have to choose tomorrow.

I realized after a quick yoga class this morning, though, that no matter what happens tomorrow, we can all get through it if we just breathe.

14-Year-Old Feminist Explains Why She Supports Hillary Clinton

Common wisdom these days has been telling us that the youth vote is going to Barack Obama. 

That may be mostly true,  but I came across this post over at Girl w/ Pen! entitled, Feminist Awakening at 14, which I found very interesting, especially in terms of some preconceived notions that at least one high school boy has about why he wouldn't want a woman leading our country.

The good news?  Fourteen-year-olds are thinking about politics in a new way -- they're actually thinking about them!

I don't know about you, but at 14, I was the only geek who cared about politics, Watergate or "Woodstein."  Most of the other girls in my class at that stage of the game were more worried about what color nail polish they were going to wear to the Friday night dance in the gym.

Whether you agree with this high school girl or not, you've got to give her credit for thinking for herself and deciding what's important to her, even though she can't even vote in this election.

You can also find Joanne mulling all this political stuff over at her place, PunditMom, as well as at BlogHer, where she is a Contributing Editor for Politics & News.

Mark Penn: Finito With the Clinton Campaign...Or Not?

I'm an Obama supporter who went from feeling all kumbaya about our two history-making candidates in the Democratic Party after Super Tuesday, to wondering how Clinton came to be so Republican Lite. To think I actually once proclaimed myself "bi-candidate", in Margaret Cho's words, and contemplated a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket! Sadly, I'm not the only one to watch in disbelief as Clinton plummets in reputation and credibility.

Phil Gramm: Thanks for the Subprime Meltdown, Dude!

It took me lots of digging and puzzling it out to connect the dots: Glass-Steagall 1933's repeal leads to Gramm-Leach-Bliley 1999, which leads to former Senator Phil Gramm as economic advisor to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign.

Basically, a law that kept commercial banks separate from investment firms (Glass-Steagall) was repealed and replaced with a law that enabled both banks and investment firms to offer "financial services" (Gramm-Leach-Bliley)--and this gave us an economic climate ripe for sketchy mortgage backed securities and other iffy investments that recently necessitated a $30 billion credit line from the Federal Reserve to Bear Stearns. A credit line of taxpayer money. You. Me. Wallet opening, dollar bills fluttering out and flying away, never to be seen again.

Phil Gramm stood by John McCain in his worst days last summer when his campaign went broke and his candidacy was all but written off by political observers.

Photo: AP--caption and photo courtesy of Politico

Now the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 isn't the *only* reason we have the mess we have. But it's a large reason. And it was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton.

Politico has more on the Gramm/McCain relationship: "McCain Guru Linked to Subprime Crisis".

So if you vote for John "I'm Kinda Fuzzy on the Economy Thingamajingy" McCain, you'll probably be getting more Phil Gramm economic policies. Can we put this vampire Gramm to rest, for once and for all, before our economy is totally sucked dry? I mean, the subprime meltdown with its misery-inducing, credit-wrecking foreclosures and bankruptcies (and abandoned pets) was enough, thanks. No more of your genius wealth-redistribution policies from bottom to top, please.

Otherwise, it's tent cities and soup lines, everyone.

Clinton and Obama Speeches on the Economy

  Conventional wisdom repeated often enough gets mistaken for truth--take for example the hoary old chestnut that Clinton and Obama offer almost the same proposals. Well, I've gone through their speeches addressing the economic fallout from the subprime mortgage mess which has metastasized into widespread financial market meltdown, and found distinct differences in approach and emphasis.

It's true that both candidates support passage of the Dodd-Frank bill (more here). But in terms of their identification of solutions, the two differ widely.

First a summary of each candidate's speech, then a discussion of the differences.

Can We PLEASE Forget About the Blue Dress?

I KNEW that no one really cared about Hillary Clinton's schedule.

Not the schedule per se.   The interest was to use it as a tool to go after her.    That's what it looks like today.

Don't believe me?  Then go read this:

Hillary At White House on 'Stained Blue Dress' Day

I knew that MSNBC was out to get Hillary, but I didn't know that ABC was on that anti-woman bandwagon, as well.    That there is some serious "investigative" work by "Brian Ross and the Investigative Team" over at ABC. 

Is there a legitimate news reason to run that story with that headline?  Go ahead -- try to convince me.

Just as I'm sure we as a nation couldn't care less about the innumerable ladies' lunches I'm sure Hillary had during her stint as First Lady, this nation is way past Blue Dress Fatigue.

But here's the thing I don't get -- why is there such an insistence to criticize Clinton for the sins of her husband?    Sure, she thought it was all a right-wing conspiracy, but PLEASE!!!  There is one reason and one reason only to have this headline, and that's to help tank her race.

One's memory doesn't have to be too long to know that when it comes to anything related to sex and elected officials, the perpetrator of the sin isn't the only one the media consider fair game.  Just ask Silda Wall Spitzer.  And Dina McGreevey.

Just promise me this, MSM -- no matter what happens this time around, in the 2012 presidential race stories like this will be buried, just like the blue dress should be. (Thanks to my pal MOMocrat Debbie for alerting me to this craziness).

Cross-posted from Joanne's place, PunditMom.

Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and Shades of "I Did Not Have..."

It's tempting to read the Spitzer debacle through Monicagate, or to at least wonder what this means for Clinton's campaign.

Do we see in Silda Spitzer's wracked, anguished face hints of Hillary Clinton's from years ago? Will all of this disaster end up reminding voters, especially women voters, how rampant satyrism is among powerful men, which would translate to "bring the woman in and throw the cheating bums out"?

Or is Eliot Spitzer calling to mind Bill Clinton, both radiating shame as they publicly faced up to their sexual peccadilloes? Does Spitzer's moral lapse fuel public speculation of what possible future scandals a First Man Bill Clinton would bring to the White House, shoring up the conviction that both Clintons need to be banished from the White House altogether?

Hard to say what's on the minds of the electorate, or to what extent this will all be a distant memory in Denver at the Democratic National Convention.

We do know that Spitzer, as governor of NY and a superdelegate pledged to Clinton, endorsed Clinton for president. It looks as if Spitzer's resignation is imminent if not already announced. His superdelegate status, nil (Lt. Governor David A. Paterson, the first African American governor of NY and also a superdelegate pledged to support Clinton, will step in). And according to this brief Radar Online posting, the Clinton campaign issued a curt statement and is otherwise emanating a frosty silence on the entire affair, and has erased all visible signs of Spitzer support from her official website.

Cynematic's personal blog is P i l l o w b o o k.