Started my reread with vague memories of the plot. Golems. The Watch. Some seriousness.

Then during my read last night I came to this part:

"In a way, it didn't matter who they were. In fact, their anonymity was part of the whole business. They thought themselves part of the march of history, the tide of progress and the wave of the future. They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists, and secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that."

Pterry always managed to slip something in.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Gacked from

difrancis

I was born in Buffalo. Mom was pink collar all her life. When he worked at Bethlehem Steel, Dad was a member of the United Steelworkers. I guess it's in the blood somewhere.

My Liberal Identity

You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

Current Mood: recumbent

Boosting the signal. My Arizona friends love their state, but boy howdy, the state guv has gone off the rails.

Originally posted by

seachanges at Stop the Arizona birth control bill

I never thought I'd be glad I no longer live in Arizona, but this recent spate of hateful, anti-women legislation being considered makes me so very grateful I left when I did. :/

---------------

Originally posted by

maryosmanski at Stop the Arizona birth control bill

I just signed the following petition addressed to: Arizona Senate, Arizona State Legislature, Debbie Lesko.

----------------
Stop the Arizona birth control Bill

If this bill passes the senate then women of Arizona would be forced to provide documentation that birth control is for medical purposes only. The "company" would not be required to cover birth control if it was for prevention of conception. Additionally this bill would give companies the right to fire women if they discovered that she was using a contraceptive to prevent pregnancy
----------------

http://www.change.org/petitions/arizona-sentate-arizona-state-legislature-debbie-lesko-stop-the-arizona-birth-control-bill#

I cannot even find the words to say how outraged I am at the idea of this particular piece of legislation.

Current Mood: pissed off

First of all, this isn't about the unborn. If the people behind this amendment were as concerned about "life" as they claim, they would work to ensure that women had access to family planning services and birth control. Every child would planned for, wanted, and cared for by a parent prepared to meet the challenges and responsibilities of rearing him/her, and abortion would be, in the words of iirc Bill Clinton, "safe, legal, and rare."

But the purpose of this amendment is to control women's bodies, strip away their personhood and relegate them to the status of ambulatory incubators. My mother worked in Catholic hospitals for much her of adult life, and in many of them the unwritten rule was that if the doctor needed to choose between saving the life of the mother or that of the baby, the baby won. Her mother, who bore ten children and lost several more, was accused after one miscarriage of having fallen deliberately in order to induce. She would not have been treated but for the fact that her doctor stepped in and defended her. Ponder for a moment what might have happened if he hadn't done so. Ponder for another moment a country where this sort of defense becomes the standard, the only thing standing between a woman who has just miscarried and a criminal charge.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that the wives/daughters of the people pushing this law will always have access to whatever is needed to prevent or end a pregnancy. This amendment will only affect women who lack the resources to protect their rights.

**************
Originally posted by

james_nicoll at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by

soldiergrrrl at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by

twbasketcaseat Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by

gabrielleabelleat Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting ~~very little~~ no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

Current Mood: angry

Elizabeth Warren Announces Her Bid for Senate - YouTube (hat tip to Angry Black Lady over at Balloon Juice)

Current Mood: amused

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/22/976743/-Owners-of-the-world,-unite

Analysis of Deng Xiaoping sowed the seeds of China's economic growth, by Mark Sumner at Daily Kos.

It's become popular to view American workers in the decades after World War II as "highly paid." The truth is they were "rightly paid," with incomes that tracked well against the value of the products they produced. This was only possible because of the tight alignment between workers salaries and the price of goods.

Rather than organize an international revolt of workers, Deng generated a conspiracy of business leaders willing to devalue their work force. He showed CEOs that they could become fabulously wealthy if they only reduced their companies to nothing more than nameplates and outlets – brand names for China Inc. He showed them that they could profit from the destruction of their own system. What we took as economic victory was really an invitation to economic suicide, and corporations lined up to jump.

I'm not a political scientist, historian, or economist. Interested on other takes.

Current Mood: contemplative

Current Mood: contemplative

A very good post about Ryan's proposed budget by John Cole over at Balloon Juice

The only way you could think slashing Medicare as it is proposed in the Ryan plan and then giving that same amount to the well-off is acceptable is if you simply have no idea what Medicare does and how valuable it is to so many people. You must think the whole program is full of fraud, waste, and abuse. You must think that no lives are actually being saved. That is really the only explanation for some of the behavior from some pundits.

Long, but imo worth reading.

Current Mood: angry

Current Mood: angry

A good entry from Kay over at Balloon Juice:

The other thing that occurred to me, standing there listening to the fireman with the bullhorn, was that a lot of the workers attending the rally appeared in the coloring book I got in kindergarten. “Your Community”, I think it was called. I don’t know if you got one of those at public school, but I think you know what I mean. There’s the brick schoolhouse, the teacher, the school bus driver and the crossing guard in the foreground, with the police officer waving the fireman in the fire truck through the 4-way stop in the background. That’s what came to my mind.

Current Mood: contemplative

Current Mood: contemplative

This point has been made several times this weekend, and it's true:

Before the emergence of public unions, public employees were compensated significantly less than people in the private sector. The reason? Much of the private sector work force was unionized. What changed is not the public employees got a better deal, but that the private sector became deunionized, lost the right to bargain collectively, and saw their compensation and benefits stagnate or fall. But I have another question. Do taxpayers want public workers to get the smallest possible salaries? Do they want a government administered by paupers?

Crabs in a bucket. If we're slicing at one another, we're not paying attention to the folks with the pot of boiling water.

Wrong target.

Current Mood: contemplative

Current Mood: contemplative

A good post, a very good post, from Kay over at Balloon Juice:

The phrase collective bargaining has a much larger meaning than “benefits”, and to watch Scott Walker with his vacant ideologue’s stare reciting bullet points over and over is to realize he has no idea what it means.

It means workers have a seat at the table. It’s a simple idea but it’s incredibly powerful. That’s what they’re defending.

Some of the comments aren't bad, either.

Current Mood: contemplative

Current Mood: contemplative

Strong stuff, by way of Greg Sargent's Plum Line:

Current Mood: contemplative

Strong stuff, by way of Greg Sargent's Plum Line:

Current Mood: contemplative

A sobering column by Bob Herbert:

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Current Mood: thoughtful

From this morning's Washington Monthly:

"In a smart column today, Bruce Bartlett looks at why it will be so hard for politicians to cut government spending: because so many Americans who say they support cutting government programs don't realize just how much they benefit from them.

Remember, for example, when a town hall attendee famously told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare"? Apparently that bewilderingly blinkered sentiment is hardly unique."

Current Mood: ooookaaay

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ksmith

Kristine Smith

July 2025

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One More Detour on the Writing Road

My hair is stuck in Chapter 8

Entries tagged with politics

Feet of Clay

Haven't done one of these in a while

My Liberal Identity

Stop the Arizona birth control bill

Mississippi Personhood Amendment

PSA

A fine way to start the morning

A fine way to start the morning

The Ryan Budget and Medicare

The Ryan Budget and Medicare

These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

Screwed So Long They Can't See Straight

Screwed So Long They Can't See Straight

Ironworkers Local 8

Ironworkers Local 8

House Dem reveals abortion on the House floor

House Dem reveals abortion on the House floor

When democracy weakens

When democracy weakens

The lack of self-awareness is almost amusing.

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July 2025

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