Nor is there anywhere right now to get information on O’Donnell from O’Donnell, because her website has vanished except for a funds solicitation. Like Sharron Angle’s site, which also disappeared for a while after Angle won an unexpected Senate primary victory in Nevada, it is presumably being scrubbed of O’Donnell’s more controversial positions.

Not that they are a secret. She told the JCC audience that she opposes embryonic stem cell research and all abortions except if a woman is going to die, in which case her family could decide which life to save (“There’s probably not a single person in this room who has not been affected by abortion,” she said, somewhat enigmatically).

From this article (bolded emphasis mine).

So Christine O’Donnell has said a number of disturbing things about what she believes… a lot of her statements parrot Palin or don’t differ much from Tea Party catch phrases and mottos.  But this?  This really tops everything I’ve seen so far.

Let me get this straight… Let’s say I get rushed to the hospital with complications in my pregnancy and my life is in danger and she thinks my FAMILY should get to decide whether or not the doctors should save me or let me die trying to save the fetus? That isn’t something I get first dibs on?  Should I make sure I go in with a disclaimer, make sure the doctors understand that I get to be saved.  Me.  Abortion to save my life is absolutely the first measure that meets criteria in that “First, do no harm…” oath.

Who in my family exactly?  Surely Christine O’Donnell doesn’t consider my partner of 8 years my family.  So my conservative Catholic mother? If I were straight, my husband? 

What the actual fuck?  Who could possibly believe this should even be a question? Who would say something like that?

(aside from being excited about this news, I love that it’s “Holy Damn!” which feels like the lovechild of “Hot Damn!” and “Holy Crap!” - two of my favorite exclamations!)

For Rhode Islanders, like me, without a tv!

(this effing governor’s race better get decided tonight.  I hate political cliffhangers, never good news.)

Today is a good day. Our elected officials have finally pushed hard enough to kill this awful, discriminatory and life-ruining policy!  And this is a clear victory in the ongoing battle for a cultural shift that favors equality for queer people in our country. I know that you can read about this in a million different places, or watch it on TV.  Here’s just a little round-up of talking points that I liked:

The Basics

- NPR has a nice, concise rundown of the bill’s debate and passage.

- Amy Davidson at the New Yorker has an essay that touches on the mixed feelings of the day, acknowledging how many people have lost their military careers and still more who have lived in fear of being outed:

We have no way of counting how many more people left the military or denied their own vocation for service, or how many personal relationships were ended or soured. How many soldiers gave up on the prospect of having a family? One thing we do know, as the Pentagon freely acknowledged in its review, is that there are plenty of gay and lesbian troops in the military now. (And the study’s survey found that having worked with a gay or lesbian colleague made straight service members more likely to support repeal.) D.A.D.T. just forced them to lie about who they were, and live in fear about being found out, when their jobs were hard enough already. Why should, say, a nineteen-year-old already in a combat zone have to wake up scared about that?

- Towleroad has a great Q & A from Ari Ezra Waldman on some of the legal questions involved and why people in the service may need to wait a bit to be completely safe coming out!  This is important to discuss, because it is likely to take a while to be completely safe and fair.

- Just for perspective, check out this list on Wikipedia of the 38 countries who already allow openly homosexual people to serve in their militaries.  It’s about time we’ve joined them.   Despite what many Republicans would have you believe, it’s not like we’re doing something revolutionary or radical here in the US, we are just finally catching up to the obvious truth of equality that several other countries already understand and practice when it comes to this issue.

People of the Day – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

… read more

In which I compile links, quotes and discussion of the big news today and comment on it.

Oh man.  I ((heart)) you, Boing Boing!

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In one of their first acts this year, state lawmakers have banned state officials and agencies from using any term but “Christmas trees” to describe the trees that are “customarily erected or displayed” during the holidays.

The measure was introduced by freshman Republican Rep. Doreen Costa, R-North Kingstown — with backing from Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick — and was approved by the House within moments of introduction, without any of the lawmakers getting copies of the measure on which they were being asked to vote. Read the resolution here. “The way I looked at is this,” said Costa, who identifies herself as a Catholic. “When you were small, did you say Mommy I want to go holiday shopping or Mommy I want to make holiday cookies…? No, no. They’re always Christmas.”

Costa, who also identifies herself as a member of the Tea Party movement, said she could not imagine anyone objecting to passage of the resolution, which marked her first and only legislative accomplishment so far. She said she introduced it “on a whim,” is “excited” that it passed, and “it is what is. It’s a Christmas tree.” Resolutions are directive, but they do not have the force of law.

Ok, so let me get this straight - On their first day back, while the Dems in the RI House and Senate were busy introducing measures to tackle issues of immigration, the economy… oh yeah and Marriage Equality (woot!), the Republicans were introducing resolutions to restrict terminology used to describe holiday symbols?

Who the fuck is electing these people?

Priorities, people, it’s about priorities!

*Oh and in regards to the tree business, Ms. Costa, you can take your “War on Christmas” and shove it, too!

(Source: listofnow)

1.  Today is one of those days in which, no matter how great my day at work would be or even if I stayed home, I would rather be on a roadtrip.  Can a person call in “nomad”?  I mean, it’s not everyday.  It hits me like an illness.  Just the ridiculous yearning to take-off.  I’m sorry, I’m having wanderlust today, I need to take an early weekends so I can go now.  I’ll be fine next week.  I think.

2.  I was riding in a car this morning with a work colleague that I don’t know too well, he works for our library consortium and comes to handle our routers and networking once and a while.  It came up that he loves talk radio, as do I.  And he proceeded to tell me that he listens to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the like.  I politely said I listen to NPR and local public radio, and it was a moment where there was like no hostility, just polite/friendly acknowledgment that we are on different “sides”.  I went on to say that I listen to a lot of programs that are pretty much news and “neutral” - pointing out the difference between something like “the World” (a straight-up news program) and something with opinion/pundits.  I joked that listening to pundits often just made me too angry.  And I didn’t even specify which pundits, because often even liberal pundits get me all riled up when I agree with them cause there is a lot to be outraged about.  But he took it as me referring to conservatives (still joking) “What, so it makes you angry to hear the truth, to hear someone actually talk about what’s going on in the world once in a while?  Yeah the truth hurts!” 

What. The. Actual. Fuck.   I was trying to stay polite (work relationship that I have to have and all).  Why do conservatives do this?  Why do they always have to take the cheap shot and make a dig when I’m happy to keep it on the level and not make it a personal issue about what I believe.   I mean as soon as he mentioned taxes, I could have said “So what, you’re a close-to-retirement Baby Boomer who has gotten more advantages in the early stages in your career than I will get in my LIFETIME, and yet you feel entitled to not have to give back shit for future generations? You like to listen to fear and hate-mongering, whiny bitching all day instead of actual news?” 

But I don’t do that.  1. Because I’m at work.  2. Because I have no right to assume I know him or his life experiences and story, or how well-informed he is.  But I don’t deserve the same courtesy?  I had just said I listen regularly to global news programs… yes, of course I don’t like to hear the TRUTH.  Because I’m missing out on so many FACTS that are left out of the news and only Glenn Beck has the insight to enlighten me with?  What planet is he living on?  And why don’t their customs include basic respect, especially at work?

3.  The list of now blog (not this tumblr, which I think of as an adjunct) needs a new layout.  My current layout was chosen and adapted cause it’s pretty, but it’s not functional really and I’m realizing it just doesn’t fit me.  So I’m going to work on a shift towards that a redesign that feels more like me in the next week or so.

4.  Why does Pandora not understand that I do not like the Silversun Pickups or Kings of Leon or Vampire Weekend.  I click to make it go away and they keep coming back!!!

5.  I would spend all weekend in a movie theater given adequate time and money.

feministlibrarian:

“This leftists-are-elitists bit chaps my ass to no end. Politically, I lean toward the left, but I grew up in a blue-collar single-parent home and put myself through college and law school. Isn’t that the American Dream or some shit? Nope. Not when you’re a progressive. When you’re a progressive who has dared to rise above her station in life you’re a frakking leftist elitist.”

~Fannie, Fannie’s Room.

I find this really frustrating too: the assumption that someone with a graduate school education a) comes from an upper-middle-class background and b) is currently upper-middle-class in terms of their financial resources. And that these together equal automatic elitist tendancies.

Um … I’m a radical leftist in my politics precisely because I’m anti-elitism? Because I’ve been marginalized in many ways throughout my life? It’s such a through-the-looking-glass feeling to be charged with innate elitism based on false assumptions about my biography.

word to all this. 

And this is a total departure rant (albeit somewhat related in my mind) but  I’m also really, really fucking tired of the added geography assumption.  I’m tired of hearing about the Northeast Liberal Elite.  And the shock (even coming from Midwest liberals when I lived there) that there are working class unions and my home state is full of blue collar tradespeople, unions, farms and fishermen.

So no… we aren’t all democrats because we all get sent to ivy-covered prep schools, or because we grow up with snobbish people don’t understand what down-home, country, good American life is like - a lot of us are progressive because generations of our families have been working class here in New England. 

I don’t understand how elsewhere in the country there is no understanding or acceptance that there is rural New England, that there are poor fishing villages, not just tourists, summer homes and mansions. That there is urban and even inner-city New England.

I don’t understand how, even those some of the oldest settled areas in our country, with deep and preserved access to history and traditions, people still have the nerve to act like “down south” their cultural memory and identity is something unique.  I can’t count how many times I’ve been treated like a WASPY yankee who doesn’t understand “good home cooking” or how “everyday folks” do things. As if my descendants were fucking Kennedys and I grew up with nannies and maids instead of being from poor farming Portuguese and Italian immigrants, and I grew up in a rural town with only two stop lights.

And don’t get my started on the Tea Party anti-intellectualism (anti-actual facts and research) current that runs rampant under the taxes lies.  How we all want big government to tax the people who are really working in our country.

I mean really.. stop.  Stop with this Elite-labeling bullshit.  I don’t assume everyone down south is waving a confederate flag.  I don’t assume that everyone in Arizona is a cowboy, border vigilante.  I don’t assume that everyone in California is a dope-smoking hippie.  What the fuck is with the assumption that everyone in the NE is a harvard-educated, silver-spoon brat that is liberal only because we don’t know how the rest of the country (i.e. the real “America”) lives? 

((end rant))