anniemiz

Sweet!

Heh:

Yes, he could and he did!

CNN: OBAMA TO BE NEXT PRESIDENT 

BREAKING NEWS

 

 

Sen. Barack Obama will defeat Sen. John McCain to become the next U.S. president, CNN projects. Projected wins in West Coast states helped give the Democrat the magic number of electoral votes.

Stoatification

Okay, this is exciting, but it's not quite as exciting and close as I had expected. 

VOTE!

Vote!  C'mon, people, get out and vote!

Now, if for some bizarre reason you do NOT vote, you get to keep your mouth shut for the next four years.

Our polling station is just a few blocks away and on the way to the train station.  Kevin voted this morning on his way to the station.  He said there were about 50 people in line to vote when the doors opened.  That's kinda busy for our little town.  I'll go a little later today, when I think it might not be as busy.  I'll just have to wrench myself away from CNN.  I did sign up via mybarackobama.com to give people rides to the polls, but I haven't heard anything specific back. I figure I probably won't be used if I haven't heard anything by now. 

But enough about me...get out and vote, bitches!

WIVOB&NMcCP: Second in an occasional series

The post title acronym stands for Why I'm Voting for Obama/Biden and Not McCain/Palin.  The first post is here.  My 'why' there is around Palin as an awful choice for vp.

Today's 'why' is about who I relate to better: Obama or McCain.  You've probably read about polls that ask people which candidate they can relate to better, which candidate they'd like to have a beer with, who they'd rather carpool with, etc.  From the carpool link:

The old beer question as a test of likability in presidential candidates has been scorned by some as a superficial measure of whether someone would be a good president.

Still, pollsters can’t help but ask it in one form or other, since voters say that likeability matters as they consider whom they want in their living rooms for the next four years.

OTOH, I'm ambivalent about voting for someone bc I feel I can relate to them better.  Shouldn't I vote based on just the candidates' stand on just the issues?  OTOH, it may be the case that I relate to someone better at least partly bco our shared values.  In that case, I'm also voting based on the issues and not just on likeability.  Anyway, let's put that ambivalence aside for now and just accept that I'm at least voting based on likeability and relativity.  So.  I relate better to Obama bc:

1. His upbringing is much more like mine.  This is significant to me and I'm unsure why.  In a way, I think very wealthy candidates (and I'm generalizing here; there are exceptions, of course) are too far away from the  average lower class person's experience, perhaps even the average middle class person's experience.  They don't know what it's like to work multiple jobs; use food stamps; try to simultaneously save for retirement, put kids through college and provide care to older relatives; afford a safe, decent place to live; etc.  Not only do they not know these kinds of things from experience, they don't know it from the experience of those close to them, e.g., parents, grandparents, mentors, other important people in their lives, etc.  So they're experientially too far away from my experience.   Financial security is very important to me, whether I want it to be or not.  And by financial security, I mean having the basics covered.  And by basics, I mean basics: housing, employment, food, clothes, health insurance.  Anything else - cars, cats, electronics, etc. - is gravy.  Chris Rock had a funny quote from Larry King, about who to vote for: And I'll go with the guy with one house. The guy with one house is scared about losing his house. It's a joke, but it resonates with me.
2. His life now is much more like mine.  See much of #1.  Grow up, go to college, get a job, do something with your life, give a damn about other people, etc.  Rest assured that I am most certainly not saying my achievements compare to Obama's; indeed they do not.  I suppose I'm quite the underachiever (which is sort of an achievement in itself?).  But the track, or path, is similar.
3. He's very calm under pressure.  I admire that and it's something I'm continually working on myself.  I feel I make the best decisions when I think clearly and calmly about things.  I want a deliberative president.
4. He gives a damn about other people.  Even people he hasn't met, people who need help, people who often seem invisible in society, etc.: poor, unemployed, struggling.  I read about his tax plan to cut taxes for everyone earning under $250,000 ($250,000 sounds like a lot, which it is, but it also includes people earning way less) and think, 'This guy is doing something good for the vast majority of people in the country.'  Perhaps it's just campaign tactics, but I don't get a similar vibe from the opposition.
5. Again, perhaps it's bco campaigning:  McCain/Palin seem like yer basic Republicans.  It probably doesn't help that he's an old rich white guy and she's a crazy church lady.  They've tried to disassociate themselves from the Bush administration, but to my mind they haven't succeeded.  Obama is bigger than his party.  Where McCain/Palin retain solely the Republican brand, Obama is a Democrat with his own brand.  Obama and Hillary Clinton ran on similar platforms, but both have very strong personalities.  It would matter if one or the other were running, simply by force of their personalities and characters.   McCain/Palin don't seem that special.   Hmm.  This isn't really a relational point, but I'll leave it.  Maybe it's that I think character is important and I like Obama's character.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Alright people, I'm feeling uninspired today so I shall direct your attention elsewhere.  A few links:

The post, I missed the memo, at unfogged generated some interesting comments.  From the original post:

Do people really abort because they find out the baby has Down's Syndrome? I thought that people had abortions because of the mother's circumstances, the mother's health, or because the baby had such severe abnormalities that it would only live a year or two.

But lately all these people have come out of the woodwork saying, "Yeah, we would have aborted it if it had had Down's." Really? Am I totally out of touch with the baby calculus going on in other people's heads?

Annnnnnd...did you know that, in NJ, you can vote by absentee ballot for any or no reason at all?  I did not know that...until yesterday.  From the NJ Division of Elections website page on Absentee Voting:

In New Jersey, any voter can now vote by Absentee Ballot for any election. You do not need a reason to vote by Absentee Ballot. Don't feel like going to the polls? Simply vote by mail. Now there is "no excuse" not to vote!

A voter may apply for an absentee ballot by completing an Absentee Ballot Application (see below) and mailing the application to their County Clerk by mail up to 7 days prior to the election. A voter may also apply in person to the County Clerk until 3:00 p.m., the day before the election. The County Clerk cannot accept faxed copies of an Absentee Ballot Application since an original signature is required. And here's the link to the application.  I'm thinking about doing it, for a few reasons: I'm lazy and my polling place is all the way down the street (as in, 5 blocks away; further as in, I could walk there in 5-10 minutes). The polls will probably be very busy that day. I'm considering volunteering to give rides to polling sites to people who need rides to said polling sites.  This way my vote will already be in and I won't have to worry about doing it on a day when I might be rushing around trying to get other people to the polls. I'm thinking about not doing it for symbolic reasons: There's something about going behind the curtain and physically casting your vote. My town is very Republican and, for some reason, I think of physically going to the polls here and casting my Democratic vote, standing in line with a whole mess of Republicans, existing Democratically for all to see, etc. as somehow symbolically important.  Not quite sure how, hence the 'somehow', but there it is. The important thing is that you vote. Somehow, some way, it doesn't matter how you vote, just do it! And now, for something completely different (well, perhaps not; it's about a proposition that's up for vote in CA): Frank Notes blogs about and against California's Proposition 8 here and here.  I am tewtally down with commenter Mary, who says: Whatever mystique there may be about the sacred tradition of marriage is absurd, IMHO. For much of history, marriage has been a means of transferring property (a woman) from one man (her father) to another (her husband). Quite honestly, I hope any adult who wants to enter into a lifelong commitment with another adult should be able to do that. Stheriousy.  My own comment (which came off a bit pessimistic): I’m with Mary who commented about the mystique of a sacred tradition of marriage. People who are against gay marriage often speak of hetero marriage as if it means the same thing to everybody, but it doesn’t, whether or not we married heteros realize it. People get married for different reasons: love, companionship, to start and raise a family w/another person, financial security, societal expectations, etc. I don’t mean to demean the love part of any marriage; I just mean to point out that it’s not the only reason people want to marry. It’s like saying there’s only one version of patriotism or one ideal of beauty. Not all hetero marriages are the same mysterious sacred union; they’re all variations on the theme of marriage. And the consenting adults who enter into marriage should be just another variation on marriage. I don’t think I expressed myself very clearly. I once heard a gay comedian talk about how, wrt gay marriage, gays just wanted a chance to be as miserable as hetero married people. It pointed up what I’m trying to say, just better and funnier. People make such a big deal out of marriage, like it's some sort of ethereal existence.  It's just one type of interpersonal relationship.  It has not always existed.  It has also played different roles in society throughout time, as Mary noted about its use of transferring property.  Or transferring power.  At some places and times it has represented - and continues to represent - the union of entire families rather than just two people.  Sometimes multiple spouses (usually multiple wives) are allowed, accepted as normal and perhaps even encouraged, but even that is often done for reasons other than bco some spiritual union business.  Basically, I doubt that very few people who get married actually do so for groovy mystical reasons. I'd like to see state-recognized marriage and all its benefits as a civil function, i.e., a civil wedding takes place and is the legal wedding for purposes of all those lovely benefits.  If people want to have a religious ceremony too, they can certainly do so.  My father used to occasionally get pictures from then-Communist Poland of relatives' weddings.  There seemed invariably to be two pictures: one of the happy couple at their civil wedding and one at their religious wedding.  So in my mind, then, this idea of civil and religious weddings suggests a Communist approach.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  But I assume that those who are afraid of the Pinko Commie Threat would oppose such an arrangement, but I bet a lot of such people wouldn't even know enough to make the connection to what Communist countries used to do. Shorter: Just take religious institutions out of the state-recognized marriage business. Even shorter: Separation of church and state.

Why I'm Voting for Obama/Biden & Not for McCain/Palin (or WIVOB&NMcCP): First in an occasional series

Okay, people, you watched the VP debate, right?  How anyone can think that Palin won (and there are people who think that and I'm not counting other Republican politicians, Faux News, etc.), I have no idea.  Yes, Palin did better than expected last night, but the expectations for her were incredibly low.  Her main goal was to make less of a very public fool of herself than she has in the recent past.

For a president or vice-president, I want someone who is intelligent in general and knowledgeable in particular about the huge amount of issues presidents or VPs need to know (e.g., foreign policy, domestic policy, history, the Constitution, the legislature, finance, economics, etc.).

Palin is probably a nice person (although, if she's anything in person as she is on TV, I probably wouldn't care much for her) with good intentions, but she is totally unqualified to be aVP or president.  Click here to watch an excerpt from Katie Couric's interviews with Biden and Palin.  She asks them both about Roe v. Wade and Supreme Court decisions.  (There's an ad first, then Biden, then Palin.)  Here's the transcript:

*****

Katie Couric: Why do you think Roe v. Wade was a good decision?

Joe Biden: Because it's as close to a consensus that can exist in a society as heterogeneous as ours. What does it say? It says in the first three months that decision should be left to the woman. And the second three months, where Roe v. Wade says, well then the state, the government has a role, along with the women's health, they have a right to have some impact on that. And the third three months they say the weight of the government's input is on the fetus being carried.

And so that's sort of reflected as close as anybody is ever going to get in this heterogeneous, this multicultural society of religious people as to some sort of, not consensus, but as close it gets.

I think the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment … offers a right to privacy. Now that's one of the big debates that I have with my conservative scholar friends, that they say, you know, unless a right is enumerated - unless it's actually, unless [it] uses the word "privacy" in the Constitution - then no such "constitutional right" exists. Well, I think people have an inherent right.

Couric: Are there Supreme Court decisions you disagree with?

Biden: You know, I'm the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act. And I said that every woman in America, if they are beaten and abused by a man, should be able to take that person to court - meaning you should be able to go to federal court and sue in federal court the man who abused you if you can prove that abuse. But they said, "No, that a woman, there's no federal jurisdiction." And I held, they acknowledged, I held about 1,000 hours of hearings proving that there's an effect in interstate commerce.
Women who are abused and beaten and beaten are women who are not able to be in the work force. And the Supreme Court said, "Well, there is an impact on commerce, but this is federalizing a private crime and we're not going to allow it." I think the Supreme Court was wrong about that decision.

Couric Why, in your view, is Roe v. Wade a bad decision?

Sarah Palin: I think it should be a states' issue not a federal government-mandated, mandating yes or no on such an important issue. I'm, in that sense, a federalist, where I believe that states should have more say in the laws of their lands and individual areas. Now, foundationally, also, though, it's no secret that I'm pro-life that I believe in a culture of life is very important for this country. Personally that's what I would like to see, um, further embraced by America.

Couric: Do you think there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

Palin: I do. Yeah, I do.

Couric: The cornerstone of Roe v. Wade.

Palin: I do. And I believe that individual states can best handle what the people within the different constituencies in the 50 states would like to see their will ushered in an issue like that.

Couric: What other Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?

Palin: Well, let's see. There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today.

*****

Now, Biden's answer wasn't a dazzling answer, but it was a perfectly acceptable answer in that it answered the question in a cohesive, thoughtful, meaningful way.  Longtime readers will recall that I agree with the Obama/Biden position on Roe v. Wade and abortion in general.  So that's one reason why they have my vote.

Palin's answer (like much of her debate performance) was a non-answer.  She believes there's an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution, which contributed to the Roe v. Wade decision, but she can't accept Roe v. Wade and she doesn't explain why her acceptance of the right to privacy and her stance on Roe v. Wade are not contradictory.  She does say it's a state issue, but (Carol, correct me if I'm wrong on this stuff) if the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy then the states cannot deny that right to privacy.  They can try, but all it takes is one unsuccessful state version of Roe v. Wade to get challenged and overturned at the Supreme Court level for Roe v. Wade to stand in that state and then it's at least very hard for another state to differ.

Bonus deductions for Palin: She cannot think of a single other Supreme Court decision with which she disagrees. I wager it's bc she's unfamiliar with Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v. Wade.

Instant 147 demerits for winking.  Enough with the winking!  One wink is one wink too many.  I demand an All Winks Left Behind bill!  (And let's hope it's more successful than NCLB.)  You are debating the Democratic vice presidential candidate.  You are not (at least you shouldn't be) flirting with the cameraman nor are you opening a new Hunters' Emporium, for goodness' sake.

Shorter WIVOB&NMcCP: I want a vp (and potential president) who:

• can speak in a coherent, cohesive, informative and meaningful manner;
• can answer a serious question;
• is knowledgeable about the many areas that fall under the VP and president's purview; and

• doesn't wink unless absolutely necessary (i.e., never).

Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit, but there's an applicable cheezburger cat (actually, there are a few):

Helping the Womens' Group in Basra

I blogged recently about the murder of Leila Hussein, the mother of Rand Abdel-Qader, a 17 yo girl who was murdered by her father for having a crush on a British soldier in Iraq.  Hussein had divorced and left her husband after their daughter's murder.  A womens' group in Basra hid Hussein and was trying to smuggle her out of the country for her own safety.  She was murdered as she and two women from the group were moving her from one place to another along her escape.  The two women with Hussein were also shot, but they survived.  In my earlier post I said:

More importantly, I don't know what can be done.  Several commenters on the Feministe thread express frustration at the seemingly non-existent assistance one can give to women like Rand and Leila.  I used to volunteer on the help line at a womens' shelter (also at a nursing home and an animal shelter, but it's the womens' shelter volunteering that I miss most; I miss the cats at the shelter, but I do not miss all the cleaning, the scooping, the stinking, the  medicating, the feeding, etc. etc., in short, all the dirty work; with 6 cats, I get enough of that at home nowadays) and my contributions were always visible, measurable, etc.  I knew that I was helping people, that I was getting the right information to the people who needed it, that I was listening to people who needed to talk, etc.  Direct assistance is surely not the only way to help others, but women suffering under oppressive patriarchal societies seem so far away, so unreachable, so untouchable to those outside the society willing to help (and, to a lesser extent, probably to those within as well).  One commenter had several suggestions, most of which I'll call 'administrative', although I do not mean to suggest anything negative about them.  I'll guess that the most effective suggestion would be the economic one: boycott offending countries.  So, unfortunately, I have nothing practical to offer.

I received the following email from a reader:

I realize there is no shortage of ghastly events everywhere that demand our attention but each of us is especially touched by one or other. The case of  Leila Hussein has been hammering round my head since Sunday. She vanished very quickly from the press and is remembered in just a few blogs. I wrote to Al- Jazeera to ask why there was no coverage but have received no reply. It occurred to me that maybe a teeshirt campaign would take off - I imagined millions of people wearing her image to demonstrate that her courage was not forgotten and to show the Islamic world that we are disgusted and outraged and perhaps to encourage sensitive and intelligent Muslims to wear it also to distance themselves from such practices.  Letters have been written to the authorities in Basra to press for the arrest of the father and brothers but I feel this campaign could address the issue in another way. What do you think?

 

Thing is, I don't really know enough to know what a good idea is in this situation.  Around this time, Feminist Philosophers blogged about Hussein's murder.  Figuring the folks over there would be more hooked into how to help women like Hussein and Abdel-Qader, I shared my frustration and my reader's suggestion in their comments section.  One of FP's bloggers pointed to this link over at Jezebel, about how to get funds to the Basra womens' group, which has shut down bco the danger.  Group members have received death threats and are trying to get themselves out of Iraq.

 

Jezebel readers have somehow managed to send $1,700 to the group.  Not sure how they did it; PayPalling Jezebel was involved; I think it went through somebody in the UK bco potential problems with U.S. types sending money to Iraq.  Anyway, I'm checking in on that post occasionally to see if they're still collecting funds and will be sending over another chunk o' cash.  Of course, this may help these women escape Iraq and potential death, but won't do anything for the women who remain.  That still remains a challenge and I'm still interested in good ideas about how to help them.

 

BTW, here's Afif Sarhan's blog.  I think it was Sarhan who first reported on Rand's murder.

Leila Hussein, Mother of 'Honor' Killing Victim, Is Herself Murdered

I blogged recently about the 'honor' killing in Iraq of 17 yo Rand Abdel-Qader.  Rand was killed by her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, when he learned that she had become infatuated by a British soldier, 'Paul' while she was volunteering to help fellow Iraqis in Basra.  He learned this 4 months after she had last conversed with Paul.  Apparently, she had chatted with Paul briefly a few times over several months.  When Abdel-Qadar began assaulting Rand, her mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers for help, as in to stop her husband.  Instead, they joined in.  Rand was stomped upon, suffocated and stabbed to death.  Abdel-Qadar was arrested by Iraqi police, but released within 2 hours.  He has not been charged with any crime.  He claims that police congratulated him on his actions.  From the Guardian UK (also linked in my original post):

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.

Hussein divorced Abdel-Qadar two weeks after the killing, at which point he broke her arm while beating her.  She went into hiding and was being helped by one of the few womens' rights groups in Iraq.  The group was trying to get Hussein out of Iraq.  Feministe tells us that Leila Hussein has also been murdered.  Again, from the Guardian UK:

Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband - the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal 'honour' killing for which he has shown no remorse.

Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.

The two women helping her were hit with one bullet each.  The womens' rights group to which they belonged has since stopped their work, citing the danger:

Since the attack the NGO has stopped its work in Basra. 'We daren't answer the phones because we have received so many threats since we gave our support to Leila's case,' said Mariam [one of the two women with Hussein at the time of the attack]. 'Most of our members are preparing to leave the city and even Iraq if they can raise the money.'

...

Mariam has moved out of her home. But within hours of speaking to The Observer a close friend went to her new address to deliver a message that had been left for her at her front door. It read: 'Death to betrayers of Islam who don't deserve God's forgiveness. Speaking less you will live more.' She believes it was sent by Leila's killers.

This whole business of female 'honor' seems so odd to me, for several reasons (and yes, I realize that several of these points stem from my own cultural background which is itself foreign to cultures in which these murders are condoned):

1. The idea that an individual's honor is connected to/defined by another individual seems so counter-intuitive.
2. These murders are about control, not honor, religious purity, Islam, etc. Yes, the murderers hide behind Islam (like so many murderers have hidden behind so many religions for ages), but one can be Muslim without condoning honor killings. Of course, extremists will say that such people aren't real Muslims.  I wouldn't be surprised if many, many extremist men who think that they're defending Islam ('true' Islam, of course) don't realize that they themselves have been formed by generations of cultural manipulation.  I'm not expressing this well, let me try again: They think they're being good Muslims, i.e., they think they're acting religiously out of their own piety, when really they're acting culturally.
3. It strikes me as odd that, in such a very patriarchal society, the actions of one woman - a society in which women are worthless, female births are occasions for sorrow instead of joy - have such power over the men in her family.
4. Besides being about control, there's something here that suggests fear. Perhaps it's fear that, by not supporting concepts such as female honor, men will lose control over women.  When a woman steps outside the bounds, it ignites this fear and the transgressor must be extinguished a) before she does any damage to male control and/or b) so that others see her fate as a deterrent (similar to how capital punishment is supposed to serve as a deterrent in the U.S.).

The commenters on the Feministe thread about Husseins' murder are mostly anti-honor killing, feminist, etc.  There is one dissenting commenter, 'Syed'.  Now, other commenters wonder if Syed is who he appears to be, i.e., a Muslim man who supports Rand's honor killing, but not necessarily Hussein's murder.  Some suggest that he may be a troll posing as such so as to make Islam come off badly in a public forum.  Here I'll take Syed's comments at face value.  His first comment:

While I understand that the murder of the wife should be prosecuted, the daughter’s killing is justified in Islam which was their religion and while it may appear strange to westerners, they should not worry too much about it just as Muslim countries leave the strange Western practices alone. In Islam, it is forbidden for a woman to be alone with or talk unnecessarily to a man that is not related to her. The punishment prescribed by the Holy Quran can go from imprisonment until she repents upto death. We are not privy to what went between her father, who must have loved her, and her before her death and we should refrain from speculating.

From another comment:

Only that which is given in Quran matters as that is the unaltered will of Allah.

Annnnnd:

It is just the way it is. There are consequences for actions. They may appear harsh but there is a reason they were ordained that way.

These comments, and this view in general, strike me as odd for, again, at least several reasons:

• Allah is (I presume) the source of all creation, including humans, who have powers of reason. The above interpretation of Islam suggests blind adherence to the Quran, i.e., no further thought is required. Perhaps reason can be applied to non-religious matters (if there are any; perhaps everything can be religiousized[?]), but never to religious matters.
• Strict adherence (read: blind obedience) to the Quran is necessary. How was this decided? Perhaps somebodies, somewhere, sometime along the way, reasoned that that was the thing to do. But is that still human reasoning involved in the very fundamentals aspects, in the establishment of Islam?
• Or perhaps the Quran itself mandates strict adherence. But a lot of Muslims interpret Islam and the Quran in a lot of different ways. Even such a mandate could be interpreted with widely divergent results. If determining the meaning of text is an exercise in reason, then even those who say they're following the letter of such a mandate in the Quran (again, I don't know that there is one) are actually reasoning about the meaning of said mandate.
• If there's any reasoning involved in following the Quran, isn't there room then to wonder if one's got it wrong?  I suppose one could argue that one's interpretation is the correct one, but then there's that reasoning again.
• These bullets point are not an argument.  In fact, there are inconsistences among them. There are also other factors that should be considered, e.g., what role does free will play in Islam and in the interpretation of the Quran?  (That particular question is too large to deal with here.)

I don't have any answers to these questions.  More importantly, I don't know what can be done.  Several commenters on the Feministe thread express frustration at the seemingly non-existent assistance one can give to women like Rand and Leila.  I used to volunteer on the help line at a womens' shelter (also at a nursing home and an animal shelter, but it's the womens' shelter volunteering that I miss most; I miss the cats at the shelter, but I do not miss all the cleaning, the scooping, the stinking, the  medicating, the feeding, etc. etc., in short, all the dirty work; with 6 cats, I get enough of that at home nowadays) and my contributions were always visible, measurable, etc.  I knew that I was helping people, that I was getting the right information to the people who needed it, that I was listening to people who needed to talk, etc.  Direct assistance is surely not the only way to help others, but women suffering under oppressive patriarchal societies seem so far away, so unreachable, so untouchable to those outside the society willing to help (and, to a lesser extent, probably to those within as well).  One commenter had several suggestions, most of which I'll call 'administrative', although I do not mean to suggest anything negative about them.  I'll guess that the most effective suggestion would be the economic one: boycott offending countries.  So, unfortunately, I have nothing practical to offer.

I'll leave you with pictures of Leila and Rand, both of whom are now dead, murdered by religious/patriarchal extremists.

Leila Hussein:

Rand Abdel-Qader:

Backyardigans

Just hanging in the backyard, blogging while I keep an eye on my kitty.  Nosey loves coming outside.  He's the only cat that comes out all free and easy, without a leash or stroller.  He sticks pretty close to home.  Compared to the others and I think most cats in general, he's relatively slow so even if he does try to broaden his horizons too much, he's easy to corral.

The neighbors two doors down like to play music loud while they're hanging out out back; I don't mind.  Anyway, it sounds like the grandparents have control of the radio dial tonight bc it's oldies night.  It concerns me that I know so many of the songs.  Now, I do have some excuse in that I couldn't help but learn a whole mess of old ditties when I was at the nursing home (as a volunteer/employee, of course, not as a resident).  I used to know so many pop songs and used to be able to name the titles and artists of so many one hit wonders without missing a beat.  Beat? 'Heartbeat (It's a Love Beat)' by Tony DiFranco & the DiFranco Family anyone?

It's so nice to be outside on a great day...the sun is shining...the neighbors' lilacs' scent is wafting by on a light breeze....  I caught a virus last week and I holed up inside until Monday.  Nothing you can take for a virus, though the doctor did suggest Claritin-D to manage the symptoms.  I took one today; meh.  How do people who use it regularly for allergies afford it?  A pack of 5 was $10...that's $2/pill!  Sad to say, it appears I may have regifted my virus to Kevin.

Moving along...watching CNN's coverage of today's primaries.  Wolf Blitzer having a field day in THE SITUATION ROOM (dun dun dunnn).  John King playing with his map.  Talking heads talking over around each other.  Why am I watching this?  Click.

Wait!  Off to hear what Hillary has to say.