Welcome to the Conservative Revolutionary American Party's BLOG. Conservative in that we believe in the Constitution of the U.S.A. We are Revolutionary in the way that our founding fathers were in throwing off the bonds of tyranny. We are American in that we are guided by Native American Spirituality; we ARE responsible for the next 7 generations. We are a Party of like minds coming together for a common cause. This BLOG is a clearing house of information and ideas.
PEACE…………Scott
Obama has made good on some promises but they haven't been implemented yet. I'm still withholding judgment until I see the outcome...which could be some time since the Repugs have continued their partisanship tactics. Time will tell. We have a long way to go but I THINK that we are at least trying to look at things differently....once again, time will tell. So I say to all "Good Luck & Good Night".......PEACE....Scott
This video is the absolutely hilarious opening of this past weekend's Saturday Night Live. The first new episode since the writer's strike was one of the show's highest rated in years and one of its sharpest satirically. This particular debate sketch brilliantly skewers both Obama and Hillary.
The mainstream press' frequent adoring coverage of Obama is mocked, one of his debate questions is, "Are you comfortable?" Meanwhile, Hillary's absurd tendency to dismiss every primary defeat as expected is lampooned. Loved Amy Poehler's line about how "Getting blown out by Senator Obama in Maryland has been a dream of mine since childhood."
I was bemused, and not a little puzzled, when I read this tsk-tsking article about about "sexy" wedding dresses in the NY Times. I'm confused as to why the Times has a slate of fashion writers that hate innovation, playfulness, and creativity--you know the very elements that redeem high fashion insofar as it's a redeemable thing. Here are the dresses they think are too damn scandalous when draped over a bride.
Not a one of these wouldn't be considered a perfectly reasonable evening gown if it was a different color and worn to some kind of thing where you wear clothes like that. Considering that a wedding is probably many women's sole opportunity to dress up that much, why shouldn't she wear something that's appealing, instead of something that fits the image of the bride as a child-like virgin, fancied up for a ritual and deeply creepy deflowering? Wedding fans should be glad that the consumer culture has kept the practice alive in an era where people are increasingly disinterested in the wedding's traditional function as a ceremonial transfer of a female body from father to husband. But for some reason, the NY Times fashion section is fond of harumphing. Another writer there recently threw a temper tantrum when a designer dared to make men's clothes even a fraction as difficult, uncomfortable, and decorative-in-a-demeaning-way as women's clothes are.
Being pissed because brides are increasingly unwilling to play into the fantasies of those who enjoy saying, "Wow, she's so pure and virginal. I bet she doesn't even know what's going to happen to her later tonight. I shall cackle evilly now, because I'm a sadistic misogynist who likes his deflowerings violent," just made me roll my eyes. But of course, it got Rod Dreher all excited, and feeling empowered by the vindication of his deep misogyny by the fashion supplement of the Times, he dropped a time-honored slur right in the title of the post:
The bride's a slut. They call it progress.
He didn't get much farther than the opening story about a bride who wants the back of her wedding dress to dip down to buttcrack to show off her tramp stamp. Apparently, once you get the lower back tattoo, the gloves are off and Rod can call you all the names that he'd probably like to call all women. I have tattoos, so I suppose I should be personally offended, but I'm not really. I figure that the day I start doing things that Rod Dreher approves of is the day that I relinquish my right to high self-esteem.
But what really makes his post funny is this:
UPDATE: I just got back from the Ayaan Hirsi Ali event, which I'll be blogging about momentarily. But listening to her made me rethink my use of the word "slut" in this context.
Doh! For those who follow Dreher's blogging (though I often choose to through the Roy Edroso filter), he's often wrangling between the twin desires to demonize Muslims and his admiration for the way fundamentalists societies keep women under lock and key. Merriment ensues, if you like that dark humor sort of thing. But he's not going to let a little bit of feminist thinking creep in, no matter how well-padded it is in anti-Muslim sentiment. He immediately returns to demanding that women put our own joys and lives behind his desire to have violent deflowering fantasies at weddings.
I should be clear that when I said earlier that I missed old-fashioned hypocrisy, I meant that I don't really expect brides today to be virgins on their wedding day (though I hope that they are), but that I wish they would still honor the ideal by the way they comported themselves on their wedding day. Even if the couple has been shacking up prior to marriage, I think it's a nice and even necessary tradition for the congregation to officially overlook it in the ceremony, and if the bride proposes to wear white, then we all become De La Rochefoucaulds, and appreciate that she's honoring the old standard.
Even better would be if she carried a small whip with her and flagellated herself for having sex with the groom before that day during the ceremony. Even better would be if she let the groom beat her up in front of everyone for ruining his property values by letting him have access before he made the final purchase. Should the groom decline to beat his blushing bride for not providing him a hymen to break on his wedding day, the congregation could call his manhood into question. Fun for everyone! I love honoring the old standards.
I didn't know this happened when it did, but WTF. Because a woman does a book on her sexual fantasies, she's a "hypocrite" for writing a children's book? That makes no kind of sense. Seriously, what's the logic there? Shall we say that a woman can't be a mother if she's had sex? How does one then propose making that work in the biological sense? I guess the idea here is that women of course have to tolerate being fucked for god and country, but they can't allow themselves to have desires themselves.
But the survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest views yet of that trend, scholars said.(...)
The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country's fourth largest "religious group."(...)
While the unaffiliated have been growing, Protestantism has been declining, the survey found. In the 1970s, Protestants accounted for about two-thirds of the population. The Pew survey found they now make up about 51 percent.(...)
The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.
The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion "as nothing in particular." Pew researchers said that later projects would delve more deeply into the beliefs and practices of the unaffiliated and would try to determine if they remain so as they age.
This is a massive demographic shift that we must understand. Such a large change in a major ideological institution in America, religion, necessarily results in a major shift in American ideology in general. In particular, I have often noted how self-identified whites who do not self-identify as Christian tend to vote for Democrats at almost exactly the same 2-1 or 3-1 ratios as self-identified non-whites. When someone does not self-identify as Christian, it appears to have an equivalent impact on their voting behavior as not self-identifying as white. Given that both non-Christian self-identifiers and non-white self-identifies are growing at rapid rates in America, they appear to be the future of both the Democratic Party in particular and American politics in general. More than 60% of Americans under the age of 43 fall into one or both of these demographic groups. This massive generational demographic shift, combined with the conservative movement's attack on these groups, are the main reasons for why Democrats are no performing exceptionally well with young voters in America.
The diversity within these groups makes continuing to appeal to them at such fantastic rates a difficult task. Latinos, Asians, those with unaffiliated religions, and the religious but non-Christian are all highly diverse groups within themselves, making any monolithic messaging difficult. Faced with such a diverse array of emerging cultural identities within America, the only generalized solution for Democrats and progressives is to make certain that pluralism is a core value in both rhetoric and legislation. The conservative movement has done a good job presenting a cultural supremacist contrast, leaving progressives with a wide open opportunity to continue to score huge margins among the fastest growing demographic groups in America.
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
Senator Russ Feingold and Secretary Jack Kemp joined together last week to propose the Democracy Restoration Act -- a federal law that seeks to restore voting rights to U.S. citizens on probation and parole. The proposal is noteworthy for several reasons, not the least of which is that it is made by two prominent political figures: a Democrat and a Republican. The bipartisan proposal makes it clear that restoring voting rights is about democracy, not about politics.
More than 5.3 million American citizens are denied the vote in our country because of a criminal conviction in their past. Nearly four million are people who have been released from prison but continue to be disenfranchised for years, often for decades, and sometimes for life.
As Senator Feingold and Secretary Kemp note, there has been significant momentum in the states to end these draconian disenfranchisement laws. In the last decade, 16 states have eased voting restrictions on people with conviction histories. In 2007 alone, Florida, Maryland, and Rhode Island all took steps to restore voting rights. But disenfranchisement is a national problem. Thirty-five states continue to deny the vote to people who have been released from prison and rejoined society.
The right to vote forms the core of American democracy. Once a privilege reserved for a few white men, Americans have fought hard to make it a right guaranteed for all. The Democracy Restoration Act would make this ideal into a reality. It is a proposal that we can all come together to support, not as Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, but as Americans who believe in our democracy.
Erika Wood works principally on the Brennan Center's efforts to restore the vote to people with felony convictions, as well as other voting and representation issues. Prior to joining the Center, she was an attorney with the Legal Action Center where she worked on cases involving HIV/AIDS discrimination and privacy, as well as various criminal justice issues including felony re-enfranchisement.
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