This Shit Is Just Not Fucking Helpful.

I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential hopeful and former vice presidential candidate, John Edwards. She always impressed me as down-to-earth, strong, interesting, fun -- the kind of woman that I'd enjoy having in my circle of friends. In fact, I like her a lot more than I like him -- he's never impressed me all that much and, after the way that he folded in his debate with Snarly Dick, I'm not eager to see him as the Democratic candidate for president.

So I am pretty fucking disgusted to see her pull crap like this:

"[Hillary Clinton] and I are from the same generation," she said of the senator and former first lady. "We both went to law school and married other lawyers, but after that we made other choices. I think my choices have made me happier. I think I'm more joyful than she is."

Sweet Hathor on a Honda. How many times do we have to go through this? Elizabeth Edwards ought to know better.

The women's movement is all about giving women more choices in their lives and about supporting them in those choices. It is not fucking helpful to have women, like Elizabeth Edwards who have chosen (or who are forced by economic or other circumstances) to stay home and raise their children, criticize women who have chosen (or who are forced by economic or other circumstances) to raise children and work outside the home. Similarly, it wouldn't be helpful for women who work outside the home to criticize women who stay at home with their children. This should not exactly come as news to anyone with a third of Elizabeth Edwards' obvious intelligence.

Engaging in idiotic speculation about how "joyful" another woman is or isn't about the choice that she's either made or had forced on her does nothing except to divide women, to play an "us against them" game that only has one winner -- the patriarchy. I've got no goddamn idea who is "more" joyful; joy isn't, IMHO, a zero-sum resource that diminishes in one woman's life when another woman gets a big heaping helping of it. Nor is it a constant; there are days when I love my life so much that I can hardly breathe and there are days when I'd like to rip the universe a new asshole.

If Elizabeth Edwards wants to help her husband run for president against Hillary Clinton she'd better fucking find a more helpful way to do it than by insinuating -- as, let's admit it, she was clearly and calculatedly doing -- that career women like Hillary Clinton are cold, "joyless," frigid bitches. And I don't give a flying frap if she called Hillary Clinton up and apologized afterwards. She knew what she was doing when she did it and she's being sent out to do it because if her husband did it the whole world would call it unacceptable.

Elizabeth, don't demean yourself like this again. I mean it.

What Jamison Foser Said

The Bush administration and its congressional enablers have been shockingly inept, criminally incompetent, and, in many cases, simply criminal in their handling of everything from Iraq and national security and the hunt for bin Laden to Hurricane Katrina to the budget. They have auctioned off legislation to the highest bidder, and shunned any vestige of oversight and accountability.

And they've gotten away with it in no small part due to a political media that can be counted on to repeat -- perhaps, as Edsall says, unwillingly and unknowingly -- bogus GOP storylines almost without fail.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Ix Chel (pronounced e'shell) is a wonderful Goddess, often associated with creativity. Wikipedia says that:

In Maya mythology, Ixchel or Ix Chel was an earth and moon goddess, patroness of weavers and pregnant women.
One myth states that the sun was her "lover," but that her grandfather was very upset with this and he threw lightning at her out of jealousy which in turn killed Ix Chel. In the story it stated that dragonflies sang over her for 183 days and then she awoke again only to follow the sun to his palace. But the sun soon after too started to become jealous of Ix Chel, thinking that she was having an affair with the morning star, who was the sun's brother. The sun threw her out of heaven and then persuaded her back home, but soon after her return he became jealous again. It is said that Ix Chel became annoyed with the behavior of the sun and so she went off into the night and remained invisible whenever the sun came around. At her new place in the night it is said that Ix Chel spent the nights nursing women of Earth through their labor (during the stint of their pregnancy and birth)

But I like this version, better:

As an ancient fertility goddess, Ix-Chel was responsible for sending rain to nourish the crops. When fulfilling that function she was called “Lady Rainbow”. She helped insure fertility by overturning her sacred womb jar so that the waters would flow.

Though sometimes depicted as a goddess of catastrophe (the woman who stands by as the world floods), many of her myths show her in a more benevolent light—as a goddess who refused to become a victim of oppression.

This was a woman who, when faced with adversity, took charge of her life and turned it around!

Ix-Chel was almost too beautiful, this girl with opalescent skin who sat in the skies brushing her shimmering hair for hours on end. All the gods were captivated by her. All but one, that is.

Kinich Ahau, the Sun God, seemed immune to Ix-Chel’s charms. Yet he was the only one she really ever wanted. For years she had longed for him as she watched him glide across the sky in all his golden splendor.

But the more Ix-Chel followed him around, the worse the weather on earth became. As she chased after him the tides would rise, creating floods that inundated the fields and caused the crops to die. So enamored was she, that Ix-Chel did not even notice the havoc she was causing.

Like many moon goddesses Ix-Chel was a fine weaver, and it was the beautiful cloth she wove that finally captured Kinich Ahau’s attention. Soon they had become lovers.

Ix-Chel bore the Sun God four sons. They were the jaguar gods and could creep through the night unseen. They were named for the four directions, and each one was responsible for holding up his corner of the sky.

Unfortunately Ix-Chel’s love affair with the Sun God drew the ire of her disapproving grandfather. In his anger he struck Ix-Chel with lightning, killing her. For the next 183 days she lay lifeless as hundreds of dragonflies surrounded her body and sang to her. Waking suddenly, she returned to the palace of the Sun God.

Their relationship was turbulent—Kinich Ahau had a suspicious nature and was often consumed with jealousy. To make matters worse, he also had a fiery temper. Suspecting that the innocent Ix-Chel was having an affair with his brother (the Morning Star), Kinich Ahau threw her out of the sky.

Ix-Chel quickly found refuge with the vulture gods. Hearing this, Kinich Ahau rushed to plead with her to return and promised never to treat her so poorly again. Little time passed before he became jealous and abusive again.

Finally Ix-Chel realized he was not going to change. She decided to leave him for good. Waiting until he fell asleep, she crept out into the night, taking the form of a jaguar and becoming invisible whenever he came searching for her.

Many nights she spent on her sacred island (Cozumel) nursing women during their pregnancies and childbirth. Ix-Chel, like other moon goddesses, governed women’s reproductive systems so it was quite understandable that she would become the protector of women during pregnancy and labor.

The small Isla Mujeres (“Island of Women”) was devoted to the worship of Ix-Chel. Comfortable with all phases of life, she was honored as the weaver of the life cycle. She protected the fertility of women and was also the keeper of the souls of the dead.

Ix-Chel encourages us to acknowledge the negative forces affecting our lives. And she prompts us to assert ourselves fully in the face of physical or emotional violence that would diminish our sense of self.

Amy Sophia Marashinsky wrote:

Ix Chel

I weave strings of energy
into the web of creation
Where nothing was before
out of the void
into the world
I spin them into existence
Out from my mind
out from my body
out of my awareness of what needss to be
Now there is something new
and all life is nourished.

G. Felix Allen, Jr.

Time for him to go

The Forests Of The NIght

Wow. Even before you see the credits, there's only one poem that this, via Miniver Cheevey, could possibly be illustrating.

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies 5
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 10
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp 15
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee? 20

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Why Women Need To Cast Circles

The body is the image relator. In ritual, we embody and activate images of the arhetypal, the eternal feminine, the Goddess. Images of power, of transformation, of harmony, and of duality. One woman empowering another. The crucial exchange of gifts. I cross the circle to give you something; you cross the circle to give her something. And so on until we have all chaged places. Power held is powerless; power given is power for all. In feminist ritual we maintain a center of which we are all aware. It is our collective heart which beats there. We hold together, our center endures. Even the most painful separation, the dispersal which is feared but necessary, cannot disconnect us from the ritual circle. Once that circle is created and affirmed, chance is subdued. We survive. We thrive.


by Kay Turner from "Contemporary Feminist Rituals" in The Politics of Women's Spirituality, ed. by Charlene Spretnak

.Comptine D'un Autre Ete

So she left and never looked back.

And Suddenly It Is Evening

Everyone stands alone at the heart of this earth
Stunned by a ray of sunlight.
Suddenly, it is evening.

Salatore Quasimodo
(1901-1968)
Translated from the Italian by J. Ruth Gendler

Oh, This Could Be Ugly. I Hope.

Tax-cutters are calling evangelicals bullies. Christian conservatives say Republicans in Congress have let them down. Hawks say President Bush is bungling the war in Iraq. And many conservatives blame Representative Mark Foley’s sexual messages to teenage pages.

With polls showing Republican control of Congress in jeopardy, conservative leaders are pointing fingers at one other in an increasingly testy circle of blame for potential Republican losses this fall.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ohhhhh, ah, Goddess, yes, yes, yes, yes, ahhhhhhhhhhh.

~Looks up surprised~ Oh, did I orgasm like that in my out-loud voice?

What Athenae Said

I've said this before and i'll say it again. I'm going to start a new blog called "What Athenae Said." Every day, I'll just link to what Athenae said.

She writes so well that it's even difficult for me to be jealous of her.

Man, I Am Tired Of This Bitch

Sally Quinn is a nasty bitch, a creepy little non-entity who slept her way to comfort and influence. Sally Quinn is a dark-faced little gorgon, with the breath of a poorly-bred carrion bird and the conscience of a psychopathic incubus. Sally Quinn has the morals of an immoral succubus and the manners of Baphomet on a bad day.

From today's WaPo

Don Rumsfeld is the shrewdest person in Washington. He understands better than anyone that somebody has to be in line to take the blame when things go wrong. So far he has been willing to do so. But not much longer.

The drumbeat to get him out of the Pentagon has reached deafening proportions. Republicans and Democrats, the generals, the media, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Andy Card, the first President Bush, and even Laura Bush all want him gone. Until now George W. Bush has resisted all of the pressure to get rid of his defense secretary. But those in the know say that the president may have reached the point where he realizes that Rumsfeld has outlived his usefulness.

Still, the president must be aware on some level that once the pugnacious, outspoken and flak-attracting Rumsfeld leaves the stage, the focus will be on the president. Whether Bush realizes it or not, this is about a scapegoat.

In the Bible, the high priest would transfer the sins of the people onto a goat, and, as it was written, "the goat shall carry all the sins of the people into a land where no one lives, and the man shall let it loose in the wilderness."

(The word for scapegoat in Hebrew means, literally, "into hell.") [See? Sally stoops to conquer; explaining to the morons who she's never met at Citronelle for lunch and who must, therefore, not know, what a scapegoat is! And they say that Medusa has no manners!]

Rumsfeld has seen others take on the role of scapegoat. Look what happened to Nancy Reagan. When she was first lady, she rightly realized that Donald Regan, the chief of staff, was causing her husband enormous damage. What she hadn't realized was that Regan was filling the role of scapegoat for the president. When Don Regan was finally fired, Nancy herself was made the scapegoat. She then took the brunt of criticism for the errors of her husband's administration.

It is hard for the American people to turn completely against the president. It seems tantamount to patricide. We're much more comfortable being able to blame someone else for the president's mistakes. Laura Bush will never be the scapegoat. For now, it's Rumsfeld.

Listen, Little Miss Marduk, the American people have, in fact, turned completely against the Bush junta. You may have married Daddy, but the rest of us aren't looking for a big pappa to make our delicate bits wet, just a competent, caring human to work for us. That's likely why you weren't able to get the rest of us to join you in a smelling-salt and Grey Goose cocktail when Bill Clinton got a blow job. And it figures you'd write paeans to Laura I-Killed-My-Boyfriend-Now-Let's-Have-A-Cig Bush. You're collaborators of a feather, aren't you?

Now shut the fuck up and take Rummy with you. You're not shrewd, you're not scapegoats, you're just plain, old disgusting goat fuckers. And Ben Bradlee can take that lack of a final comma any way that he likes.

New Yorkers, Be There Or Be Square

Reminder...tonight is the night! A special birthday EP release show - come hear songs from my After The Fall EP (MAAT Music, 2006) and new ones which are getting GREAT reviews…

“When I first heard Amy sing her new song, "From Here", I knew that she had arrived! It's brilliantly crafted, with a tag and melody that haunt you....The story draws you in immediately, and the journey gets to the tagline effortlessly at the end of each chorus, yet it means something new each time. To hear her sing this song, you know that Amy has come into her own, with vocal stylings and dynamics that hold back just enough to keep you hanging on every word. This song has a very appropriate title, because to me, it defines a new phase of Amy as an artist, starting right ‘From Here’.” - Lorraine Ferro, NAPM, SHOF

AMY CLARKE
thurs oct 19
8pm, $5
the bitter end
147 bleecker
www.bitterend.com

Signed EP copies will be available...I look forward to seeing you tonight! Make sure to tell the door you’re there for Amy’s show...

*afterparty*...join us after the show at the Sullivan Room (a few blocks away) for birthday cake, drinks & dancing with DJs Dustin Cook & Kevin Graves...everyone at my show receives FREE ADMISSION and 2-for-1 drinks from until 11! www.rotationnyc.com

P.S. I just put up another new song from a recording session this weekend on www.myspace.com/amyclarke – have a listen and let me know what you think!

Amy Clarke
www.amyclarke.com
www.cdbaby.com/aclarke
www.myspace.com/amyclarke
MAAT Music © 2006
ScorpFaery Productions

Santorum Ducking Global Warming

LYING RICK SANTORUM

Keith Olbermann: King George

I really hate Bush.

TWU Guys on Bush

He gave you nothing!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

From the WaPo, which, inexplicably published this article in the Religion Section, instead of the Treasonous Bastards Subverting the Constitution Section

Kuo tells a story about meeting a member of the review panel at a party. He says she giggled as she recalled, "when I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero."

Someone please subpoena this had-an-abortion-now-want-to-criminalize-abortions piece of shit and get him to name this cunt. Then, let's try her for treason. It's a capital offense, i believe.

Jim Webb's Favorite Poem

DO YOU FEAR THE WIND?

by: Hamlin Garland (1860-1940)

Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf,
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheek will tan,
You'll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you'll walk like a man!

G. Macca Felix Allen, Jr.'s favorite poem is apparently: Can't take the heat/Smell my feet/I'd like something good to eat (preferably a ham sandwich or Mom's pork chops).

There You Go Again

Unlike the Merkins in Kkkkarl Rove's world, I don't have amnesia. Nor, does my brilliant friend Elizabeth, football fan and Eagles blogger extraordinaire. So when Elizabeth called to tell me that all of a sudden the Bush junta is releasing information with absolutely no credible purpose other than to scare the bejebuz out of Americans, now, just before an election, where Diebold is Bush's obi Wan (as in, "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope."), we both agreed:

This is the Summer of 2004 redux.

Remember how every other fucking week Tom Buttface Ridge would parade out in front of the cameras (and if he didn't do it fast enough, John NoBreasts Ashcroft would knock him down racing to the microphone) to announce one bullshit "threat" or another? Terrorists are going to blow up your Memorial Day picnic! Terrorists are going to float explosives inside beer coolers in the hope that you'll fish them out of the drink looking for beer and then BLAMO! your fishing boat's a gonner! Terrorist are going to put poison in swimming pools! Terrorists are going to slip microscopic bombs inside baseballs and then when the batter hits a triple, POW! no more American pastime! Terrorists gonna getcha, getcha, getcha. Then, immediately after the Bush junta stole the 2004 election, the terrorists miraculously laid off, the threat level dropped from orange to yellow, Ridge and Ashcroft blessedly disappeared from the evening news, and Ridge eventually admitted he had no idea why he was always being sent out to issue terror warnings.

Ridge may not have known, but everyone else did. Rove had studies showing that warnings of terrorist attacks bumped up Bush's numbers and Rove had to keep the election close enough to steal.

This is easy for me to say because I'm not a football fan, but every redblooded American ought to stay away from footballs stadia this weekend. The one thing the Bush junta can't stand up to is pressure from their corporate masters. In a few days when the up the stakes and issue vague warnings about, oh, I don't know, airplanes, Halloween candy, shopping malls -- take your pick -- Americans should boycott those as well.

Fuck this fucking shit.

Why Women Need The Goddess

At the close of Ntosake Shange's stupendously successful Broadway play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, a tall beautiful black woman rises from despair to cry out, "I found God in myself and I loved her fiercely." 1 Her discovery is echoed by women around the country who meet spontaneously in small groups on full moons, solstices, and equinoxes to celebrate the Goddess as symbol of life and death powers and waxing and waning energies in the universe and in themselves.2

It is the night of the full moon. Nine women stand in a circle, on a rocky hill about the city. The western sky is rosy with the setting sun; in the east the moon's face begins to peer above the horizon. . . The woman pours out a cup of wine onto the earth, refills it and raises it high. "Hail, Tana, Mother of mothers!" she cries. "Awaken from your long sleep, and return to your children again!"3

What are the political and psychological effects of this fierce new love of the divine in themselves for women whose spiritual experience has been focused by the male God of Judaism and Christianity? Is the spiritual dimension of feminism a passing diversion, an escape from difficult but necessary political work? Or does the emergence of the symbol of Goddess among women have significant political and psychological ramifications for the feminist movement?

To answer this question, we must first understand the importance of religious symbols and rituals in human life and consider the effect of male symbolism of God on women. According to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, religious symbols shape a cultural ethos, defining the deepest values of a society and the persons in it. "Religion," Geertz writes, " is a system of symbols which act to produce powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations"4 in the people of a given culture. A "mood" for Geertz is a psychological attitude such as awe, trust, and respect, while a "motivation" is the social and political trajectory created by a mood that transforms mythos into ethos, symbol system into social and political reality. Symbols have both psychological and political effects, because they create their inner conditions (deep-seated attitudes and feelings) that lead people to feel comfortable with or to accept social and political arrangements that correspond to the symbol system.

Because religion has such a compelling hold on the deep psyches of so many people, feminists cannot afford to leave it in the hands of the fathers. Even people who no longer "believe in God" or participate in the institutional structure of patriarchal religion still may not be free of the power of the symbolism of God the Father. A symbol's effect does not depend on rational assent, for a symbol also functions on levels of the psyche other than the rational. Religion fulfills deep psychic needs by providing symbols and rituals that enable people to cope with crisis situations5 in human life (death, evil, suffering) and to pass through life's important transitions (birth, sexuality, death). Even people who consider themselves completely secularized will often find themselves sitting in a church or synagogue when a friend or relative gets married or when a parent or friend has died. The symbols associated with these important rituals cannot fail to affect the deep or unconscious structures of the mind of even a person who has rejected these symbolisms on a conscious level especially if a person is under stress. The reason for the continuing effects of religious symbols is that the mind abhors a vacuum. Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected; they must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat.

Religions centered on the worship of a male God create "moods" and "motivations" that keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority, while at the same legitimating the political and social authority of fathers and sons in the institutions of society.

More here.

Why I Love Derrick Jensen

Via Counterpunch:

It should be obvious to everyone that bad things are happening, even if you "don't believe" the facts about global warming. Just common sense tells us that we are going to run out of oil - civilization is going to crash- you look outside and the seasons are not what they were 20 years ago. So why speed it along? I think what people are themselves resembles: okay if it is going to happen anyway, I might just as well sit back and enjoy my Budweisers. So why take it down now?

Jensen: Because it is systematically dismantling the infrastructure of the planet and the sooner it comes down the more that remains for the humans and non- humans that come after. Even from a purely selfish perspective, if someone were to have "brought it down" 200 years ago, then people in the East would still be able to eat pastured chickens - if it happened 50 years ago, people in the West would still be able to eat Salmon. There are going to be people sitting along the banks of British Columbia 40 years from now saying "I'm starving to death because you didn't take out the dams that were used to create electricity that were used to change phosphates into aluminum beer cans," and that's inexcusable. So that's why we have to hurry it along. Because everyday more of the ecological infrastructure is being destroyed. From a more moral perspective of course the reason to do it is because those in power have no right to drive us down to extinction.

There's something else. People say "what do you mean" when you talk about "bringing down civilization." What I really mean is depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the planet. That's what I really mean.

Engel: Why do you so few people resist, unlike in the 1960s or 1930s?

Jensen: If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your food comes from the grocery store, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it. Also, one of the smartest things the Nazis did, according to Sigmund Bauman's "In Modernity and the Holocaust," was to make it seem in the Jews's rational best interests not to resist: "do you want an ID card or do you want to resist and possibly get killed? Do you want to live in the ghetto or do you want to resist and get killed? Do you want to get on this cattle car or do you want to resist and get killed? Do you want to take a shower or do you want to resist and get killed? Every step of the way it was in their so-called "rational best interest." We see the same thing happening today. People will keep suffering all these indignities because if you resist there is the theater of terror to keep you silently, submissively in line. Put you in your place, where you belong.