Tag Archives: Politics

I support Clinton, and you support Sanders, and that’s okay (as long as none of us supports Trump)

Hillary Clinton was a different kind of first lady. She wasn’t a Nancy Reagan, married to the patron saint of the Republican party, or a Barbara Bush, married to…okay, I got nothing on George Bush, Sr. She was a politician first and a wife twenty-third. And that’s when people started hating her, back when sexism was rampant, unlike now when it’s completely eradicated, and women enjoy all the same privileges as men do. Unlike the other first ladies, she did STUFF. And then she became a senator and did more stuff. And then she became secretary of state and did even more stuff. And you know? I am sick and tired of people hating on her because she dared to be a person back in the 90s and had a vagina at the same time. She not warm and fuzzy, and, as I’ve come to realize, you cannot be a powerful woman and be warm and fuzzy at the same time. Our society does not accept that. But you also can’t be a powerful woman and avoid being called a bitch, because our society does not accept non-warm-and-fuzzy women; only men are allowed to be the opposite of warm and fuzzy. So in summary, women should not be powerful.

I say all this because people are so set in not liking Clinton and finding a lot of ways to avoid supporting her without having one central argument other than she just rubs them the wrong way. Some people say they’re against this whole idea of a Clinton dynasty. Guess what: only one Clinton has been president. And Hillary isn’t even an actual Clinton; she just married one. If you want to talk about Benghazi, I would just like to say of course she’s had some foreign policy issues, because she is the only candidate with any foreign policy experience. No, Sanders never made any international errors, because he’s never been responsible for dealing with other countries. If you like Sanders, that’s okay, but I hope you support him for what he stands for and that you know what he stands for and just how viable his ideas are in the real world. That is, I hope you didn’t just become a diehard Bernie fan because you don’t like the alternative.

And if you really love Bernie Sanders, I accept that, and I hope you can accept me, too. Just as long as neither of loves Trump or Cruz.

Cruz wins the Iowa Caucuses, scares me

Last night ended with a dual cliffhanger for me. (I go to bed at 10:30, because I’m secretly eighty years old.) First, The Bachelor culminated in a “to be continued” BEFORE THE ROSE CEREMONY. Also, Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz had marginal leads in the Iowa caucuses. When I woke up this morning, I found out that those marginal leads had become clear victories overnight, and that Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, which means early spring and also that people will be quoting Bill Murray all day, but that would have happened whether he saw his shadow or not. There was still no resolution to the Bachelor conundrum.

On the plus side:

-Hillary’s emails addressed to me personally with the subject “hi” and “no subject,” in which she warned me that Bernie Sanders was outspending her and implored me to donate money, were ultimately just scare tactics. God, Hillary, I already gave you $15.00. What more do you want?

-Early spring! How early? I’m not clear on that. Somebody tell me the rules?

On the minus side:

-I still have to hear a lot about a twenty-two-year-old movie.

-I have to wait until next week to find out to whom Ben is giving roses, except for Jubilee, the army vet, who already got kicked off.

-A man who embraces carpet-bombing is a serious contender for president.

So yeah, rough day.

I’m not as excited about Boehner resigning as you might think

John Boehner and I have a few things in common. We both cry a lot, for instance. Republicans think we’re too liberal. (Admittedly, one of us is probably a little more liberal than the other.) We’re both into the government funding Planned Parenthood (Again, one of us may be slightly more excited about that than the other.) That’s probably where the similarities end. But now that the Boehner is resigning because the GOP is like, “You aren’t exercising enough control over women’s uteruses” (or is it uteri?), I’m concerned. Mostly because I’m terrified to find out whom they will choose next. Wikipedia tells me that Kevin McCarthy, the most likely pick, was one of the three founding members of the GOP Young Guns Program, which I didn’t even know existed but sounds scary as fuck. Also, he has pledged to vote against any Global Warming legislation that would raise taxes (as you do). And finally, homeboy wants to ban all abortions foreva and eva, pinky-swear. Where did they find this guy? It’s almost like the GOP crafted this dude out of clay and imbued him with a wish list of attributes Pygmalion-style.

Anyway, I’m foreseeing a future in which he is Speaker and Marco Rubio is president, and now I need to practice the deep-breathing exercises my therapist taught me.

Here’s why Roberts is worse than scalia

Scalia is like that villain on your favorite tv show that you’re supposed to hate. S/he is so one dimensional that it becomes boring and cliche to hate him or her. Like Franny on Greek. Or what’s her face on Orange is the New Black season 2 whose name I can’t remember. Or Bill O’Reilly. Anyway, Scalia is that person. Like, okay dude, we get it, you’re a dick. You’re SCOTUS’s Dick Cheney.

Roberts is that asshole who thinks he’s a genuinely good guy. In my opinion, that’s the worst kind of asshole. He sits there all Aryan and condescending, and says things like, “It’s really great that people get to celebrate today, and I don’t want to put a damper on that. But FYI, it’s also super wrong in the eyes of the constitution.” You know he’s that guy who’s always saying, “I have lots of gay friends. I just don’t want to have to see them being gay.”

What really bothered me was his attempt to shame gay rights advocates today. Putting an end to same-sex marriage bans is not up to the Supreme Court, he argued. What we really need to do is try to convince our bigoted peers to see our point of view, and maybe they’ll come around. Because that’s been working so well. Everyone knows if we just talk it out we’ll all agree in the end.

That’s why Roberts is worse than Scalia. Of course nobody cares today, but I worry that because he comes across as rational, he’s dangerous as an evil person.

But today is a good day, so I’ll put the loathing on hold. I’ll leave you with a final question: if you were in a bar and Ruth Bader Ginsberg happened to walk in, what drink would you buy her? She seems like a scotch on the rocks kind of girl to me, but maybe you feel differently.