Author: wobblie

AP: GOP Busted on "No Voter Suppression" Pledge

Thought I’d post a “head’s-up” to someone more up on the history of this particular GOP criminal act than I.  Found this AP story over at the Guardian.

First, Ken Mehlman’s “solemn word”:

Earlier this week, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director, reiterated a “zero-tolerance policy” for any GOP official caught trying to block legitimate votes.

“The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: We will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate or any person representing the Republican Party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position,” Mehlman wrote Monday to a group that studied voter suppression tactics.

That carefully worded bold section does not bind their hands, however, in paying the legal bills for someone who did engage in one of these activities.

Flip, flip, flip to review…

WASHINGTON (AP) – Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire’s newest senator.

There’s a pattern emerging here.  More and more, we see what look like just plain, old dirty tricks.

There’s an old word in the political lexicon for this sort of behavior: Nixonian.  And the GOP machine is run by Nixon alum.  Karl Rove is a protégé of Donald Segretti, a dirty trickster paid by Nixon’s re-election campaign.

And as with that classic tale of corruption from yore, there’s a simple rule to which one should adhere:

Follow.  The.  Money.  

Again, from the AP story:

Paul Twomey, a volunteer lawyer for New Hampshire Democrats who are pursuing a separate lawsuit involving the phone scheme, said he was surprised the RNC was willing to pay Tobin’s legal bills and that it suggested more people may be involved.

“It originally appeared to us that there were just certain rogue elements of the Republican Party who were willing to do anything to win control of the U.S. Senate, including depriving Americans of their ability to vote,” Twomey said.

“But now that the RNC actually is bankrolling Mr. Tobin’s defense, coupled with the fact that it has refused some discovery in the civil case, really raises the questions of who are they protecting, how high does this go and who was in on this,” Twomey said.

People already have a bitter taste in their mouth about the performance of the GOP since last November’s election.  Time to show that the rotten fruit is merely a symptom of a corrupt and decayed root.

The GOP is the Party of Corruption.

Pass it on.

Would you want your daughter to join this Army?

Wowzers, an NYT editorial I can read:

Surely no one can approve turning an American soldier into a pseudo-lap-dancer or having another smear fake menstrual blood on an Arab man. These practices are as degrading to the women as they are to the prisoners. They violate American moral values – and they seem pointless.

More on the flip…
The Times has developed an interesting meme to work with here: Women who join the military are asked to perform sexually degrading work (all the while, doubtlessly being told that they are “serving honorably”).

The editorial staff rightly casts doubt on the utility of these techniques

Does anyone in the military believe that a coldblooded terrorist who has withstood months of physical and psychological abuse will crack because a woman runs her fingers through his hair suggestively or watches him disrobe? If devout Muslims become terrorists because they believe Western civilization is depraved, does it make sense to try to unnerve them by having Western women behave like trollops?

No trained terrorist would crack under these conditions, and you might create a few more along the way.

I know the logic is to play on the cultural beliefs of Muslims and humiliate the prisoners, but by that logic, shouldn’t men be performing lap dances, as homosexuality is taboo in Middle Eastern cultures?  Is that happening?  I sure haven’t heard about.

The Bushco Pentagon is using the brave women in our armed forces as sexual objects.  They are purposely creating an environment which puts women in a dangerously hypersexualized environment.  Check out the increase in sexual assaults within the Army, not to mention the violence perpetrated against female prisoners.  

I want to know the answer to the question implied in this editorial?  Knowing that your daughter/sister/loved one might participate in the actions depicted in the Abu Ghraib photographs or those mentioned in reported cited in the Times editorial, would you want her to join the Army?

Are they deliberately trying to destroy our Armed Forces?

Friday BT Gender Theory A-Go-Go: Gendered Organizations

In today’s little theory party, I’m going to endeavor to explain how organizations are gendered.  Before you gasp, “WTF?!”, let me issue the standard explanations and disclaimers.  These gender theory discussions were started a few weeks ago here at the Frog Pond and have included some well thought out diaries by lorraine, MAJeff, and IndyLib.  It’s become something of a Friday treat for us.

Also, gender theory tends to get dense at times.  If you’re really interested in some of the points being made, or just want to make sure that we’re not simply making up words and giggling at our in-jokes, feel free to ask for clarification.  There’s a good chance that even we don’t know what we’re talking about.

Now, what were you saying?  Oh yes – “Gendered organizations?  WTF?!”

More on the flip
Common sense tells us that gender is a property of an individual.  A person expresses gender (how it is expressed has been dealt with in previous diaries).  Stepping back a little bit, most people can even understand how gender is socially created, that it is an interactional phenomenon.  When we step back even further, we can begin to see how social organizations themselves are gendered; that is, the various social organizations in which we participate on a daily basis are structured by and shape our assumptions about gender.

Theories of gendered organizations were developed within the Marxist feminist camp, most notably by sociologists Joan Acker and Dorothy Smith.  Acker and Smith start from the premise that the assumptions upon which social organizations are built and the rules that result from these assumptions structure relations of inequality like gender (but also race, class, sexuality, and any other number of the fields of inequality whose complex interactions shape an individual’s subjective experience).

What exactly does this mean?  It may be instructive to re-visit the Lawrence Summers fiasco of this past winter.  Summers, who is the president of Harvard University, was examining why women were underrepresented in certain fields within the academy.  His most outrageous hypothesis was the inherent difference thesis – that women are innately inferior at certain types of work than men.  Of course, decades of empirical work show this to be so much frothy bullshit.

What exactly does it take to reach the elite ranks of academia?  As many people could tell you, a slavish dedication to one’s research, working 80+ hours a week in the laboratory or office, and frequent travel to professional conferences and presentations – in other words, a lot of work.  Certainly both men and women can function at this level, but the academy still favors men in this line of work.  Why?

The answer?  The sexual division of labor.  The academy (and most other work organizations) are premised on the sexual division of labor, that there is someone (a woman) at home who is busy taking care of the necessary reproductive labor (in the short term, making sure that the daily requirements of living are met so that the worker can labor another day; in the long term, raising the next generation of workers).  While men have been responsible for production, it has traditionally been the woman’s task to take care of the reproductive aspects.

While some women have been able to find success within the workplace, the sexual division of labor within the home has not changed as dramatically.  The onus of household management, child-rearing, and daily household tasks still fall disproportionately on the woman.  We’ve all seen the popular articles about the choice between being a mother or a successful career woman.  Do we ever see articles about the difficult choice between being a father or a successful career man?  No.  Why?  Because the organization of the workplace assumes that a man will be filling a position, a man with someone at home to take care of his reproductive needs.  The assumptions of the workplace posit the sexual division of labor and produce rules accordingly.  Looking back at the Summers fiasco, it is exceedingly difficult for female academics to participate at the top of their fields when the sexuo-economic relations of the home make it so that the female is still responsible for the majority of the unpaid reproductive labor.  The rules based on the assumptions of what makes an elite scholar   are themselves biased against women.  The academy is a masculine gendered organization because of the assumptions upon which it is built.

When seeking to address forms of oppression, then, it’s important to note how the institutions within which interactions occur structure the situation to empower a particular group over another.  In seeking to redress inequality, we must seek to establish new forms of social organizations which enable a multitude of subjective social positions to participate in ways which avoid the stratification of current or past organizational forms.

That’s the quick and dirty version.  What do you think?

Attention Propagandists!

Wanted: Snarkshuckers, cranks, and all manner of bloviation specialists needed to guide public opinion away from dangerous thoughts.  From today’s Guardian:

With the number of users forecast to rise above 100 million this year, access to the web is spreading beyond China’s well-rewarded middle class and into the more disgruntled factory and farming communities, where young migrant workers are teaching their families about internet cafes.

In response, the propaganda departments of provincial and municipal governments have recently been instructed to build teams of internet commentators, whose job is to guide discussion on public bulletin boards away from politically sensitive topics by posting opinions anonymously or under false names.

So, all of you trolls out there – get thee to Red China, where there’s dough to be made, plus plenty of other perks:

Applicants for the job – mostly drawn from the propaganda and police departments – were told they had to understand government policies, know political theory, be politically reliable and understand internet technology. Successful candidates have been offered classes in Marxist theory, propaganda techniques and updates on the development of the internet around the world.

Why pay for that expensive sociology, journalism, or computer science class at the local university when you can get these for free while you troll the hapless netizens!

Good thing this would never happen to us in the good ole US of A!  Oh wait… damn!

Senate Apology Long Overdue and Completely Inconsequential

In a fit of pique, a suddenly conscience-stricken U.S. Senate delivered a long overdue apology for the actions that its members took (or, more to the point, didn’t take) over 100 years ago.

Tomorrow, too late for Williams and the 4,742 others murdered by lynch mobs between 1882 and 1968, the Senate will vote on a motion apologising for the failure to enact an anti-lynching law first proposed 105 years ago.

‘The apology is long overdue,’ said Republican Senator George Allen, sponsoring the resolution with Democrat Mary Landrieu.

The Guardian has the story here.

More on the flip
Before I go any farther, let me first say that I’m overwhelmingly pleased that the patricians in the Senate acknowledged the role that their institution played in this ugly chapter in history.  It’s important for the historical record, and maybe little acknowledgments like this can crack through the ahistorical “patriotism” that currently polices our discourse.

But an apology?  Worthless, unless as an institution, the Senate is willing to apologize for being on the wrong side of history in any number of other occasions, but, most recently:

  1. (With the House) For abdicating it constitutional power to declare war to an imperial executive.
  2. For refusing to seriously investigate any of the serious allegations against BushCo, but most significantly for not investigating instances of torture.
  3. For failing to vigorously perform its oversight functions over the Executive Branch.

And really, even with those apologies, I’m not satisfied.  “Whoops, we’re sorry for standing aside while allowing mobs of our fellow citizen to terrorize African-Americans.  Our bad.”  No, those words ring hollow after dealing with the institutional hubris and arrogance of the Senate.

Only by now taking action to redress current injustices can the Senate absolve itself of its previous inactions.  Everyday, innocent Iraqis are killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time – targeted as collaborators by their peers, viewed as potential insurgents by U.S. troops – the victims of this political violence number in the tens of thousands.  And this injustice was brought on by the Bush Administration.

Lynchings and military occupations share a lethal use of force in order to assert and maintain control.  Both are forms of violence for political ends.  Both are forms of terrorism.

When the Senate cops to its role in the illegal occupation of Iraq, then I’ll start thinking of forgiveness.  When the Senate begins to seriously discuss the timetable for a complete withdrawal of the troops and reparations, then I’ll consider the substance of their apology.  And when the Senate begins holding BushCo accountable for their crimes, then I’ll be able to grudgingly accept that the Senate is entitled to some dignity.

But in the meantime, I’m left with this thought: in the time between the Senate’s initial inaction on anti-lynching legislation and the apology, the Senate roughly double in age.  By that standard, the Senate should get around to issuing its apology for (and I quote) “completely fucking around” for the past 4+ years in 2213.

Dear MSM – We’d Like Our Color Back

And now, for a bit of the lunch-time snark

Dear Mainstream Media,

I suppose it started off as a merely functional consideration – you needed colors for the map, and needed to utilize the traditional “red, white, and blue” motif.  And in those heady days following the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November 2000, it’s to be expected that we’d let this misappropriation slide.

But it’s 4 and a half years and two election cycles later.  So, on behalf of my fellow leftists, I’m politely asking you, please, please, give us the color red back.
In a conversation with a European colleague the other day, he made reference to the fact that a large chunk of middle America had gone socialist.  Shaking my head, I had to clue him in on the fact that no longer is red the color of the revolution.

“Better dead than red?”  They used to be talking about us!

“Pinko commies?”  That doesn’t even make sense anymore.

“Red Emma?”  Now come on.  Once you bring Emma Goldman into it, it’s just silly.

All of our anarchist friends laugh at us now.  I keep threatening to have the Democrats take black from them, but they just laugh harder, noting that black has never, ever been accepted on the American palette.

So now, here we are in the lull between election cycles.  The “red state” money has been made.  Would it be too much to ask to choose another color for the right next year?  Maybe a nice shade of yellow?  Or brown?  But not red.  Too many of our international brethern are confused.  And dammit, haven’t you taken enough from us?  Please, we’ll turn our backs, and if the color red is back on our desk when we turn around, we’ll let the whole thing drop, no questions asked.

We hope you find it in your hearts to return to us leftists our beloved color red.

Sincerely,
A whole gaggle of red-blooded redder than red leftists.

cross-posted at jScoop