Jill Rants and Raves

spitzer, moralism and mandatory neutering

I keep starting to write blogs about other things, for instance I am eager to let off steam about the proposed  state law in California mandating spay and neuter - Assembly Bill 1634, laughingly called The Healthy Pets Law. This is bad law people and I oppose it. Shitfuckgoddamm, are you sure Jill?????? Yes, I am, and when I have a few minutes not absorbed by stupid heterosexuals getting all riled up about a bit of prostitution, I'll get to it...

I've also started writing a blog about being proud to be a lesbian chauvinist, but the hypocritical, hysterical reaction to Elliot Spitzer just sweeps away cute little topics like that. You'd think all these talking heads have never heard of such a thing. Huh, a powerful white man liked to spill his semen all over the place in a fancy hotel room with a very attractive woman whom he had to pay for. This is what a guy resigns over??? Not going to war, or stealing from the American working class, or taking bribes, or being in bed with lobbyists. If only all politicians relieved their stress that way, we'd have fewer stuffed endangered species in hunting lodges.

Photo: ©Jill Posener, London 1982, All Rights Reserved

Can you believe the response to this thing? I am mad as hell. And you know where this is going to end, dontcha? It's gonna end up being his wife Silda's fault for being an uptight frigid ungiving wife with her twinset, pearls and silk scarf. So Elliot didn't get his rocks off with Silda. So freakin' what?

What exactly is everyone upset about? That he 'cheated' on his wife while being a hardass moralist? That he liked unprotected sex with his prostitutes? That he has three teenage daughters who are going to be 'ruined' by this? That he has 'issues'? That his wife has 'issues'? That sex has brought another political career to it's knees - forgive the sexual pun. What exactly are people surprised at? That a politician used hookers? That they were pretty pricey?

But back to mandatory neutering. You know where I'm going with this, right? So, I won't.

stolen - generations and elections

My Australian buddy Suzy - who shows me up by writing so beautifully and she is a visual artist of enormous talent, and she's a great parent of four-legged and two-legged beings, and she manages to make a longterm relationship work, and she's politically more correct than me, and she has always supported amazing self- empowerment efforts among indigenous and native peoples, and she has a mom who is about the best cook I ever had the pleasure of staying with, her dad and her sister are freakin' cool, and on top of that she introduced me to Bonzo, the first dog I fell in love with as an adult .... oh my god .... I hate her.

Melbourne, 1985 © Jill Posener. All Rights Reserved, 2008

Anyway, that Suzy wrote a comment on my blog about Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister making a long overdue official apology to indigenous people for the laws and policies of past Australian governments which robbed native people of their land and rights as human beings. Rudd refers specifically to the 'stolen generations', the thousands of children who were removed from their families and tribal lands and placed in 'orphanages', one of the most blatant and cruel attempts at eliminating a whole culture and people. Most Americans know of this terror via the movie Rabbit Proof Fence. This moment in history is an important one - will the Australian government be able to fulfil promises of change and create real practical solutions beyond the words?

Americans could look to Australia for guidance about how to run elections. The political parties choose a leader from within the legislative arena and the electorate votes the party's platform in the general election. There is  mandated public funding of elections, no complex caucus and primary system, no open primaries where Republicans are able to swing a vote in favour of one Democrat candidate in order to skew the process. America lives in an Oz dreamland where it is assumed that the primary system empowers we the people to be the decision makers. Splat.....oh dear I just spilt coffee on my new keyboard I laughed so hard...there are so many problems with Amerika's primary system it is hard to know where to start the surgery.

Take just two of the stranger anomalies - Florida and Pennsylvania. Florida is used to being disenfranchised so it doesn't really matter. Even though this state carries a large number of delegates, the vote didn't count. Why? Because of a power struggle between the Democratic National Commitee and the local state party over the timing of the primary. The fact that caucuses and primaries are spread out over 4 months is of itself absolutely nutty. So poor Pennsylvania, which doesn't vote till April doesn't count because Obama already has enough delegates. So how do you feel if you're a voter in the city of the birth of American democracy and hey, your vote don't count dude.

One of the reasons given is that if primaries were held on one day (like a general election), the candidates wouldn't have a chance to campaign in all the states. No shit, Sherlock! But public funding of elections would mean each candidate or party has equal media time and televised debates were shown on every channel including cable channels. You wouldn't need a massive on the ground campaign. You wouldn't need to make political consultants rich. And how about the fact that Kucinich was left out of Democratic candidate debates because MSNBC decided he wasn't a viable candidate? Is this working for you?

How do you feel about the 30 - 50 million dollars being raised every month by candidates in a PRIMARY campaign goddammit? Do you have a better idea of how that money could be spent?

The $100 you sent - how about funding a homeless shelter bed for 2 nights? 3 months of care for an oiled bird after an oil spill? Or paying for a senior citizen to be able to get vet care for her cat? Or organising a clean up of a local park? Maybe help pay for a returning army veteran to go on vacation? Or help with funeral costs for the woman shot to death in my Berkeley neighbourhood.

This blog is getting too long - this is important stuff people. You know what? The Australian Labour Party internally elected a leader (who wasn't everybody's first choice don't get me wrong), but who managed to lead the Party to victory over the Bush lover John Howard, and then within 6 months of taking power, issues a profound statement of regret for the policies of his beloved and dare I say it magnificent country. No primaries, no half a billion dollar campaigns, no lobbyists, no corporate financing of elections....start dreaming Amerika. What passes for public empowerment here is a popularity contest where the winners are the mainstream media, global corporations, consultants and lawyers and the men and women who are already among the richest in the world.