Jill Rants and Raves

the obama swoon

The Swoon Comes to West Oakland Photo: Jill Posener © 2008 All Rights Reserved

Yeah, the swoon thing. Clearly Obama is the nominee. Was this what we were being set up for when John Kerry suggested Obama give the keynote address at the Demo Convention in 2004? I guess so. You gotta give the Demos credit for thinking that far ahead. The comparison being made between BO & RFK is apt - and who knows what might have been had Kennedy lived? But I keep hearing people talk about Barack as if they were reading from a Winnie The Pooh story. Their voices grow sweet and sugary. Men as well as women are enamored of this guy, they speak of Obama's 'vision', his 'hope for the country'. It's as if everyone started believing in the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy all at once.

And which country are they talking about? Is it the country that just recalled hundreds of millions of pounds of beef, of slaughterhouse workers in a video shown torturing diseased cattle as they lead them to the death line? The same country that then uses the meat from those abused animals in the federal school lunch program? Is it the country that has seen a slew of mass killings by disturbed loners in the last year? Is it the country of Tom Cruise's Scientology or the Nation of Self-Medication? Is it the country of the inspirational Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco or the nation of 'god hates fags' Fred Phelps at his Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. The nation of Code Pink or the Nation Of Islam, the Marine Corps or marine mammals?

What country does Barack have hope for? The country that still executes human beings or the country that describes Cuba as enslaved while millions here cannot read or write, afford health care and feed their children cheap beef at fast food outlets? One Nation Under God? There is no 'one nation'.

What there is, is a sliver of opportunity every few years to redress the most egregious desecrations committed in the name of progress. And while Amerika remains a two party system - shackled to party machinery and wedded to pretending the divides don't exist while driving the wedge deeper - between rich and poor, black and white and immigrant and illegal, male and female, gay and straight, right and left, insured or not, owning or renting, gun supporting or gun opposing, and faithful and faithless - America will swing wildly on it's familiar pendulum.

I heard a plump liberal radio talk show host from the Dakotas in conversation with Tom Daschle the other day and he asked him two questions. First, 'what is China like?' Ok, yeah. I guess if you come from Fargo the vastness of China might escape you. Then he asked 'Do they like us?' They? The Chinese. All 1.3 billion of them. 20% of the entire population of the world. Do they like us? Who is us? It is this level of facile b.s that is driving the Obama campaign, the idea that somehow if we get the right preacher, we can all follow along with the sermon and not feel left out.

I don't dislike BO. He seems like a good and solid human being. He is however not a knight, on any kind of horse, and any armour he's wearing probably includes a bulletproof vest. But a large number of Americans are swooning. Expect a 'wave' to spontaneously sweep the Convention Hall after he takes the stage. This just is not the way to elect a leader of a government. On election day 2008, chances are that almost half the country will have voted against him. He may have hope for them. Let's just all hope it's mutual.

Alright, I'm gonna leave election politics behind for a while. The number of hits on my blog spikes markedly when I write the words lesbian and sex in the same sentence in keywords or in the title....so next blog: Lesbian. Sex. And how heterosexuals taught us everything we know about drama.

preacher obama, berkeley cops, rain and self pity

Grrr, I'm really annoyed at myself. No matter how hard I try to write a new blog about how I feel Obama is becoming more of a preacher in a travelling tent every day (and what is this bullshit about inclusion in the 'big tent' political cliche crap?), no matter how hard I try to write a follow up to the shooting on my street when a 51 year old black woman was shot to death by a black Berkeley officer (why mention his race? Because, godammit, it's been raised by neighbors who somehow seem even more incensed that he was black, than if he had not been. Is it a more egregious shooting? I don't think so). I have tried to write about how much relationship drama I seem to circulate in, and before you start lecturing me, it is not all of my making. But man it just does my head in. And on top of this lack of good ideas, I'm having trouble starting a piece of writing for which I might actually get paid. Freaking bejesus. What is wrong with me?

Obama feels like the guy with a bottle of elixir, and everywhere the circus sets up the tent, people faint as they try to get a whiff of that stuff. He makes claims about the benefits of the potion he's carrying in his hands and condemns the competition for running ads that question whether the small blue bottle with the simple formula is nothing more than rose flavored tap water. Do you know what I mean? I listen to him, I really do, and feel like pulling my car over and beating the radio to death. He's more preacher than Huckabee. He's more supercilious than Newt. He's more ethical than Miss Manners. He's more popular than Jesus, at the moment. Step aside John Lennon. Simply - he scares me. He can't deliver on the promises because he may not have that majority in the Senate the Dems need to fully undo and re-do the stitching in DC.

I think the Dems missed the chance to have a knowledgeable, work both sides of the aisle Prez. I think many Dems are beginning to see the dreadful truth here. Hillary will not win, but I've been saying that for over a year. A few people owe me for that prediction. But Obama? Who knew the American Idol producers were pulling the levers?

As to the shooting a block from me. Wow, it feels sadder and sadder to me. I understand that a cop makes a quick judgement about the safety of himself or others. I don't know exactly what happened. It scares me senseless that a woman got shot to death in her own home while under the influence of some product, while with her family. It's just wrong. I'll come back to this.

It's raining again, I've had a really bad cold for days, doping myself with Zicam, Sudafed, Advil and lots and lots of coffee. I think that is the key to successfully fighting off most bugs. But I hate this weather. I live with my dogs and cats and they have simply failed me - I had to cook for myself again last night. Life just is not being fair right now. I'm bummed that the New York Times is using a sex slur against Johhny Boy McCain. All in all, I'm thinking of moving again. The real problem though, is that wherever I move to, I go too.

berkeley police shooting

It is eerily quiet on my street this morning. It was deathly quiet on my street last night, a Saturday night of a long weekend. This was not normal. I live in one of those neighbourhoods in Berkeley which teeters on the edge of trouble but doesn't usually tip over. I live with a pretty constant sense that eruption is close, but hey, the volcano can simmer for years and not blow. Right? The last year has seen the temperature rising though. And these days my neighbours and I share an increasing number of complaints about the lack of police or city response to a growing sense that our streets and our homes are not as safe as they were. Yesterday, early evening, I was heading into San Francisco to see friends and as I drove away from my house, noticed two teens making their way down the side of a neighbours yard and stopping to share drugs. I told them to leave. The response of the girl who cannot have been more than 14 was that she would blow my car up. Perhaps she should visit the Marine Recruiting Office Berkeley is trying so hard to get rid of.

But neighbors here do care about one another and, in their defense, police response, when they are called, is swift. But who knew just how fatal this particular response would be.

When I got home at ten, the news vans were ahead of me, the whole block immediately next to mine was taped off with yellow tape, and it seemed that every police cruiser Berkeley owns was within a hundred yards of my house, 6 of them in the middle of my street and outside my house. I felt safe. I asked a young officer what had happened. He said he couldn't say.

What had happened is that a woman died at the receiving end of a police service revolver. It is too soon to know what really happened. The news reports spoke of a domestic dispute call and windows being smashed, and then a second call, a woman wielding a knife and a veteran police officer shooting in 'self defense'. Officers killing people in Berkeley is a rarity - unlike Oakland, where it seems almost routine - but the still which enveloped my neighbourhood last night was somehow like the blood draining from a blunt trauma injury. And though I am shocked at the cause of the peacefulness, I had a sense last night of what it is like to sleep in a truly safe neighborhood. I'm upset at myself for being grateful for the calm, in which my dogs slept through the night and didn't rear up fretfully at the sound of the guy on the Harley Davidson who shatters the sound barrier at night - consciously, deliberately and repeatedly, just to let us all know he is out there. I'm amazed at the sleep which I experienced, without waking to the sounds of a group of over stimulated jerks having a debate about some shit fuck crack cunt bitch ho outside my darkened windows.

I'm angry that I slept so well because my street was blocked off and police were everywhere. A woman was shot to death on a night that may have started like many others for her, but which ended with no possibility of another one.

Berkeley is filled with people who look over their bi-focals at distant problems they are powerless to correct, but our infrastructure and quality of life is cracking and becoming as rutted as the street that bears Martin Luther King Jr's name, that you can't drive along anymore because presumably there is either no money or no will to fix the damage to it. The gap between life in the hills and the flatlands gapes wider. Berkeley is so in love with its reputation and history as a maverick, it no longer seems to care that the stain is seeping across the south part of the city. That's the problem with thinking the eruption isn't happening. The rumble is there, constant, but until a tragedy puts a finger to our lip and shushes the whole area, we don't notice the lava boiling.