Participating in this roundtable are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report; Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.
Jim (Con't): Betty, let's kick it off with you because everyone wants to know: What the hell's going on with your site?
Betty: As we do this roundtable, there's no new post up there. I've written one. I'm just not sure. Thursday night, I asked C.I. to announce something at The Common Ills Friday morning and then Friday morning I called her and said, "Abort! Abort!" It's just so difficult. Not to write. I've got my post written. It's just --
Rebecca: Difficult. Here's the deal, Betty's readers miss Betinna and she's been getting non-stop e-mails about that.
Betty: Thanks, Rebecca. I would have been like a needle stuck on a record without that. As Rebecca's pointed out, the readers miss her and then I read the e-mails and I miss her. If you're just tuning in, my site started as a comic, online novel revolving around Betinna. She was married to Thomas Friedman and she wore cotton sheets wrapped around herself because Thomas Friedman was so cheap and said that's all she would have worn in her country as well. She slowly learned that Thomas Friedman was not so great -- that's why the title of my blog is "Thomas Friedman is a Great Man." That's what he indoctrinated Betinna into saying. And he did that by drugging her, among other things. During the first half of the year, this novel went on and on, but during the first half of the year -- this would be 2005, Betinna slowly awakens to reality about him. By year two, drug free, she's starting to remember things and she's not from an island. Turns out, she's from New Jersey. Turns out Thomas Friedman was using her. For the novel to end as planned, Betinna had to die. And that's one of the reasons I ended up chucking it to the side. The other was the sexism against Hillary and the need for me to make a strong statement there. I was already having Betinna campaign for Hillary, but I just wanted to say more.
Ava: And that's the problem Betty's facing now.
Betty: Right, I've been talking to C.I., using her as a soundboard, and I've come up with a way to do Betinna and spin her into a different or larger adventure -- I'm sick of Thomas Friedman, Nicky K and Gail Collins, all of whom were regular characters in the novel -- but if I do it, and this is why it's been so hard to post, if I do it, I do it. How do I go back to doing a blog entry like I've been doing since the middle of 2008? And I remember how hard the chapters could be. And do I really want to go back to that? But C.I. pointed out that I can put "NOT A CHAPTER" in a post title and everyone will know I'm just doing a blog post that night, if I need to do that or want to do that. I miss Betinna. There are nights, I'm sure this sounds crazy, but there are nights when I dream about her. I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, he falls in love with Dorothy Michaels and then misses her. And I love Betinna and I miss her so much. And most of the time I don't dwell on that but with all the e-mails coming in lately . . .
Jim: Do you know what started it.
Betty: A new community member, Tonja J, was going through my archives and reading old things and she started e-mailing to a number of other community members, who'd been members longer than her, to ask if they'd read it and if they'd liked it. And then that just blossomed into basically a discussion group about Betinna. And people like Tonja, or Kayla or Brenda or Kendrick weren't trying to get me to start Betinna back up, but they'd e-mail and they'd talk about this or that and they'd sometimes wonder what Betinna was doing and goodness know I do too. I miss her. She's like flesh and blood to me. She's a friend. I picture myself at the end of my life, lost nearly all my senses and in an old folk's home, not visited by anyone but, in my head, Betinna's with me. It's her and me until the bitter end. And I'm sure my attachment to her makes no sense, but she's very real to me.
Jim: So what's going on? You're posting the chapter today?
Betty: If C.I. will read over it, then yes. It's my sixth draft and it's as much a mess as the other five before were.
Jim: Let the record show that C.I.'s nodding that she will read it. C.I. and Ava take the notes for this transcript piece. Okay, so it's the return of Betinna and I can tell you, Betty, that's going to make a lot of Third readers happy as well.
Betty: Maybe, maybe not. It may be darker. I don't know. The first week of posts will probably be tying up ends and Stan and C.I. deserve huge thanks because they were sound boards for ideas I had and they were also kind enough to pitch in ideas as well.
Stan: And I've read the sixth draft. I think people will love it.
Jim: Alright, well I look forward to reading that. Can we talk about Dandelion Salad because that's not something that's working as a feature this edition and we've postponed and postponed it.
Dona: For reference, Rebecca's "dandelion salad pimps abortion lies and islamophobia" and Marcia's "Dandelion Salad pushes abortion lies" are the first two pieces to read and follow that with Rebecca's "the lying website dandelion salad" and Marcia's "Dandelion Salad defends abortion lies."
Jim: C.I. wrote about it as well but we're sticking with Marcia and Rebecca's for a reason. Who's going to explain what Dandelion Salad did?
Marcia: I'll go. They 'celebrated' Roe v. Wade's anniversary at Dandelion Salad by posting an attack on abortion. It was a piece filled with right wing lies by some man. And, at Dandelion Salad, a few people tried to call it out. Some got their comments deleted, some got their comments edited -- like community member Vanessa. But Dandelion Salad's owner jumps into the comments to insist that the article is well sourced. The sources are right wing links -- falsely claiming that abortion rights groups get their money from racists.
Jim: Okay, I'm going to stay with Marcia for a second. You wrote two pieces. Your first piece went up and got a number of comments including from Dandelion Salad's owner. Talk about that.
Marcia: Oh, yeah, that twit left a comment. As I said, he or she wants to claim that he or she did not endorse or oppose the opinions of the anti-abortion piece. That's a lie. When people are questioning the 'sourcing' and you rush in to say that it is well sourced -- and all the sources are right-wing -- you've endorsed the article. Now, as I pointed out, he or she edited Vanessa's comment. Including a link she gave to my site. He edited that out. I'm just going to say "he" -- I'm sick of doing he or she. So he comes over to my site and gets to spew his thoughts and I let him. I wasn't a little s**t like he was. I didn't alter his comments and, in fact, copied them and pasted them into my second entry to respond to them. While all he did was delete comments at his site that he didn't like and edit and alter other ones.
Jim: And what did he want you to do in his comments?
Marcia: Stupid little prick wanted me to change my post, delete it, and instead go to his website and leave a comment. So the prick could edit my words, alter what I was saying, the way he did Vanessa's? Kiss my ass.
Jim: Rebecca, why don't you pick up there?
Rebecca: Marcia and I were both blogging about this at the same time because we were both outraged by it. While she heard from DS, I heard from the prick who wrote the article. Blah, blah, whine, whine. And, as always with chicken s**t men, they didn't contact me directly, it went through C.I. I didn't post his nonsense at my site. I noted his disagreement but he can kiss my ass. He had a whole article with which to slander abortion, I believe he's had his say and then some.
Jim: Elaine, you and C.I. also weighed in so let me open it to you. What were your thoughts?
Elaine: C.I. said it best, this is paraphrase, "Stay out of my examination room and I'll stay out of yours." And where does it end? Where do the efforts of these so-called leftists end, these efforts to curtail the rights of women? Since 2008, it's been open season on women and let's not pretend otherwise or pretend that Barack Obama didn't waive it all through with his sexist and homophobic campaigns. The article had a wealth of misinformation about organizations -- apparently NARAL and Planned Parenthood -- getting money from KKK-type groups. In addition, it wanted to argue against abortion based upon what some women in the 19th and early 20th century might have thought. These are women who were campaigning for the right to vote. As a general rule, any class subordinate and dependent upon a larger class to be granted rights may self-present and present the rights they wants as the best option for continued good behavior. I'm not slamming them for it. I'm just saying, you put on your best clothes and smile you warmest when you're the subordinate class desparately attempting to convince someone else to grant you rights.
Jim: C.I.?
C.I.: I'm living in the 21st century. I have no desire to take medical advice from non-professionals about medical procedures which didn't exist when they were alive. It's stupid, it's beyond stupid. First off, there were many feminists who supported abortion. The mid-wives were run out of business and demonized as was abortion. This was part of the 'professionalization' of medicine. The wave the right-winger male was writing of is honestly a backlash wave. And to Elaine's point, let's note that not only were they seeking the vote, they were also living in a time when birth control -- birth control, not abortion -- was a topic you could be arrested for discussing in public. I'm not interested in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's version of the Bible. Sorry. A lot of that stuff has no application to my life and never did. Times change, progress comes marching through, that's life. I try to be advanced but in 20 years, I'll seem middle-of-the-road and in 50 or 100, I'll seem conservative.
Jim: In what way do you see that happening?
C.I.: I'm not big on predictions. But it is likely that the country might be vegetarian in 50 years. Excuse me, vegan. I'm not saying that "will" happen, I'm saying it's likely. A major upheaval could stop that, but it could happen. And I love fried chicken and I love seafood. I could see there being repulsion in the future over the brutality of eating animals.
Jim: Jess, you're a vegetarian. What do you think?
Jess: I grew up that way and what seemed weird to people I knew growing up doesn't seem weird to people I know today so it is possible. I'd guess 100 years though, not fifty. And I agree that some major upheaval -- especially to do with climate -- could alter that.
Jim: Mike, your thoughts on the Dandelion Salad issue?
Mike: I agree with Marcia. Once you wade into the comments and start arguing that right wing, fanatically anti-choice 'sources' are valid sources, then you're taking a stand. To then try to walk it back is just cowardly. In fact, it's even more offensive because now you're not just promoting attacks on abortion, you're also lying about it. I have no idea why Dandelion Salad would even post that article. Don't give me any s**t about "Presenting all voices." You know for damn sure, they wouldn't post a column by Bill O'Reilly or anyone like that. What's the difference between that and the crap they posted? Dandelion Salad's too stupid to look at the 'works cited' at the end of the article and not notice they're all right-wing sites? No. Dandelion Salad knew what it was doing and deliberately posted that article. Why? I don't know. To get some attention, most likely. And the easiest way to get attention these days? Attack women's rights. I have no interest in that site anymore. It's as bad as all the ones launching sexist attacks on Hillary and, for all I know, Dandelion Salad was one of those because I wasn't reading it then. But that idiot Kimberly Wilder loves her some Dandelioon Salad and the suppsed Green Party website On The Wilder Side did little to promote the Green Party presidential candidate in 2008 but did make time for non-stop Barack whoring and for never ending Hillary trashing.
Wally: Let's remember this is the website, On The Wilder Side, that claimed to link to all the canidates on their candidate page and yet it didn't link to Hillary. And it was only after the Democratic Party primary was over that Kimberly Wilder provided an active link to Hillary's campaign. That page went up in the summer of 2007 and linked to everyone running for the Democratic Party nomination, to every candidate for other parties' nominations as they announced their candidacy and yet couldn't link to Hillary. We're talking about a site that linked to Bob Barr as a candidate and to the Constitutional Party and on and on and maintained it was about open elections and free elections but Wilder couldn't get over her own loathing for Hillary enough to practice what she preached. And I agree with Mike that there probably isn't a great deal of difference between On The Wilder Side in 2008 and Dandelion Salad today.
Jim: And you word it that way because?
Wally: As everyone knows 'Green' Kimberly Wilder waited until after the 2008 election to come out as a non-Green with her announcement that she'd left the party --
Cedric: Already obvious by all her mad love for Barack. That woman was sick.
Wally: Yeah. And also because the site is really Ian Wilder now.
Jim: Jess and Ann, let me bring you in. We're moving to Green issues, your thoughts?
Ann: Jess, can I jump in and go first?
Jess: Absolutely.
Ann: I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, 2004 and 2008. I bring that up because a Nader supporter in 2000 who ended up voting for Barack is nothing but a fool or a whore or both in my opinion. I also bring it up because I didn't have a blog in the summer of 2008 or the fall. And I found a lot of things from Nader supporters disgusting. I seriously considered not voting for him and switching to Cynthia McKinney due to his supporter and Nader and third party candidates need to pay attention to this. At the Nader website, in the comments, you would find people trashing Hillary -- and praising Barack -- in the summer and fall of 2008. I ended up telling myself that a lot of them were intentionally trying to destroy his support. But here's reality. If Lucy and Charlie Brown run for a nomination and Charlie gets it while you're supporting Linus' run, your job is not to insult Lucy. Lucy is (a) now out of the race so you look like a stupid Kimmy Wilder attacking Lucy to being with but (b) Lucy's supporters are considering who to vote for. Some will vote for Charlie. But some may move over to Linus' camp. But they're never going to come over to Linus' camp if Linus' supporters are running around trashing Lucy. It wasn't just sexist and immature, it was dumb politics and it never needs to happen again. Ralph could have easily picked up a number of Hillary supporters if his fan base could have just stopped the attacks on a woman who was not even in the race.
Jess: I agree with that. And. let's be honest, it was those Nader supporters' way of trying to maintain their 'cred' by slamming 'the Democratic Party.' They were too chicken s**t to call out Barack, so they went after Hillary who, as Ann points out, wasn't even in the race. It was chicken s**t from a bunch of chicken s**ts. And that's what's so awful about the Green Party today. They're just chicken s**t. Barack's drone bombing Pakistan and the Green's can't call it out. He's continued the Iraq War and they can't call it out. He's continued the Afghanistan War and they can't call it out. He gives that awful State of the Union Address. The Libetarian Party, for goodness sake, is calling him out on Iraq, their president issues a statement. The Green Party plays dumb. It claims it is an alternative to the two major parties but all it is a whore for the Democratic Party. I'm sick of it. I vote Green state wide but I will not be voting Green nationwide. That's why I voted Nader in 2004 -- I wasn't old enough to vote in 2000 -- and why I voted for Nader in 2008 and that's among the reasons Nader doesn't run on the national Green Party ticket. They're a joke. They're not a real party.
Jim: Okay, thank you both. Dona's passed a note that Stan, Ty, Isaiah, Kat, Trina and Ruth still haven't spoken. Who do we start with? How about we move over to the Patriot Act? Last week, here, we were noting, as Marcia had, that a renewal of the Patriot Act was being pushed and that no one was paying attention to that. Isaiah, last Sunday, you made that one of the focal points of your comic and how it was being ignored due to the soap opera that was the Egyptian coverage.
Isaiah: Right. We'd discussed that here and C.I. had written similar thoughts, so I used it as the basis for a comic and, I know Marcia felt this way too because I spoke to her, it was like being Paul Revere when no one was listening. The vote came up and no one was alerting about it. No one could even pay attention to it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is what Ann, C.I. and Elaine ended up noting because that was one of the few with an eye on the ball. But most ignored it and were caught napping.
Kat: And they were some real whores and here's how you spot them, after the vote went down in the House, the day after, they showed up praising Dennis Kucinich and playing the Cowardly Lion's little speech where he was supposedly appealing to Tea Pariters. Point of fact, Tea Pariters were not going to support the Patriot Act to begin with. The idea that they were swayed by Dennis is stupid and whores like Amy Goodman were able to pretend that Dennis had effect only because they've refused to report on what the Tea Party actually stands for.
Jim: Why was that? The Tea Party wasn't reported accurately. Any reasons or theories?
Stan: Yeah, let me jump in here. Because the Kimmy Wilders -- White Mommas and Daddies -- who get all wet in their drawers at the thought of bi-racial Barack needed an enemy. But they can't handle a real enemy. They couldn't take on the policies that the Tea Party favors. They had to demonize them and declare them a racist organization and all this other stuff. So, yes, it's hilarious that Amy Goodman, the whore of all media whores, wants to show up the day after the House votes on the Patriot Act and pretend like Dennis Kucinich's useless words meant a damn thing and somehow rallied support.
Jim: Let's pretend I'm just reading Third for the first time, okay? Ruth, I'm a lefty and I'm hearing this on Dennis Kucinich and thinking, "I thought they were a lefty site. What kind of site is this?" Explain that.
Ruth: We do not like pretends. We do not like fakes. We do not like spineless. In 2007, a number of us were supporting Dennis Kucinich's announcement that he was running for the Democratic Party nomination. Ava and C.I. did not take a stand. But a number of us, including me, did. Trina, Kat, Dona, go down the list. What changed? Dennis is a fake, a fraud, a huckster. Barack did not 'win' Iowa. It is so hilarious today to read the 'big win' Barack had in Iowa. That 'win' resulted from Dennis and others sending their delegates over to Barack. Dennis claimed he was running a real campaign and running to win. And a number of us believed him and supported his run. But when you are running a real campaign, you do not give away your supporters, you do not tell your supporters to go over to another campaign. Later on the networks would get trashed for cutting Dennis out of the debates. Why not? In fact, that should be the rule for who gets invited to the Democratic Party debate. If you give your supporters away, you are not a real candidate and not invited to the debate. Now why the hell was Dennis giving them away to begin with? Then answer why he was giving them away to a War Hawk? Though Iraq may surprise some, everyone knew Barack was going to increase the war on Afghanistan. Why was 'peace man' Dennis helping out a War Hawk. So that is when we walked away from Dennis. And, in the ObamaCare battle, Dennis swore he was not voting for it as stands. He was going to stand up to that corporate give-away. Then he takes a plane ride with Barack Obama and, next day, announces he is breaking his promise. Dennis is a joke. We do not support Mr. Spineless. He is a typical politician, full of promises, short on results.
Jim: Thank you, Ruth. That leaves Ty and Trina and Ty's passed me a note saying to let it go to Trina so we can wrap up. Trina, can you pull this last topic together in any way?
Trina: I can sure try. The Patriot Act is something that those of us on the left are supposed to be opposed to which would mean being opposed to the extension of. But now that Barack's in the White House, I guess it just doesn't matter judging by the fact that Democracy Now! couldn't even do one segment on the Patriot Act in the lead up to the House vote -- it failed to pass in the House. It will be up for another vote before the end of the month. The day after, instead of an analysis or discussion of the vote, Goodman reduces it to a headline and a "Praise Dennis" one at that. I'm not in the mood for that whoring. I supported Dennis once and you can only play me for a fool once. I gave to his campaign, I donated money and I donated time. He can kiss my damn ass and were some of his supporters to decided to sue him to return their contributions, I might join in on that because I only put the time and money in because I thought he was a real candidate. Then came Iowa and his giving his supporters away so Barack could be put over the top. All but Hillary, John Edwards and Mike Gravel's campaign ended up giving over their supporters. That's why Barack 'won' Iowa. Iowa 'votes' in a series of rounds. You 'vote' -- gather -- over and over and, as the front runners know how much they need to win, they begin making deals and fake candidates go along with the deals and send their supporters over in later rounds so that who ever's waiving the most pork in front of them gets their supporters. The most democratic thing that could be done primary wise would be to endthe Iowa caucus. In the general election, no onevotes 'caucus style.' And it's a corrupt system. To infer, as Goody did, that Dennis helped 'awaken' the Tea Party is just nonsense. But it's the sort of nonsense she pulls all the time.
Jim: Okay, and that's the wrap for this roundtable.