Not in my name, not on my ground
I want nothing but the ending of the war
No more killing, or it's over
And the mystery won't matter anymore
-K. Kristofferson, "In The News"

I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. I just lay there and stared at the clock, watching it count down to a new day, the first day of spring. And watching it count down to the appointed hour at which the government of my adopted state, presuming to speak for me, would, with legal and social sanction, murder one of its citizens.

I thought about turning on the radio to listen for news of a last-minute stay of execution, but I didn't, because I knew there wouldn't be one. And there wasn't. Texas killed a man last night, Charles Anthony Nealy. He was the 9th person executed by the state this year.

If you want to read the particulars of the case, they are all over the web. Dallas and Houston's morning papers both ran the AP story this morning. In bare bones terms, Nealy was convicted of shooting a storeowner during a robbery in 1997 and sentenced to death. Nealy has never admitted taking part in the robbery or killing the victim. He was supposed to be executed last November, but got a stay due to a witness in his trial contending that his testimony had been wrong. The Texas Court of Appeals upheld the conviction and the murder was rescheduled for last night.

As a Texan, or really as an American of any variety, one gets a bit used to one's government carrying out atrocities in the name of the citizenry. No matter how many times it happens, though, I just can't get used to this. It is surreal to the point of seeming impossible that I really live in a place where the government regularly and publicly murders my fellow citizens and nobody cares. I can think of all manner of different arguments against it when I am thinking logically, trying to argue with someone about why the death penalty is such a very bad idea. I can cite the racism, the classism, the possibility of a mistake leading to the execution of an innocent person, the expense of the system. When I'm lying in bed at night, though, it all comes down to being completely floored that anyone can think that the intentional taking of a human life by the state is acceptable. Killing is wrong, and it is even more wrong for a government than for a person. It is a subversion of everything governments are supposed to do for their citizens. It does not keep us safe, it provides us with no collective service and contributes nothing to the collective good. It gives no hand up to the less fortunate among us. It does nothing but exact vengeance upon the weak (a single individual, in this case) by the strong (the state apparatus). And every time it happens, we are all the worse for it.

I'd like to find some silver lining to this dark cloud, but there really isn't one. A few weeks ago, I heard Sister Helen Prejean on the radio, and she seemed so positive, citing statistics that showed the number of executions, even in the South, was going down, and that people's tolerance for government sanctioned murder was waning. I can't find her optimism today, though. In less than three months, my state has executed nine people. Last night, in the first hours of spring, they--no, we--executed a black man who may or may not have met the legal definition of mental retardation days before his 43rd birthday. The dark, bleak winter stretches out before us, and there is no spring in sight.

As you probably already know, Representative Dennis Kucinich entered articles of impeachment against VP Dick Cheney yesterday. A lot of people have unkind things to say about this. A lot of liberal people. What I've heard so far has centered on any one of the following three things, or any combo thereof:
1. This is a waste of the Congress' time; they should be doing something more worthwhile.
2. Kucinich is a kook who should work with his party, and Speaker Pelosi already said impeachment was off the table.
3. He's just doing this for attention because he's running for president.

I reject all three of these premises, and I'll tell you why:

First, I have a big issue with the idea that working to impeach Cheney isn't worth Congress' time. Dick Cheney has committed multiple impeachable offenses, not the least of which are the pre-war actions for which Kucinich is taking him to task. It is way past time for someone representing the American people to stand up in the most public possible forum and make it clear that we do not accept these actions from our government. It's not OK to lie in order to get your war on. If you do it, there should be consequences.

Which isn't to say that I think Cheney will actually be impeached--obviously there isn't political will among the Democrats for that (which I think is too bad, frankly). But whether or not he's actually impeachable isn't, to my mind, the point. The point is that I support someone standing up and voicing their dissent, both on behalf of themselves and behalf of the people they represent. Kucinich is hardly the first person who had said that someone in the current administration should be impeached. Resolutions supporting impeachment have been put forth by city councils nationwide, as well as by members of state legislatures in Vermont, Illinois, California, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Washington. There are also grassroots impeachment organizations such as Impeach For Peace and Impeach Bush. A March 2006 poll by the American Research Group showed 42% in favor of a Bush impeachment. Just because Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to do it doesn't make impeachment a radical or ridiculous idea.

The notion that this is some sort of kooky power play by presidential candidate Kucinich, however, is ridiculous. As a candidate for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Kucinich polls at somewhere around 2%. He's not doing this because he thinks it is going to pull him in front of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. He has no history of that type of behavior, and no realistic reason for it. Kucinich has been pissed off about Cheney's lies and war on false premises for years. He didn't just hit upon the idea. Besides, with so-called liberals taking him to task for wasting everybody's time with this silly impeachment thing, he's probably not making any friends anyway.

So, basically, I completely support and applaud this effort by Kucinich, and I'll be writing a nice letter to my Representative, Michael McCaul, telling him I'd like him to support Kucinich. He won't, of course, but as he's the one who is supposed to be speaking for me in Washington, I'm going to ask him to anyway. Because folks, that's how our government is supposed to work. We are not powerless to sit back and watch these shits we elected commit atrocities in our names. We have not only a right, but also a responsibility to speak up against them, loudly and clearly. To my mind, that's exactly what Kucinich is doing.

So I have been refraining from posting anything about Michael Vick, mostly because I didn't think my blog readers needed to have their eyes assaulted by the inevitable onslaught of profanity that would ensue. I also didn't think my repeated wishes of great pain and suffering to Vick would put me in the best light. However, today it was brought to my attention that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is planning to honor Vick at their 50th anniversary celebration this weekend.

Honestly, there are no words for the pure rage that fills me with.

The SCLC has done fantastic work, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott through the March on Washington, voter registration drives, etc. I am fully in support of their history, even if my loyalties tend to lie with more radical organizations. Choosing to honor a man who is currently facing charges of horrendous, sadistic animal abuse, however, is beyond the pale (hit Google if you want info on Vick's case, I really don't have it in me to go through those stories again). How can the SCLC choose to honor Vick for his outstanding humanity? The message they send by doing so it terrible in two ways. First, it implies that Vick's alleged crimes against animals make no difference is his great humanity; and secondly, it implies that they couldn't find any other great black people to honor who actually are outstanding humans. This choice is offends me not only as a dog advocate, but as a human being. It's not just completely without regards to the animals abused and destroyed by Vick and others like him, it's also really racist.

I was going to just let this go, but honestly, I couldn't resist.

So I worked as a waitress for several years while I was in high school. Not for a long time, but for long enough to develop the second sense that waitstaff get on who will tip well and who will tip shabbily or not at all.

And I gotta tell you, if I saw Hillary Rodham Clinton walk in (if I didn't know who she was, just someone who looked/talked/acted like her), I'd not be expecting a tip. Her entire countenance screams "I'm too self-absorbed to tip!"

This never would have occurred to me, of course, had it not been for the NPR story about HRC stiffing the waistaff at a restaurant in Iowa. Though the story was later corrected, just the fact that it was brought up, and that it recalled the time during her 2000 senatorial campaign that HRC was accused of and admitted to stiffing a New York waitress, is enough. Because whether she actually did it this time or not, these stories sound very likely to me. Because I already had HRC pegged in my mind as a non-tipper.

This is probably not a fair means to decide who I'd like to vote for. If I was in any way considering voting for her anyway, this story probably wouldn't change my mind about HRC. But I didn't like her anyway, and this is precisely the type of thing that led me to that conclusion.

Obama? I bet he tips well.

Armistice: a temporary cessation of fighting by mutual consent; a truce. (From the American Heritage Dictionary, via dictionary.com)

In Europe, it's called Armistice Day. A celebration, from what I can tell, not of war, but of war ending. To me, this makes sense. To celebrate the end of war, the end of dying and killing and brutality, makes sense.

Here, though, we call it Veteran's Day, and the end of war is not something I ever hear mentioned. Rather, we celebrate those who have fought. And it's not that I don't have respect, or at least sympathy, for veterans--I do. But I don't want to celebrate fighting and dying. I want to celebrate the end of it. I want to celebrate armistice.

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
-"Taps"

I've not said much here yet about the presidential race, not because I am not decided, but because I'm already sick of reading other people's views, so I figured you'd probably not be all that interested in mine. However, as today is Super Tuesday, I thought maybe I'd come out with.

I'm supporting Obama for the Democratic nomination. I am a feminist woman who is not supporting our first serious female presidential contender. It pains me to say that, but that's how it is.

When it comes down to it, I'm less against Hillary Clinton than I am for Barak Obama, but if I am totally honest I will tell you that Clinton doesn't thrill me as a candidate. Mostly, the problem I have with her is that she's part of a Democratic party machine that has been disappointing me for more than a decade. More than any other single thing in this election, I want someone new.

It's better, though, to focus on what I like about Obama than what I don't like about Clinton. I'll admit I'm swayed by rhetorical style here--I like Obama because listening to him speak inspires me, and that has never been the case of a presidential contender in my life. Listening to him I believe things can change. At this point in my own apathy and in the country's, that is worth a lot.

And I like him because he's new. He isn't an old-school embedded party politician. Some people call this a lack of experience,and that may be right, but to me, right now, it's worth the risk.

None of this, though, says anything about Obama's actual positions. Well...those tend to be on the conservative side for me, but the truth is that nobody who doesn't strike me as too conservative is going to get elected, so I'm not too worried about that right now. I'd prefer he take a harder liberal line on things like universal health care and getting the hell out of Iraq, but I understand why he doesn't, politically, and I'm willing to give him a four-year chance and see how he does.

So that's my Super Tuesday spiel. We'll see how it goes.

My friend Jenny sent me this e-Valentine today.

Isn't he dreamy?

I spent about an hour this morning waiting in line with other people starting their work day a bit late, at a junior high only a few minutes from my house. We were all participating in the democratic process.

The school, and my neighborhood, is mixed race. Across from where we were lined up to vote was a classroom of what I'd bet were fifth or sixth graders, about 3/4 of whom were African American. As they filed in and saw what we were lined up to do, many of them let loose with shouts of things like "Obama '08!" "Vote for the brother!" and "First Black president!" Technically, of course, this was illegal--electioneering too close to the polling place--and it was stopped by their teacher pretty quickly, but they got their point across. These kids were excited. And why I'd have loved to see similar excitement about the a possible first female president, I couldn't help but find their excitement a little bit contagious. Marking that ballot today felt like being a tiny part of history, and I'm glad I was there.

I've been attempting to just skip any political posts the burble up in my tiny brain, mostly because there is plenty of that on the blogosphere already and partially because I bore myself when writing about those things. But I can't not get into this, it's just bothering me too much.

This hubbub about Barack Obama's friend/pastor Jeremiah Wright. It's ridiculous.

First, from what I have heard, the comments Wright made were right on.

Secondly, allegiances between hate-monger preachers and politicians are hardly new. Nearly every Republican since Reagan has been chummy with Faldwell and his ilk. And even Al Gore (back before he became a Nobel-winning saint) had political ties to fag-hater Fred Phelps. Why haven't we been up in arms about politicians having "spiritual leaders" who advocate for the murder of gays and lesbians? Or even the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?

Because they were white and didn't sound big and scary on a pulpit, for one thing. All over the U.S., white people who have never been to a church that wasn't polite and austere are seeing clips of Rev. Wright and peeing themselves. Power! Authoritative speaking!? From a Black man?! Why, that could get downright dangerous!

And another thing. I just listened to an episode of On Point during which a guest likened Louis Farrakhan to David Duke. Uh, no. See, racism doesn't work the same way in reverse, much as you'd like to think it does. The blood is still on your hands, no matter where you try to smear it.

Jenny asked for my thoughts on this article. I am only too happy to comply.

My first reaction is to ask, as I always ask, who are these crazy people who thought we were in post-feminist space? Who really thought that we'd done all we needed to do and we now live in an equitable world? I'm always puzzled by that. The article implies that you have to be out of your 20s to really "get" how sexist the world is, that nothing other than a decade in the workplace will teach you. I think that's bullshit. Sure, we face sexism in the workplace, but we were already facing it in the media, in our schools, in our families. I'm hard pressed to think of the moment when I first knew sexism existed--not because I never noticed it, but because it has always been there. I absolutely believe progress has been made by each "wave" of feminism, but to pretend it's over is just ridiculous, and it's hard for me to have much respect for someone who needed what has happened to Clinton to prove we still live in a sexist society.

That being said, I do think HRC's run for president and some of the reactions to it have made the depth of the sexism and the misogyny in which we are still steeped a little bit easier to grasp. Some of the bullshit leveled at her has been so outlandishly obvious in its sexism, it's hard to miss, even, I would expect, for those who had previously chosen to believe feminism was no longer needed. Things like why we find her voice "grating" or are more concerned about her "aging" than a male counterpart are subtle, but the Hilary nutcracker sure isn't.

What I am not willing to say, though, is that sexism is "worse" than racism in the U.S., or that the sexism towards Clinton has been worse than the racism towards Obama. It's a bit of a hard thought to put into words, but I have trouble separating sexism and racism from each other. They come from the same place, I think. The land-owning white men who devised this country thought of both Black human beings and female human beings as property, and to my mind, we're still living with the effects of that in both cases, probably more or less equally. I see the slights against Clinton more clearly, I think, because I am used to being a woman in this society, but that doesn't mean the slights against Obama, often brought to my attention by people of color, aren't there.

If people who were previously asleep to sexism are now coming awake, then Clinton's candidacy is worth even more to me than I thought it was. I can only hope that they'll remain alert and not stick their heads back in the sand once the election is over.

So Earth Day was yesterday. I had a post composed in my mind to write about that, but my posting ability was curtailed by my attempt on Monday night to cut my thumb off and my subsequent need to spend yesterday afternoon in the urgent care, where they glued it back on. Still, as I drove home from the urgent care, the only passenger in my SUV on a backed up freeway full of other one-passenger SUVs, I was thinking about Earth Day, and about how much we've changed our lives to be more environmentally conscious, and about how much more is needed.

We have definitely made some changes. We still commute by not-all-that-efficient car, which is bad, but we commute together, which is good. We recycle everything our curbside recycling will take, which is good, but we don't save the other stuff and take it to a recycling center, which is bad. We have mostly phased out paper towels in favor of cloth napkins, which is good. I still take a shower nearly every morning and a bath several nights a week, in very hot water, which is bad. We compost, which is good, but my dear partner and in-laws spread chemical fertilizer on our roses this weekend, which is bad. So while we're improving, it is definitely safe to say we're not there yet.

What else, I wondered as I sat in traffic, should we do? What one change should we implement on this Earth Day? But by the time I got home, I'd forgotten all about it. Why? Because I was greeted by a sweaty, ranting Mark and a disassembled clothes dryer. It stopped working. He took it apart and discovered that due to an ill-fitting pipe, hot air and lint have not been going outside, as they should, but back into the dryer's cavity. This, he suspects, has either led a thermostat to trip (good) or the motor to burn out (bad). It also very easily could have caused a fire, but luckily didn't. However, we're not sure at this point if it's something Mark can fix, or if it will have to be repaired by someone from GE. Neither of those things was really going to happen last night. And in the meantime, there was a load of wet laundry in the washing machine.

Mark said he was going to ask our neighbor if we could use her dryer. But it seemed to me there was a far better plan.

A clothesline.

We live in Texas. It's hot here, already. We've got solar energy to burn. We have a decently sized yard with lots of trees to string lines between. Why on Earth have we not been using a clothesline? Why has it never occurred to me? My mom almost never uses her dryer--in the summer, she hangs clothes outside, in the winter, she hangs them inside. Rural frugality works like that. It's ridiculous that I hadn't thought of it before.

So we strung up a rope, hung the bedding that was in the washer to dry, and put dealing with the dryer off. Mark seems skeptical about the whole idea, but he'll come around. He hated the idea of compost to begin with, too. I'm going to suggest we use the dryer on an emergency basis only all summer. And I'm going to go out today at buy some clothespins.

Happy Earth Day, y'all.

I gotta get something off my chest.

Everyone I know is getting married. Again. This keeps happening--you'd think they'd all be hitched by now and we'd be done with it. I guess some folks are on their second round, though, so maybe it will just be a perpetual cycle. At any rate, I have at least three weddings of close friends and/or family on my agenda in the next year, and counting. So I am thinking, once again, about the "M" word.

Here is the part where I put in the disclaimer: If you are my friend or family member and you are married or planning to be, you may want to stop reading here. If you don't, you may end up feeling hurt or insulted. I am, completely and honestly, sorry about that. I will, as I've likely already told you, do all I can to support your decision to get/be married. If you want me to put on an ugly dress and be in your wedding, I'm there. I'll even throw you a shower. But none of that is going to change my essential feelings about the decision you're making, and those feelings are what I'm going writing about here, on my soapbox, so read at your own risk.

Now. About marriage.

Marriage in the U.S. is a fundamentally discriminatory institution. Clearly, it discriminates against anyone not in a male-female relationship, but that's just a part of it. It also discriminates against anyone who is unlucky enough not to have someone to marry, or anyone who chooses not to participate. It elevates one set of citizens over another by virtue of their personal relationships and how they choose to legally codify those relationships. This is never going to be OK with me. While it's not by any means my only problem with marriage, it's the top of the list, and it's the one that makes me feel fine about making the following analogy:

When you choose to participate in a legal heterosexual marriage, you are, in essence, choosing to drink from the "white only" fountain. You may not have put that fountain there, you may not agree with its existence, you may do whatever else you can personally and politically to open it to people of all colors but you are still partaking in it. You are buying into an inherently discriminatory system, and by participating in it you are helping, in the slightest way, to keep that discrimination alive and kicking. You may have any number of personal and financial reasons to have made that choice, and some of those reasons may be very sensible, but the bottom line does not change. That isn't OK with me. For me, watching my friends and family make that decision isn't something that feels celebratory. I can be and often am nothing but happy for friends and family members who have found wonderful partners and want to build a life with those partners--but that happiness does not extend to their choosing to participate in legal marriage.

I honestly don't believe that the small number of us who choose not to marry for this reason (or for this among other reasons) are doing anything particularly effective to protest in favor of same-sex marriage. That's really not the point. Even if my getting married doesn't make the slightest difference in eradicating this particular discrimination, I am still committed to not being married. I want no part of an institution built on treating women as chattel, an institution built on "legitimizing" children, or an institution wherein rights and privileges are based on personal or sexual partnerships. And it's not just a "this is my personal preference, you do what you like" type of thing. I think it's morally wrong.

This clearly isn't some sort of deal breaker between my friends and I--if I didn't have married friends, at this point, I'd have few friends at all. Just as I am sure there are decisions I make with which the people who are important in my life disagree, this is a decision that most of the people in my life are making/have made with which I disagree. The difference that I can see is that it's a decision for which most of society will laud you. When you get married, or announce you are going to, you expect congratulations, presents, parties, etc. That makes sense. And it might make it even more insulting when someone among your friends (like, say, me) isn't excited for you, and doesn't say congratulations. Like I said before, I am not going to try to convince anyone I know not to get married. My friends and family members are, by and large, grown ups with their own decision-making processes and I have to respect the decisions they come to. But I am also not going to pretend I'm OK with it, because I'm not, and the more time passes, the less OK with it I get. This is, increasingly, the hill I am willing to die on.

So. There it is. A few of my thoughts on marriage. There are more, but on the slight possibility I still have friends left, I'm going to stop here.

Go here and listen.

Indeed.

If A Song Could Be President

If a song could be president
We'd hum on Election Day
The gospel choir would start to sway
And we'd all have a part to play

They would show us where our country went wrong
Strum their guitars on the White House lawn
John Prine would run the FBI
All the criminals would laugh and cry
If a song could be president