Category Archives: Uncategorized

Obama from Richard Taylor

Americana, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

 

Richard Taylor took exception – in the comments – to my very critical post on Obama and I am reprinting it here because everything Richard says I want to be true. I also think what he said can get lost in the comments and I would like more people to make comments and argue me down.

I too would like more and can imagine strategies I’d like better but still fail to understand how he is supposed to all that I’d like alone and in just 3 years.  Given that the the left abandoned him to let Republicans walk away with Congress I think we might be asking a bit much.  I’m taken by this remark from another blog (that may have even be referenced here first, not sure):

“So according to Raj Patel, at the heart of the widespread disappointment in President Obama among his previous supporters is that too many Americans view Obama as the pizza delivery guy of change.  We exerted a small effort to place an order, then sat down in front of the TV to wait for the change to show up at our door….”

Finally, and if nothing else, we need a democrat in the WH to keep the Supreme Court from getting even worse than it already is.

Steve again: This sort of reminds me of the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. As I remember the story, Randolph – in a meeting with Roosevelt – wanted Roosevelt to use the Federal Government to desegregate the defense industry. Roosevelt said that he could only do it if Randolph made him do it.

Randolph threatened to march on Washington with 100,000 protesters and Roosevelt finally issued Executive Order 8802, which said that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.

The moral being that we are only going to get Obama to do what we want by making him do it. The Tea Party is making the Republicans do what they want and there is just no comparable force on the left.

 

 

San Francisco Pride Parade:The start and finish

Americana, Around home, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized,

Like a James Bond movie, or a fireworks display, the Pride Parade starts with a bang and ends with a bang. The middle was much more prosaic; not prosaic like the Sonoma Fourth of July parade which was white bread boring prosaic, prosaic like regular people prosaic. The Pride Parade starts with Dykes on Bikes. Dykes on Bikes are famous enough so that even I, who before now – had never been to a Gay Parade – have seen dozens of pictures of Dykes on Bikes.

Still, they were a surprise. Surprise number one was that many, if not most, of them on rice-burners, less on Harleys than I had expected. Number two, there were just less of them than I expected. Number three, they soon turned into something more akin to Maidens on Mopeds. Then, rapidly, nice guys in pink shorts, holding hands. I don’t say that derogatorily, it was the most charming thing about the Parade. Just nice people saying Please accept me as I am.

There were times when the spectators were more fun than the paraders.

As an aside, it seems to me that there are two kinds of people who are here, on display. People who put together a costume or outfit to go to the parade or be in the parade and people who get out their costume. The costume, or one of the costumes, that they already had. I lived with a woman, with a spectacular body, who had what she called a cat suit; it was a very tight, black, body suit . She would get out whenever she could. Halloween? Check, wear it with rabbit ears. Costume party? Check, wear it with a white collar and black tie. San Francisco Pride Parade? I’m sure the answer would have been, Check, just wear it. End aside.

But the paraders were plenty entertaining even if they were sometimes a little hard to understand.

 

And then came the finale: the horsey set and the leather crowd . Both gay and straight and, to my eye at high noon, not all that appealing. But they seemed to be enjoying themselves. It reminded me of the joke; What did the sadist say to the masochist?….. Nooo!

That was pretty much the end of the parade, but it is not where I want to end the post. What moved me most about the parade, what brought me close to tears a couple of times was not the wild and wicked; it was the quiet and nice. The normal. I think that explains what is happening right now with gay marriage and the mainstreaming of gays in general. As long as they were in the closet, in the popular imagination, they could be anything. And past the popular imagination, they could be and do the unimaginable. As they came out of the closet, they began to just be other people. With problems and worries just like anybody else.

So the couple above just becomes another older, sort of overweight couple and not a couple of wackos or, maybe, not yet. The people below just become neighbors, some of who want to get married.

 

 

 

 

San Francisco Pride Parade: Part Two

Uncategorized,

One of the most surprising things about the Pride Parade is not the number of gay people who are dressed outrageously for the occasion, but the number of seeming straight people who are dressed like gays who are, themselves, dressed to be outrageous. You know the world is changing when straight people are trying to look gay. The gay evolution, from closeted to virtually normal as Andrew Sullivan calls it has crossed over the tipping point. Maybe not in the Mississippi Delta but on the Coasts. It is thrilling to watch.

I wrote “What is not surprising, especially in San Francisco, is the number of politicians. I think that being in the parade must be mandatory for a politician just like marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was for New York politicians ten years ago.” But in looking at it again, it should be sort of surprising. Many, maybe most, of these politicians come from traditional backgrounds and cultures. Here they are saying, “Today, everybody is gay.” They are wearing pink, or rainbow colors, or, even, a Chinese woman wearing a rainbow top with beads and a grass skirt. It makes me want to run across the  street and give her a hug.

Mixed in with the politicians, sometime carrying their signs are people who those politicians would have run from twenty years ago.

Of course I expected the San Francisco Police and the Fire Department, but the Garbage men? That was a surprise.

I was very happy to see a large contingent of Free Bradley Manning people. Of all the things that Obama is doing that I don’t like, and the list is growing longer, keeping Bradley Manning in solitary confinement – for 23 hours a day, checked, naked, every morning as a ritual humiliation – without a trial is on top of the list. It is disgusting and unAmerican.

Google was there, but not Apple, and several churches.

And a small Jewish contingent with that rarest of the rare, A gay, Chinese, Jew.

Concluded with the next post: the start and the end of the Pride Parade.

 

 

 

 

The missing baby

Around home, Current Affairs, Uncategorized

We have a deer with a bad leg that lives near our house and spends a lot of time in our backyard. Last year she had two babies: one with a goiter on its neck that just disappeared, and I saw the other one by the side of the road, dead. A couple of days ago, both Michele and I saw a new born doe by the side of our house. Michele said that when she saw it, it was still wet and when I saw it, it was standing, near its mom, on very shaky legs.

Then the baby was gone.

Last night, just at dawn, Michele looked out and saw the baby with its mom. It makes us both feel better.

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