n/t

Here in Milwaukee even the women's bars keep getting invaded by men. What do you suppose they think we have that they don't have?

everybody here is trolling hardcore for a hookup, at least it seems that way to this more recent immigrant to the area.

Just give me a quiet stool at the end of the bar and some good beer on tap ...

in Milwaukee's lovely riverwest area. Just down Locust about a 1/2 block b4 Humboldt. Great live music in that area, too. Welcome to my little corner of ghetto heaven.

just some of the brewpubs ... not a big social butterfly.

that I'll check it out sometime.

I still haven't gotten the hang of this embedded linking thing, otherwise you would have had a cool link over your name too ;)

b/c I really meant it as a compliment.

glad to see you adding your two cents! welcome!

I'd promise to try not to stir up trouble ... but I seem to have a knack for it, so I won't.

... seriously, I disagreed with your recent comment "over there" but I really appreciate the heads up on this site - it's a good'un!

meant "lurking" not trolling ...

This is a freedom issue. Freedom, as in Constitutional Freedom, not Privacy as in Maria Shriver wanna be important issue.

is one way to link the issue w/ other people's concerns ...

but it's not the point of it. Protecting women's freedom is a human rights issue.

Certainly the women who came here so we could discuss it openly aren't worried about Privacy. Imagine an issue more important to men that women...I'm having trouble coming up with one off the top of my head..anyway, Imagine if each time it came up women said "Yes, its important, like men's sports."

The remark is patronizing and diminishing all in one. Behold the effect of the "Privacy" frame. It's not a REAL issue, its a woman's issue. Its not about the Constitution, its about Privacy...like a teen girl issue.

There is now way that makes the issue more palitable to the Homeland Security Crowd. Its meant to diminish the issue.

Weak attornies soften their clients rather than fight for them. Democrats that soften women rather than fight for their issues are those same bad attornies.

never thought of it that way.

I've always thought of it as "you don't like the gov't meddling in YOUR private life, why are you okay w/ it meddling in women's?" More of a persuasive tack ... though I see what you mean.

I look at privacy as something that results from true personal autonomy, and the only way anybody can have autonomy is to have control over their own body and destiny.

There's an issue that's more relevant to men than to women.

And I agree wth you about the frame, I think.

Schweitzer for President! Sign the petition!

it's not about privacy. privacy is not an absolute value in the constitution. privacy is only protected from government interference without due process of law. hence you need a search warrant to enter a person's house. a town can take a person's home by eminent domain, as long as there is some due process first.

abortion rights are about something that goes to the center of our jurisprudence: the right of each person to self determination. if i give birth to a baby and immediately after birth that baby needs a blood transfusion, no court in this country is going to order the baby's father to donate his blood to save that baby. people may feel that father is cold hearted, immoral, or cruel, but the goverment can't order him to give up his blood to save another's life.

during pregnancy, a fetus feeds off a woman's blood, strains her kidneys, and in other ways feeds off a woman's biology. a woman's body belongs first and foremost to herself alone. any time she chooses to cease donating her biology to another, she, just like any man, has an intrisic right to do so.

unfortunately, many in our society do not view women as having the same ownership rights over their bodies that men have over their own. to them a woman's body doesnt belong only to her. it belongs to her husband (absence of marital rape laws in many states); it belongs to her children, and it belongs to a parasitic potential life occupying her uterus.

the abortion debate, to me, needs to be reframed to be about the sanctity of our intrinsic right to own our bodies.

agree with them...my question is this: given that "self determination" has become a tainted term due to specific and deliberate propaganda campaigns by powerful, radical, rightwing religious organizations and their political acolytes, how do we effectively frame the issue without immediately relegating ourselves to the fringes of the debate?

The easy answer, of course, would be to get 20 or so million people to march through the streets of Washington and occupy the chambers of power...but until that happens, how do we say what you said without getting hamstrung by the "kool kids"?

could you please explain a bit more about how:

"self determination" has become a tainted term due to specific and deliberate propaganda campaigns by powerful, radical, rightwing religious organizations and their political acolytes...

i'm not familiar with what you are talking about.

is closely associated with the anti-colonial uprisings, the civil rights, and the women's movements of the mid- to late 20th century.

The phrase itself is indelibly associated with the rhetoric of class and ethnic struggles, communist rhetoriticians and anti-imperial activists, partisans, militants, and guerrillas.

If you start talking about "The Self Determination of All People" a large segment of the so-called "moderate" political and media population will immediately think "Noam Chomsky"...and then you're done.

When you take the pill and your egg is fertilized, you are aborting. That is why the religious right is against the pill, because taking the pill is causing an abortion.

But the end of the pill is also the end of the sexual revolution...and it seems to me that the end of the sexual revolution isnt something that the younge republicans would want to be responsible for...certainly Judge "Where are the Orgies" Scalia wouldn't want that.

"Will the Republicans End the Sexual Revolution?" "Why do Republicans hate Sex?" "Republicans, Turning us all into Elizabeth Taylor." I say hit them in the ....johnson? (that was for you kactus)

if i give birth to a baby and immediately after birth that baby needs a blood transfusion, no court in this country is going to order the baby's father to donate his blood to save that baby. people may feel that father is cold hearted, immoral, or cruel, but the goverment can't order him to give up his blood to save another's life.

during pregnancy, a fetus feeds off a woman's blood, strains her kidneys, and in other ways feeds off a woman's biology. a woman's body belongs first and foremost to herself alone. any time she chooses to cease donating her biology to another, she, just like any man, has an intrisic right to do so.

unfortunately, many in our society do not view women as having the same ownership rights over their bodies that men have over their own. to them a woman's body doesnt belong only to her. it belongs to her husband (absence of marital rape laws in many states); it belongs to her children, and it belongs to a parasitic potential life occupying her uterus.

the abortion debate, to me, needs to be reframed to be about the sanctity of our intrinsic right to own our bodies.

I'm spreading that.

So it's her words you're repeating, not mine.

There is something just under the surface, here and seems to be forgotten by anti-Choice people.

That so long as the fetus cannot exist outside the body of the female, it is a part of the woman and it is her decision whether or not she wants to continue to grow inside her body.

This is not about babies. It is about women controlling what happens to them and the affect it has on their health.

but I understand why it is being bandied about.

It is at least worth discussing, as long as the discussion does not devolve into namecalling and casting of aspersions.

isn't "reframing" ... it's capitulation.

It's like Abe Lincoln recommending that Jefferson Davis be welcomed into the Republican Party right before the Civil War.

Certain party caucus sites stopped being about ideas and conversation and learning, and became about raising money and pushing an agenda.

Pushing Casey and Langevin, first and foremost, is recognition that the political landscape is difficult for us in certain places: in RI because Chaffee has a lot of power and clout in the state, in PA because there is a very close split between the liberal/urban and the conservative/rural votes.

I think that "pushing" of Casey and Langevin was not "pushing" per se, rather it was "tactics"...as such, while I personally do not like or support either one, in the same way that I did not really like or support Kerry, I would still vote for either of them over Chaffee or Santorum.

And I think that your take on DailyKos is entirely off the mark, offensive and divisive...but that's not a discussion for here.

not for here ... and I got carried away by taking it this far.

That fight is for dKos and LSF. As for divisive ... I wasn't leading mobs of bullies into people's diaries, and I have provided links when I can, and made it clear when I was offering just my opinion.

dCaucus is dull and drab now, and that makes me sad.

That's my last word on that place in this forum.

And this is an issue that for some reason I've really taken to heart. I understand the necessity for a purge at Kos (and I only use that term cuz Kos himself used it) but I objected to his rational for it. To say that some of the posts were embarrassing was like a red flag to me, but then I had to consider some of the things that you mentioned--that the site IS getting increasingly mainstream, and is increasingly a political sounding board for politicians who would rather not align themselves with a bunch of conspiracy theorists who sound more than a little nutty.

What I mentioned then, though, and will reiterate, is one of the same things that others also said--that was seems wingnutty today may very well be borne out to be true 15 or 20 years down the line. And so what do we do with those conspiracy theorists now? Do we shut them up because we think they sound nuts? Do we stick THEM also in a ghetto, where they can rage about anything they want to to fellow believers?

And there's that loaded term ghetto again. I keep thinking of the eastern european Jews being forced into ghettos, and the area of Milwaukee that I live in that could properly be called a ghetto, and how even ghettos have their own culture, their own identity, often their own language, and literature and music and so forth. To those who live in the ghetto it seems natural, and it's home, but to an outsider it looks pretty damn foreign and scary.

And another thing--you mentioned that a lot of the conspiracy theorists were rude, wouldn't listen to reason, and were generally a deficit to the entire process. I would posit that it's not just the conspiracy theorists that are guilty of that, and that if we could overall raise the level of discourse in the comments without descending to the level of personal attack, then everybody would benefit. You could check out my recent post, "URRGGHHH!!!" to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Then there's the whole cross-pollination thing, which I am all in favor of and hopeful for, also. In all, a very thought-provoking post RedDan. Thanks.

And another thing--you mentioned that a lot of the conspiracy theorists were rude, wouldn't listen to reason, and were generally a deficit to the entire process. I would posit that it's not just the conspiracy theorists that are guilty of that, and that if we could overall raise the level of discourse in the comments without descending to the level of personal attack, then everybody would benefit. You could check out my recent post, "URRGGHHH!!!" to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

The threads I participated in started off with several people, myself included, asking critical and pointed questions of the diarist - asking for logical defense of particular hypotheses, asking for corroboration and independent confirmation, asking for rationale, and so on...

We were met with accusations and abuse, and responded likewise.

The real problem with the conspiracy theorists is that they are lazy, and perpetrators of magical thinking. They put together these incredibly long, dense, and logically inconsistent screeds, and refuse to engage in critical thinking, defense of their work, or the labor involved in actually building a case...

Then, when someone with some new information and a good take on an issue or a good logical framework to support the existence of some form of "conspiracy"...the well is already poisoned.

A perfect example is the whole Bev Harris/BBV debacle, in which extremely good questions and important concerns regarding the issue of electronic voting, insecure, unverifiable voting was submerged in the self-promotional shenanigans of Harris, who took a lot of money and support from a lot of people, never delivered, and then disappeared...but she sold a lot of books and made a pretty penny.

That kind of behavior is pure poison, and Kos was, IMO, entirely right to do what he did...and entirely right to mitigate his actions by reinstating people who asked via email.

Could you elaborate? Thanks.

centered around Democratic Underground...the deal, in a nutshell, was that Bev Harris said that she had direct, incriminating evidence of vote tampering and electronic voting machine shenanigans. She asked for money, and got donations from a lot of people.

She never delivered, she engaged in destructive and ridiculous "guerrilla theater" that got the entire BBV crowd tarred as a bunch of loons, and she wound up hurting the cause and obviating a lot of hard work by a lot of people.

She also made a lot of money and got a lot of people really angry and bitter in the process.

I think many of us have become more paranoid than we normally are and, as such, more vulnerable to that kind of scam....but you are right. Conspiracy theories hurt our credibility.

As far as I know, in December of last year, Bev Harris could be found here. The forums seem quite lively these days.

The DU attacks struck me as intimately personal, and criticism of how someone who's poking a stick in the corporate-politocracy's eye as not being fast enough or satisfying enough struck me then as rather naive and infantile. It's a huge leap to go from, by personal judgment, unsatisfactory results to malicious or larcenous intention.

Stick your face up in front of the political machine and call them frauds, and see how happy your life becomes.

That's all I have to say on this.

w/ many of the responses to "loons" in some communities is that there is a tendency to make broad, sweeping declarations that an entire issue is off limits. Yes, Bev seems to have been a fraud, by out of all the cries to shut up about Ohio, Georgia10's excellent work arose.

More recently, there have been declarations by front page/admins at the dailyCaucus that entire websites (like antiwar.com) are verbotten.

That sort of thing drives me nuts. I'm old enough to remember that Tuskegee, MK-Ultra, COINTELPRO and the connection between the CIA and crack in the cities were supposedly "conspiracy theories" ... which all of which turned out to be at least partly true. How much damage could have been avoided if people had listened to folks trying to get everyone's attention?

It's been pointed out to me elsewhere, where I crossposted the original post, that the prolifferation of new communities is good. I think it is too, but this need to emphasize that "important" sites are "mainstream" and shouldn't "embarrass" visiting pols ... that idea makes me really angry. Are Democratic Party officials so delicate? Do you see Republicans running away from, or trying to silence, their passionate wing? Hell, they practically feed and water them, and I would submit that the leftist fringe is a LOT less scary than the right.

A lot of the folks driven away by the bullying post-pie weren't "the fringe", but were smart, passionate, well-informed and decent people trying to contribute, and they were treated w/ abuse, misogyny and contempt. A community was turned into a party organ, and it was done so as to not "embarrass" a party that was selling its soul for tactics, to enable the ATM to have nothing but pretty party-approved happiness on display.

the lunatic fringe often has the effect of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

That is why I am so adamantly and ardently negative about that lunatic fringe.

The reaon why the response to the lunatic fringe gets so nasty is because one of the primary modes of "discourse" engaged in by that lunatic fringe is to attack anyone who questions sources, disagrees with logical or illogical inferences, asks for more or better detail, and so on, and to accuse any and all people who are skeptical or critical of "working for the man" or "being part of the problem" or being "sellouts".

It's demeaning, dishonest, unfair, and incorrect. And it's fundamentally lazy.

The difference between the "conspiracy theories" and "turned out to be at least partly true" is vast. There's a huge difference between the sweeping, all encompassing, all inclusive grab bags that many conspiracies ultimately resemble, and the grimy reality that ultimately turns out to be the documentable facts.

I, personally, find antiwar.com to be pretty difficult to give a whole lot of credit. Some of their work - a lot of it, actually - is simply not very credible or well supported. When I want hard core alternative views, I go to counterpunch, ISO, or stan goff.

... this need to emphasize that "important" sites are "mainstream" and shouldn't "embarrass" visiting pols ... that idea makes me really angry.

It's not that it will embarass them, it's that they will simply not visit anymore.

Are Democratic Party officials so delicate?

Yes, unfortunately.

Do you see Republicans running away from, or trying to silence, their passionate wing?

I see them giving a wink and a nod, allowing the money networks and think tanks, and "foundations" deal with corralling and herding those more passionate wings, and the pols skating around the reality of just who it is that they are depending on for votes and bodies in the trenches.

A lot of the folks driven away by the bullying post-pie weren't "the fringe", but were smart, passionate, well-informed and decent people trying to contribute, and they were treated w/ abuse, misogyny and contempt.

A number of the folks driven away were, in my opinion, looking for different places anyway, for a number of both good and bad reasons...and that is just fine with me.

A community was turned into a party organ, and it was done so as to not "embarrass" a party that was selling its soul for tactics, to enable the ATM to have nothing but pretty party-approved happiness on display.

The above statement does not follow from its preceding statement, is not based on the facts as I see them, nor is it fair to the vastly larger, non-misogynist, non-ATM, non-party-approved community. I think, in large part, that the venom that arose out of the whole fight was primarily a result of frustration, of venting, and of unfair, demeaning, and dismissive nastiness on both sides of the argument.

...comes from those who say overturning Roe would benefit Democrats. People will die. And suffer. And women will be imprisoned and live lives basically on probation. What kind of landscape is that to covet for gains of the Democratic Party.

To his credit, Boo completely retracted his speculative query. But all too many just see the game playing and power struggle, and to hell with people's lives.

And that is as disheartening as wingnut misogyny.

Making the move over here, for me, was making a considered choice of how I choose to spent my energy, voice and talent. I no longer am willing to spend my best energies shouting at the top of my lungs to be heard, or for-freakin-ever combating inbedded sexism and misogyny that seems to be simply passed on generation to generation. Been there, done that, over and over and over. Lot's of us are sick and tired of that routine, and know theres not one damned thing we have already spent years trying to do, that has ever realy changed what tends to happens in male run, make dominated groups. You want change there? Then you GUYS step the hell up and change it, ok? After all, it IS your turf, as has been made amply clear, so it seems to me the palace to rehash what went on or is going on over there, is over there, not here.

Meanwhile, I choose where I spend my energies. Right now, this looks like a great place to invest them, along with Boomans, to do what I can to create a spot where both men and woman CAN have rational, respectful discourse on important issues that affect all of us, and hopefully, be willing to sinceraly listen to each other and learn from each other's perepctives, rather than just trying to impose our beliefs on each other or "debate" about who is right and who is not.

This IS a women-run site, so we do have the power to say what goes on here, and what doesn't, just like the big boy bloggers do on their sites. Male bloggers get to design the "house" in which they live, and they get to choose who is welcome and who isn't. When we learned we really weren't welcome there after all, we simply moved out and designed a house according to our own specs. Sounds like the exercise of equal power to me, not some retreat to any "ghetto!"

ONward!

scribe

please tell me if I do cross a line here. I only want to learn, and to try to explain my perspective if I think it's helpful. If it's not helpful, please tell me.

As for the other place, I keep putting up my little crossposts, popping up in threads, even though it's gotten pretty lonely w/o so many posters I used to admire. Sometimes it's just me, wu ming, wilfred and marisacat against a bunch of Clarkies, but it makes me feel like I'm in a Hong Kong martial arts movie ...

;)

Anyway, it's interesting to compare and contrast resulting threads on LSF to crossposts at Booman and dailyClark. The first two are usually more thoughtful, while the last I often get grammar corrections, invitations to leave and nitpicks over the foundations of my argument.

Very instructive.

Oh, and one other word about my choice to use ghetto in my original post. I'm not concerned that all of the new blogs ARE ghettos, but rather that the big blogs might TREAT them as ghettos. I'm really concerned that the cross-pollination continue, because we have so much to learn from each other.

...but in the last election, to me it seemed like only Dean and Clark had anything intelligent and concise to say about the main issues. Clark's very strong military background added to the credibility of his lacerating critiques of Bush and the war on Iraq.

I don't know much else about him, and would not write off anyone's chances of being elected based on previous elections. (Reagan was a joke candidate in '76.) But I do not care for the dittothink happening out there on the liberal end of the spectrum. When the left's arguments become as shallow, emotional and autocratic as the right's, there is no debate, no choice but to go see what's behind door number three.

it will be interesting to see what develops in '06 and beyond, but right now I'm not hopeful.

to "adaptive radiation" as I suggested earlier?

Liberal Street Fighter

Glad to see you here.

For reminding us of the truth.

A few quick opinions off the top:

Laura, thanks for the abortion post, it's so perfect and sensible and succinct, it should be widely read.

About the lunatic fringe, hm, I'm a reputed loon advocate so call me biased, but exhorting and ejecting nutbars comes from a place of weakness and insecurity, anxiety over credibility, which leads to questions about how sure the ejector is in their own ideologies. As for Kos, he got his own page in the recent bestseller on the 100 people ruining America, so public image of DKos is arguably on the table concerning recent policies there. Manipulation of public image is a bourgeois value, not a good thing to my own way of thinking, diversity, honesty, authenticity and funky conspiracy theorists are going to pop up whenever we're not wedded to tweaking the public image. I don't call that a ghetto, that to me is the quintessential left.

A