Despite my pessimism and cynicism about the Keystone XL Pipeline, I decided to submit a public comment anyway. This tip from a Council on Environmental Quality document called, “The Citizens Guide to NEPA” is in keeping with my understanding of the process:

Commenting is not a form of “voting” on an alternative. The number of negative comments an agency receives does not prevent an action from moving forward. Numerous comments that repeat the same basic message of support or opposition will typically be responded to collectively.

So I did not sign the numerous petitions that will be submitted today. Instead, I wrote a comment focusing on what I thought were the weakest part of the dEIS.

Dear Ms Genevieve Walker,

I am writing to voice concerns about the Keystone XL Pipeline draft Environmental Impact Statement. I have two main areas of concern – the impact of the project on climate change, and the ability to clean up any future oil spills.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement states that the impact on the climate will be negligible because the no action alternative assumes that the production and consumption of tar sands oil would remain unchanged. This is quite a large assumption to make considering the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that would be emitted from burning the tar sands and is resulting effect on our climate. It is my understanding that the no action alternative is meant to serve as a baseline/control measure, not as conjecture. Therefore I find it not only tremendously irresponsible to make this assumption but highly disingenuous. Although this dEIS appears to comply with the letter of the law I believe it to be incomplete until another scenario is added to the alternatives section which considers not building the Keystone Pipeline and no further development of the Canadian tar sands. I know that the United States has no control over Canadian companies, but the analysis is not complete without consideration of this scenario.

Secondly, I am concerned about the possibility of an oil spill within the United States. The dEIS states that measures would be put in place to prevent such a spill and that if one were to occur, procedures are in place to respond . However, the current spill of tar sands oil in Mayflower, Arkansas makes this plan highly suspect. It seems that the technology does not yet exist to adequately respond to a spill of tar sands oil.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Happy Earth Day.

The March 16 episode of Both Sides Now featured Ron Reagan Jr. and Torie Clarke. The two were discussing Rand Paul’s filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination. Both agreed that it was grand standing, and that the President should be more transparent about the drone program.

Mark Green the host said “Consensus Alert!” To which Clarke responded, “Don’t you hate that? You just hate that as the host of the show.”

“No, we love it!” said Green.

“We actually live for those moments,” Reagan replied.

The topic was quickly changed, but I think the exchange was telling. Clarke’s mocking question was followed up with Reagan and Green’s enthusiastic reassurance. This is an almost perfect metaphor for the gridlock in the American government right now. Republicans don’t care about governing and Democrats are begging for table scraps of common ground.

The anti-choice movement in the United States is one that seeks to outlaw abortion. This is not only morally abhorrent in terms of denying women bodily autonomy, but also incredibly poorly crafted public policy. Very few of its proponents can explain how this prohibition would work. The pro-choice movement would do well to understand exactly how weak this position is from a practical standpoint.

There was a long period of American history when legal abortion was not available. Leslie J Regan’s book When Abortion Was Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867 – 1973 documents the history of the era well. Often, doctors would perform abortions in secret and with varying degrees of safety. Women died of infections, and were often refused medical treatment in hospitals unless they would reveal the name of their doctor. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan tells the story of the secret group of women who provided abortions in Chicago in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The book tells the stories of the women who took great personal risk to get the abortions they needed and of the women who organized the illegal abortions to make them as safe as possible. From these books and other historical documents we can see that even when abortion was illegal, women still sought them out. Even in the present, abortion rates are generally the same, regardless of the legality of the procedure.

Although it was only 41 years ago that these laws were in place, the anti-choice movement seems to have a very short term memory as to how the law used to be – and a surprising difficulty in articulating what exactly the law should say if they were in charge.

Anti-choice protesters can’t explain whether or not a woman who gets an abortion should go to jail and why.

Rick Berg (R-ND) won’t say whether or not a rape victim who gets an abortion should go to jail.

Even if we concede that anti-choicers would eventually decide on legal punishments for doctors and/or women involved in abortion, as they had done in this country in the past, it is also important to ask questions about how this law would be enforced. Would the tactics of the past be used? Would we codify that women admitted into emergency rooms for complications due to an illegal abortion be refused treatment unless they reveal the name of their doctor? Would a woman caught attempting to abort her pregnancy be placed in jail until she gives birth? Would we look to the models in place in other countries?

In communist Romania:

Monthly gynecological examinations for all women of childbearing age were instituted, even for pubescent girls, to identify pregnancies in the earliest stages and to monitor pregnant women to ensure that their pregnancies came to term.

This is a horrific violation of human rights. But it is robust public policy. This type of draconian enforcement is necessary to actually eradicate abortion, instead of just making it more difficult or more dangerous as was the case in America’s past.

In fact, this same policy is used in China to force women to get abortions in order to uphold their one child policy:

Every village has a family planning committee and in some, women of childbearing age are required to have pregnancy tests every three months.

In El Salvador, women who go to the hospital for miscarriages are investigated because they are suspected of procuring an abortion. Would American anti-choicers go this far? What would constitute probable cause that a woman had an abortion? A late period? A miscarriage? An infection? Who would keep track of all American womens’ bodies?

Whenever a person declares that abortion should be illegal in the United States, these are the facts we must present them. These are the questions we must ask. They must know the logical conclusion to the policy they are proposing. Even if they think they are speaking of religion or morality – they in fact suggesting a radical change to our laws and to our way of life. This must be made clear. That they have not thought it out this far suggests an ignorance as to how government works, and fantastical belief that simply declaring something to be wrong means that it will stop happening.

***

For further reading – How Would A Rape Exception Work?

I haven’t done much gloating about last week’s election results. My feelings are more of relief and gladness that we can talk about topics other than the horse race. But in reading the post-election coverage about how so many conservatives who are in a state of shock because they were so certain they would win, I have noticed something disturbing. The undercurrent of racism and hate makes it difficult for me to be gleeful about conservatives loss. It would feel like taunting an injured but still dangerous animal.

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is “a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.”

I can’t relate to this. Not in the least. I certainly benefit from white privilege. I am committed to being anti-racist. But white privilege can warp and change when it intersects with class, gender, sexuality, and nationality/ethnicity. It’s the latter I’ve been thinking about this week.

When I think about my racial privilege as a white woman with Latina heritage, I think about passing and how sometimes other white people challenge my identity.

“How can someone with your last name celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?”

“You aren’t what I expected. I thought you’d be more, you know [does imitation of Carmen Miranda] ‘Ay! Yi! Yi!’ …authentic.”

It feels disorienting and irritating. My family is real, and there are millions like mine. You don’t get to erase us or deny we exist because of your racist fears about interracial or inter-ethnic marriage, or petulance about losing an election.

they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.

My “forefathers” were immigrants from South America, Eastern and Western Europe. Some of them faced racism or antisemitism. To be alive during a time when the people in power are starting not to be monolithic or bigoted validates everything I know. This is the America that my family has built.

Last week in his election night victory speech, President Obama said, (emphasis added)

I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even silly. And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics that tell us that politics is nothing more than a contest of egos or the domain of special interests. But if you “ever
get the chance to talk to folks who turned out at our rallies and crowded along a rope line in a high school gym, or saw folks working late in a campaign office in some tiny county far away from home, you’ll discover something else.

You’ll hear the determination in the voice of a young field organizer who’s working his way through college and wants to make sure every child has that same opportunity. You’ll hear the pride in the voice of a volunteer who’s going door to door because her brother was finally hired when the local auto plant added another shift. You’ll hear the deep patriotism in the voice of a military spouse who’s working the phones late at night to make sure that no one who fights for this country ever has to fight for a job or a roof over their head when they come home.

That’s why we do this. That’s what politics can be. That’s why elections matter. It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.

That won’t change after tonight, and it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that as we speak people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.

This portion of his speech really resonated with me. I’ve written before about my frustrations with people who can’t be bothered to vote. It’s important to talk about why politics matter, and that it’s okay to disagree. Disagreement, even vehement disagreement means we care about what’s important.

I feel like one of the luckiest women alive. Adam and I got through Sandy in our apartment. We didn’t lose power or water, even the cable and internet stayed on the whole time. There were several downed trees in our neighborhood, but none hit our building or our car. Our families have also fared well, even though they lost some services, they are not in any danger. Public transportation is slowly coming back and we’ve been able to get to our jobs after a few days of telecommuting.

On Wednesday, I was driving through part of Long Island to check on family, and drop off some supplies at a food bank I heard was running low. I was listening to NPR and I heard Mitt Romney say,

We come together in times like this and we want to make sure that they have a speedy and quick recovery from their financial and in many cases, personal loss.

I started laughing and crying at the same time. I’m glad I was stopped at one of the few working stop lights in Nassau County because I think I might have lost control of the car otherwise.

“financial and in many cases, personal loss.”

Dozens of people are dead. And Mitt Romney is hoping we recover from our financial loss before he even mentions those killed, or the people running out of food, water, gas, and prescription medicine. There’s a water treatment plant that serves 500,000 people that’s teetering on the edge of shutting down. But, hey! Mitt Romney is sorry for your financial loss! Doesn’t that make you feel better?

P.S. If you live on Long Island or in Queens and you want to help, here’s some places I know that need it:

Long Island Cares of Freeport Food Pantry at 84 Pine Street in Freeport needs baby diapers, infant formula, cereal, fruit cups, fruit juice, and other kinds of ready to eat food (granola bars, cans or pouches of tuna fish, peanut butter, crackers, etc). They are open Monday – Friday 8am – 4pm also this Saturday 11/3 and Sunday 11/4 only, they will be open from 9am – 12 noon.

Powhatan Democratic Club in Astoria

Donate: blankets, shirts, socks, sweaters, jackets, sneakers, Non-Perishable Food (such as Canned Soup, Canned Food)

Drop-off location: Powhatan Democratic Club 41-05 Newtown Road, Astoria Friday night 6:30pm-8:30pm
Saturday 1:30pm-4:30pm Sunday 12pm-3pm

The Merrick Fire Department is having a food/clothing drive for everyone in need. If you have items to donate you can go to: Friendship Firehouse, 2075 Meadowbrook Road, Merrick every day between 9 am and 9 pm.

This is a few weeks old, but I think it’s important to sort this out as the Presidential campaign season continues. Anderson Cooper interviewed Debbie Wasserman-Shultz on his show and claimed that she, “lied” when she claimed in fundraising letters that Mitt Romney does not support a rape victims right to get an abortion. His basis for this claim is that Romney has, in the past said that he thinks abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest or when a woman’s health or life are threatened. However, he has also said many other things.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As Rachel Maddow reports, Romney has gone back and forth on the idea of a health exception and also a rape exception. So if Cooper wants to say that Wasserman-Shultz is “lying” because she has only included Romney’s most extreme statements, he’s being obtuse. Language lawyering here is incredibly clueless when you consider the policy implications of even the most generous pro-choice interpretation of Romney’s position(s).

Wasserman-Shultz was correct in pointing out Mitt Romney’s support for personhood amendments, as it is in direct contradiction with his statement that he favors any exceptions at all. And she was also correct in tying him to his party’s platform. Cooper’s balking at this is nonsensical. If political party platforms are to be disregarded, then the parties themselves are meaningless. Does Anderson Cooper really think there are no policy differences between the two parties? How could that be possible? By rejecting what Debbie Wasserman-Shultz said about the Republican party’s official stance on abortion, Cooper is picking and choosing what statements he will and won’t hold Mitt Romney to. Why would someone do this? The only reason I can think of is that “Liberal Democrat Woman caught in lie!” is a bigger story than “Mitt Romney flip flops again.” That kind of intellectually dishonest pandering is a great disservice to viewers.

Beyond the obvious, what Andersoon Cooper is missing is that rape exceptions are bad policy by design and are pretty much written so that Americans in the mushy middle can sleep at night, but in reality don’t actually allow rape victims to get abortions. This is yet another reason why Debbie Wasserman-Shultz wasn’t lying. A country where only rape victims can get abortions does not exist on this Earth. As Jesse Taylor explains, such a policy is unenforceable and would not work at all. The same is true for health and life exceptions. They end with women dying horrible deaths from sepsis. In South America, for example, if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, the doctor cannot abort the pregnancy it until either the fetus dies or the fallopian tube ruptures.

Upon closer examination, the “exceptions” Cooper is insisting Mitt Romney advocates for don’t exist in reality, even when they are stated as a goal by politicians. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is right that Mitt Romney’s position is extreme and would take away women’s access to abortion in almost all cases. Anderson Cooper owes her and his audience an apology.

Our affable captors.

I listened to Sam Seder’s interview with Jill Stein. And while I think she sidestepped his questions about the strategic reasons a person might hesitate to vote Green, what jumped out at me was that she said the Democratic party is unsalvageable. Even though I have a lot of ambivalence about President Obama, it makes me uneasy to say the the Democratic party as a whole is beyond repair.

A friend of mine involved in Occupy once suggested that the reason I feel this way is because of my efforts in local Democratic politics. That might be true. I have spent a lot of time, money and shoeleather volunteering for Democrats. I’ve made some great friends and learned a lot. To abandon the party now, when it includes people like Tony Avella, and Sandra Fluke feels wrong.

If I did leave, where would I go? The Green Party seems like the obvious answer. I did vote Green for NYC Mayor in 2009, and I was voting for Bill Talen, not against Thompson or Bloomberg. Listening to Jill Stein was kind of anticlimactic. She couldn’t answer Sam Seder’s questions about his concerns that promoting the Green Party would elevate the Republican Party. She said that Obama is a hypnotic orator, which has weird and racist undertones. I think that Sam Seder was right when he said that the liberals were co-opted by anti-Bush organizing during the Bush administration, and that we only have the Occupy Movement because we now have Democrats in office who we can try to persuade. Voting for her would seem more like a vote against Obama than one for her.

Yes, she voted for the Iraq War and he signed DOMA and made life shittier for poor people and called it “Welfare Reform” (which included the beginning of federally funded abstinence only sex education, btw) but they are so DAMN ADORABLE!!

I was mulling this over in my head and I thought about groups like the Sierra Club and the AFL-CIO. They have even less of a choice than individual voters. Obama hasn’t delivered much of anything on environmental policy, and has failed to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. But environmental and labor groups must continue to endorse Democrats. Republicans would be actively destructive to those causes, and these groups would lose access and power if they endorsed a 3rd party candidate.

This was underscored when the Sierra Club tweeted the praises of Obama’s speech to the DNC, even though he was talking about “clean coal” and making what some say were references to increasing fracking (he said we should use more natural gas).

Obama at DNC: We’ve doubled our use of renewable energy & 1000s of Americans have jobs today building wind turbines & long-lasting batteries

— Sierra Club (@Sierra_Club) September 7, 2012

But as I tweeted, I know why they said this. President Obama needs to win Pennsylvania and Ohio, so he must speak favorably of coal. He uses the false frame of “clean coal” because most Americans don’t know that that’s greenwashing. The Sierra Club has no choice but to ignore what they clearly know to be bad policy. They either fall in line and endorse him or get left behind.

This weighed heavily on me as I watched the rest of his speech. As soon as I saw through what was behind the President’s mention of clean coal, it was difficult for me to focus. I did appreciate his vision of an America where everyone is equal and free:

If you reject the notion that this nation’s promise is reserved for the few, your voice must be heard in this election.

If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election.

If you believe that new plants and factories can dot our landscape; that new energy can power our future; that new schools can provide ladders of opportunity to this nation of dreamers; if you believe in a country where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules, then I need you to vote this November.

America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now. Yes, our path is harder – but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer – but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes, but we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, knowing that Providence is with us, and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.

It was as if he was drawing a line in the sand, and I resent that. President Obama expects us to believe in the facade of “clean coal” even though he must know that a pursuit of it would be counterproductive to his stated desire to combat climate change. And yet, here he was saying really moving things about freedom, justice and equality. It’s quite disorienting.

I have long said that I am not disappointed with President Obama because when I voted for him I knew that I was voting for a centrist and not a Liberal. I thought that I could deal with his pie in the sky bipartisan ideas, and I am glad to see that much of this year’s DNC was about drawing contrasts between the parties and calling out obstructionism. I’m not the only Liberal with a deep ambivalence for President Obama. But politics is as they say, the art of the possible.

There are those who wear their self righteous indignation with President Obama and the Democratic party like a badge of honor. I think that we should ask questions of our leaders. But we won’t get answers if we play games and grandstand. There are outlets other than politics for people enraged by the United States human rights violations of the 21st century. The prison reform movement and Amnesty International come to mind. But while the tactics used in the video did get a lot of page-views, did they effect policy? Did they inspire anyone to run for office or make a donation or write a letter? Was anything changed, even to the level of an individual’s opinion?

What it comes down to is that the Obama Administration has a tangible list of accomplishments that have real positive impacts on the lives of people. This cannot be ignored.

It’s easy to resent the Democrats for not doing what I want them to do. It’s even easier to resent them for being what I believe to be my only option. But I take full responsibility for my own role in the process. I write to my representatives, and I support candidates who really, really get it. There are two ways out of this hostage crisis. One is to work harder. The other is to give up.

We all know how Dan Savage turned Rick Santorum’s name into a profanity. I would like to do something similar to Newton Leroy Gingrich, but not a profanity. I would like to see the word “Gingrich” become an adjective.

Gingrich /ghin-grich/ adj. Wealthy as a result of exploiting the gullible. (Pejorative)

Newt Gingrich sure sold a lot of books on the campaign trail this year, didn’t he? Lots of people wanted to see the big man on his way to the White House. What Mr. Gingrich didn’t get were a lot of states in the GOP Primaries. What we do see is Newt Gingrich sabotage his campaign, again and again

This sounds a lot like the plot to The Producers. Gingrich evidently doesn’t manage his money very well, perhaps he saw this financial difficulty coming, and decided he could use his presidential race to raise his personal capital, even if it meant screwing over his campaign staff.

Newton Leroy Gingrich may be full of himself, but he knows he could never be President. It’s much too hard. It’s much easier to write books and piss and moan and mock anyone crazy enough to become president. Gingrich treated the campaign trail as a book tour.

Lawrence O’Donnell figured out Sarah Palin was trying something similar back in May 2011, deducing that she and Donald Trump were just publicity hounds that had no intention of actually running for office. Gingrich managed to get away with it a little longer.

He’s not the only one who got filthy gingrich, and he won’t be the last. It would seem many politicians decided to use the campaign year as a means of selling books and collecting appearance fees. I expect we shall see even more of this in the future. In the United States of America, we crave money, and fear responsibility -we get the government we deserve.

In the aftermath of a getting banned from speaking because she used the word vagina in defense of abortion rights, I made a donation to Lisa Brown’s campaign. Term limits prevent her from running for the Michigan State Assembly again, but I am glad to support her campaign for county clerk.

During the controversy some claimed that she was not punished just for saying the word vagina, but for the content of the entire statement,

I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no.'”

A powerful woman like Brown’s confident smack-down of Republican talking points probably stings rather harshly. It’s not just an awesomely snarky end to a political speech, but she is blatantly calling the bluff that this isn’t about controlling women’s sexuality, and in using the words that she did, she is refusing to acknowledge the illusion that this is not about sex. It makes sense that it would feel all the more humiliating to be talked to that way, which is why they lashed out like they did. However, the expectation that women will sit quietly while their rights are being taken away has no basis in reality, so I find it humorous how shocked many Republicans appeared.

Brown’s thank you note below.