DNC Day Four

-Khizr Khan, whose Muslim son US Army Captain Humayun Khan was KIA

-Sarah McBride, first transgender person to address the convention for any major party
-Jennifer Granholm
-Retired general surrounded by other generals, admirals, and vets of the last two wars
-Andrew Cuomo
-Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles
-LGBTQ rights
-Republicans who are voting for her (former Regan speechwriter being one)
-Katy Perry
-Chelsea's intro and the Hillary video
-Hillary's speech

 At 19:47 PDT:  She accepts the nomination!!

Small details ARE a big deal because they impact our lives.
"When one barrier falls, it clears the way for everyone."
"And I believe in science."
"He spoke for seventy-odd minutes, and I do mean odd."
"Way too many dreams die in the parking lots of banks."
20:12- Going after Trump
"No, Donald....you don't. " (re: knowing more about ISIS than the generals)
"A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."
"But I ask you, how can we stand by and do nothing?" (re: gun violence)

And then the balloons drop.

Hope. Diversity. Unity. 

Stronger together. Do the most good.

I'm on board all the way. Twenty-four years ago, my parents brought my brother and I to see Bill campaigning in the city next door, and I will never forget that. I will also never forget watching the 1996 election with my dad , playing with Lincoln logs and my red Chevron car, hoping that he would win and being so happy when he did. I was only ten. I didn't do much to help Obama get elected except vote for him and urge others to do the same while I also tried to dispel the misinformation. This time, I will do more. The stakes are too high, and I truly believe in her as my candidate. It won't be easy since I'm a full-time teacher reworking my curriculum, but I'll find a way.

Onward to a brighter future for ALL.

DNC Day Three

-"Donald Lump"
-Tim Kaine's Trump impression
-Tim Kaine
-Ending gun violence
-Women's rights
-Military and law enforcement
-Joe Biden's speech
-Climate change
-Obama's speech
-Hillary on stage with Barack

I really like Tim Kaine. Tonight was more optimism while still acknowledging our shortcomings. One more day to go. She'll accept the nomination tomorrow, and we'll hear from her and Chelsea.

I'm more than ready to call her Madam President in January.

DNC: Our Fight Song

DNC Day Two

So today we officially nominated Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president. I was concerned about the roll call, that Bernie supporters may be loud and only cause a larger rift. Thankfully, that didn't happen. It went smoothly, and Bernie moved that she become the nominee.

The rest of the evening and night was filled with speakers telling personal stories about the ways she had impacted their lives both personally and through policies that she fought for. Then they capped it off with Bill speaking for about forty minutes. I feel this went a long way to humanize her as he talked about what she's done and how they built a life together. By the end of it all, I feel like the party has finally united. We can only get stronger over not just the next two days but the months leading up to the election and the years following as we work to make this country better for all of us.

Highlights (besides what I listed above):

-"Fight Song" montage
-National Anthem being sung by a young man with cerebral palsy
-9/11 survivor Lauren Manning
-Mothers of the Movement
-Alicia Keys
-Montage at the end of the presidents with Hillary breaking through at the end
-Elizabeth Banks
-Eagle Academy founder and students

I look forward to tomorrow and listening to Obama, Biden, and Kaine. Our convention so far has been great, espousing the virtues of this nation while also acknowledging the work we still have to do. It is far from the doom and gloom of Cleveland last week. We look professional and like the adults we truly are. I always get into the conventions, but I'm truly proud of my party tonight.

See you tomorrow.

DNC Day One

So the DNC is just about done for tonight, and I spent the whole day watching the speakers. I am always amazed at how diverse it is compared to its counterpart. Today they spoke about unity and why Democrats are the ones to move us forward with Clinton at the helm. (Bernie just mentioned SCOTUS and who Drumpf would appoint. He needs to keep hitting at stuff like that so his people will stop booing and support Hillary like he has pledged to do.) Sadly, some of the fools still resisting voting blue (as Sarah Silverman said, they are being ridiculous) just don't get it.

I have vowed to stop wading into comment sections until after November because the vitriol and misinformation are too much. They call Clinton and her supporters like myself a variety of terrible names, embrace the conspiracy theory that the DNC colluded with all of the state parties to deny Bernie the nomination, and press that a third party is the real option. If enough people vote, it can happen, they say. Obviously these people either never took a government/political science class in high school or college, they goofed and didn't learn anything, or they forgot.

We have a constitutional. representative democracy. Change happens slowly, for one thing. Revolutions don't occur overnight. Aside from that, the very foundation of how we vote paves the way for only two viable parties. We award seats in a winner-take-all fashion rather than proportionally like they do in parliamentary systems. As such, we fill Congress with people from just two political parties (Bernie being the exception). Even if enough people voted and put in a Libertarian or Green candidate (can't happen anyway since they won't even be appearing on ballots in every state, and write-ins are useless, sorry to break it to you), Congress would still be divided between blue and red. We have three branches, remember? Separation of powers and all that jazz. For a third party president to get anything done on their agenda, they would need to populate Congress with others of the same. At this point in time, that is fundamentally impossible.

(I was thinking about it, and it seems to me that third parties are way more narrow in scope. Simpler minds can't handle a larger platform, I guess. Also, Libertarians are whiny little babies who don't understand how the real world works. We live in a connected society and have formed compacts with each other and our government so that we can all succeed and live together. This has been eroded, obviously, partly by greed and partly by the mentality that I got mine, so fuck you. I experienced that first hand each time our labor union tried to negotiate a fair contract over the ten years I was there.)

If the notion that someone as vile, selfish, and stupid as Drumpf can become president isn't enough to scare people, then I fear they never were going to vote for Hillary anyway. They'll keep grandstanding, stomping their feet that they didn't get their way. It's almost like they don't understand how our democracy functions because they haven't participated before. Hillary has been hammered for over thirty years, and nothing has ever stuck. She spent her whole life doing public service as has her VP pick Tim Kaine. Sadly, that rhetoric has tarnished her, and I feel that her gender doesn't help things (though I've read plenty of women posting awful things about her).

If you want the establishment to burn down, you are selfish and short-sighted. You have no regard for the real people that will be hurt (and there will sadly be far too many). You never subscribed to our compact, and now you want to put the entire world at risk (Drumpf is dangerous, and the fact that Russians were the ones who hacked the DNC emails in a bid to help him should be very concerning). I'm tired of being nice because people like that are not rational. That's why I am staying away from comments sections, even on trusted pages that are pro-Hillary.

We need to vote blue to keep the White House, take back the Senate, and reclaim governorships. Maybe in two years, we can make the House more blue as well. The stakes are too high to protest Hillary and the DNC, and anyone who doesn't see that may just get their wish.

Comment Win: Trump Edition

How Many More Times?

So trending on Facebook tonight is the tragic story of an eight year old boy who was playing with a handgun and who shot and killed himself by accident. His brother tried to administer CPR, but he still passed away. How many more stories do we have to read? How many more times does someone have to die a completely preventable death? How many more families have to grieve their children, parents, siblings?

People love to bring up the second amendment when we talk about regulating guns, or 'gun control.' I hate that second phrasing now only because it implies we want to reach further than most sensible people actually want. I want firearms to be regulated, which is exactly what the amendment says.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

First of all, apply some historical context to this. We had just won a bloody war against a country that wanted to keep us as property and not give us equal treatment like other citizens of the empire. Our weapons were muskets, which fired one round at a time and had to be loaded each time with the propellant.  Not exactly the standard in handguns we have now, let alone semi-automatic weapons and extended clips. We wanted to make sure we could protect ourselves from tyranny in the future.

(Side note: The third amendment protects us from housing soldiers in our houses during times of peace. This is ridiculous and would not ever happen now. Still, it exists and would be upheld should the super unlikely ever happen. My point? Our times have changed dramatically since 1789. The constitution was meant to be a living document hence the judicial branch of our government. Moving on.) 

Back to the regulation part. Before I could legally drive, I had to obtain a learner's permit and hold it for six months. I had to take at least three lessons behind the wheel through an approved school. I had to pass a test just to get the permit. Then I had to take a behind-the-wheel exam to get my license. Sure, I could have skipped all of that and drove illegally, but I didn't. I know many people still do it, but we have tried to prevent this with regulatory laws. We have less restrictions on guns in far too many states. 

Yes, people are always going to do things that are against the law. So then why do we have laws at all? Because we are a civilized society (or so I thought) who values the social compact we make with each other. (Same thing goes for vaccination, but that is a whole other ugly monster to tackle later.) 

They wanted to get rid of alcohol in the 1920s via prohibition. That worked out so well that we repealed it thirteen years later. We've done the same to drugs, and that has created a bloated prison population with people in need of treatment rather than punishment. (But there's no money in that, is there, private prison industry?) Same thing goes with abortion, which sadly is more regulated than who can buy a firearm. Outlawing stuff we don't like doesn't make it go away, but regulating things makes sure that, for the most part, it is safer for us as a society. 

So how many more have to die before we let go of our egos that guns make us better, safer, more important than other peoples' right to live? 

How many?

Thoughts on White People and This Election

This morning, Bernie Sanders (finally) endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. He did it with fervor and has made it clear that defeating Donald Trump is his priority. Now that he has gotten concessions on the Democratic Party's platform, this is undoubtedly true. And yet some of his supporters are still clinging to him as the nominee and refusing to vote for her. Most of the comments I have seen have been online so I admit my sample size is limited. What I have noticed about these people, though, is that they are all white. They say they'll vote for some third party person, effectively wasting their votes. In blue and red states, this shouldn't be much of a problem (*rants to self about the electoral college*). In swing states, this could be an issue.

Now why did I mention white people at all? Because we as white folks have no clue the issues minorities face in our country. Trump and his ilk are dangerous. Racist jerks have felt emboldened since 2010, when a red tide of stupidity swept over the nation because the big, scary black man was in office. This is not to say the all Republicans are racist. Indeed, the people I know who are Republicans are mixed in ethnicity themselves. But every racist thing I've seen and heard has been from a Republican. The nominee of their party has stated his plan to build a wall along our border with Mexico (because that fence worked so well). He's also expressed the opinion that Muslims should be banned from coming here (!!). Racial tensions have swelled since Pres. Obama took office but not because he stoked the flames. The politicians, "leaders" of our nation, have done so well enough on their own by what they say. Racists eat that stuff up, and now that a racist, misogynistic narcissist with a bad spray tan is leading the party and garnering over 13 million votes, people feel justified in their hate.

So to all you white people calling her Killary or Shillary, who think she is so damn corrupt despite nothing ever legally sticking, who don't know what she has really done for the most vulnerable of our people: if Trump is elected because of your stupidity and ignorance, then you have each contributed to further acts of hate committed against people of color. Get over yourselves. Unite, vote blue, and campaign to get Democrats elected to congress, where policy change can truly happen.

Kindered Spirits

From a conversation I had with an acquaintance (red) from the credential program earlier today. I got annoyed with her negative attitude a few months ago, but tonight her comment resonated with me.

Blurb

As the 20th anniversary of the first Spice Girls single is upon us (in conjunction with the talk of late about the socially constructed notion of race in relation to how people are perceived and treated) I remembered something.

In my stupid girl clique of 5th grade, we all were labeled a certain Spice Girl. I was Scary Spice. The reason my friends sorted me this way? My fluffy hair (I had super curly locks thanks to my dad getting my curly hair layered against my mom's wishes). And I accepted it no problem, even though Mel B was black, and I very clearly was not. (My high school friends called me transparent because of how white I was compared to them, which I always laughed at.)

My point? That hate is taught. I never saw a difference with Mel B, let alone one existent because of skin. Going deeper, I never saw my friends for their color, just their similar interests and ability to be friends with a lowly dork like me. I made stupid ass race jokes in 9th grade after 9/11 (not my shining moment and a time I acknowledge exists in my evolution as a person).

There are a million things I can say, and I probably will tomorrow. For now, I just want to point out how biases are stupid social constructs that stem from the inability of people to recognize that differences are not scary, are not stereotypes to help us form opinions that allow us to paint a brush over many individuals. And yet they keep resulting in the deaths of human beings labeled quickly as anything but in the minds of the ones pulling the trigger.

Black lives matter. (All lives do, but I understand the frustration that people with dark skin are thrown aside so often, their voices ignored.)

Violence against law enforcement in general is wrong. Those cops in Dallas were doing their jobs.

People who can see both sides, empathize with them, are labeled a threat along with the people so tired of being ignored. People like Joe Walsh (failed one-term congressman from Illinois who lost his seat to real patriot Tammy Duckworth) only stand for hate and ignorance.

I thought this to myself earlier: We're not listening to their voices. Soon, we won't be able to ignore their gunshots. And that is not an acceptable answer for anyone.

Sadly True

“Dear Political Activists,

All your chanting, marching, voting, picketing, boycotting and letter-writing will not change a thing; you will never right the wrongs of this world. The only thing your activity will accomplish is to make some of you feel better. Such activity makes powerless people feel useful, and provides them the illusion that they’re making a difference. But it doesn’t work. Nothing changes. The powerful keep the power. That’s why they’re called the powerful.

This is similar to people’s belief that love can overcome everything, that it has some special power. It doesn’t. Except one on one. One on one, love is incredibly powerful. It is a beautiful thing. But if love had any power to change the world, it would have prevailed by now. Love can’t change the world. It’s nice. It’s pleasant. It’s better than hate. But it has no special power over things. It just feels good. Love yourself, find another person to love and feel good.
Love, George” ~ When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)

Really?

Our country is so divided right now, and I doubt we'll be able to reconcile with each other in the foreseeable future.

An article from ABC7 News about the death of a UC Berkeley student being among the victims of the latest terror attack was not immune to people who bring politics into everything. Now I love debating politics (more like arguing, let's be real), but a young woman died horrifically along with 19 (?) others. So this person points out how liberal her university was and it's us liberals who are saying we should tolerate these people. (Am I late to that party or something? Because I don't remember saying that or thinking it.) Also she took the opportunity to say that all Muslims can become terrorists, and she knows this because she's read the Quran. And she got 40 likes as of the time I snapped this screenshot. (Name not redacted because she posted publicly.)

*sigh*