Wilshire & Washington: The Conservatives Strike Back, Twitter Edition

Join Maegan and I for a special interview with conservative Web 2.0 expert DavidAll (@DavidAll) for a special discussion of the conservative Twittersphere. Plus, what does Ted Kennedy’s death mean? And how about Twitter’s box office effect?

Houston Schools Ban “Sexting”

The Houston school district has implemented a new rule for the coming term banning students from sending one another nude or semi-nude photos of one another via text message. This is meant to tamp down on a reported “epidemic” of the behavior - which has lead to some embarrassing situations for teens when the photos have leaked out to a larger audience than the one originally intended.

It seems a reasonable policy in the sense that kids often don’t recognize the potential consequences of their behavior until it’s too late. But I wonder how the schools are really going to enforce this kind of thing. After all - like like other teen digital behavior - sexting can happen before or after school and on the weekends. If it wasn’t happening during school hours or on school property, there’s not a whole lot that can be done.

It might be smarter to try to raise students’ awareness of the potential consequences of sending nude pictures of themselves to one another and then let them make their own decisions, just like with actual sex.

This reminds me of the time Seattle Schools tried to ban freak dancing. It didn’t really end up working out all that well.

It’s Time For Across The Board Reconciliation

If you’ve paid any attention to anything that’s gone on in Congress since 2006, you’ve probably heard a whole lot about the need for Democrats to muster 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything. And this is true, so far, the Senate has needed 60 votes in order to get a floor vote and avoid a filibuster. However, the Senate can also call for “reconciliation”, whereby debate is ended and bills go straight to a vote. Then, the Senate only needs 50 votes plus Joe “Foot-in-Mouth” Biden to pass anything. And, according to Chuck Schumer, the Senate is beginning to consider this.

Now, this would mean an end to the “bipartisan” process that Barack Obama has naively been pushing for since he got elected. I think it’s admirable that he wanted to try to get a few Republicans and every single Democratic Senator to vote for his bill. But in reality, Chuck Grassley, the leading Republican writing the health care bill has said he won’t vote for it (and he’s WRITING it), and Senator John Kyl, the number 2 Republican in the Senate, has said that he won’t vote for anything. Both Senators have also expressed concerned about “death panels.” Meanwhile the “moderate” Democrats Obama needs to get to 60 votes are really just the Democrats who have accepted the most money from health insurance companies.

So I hope Schumer, Obama, and the remaining Democratic Senators who have not been bought and sold realize that the Republican party cares solely about thwarting the Democratic party, and that the moderate Democrats would be better named the “bought” Democrats. Screw them, and stop watering down bills like the Stimulus package or cap-and-trade. Stop passing garbage. Cap-and-trade won’t do anything, if you want to decrease pollution, TAX ENERGY. Health care “reform” without a public option won’t solve any problems or bring down costs. We need free, public, universal health care and we need it 15 years ago. We need to actually regulate the financial industry. Oh, and we need to raise fucking taxes. Our deficit is at 1.6 trillion dollars*.

The Republican party is not lost in the wilderness, they have set the wilderness on fire and are going around the village looking for more gasoline and matches. Stop trying to get them on board, and pass actual laws that help solve actual problems.

* Pulling out of Afghanistan might help with this. I don’t see the point of being there. What actual good are we doing? Our soldiers are dying, we’re spending billions of dollars, the Taliban controls the South, Al Qaeda has free reign in Waziristan, and the government has passed laws legalizing marital rape. We’ve been there for 8 years, and even year the situation gets worse, not better. If we’re there to fight Al Qaeda, we can leave now, they’re all in Pakistan. If we’re there to fight for women’s right’s, let’s airlift them all out and move them to California. If we’re there to set up a stable nation state, we better increase our budget by a factor of 40.

Unpacking Kourtney Kardashian’s Statement on Carrying Her Unplanned Pregnancy to Term

Earlier today, I agreed with Feministing’s Jessica Valenti in calling Kourtney Kardashian’s remarks surrounding her decision to carry her unplanned pregnancy to term, “cringe worthy.”

A lot of people, both on Facebook and on Twitter have disagreed with me, and it’s hard to explain myself in short form - so I’m unpacking my reaction a bit more here.

In her interview with People, Kardashian makes four statements that really, really bothered me.

Number one:

I looked online, and I was sitting on bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty from having an abortion,” she recalls. “I was reading these things of how many people are traumatized by it afterwards.

The information she found is most likely propaganda from the anti-choice right describing a fictitious mental illness they call “post abortion syndrome.” Scientific research has demonstrated that post abortion syndrome isn’t real. If this was the reason why Kardashian decided not to have an abortion, then she made her decision based on false information.

Number two:

For me, all the reasons why I wouldn’t keep the baby were so selfish: It wasn’t like I was raped, it’s not like I’m 16. I’m 30 years old, I make my own money, I support myself, I can afford to have a baby. And I am with someone who I love, and have been with for a long time.

There is a lot of propaganda out there about women choosing abortion for “selfish” reasons. If a woman doesn’t want to be a mother, or she isn’t ready, she’s being selfish. Double selfish if she has the means to care for a child, if she got pregnant because she was having sex for pleasure rather than being forced, etc.

This idea is part of a larger agenda that is supposed to keep women “in our place.” It’s fine to choose to keep your pregnancy, but if you’re doing it because you think it’s selfish not to - even if you’re legitimately not ready to be a parent - then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

Number three:

My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, ‘You may regret not having the baby.

What kind of doctor was this? It sounds like the kind of thing women are told at anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers that try to persuade women into keeping their pregnancies through any means necessary.

And finally:

Scott he was so excited. But I think if I had said I’m not going to keep it, I really think he would have pushed me into keeping it.

This last statement says so much. Her boyfriend wants her to keep the pregnancy, and even if she didn’t he would have pushed her into having the baby.

Doesn’t sound like much of a choice if you ask me.

Wilshire & Washington: Post-Health Care Politics with ABC News’ Rick Klein

Join Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry and I as we interview Rick Klein, senior political reporter and author of ABC News’ The Note blog on health care (obviously) and the fall’s political slate, Clinton’s comeback with North Korea, and the midterm elections of 2010.

Sense of Entitlement was to Blame in George Sodini’s Hate Crime

Dan Savage’s most recent column finishes with a letter from a reader drawing a comparison between his column of a few weeks ago addressing male loneliness and the case of George Sodini, who killed three women and injured 9 more in a hate crime at an LA Fitness in Collier Township, PA.

Savage has largely covered the Sodini case from the right angle, but he really misses the ball in his column this week:

Sodini felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance guru who encouraged him to cling to that belief. Not normally a problem, I suppose. But Sodini wasn’t just another socially maladapted schlub furious with the world—and with women—for denying him the twentysomething ass he felt he had coming. Sodini was a nut. And he couldn’t understand why, if he was doing everything right, he wasn’t finding the success that Steele guaranteed him. [Emphasis mine.]

Someone needs to remind Dan that it’s actually a big problem when your normal, average “socially maladapted schlubs furious with the world” get it into their heads that women owe them something. Sodini was unhinged, to be sure. But it’s hard to tell how much of the eventual outcome of his life was attributable to the fact that he was crazy and how much could just as easily be accounted for by the fact that he felt entitled to sex - if only those pesky women would forget their own wills and just agree to give it up.

Where is the fine line between the jackasses who won’t leave me alone at a coffee shop or feel entitled to grab, grope and grind on me uninvited at a nightclub and rapists who slip roofies into women’s drinks and sexually assault them? Where’s the fine line between those rapists and George Sodini?

Fact is, these guys are committing three different degrees of assault, but they all cling to the same sense of entitlement. It doesn’t matter who they feel entitled to have sex with, or whether or not they’re crazy enough to shoot up a fitness club. The underlying cause of their behavior is the same - and that’s never “not normally a problem.”

Jezebel has a great response to this as well.

Wilshire & Washington: From Campaigns to Governance

Daily Kos General Manager Will Rockafellow joins Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry and I for a discussion of how the Obama administration is using its election infrastructure to govern. Also, the return of Current.TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee and the continuing health care debate.