Thursday, April 24, 2008

My adventures in the land of ovaries.

Okay so the other day I was thinking to myself, "I wonder how people are still able to support Hillary after all that we have learned about her?"

It was very similar to a thought I had about two years ago which was "I wonder if I could start a civil conversation with blogs that still support Bush?"

Two years ago I did indeed visit a blog that was still supporting George Bush called Tim Blair, a website based in Australia. We had a very interesting exchange of ideas and then we essentially gave up on each other.

So I thought I would try this again with some blogs that support Hillary. I mean surely we could not be as far apart in our opinions as I had been with Tim Blair and friends.

I often wonder how I can still be so naive at my age.

So I went over and asked if the things that bothered me about Hillary was making any of them second guess their support. I mentioned her use of Rovian political tactics, her lack of charisma, that much of her popularity was reflected from her husbands popularity, and talked about her creepy-ass laugh. I thought that would open a dialogue where we could logically discuss the pro and cons of both candidates and then I could convince them of the error of their ways with my superior grasp of the facts. (Okay I may have come off as a little condescending.)

But what greeted my comments was completely unexpected and left little room for compromise or discussion. They took my comments as anti-feminist and anti-woman. WTF?

I am a guy who held a sign supporting ERA in the seventies. Most of the jobs I have had have been in workplaces that were predominantly female, elementary schools, child care centers, summer camps etc.. I have never treated any woman as an object even when I worked as a bouncer in a strip club. (It is a long story but I was desperate for a job.)

One woman went so far as to say that her ovaries were screaming at me.

I did not even know that was possible!

A few addressed my points, but dismissed them as wrong headed or simply my opinions, others just went for the jugular and even made a point that my referring to her as simply "Hillary" was a sign of disrespect. I explained that I used her first name because "Clinton" would make many people think of Bill.

What I learned was that for many Hillary supporters this is less about qualifications and more about gender. They desperately want to have a female in control of this country. And they will ignore or forgive a vast amount of negative information to ensure that outcome. And not even serious doubts raised by no less a respected a source then the Brad Blog about possible voting machine fraud will sway these ardent supporters. In that way they seem much too similar to the Bush supporters that I tried to dialogue with two years ago.

I imagine that there may be Barack Obama sites that will support him no matter what they learn, simply because he is black. I mean with all of the websites out there that MUST be the case. But I would argue with them that his ethnicity is not the reason that he should be President, but it also should not be the reason he could NOT be President.

And that is what I would argue to the Hillary supporters. I would LOVE to see a woman as our President. Just not THIS woman!

But the Hillary supporters are very entrenched. There will be no compromise until one of these popular candidates is forced out. And even then if it is Hillary Clinton I think we will have a lot of trouble mending some of these ideological fences.

30 comments:

  1. Oh Gryphen, you tried, I give you that. I have wondered the same & now you've gone & done the research so I don't have to!

    As one who fits the Hillary demographic (white, over 50, female, less than full college education, scion of blue-collar workers, etc) who would've LOVED to have a Madam President this time, I have to say it is NOT about anatomy. Please don't think any less of us aging feminists who went through the battles of the 60's based on some rabid Hill supporters. I do not think with my ovaries and have never heard them scream (groan, yes, but not scream).

    I plan to reach out to all of them, entrenched or otherwise, after the convention. We need them and they need us. Until then, after my snark post today, I think I should be concentrating on Obama vs McCain. Positive thinking!

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  2. Thanks d.k.,

    I appreciate your kind words and non screaming ovaries.

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  3. As the spouse of a former submariner, I have ovaries that possess a strong sense of identity and self-worth. The result of this is that they do not need to scream.

    I appreciate dk's comments very much, coming from a woman of a certain demographic. I was starting to (absolutely inappropriately, of course) characterize Clinton's supporters as 60-year-old white women covered in cat hair and wearing ill-fitting undergarments who constantly scream about how their grannies did not have the right to vote. I do not like thinking of my older sisters and aunts this way, but I wonder if I am losing a little faith in them. I am following this whole thing too closely it would seem.

    One wonderful thing about a woman having a right to vote is that she has the right to vote... for whomever she chooses.

    Why do some women feel this absolute obligation to vote for THIS particular woman?

    Great blog Gryphen! I read it every day!

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  4. Thank you for your support Jackie.

    It is very nice to hear from some ladies who do not feel that finding fault with one woman is not the same as finding fault with all women.

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  5. The Obamabots can be irritating at times. They have this irritating habit of defending their candidate even where he's wrong, like his health care plan that isn't. But I had the same problem as you with the Clintonistas. She has run a terrible campaign and manage go from front-runner to also-ran in the course of a year, and has demonstrated in her personnel choices and strategies that she does not have the judgement that I want from a President, but you mention that to one of the rabid Clintonistas... their ovaries scream at ya.

    So while the Obamabots are annoying, the Clintonistas are just friggin' batshit crazy. They do their candidate more harm than good by attacking any critic as sexist, rather than addressing the points regarding personnel choices and strategies that critics bring up. They've jumped the shark and end up hurting their candidate even more than their candidate's bad choices.

    - Badtux the Obama-leanin' Penguin

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  6. Anonymous8:31 AM

    I'm interested that your objections to her holy highness were the ones that they were. Who cares about her charisma or laugh? What about her policies and actions?

    She's got a health care "plan" that FORCES everyone to join. She lied her ass off about Bosnia and dodging bullets. She and her husband have taken many millions of dollars in the form of "speaking fees" and other dubious transactions from all sorts of odd folks over the last few years. Do we want four more years of Bill, too?

    There are lots of more substantive objections to Ms Clinton than her laugh or charisma.

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  7. Rob, we can have universal health care only if everyone pays for it. "Deadbeats" who don't pay means that we don't have universal health care. Hillary understands that. But too many people apparently think we can get something for nothing. I've worked the economics, and short of a single-payer system where everybody pays via higher taxes to government, Hillary's "health care tax" plan where everybody pays a "health care tax" to insurers (either to private ones or her FamilyCare plan that is Medicare for families) is the only plan that breaks the current health insurance death spiral.

    I have more information on that subject at my own blog. In any event, her health care plan is the *only* thing she has that is better in all ways than Obama's plan. I worked the numbers as an economist (as vs. emotional sound bite "feel good" person), and Obama's plan continues the health insurance death spiral and actually increases the number of uninsured over time. The downside is that to get Hilary's plan, you have to get... Hillary. Karl Rove in a pants suit. Gah.

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  8. Anonymous10:07 AM

    "short of a single-payer system where everybody pays via higher taxes to government"

    I was on a plane next to a Canadian and he explained to me that waiting for healthcare in Canada was a myth. "Just give a small 'donation'" he said, "and you never have to wait for anything."

    Liberal heaven. Power over life and death to govt functionaries without competition.

    I see that the Democrats want to forcibly insure "children" up to 25 years old. Why would that be? Because they are the healthiest and so see buying insurance as a waste of money. Coerce them!

    Yes, I came from Tim Blair's blog.

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  9. Anonymous11:26 AM

    Well, this probably isn't the forum to debate the idea that "universal health care" might not be a good idea, but my point was that forcing people into things is not the traditional Liberal way.

    Would you force homeless people to live in shelters? It's better for them (and probably save the city money by bringing them together in one place to receive city services), there can be little doubt, but shouldn't they be free not to?

    Would you force people to lose weight if they were overweight? Would you tell black people that, in the name of perfect integration and diversity, you were going to relocate them so that they were evenly spread through the population? I can think of lots more.

    There are lots and lots of highly desirable things that nevertheless should not be forced on people. For my money John Locke thrashed this all out pretty effectively in the _Second Treatise On Government_ back in the 1690's.

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  10. Which of course is why the U.S. ranks 26th in every measure of healthcare quality (!) while every single nation that scores higher than us has some sort of universal health care, but hey, let's not worry about that reality crap, let's talk ideology ("Government bad! Ugh!"). Go fuck yourself, troll. I'm talking life or death, you're talking caveman grunts with no basis in reality. You want people to die for your caveman grunt ideology. Go murder someone closer to home, personally I'm tired of hearing about children dying because they couldn't get an appendix operation because they didn't have health insurance and things like that. But oh I forget, "Govermnment bad! Ugh!". Which is why France has the best health care system in the world by *all* measures, oh my goodness, there I go bringing up that nasty *reality* shit again, when will I ever learn that *reality* has nothing to do with caveman trolls who only know one grunt ("government bad! Ugh!").

    BTW, this is coming to you courtesy of the Santa Clara Municipal Utilities, which provides me with electric power for 2/3rds the price of the surrounding private utilities while driving our local taxes way down with its in-lieu-of-taxes payments to our local government, but I forget, you say this can't be because of your caveman grunt "government bad! ugh!". Gah, the stupid, it burns, it burns!

    - Badtux the Rude Penguin

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  11. Rob, my apologies, the above was not aimed at you. My point was that universal health care requires all people to pay, whether we do it via a mandate or via a tax, else it's not universal. And if it's not universal, we end up in a health care death spiral because health care takes up 15% of the national GDP but sick people don't make up 15% of the national GDP, and a lot -- a *LOT* -- of dead people. The math doesn't lie, and you can see it starting already as small businesses are forced to drop health care coverage for their employees due to cherry picking on the part of health insurers and deadbeats like Wal-mart who won't pay health insurance for their employees but instead tell their employees to go to the emergency room and apply for Medicaid (i.e. you and I pay). The whole system is in a state of slow collapse, and the numbers don't lie -- it won't get any better without universal coverage with a universal mandate of some type, whether it's purchase of insurance on the open market or payment of a tax to a government insurer like Medicare.

    Hillary's plan acknowledges this reality. Obama's plays politics and is fundamentally dishonest. Sorry, that's just the facts.

    - Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

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  12. Anonymous11:59 AM

    "let's not worry about that reality crap"

    Or let's not worry about how one of the reasons Canadians are upset about border security is that it impedes their ambulances trying to get from Windsor to Detroit with critically ill patients, either.

    Or that ratings aren't reality. They are opinions and subjective values added up into a number. I know that it is hard for you to actually critically think about that, so don't try. Better to feel superior by calling me a retard.

    Why not look at cancer and heart attack survival rates in the US vis a vis the vast majority of those countries? Problem is that these are not a "value" in the index, so the better US system does not score any points. Socialist systems do not score well on these because it costs a lot of money to keep such people alive. Then, when they go back to work, they add to GDP.

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  13. Anonymous4:26 PM

    I don't have a serious problem with universal coverage. I just have a problem with govt mandating, as in Canada, what procedures can be done, what equipment can be bought, and talk about free riding, setting drug prices that abrograte any return on the investments in research and development.

    If you look at the issues that Canada deals with the best, they are politically popular women's health issues. They developed the HPV vaccine (cervical cancer) and if you think you might have breast cancer, there is no waiting at all. Women vote on health issues so no matter that nursing homes are full of women that have survived their husbands by many years, the limited health money goes to them.

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  14. Anonymous5:52 PM

    "Go murder someone closer to home, personally I'm tired of hearing about children dying because they couldn't get an appendix operation because they didn't have health insurance and things like that"

    By law, emergency rooms MUST take patients regardless of their insurance status. So please, provide a link to just ONE of these horror stories of a child dying of appendicitis because his family did not have insurance.

    And I'm talking a legitimate, factual link, not hearsay from an advocacy group.

    Now as for me, I'm going to Google up a story I read in the news of a Canadian man turned away from an emergency room because he did not have his insurance card. His appendix burst and he died. Be right back...

    -Dave S.-

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  15. Anonymous6:03 PM

    Well, the links are all dead, but here's the story, with a source:

    "A 21-year-old man died of appendicitis after he was refused treatment at an emergency clinic because he didn't have his provincial health card with him.

    Gerald Augustin complained of stomach pains on Thursday but the receptionist at the St-Andre medical centre told him he had to go home to get his health card. He didn't make it back to the clinic in Montreal's east end.

    About four hours later, a friend alerted police and called an ambulance for the man, who had a fatal attack of appendicitis in his apartment. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

    Rouslene Augustin, administrator at the St-Andre clinic, said the man had not appeared to have any urgent symptoms when he arrived there.

    "If this guy was an emergency case, we would accept him if he had his card or not," she told CTV affiliate CFCF. "I don't see what we did wrong. I'm not defending the clinic, we just followed the rules."

    Health department spokesperson Dr. Marc Giroux said clinics are obligated to provide service for emergencies even if no medicare card was produced.

    In non-emergency situations, patients must provide payment upfront and are later reimbursed by the provincial health insurance board. (Toronto Star, April 24, 2004, page A23)"

    (I'm not aware that the inferior American health-care system allows receptionists to perform triage)

    -Dave S.-

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  16. Anonymous6:34 PM

    Whenever I read Andrew Landeryou's my ovaries scream at me too, and i don't have any!

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  17. So they treated you as they do conservatives, not actually listening, just anathematising you as evil.

    You know, that no matter who wins the DNC nomination, all this bitterness and rancour will be laid down to nefarious Karl Rovian trickery. That it couldn't have been those on the Left who were acting irrationally, it's all the fault of the Right. Can you say "projection"?

    I think you do know this. You just have to ignore it because you believe in the Left's policies.

    I do too - some of them, at least. But I consider myself a RWDB because they're relatively sane, and actually produce facts, evidence to back up their opinions. Most of them, anyway. I think we can both agree that there's plenty of irrationality and hatred amongst the Dominionists.

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  18. Anonymous6:36 PM

    Which of course is why the U.S. ranks 26th in every measure of healthcare quality (!) while every single nation that scores higher than us has some sort of universal health care, but hey, let's not worry about that reality crap, let's talk ideology ("Government bad! Ugh!"). Go fuck yourself, troll. I'm talking life or death, you're talking caveman grunts with no basis in reality. You want people to die for your caveman grunt ideology. Go murder someone closer to home, personally I'm tired of hearing about children dying because they couldn't get an appendix operation because they didn't have health insurance and things like that. But oh I forget, "Govermnment bad! Ugh!". Which is why France has the best health care system in the world by *all* measures, oh my goodness, there I go bringing up that nasty *reality* shit again, when will I ever learn that *reality* has nothing to do with caveman trolls who only know one grunt ("government bad! Ugh!").

    BTW, this is coming to you courtesy of the Santa Clara Municipal Utilities, which provides me with electric power for 2/3rds the price of the surrounding private utilities while driving our local taxes way down with its in-lieu-of-taxes payments to our local government, but I forget, you say this can't be because of your caveman grunt "government bad! ugh!". Gah, the stupid, it burns, it burns!

    - Badtux the Rude Penguin


    Dude, I think your ovaries are screaming. Looks like it's not just for Clintonistas!

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  19. 18,314 is the number you're looking for, guys. That's the number of Americans that die every year due to lack of health insurance. Ancedotal stories about someone who would have died in the U.S. system too are nice and fun, but the fact of the matter is that nobody dies in, say, France, due to lack of health insurance, and 18,314 people die every year in America due to lack of health insurance.

    'Nuff said.

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  20. Anonymous9:53 AM

    BadTux,

    Is your reference for that 18,314 number
    http://www.numbersipulledoutofmyass.com?

    Or do you have a better cite?

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  21. Use Teh Gooogle, moron. It's from a study in 2002. The number is probably higher now, since the number of uninsured has increased by close to 40% since 2002 as small businesses are forced to drop their insurance coverage due to the insurance cost death spiral. And if you don't know what the "insurance cost death spiral" is (and why Obama's plan will make it worse), Google it. I don't feel like catering to morons, I already covered all this shit on my own blog complete with cites, Google will find it for you. And if you're too fucking lazy to use Teh Google, well. You want me to come over and wipe your butt for you after you take a dump, oh wah?

    - Badtux the Health Care Penguin

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  22. Anonymous10:05 AM

    Sirs,

    As a member of the Republican Party, let me say:

    Welcome to the world of Identity Politics. You don't need to let us know how it really feels, we've been feeling it for over 50 years.

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  23. Anonymous10:16 AM

    "So I went over and asked if the things that bothered me about Hillary was making any of them second guess their support. I mentioned her use of Rovian political tactics, her lack of charisma, that much of her popularity was reflected from her husbands popularity, and talked about her creepy-ass laugh. I thought that would open a dialogue where we could logically discuss the pro and cons of both candidates"

    An idea, in the future: don't go looking to "start a dialogue" by mentioning all sorts of bad things about the subject of your intended dialog. This paragraph sounds like you went onto a Hillary supporter's blog with "how can you people vote for that woman with the horrible cackle?" which may not be what you have done, but when what you state above is your opening bid, you come across sounding hostile.

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  24. Anonymous10:21 AM

    Ouch!!! that must really hurt

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  25. Anonymous10:56 AM

    First of all, Mr Penguin, that number from Google is the number that die each YEAR not every DAY. If you want to make a case for single payer health care, then you should at least get your facts in order, or do I need to come over and wipe your brain with the toilet paper for you?

    Second, the study cites -- "The estimated death toll includes about 1,400 people with high blood pressure, 400 to 600 with breast cancer and 1,500 diagnosed with HIV."

    This is propaganda, comparable to the Lancet study that said the civilian death toll in Iraq was somewhere around 1 million deaths.

    This study is assuming that with insurance and preventative care, all these lives would be saved; this is preposterous. Some would be saved, most would not. What WOULD be certain is that these 18,314 would be put on government rationed care, and government bean counters would be the ones deciding who was worth saving and who was not.

    Universal insurance coverage is not the answer; insurance is not the barrier to receiving care. The onerous regulation that creates a prohibitive cost of doing business is part of problem. The inadequate supply of doctors, clinics, and hospitals is the other.

    The more I research the subject, the more I am convinced that advocates for single-payer health care are propagandists or fools. The Propagandists know that single payer health care is a way to siphon off more money and funnel it through the ever-increasing government bureaucracy. The Fools are too dumb to see what a disaster government mandated health care has been everywhere its been tried.

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  26. Anonymous1:22 PM

    You got treated better at a "rightwing blog" than by Hillary supporters because in large part conservatives are right-brain thinkers and liberals are left-brain thinkers. That is, a conservative will argue your points and a liberal will see you as nest-invader who must be driven away or destroyed.

    The "My ovaries are screaming at you!" reminds me of the time I tried to discuss war opposition with someone on the antiwar side. I opened my mouth and she started screaming. It wasn't a debatable point with her, she just wanted to drown me out and drive me away. Worked, too.

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  27. Anonymous1:32 PM

    I think that "The Screaming Ovaries" would be a excellent name for a band.

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  28. Anonymous9:02 PM

    Basically, they (this years crop of presidential candidates) are....


    ALL BATSHIT CRAZY


    ....it doesn't matter their political stripe, just tune into ANY blog that is a core supporter of {fill in the blank}, and you'll see that I'm right.

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  29. "Go fuck yourself, troll."
    "You want people to die for your caveman grunt ideology."
    "You want me to come over and wipe your butt for you after you take a dump, oh wah?"

    Gryphen, I know that one data point does not prove an assertion, but have you ever considered that the knee-jerk hostility and ill will you received from Sen. Clinton's supporters may more a feature of the system and what the Democrats have become than a bug? Like others have said, I can only echo "welcome to the club."

    (from another of those evil, close-minded conservatives)

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  30. More on topic, something Jackie said got me thinking:

    "I was starting to ... characterize Clinton's supporters as 60-year-old white women ... who constantly scream about how their grannies did not have the right to vote."

    It seems that supporters of both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama spend far too much time seeing the election of their candidate as just national compensation for past wrongs done not to the candidate but, rather, historically to those of the same demographic identity. And, to my eyes, it seems that both of them are enjoying and using their perceived underdog and victim cred as part of their respective groups a bit too much for a lot for the general electorate, accounting for the large Clinton/Obama shift to McCain reported in polls depending upon if their candidate wins of looses.

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Don't feed the trolls!
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