The ABCs...

It's been a while since my last political post.  And since I interrupted my viewing of Metamoris fights last night to watch the second debate between Mitt and Barack, I thought I'd share some thoughts on both with you.

On Metamoris:  I only watched two fights so far... of course, these would be Roger v Buchecha and Ryron v Galvao.  I was amazingly impressed by them both as far as fights go.  I was not thrilled with the bullsh*t artsyfartsy camera work-- I don't CARE what their facial expressions are, I am watching for the JIU JITSU, and thus the very very close-up shots AND the far away, capture-the-big-picture scenes are both detrimental to my ability to follow the grappling.  I was not as impressed by the Ryron/Galvao fight mainly because I thought Galvao should have been able to make something happen-- Ryron did (as Rener noted) seem a little too relaxed at times-- and yet I did think Ryron was extremely sport-jiu jitsu focused because if someone was pounding on his face during this, his lackadaisical comfort on the bottom would have evaporated.

Then the debate came on and I turned off youtube.

Today I found some "ABCs" of the debate and liked them so much, decided to share a select few.  They were written by journalist Erin Gloria Ryan on Jezebel.

B is for BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN

And, only two letters into the alphabet and not long into the debate, Mitt Romney gift wraps and delivers the event's most meme-able moment.  As the story goes, when Mittens Romney was governorbot of Massachusetts, he told his staff that he wanted more women in his cabinet. But there weren't any qualified applicants! So instead of just hiring all dudes, like he'd always done, Mitt urged his minions on in a relentless search for women. They followed them to the bus stop. They found out where they liked to get coffee. They watched them read books in the park. They sent love poems to their email, elaborate edible bouquets to their offices, and dead birds to their boyfriends. Mitt Romney ate, slept, and breathed women. BINDERS FULL OF THEM.
Except the story is a big crock of piping hot homestyle bullshit. The real story of the binders is that before the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial elections, a group of 40 or so interest groups in the state formed a coalition to find women qualified for upper level jobs in the state government. Leading the charge was the bipartisan Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus, not Mitt Romney's made up ah-hyuck aw garsh, where are all the ladies? antics. On Mitt Romney's first day in office, he was presented with the list of women the coalition found. So not only was it a weird thing to say, it was a weird thing to say that was also a lie.

Veracity of the Binders story aside, by the end of the debate, Romney's story had spawned BindersFullOfWomen.com, MittsBindersFullofWomen.com, and my personal favorite, Binders Full of Women, the Tumblr.

I is for ILLEGALS

When a dark haired, olive complected woman named Lorraine Osorio asked how the candidates would deal with law abiding undocumented Americans, Mitt Romney sensitively referred to them as "illegals." At least he didn't talk about "self-deportation" this time.

K is for KATHERINE F*CKING FENTON

Audience member Katherine Fenton struck lady voter gold last night when she asked the candidates the question that finally got them talking about what we've been waiting to hear from them — equal pay, which ended up spawning an awesome response by the President about how abortion and birth control are economic issues. Here's his response, in part,

A major difference in this campaign is that Governor Romney feels comfortable having politicians in Washington decide the health care choices that women are making. I think that's a mistake. In my health care bill I said insurance companies need to provide contraceptive coverage to everybody who is insured because this is not just a health issue, it's an economic issue for women. It makes a difference. This is money out of that family's pocket. Governor Romney not only opposed it, he suggested that employers should be able to make the decision as to whether or not a woman gets contraception through her insurance coverage. That's not the kind of advocacy that women need. When Governor Romney says that we should eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, there are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care, they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings. That's a pocketbook issue for women and families all across the country, and it makes a difference in terms of how well and effectively women are able to work. When we talk about child care and the credits that we're providing, that makes a difference in terms of whether they can go out there and earn a living for their family. These are not just women's issues. These are family issues, these are economic issues, and one of the things that makes us grow as an economy is when everybody participates and women are getting the same fair deal as men are, and I've got two daughters, and I want to make sure that they have the same opportunities that anybody's sons have. That's a part of what I'm fighting for as President of the United States.

F*cking finally.

L is for LIBYA

Pundits are saying that this is the moment when Romney lost it— he accused the President of refusing to call the Libya attacks an act of terror, when in fact the day after they happened, the President referred to them as an "act of terror" during a speech in the Rose Garden. And Candy Crowley provided the live fact check.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I think it's interesting the President just said something which is that on the day after the attack he went to the Rose Garden and said this was an act of terror.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That's what I said.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an attack of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please proceed.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that. It took the President 14 days before he called it an attack of terror.
MODERATOR: Let me call it an act of terror. He did call it an act of terror.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?
MODERATOR: He did call it an act of terror.

Then the audience applauded.

N is for NUPTIALS

While answering a question about keeping assault weapons off of the streets, Mitt Romney offered an unorthodox, but predictable prescription to solve America's crime problems: let's not pass any new gun laws. Instead, let's get unregulated women off the streets. When single parents ("single parents" is dog whistle talk for "single mothers") exist in a state of unmatrimony, you see, they raise children who grow up to shoot dozens of people in movie theaters. If only women would get married, all of the problems would be solved!

During his stern Ward Cleaver lecture about how American gals shouldn't bring children into circumstances that statistically lead to crime — single parenthood, poverty, etc — what he didn't say said a lot more than what he actually said. The irony of the Romney's weird, meandering solution to the gun problem was that it didn't register that defunding Planned Parenthood and outlawing most abortion would likely lead to more children being born to unmarried women. Does Mitt Romney have a plan to personally visit each and every one of those women and try to bully them into giving their children to a nice, Mormon family?

R is for RUNNING HOME TO MAKE DINNER

[Note: this is one I really got mad about-- 99% of my facebook status update outcries during the debate were about this one.]

Don't worry, ladies. If Mitt Romney is President, he'll make sure that your boss lets you be home to make dinner for your kids. He knows what it's like for employers to hire women. You've gotta let them get to their god-ordained servant duties, or it all goes to shit! From the debate transcript,

Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. But number two, because I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.
She said, I can't be here until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.

To Mitt Romney, that's what workplace equality means — the ability for women to continue to do household chores while working a full time job. We can only assume that if elected, Mitt Romney will replace the Lily Ledbetter Act with the Make Me A Sandwich Act.