I'm suing you, Mr. President...for my therapy sessions.

I've been mulling this idea for months - suing President Obama. It's time to make my move. You see, he's made me schizoid... or schizophrenic...I can't decide. Is that bad to say? I don't want to be less than PC when explaining my symptoms and why I find it necessary to sue and why he is culpable. 

Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness and sometimes (sexual) apathy, with a simultaneous rich, elaborate and exclusively internal fantasy world.^[1] SPD is not the same as schizophrenia, although they share some similar characteristics such as detachment or blunted affect.

Let's first parse the schizoid personality disorder. 

1. Sometimes I do have a lack of interest in social relationships particularly if they're with Obama apologists who have deified this man beyond all reason. If one were generous, one could call them Optimists, but I am not so generous. I think they're deluded. 

2. Okay - "a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle" - I would have to say that's true if only to protect myself from political crazies and Optimists. It's best to hunker down with some good beer and catch up on Arrested Development. 

3. Next up -"secretiveness, emotional coldness and sometimes (sexual) apathy" - Well, secretive I am not. Ask me anything and I will tell you. And then you'll wish you hadn't. Emotional coldness? This one's crucial when it comes to shielding myself from reacting to every single Obama disappointment. Sadly, the disappointment started inauguration day and I've been in a cold 'disappointment' bubble ever since. Hmmm, sexual apathy? That could be worth big bucks when I sue, right? 

 4. However! A "rich, elaborate and exclusively internal fantasy world" - Big Time! 

I painfully go over each and every missed opportunity Obama could have/should have taken...like what if he just stood up for single payer and had to settle for the public option? What if he hadn't met with Big Pharma and cozied up to insurance companies? What if he had listened to Paul Volker instead of those Wall St. sycophants, Geithner and Summers? How the hell did he deserve the Peace Prize? I spent a lot of time on that...kind of looking for a lost penny in the sand. The Nobel committee must have been star struck. What if he had prosecuted just a few of his criminal banking friends and aggressively regulated derivatives? I fantasize about how $16 million buys 'friendship' -  the amount Obama has taken from Wall St. thugs. Sometimes I go way back to fantasize about why Obama increased Iraq war funding when he always said he was against the war. The number of 'whys' are legion and the gnawing at my psyche is sending me over the edge. But the biggest fantasy of all, (insert violins and angels singing) I'm sure shared by millions, is the heavenly fantasy of Obama kicking-ass in his second term. Possible? Probable? Time will tell but No Guts No Glory, Mr. President. I'm all over the place with this but you can see how I might be schizoid.  

Moving right along to schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia ( /ˌskɪtsɵˈfrɛniə/ or /ˌskɪtsɵˈfriːniə/) is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness.^[1] It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.   

I hope to god this isn't where I'm headed but it may be too late as Obama keeps piling on with Bushian alacrity. What's up with these 'free trade' deals? But wait! That 'disorganized speech and thinking' symptom...doesn't it make you think of the kooks running for the Republican nomination not to mention those muddled-headed bigots called the Tea Party? They are giving schizophrenia quite the bad name.  

My most disturbing burden, though, is philosophical, what I call 'The Dilemma'. The Dilemma is not whether to vote for a Republican instead of Obama; The Dilemma is how badly am I compromising my shabby morals to vote for someone who betrayed me? I am so troubled by The Dilemma that I reached out to my son to help me. He's got a PhD in philosophy so I begged him to find a philosopher for me who can assuage my disquieted soul, someone who will tell me how disgustingly human I am by spinning excuses to vote for O. Obama is like a bad boyfriend who seduces you with a flashy smile (oh, wasn't he adorable?!), whispers meringues of sweet nothings (which it turns out they were...nothing), a hot bod (remember that pic in Hawaii?) and promises you the world with the "C" word, "We will Change the world." (Obama at the Pennsylvania Capitol, Saturday, April 19, 2008) This guy was different. So I happily, dreamily got in the symbolic bed - the voting booth - with him (no sexual apathy here!) And then he dumped me. Just. Like. That. On day one. How dare he have Rick Warren give the invocation at his inauguration? 

You can see how badly I need therapy. Maybe you do, too? So, I'm going to sue the President, the White House, the entire administration and his ass-wipe advisors for malfeasance, for taking a gigantic mandate - from middle-class Democrats, progressives, Republicans, blacks, Latinos, women, people who had never felt moved to vote before who registered and voted...students, young people, old people, if dogs could've voted they would have...everyone came out to vote. It was the biggest party, the most positive, charged, electric global, hopeful atmosphere. People were joyful, elated that they rode this prophet, of Hope and Change, to victory on their shoulders, happy to carry this man, this harbinger of better days, after their months and months of hard work and devotion, and love - to victory. To a victory that was squandered by inexperience, arrogance and Obama's weakest link, a pathological need to be liked. As Eric Alterman writes in the Nation Magazine, "Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has complained of Obama—accurately, in my view—that he “wishes to be President of a country that does not exist. In his fantasy, US politicians bury differences in bipartisan harmony.”" As smart as people says Obama is, he doesn't seem able to pick up the cues of defeat. Or is it pride, the worst sin of all? Are we going to hell in a hand basket because of a prideful President who believes his early reviews?  

And here's exactly how schizoid I am. My last post was about forgetting all of this angst and getting on with it...just work your ass off to get O re-elected: http://contrarianbitch.blogspot.com/2011/08/obama-time-to-compartmentalize.html We don't have a choice. And because that choice is so limited, because it compromises my already beleaguered morals, my torment rages on. What to do? What to do?

Say, is your finger also on the dial to your therapist? Are you feeling schizoid, too? Maybe we could join up to file a middle-class-action lawsuit. I did consider raising money for therapy on Kickstarter but I couldn't figure out what I would give for someone's donation...old Obama posters? I have a ton of them, some even signed. No, I'm going direct to the source. He owes me.

My song for Obama: 

Baby baby
Baby, don't leave me
Oh, please don't leave me
All by myself
I've got this burnin', burnin', yearnin'
Feelin' inside me
Ooh, deep inside me
And it hurts so bad
You came into my heart (baby baby)
So tenderly
With a burnin' love (baby baby)
That stings like a bee (baby baby)
Now that I surrender (baby baby)
So helplessly,
You now wanna leave (baby baby)
Ooh, you wanna leave me (baby baby)
Ooh, baby baby baby,
Where did our love go?
Oh, don't you want me? (baby baby)
Don't you want me no more? (baby baby)
Ooh, baby
Baby baby,
Where did our love go?
And all your promises (baby baby)
Of a love forever more? (baby baby)
I've got this burnin', burnin', yearnin'
Feelin' inside me
Ooh, deep inside me (baby baby)
And it hurts so bad (baby baby)
Before you won my heart, (baby baby)
You were a perfect guy
But now that you got me, (baby baby)
You wanna leave me behind (baby baby)
Ooh, baby baby baby,
Baby, don't leave me
Oh, please don't leave me (baby baby)
All by myself (baby baby)

Obama Re-election: Time to Compartmentalize

I've had this title languishing on my blog for weeks: "Obama: Buyer's Remorse...but..." and now "buyers remorse" is everywhere from Bill Maher to Joan Walsh to Miss Piggy. I waited too long to be the clever one. Oh well. In any case, they certainly popularized it way better than I could have so I have to go with something else. Here is my original thought anyway: As miserable and disappointed as I am with Obama's leadership, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time to put aside all expert opinions, brilliant psychological analyses, psychic prognostications, the gray hair count, the disgust, and, ok, the buyers remorse and Compartmentalize! Everyone who's ever been in therapy, or into actual survival, knows this much about compartmentalizing: "This process is performed in an attempt to simplify things, and to defend against anxiety." Get it? We are shifting gears, people. I am proposing ALL of us do this...put all those negative, pissed-off thoughts to bed in a corner of your hippocampus - you can trot them out after the 2012 election. In case you're wondering if I've gone off the reservation, no, I haven't. I'm an angry progressive...and a pragmatic one...just like Obama calculated.


Now, it is time to be our most dysfunctional selves and pretend like it's 2008. Well, almost. It's kind of like masturbating...just try your hardest to conjure the memories of the energy and adoration, the fantasy bubbles of hope and change, the hotness of the candidate himself, to fire you up and get out there to volunteer to re-elect Barack Obama President of the USA. "The American People" (you know who you are), we HAVE to get this done - to work work work to push back the vile Taliban Tea Party and servile, ass-kissing Republicans from ever getting near the White House. No matter what you think. That Republicans have an assortment of Marat-Sade escapees for candidates, DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED.


GOTV, "get out the vote" as it is popularly known among us volunteer cognoscenti, will be critical to winning this election. No issues, no polls (don't listen to them except maybe Nate Silver), no trash talk should deter us from #1: registering voters, and that means not only new voters, but people who have moved, been in prison, changed their names or political affiliation - they need to be registered or re-registered, as the case may be. Then, it's knock on doors time. There is nothing more meaningful than speaking to people in real life, and that's the GOTV part. No, Facebook is not "communicating" - you have to have your feet on terra firma and talk the talk and walk the blocks.


This is not a polemic about Barack Obama. Remember American People, we are compartmentalizing, we are focused. OMMMMMM. We are NOT, I repeat NOT, considering a Hillary, Barney, Russ, Andrew or anyone else to run against Obama. That is silly and non-productive. Get out your 2008 campaign gear, stare at your HOPE poster, pin on your iconic Shepard Fairey buttons and hook up with your local volunteer group to help get this campaign going. Do we have a choice? No. I mentioned this in a post 55 days into O's administration, that he would take us for granted because he already understood that he was the only game in town for liberals and progressives. No matter. History will deal with him. Of course, there's always the fantasy of him getting it right in his second term but that's jumping ahead. The game is ON. Now.


But wait! We have double duty this time. We MUST take back Congress. Dicks though they be, we must also work to re-elect incumbents and elect Democratic newbies. Yes, the system is rigged. Hold your nose and Just Do It.

Obama Reelection Campaign Off To A Smug Start

True to this blog's name, I will herewith give you my take on OFA's vainglorious kickoff reelection campaign event.

AS you may know, I am a proud progressive, beholden to no political party - a political atheist - and one who volunteered her ass off for Obama from the day he announced to the day he won the election. From the day of his inauguration - when he had Rick Warren give the invocation against all pleas from the LGBT community and signaled that he was already pandering to the right - til today, Obama has been a classic enigma wrapped in a mystery as one who seems so disdainful of the base that was critical to getting him elected - progressives. Why? I do not know. And now that attitude has seeped into OFA's approach to the reelection campaign. At least from my perch.

Resigned to making sure the Taliban Tea Party doesn't impose their crazy sharia-like dogma on us and have us all return our college degrees, I am picking myself up, brushing myself off and volunteering for O's reelection. As per an earlier post, very early, like 55 days after his inauguration, it became clear that Obama didn't feel he had to appease the left because there was no place else for us to go: http://bit.ly/fLj5m1. His calculation is correct but...

So, I went to the first OFA meeting for the reelection wanting to check in and see how they were going to play this, this time around. About 20 showed up...hey, it's early, very early...and the leader led off with a powerpoint of Obama's accomplishments called, Promises Kept (reeking of a subliminal way to reach out to the right, to Promise Keepers?) listed stuff under Rebuilding Our Economy, Historic Healthcare Reform, National Security, Education and Civil Rights. I wanted to blue pencil all of them. Glaringly missing Global Warming/Climate Change.

This was beginning to feel like a propaganda machine as our leader raised the pitch and tone of her rhetoric and picked up steam. She touted Obama's record and excoriated those who didn't buy it telling us that people she had encountered were "out of their minds" "not into reality" "living a fantasy" if they said "he hasn't done anything" or didn't agree with the party line. She was entirely dismissive of anyone who disagreed with "the list of accomplishments" "after all, he's only been in office for 18 months" and so on. Now is that any way to embrace the disaffected? I felt my very measured enthusiasm going pfffft like an overblown balloon.

So, then after being berated for being a progressive, another OFA guy gets up and, again, goes on about Promises Kept...are you getting the feeling this is an indoctrination rather than a welcoming? Anyway, he just sounded smug. But the kicker was the repeated refrain from both these OFAers that - and this was repeated so often it must have been a talking point and a tactic as a way to ameliorate the left - "he's not perfect, no one's perfect". What?! Do you really want to remind everyone that Obama is not perfect? This line definitely doesn't move the needle on my empathy meter. I can't believe they are going to continue with this. Someone call Jim Messina and run this by him.

But back to Obama's calculation that progressives have no place else to go, that they will show up at the polls and vote for him because the alternative is so frightening. Is that how you want to win, Mr. President? Because you're the only option? I thought you were president of ALL America. What happened to Progressive America? Diminished enthusiasm begets apathy, and if OFA is counting on everyone from the last election to jump on board, well, there's campaign fatigue, frustration with wimpy Democrats and disappointment with the administration to distract us so they're going to have to dangle some pretty delicious carrots to get us to volunteer - and vote - again. Oh, that I could believe my own fairy tale that Obama is reserving his fire for his second term when he'll get it done for all Americans...wooohooo, Mr. Red State/Blue State President...we're over here on the left!

“a woman walks into a bar…” at El Chubasco, Echo Park

“a woman walks into a bar…” at El Chubasco, Echo Park

Thank you, Donald Trump. And It Pains Me To Even Write His Name

The clear race baiting, the buffoonery of a reprehensible clown - I'm waiting for someone to rush up and mess up that cotton candy comb-over - has achieved one positive thing: he has single-handedly galvanized President Obama's base. There is no turning back. The only way to defeat this ugliness is to work for a gigantic landslide victory for Obama's second term. I've always believed he would be a two-term President, and for anyone who knows me, knows the limitations of my admiration of his policies - but, that said, this is not a policy issue. This is way bigger than that. This is about our humanity, the core of what separates us from...who? aliens? animals? Do animals discriminate on the basis of race? Fur? Leave it to the supposedly highest form of life, humans, to want to destroy one another for some incomprehensible ideal.

We cannot abide the open racism of the right, its fearless expression protected by politicians who validate that racism by not out-rightly repudiating it because they need those Taliban Tea Party votes, after-all, to support their whacked out agendas. 

What Trump has managed to achieve, that I'm not sure even David Axelrod and Jim Messina could do, is to have shocked the base to the point of re-energizing them to work hard for Obama's re-election. And that's no small feat given the discontent over a multitude of issues. Trump has trumped the inertia, the disappointment, the discontent with Obama's performance. There is only one issue we can agree on now and that's WINNING! (Thanks Charlie!)

The more the Right sustains its ill-disguised racism, the more the base will coalesce. It's a horrible reason to come together but come together we will. Winning will be the best revenge.

Tea Party Taliban Imposing Sharia-like Law

With the imminent shutdown of the government by the Teabaggers - make no mistake, they are the ones whose intractability is pushing this country to the brink - they are beginning to look a lot like a cult enacting their own type of Sharia law by imposing their repressive and regressive moral code onto all of us 'non-believers'. NO health screenings for women, NO sex education in school, NO abortion counseling or abortion funding NO matter how you got pregnant, NO arts funding, "Waste of money!", NO learning to read, write or 'rithmetic, "Cut education funding. Now!" It's the uneducated hating to learn anything because it might upset their vacuous core 'values'. And god forbid anyone else should read a book and find out that the Philistine Teabaggers are all full of shit. NO climate change. NO birth certificate. NO government. NONONONONO. 

So, the Tea Party is taking a page out of the Al Qaeda handbook. For al-Qaeda, Sharia represents a perfect system for ordering human affairs. And for the Taliban Tea Party, that is exactly how they want the system to be: no room for diversity of thought, a strict adherence to their commandments or punishment by slow asphyxiation of the mind by depriving one of books, classrooms and learning. They want a country devoid of creative thinking, going down the slippery slope to next banning hip hop, all languages but bad English, and just shooting immigrants on site.

Wikipedia calls the Tea party an American populist party and goes on to describe Populism, as a political philosophy urging social and political system change that favors "the people" over "the elites", or favors the common people over the rich and wealthy business owners. Read that, per the Tea Party, as deriding anything that can help “the people” like crushing collective bargaining (I wonder if they know about the Triangle Fire and other apocalyptic worker tragedies and child labor that would still be going on today if it weren’t for collective bargaining aka unions.) And read that as the Tea Party turning the other cheek with regard to obscene corporations, “the elites” (the Kochs), making out like Jesse James in Vegas. As usual, they have everything ass-backwards. 

Here’s their mission from their website: “A community committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country and the Constitution upon which we were founded!” Yes! With an exclamation mark 'n all! It’s like somebody in grade two wrote it. Or the Republican caucus. Meaningless drivel, and yet the political muscle of their miniscule minions is stupefying.