US Pets

Oprah‘s doing a show on puppy mills today that I can’t even stand to watch, and I’m not even a dog person.

There are reports around that many of the people who are victims of this subprime mortgage scam are having to give up pets because the rental places they’re moving to don’t allow pets. As we well know, having three cats, & from having numerous friends with pets who had to move, it can be difficult to find a place to live with them.

Volunteers here in Park Slope catch, neuter, and release feral cats. Others like BAFN foster, save, and check in on pets that have been left behind

So why is this the case? With all the people who are currently unemployed, why don’t we have a New Deal type program to take care of our nation’s animals and to change the laws that would keep landlords from barring pets? I can understand restrictions on how many pets, or how many pounds worth of pet (our three cats, for instance, don’t do nearly as much damage as one large dog could), or whatever. But we’re a nation that loves our animals, and yet you have horrors like animal abuse and puppy mills and the stupid decisions that separated people from their pets during the Katrina evacuations.

It seems there’s plenty of work to do, and improving conditions for our four-legged Americans might be a good place to start.

Twofer

Two reasons I want Obama to win the nomination:

  1. Students in the South Bronx are inspired by him
  2. He knows from LGBT issues (despite his political assessment of trans inclusion)

Still, I think he’s paying attention in ways other politicians don’t. & I’ll be honest, the degree of entitlement being expressed by the Clinton campaign – as if she is the only possible nominee – just pisses me off.

Stop the Democrats

(I thought that might get your attention!)

20 big Clinton donors tried to bully Nancy Pelosi for saying that superdelegates should let the voters decide who becomes the Democratic nominee. This is the worst kind of insider politics, and it has to stop.

Do we really want to elect people who think their money gets to call the presidency, or the guy who managed to raise more money from small donors than anyone ever has before? Hmm, let’s think about that. A lot of money from few sources, vs. a lot of money from many.

Let’s look up that definition of democracy again, shall we?

Sign the petition.

Get the Chinese to Talk

The Tibetans have been trying to open a dialogue with the Chinese for forever, but with the international pressure now on them because of a potential boycott of the Olympics if they don’t violently crackdown on Tibetans, there’s a new chance to get them to talk.

Sign the petition.

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

I was going to write a column about why, as a feminist, I’d rather be voting for Barack Obama and why, precisely, I’d rather not vote for Hillary Clinton, but one of my students beat me to it.

As smart as she is, however, Hillary is a seriously repugnant actress. Anyone who has sat through a community theater rendition of Shakespeare might know how I feel when I watch Hillary on TV. You are literally crawling out of your skin by the time intermission rolls around. Hillary is like Lady Macbeth and Ophelia rolled into one, and that, my friends, is a very unfortunate combination of ambition, madness, victimization, and desperation.

Do read the whole of the article, since it expresses so much of what feminists who don’t like Clinton don’t like about her.