muffy bolding

I loathe the man, but I gotta say…this picture made me HUGELY BELLY SMILE.

From yet another romantic, tempestuous American girl whose life you changed.

Fever 103

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern —-

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise —-
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) —-
To Paradise.

— Sylvia Plath

Andrew Sullivan, influential blogger, longtime Bush supporter, and Log Cabin Republican, soberly and eloquently pens the endorsement he “once never thought he’d write”:

Why I Am Supporting John Kerry

“Where’s OUR Oswald?”
— a t-shirt slogan recently spotted adorning the audacious chest of one Marshall Mathers (Eminem) during a national television interview

Anyone who reads this and is not terrified for the future of our country…is a fool.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Karl Rove: America’s Mullah

This election is about Rovism, and the outcome threatens to transform the U.S. into an ironfisted theocracy.
By Neal Gabler

Even now, after Sen. John F. Kerry handily won his three debates with President Bush and after most polls show a dead heat, his supporters seem downbeat. Why? They believe that Karl Rove, Bush’s top political operative, cannot be beaten. Rove the Impaler will do whatever it takes — anything — to make certain that Bush wins. This isn’t just typical Democratic pessimism. It has been the master narrative of the 2004 presidential campaign in the mainstream media. Attacks on Kerry come and go — flip-flopper, Swift boats, Massachusetts liberal — but one constant remains, Rove, and everyone takes it for granted that he knows how to game the system.

Rove, however, is more than a political sharpie with a bulging bag of dirty tricks. His campaign shenanigans — past and future — go to the heart of what this election is about.

Democrats will tell you it is a referendum on Bush’s incompetence or on his extremist right-wing agenda. Republicans will tell you it’s about conservatism versus liberalism or who can better protect us from terrorists. They are both wrong. This election is about Rovism — the insinuation of Rove’s electoral tactics into the conduct of the presidency and the fabric of the government. It’s not an overstatement to say that on Nov. 2, the fate of traditional American democracy will hang in the balance.

Rovism is not simply a function of Rove the political conniver sitting in the counsels of power and making decisions, though he does. No recent presidency has put policy in the service of politics as has Bush’s. Because tactics can change institutions, Rovism is much more. It is a philosophy and practice of governing that pervades the administration and even extends to the Republican-controlled Congress. As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of UC Berkeley, has said of Bush’s foreign policy, a subset of Rovism, it constitutes a fundamental change in “the fabric of constitutional government as we have known it in this country.”

Rovism begins, as one might suspect from the most merciless of political consiglieres, with Machiavelli’s rule of force: “A prince is respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy.” No administration since Warren Harding’s has rewarded its friends so lavishly, and none has been as willing to bully anyone who strays from its message.

There is no dissent in the Rove White House without reprisal.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki was retired after he disagreed with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s transformation of the Army and then testified that invading Iraq would require a U.S. deployment of 200,000 soldiers.

Chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster was threatened with termination if he revealed before the vote that the administration had seriously misrepresented the cost of its proposed prescription drug plan to get it through Congress.

Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was peremptorily fired for questioning the wisdom of the administration’s tax cuts, and former U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III felt compelled to recant his statement that there were insufficient troops in Iraq.

Even accounting for the strong-arm tactics of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, this isn’t government as we have known it. This is the Sopranos in the White House: “Cross us and you’re road kill.”

Naturally, the administration’s treatment of the opposition is worse. Rove’s mentor, political advisor Lee Atwater, has been quoted as saying: “What you do is rip the bark off liberals.” That’s how Bush has governed. There is a feeling, perhaps best expressed by Georgia Democratic Sen. Zell Miller’s keynote address at the Republican convention, that anyone who has the temerity to question the president is undermining the country. At times, Miller came close to calling Democrats traitors for putting up a presidential candidate.

This may be standard campaign rhetoric. But it’s one thing to excoriate your opponents in a campaign, and quite another to continue berating them after the votes are counted.

Rovism regards any form of compromise as weakness. Politics isn’t a bus we all board together, it’s a steamroller.

No recent administration has made less effort to reach across the aisle, and thanks to Rovism, the Republican majority in Congress often operates on a rule of exclusion. Republicans blocked Democrats from participating in the bill-drafting sessions on energy, prescription drugs and intelligence reform in the House. As Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) told the New Yorker, “They don’t consult with the nations of the world, and they don’t consult with Congress, especially the Democrats in Congress. They can do it all themselves.”

Bush entered office promising to be a “uniter, not a divider.” But Rovism is not about uniting. What Rove quickly grasped is that it’s easier and more efficacious to exploit the cultural and social divide than to look for common ground. No recent administration has as eagerly played wedge issues — gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, faith-based initiatives — to keep the nation roiling, in the pure Rovian belief that the president’s conservative supporters will always be angrier and more energized than his opponents. Division, then, is not a side effect of policy; in Rovism, it is the purpose of policy.

The lack of political compromise has its correlate in the administration’s stubborn insistence that it doesn’t have to compromise with facts. All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don’t mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all. Reality is what you say it is, which explains why Bush can claim that postwar Iraq is going swimmingly or that a so-so economy is soaring. As one administration official told reporter Ron Suskind, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors.”

When neither dissent nor facts are recognized as constraining forces, one is infallible, which is the sum and foundation of Rovism. Cleverly invoking the power of faith to protect itself from accusations of stubbornness and insularity, this administration entertains no doubt, no adjustment, no negotiation, no competing point of view. As such, it eschews the essence of the American political system: flexibility and compromise.

In Rovism, toughness is the only virtue. The mere appearance of change is intolerable, which is why Bush apparently can’t admit ever making a mistake. As Machiavelli put it, the prince must show that “his judgments are irrevocable.”

Rovism is certainly not without its appeal. As political theorist Sheldon Wolin once characterized Machiavellian government, it promises the “economy of politics.” Americans love toughness. They love swagger. In a world of complexity and uncertainty, especially after Sept. 11, they love the idea of a man who doesn’t need anyone else. They even love the sense of mission, regardless of its wisdom.

These values run deep in the American soul, and Rovism consciously taps them. But they are not democratic. Unwavering discipline, demonization of foes, disdain for reality and a personal sense of infallibility based on faith are the stuff of a theocracy — the president as pope or mullah and policy as religious warfare.

Boiled down, Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable self-righteousness — ironically the force the administration says it is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes.

Rovism surreptitiously and profoundly changes our form of government, a government that has been, since its founding by children of the Enlightenment, open, accommodating, moderate and generally reasonable.

All administrations try to work the system to their advantage, and some, like Nixon’s, attempt to circumvent the system altogether. Rove and Bush neither use nor circumvent, which would require keeping the system intact. They instead are reconfiguring the system in extra-constitutional, theocratic terms.

The idea of the United States as an ironfisted theocracy is terrifying, and it should give everyone pause. This time, it’s not about policy. This time, for the first time, it’s about the nature of American government.

We all have reason to be very, very afraid.

As far as I’m concerned, this guy oughta fucking be canonized:

Rent Fahrenheit 911 For Free

October 18, 2004

MICHAEL MOORE ANNOUNCES “FAHRENHEIT FOR FREE” OCTOBER 26

VIDEO STORES ACROSS THE NATION TO RENT CUSTOMERS “FAHRENHEIT 9/11” FREE OF CHARGE

While on his 60 city “Slacker Uprising Tour,” Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is joining forces with video store operators in an effort to get as many Americans as possible to see the film before the election. Video stores across the country will be waiving the usual rental fee for “Fahrenheit 9/11,” beginning on October 26. A recent Harris poll showed that 44 percent of Republicans who have seen the film gave it a positive rating. “It isn’t possible to view this film and come out saying you are voting George W. Bush,” stated Moore.

Moore is currently on a 60-city tour to the 20 battleground states to rally non-voters and slackers, America’s majority, to give voting a try, just this once. He’s offering clean underwear and Ramen noodles to slackers, which has Republicans in his home state of Michigan calling for his arrest.

Moore is appearing on college campuses, arenas, stadiums and field houses. Nearly all venues hold between 5,000 and 15,000 people, with students — historically the largest block of non-voters in presidential elections — admitted for free at most events.

Click link for participating Video Stores:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/fahrenheit911/free/index.php

How fucking ALL-talent is it that my mother-in-law — progressive jew and therapist — is traveling to New Mexico next week, on her own dime, to work the phone banks for the Democratic National Committee? She is also co-ordinating rides for elderly Dems who may otherwise not be able to make it to the polls.

It almost makes me want to like her.

Please believe me when I tell you that this Democrat will not go down without a serious fight this time around.

If the Republicans think they can steal this election the same way they did in 2000 — when the Democrats laid down, lubed up, put their faces in the pillow, and took it right in the ass without so much as a whimper or a clamper — they have another thing coming entirely.

You see, dummies — we are onto you this time.

If there is even the remotest question regarding the veracity of the results on November 2nd, I am fully prepared to follow in the footsteps of my subversive European ancestors (the violent, torch and pitchfork-wielding Sicilian filth that they were)…and take to the streets — and even to be arrested, if necessary.

I will not sit idly by and watch the Democratic process of our supposedly free nation die yet another gruesome death on the bidness end of a rusty Republican meathook…without my splintering, into a thousand steaming fecal pieces, the evil black hearts of those who would subdue me. George W. Bush, his pack of leering puppeteers, and the entire Supreme Court can kiss my fatass.

If those smug, dishonorable cocksuckers want a fight — they’ll get one. Like I’ve been saying for awhile…we, The People, are about due for a good ol’ fashioned revolution, anyway.

Bring it.

If you are able to make it, do come out and sing with the family.

I cannot even begin to tell you just how gottdamned excited I am to finally meet everyone.

I could just pee.

From the Soft Skull Press website:

Friday, November 5, 2004
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Mamaphonic Book Release Party at Jane’s Exchange in NYC!

Featuring Bee Lavender, Maia Rossini, Muffy Bolding, Laura Fokkena, Ayun Halliday, Lisa Peet, Victoria Law, and Katherine Arnoldi!

Jane’s Exchange
207 Avenue A (btwn 12th and 13th)
New York, NY 10009
212-674-6268

All are welcome to join the celebration and partake in cake and champagne!

Tapping into the universal drive to etch out immortality (in this case through art and children) Mamaphonic will appeal not only to mothers, but to anyone who has ever wanted to leave a mark on the world. Mamaphonic includes confessions and conversations about the true, exhilarating, entertaining, and difficult aspects of remaining creative while raising kids. It’s a smart, sexy, alternately funny and heartbreaking look at balancing art and motherhood, told in the artists’ own words. In a world where young mothers are discouraged, this is an incredible, empowering, and much needed source of inspiration.

Sunday, November 7, 2004
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Bee Lavender, Maia Rossini, and Muffy Bolding read from Mamaphonic at Atomic Books in Baltimore!

Atomic Books
1100 W 36th Street
Baltimore, MD 21211
410.662.4444
fax: 410.467.5686
http://www.atomicbooks.com

Monday, November 8, 2004
7:30pm

Bee Lavender, Maia Rossini, and Muffy Bolding read from Mamaphonic at the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop in D.C.!

Brian MacKenzie Infoshop
1426 9th St NW
Washington, DC 20001
202-986-0681

Tuesday, November 9, 2004
7:00pm

Bee Lavender and Ayun Halliday read from Mamaphonic at the KGB Non-Fiction Series in NYC!

FREE
KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Aves.)
New York, NY 10003-8904
6 to Bleecker or F/V to 2nd Ave
21+ over
212-505-3360
http://www.kgbbar.com

Wednesday, November 10, 2004
7:30pm

Bee Lavender, Maia Rossini, and Muffy Bolding read from Mamaphonic at the Barnes & Noble in Park Slope!

Barnes & Noble
267 7th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-832-9066

Thursday, November 11, 2004
7:30pm

Bee Lavender, Maia Rossini, and Muffy Bolding read from Mamaphonic in Greenwich, CT!

Just Books
11 E. Putnam Ave
Greenwich, CT 06830-5424
203-869-5023
http://www.justbooks.org

When you see this, post a poem.

Okay. You got it. And when I post a poem, I do not fuck around, my friends. I go straight to the top of the heap. Read it. Read it and weep.

Now excuse me while I smoke a cigarette…and daintily use my removed shoe as an ashtray.

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

— Anne Sexton