If you surf, it’s not a question of “if,” but “when.” When will you wipeout? Cuz you will. Even if you’re just playing around boogeyboarding in the whitewater. Then the question becomes, “How badly?”
I’ve had my share of wipeouts—on surfboards, bodyboards, and even an inner-tube. (I was 7 or 8 and the huge wave came out of nowhere and just creamed my brother and me!)
The wipeout I remember most, however, happened about six years ago. I was on my bodyboard and wasn’t even riding a wave, but was paddling out. First, though, a bit of physics.
Most waves on water—except the wakes of boats and ships, tidal bores, and tsunamis—are wind-generated. With waves, it’s not just size that determines strength, but shape. And shape is determined by the force and consistency of the wind that generates the waves, the size of the body of water over which the wave travels, and the bottom topography and depth on shore where the wave breaks.
The best waves for surfing result from strong winds—like those generated by hurricanes—blowing over a large body of water, that then travel far enough in one direction to “even the kinks out,” becoming long, regularly spaced lines of energy traveling through the ocean before they break on a distant shore. This sort of swell is instantly recognisable to a practised surfer.
Which brings up another basic fact: did you know that a wave is energy moving through water? I know that may sound obvious, but what I want to point out is that water molecules themselves do not move through the water with a wave, only the energy does. The water molecules move up and down as the wave passes and sometimes in a circle perpendicular to the direction the wave is traveling through the water. But they do not advance with the wave—well, until the wave reaches land, encounters drag, and eventually breaks. At sea, in deep water, only the energy moves through the ocean.
A wave that reaches shore and crumbles over from the top, like this:
Will have little power, even if it’s several times bigger than the one in this photo.
Whereas, a sucking wave like this, that slams over hollowly from the lip:
Will be powerful, even if small. Waves like these are usually generated by storm systems, far away from where the wave actually breaks.
My hero, body-boarder Mike Stewart, who I’ve mentioned numerous times in previous surf blogging, once surfed waves from the same huge storm in various breaks across the globe. If I remember correctly, he tracked the storm at its inception, flew first to Tahiti, then to Hawaii, then to California and finally to Alaska. At each beach, he was surfing waves that had been generated by the same, single storm. He was quoted as saying that there was a certain character to the swell that was consistent and recognisable at each location.
On the day of my bad wipeout, waves at La Jolla Shores where I was surfing—a sandy-bottom beach break— were probably 4 to 5 foot and were generated by a hurricane off the coast of Mexico. That’s not that big, but they were hollow, thick lipped, fast-moving fiends, slamming over with tremendous force in shallow water. As I was paddling out after catching a small wave, I got caught inside on a set—every so often, three or four larger waves, or “set waves,” show up among the smaller waves—which meant that no matter how hard I paddled and kicked, I couldn’t make it over the first wave before it broke. Even worse, my mad paddling had placed me right in the “impact zone,” where the wave’s force is concentrated as it breaks, and I was out of breath from paddling hard. Knowing that what was coming would be bad, I duck-dove as deeply as I could then wrapped my arms around my bodyboard. Being buoyant, I knew I’d eventually bob to the surface this way, for in a bad wipeout, when you get tumbled and held down, you don’t always know which way is up.
The wave slammed down on me, tumbled me end over end like an insane washing machine, and next thing I knew I was on my back being literally dragged along the bottom with my buoyant bodyboard pressing down on top of me. It felt like a huge fist was pushing me and the board into the sand as it dragged us and held us down. I tried not to panic and just go with it, but then I started to run out of air.
Just short of panicking, I struggled to put one foot on the bottom—at least it was clear which way was up—and kicked off as hard as I could. I fought my way to the surface, breaking through just before I was going to suck in water, and discovered (1) that one fin was ripped off and dragging my leg down on the end of its fin-leash, and (2) the next set wave was just about to break right on me. I sucked in a breath of air and tried to dive for the bottom.
The second wave tumbled, dragged and held me down, though not nearly as bad as the first. But I was weaker and by the time I surfaced for the second time, my whole body was shaking, my heart was pounding, I was starved for air. My muscles felt like jelly. The good news was, I was much nearer to shore. When the third wave broke, sending a wall of whitewater toward me, I turned and pointed myself toward the beach, wrapped myself around my board and held on for dear life.
The white water rocketed me into the beach and I basically crawled up on the sand and sat there, my trembling slowly easing, for 10 or 15 minutes. Experienced surfer that I was, I was still pretty shook up. Then I forced myself to paddle out again, and catch a few waves. I was scared that if I didn’t, I might never paddle out again.
And that was a 4 to 5 foot wave. The waves in the picture above and footage below, needless to say, are many times bigger. The photo above is of three-time Mavericks champion, Darryl “Flea” Virostko, going over the falls on a 40-foot bone-cruncher in Waimea Bay, HI, in December, 2004.
The location in the video below is Mavericks—the legendary reef break just north of Half Moon Bay, about 25 minutes drive south of San Francisco. When I lived in and surfed the Bay Area in the late 80’s, I heard rumors of huge waves just off Half Moon Bay but I thought the reports were exaggerated.
You’ll notice in the video, that many of the wipeouts result from something I mentioned in a previous “Saturday Surf Blogging” entry: the waves are simply too big to paddle into. The surfers would have been fine had they been towed in. But the storm energy is moving through the water too quickly, the surfers can’t paddle fast enough, they have to catch the wave at the critical last moment as it breaks, when everything happens too damned fast. Even the superb, highly skilled athletes they are, they can’t stand up and do everything they need to fast enough to make the drop.
Mavericks history is all pretty recent. Until around 1990, only one person was surfing Mavericks—local Jeff Clark, who first paddled out there in 1975, then surfed the break alone for the next 15 years. Most people, professionals, big-wave riders, and casual surfers alike, simply couldn’t believe that rideable waves that big routinely and predictably broke in Northern California.
Under the right conditions, 25 – 50 foot waves feet break over Mavericks’ rock reef. In 1990, a photo published in Surfer magazine broke through the world’s denial, triggering the arrival of crowds of big-wave riders, many from Hawaii.
Mavericks is a dangerous break. The waves come in off deep water and are funneled by the rocky topography of the bottom, concentrating the size and power into the impact zone. Moreover, the water is cold, requiring thick wetsuits which restrict body movement. —something warm-water surfers are often unused to. Then there’s just something about cold water: it feels “harder,” when you hit the surface. It’s “unfriendly.” Warm water, by comparison, can feel like a caress.
Disaster struck Mavericks in December of 1994. Hawaiian professional big wave rider Mark Foo wiped out during take-off on an 18 foot wave. No one thought much of it in the moment: the wipeout seemed innocuous, especially for such an experienced surfer. But Foo never surfaced. People began searching for him and his body was eventually found a few hours later, floating just beneath the surface.
In retrospect, trying to figure out what had happened, some people speculated that Foo was over confident and had underestimated the strength of the Northern California surf, along with the deleterious effects of cold water and restrictive wetsuits. But, of course, no one will really ever know.
The ocean must be respected, regardless of the size of waves. That’s something every smart surfer remembers.
Finally! At long last, someone has had the ingenious idea—and the courage to realize it—of bringing religion to teh internetz!
Bless you, Kirk Cameron. Bless you.
And bitch works fast, because a Google search of "religion" already brings up 238,000,000 hits!
President Bush will return to the Gulf Coast next week, where hard times and resentment linger two years after Hurricane Katrina's massive strike. … On Wednesday, the anniversary of the storm, he is expected to examine recovery efforts in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.Of course it didn't.
…Bush's trip will be his 15th stop in the region since the hurricane, but only his second since he visited during the one-year anniversary last August. The Gulf Coast's plight did not even get a mention in his State of the Union address this year.
In New Orleans today, despite progress, signs of a shattered city abound. Neighborhoods are in ruins. Crime, inadequate health care and faulty infrastructure are pervasive.It's good to be king.
…Meanwhile, Bush is nearing the end of a vacation at his ranch in central Texas, where's he been biking and clearing brush in the searing heat. He arrived in Crawford on Wednesday afternoon and has no public events scheduled through Sunday.
Here are the last of my reviews from the Stratford Festival of Canada: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde and The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare... who as far as I can tell, did not have a sister, nor was he one.
The Comedy of Errors - by Mel Brooks
The only thing missing from Stratford's production of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors was somebody saying, "Walk this way," and then exiting Stage Left with a limp or a hitch and everybody following along. Other than that, they went for the full-tilt broad farce that this play really needs and pretty much hit all the marks, if not the Marx Brothers.
The plot is a simple one that gets complex when it's described: two sets of identical twins who don't know about their own counterparts get confused by people and end up being accused of doing things they did or didn't do until at the very end they figure it out and all is set right. Got that? Okay, that's all you need, and let the madness begin. There's lots of opportunities for stock characters, split-second timing, planned ad-libs, inside-Stratford jokes (I didn't get the one about the penguin), and a lot of running gags -- literally. There can't be a moment's pause or it will all seem woefully absurd, so you just keep going on frantically, keep the jokes and the slapstick coming, and the two hours -- the shortest Shakespeare play on record -- go by in a flash. And a bang.
The Stratford production is lavish in bright colors and commedia del arte overtones, and it works very well. The setting -- first century A.D. Greece -- was perhaps the convention because of the original story being from that time, but it was also an unconscious reminder of History of the World, Part I, and it worked as well as the Brooksian effort, except, perhaps with a nod to knowing the age and temperament to the Midwestern audience, without the profanity. The jokes worked and the actors playing the twins looked enough alike that it was easy to accept the mistaken identities premise. The two Dromios -- Bruce Dow and Steve Ross -- could have been twins. The actors playing the Antipholuses not so much; David Snelgrove as Antipholus of Syracuse looked like he was in his twenties, while it would be a generous stretch to say that Tom McCamus was the same age. In a farce, the audience has to be in on the joke that the rest of the cast isn't, so the important thing is not whether or not we the audience believe they can be mistaken for each other; it's whether or not the other characters believe it for it to work. (And I can't help but think there was a subconscious influence on me when I created the characters of Donny and Danny and Eric and Greg in Small Town Boys, but that's another post.)
The first time I saw The Comedy of Errors at Stratford was in 1981 when the director set it in the Old West and used the model of the Maverick brothers for the Antipholus characters and Gabby Hayes as the model for the Dromios. That memorable production set the standard, but this production rose to it, and while I don't really know why they had a six-foot penguin with the sign "Just For the Critics" waddle across the stage, it was still a riot.
PS: Last night as we were leaving the restaurant to go to the theatre, we came upon Graham Greene sitting on a bench enjoying an after-dinner cigarette. I complimented him on his portrayal of Shylock and we chatted about the play and his approach to the character. That's one of the other nice things about doing theatre in a small town; the cast, crew, and audience all mingle together, the known and the unknown. (In 1981 I sat behind Lauren Bacall at a production of Richard III starring Brian Bedford.) It's not unlike the experience at the William Inge Festival in Independence, Kansas; truly "community theatre."
An Ideal Husband: Something Wilde
Who am I to argue with Richard Monette, the artistic director of the Stratford Festival? From the program notes for the Stratford production of An Ideal Husband:From the time of [Richard Brinsley] Sheridan -- about a hundred years before -- until Wilde, there isn't a single play we produce now. During that hundred years, more people went to the theatre than ever before, but the plays were mediocre. So the works of Oscar Wilde represent a renewal of excellence in English dramatic literature.
If we take Mr. Monette at his word, if it wasn't for Oscar Wilde, the idea of witty, well-written, and socially important English drama may never have been revived, and without his influence, writers such as George Bernard Shaw and those who followed here in North America would never have evolved. It's awfully hard to imagine what writers such as George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart and even Neil Simon would have written had it not been for the influence of Oscar Wilde.
That's a pretty bold statement, but when you look at a play such as An Ideal Husband or Man and Superman or even The Importance of Being Earnest, it's hard to argue with it. Combining a satirical look at turn-of-the-20th-century London society and the timeless battle of wits between the sexes, Wilde was able to get audiences to laugh at themselves and their social manners then, and still a hundred years later, get us to do the same.
The plot of An Ideal Husband is pretty straightforward: Sir Robert Chiltern, a member of Parliament who is seen as a man of untarnished virtue, is the victim of blackmail for something he did years before. He coaxes his friend, Lord Arthur Goring, a profligate and playboy, into helping him get out of the jam and keep his wife unaware of the situation. It has all the makings of a door-slamming farce, yet it devotes more time to actually exploring the characters and their situation rather than just have people running around mistaking people for other people or hiding in other rooms. (Fear not; there's a fair share of that going on.) All the while we are treated to a virtual avalanche of Wilde's patented witticisms and epigrams: "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." In the end the plot is undone, the blackmailer is defeated, Sir Robert and his wife are reconciled, and Lord Arthur is engaged to be married. All's well that ends well, you know.
What lies beneath, though, is Wilde's insurgent campaign as a feminist and a socialist. His women are always portrayed as equals in terms of character and wit, often out-showing the men in terms of sense and awareness of what they are capable of accomplishing. The fact that the "villain," so to speak, in this play is a woman isn't a slight against her or her sex; it's an affirmation that women are fully capable of being just as conniving as a man and on their own terms. It's clear that even in a farce such as The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde gives his women the full stage to make their case as equals, much to the befuddlement of the "superior" men. That he also uses the conventions of love and marriage isn't so much a nod to the social convention of the times but rather just another arrow in the arsenal to prove that women can get what they want, and if that is happiness in marriage, then it isn't subjugation at all. His influence on other playwrights is also clear: Shaw, for instance with Man and Superman, Saint Joan, and Major Barbara, imbues his women with equal status and strength, often to the awe and shocked admiration of the men.
The second element of this play is the use of politics and corruption as the plot device that drives the story forward. Intrigues about bribery and influence-peddling are just as interesting now as they were then. It's not hard to imagine this play being staged with contemporary names like Jack Abramoff and Randy "Duke" Cunningham in the cast, but certainly neither of them were as classy as Wilde's characters. But it does make the story as true today as it was then.
The Stratford production is a perfect combination of wit, grace, elegance, and dry humor. David Snelgrove as Lord Goring really gets the part of the Wilde dandy; self-aware and even self-mocking. Tom McCamus as Sir Robert plays the part of the wronged politician with the remorse and frustration that allows you to care for him and make you happy to see him rescued from his dilemma. The women are given their full dimension as well by Brigit Wilson as Sir Robert's wife and Dixie Seatle as the blackmailing Mrs. Cheveley. Thankfully the production itself is done in full Victorian glory with set pieces and costumes that reflect the time and place and help the actors portray so well the era that Mr. Wilde satirized so well, knowing that if you're going to make fun of something, you have to give it its due in all its original glory.
Here endeth the dramaturgy. Back to my regular posting of drivel when I get back to work.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
TFIF, Shakers!
Murray's behind the bar;
Mel's taking drink orders.
Bret and Jemaine will be
providing the entertainment.
Belly up to the bar and
name your poison, friends.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday raised the prospect of a terror attack before next year's election, warning that it could boost the GOP's efforts to hold on to the White House.Matt Yglesias calls the remarks a disaster, suggesting instead that "the Democrat best positioned to deal with GOP political mobilization in a post-attack environment is going to be the one who isn't reflexively inclined to see failed Republican policies resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans as a political advantage for the Republicans." Josh Marshall agrees, noting that such a contention "signals a lack of confidence either in your own policies or the American people's reasoning powers. And quite possibly both."
…"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord.
"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that," she added.
The third possibility is that it signals a deep distrust of the media to do its fucking job, instead of just grabbing hold of the nearest easy narrative irrespective of its veracity. Hillary's been repeatedly victimized by precisely that sort of lazy meme-spinning for the last fifteen years; I can imagine she might be a wee bit jaded and—regardless of her confidence in her own policies and the American people's reasoning powers—figure that the de facto narrative that the GOP "owns" the war on terror will prevail.
That said, she should also know better than to feed those narratives with statements like this one. It doesn't exactly give the media reason to go looking for a new, custom-tailored design when everyone on both sides seems happy with the one-size-fit-all version they've got in the closet, waiting to be worn again. And again. And again…
...I have been watching this video over and over and just laughing my fool head off.
Every time he slooooowly leans back, then collapses to the side in a heap of giggles, I just absolutely end myself. And by the time he does the preemptive giggling at the end of the video, I am weeping with joy.
One night not long ago, Mr. Shakes and I got into the silliest mood where we were both laughing like this, and we kept setting each other off over and over and over. We were totally weak with laughter, gasping for air, and it just went on and on until the tears rolled down both our cheeks over the slightest thing. Just the sound of the other even starting to laugh would send us into gales of howling laughter all over again.
Uncontrollable laughter is truly one of my favorite experiences in the whole world. And it doesn't cost a dime.
Ms. Ditto gets her kit off at The Carling
Weekend Festival earlier today.
Beth Ditto brands Bush a fascist:
She told The Advocate: "George Bush is absolutely a fascist piece of shit. As a radical queer, there's never anybody I can 100% trust in politics. It's a fucking joke to even call it a debate with the idea that we (haven't yet treated) human beings like they are on the same par with everyone else, from homos to immigrants. It's two-thousand-fucking-seven, get with the program, you know?"Ditto. Heh.
It would all be so much easier.
It would be easier to believe we were always being told the truth by our leaders.
It would be easier if the free market would cure our ills.
It would be easier to believe our leaders really cared about democracy. Or freedom. Or the troops.
It would be easier to believe there were real leaders in Congress who'd fight for us.
It would be easier to believe the U.S. was always on the side of good.
It would be easier to just sit back and hope the U.S. doesn't attack Iran.
It would be easier if more joined the fight, or at least were willing to get involved.
It would all just be so much easier.
But being Progressive means never taking the easy way.
--WKW
[I'm moving this up to the top for a bit, because there are notable updates I didn't want anyone to miss.—Liss]
I explain just how boneheaded the Quebec police were this week.
Rick Salutin sees the SPP as a done deal.
Naomi Klein argues that what the SPP summit shows us is that surveillance is the new democracy. This is what I would call a must-read column, because it shows how NAFTA is being merged with things like the Patriot Act in a way that will affect everyone on the continent for the foreseeable future.
Update: And skdadl has a great overview of "the corporatist race to the bottom."
Second Update: The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) covers the story of the undercover cops:
GOP Activists Found Dead in Florida Double Murder-Suicide
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Friday, August 24, 2007A Republican political consultant and two other men were found dead in a home in an apparent double-murder and suicide, authorities and relatives said. Authorities have not determined a motive for the deaths of Ralph Gonzalez, 39, his roommate, David Abrami, 36, and a friend, Robert Drake, 30.Yikes.
Investigators found weapons and signs of a struggle in the house, but they did not say what the weapons were or which man they believe was the killer. The men are believed to have died several days before the bodies were discovered Thursday.
Gonzales served as director of the Georgia Republican Party from 2001-2002 and managed Representative Tom "Total Crook" Feeney's 2002 campaign. He was also "president of Strategum Group, an Orlando-based political consulting firm that represents Republican candidates."
Abrami was also a Republican activist, who, among other things, was investigated by the Secret Service in 1992 when he organized a turkey shoot using blown-up pictures of then-president Bill Clinton as targets.
No info on Drake. At least one story posits, however, that he was the shooter, which is unconfirmed.
Early AP reports called the incident a lovers' quarrel, but that language has been removed from later dispatches.
[Thanks to Blogenfreude for the heads up.]
So Juan Cole is reporting that Nouri al Maliki's days are numbered in Iraq:
"There is serious talk of a military commission (majlis `askari) to take over the government. The parties would be banned from holding positions, and all the ministers would be technocrats, so to speak. . . [The writer indicates that attempts have been made to recruit cabinet members from the ranks of expatriate technocrats.]Wow. Daring plan. And only one problem that I see: absolutely nobody will buy it for a second.
"The six-member board or commission would be composed on non-political former military personnel who are presently not part of the government OR the military establishment, such as it is in Iraq at the moment. It is said that the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes."
We'll lay aside the complete irony of the fact that we'd be reaching a place where we had invaded Iraq to get the nonexistent WMD's, and then replaced a military dictatorship with a junta. No, the problem is just what I said in the last sentence: we would be doing this.
There is, quite simply, no way that Maliki is removed in a coup without American support. The potemkin Iraqi army is not a potent force. It owes its continued existence to American backing. If America reacts negatively to a coup, then Maliki is quickly swept back into office.
If he is not, we will know who really precipitated the coup d'etat: the United States of America.
We are in a lose/lose situation. Oh, it would be better for American interests if some strongman had control of Iraq, keeping it together in order to blunt Iranian and Syrian aims at regional hegemony. But we sort of had that, and invaded in order to rid the world of that horrible threat. We can't unring a bell, we can't uninvade Iraq, and we can't un-depose Saddam. If Maliki can't succeed, then we maybe, just maybe, will need to give up on our grand Mesopotamian adventure. But if our best move is to depose the government we've so warmly claimed to support, then what the hell is the point?
No one wants to get involved:
A 25-year-old man was charged Thursday for allegedly raping and beating a woman in an apartment hallway -- an incident apparently witnessed by as many as 10 people who did nothing.Eventually, police showed up after responding to a call about "drunken behavior" in the apartment hallway, where they found the alleged rapist Rage Ibrahim (appropriate name) and the woman both lying unconscious, she with her clothing pulled up and bearing "fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh."
When the police reviewed surveillance video from the hallway, they saw that the assault started about 1:20am, but the call about the "drunken behavior" didn't come in until nearly an hour and a half later—even though the video also shows five to 10 people peering our their doors or "starting to walk down the hallway before retreating" during the assault. Police spokesman Tom Walsh said: "It shows one person looking out of her door probably three times. It shows another person walking up, observing what's going on, then turning and putting up the hood of his sweatshirt."
The 26-year-old victim knocked on a door at one point, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he didn't open the door or look out, but said he did call police -- although they have no record of his call, according to court documents.Nonetheless, and despite Minnesota's Good Samaritan law which ostensibly compels people to provide reasonable help to a person in danger of "grave physical harm," and makes it a petty misdemeanor if they don't, none of the neighbors are likely to be charged—because "authorities would have to show that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger," and what sensible adult could be expected to conclude that a woman beaten until she was bleeding, screaming for help, and being raped was in danger of "grave physical harm," right?
…Walsh said police were upset by the behavior of the bystanders. "It's not what we expect of responsible citizens," he said.
"If you're not comfortable, if you don't feel capable of intervening, that's fine," Walsh said. "But not calling is not understandable."
Anyway, the AP is quick to inform us, she'd been drinking. Plus, the alleged rapist makes a good point.
[The complaint] said the woman was visiting the apartment of a friend, where she met Ibrahim; after drinking for several hours, she told police Ibrahim tried to stop her from leaving, and began to assault her.Yeah, I mean, why rape her out in the hallway where there might have been witnesses? They might do absolutely nothing!
Ibrahim denied to police that he tried to rape the woman, saying if he wanted to do so he would have done it in the apartment, according to the complaint.
Ibrahim also explained: "I've got a mom, I've got a sister. I wouldn't rape anyone." Right, I forgot how rapists don't have mothers.
You know, I actually hope this story's wrong. I quite genuinely want to believe that a record of that call will be found, or, I don't know, something. Except I don't hold out much hope for it. I've been shocked on far too many occasions in my life by the callous disregard for human life, including lives right in front of our noses.* I've seen people literally step over a body stretched lengthwise across the sidewalk on Chicago's Michigan Avenue during evening rush hour—dozens of people, walking around or right over the prostrate figure of a homeless man, on their hurried way home. I stopped to see if he was okay, if he needed medical attention, if he was alive, and people stopped not to help, but to look at me with utter disgust, before walking on. And just recently, a man had a stroke and fell and cracked his head open on the train platform in front of Mr. Shakes during morning rush hour. He was the only one who stopped to help this elderly man, staying with him and trying to care for him and making sure he was breathing, alive, until the paramedics arrived.
That's why the whole "not my problem" posture doesn't work for me. Because if I don't make it my problem when someone else needs help, maybe no one else will. Everyone seems to presume that someone else will help, surely there are plenty of Good Samaritans in the world, it's not like everyone will do nothing, someone else will do the Right Thing—but on what, precisely, is that presumption based? If you can find an excuse to not get involved, what makes you think everyone else can't do the same? Is it the one person—the girl crouched over the homeless man on the sidewalk, the guy cradling the bleeding man on the train platform—that one person you always seem to see that reassures you there's always someone else, that it never has to be you?
On another occasion, I was on the el, when a man sitting across from me—I can still picture him in his clean Bulls jumpsuit and dingy gray coat fifteen years later—pulled out his penis and started masturbating and leaning toward me. When I stood up to get off the train, he grabbed me, still masturbating with the other hand, grunting and panting, and I had to wrestle free of his grip to get off the train. There were at least a dozen other people on that train, mostly men, and not a single one of them stood to help me or said a word, even as I struggled and yelled. Evidently, I was the only one on the train who would have been willing to "get involved" to at least try to protect someone from the assault, but I was the one being assaulted. Bad luck.
But I guess that's my problem.
------------------
* I've been shocked on occasions by some rather astonishingly brave and wonderful things, too, but I would be lying if I said they were not decidedly more rare.
No, this is not another theatre review, but after seeing The Merchant of Venice and hearing the speech about the quality of mercy, I was reminded of a post that I wrote last year after President Bush signed another of his brow-beaten-into-law laws that is supposed to fight the GWOT but merely drags down the Constitution. Here it is again; it's just as true now as last October.
President Bush signed a law that creates a parallel legal system for military detainees. It eliminates the right of habeas corpus for non-citizens, removes many of the basic rules of evidence for these defendants, and gives the president the right to basically declare anyone he wants as an "enemy combatant." Anyone.
I've heard all the excuses: we're at war, the terrorists have lost all their rights to humane treatment, do unto them before they do unto us, and so on and so forth. I guess we could come up with any rationalization that fits into a soundbite or campaign commercial, but when you get right down to it, it's all just an excuse to exact revenge and respond in a visceral way to barbarism.
I freely admit that my knowledge of the law is based primarily on what I've picked up from television and Shakespeare, so I can't claim any greater insight to it than any other person who hasn't been to law school. But even a cursory examination of the foundation of the laws of this country and of Western civilization teaches us that we have a system that is dedicated to justice, not revenge. Justice means that we do not respond to a horrible crime by committing the same level of horror in response. We have matured from the level of exacting punishment as described in the Old Testament of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," because if we had not, we'd be a nation of blind people gumming our Cream of Wheat.
I've heard a lot of people -- especially those on the right who claim to stand for law'n'order -- say that "terrorists don't deserve the same rights I have." Aside from the fact that rights aren't something you "deserve," under the new law it's all too easy to define what a "terrorist" is. The president may decide that terrorism isn't just confined to taking up arms against the United States or trying to pack C-4 into your Reeboks; he could decide that snarky bloggers or anti-war Quakers in Broward County fall into that category. Pshaw, you say; the president would never go that far. Well, excuse my cynicism, but a president who has already shown contempt for the laws already on the books and who uses his violation of the laws as his justification for asking for new laws to give him the power to do just that has already shown a willingness to define what terrorism is without any acknowledgement of the constraints of Constitutional law.
The counterattack from the right wing is the same predictable cant: you lefties are soft on terrorism and you care more about the rights of criminals than you do about the rights of citizens. The first claim is bogus and not worth repudiating, but the second one is truly the heart of the matter. The concept that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty gets a lot of lip service, but in our current climate it's become an endangered species. But it's the heart of our system of justice, and no one is considered guilty of a crime until a jury has rendered a verdict. Up to that moment, the accused is entitled to every right available to him under the law. If we shortchange that, what's the point of having a justice system at all? Why not just shoot them in the head as soon as you catch them? It certainly would reduce the caseload on the courts. (That's another lame excuse for eliminating habeas corpus; the courts would be clogged. Lack of prior planning is no reason to deny a defendant his rights.)
I don't know what they teach in law school, but I believe that one of the basic tenets of our justice system is a quality that is not written in Blackstone or the US Criminal Code. Our laws may be the foundation of our civil society, but it is our humanity -- our capacity and desire to show mercy even for the worst among us -- that gives it our soul. As Shakespeare notes,The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It is not weakness to administer equal justice; it is what separates the noble experiment and idea of America from every other system of government, and it is one of the primary reasons this nation was founded in the first place. Terrorists don't win when they are granted the same rights as other defendants, and equal protection under the law shouldn't be conditioned on the accident of birth within or without the borders of the United States; a person before the bar is still a human being no matter what country issued his passport. If anything, it is a sign of weakness and desperation to stack the deck against a defendant; it's conceding that we have no faith in the justice system and must exact our revenge in a way that brings us down to the same level as the criminal.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
So, yesterday, Republican Senator John Warner threw himself a press conference. Having spent four whole days in and around Iraq, he was ready to make some "recommendations" to the president. And, wow, it was quite spectacular:
It seems to me the time has come to put some meaningful teeth into those comments, to back them up with some clear, decisive action to show that we mean business when those statements and others like it have been made.Damn, bitch gone crazy!! Five thousand whole troops by Christmas—without a timetable, making it a totally pointless, symbolic gesture?! Slow down there, Warner—you could give yourself a heart attack with such radical recommendations!
And so, therefore, I make a recommendation to the president. … I say to the president, respectfully, pick what ever number you wish. You do not want to lose the momentum, but certainly in 160,000- plus, say, 5,000 could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year.
…He need not lay out a totality of a timetable. I would advise against it.
…That simple announcement of a single redeployment of some several thousand individuals under the military tradition — first-come, first-served in Iraq, first to depart — you’ve got to be careful how those selections — they can pick them from various units; put together a group and send them back. Then evaluate, re-evaluate how successful it has been. Then perhaps, at the president’s discretion, select a second date and time for a contingent to be redeployed.
Petulant has video of this ridiculous stunt, and some great commentary in a full-blown rant of Petulant proportions: "If this is showing teeth, someone get my dentures off the nightstand. … This entire press conference is nothing more than a floorshow for Warner to gum the president and don his motorcycle jacket and proclaim, I am a Rebel with a Cause."
Steve Benen notes the recommendation for a 3% troop reduction is "pretty weak tea. …[U]nless Warner is planning to challenge Bush directly, and bring some of his Senate friends with him, all of this comes across as 'Pretty please, Mr. President, we’d really love it if you adopted a sensible policy. But don’t worry, we won’t force you'." Yeah.
Meanwhile, Digby (also confirming the patent bullshittery and utter toothlessness of Warner's "respectful recommendation") highlights the media's dutiful determination to lap up Warner's pile of poop and declare it haute cuisine: "The press is portraying this as a 'tectonic shift,' which is what they've been saying about Warner's every utterance for the last three years. It's ridiculous. I don't know if the Great God Petraeus will say that the surge is working so well that we can redeploy 5,000 troops, but I wouldn't be surprised, would you? (Particularly since it's highly likely that 5,000 troops are scheduled to be redeployed anyway.)"
This is just sad. All of this ridiculous posturing, contingent on the ludicrous idea that "the surge is working," while, back in reality:
The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.Superb.
Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show.
…“There is no way we would go back,” said [Aswaidi, 26, a Sunni Arab who was driven out of her Baghdad neighborhood by Shiite snipers]. “It is a city of ghosts. The only people left there are terrorists.”
Remember how it looked as if the police had planted agents among the protesters at the anti-SPP summit in Quebec?
Well, guess what?
Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.They claim, however, that they were not there to start any trouble. So I guess the masks, anarchist outfits, and rocks were just a fashion statement.
H/t to Dave at the Galloping Beaver.
I know nobody here needs convincing that the free market doesn't provide the best medical care for all. But it's not just the care part that struggles. The real heart of medicine is cures and, best of all, preventing disease altogether. Profit-driven drug delivery actually hampers finding the best solutions.
I'd say the most insidious effect is how research gets shunted away from the really good stuff. That takes away benefits in the future, and we don't even know what we're missing. It could be the cure for cancer or a vaccine against the common cold. Maybe it's something that makes childbirth feel like orgasm. (Hey, contractions are contractions. It's an interesting question why there's such a big difference in felt sensations.) The point is we don't even know.
And don't even get me started on what's painfully obvious: the fact that prevention can never be a priority in a profit-driven system. Prevention can never be expensive because the customers aren't desperate. It's that simple. And because it has to be cheap, the profit margins can never be large. Besides, if it totally works--one vaccination or one pill and you're done--there isn't even any repeat business. Benefit to the consumer: priceless. Benefit to the drug company: pennies. Result: prevention is boring.
There are solutions, no question about that, but they can't come from the "market." They're the same as for any endeavor with huge social benefits that doesn't pay off for any single individual: regulation and government action. That doesn't always have to be expensive. Imagine, among many other necessary changes, a law which applied to federally funded scientists, i.e. practically all of them. If they had useful prevention-related results (not just "research"), they had to be given priority in hiring. That would focus people's minds.
Okay. Back to the new technologies we're missing because the opportunities for profit aren't too good. There's a common thread that runs through several of them.
One of the dominant themes in biology is infinite diversity in infinite combination. (You thought they just made the Vulcans up, didn't you?) That means that the most effective cures are tailored to specific patients, specific bacteria, specific tumors, to a very narrowly focused situation.
There's not a lot of money in narrowly focused situations. If you're Merck, you want to sell your drug to millions, better yet billions, not just fifteen people in Poughkeepsie. And, in fairness, it has to be said that the process for getting regulatory approval for a drug takes around seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Unless there's some way to spread that cost around, you can't even blame companies for not working hard at drugs that serve a small number of people.
Consider phages, a treatment that's not all that new, that's never gone much of anywhere because it's individualized. Say what? you're probably thinking. Never heard of 'em. They've been around as a treatment for bacterial diseases since the 1930s, before penicillin. Phages is short for bacteriophages, which are viruses that attack bacteria. Of course, this being biology, specific viruses attack specific bacteria.
So, in order to find a phage treatment for strep throat, for instance, you have to find the specific bacteriophages that attack the strains of bacteria causing the disease. No silver bullets here. But when you do find the right bullet, it wipes out the disease with zero side effects of any kind. And there is no way for bacteria to develop overall resistance, because phages evolve even faster than they do.
Given the rapidly increasing problem of antibiotic resistance, and the potentially catastrophic outcomes if it gets out of hand, why aren't the drug companies doing more with this?
There are two real problems with phages. Viruses can't necessarily get to all the places where the bacteria are (and vice versa). No phages are known so far for the bacteria that cause some serious diseases (leprosy, tuberculosis, botulism).
But other than that, all the problems fall into the "stupid" category. Drug companies would have to maintain libraries of thousands of different phages. Any one phage would only be used rarely. They'd continuously have to be screening for new phages. Phages and bacteria evolve a lot faster than the regulatory process, and light years faster than the patent process. There's no easy way to "own" them. The approval process is stuck in the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, drug resistance marches on and the drug companies concentrate on important drugs, like Alli, that can help people lose a whole extra three pounds a year and rake in millions.
A much newer development is in the field of tailoring drugs to specific individuals. One of medicine's least-publicized aspects is that drugs work differently in different people. It was expressed clearly in a BBC report (Dec 8, 2003).
Drugs 'don't work on many people'
A senior executive at Europe's largest drug maker has admitted most prescription medicines don't work for most people, it is reported.
Allen Roses, of GlaxoSmithKline, is quoted in a national newspaper as saying more than 90% of drugs only work in 30-50% of people.
He said: "Drugs on the market work, but they don't work in everybody."
Mr Roses, an expert in genetics, said new developments should help tailor drugs more specifically.
At present, pharmaceutical companies adopt a "one-drug-fits-all" policy.
At the time, the type of genome testing which would take the guesswork out of matching drugs to individuals was still hugely expensive. The costs are coming down, but there's no excitement in the pharmaceutical industry about making sure every individual gets the most suitable drug. They're hardly doing the obvious stuff that doesn't take any testing, like making sure drugs shown to be most effective in a given gender or ethnic group are prescribed accordingly. What would be the incentive to shrink your market? Especially if a competitor's product is better for a given person?
In Europe, with their better-developed social consciousness, there's talk of getting the companies to work on it. The BBC again: "[There are] calls for financial incentives to be introduced to encourage research in the UK and Europe and to encourage pharmaceutical companies to work on developing pharmacogenetic drugs which are likely to have relatively small potential markets. 'If medicines were able to target an individual patient's cancer, they would work more effectively' [said] Professor John Toy, Cancer Research UK." (They better make sure the companies don't treat the incentives in their usual all-contributions-gratefully-accepted manner.)
An added wrinkle is that in cases of cancer, tumors with different genetic profiles have different susceptibilities to chemotherapy drugs. It becomes a matter of life or death to find the most effective combinations. In these cases, grudgingly it seems, drug companies actually try to figure out and promote the correct match, such as in the cases of Herceptin-susceptible breast cancer tumors.
Even more individualized is the treatment of tumors with monoclonal antibodies. Remember the complement proteins that could bind with specific proteins on the surfaces of cancer cells? (Discussed in Ten Minute Cancer Test.) You can attach many different things to those complement proteins, like antibodies that mark the cell for destruction by the immune system. They bind to their match on the cancer cell, and wave a flag around saying, "Come kill this thing."
The "antibody" part is the flag. The "monoclonal" part is how they're made. Cliff Notes version: a sample of the patient's own specific type of white blood cell is taken (B-cell), and exposed to the unusual proteins on the tumor. Once the B-cells start producing an antibody targeting a specific tumor protein, that line of cells is grown in quantity. Once there are loads of antibody-producing cells, they're injected back into the patient and all attack the tumor. Unfortunately, tumors are good at evolving to evade the immune system, so monoclonal antibodies often provide remission rather than cure. However, recently it's been discovered that the tumor cells' ability to evade can be crippled with another drug, and then they're really helpless. Early results indicate tumors tend to melt away.
Everything about the process is individualized, both the tumor genetics and the need to culture the patient's own white blood cells for the procedure to work. All the difficulties of getting the industry to work on small-market drugs are compounded. These aren't just small markets. These are one-person markets. Knowledge about using monoclonal antibodies in medicine has been around for a few years, but there's been no rush to make kits hospitals could use for individual patients. People keep doing research.
(I should mention that the results of monoclonals aren't always nice. There was a horrific miscarriage of a medical trial on six volunteers in England who were testing a neurological monoclonal antibody treatment for safety. Turned out something wasn't at all safe. They had massive systemic immune reactions, two of them nearly died and have permanent damage. There are questions about how the drug was administered, and whether the antibodies themselves were at fault, but it's still not clear what caused the tragedy.)
Equally individual are stem cell cures that use the patient's own stem cells. Those are the only kind that avoid the need for lifelong immunosuppression, since there's a brouhaha about using embryonic stem cells. So the only usable cells are specific to a given patient ... but the pharmaceutical industry does its best to ignore one-off treatments.
Research has shown good results using stem cells to regenerate insulin-producing cells to treat juvenile (Type 1) diabetes, dopamine-producing cells to treat Parkinsons, and retinal cells to treat macular degeneration. How soon will it get beyond research? Who knows.
There's another low tech and longstanding issue affected by the profit motive. Unlike prevention, where the customers won't pay, diseases of poverty are boring because the customers can't pay. Result: hundreds of millions of people suffering and dying from preventable diseases. And in these days of air travel, the notoriously cavalier attitude of diseases to borders means the people suffering won't necessarily be "over there" somewhere. (E.g. as I write, this appeared: WHO warns of global epidemic risk.)
Diseases also cripple whole economies. The economic refugees then flood other countries. That creates more than humanitarian disasters, assuming that some people see those as cheap. It also costs lots of money in industrial countries that have to seal borders, deal with social unrest, worry about violence, and have wages depressed throughout their own economies. So even though pharmaceutical companies can't make things like malaria cures pay enough, it would be priceless for hundreds of millions of human beings, and industrial countries would also benefit enormously. But the profit motive can't make it happen.
Finally, just to round out this dismal saga, the regulatory process and legal system also have to take some of the blame. Take the example of the monoclonal antibodies, which work best when used with another drug. Neither by itself really does the job. Together they do an amazing job. But the approval process is for one drug at a time, and each drug in isolation is "not effective." Ineffective drugs can't get approval.
Is that braindead, or what?
Or take the example of vaccines. They take lots of research and testing, which is expensive, and all that for a preventive medicine which can't cost much. But then, just to keep things interesting, along come lawyers threatening suits about anything they hope a medically uneducated jury will believe. Vaccines have been turned into such a black hole of testing costs and legal expenditures that at this point there's only a handful of companies who will have anything to do with them. The loss to society is immense. Just how immense will become painfully obvious the first time we don't have enough vaccines to go around during an epidemic. (We've had some minor events already. Believe me. Those were very minor.)
I'm not saying vaccines shouldn't be safe. Of course they should be. But it's also true that the law is not effective at keeping up with science on this. How it should be changed, I don't know, but that it should be changed is self-evident.
I could go on about this forever. (What? You noticed?) What I'd really like to see is people understanding the deeper problem with our health care crisis. You can't always get what you want, so you have to decide what you need. And this is true at every level, not just insurance. Research, drugs, prevention, and care, all suffer from woolly priorities about health versus money. The national health insurance debate needs to be expanded to include that central problem.
If we decide we want health rather than money, we have to get our heads around the concept that we have to pay for it. Saving lives is never a moneymaker. If we decide we want money rather than health, we have to be prepared to let people die in the street.
What are the best and worst films inspired by TV shows?
Best: I haven't seen The Simpsons Movie yet, so I can't comment on that, although I imagine it will be on a lot of your best lists, and, from what I hear, rightly so. The South Park Movie and The Brady Bunch Movie are pretty good TV-to-film remakes, but probably my all-time favorite is The Fugitive.
Worst: I've never seen Charlie's Angels, mainly because it looked pretty horrible. I tried it once, and saw about 5 minutes before I had to switch the channel. The Kids in the Hall movie was such a disaster, I don't think I ever finished it, either. For sure the worst I've seen in its entirety has to be Miami Vice. Ugh. Stinkaroo.
[Sometimes I just need to repost this, to get my wevtastic ass moving again…]
Echidne once wrote a great post in which she addresses a particular frustration of active feminists: “Feminists are somehow the unpaid cleaning crew … who is supposed to turn up after dark and fix the world so that the attractive nonfeminists can live in it comfortably. So that nobody else needs to spend time or money or their lives in trying to move the almost immovable rock that is public opinion on the so-called ‘women's issues’. So that it's only the feminists who can be painted with the caricature brush as mirthless and humorless, as too ugly to get laid, as man-hating fanatics.”
Her post reminds me of my lament in the same vein, about the American majority’s intractable lethargy toward their duty as a watchdog of government to ensure good governance. “Leaving a small group to carry the burden of caring doesn’t work—especially when the party in power has endeavored to marginalize them as hysterical lunatics at every turn and the impetus to stay disengaged makes accepting that characterization so very appealing, conveniently masking as it does any reminder that one’s own indifference is not just ignoble, but dangerous.”
And it struck me that both the sweeping scale of national politics and the subset of issue-specific progressive movements in America are both plagued by the same problem: too few people willing to do the hard work required to produce the results from which everyone wants to benefit. (Excepting, of course, the retrofuck jackholes who endeavor to drive us all several centuries backwards.) If only it were simply apathy, that would be, well, a pretty normal state of affairs. But it is beyond apathy—it is hostility toward activists, a resentment expressed in Echidne’s reference to “only the feminists who can be painted with the caricature brush as mirthless and humorless, as too ugly to get laid, as man-hating fanatics,” and in my reference to the marginalization of activists “as hysterical lunatics at every turn.”
Never in my lifetime has the word “activist” been as dirty a word as it is now, never has it been so inextricably linked to all manner of negative association—crazy, humorless, dangerous, traitorous. There’s always been a certain strain of activism regarded by some as laughable; anytime someone plops themselves in a treetop, there’s inevitably going to be giggles. Now, however, seemingly anyone who cares passionately about making a difference, holding the government accountable, ensuring fair elections, changing minds on social issues, arguing for fairness and equality, etc. is regarded as unhinged, and the quickest way to discredit someone is to call them an activist.
This is collective amnesia of our own history. America was a nation of action. The spirit of “can be done…the pioneer thing,” as Eddie Izzard would say. Go West, young man. Manifest destiny. Send the boys off to war; Rosie the Riveter and her sisters will keep the factories humming. Rural electrification?—no problem. By god, we’ll put a man on the bloody moon! And so we did.
And now, apparently, we’ve decided to take a little nap, after all our forebears’ hard work. Yawn. Thanks to their blood, sweat, and tears, we can fulfill our destiny as couch potatoes.
Especially since we all know that somebody will keep an eye on things. Surely someone will stay vigilant and make sure the train doesn’t go careening off the tracks, that we don’t lose our reproductive rights, our separation of church and state, our environment, our jobs, our right to vote, our very country. Yawn. What’s that? Cindy Sheehan’s on the teevee? Ohmigod, hahaha. What a wacko! She is such a loser. She, like, totally needs to get a life.
Get a life, you mourning mother of a fallen soldier. Get a life, you humorless feminists. Get a life, you parading queers yelling about marriage. Get a life, you affirmative action dopes. Get a life, you poor, lazy slobs on welfare. Get a life, you enabling progressives. Get a life, you national healthcare advocates. Get a life, Al Gore. Get a life, get a life, get a life.
So we are instructed by the La-Z-Boy jockeys. So is their resentment at those who refuse to quit stirring the pot made manifest. By telling the rest of us to get a life from the slack-jawed, numb-brained comfort of their comatose lives, by recasting inaction as life and activism as a pathetic, contemptible waste of time, they deflect the responsibility for any and every unhappiness, inequity, or injustice that befalls themselves or anyone else.
In the new American paradigm, pacifists are the enemy, and passivists are the real heroes, realizing their ultimate purpose as inert, impotent consumers, who contribute nothing but judgment on those who refuse such a fate. Get a life.
Even the phrase is rich with the notion of consumption. Get a life—surely the local Wal-Mart’s got several lovely models on offer. As if we don’t all have lives already. What we need is more people who are willing to use their lives for a purpose, to make those lives meaningful, to contribute to effecting the changes from which they want to benefit.
It is the definitive nod to what a lackluster, overindulged, ungrateful, and uninspired nation of people we have become that disdain for activism is not only accepted, but encouraged. When people marched to protest the war, the big news story was how they were holding up traffic, the inconsiderate bastards. Don’t they have anything better to do? Don’t they have lives?
Quaint, and silly, this notion of sacrifice, when juxtaposed against the ease of taking liberty and opportunity for granted. Only a fool would waste time trying to make his voice heard over the roar of complacency that echoes across the nation to its farthest corners. If we can have a war and tax cuts, surely too we can bask in our freedom with no obligatory exertion to protect it.
Having been given the chance to do nearly anything, the majority of us choose to do nothing.
But it can’t last forever. Believing one’s choices are guaranteed but leaving it up to others to protect the continued ability to make those choices—others who then become objects of ridicule for one’s amusement—is a recipe for disaster. Sooner than later, every American will be left with only one choice: keep on laughing at the activists, or become one to save themselves. And what a glorious dawn in America it will be when every chortling, finger-pointing, invective-hurling slacker who finds activism the epitome of pitiable profligacy stops counseling us to get a life, and instead, gets off his ass, and at long last takes a stand.
I am suffering from malaise.
I feel like poop. Tired. Uninspired. Apathetic. Useless. Overwhelmed with a crushing sense of futility. I am the sloth-like, slack-jawed, droopy-lidded embodiment of wev. Wev is my quintessence. Wev beats my heart, and wev runs my blood. I wev therefore I wev. All that's left for me now is leading the wevolution on the world wide wev—so wev your engines.
Actually, I probably just need some caffeine.
…to WorldNetDaily for the t0tally aw3zome coup of bringing on board wicked-hott respected journalist and erstwhile porn star/escort Rod Majors Matt Sanchez. I've never seen his movies, but from what I hear, he's got integrity literally dripping out his asshole.
Sanchez said, "I'm honored WordNetDaily.com has asked me to be a part of such a respectable organization."Sanchez might want to start off on the right foot by noting his new employer is called WorldNetDaily, not WordNetDaily. That's just good journamalizing.
Rock on.
[H/T Blogenfreude.]
Remember that knee-slapping hilarious slide show where Georgie looked all around the White House for WMD? My eyes are still-a-tearin' with all out giddiness from that one. Well, I think he could really boost his ratings if he came up with a new slide show where he scours the Pentagon offices looking for MRAPs, those life saving vehicles that would "support the troops."
AP:
The Pentagon will fall far short of its goal of sending 3,500 lifesaving armored vehicles to Iraq by the end of the year. Instead, officials expect to send about 1,500.Of course, who needs MRAPs when you have evangelical material to help you out?
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that while defense officials still believe contractors will build about 3,900 of the mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles by year's end, it will take longer for the military to fully equip them and ship them to Iraq.
Get crackin, Georgie! I just can't wait to see all those damn funny places you'd be searching!
[H/T to Steve]
Another Day, Another Iraq Clusterfucktastrophe
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Thursday, August 23, 2007Right-Wing Operatives Plot to Overthrow Maliki, Replace Him with Reliable Collaborator Allawi: "The powerful Republican lobbying group of Barbour Griffith & Rogers is plotting an effort to displace Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and supplant him with former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi."
[More at TPM Muckraker.]
You know, I've got a great idea. Since the pro-war GOP nutwitz think that Bush is Teh Best Preznit Evah!, and since Bush himself believes that a free Iraq is within reach, and since the 22nd Amendment prohibits Bush from preznitting in America again, why don't we just send his lousy ass over there where he can preznit to his minions' hearts' content?
Meanwhile, with him out of the fricking way, maybe we can actually come up with an efficacious Iraq policy.
Sportswriters avoid looking in mirror when comparing reactions to dog abuse, domestic abuse
| posted by William K Wolfrum | Thursday, August 23, 2007Of the many issues to come out of the Michael Vick dog-fighting case, one of the most interesting has to be the sudden enlightenment many in the media have experienced when it comes to professional athletes. Suddenly it has struck sportswriters that perhaps there's something wrong with a society where the public wants to hang an athlete who is a dog abuser, but will pay little or no attention to the athlete who commits domestic or sexual abuse.
There have already been several columns on this theme, all more or less covering the same ground:
-- "Vick's story sick, but it's far from only one" (Chicago Daily-Herald)
-- "The greater outrage" (Chicago Tribune)
-- "Ignoring domestic abuse is the shame of the sports world" (Orlando Sentinel)
--"Don't direct all your ire at Falcons' Vick" (HeraldNet)
-- "It's a dog and pony show" (N.Y. Daily News)
The conclusion: Yes, what Vick did was hideous and deserving of scorn and punishment, but shouldn't we all look at the bigger picture? Isn't it time to start using some of that anger, and punishing the multitude of male athletes involved in domestic abuse, sexual assault and other crimes against women?
Almost all go to the same cases, mostly highlighting the offense of such athletes as Pacman Jones, Bobby Chouinard, Michael Pittman and Kobe Bryant. And every last columnist is correct in their basic premise - Male athletes have nearly gotten a completely free ride when it comes to domestic and sexual abuse, despite the fact that it's a serious and continuous problem.
"A three-year study published in 1995 by researchers at Northwestern University found that while male student-athletes are 3 percent of the population, they represent 19 percent of sexual assault perpetrators and 35 percent of domestic violence perpetrators," wrote Sandra Kobrin of Women's eNews.
So the light being shined onto this problem by these columnists is a positive thing, overall. Nonetheless, one important part of the story is completely avoided by the above sportswriters - all of whom are male.
The sports world is male dominated. Obviously, there are a great deal of women who both compete, and enjoy games as fans. But it is not going out on a huge limb to say that female fans are greatly outnumbered by their male counterparts when it comes to the major sports in the U.S. (baseball, football, basketball). And as far as sportswriters and sports columnists go, it is virtually a boys club at newspapers throughout the nation.
Yet none of the above sportswriters seem to notice this. The onus is on you. Why aren't you paying more attention to the domestic abuse and sexual assault problems so prevalent in America's sports world? Why are you so upset about Michael Vick's treatment of dogs, when you seem to care less about Michael Pittman trying to run down his wife?
Basically, sportswriters are ignoring and overlooking their own culpability. And just because they've suddenly gotten the meme that there should be more outrage over how male athletes treat women doesn't mean they are suddenly free of the responsibility of how they've helped to keep the outrage quelled.
An example: Note how easily Craig Swalboski, sports editor of the Post-Bulletin in Minnesota, glosses over the domestic abuse charges of the late Twins' star Kirby Puckett while discussing how lucky Minnesota sports fans have been through the years:
"Puckett's image was not tarnished until after his retirement, when allegations of domestic abuse and molestation came out.
In that regard, (Kevin) Garnett was like Puckett, but without the chain saws or groping charges," wrote Swalboski.
Make no mistake, the lack of outrage at athletes who abuse women comes partly from how it's been reported. The world of sports writing is dominated by males, and overall, these male sportswriters have failed to shine a bright enough light on how male athletes abuse women.
Of course, by no means are sportswriters totally to blame. But what the Michael Vick case has done is opened eyes to a rather demented part of American society. It is forcing us to look at ourselves and question why we give misogynist athletes a pass.
And now it's time for sportswriters to ask themselves these questions, and to open their own eyes to the part they've played in it all.
--WKW
A reinterpretation of 30 year-old Viking data could mean that there were about as many bacteria in the Viking samples as there are in some Antarctic environments. These were the samples confidently pronounced as totally lifeless, proof that there not only wasn't, there couldn't be, any life on Mars.
Dr. Houtkooper hypothesizes that the carbon - oxygen balance observed in the samples could be a sign of microbes that use hydrogen peroxide as an anti-freeze. Bacteria like that are known from extreme environments on Earth. They're not just an idea, at least on Earth. However, I can't find the original references yet, or critiques, so this may be a lot less interesting than it sounds.
But finding life outside of Earth would be as much of a mind-expander in biology as the equivalence of matter and energy was for physics. (I discuss that a bit here.)
I can't wait.
What are politicians most afraid of in Washington? That they won’t be on the right side of an issue. And that goes double for political reporters. The problem is the right side isn’t always what’s right. The right side is what The Right People tm say it is.
Somehow in August a sea change has taken place. Or a PR war has been won. Or have The Right People tm convinced the scribes The Surge tm is working.
Everything old is new again. Bush goes retro. Bush goes back, way back. Back to his eternal optimism, back to the wall, past the wall of the Vietnam Memorial with its over fifty thousand dead, back to crash through logic and reality to warn against retreat.
President Bush delivered a rousing defense of his Iraq policy on Wednesday, telling a group of veterans that “a free Iraq” is within reach and warning that if Americans succumb to “the allure of retreat,” they will witness death and suffering of the sort not seen since the Vietnam War.While Bush may think "a free Iraq” is within reach, the truth runs like sand through his fingers. And power runs through the Shiites. And not just politically. The Sunnis aren’t happy. And blow up now and then.
Armed groups increasingly control the antiquated switching stations that channel electricity around Iraq, the electricity minister said Wednesday.Soon David Petraeus will report that the White House says that he says The Surge tm is working, even if the electricity in Iraq is not. Reporters will agree.
That is dividing the national grid into fiefs that, he said, often refuse to share electricity generated locally with Baghdad and other power-starved areas in the center of Iraq.
The development adds to existing electricity problems in Baghdad, which has been struggling to provide power for more than a few hours a day because insurgents regularly blow up the towers that carry power lines into the city.
And what will we end up with when the scribes finish reporting what The Right People tm say? "Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future,” said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war’s major battlegrounds.
"To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to 'pull the rug out from under them,' is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to co-opt the armed services for partisan purposes. It should be possible for a president to make an impassioned case for continuing his own policy in Iraq, without accusing his critics of wanting to attack and betray the troops. But that would require class and confidence. The president has neither."
— Sully (who, by the way, is getting married in a few days; many happy returns from Shakesville!)
When, in 2001, President Bush declared he'd gazed into Russian President Vladimir Putin's eyes and "was able to get a sense of his soul," perhaps what he really saw that was so attractive was a fellow sexxxy cowboy:
When Vladimir Putin stripped down to the waist for the cameras, his muscled torso made headlines around the world.
And one week on, the ripples are still being felt in Russia, where he has become a sex symbol, the inspiration for men to start pumping iron, and the new darling of the gay lobby.
And, apparently, Pootie-Poot likes to play other kinds of dress-up, too.
Well-known as a downhill skier and black belt in judo, he has appeared on national television driving a truck, operating a train, sailing on a submarine and co-piloting a fighter jet.Who knew the two heads of the erstwhile Cold War poles had so much in common? Beady eyes, contempt for democracy, delusions of dictatorship, and prancing about like wankers in silly get-ups. Two peas in a pod, I tells ya!
Anyway, for my money, Putin's never been sexxxier than when kissing a little boy like a kitten.
Rrrrroww.
I'm on my annual pilgrimage to the Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario, where I will be seeing five plays in four days. This, along with my trip to the William Inge Festival each April, is how I spend most of my vacation time. It's not really a surprise; in my other life, when I'm not crunching numbers for the school district in Miami, I am a recovering theatre teacher and playwright.
I've seen three productions so far; My One and Only, A Delicate Balance, and The Merchant of Venice, and I've jotted down a few thoughts about them. As saying goes: Read on, Macduff.
My One and Only: Sheer Joy
The Stratford Festival started out as a three-play bill of Shakespeare plays under a tent on the banks of the Avon River in the small town 60 miles (100 km) west of Toronto in 1953. Since then it has grown to an eight-month event that includes standard musicals like Oklahoma!, avant-garde experimental pieces (La Guerre, Yes Sir!), British 18th century and Restoration comedies (The School for Scandal and The London Merchant), French farce (Moliere's Tartuffe) and modern classics like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. It's entirely possible to spend a week at Stratford and not see something written by Shakespeare.
The reasons are simple: economics. There are a lot of people who love theatre, but they also like seeing something beyond what the Bard wrote, and the festival recognized this early on. (My first trip to Stratford in 1970 included only one Shakespearean play out of three.) And the people who run the festival also know that their audience includes a lot of people, usually the elderly, who come from Ohio, New York, and as far away as Chicago for the weekend and they want to see something that will gladden their hearts (if not their pacemakers) with reminders of theatre from their own time period done with polish and energy by attractive and brilliant young dancers and singers. Something like A Delicate Balance (see below) can only go so far.
My One and Only certainly fills the bill. It is nothing but pure joy and confection, a jewel box of Gershwin songs put together in juke box fashion -- a trend among modern musicals (vide Mama Mia! and Jersey Boys) wrapped around a simple plot of boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-marries-girl with tons of toe-tapping (literally) thrown in. Tommy Tune, who created this piece in 1983, knew the heart and soul of this kind of theatre, and it works like a charm at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, a restored movie palace from the 1920's. Laird Mackintosh and Cynthia Dale are perfect as the two lovers destined to be each other's one and only, and the rest of the supporting cast is as perfect as a Busby Berkeley chorus line. And if it takes this kind of show to make the money so that the festival can undertake the plays that draw a smaller crowd but advance the art form, then so be it; let the gaffers and gammers nibble on the sweets while those of us with more adventurous tastes check out the boys in leather in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II in the Studio Theatre.
Next year, the artistic directorship will pass from the capable hands of Richard Monette, who has guided the festival since 1994 into a shared directorship that includes Des McAnuff, who directed, among other things, Jersey Boys on Broadway. The festival also plans to restore its old name, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and include more of the Bard's plays, including Hamlet. But they're also planning productions of The Music Man and Cabaret. The more things change...
A Delicate Balance: On the Edge
There are two rules in the WASP culture: 1. Never do anything that would embarrass the family, and 2. Have another drink. Anything that disturbs the delicate balance of going to the club, having lunch with the girls, the cocktail hour with polite conversation, or trips to the City must be dealt with by ignoring the problem, sweeping it under the rug, and not talking about it. We must go on; is your martini dry enough, dear?
As a product of the upper middle class culture that includes prep schools, summer homes, the Ivy League, and the country club, seeing the Stratford production of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance hit home for me and my parents. At the first intermission we looked at each other and said, "Remind you of anyone we know?"
The comfortable lives of Tobias and Agnes in their comfortable home in Darien or Greenwich or Winnetka or Perrysburg have only a few minor disturbances; Agnes's alcoholic sister Claire is living with them, and the more she drinks the more she serves as the truth-teller, the Fool to King Lear. Their daughter Julia is returning home to the safe haven of her room after her fourth marriage has failed, but this is nothing new; children like this must return to the nest because they never grow up. All is well, sort of.
But into this come Harry and Edna, dear friends of Tobias and Agnes, who are driven out of the their home by a nameless terror. As they sat in their living room enjoying their evening drink they were both suddenly seized with this overwhelming fear, so they seek refuge with Tobias and Agnes, moving in without asking and in the process bringing along the pathogen of this terror with them, passing it off to each one in turn until everyone has faced it, dealt with it in their own way, and -- true to the culture -- subsumed it with booze.
If the only play you know by Mr. Albee is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, then this play may seem like a kinder, gentler version of the same idea. Yet in spite of the fact that there is far less violence and far less outward brutality, in its own way this play cuts far deeper and with far more surgical precision than the bludgeon of the first play. And in this play the characters give you the chance to not just identify with them -- as seemingly the audience did; as I was leaving the theatre I overheard one other audience member say to her companion, "They're just like us except not as mean" -- you get to know them and care about them, and this is done not through long speeches of exposition but by their little tics and quirks that reveal so much in so many small ways.
I must admit that I have a soft spot for plays like this and emphasis of character interaction over the melodramas of action and emotional extremism. It is far more revealing that someone deals with a crisis by making minute adjustments to the throw pillows and knick-knacks on the coffee table than it is by someone pulling a gun, and sometimes a single word or a phrase can do more than anything to drive home a point that terrifies the audience than all the heroes suffering a heart attack and tumbling to the bottom of the stairs.
The cast includes Martha Henry as Agnes; Ms. Henry has been a part of the Stratford experience in some form or another since 1962, and here she is the perfect hostess. David Fox, taking the place of the late William Hutt, has all the right moves as Tobias, the genial patriarch/bartender, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Poppy Bush. The role of Harry is played by James Blendick, who often plays character roles, but here he brings a touch of nuance and preppie charm to the role of the gentle but imposing friend. Fiona Reid plays Claire the truth-teller without a hint of malice or stereotyping, and Michelle Giroux as Julia, the wounded child, touched me deeply because I know her and have been in her place at least once in my life. But then, in this play, as in all good plays, we will all find someone who reminds us of us.
The Merchant of Venice: The Cost of Doing Business
One of the more intriguing characters that William Shakespeare used in his canon is that of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice. Drawing from a stock character -- or more correctly, a caricature -- of the stereotypical Jew of Elizabethan times, Shakespeare embellished him with the dimensions of humanity that makes it hard to decide if Shylock is the villain, demanding his literal pound of flesh in payment of a forfeited loan, or the victim of cruel antisemitism and driven to his actions in revenge for the treatment he's received at the hands of the Christians who spit on him as they take their loans from him. What makes it all the more intriguing is that over the centuries our view of Shylock and his portrayal in the play has changed because of outside circumstances and enlightenment on the part of the audience. Treating Shylock and his faith as "alien" in Venice -- the city he calls as much home as any of the other characters -- paints him as the perpetual outsider, and his odd religion is unwelcome, condemned and feared by the Christians, a practice that continues to this day, if not so much against the Jews as it is against, say, perhaps the Muslims.
To be fair, there's no lack of stereotyping by Shakespeare of other ethnic cultures and nationalities in the play. He pokes fun at the French, the Germans, the Scottish, the Arabs, and even the English, but he does them in comic relief as Portia reviews her choices of the men who have come to ask for her hand in marriage. (And Shakespeare has no problem in stereotyping women, either, even as he creates one of the more independent women in his repertoire in Portia, but the only way she can get ahead in a man's world is by pretending to be one.) But the portrait of Shylock is the only one where Shakespeare not only uses the stereotypes of the time, he also gives us the view of the world through the eyes of Shylock and lets us see how he is treated, and lets him explain why he feels compelled to strike back at his tormentors....if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgrac'd me and hind'red me half a million; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
Shakespeare is rare among playwrights of his time in that he allows his protagonist to explain his reasons for his motivations; certainly he does not give equal time to Iago in Othello as to why he "hates the Moor;" when given the chance to justify his actions at the end of the play, Iago proclaims his perpetual silence. But Shylock appeals to the human frailties and failings by raising up the Jew out of the "subhuman" category to which he's been subjected, and demanding that his persecutors see him as just as human as they are is certainly an element that makes him more than just a stereotype. While it may not engender sympathy for him -- he is as unlikeable a character as you will meet regardless of his faith -- it does give him the dimensions that make him worth paying attention to.
The production here at Stratford stars Graham Greene as Shylock. You might remember Mr. Greene from his role as Kicking Bird in Dances with Wolves and other roles. Here he portrays Shylock as a Wall Street businessman, foregoing the stereotypical costume of the yarmulke, beard, and prayer shawl as is often seen in productions of the play. He is making a business deal here with Antonio, the eponymous merchant of the play, and when the loan can't be paid, he demands his payment without religious fervor but cold and hard demand, lacking, as Portia notes in her famous monologue (which is read, oddly, as a legal brief), "the quality of mercy." When Shylock is defeated by his own demands for the exact rule of law -- a lesson not to be lost on certain political parties -- he accepts the defeat and the punishment, not to mention the hypocrisy of the Christians who show the same lack of mercy in demanding that he convert -- with shrug and a chuckle as if the whole episode is the risk you take when you do business with people in Venice.
The rest of the cast was admirable, including Severn Thompson, who played Portia, and Raquel Duffy as Narissa, her friend and co-conspirator at the trial. The set, on the Stratford Festival thrust stage, was minimal and unintrusive, as it should be. The only thing that seemed out of place was the costuming, which seemed to combine Renaissance and modern times and made you wonder what exactly the designer was trying to say. If it was an attempt at making a link between that time and now, it was done in a way with voluminous skirts (one worn by Portia made me think it was inspired by Shelob the spider from The Lord of the Rings) and the men's clothes, with the exception of Shylock, looked like they had been bought at a Goth-type Renaissance Fair. Fortunately, in this case, it was the only discordant note in what was otherwise an interesting and well-directed production.
I still have yet to see An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde and The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare. I'll report in on them later, but now it's time for intermission.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
St. Louis-based blogger supreme Dana Loesch of Mamalogues shares a delightful story of police attention where it was most decidedly not needed.
What other purpose could black people have in Soulard except to steal cars from affluent white yuppies, right? What the hell are black people doing out of North County? They’re stealing our cars!
Just a tiny slice o' life in the Gateway City. Y'all come back now real soon, y'hear?
(Cross-posted.)
Thanks to Violet, Ann, and Vanessa for giving more attention to LaVena Johnson's case.
Sign the petition to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to reopen the investigation into her death.
"Clenis Blame"
sung to the tune of Tay Zonday's
megahit, "Chocolate Rain"
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
Some can't help but focus on its reign.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
They can't forget the dress on which it came.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
Of their existence, Clenis is the bane!
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
Did you hear it's covered with a vein?
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
Man, this Clenis really has some fame.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
"Everything's its fault!" the dopes proclaim.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
For the world's ills the Clenis should feel shame!
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
I don't know how such crap can be maintained.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
The wingnuts really, truly are insane.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
I hope some psychiatric help's obtained.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
One wonders what they have to gain?
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
No focus on George Bush's lack of brains.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
It's just an endless, screeching, sad refrain.
Clenis blaaaaaaaame!
Politics is nothing but a game.
Clenis blame.
Vibrators May Yet Find a Sweet Home in Alabama
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Thursday, August 23, 2007
In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can't sell sex toys. That's right. Alabama is a vibrator-free state!I can't wait. This should be a particularly fun one for Clarence Thomas, who will no doubt dust off the Long Dong Silver collection to do some intensive research before the case.
Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. But the Alabama Legislature, in its infinite wisdom and in the spirit of protecting citizens from moral turpitude, a while back banned the sale of sex toys (or "marital aids" as some lawmakers coyly call them).
…Anyway, the Supremes have informed the state of Alabama that it must file an answering brief with the High Court, which is an indication that the case might be taken up in the next session.
[Thanks, BlueGal.]
I haven't mentioned the lawsuit against biologist, radical atheist, and cephalopod fanatic PZ Myers yet, and I really should. PZ, of course, is the irascible host of Pharyngula, a writer for Seed, and a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris. He isn't an international billionaire, but for some ungodly reason, Stuart Pivar has sued him for $15 million for stating that Pivar's bizarre anti-evolution rant Lifecode made Pivar a "classic crackpot."
My fellow Shaker William Wolfrum does a good job of laying out what's going on, and I ordinarilly wouldn't add on, but I've met PZ, and frankly, I'm a little annoyed at the attack. After all, "crackpot" is a term of art, and that Pivar can reasonably be described as such -- especially after suing a public school biologist for $15 million -- doesn't seem to enter into the discussion. Nor does the fact that by writing a book, Pivar has held himself out as a public figure, someone who would not be able to sue for libel.
Of course, this is clearly a nuisance suit, one meant to silence PZ, and by extension, anyone else with the temerity to note that Pivar doesn't appear to have the slightest idea what he's talking about. Well, good luck with that. Look, I've been called a traitor dozens of times by my friends on the other side of the aisle, and the proprietor of this blog has been called far worse. Have we sued for libel? Of course not, because we're smart enough to know that we're public figures, at least insofar as we publish our writing online, and we're open to criticism about it. And we're ethical enough to not sue someone when we can't win, just to annoy them.
Pivar is evidently not that ethical, but that's his choice. But I misdoubt he's messing with the wrong piracy aficionado in tangling with PZ. When this suit is slam-dunked out of court -- and it's when, not if -- I imagine PZ will take great glee in metaphorically keelhauling Pivar, and the rest of us great glee in watching him do it.
"Most importantly, unlike animals fetuses reside in women's bodies, and being forced to carry a pregnancy to term imposes serious burdens on a mother's health and life prospects, which forcing a woman not to torture dogs does not."—LeMew, stating the obvious in his inimitable and much-appreciated way.
A betrayal of the public trust doesn't even begin to cover this:
Prosecutors say [Marcus Huffman] was on patrol March 18 when he met the woman after she was turned away from a club because she appeared intoxicated. Huffman is accused of offering her a ride, driving her to the substation and raping her.The 19-old-woman then went to a relative's home where she called 911 to report the rape. Among the three officers who responded was Officer Marcus Huffman.
Special Assistant Attorney General Erik Wallin said prosecutors have a video showing Huffman entering the substation with the woman, then leaving separately before the woman did.
In addition, prosecutors say they have recovered Huffman's semen from the woman's boxer shorts.
He was also the senior officer handling the complaint, and, according to RI Attorney General spokesman Michael Healey, "He later filed a report which we allege failed to include important facts, among which were any mention of the incident involving him and the victim."
Whenever survivors of sexual assault have discussed here their various difficulties with law enforcement, inevitably there are people who express shock at the stories of callousness, disbelief, and outright hostility with which some of us have been met when attempting to report a sex crime. Now I'm no cop-hater; my granddad was NYPD, and he was a great guy and a good cop who really enjoyed and cared about people. But it's also wise to remember that cops' badges don't magically imbue them with a particular sympathy for victims of sexual assault that the rest of the population (including the media, judges and juries, legislators, doctors, sportsmen and entertainers, crap hucksters, other cops, etc. etc. etc.) is largely lacking.
And, ya know, some rapists are cops, too. Some rape victims; some rape suspects. If they weren't cops, they'd be raping someone else, because that's what rapists do. But that there are rapists who are cops (and, inevitably, cops who protect rapist cops) makes things just that much more difficult for victims of rape, even if a cop wasn't the perpetrator.
You never know when you walk into a police station (or pick up a phone) to report a rape, whether you're going to get someone who's on your side, someone who treats you like a liar, someone who just doesn't care, or someone who might exploit your already-terrible situation to take further advantage of you. Those of us involved with victims' advocacy have heard plenty of stories in every category. That's a big question mark for victims to have to face.
The police culture, however, too often mimics the Catholic Church in its protection of dangerous men. Huffman had already been convicted of three misdemeanor counts of simple assault and had also been "suspended without pay for two days for skipping a closed-door hearing concerning a brutality complaint filed against him. At the time, he was accused of beating a 14-year-old boy with a night stick." He probably shouldn't have been on the force at all, and no way should he have been responding to rape calls (even if he hadn't been the stinking rapist).
Eradicating that big question mark starts with the police, who, at minimum, can't be sending known bullies to do the job of protecting and serving the victimized.
Okay, I’m officially starting to get into this. I just googled “cubs magic number.”
Nobody had it, so I’ll have to figure it out myself. Let’s see…carry the two…
It’s 36.
So any combination of Cubs wins and Brewers and/or Cardinals losses totaling 36 will clinch the pennant. (While the Cards are three back, they’ve played four fewer games than the Brewers, and are even with the Brewers in the loss column; therefore, the magic number is the same for both teams, as the most wins either the Brewers or Cards can possibly muster is 100.)
Now, granted, the Cubs have 37 games left, so given the small margin for error and based on my family’s four generations of Cubs fandom, I’d say there’s probably a 95% chance that the Cubs lose the division. But I’m not going to let that stop me from getting excited. I mean, my God, it’s August 23, and the Cubs are alone in first place. If you’re a Cubs fan, you know that any season where the Cubs are still in contention in late August is a good one; a season where it’s worth dusting off the calculator to figure a magic number? That’s one for the record books. Who knows? Soriano comes back soon, Floyd looks like he’s locked in, this could be the year…after all, it is the 100th anniversary of the Cubs’ first world championship. What do you think — maybe the Cubs can add ‘07 to their other title years of ‘07 and ‘08?
That’s 1907 and 1908, of course. Back-to-back world champions. Good times, good times.
(Cross-posted from Blog of the Moderate Left)
You know, who hasn't gathered the boys around and sung happy fun songs about their non-functioning penis?
This frightening commercial was noted by Art Vandelay, who dubbed it "the Clockwork Orange of limp dick commercials." And boy, is it ever. For those of you who don't want or care to watch it, the video consists of men singing happy lyrics about going home and getting it on, thanks to the pill that makes their penises work. Then, after singing "Viva Viagra" in what appears to be an abandoned bar in an old ghost town, the guys playfully roughhouse, but, you know, it's not homoerotic because they're just happy that they all have erections. And off they speed to bed their wives, girlfriends, mistresses, box turtles, or husbands.
It's truly a train wreck of a commercial, and it just brings to mind a few random thoughts:
1. Why does Viagra advertise? It's not like anyone doesn't know about 'em at this point. I mean, when I think "erectile dysfunction," I think "Viagra." Next, I think, "something that if I have, I'll talk to a doctor about, and not take my medical advice from crappy commercials."
2. Look, I'm all for homosociality, but you know, if I've got some Viagra for my perpetually-flaccid penis, and I've got a sweet lovin' woman waiting for me at home, and I've got a few free hours, then I think I'm going to skip jamming with the guys at the Last Chance Saloon in Jawbone Creek, and I'm going to go home. Frankly, I'd expect every one of my friends to make the same choice.
3. Moreover, I'm not going to praise ED medicines to my friends. The subject has come up randomly, and to a man, we all agree that there's nothing to be ashamed of, you should talk to a doctor, and you really shouldn't bring it up. I know, I just got done saying that men are deeper than the teevee would tell you they are, and we are. I've discussed the removal of a friend's colon and his ileostomy, and I've been quite open with my friends about my depression. But damn, there are still some things you should keep private.
4. Finally, no matter how bad the ad is, I think we can all agree on this: at least Bob Dole doesn't show up in it.
Do you collect anything?
I've never been much of a collector. I'm too random and a bit of a magpie, frankly. Very few physical things capture my attention for extended periods. I had the worst sticker-book in the fifth grade, because I just couldn't be arsed with it after awhile, even though I loved it at the start...
Every surface in our house is covered in tumbling piles of books, although we aren't technically "collectors" in the sense that you won't find hardly a valuable volume among them and our "collection" has no rhyme or reason. We're just book pack-rats, really.
The closest thing I have to a valuable collection by design is my music stuff, although a big part of what I'd collected was lost in a flood a few years back. And considering all the work and energy and money I'd put into finding and collecting it all, I found it surprisingly easy to let go without much regret at its ruin.
"I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history."—Your Idiot President, during a speech today at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention in which he got so much history wrong, it hurt Maha Biggerbox's (sorry!) brain and provoked Steve to comment drolly, "It’s no secret that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but today makes clear that his speechwriters are as confused as Bush is." Also see: C&L.
The End of the World! Check it out (potentially NSFW).
[Redux. And again.]
Most US adults in the dark about world politics:
Two-thirds of US adults admit to being in the dark about political issues outside the United States, and only a third are well-versed in US politics, the results of a poll published Tuesday showed.Hmm. Anyone else thinking there might be some pretty significant overlap among the one-third who are "well-versed" in domestic and global politics? Gee.
One reason for the knowledge gap is lack of interest, according to the poll.It's pretty amazing how consistently somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the US population proves themselves to be useless fucking gobshites.
"Well over half (57 percent) say they do not like learning about political issues in other countries," and 32 percent expressed a lack of interest for homespun politics, the Harris Poll group said.
Speaking of which, one in four American adults read no books at all in the past year. Wev.
The Todd Haynes bio-pic of Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There," (due to be released next month) stars various actors as the musical icon at different points in his life/career.
This clip (H/T to Dennis Perrin) stars Cate Blanchett as the young Dylan, and it's uncanny how well one of my favorite female actresses—and an Australian to boot!--portrays the sexy American male musician.
Makes me worship her even more.
People Look Strange When You're a Stranger...
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Wednesday, August 22, 2007You are pretty darn strange. You're quirky and odd, and definitely not normal. But that's great--it makes you an interesting person. You aren't exactly as strange as they come, but congratulations on being quite unique!
How Strange Are You?
Quizzes for MySpace
c/o the wonderful weirdos at Alternate Brain.
You would think that after being caught cross-handed in an evangelical fundraising video, the folks at the Pentagon would give some thought to not having anything further to do with the church. Not bloody likely:
Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering "freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.This shit is getting more insane as time goes on. We have men and women out in the desert who are dying for no reason whatsoever, and the best the Pentagon can do is get Stephen Baldwin's group to send over materials to try to help the occupied population embrace Jeebus and play apocalyptic video games. Freedom package, my arse.
What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.
I love how these fundies simply don't know what to do with themselves when other people's beliefs differ from their own. I rejoice in the fact that it really bugs the shit out of them, so much so that they need to find a way to win. What I love the most is how Michael Weinstein will always be there to call them on the carpet.
Normally, I would be thinking of contacting Congress to introduce some obvious, yet necessary, legislation to prohibit evangelizing within, and on behalf of, the Department of Defense. Then again, maybe I'll mull that over.
Now all they need is the ten-minute cure.
No, seriously, this is interesting and promising. While a patient is in a doctor's or dentist's office, the test can be run and provide results that are much more sensitive than x-rays or other diagnostic methods.
It's done with "biomarkers." All cells have hundreds (thousands?) of different proteins on their surfaces, and the specific kinds are characteristic of specific cells. Cancer cells are bizarre in many ways, and have lots of unusual proteins not otherwise found on normal cells. It's possible to produce a complementary protein that can bind to a specific weirdo protein, and attach a bit of fluorescing dye to the end of the complement.
The complement binds, and when you look at the whole sample under a fluorescence-imaging system (specialized microscopes, but also cheaper gizmos), the cancer cells light up bright green. If there are no cancer cells, nothing lights up. Cancer cells can be detected, so cancers can be caught much earlier than the tumor stage.
The device only works when given a sample, so the first application is a test for oral cancer. (Via Technology Review, which is always full of fascinating news.) Cells from any surface accessible externally, such as the cervix, skin, or rectum, could be diagnosed this way. I also don't see any reason why any liquid sample, such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid, maybe even cells in suspension, couldn't be tested the same way. The biomarkers are different, though, so each type of cancer requires its own sampler system.
I'm not sure when the first of these devices might come to a dentist's office near you, but as an external diagnostic test there aren't the same sort of years-long studies to be done as for drugs. The future is (kinda sorta) here. All we need is a medical industry that can deliver it.
Being a pessimist, I'm not sure the cure for cancer isn't a simpler problem.
Another splendiferous episode from the Conchords crew, with an extra delicious dose of Mellie goodness. And in excellent news, HBO has picked up the show for a second season. Woot! Judging by HBO's history, that season should start airing sometime around 2041 or so. Give or take a decade.
As always, a music snippet to whet your whistle is followed by the entire episode in three parts, below.
Via Atrios, news you can use if you're facing repossession of your house:
Every now and again, a potentially significant story manages to slip through the cracks, barely noticed by anyone. A recent Dow Jones article by Jilian Mincer -- "Mtge Lawsuits Could Bail Out Some Borrowers" -- is just such an article. The only reason I even knew about it was because I spoke with the reporter and was quoted in it.As the post notes, this isn't hypothetical; people are already winning lawsuits. And for obvious reasons, while it's not great to owe $250,000 in unsecured debt, it's better than losing your house.
It is a fascinating tale that I suspect won't be ignored for long. For those few people familiar with the Federal Truth-in-Lending Act (TILA), this won't be much of a surprise. To everyone else, read on.
What happens if a lender fails to comply with the TILA rules? The borrowers are allowed to RESCIND THE LOANS AND VOID THE MORTGAGES ON THEIR HOMES. The mortgage lender is then just another unsecured creditor, who must get in line behind everyone else who may have filed a lien on the property. Who ever files first (Credit card, auto finance, doctors, etc.) has first priority.
Certainly, it's something you should look into if you owe money on a resetting 2/28. Fair is fair, and more than a few of the subprime lenders weren't playing fair.
Bush: Vietnam taught us we must stay in Iraq forever
| posted by William K Wolfrum | Wednesday, August 22, 2007More than four years after sending his nation's military into Iraq, suddenly George W. Bush remembers the lessons of Vietnam:
"Bush to invoke Vietnam in arguing against Iraq pullout"
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As he awaits a crucial progress report on Iraq, President Bush will try to put a twist on comparisons of the war to Vietnam by invoking the historical lessons of that conflict to argue against pulling out.Just a couple thoughts on this hodge-podge of ludicrousness:
On Wednesday in Kansas City, Missouri, Bush will tell members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars that "then, as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end," according to speech excerpts released Tuesday by the White House.
"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush will say.
"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,' " the president will say.
The president will also make the argument that withdrawing from Vietnam emboldened today's terrorists by compromising U.S. credibility, citing a quote from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden that the American people would rise against the Iraq war the same way they rose against the war in Vietnam, according to the excerpts.
"Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently," Bush will say.
The White House is billing the speech, along with another address next week to the American Legion, as an effort to "provide broader context" for the debate over the upcoming Iraq progress report by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad.
President Bush has frequently asked lawmakers -- and the American people -- to withhold judgment on his troop "surge" in Iraq until the report comes out in September.
1) Bush isn't "waiting on the progress report" - he's writing it. And after he writes it, he's having his career-minded general read it to the nation on Sept. 11 to add to add some drama to the theater presentation.
2) Isn't it amazing we didn't hear any invoking of Vietnam in the media blitz that led up to the Iraq Occupation? Those were different times in the U.S., when human rights and civilian casualties weren't such a big deal to the nation.
3) If you were ever curious what a "Straw Man" fallacy is, but were afraid to ask, this is literally a textbook example - "Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility, but the terrorists see things differently."
4) If Mitt Romney really is the most "Intellectually dishonest politician in history" than he must be the most intellectually dishonest sentient being in the universe to overtake Bush and crew.
5) It's a pretty sure bet you won't be hearing about the lessons of Vietnam as the media blitz to attack Iran and Syria builds.
--WKW
Afonso is constantly teaching us lessons. In this case, the message is clear - never be afraid to aim high.
--WKW
I finally picked up Barry Glassner's The Gospel of Food last night, and I started reading before bed, expecting to get about 10 pages in before I conked out.
I read 174 pages. I have no idea what time it was when I finally forced myself to put it down, but it was no earlier than 2 a.m. And, although I probably could have lasted a bit longer, I deliberately stopped before the "What Made America Fat?" chapter, because I didn't want to be sleepy for that. (Also, frankly, I didn't want to have my enjoyment of the rest of it trashed if Glassner isn't as critical of the "obesity" hysteria as I hope he is -- though I have faith that he regards it with a satisfyingly critical eye, at least.)
Can I just TELL YOU how much I love Barry Glassner? I don't even know what to say about the first 174 pages of this book; I just want to quote them all. In lieu of that, I will encourage you as strongly as possible to buy it. Even if it all goes to hell in the fat chapter, the first 174 pages are worth the money.
What I love about Glassner's writing -- and I devoured The Culture of Fear just as quickly a few years ago, right after I saw him interviewed in Bowling for Columbine -- is that he really seems to prize reason above all else. That doesn't mean he's unemotional or narrowly focused; he believes, for instance, that it is reasonable to enjoy the sensual pleasure of eating. (And he's goddamned right.) It just means that his apparent agenda is to advance the cause of critical thinking, not any specific point of view. And that is why I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading him.
So Glassner cops to being a card-carrying member of the Slow Food movement and describes some meals he's had at ungodly expensive restaurants in utterly porny detail, but he never allows his preferences to give way to snobbery. He refuses to demonize processed food or fast food, choosing instead to take a thorough look at the many pros and cons of both, the real people (often highly trained chefs) who produce the recipes, and the real reasons why people choose them over fresh, whole foods. (Progressives who act as if everyone who makes that choice is an ignorant dupe of Big Food -- or even simply too poor to have other options -- take a well-deserved licking for their [okay, our] presumptions here.) He also acknowledges that those amazing, memorable meals he's had at fine restaurants have most often been when he was in the company of a powerful critic the staff spotted -- when he's dined at the same places as an average (albeit monied) Joe, the experience has been far less thrilling. Food can be a mindblowing art form, but even those willing and able pay top dollar don't necessarily have access to the highest expressions of it. Verrrry interesting.
Glassner also untangles a lot of food mysteries I've wondered about -- such as the meaning of labels like "organic," "fresh," and "natural" (not much, in every case) -- without ever taking a gotcha tone one way or another. He acknowledges that, personal health-wise, something marked "organic" is unlikely to be much better for you than its non-organic counterpart (in fact, the best alternative might come from a small farmer who does farm organically but can't afford to jump through the hoops required to earn an "organic" label), and that the organic movement is infected with a lot of "New Age blather and inferior food." BUT, he says, even huge suppliers like Organic Valley demonstrate "obvious sincerity about the social and ethical commitments of their company." An Organic Valley product may not be substantially better for you, but it's better for the farmers who are protected from price fluctuations, the people who live near those farms and aren't exposed to pesticides, and the animals who have much better living conditions before, um, being slaughtered. So there are plenty of good reasons to buy organic, even if they're not the reasons why most consumers actually make that choice.
"Natural" on the other hand, is pretty much a load of crap (which I was just thinking the other night while examining Al's Sprite can, which simultaneously claimed to contain "all natural flavors" and "no fruit juice"). One example is "natural" vanilla, which comes from the bean, and "artificial" vanillin, which comes from wood pulp. Both come from perfectly natural ingredients and are practically indistinguishable chemically, but only one is allowed the "natural" label. On the other hand, for a food to be labeled "natural," it only has to have 51 percent "natural" components, and the taste usually comes from the 49% of artificial crap anyway.
As for "fresh," in addition to finally explaining to me how we came to have supersweet fresh pineapple year-round, starting about 15 years ago (hardcore chilling and the addition of previously stored fruit juice to balance the flavor), Glassner makes a point that occasionally gets some play in the media but is really not said enough:If these sorts of wordplays and legalistic shenanigans [to earn a "fresh" label] seem absurd, so are the public's misconceptions that motivate food companies to sell their processed foods as fresh in the first place. Frozen and canned fruits and vegetables tend to be at least as nutritious as their fresh counterparts, but most food shoppers imagine otherwise. Consumers are largely unaware of contemporary techniques for flash-freezing and canning that retain micronutrients that are often lost during the packaging and shipping of fresh produce. The levels of many vitamins decrease dramatically in fresh fruits and vegetables within several days after they have been harvested and refrigerated.
And you know, I knew all that, but I still feel mildly guilty when I turn to my trusty bag of (organic!) frozen veggies for dinner or berries for a smoothie, instead of using the real thing. I buy frozen mostly because I inevitably waste fresh stuff; I'd love to be the kind of person who goes to the market every day and buys exactly what I need for dinner that night, but, um, I'm not. So even if I only buy one apple and one green pepper and one zucchini when I go to the store, I can be sure at least one of those will rot before I use it. (And don't get me started on heads of broccoli/cauliflower/lettuce or, the worst offenders, bunches of herbs. WHO THE HELL CAN USE 50 HANDFULS OF CILANTRO BEFORE IT GOES BAD? I'm not opening a Mexican restaurant here; I'm making six fucking tacos!) Frozen fruits and veggies allow me the freedom to cook what I feel like when I feel like it -- and to say "Screw it, let's go out" without feeling guilty about those peppers that are getting squishy in the crisper. But then, there's always that niggling guilt about how I'm copping out, compromising my culinary integrity and possibly my health -- and above all, being a Bad Fatty. I must earn my right to be unapologetically fat by eating only raw, fresh, organic foods!
That kind of thinking is what Glassner calls "The Gospel of Naught" -- the idea that we should all be eating as little as possible, with as little enjoyment (and as much effort) as possible, for optimum health. (He specifically goes after Walter Willett within the first few pages. Heh.) This leads to incredible misconceptions about what kind of nutrients human beings actually need to consume.For one of his studies, Paul Rozin [a psychologist at UPenn] presented the following scenario to a diverse sample of Americans: "Assume you are alone on a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food. Pick the food that you think would be best for your health." Seven choices were offered: corn, alfalfa sprouts, hot dogs, spinach, peaches, bananas, and milk chocolate.
If you guessed that hot dogs and milk chocolate are the closest of those foods to being nutritionally complete, you get a gold star. Fewer than 1 in 10 of Rozin's subjects picked one of those.In response to another set of questions, half of Rozin's respondents said that even very small amounts of salt, cholesterol and fat are unhealthy. More than one in four believed that a diet totally free of those substances is healthiest, when of course, they are crucial nutrients for human health. Without them, we could not survive.
Emphasis mine. The "Gospel of Naught" has trained us to "see pleasurable and healthy eating as mutually exclusive." And that's a problem for our health, on a lot of levels. Not only does it keep a shocking number of people from realizing that fat and salt are necessary parts of a healthy diet, but -- as Glassner explains on the very first page -- some studies have shown that enjoying your food makes you get more nutrients out of it. He talks about one study in which groups of Thai and Swedish women were given Thai food, Swedish food, and some other food "that was high in nutrients but consisted of a sticky, savorless paste." The Thai women absorbed more iron when eating the Thai food, which the Swedes thought was too spicy; the Swedes absorbed more iron when eating traditional Swedish food the Thai women found unappealingly bland; and neither group absorbed much iron when eating the pasty shit.
How weird is that? And what could it mean, if it were found to be true on a larger scale? Is the "French paradox" really a result of better portion control, or is it a result of the French enjoying their fucking food? Citing another study of Rozin's, Glassner writes:Among the findings: the French view food as pleasure, while Americans worry about food. Asked what words they associate with chocolate cake, the French chose "celebration" and the Americans chose "guilt." Asked about heavy cream, the French selected "whipped"; Americans chose "unhealthy."
I know which camp I'd rather be in.
All right, I could go on and on, but I don't want to wreck the whole book for you. Go buy it. Meanwhile, I'm off to read what Glassner has to say about fat. I expect there will be more gushing tomorrow.
Maybe PM Harper can see if he can borrow a copy of President Bush's Combating Protestors for Dummies:
A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.
Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.Ooh, poor widdle delicate pwesident! Is our legitimate, legal, and patrifuckingotic dissent sullying your beautiful wee mind? We're sowwy!
But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."
The "Presidential Advance Manual" was released under subpoena to the ACLU, who have filed a lawsuit on behalf of Jeffrey and Nicole Rank, two protestors "arrested for refusing to cover their anti-Bush t-shirts at a Fourth of July speech at the West Virginia State Capitol in 2004." The t-shirts had "Bush" crossed through on the front and "the back of his shirt said 'Regime Change Starts at Home,' while hers said 'Love America, Hate Bush.' Members of the White House event staff told them to cover their shirts or leave, according to the lawsuit. They refused and were arrested, handcuffed and briefly jailed before local authorities dropped the charges and apologized."
Nice. Meanwhile, my new favorite White House fuck-knuckle, Tony Fratto, refused to comment on the manual "because it is an issue in two other lawsuits." Ongoing investigation, bitchez.
[Image via Think Progress.]
14 U.S. troops die in Iraq copter crash:
A Black Hawk helicopter went down Wednesday in northern Iraq, killing all 14 U.S. soldiers aboard, the military said, the deadliest crash since January 2005.I'm just sick. Absolutely sick to my stomach.
...The military said initial indications showed the UH-60 helicopter experienced a mechanical problem and was not brought down by hostile fire, but the cause of the crash was still under investigation.
...Wednesday's deaths raised to at least 3,721 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Police Provocateurs at the Stop the SPP Summit?
| posted by Chet Scoville | Wednesday, August 22, 2007I have no idea if that is what really happened, but see for yourself:
The story being reported in the Canadian Press is that police at the SPP meeting in Quebec may have used provocateurs in a failed attempt to provide an excuse for mass arrests of peaceful protesters:
A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand.More from Red Tory, the Gazetteer, and Canadian Cynic. Update: More also from Rusty Idols.
The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.
Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.
Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them....
The three do not appear to have been arrested or charged with any offence.
As Chet mentioned yesterday, Bush is up in Canada meeting with Canadian PM Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who are also meeting as a group with "a council of corporate executives from each of the countries" which is advocating "broader coordination across North America, from regulatory standards to emergency planning."
Bush was asked specifically about the SPP, and the "growing number of people in each of your countries who have expressed concern about the Security and Prosperity Partnership." His response was to treat it all like a big conspiracy theory and note that he was "amused by" and finds "quite comical" the disparity between "reality and what some people are taking on TV about."
Question: As you three leaders meet here, there are a growing number of people in each of your countries who have expressed concern about the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This is addressed to all three of you. Can you say today that this is not a prelude to a North American union, similar to a European Union? Are there plans to build some kind of superhighway connecting all three countries? And do you believe all of these theories about a possible erosion of national identity stem from a lack of transparency from this partnership?
Bush: [inaudible] We respect, um, each other's sovereignty, um—you know, there are some who would like to frighten our fellow citizens into believing that, um, relations, um, between us are harmful for our respective peoples. I just believe they're wrong. I believe it's in our interests to trade; I believe it's in our interests to dialogue; I believe it's in our interests to work out common problems [condescending chuckle] for the good of our people. And I-I'm amused by some of the, some of the speculation, uh, some of the old, uh, you can call 'em political scare tactics—you been in politics as long as I have, you get used to that kinda technique, where you lay out a conspiracy and then force people to try to prove it doesn't exist. That's just the way some people operate. Um, I'm here representin' my nation, I feel strongly, uh, that the United States, um, is a force for good. And I feel strongly that, uh, by working with our neighbors we can be a stronger force for good. And, um, so I appreciate that question, I-I-I-I'm amused by the difference between what actually takes place in the meetings and what some are trying to say takes place. It's quite comical, actually. When you realize the difference between reality and what some people are talking on TV about.
-----------------------
Hmm. I can't imagine where he acquired his familiarity with "political scare tactics."
Someone who's "been in politics as long as" he has ought to also know by now that "speculation" and "conspiracy" are inevitable when government operates in secrecy. But, strangely, it hasn't made him any more inclined toward openness. Huh. Figure that.
I'd also like to note that there were hundreds of demonstrators protesting the meeting, who were tear-gassed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And upon hearing about the protests, PM Harper's response was: "A couple hundred? It's sad."
Birds of a feather.
[Thanks to Petulant for the video.]
As many of you know, there has been a raging discussion throughout the blogosphere about what constitutes "manliness." Dave Neiwert kicked off the discussion with a rousing discussion of stay-at-home fatherhood, and the cult of faux masculinity that seems to pervade the right. Most of the men reading will nod along with Neiwert's characterization of That Guy:
I remember camping out with my dad and his buddies during deer-hunting season and encountering these kinds of men then, too. They were always the guys who had to drink the most, carry on the loudest, and make a competition out of everything, especially to see who could shoot the first buck and who got the biggest one. They were the kinds of guys you really hated hunting with, because they were terrible woodsmen and even worse companions; they were the ones who always forgot some critical camp item, and the ones who would accidentally knock your meal into the fire. Mostly, there was always the chance they were going to shoot their own fool heads off if not yours.
Ayup. These are the "manly men" who are, at heart, terrified that they aren't men at all, but wimps. And so they have to find a way to constantly prove their manliness, whether it's by buying a huge gun, or being cold to their children because boys don't emote, or refusing to take "no" for an answer, because no woman would turn down a real man.
Neiwert's article naturally drew fire from the conservative blogosphere, and back and forth we go; I don't really want to get into the back and forth, frankly, because I don't want to be drawn into it.
Instead, I want to focus on what may seem, at first, to be an only tangentially related subject: the slowly evolving depiction of men on network television.
As we all know, men on network television are generally incompetent, always oversexed, somewhat misogynistic, and extremely crude. If they're fathers, they're at best befuddled and confused. If they're husbands, they're not in touch with their wives' needs and frankly, not sure what those needs are or why they exist. If they're friends, they're a facile, brittle version of friends.
So in some ways, the article referred above is a hopeful sign that maybe, just maybe, we're getting to the point where men might have reached 2.1 dimensions.
But first, let's assure everyone that we're not queer or nothin':
Michael Vartan considers himself a guy's guy — just as much as the next guy's guy. He swears like a sailor, likes fast cars and enjoys a good high-testosterone action flick. "I can't wait to see the next Jet Li movie!" he says.
Yeah! I love when two hot, beefy men go after each other too! Nothing unmanly about that, by God!
And yet, says Vartan, "I'm a lot more sensitive than anyone would really know, and it's definitely interesting to portray that in a character."
As the star of ABC's hourlong fall dramedy, "Big Shots," the former "Alias" secret agent is just one of a number of actors playing complex, emotionally evolved, heterosexual alpha males putting their softer side on display in prime time.
One of the enduring myths about men is that men don't have emotions. Certainly men don't have the sort of emotional depth that women do. Everyone knows that. This, of course, cuts both ways: men are viewed as emotional cripples, unable to really love their kids as much as moms do, or their spouses as much as their spouses love them back. And therefore, men's relationships with children, with spouses, with friends -- they don't mean as much. They just aren't that important.
Of course, this also means that men are free to be emotional cripples. If they choose to be selfish, they can't help it, they're men. If they choose to prioritize themselves over their kids, they can't help it, they're men. If they don't show any awareness that their significant others have feelings, they can't help it, they're men. And so with regard to emotion and interpersonal relationships, men are both infantilized and devalued. Sound familiar?
In a number of broadcast ensembles premiering this fall, men are opening up about issues beyond sports, money, power and sexual conquests. They're expressing their feelings — often to other men — on fatherhood, intimacy and love.
One such series is ABC's "Carpoolers," which centers on commuter pals who commiserate about everything from their jobs and their wives ("If we don't provide for our women, do they really need us?" queries one character) to their personal secrets (one confesses to losing his virginity to Air Supply's syrupy `80s ballad, "All Out of Love.")
"The whole idea behind the car pool is that anything can be said," says co-star T.J. Miller. "It's almost like the huddle before they go into the football game that is life. Then they go back into the huddle because there's another game at home. So it's guys trying to figure stuff out and wanting to get the perspective of other guys."
I'm not going to get my hopes up -- undoubtedly, most of the discussion will be men's concerns about "sports, money, power and sexual conquests," because old habits die hard. But at least the idea is sound -- men do worry about whether they're being good fathers, good partners, good people. And however hamfistedly it's put together, at least the idea behind this show -- that men are human, too -- is true.
There's one other show highlighted that has at least some hope for decency:
The men in "Big Shots" are very in touch with their feminine sides. Vartan, Dylan McDermott, Joshua Malina and Christopher Titus play high-powered Manhattan CEOs with everything in the world they could want, except for stable relationships at home. In the pilot, the men groan so much about their dysfunctional marriages, their need for intimacy and fidelity, McDermott's character declares: "Men. We're the new women."
Series creator and executive producer Jon Harmon Feldman believes that men are now having "to deal with traditional female issues of fidelity, rejection or the challenges of love or making relationships work. We're trying to attack those (issues) in a way that is true to how men would deal with it and hopefully bring a glimpse into men that women might not ordinarily get."
I want to vomit about that last quote, but only because it's true; men, we all know, don't value fidelity, or at least not in ourselves. This is, of course, bunk.
So there's some hope, but let's not get carried away:
But "Carpoolers" scribe Kit Boss argues that there has to be a line drawn on all this male camaraderie. "I just wrote an episode that answers the question: Are they friend friends or car-pool friends? In the case of that story, we definitely looked for a way to undercut anything that felt too emotional or too sensitive."
For example, one of the characters, happy to find out that they were more than car-pool pals, goes for a hug. "The guy he was going to hug said: `Whoa, we're not girlfriends. We're friends.' ... To me, the danger would be: Does this match the reality that I know? I generally find more humor in the inability to express one's self ... than in being able to be more highly evolved as a male."
Yeah, because men would never hug, or nothin'. This is, of course, why my hopes are not overly high for these shows; I'm sadly certain that any moments of clarity, where men appear to care, with have to be undercut with a, "but we're just men, after all" joke.
At least, though, the shows appear to have their hearts in the right place, unlike, say, "The Big Bang Theory," which features two nerds! Who have a really hot neighbor! But they're inept at dating! But she's hot! By the creators of "Two and a Half Men!" Compared to most of what passes for entertainment, having a heart in the right place can go a long way.
Men do, of course, have emotions, and fears, and deep, intense feelings, no different than women. We've just been told that we're not supposed to, just as women have been told that they're too emotional, and incapable of rationality. To tie this back to Niewert, one of the things this slow change in programming does show is that society is slowly, in its own glacial way, starting to understand the lie of this. Just as a show like "Sex and the City" could portray women as having libidos, something that women are traditionally supposed to lack. It may not be perfect -- indeed, it won't be -- but it's a road marker that's at least pointing the right direction, even if it shows far too many miles to go.
(Incidentally, let me note that I'm not writing this to get into an argument about who is portrayed worse on television, men or women. The answer is obvious: women. But no humans are portrayed on television, except, perhaps, on "Flight of the Conchords.")
What is your favorite cultural guilty pleasure? TV show, literary genre, music, reconstituted füd-in-a-can; whatever it is, it's crap and you know it, but your love knows no bounds of taste.
Mine is the hour-long Aaron Spelling drama. Whence the appeal of 7th Heaven, espousing as it does such silly and reactionary values, in whose universe every extra-marital sex act results in pregnancy or syphilis? And why do I still get excited every time I come across old 90210 on the Soap Channel? I don't question it. I just watch. And eat Cheez-its. Preferably in my underwear.
...in addition to the fact that we love her endlessly as the girl in Love Actually who deftly handles the realization that her hub's best mate's indifference is self-preservation and as the fiery Lizzie Bennet who gives whatfor to Mr. Darcy in the rain and even, god help us, as Domino.
Because, when asked about the Chanel perfume advert at left, and specifically what were presumed to be air-brushed boobies, she said, bluntly: "Those things certainly weren't mine. …I don't have any tits."
And because, when there was yet more to be said, she said it: "Somebody goes, 'Gosh, you're pretty.' Thanks. I've got good genes! OK, I'm on the cover of a magazine but somebody else does the hair, and the make-up, and airbrushes the fuck out of me—it's not me, it's something other people have created."
(And, yes, I know there are constant reports that she is anorexic, but considering in candid papz shots not at ritualized post-starving celebrations premieres / award shows, she generally looks like a healthy young woman—as opposed to, say, this—and bearing in mind that I always see pictures of her walking everywhere, which is what you do in London, instead of taking limos everywhere, I'm disinclined to let the accusations preempt a commendation of her forthrightness about the beauty illusion. YMMV.)
Ok, you might have to revoke my queer credentials when I confess...that I’m just now, at age 55, coming to be acquainted with—and love!—Doctor Who.
For those of you who’ve yet to watch an episode of the famous BBC programme—according to Wikipedia, “the longest-running science fiction television series in the world—I highly recommend beginning with the 2005 revival, filmed in Wales and starring the imitable (and totally sexy) Christopher Eccleston (the quiet guy in the clip above). The show centers on the adventures of a mysterious time-traveller known as "the Doctor" who travels in his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Spacetime) ship, which appears from the exterior to be an old-fashioned British police callbox but which, like all good physics mysteries, is much larger inside than outside. With his companions, the Doctor explores space and time, solving problems and righting wrongs.
The acting in the show is painfully self-conscious, the scripts corny as hell, and the special effects so inexpensively hokey they’ll have you on the floor rolling in laughter. But it’s one of the queerest, most progressive and sweetly heartfelt shows I’ve ever watched.
A spin-off series, Torchwood—an anagram of “Doctor Who”—features “Captain Jack Harkness” (the talkative one in the clip above), a roguish, handsome, bisexual anti-hero who, from a base set up over a sort of “time rift” in Cardiff, Wales, takes care of supernatural and alien incursions and occurrences.
The man who deserves credit for the brilliance—and queerness—of both shows is none other than Russell T. Davies, who in addition to reviving Doctor Who and creating Torchwood, is famous for writing another BBC series, Queer as Folk. I’ve just started watching the British version of this show—not wanting to waste my time with the sanitized American version—and am now utterly convinced that Davies is one of the most brilliant TV script writers in history. Watch the following compilation (not safe for the workplace!) and notice the energy, the truthfulness, the sheer fearlessness of the show. The young man in the clips, btw, is supposed to be 15 years old: imagine that plot line going down in America and realize just how far behind the rest of the western world the US is falling. (And no, I'm not saying I approve of the seduction of teenagers by older men, but I am saying the show has the courage--and the BBC supported it--to deal with both the truth of what goes on in real life, and the fact that teenagers are sexual beings.)
The clip will give you an idea of Davies’ genius. Then, if possible, go out and rent or buy one (if not all) of the three series. I guarantee, after one or two episodes, you’ll be hooked.
The United States a far greater nation than Tajikistan (aside from boys soccer)
| posted by William K Wolfrum | Tuesday, August 21, 2007On Monday in South Korea in the FIFA under-17 World Cup, the United States team suffered a shocking 4-3 loss at the hands of Tajikistan. While this result was roundly ignored in most American sports circles, in political circles it is still a result that has bells ringing.
For in just 90 minutes of play, the U.S. has helped create something that sends shivers down the spines of foreign experts everywhere - Cocky Tajiks.
Yes, Tajiks are strutting about greater Tajikistan today with chests puffed out. Suddenly in Tajikistan, anything is possible. And as we all are aware, Satan hath no greater ally than an arrogant Tajik.
And sure, aside from the victory by its teens, Tajiks have some things to be proud of. Nearly one-third of its residents don't live in abject poverty, after all. And if you're an Afghani drug lord, you pretty much have no choice but to traffic your drugs through Tajikistan if you want to get them into the lucrative Russian market. Also, Tajikistan is just one of only five countries on the planet to share a border with Uzbekistan. So it's by no means all bad there.
But the recent triumph on the soccer pitch will likely get Tajiks thinking they are on par with the U.S., and this is by no means the case, whatsoever. A simple look at the facts will show that the United States of America is far superior to Tajikistan.
Infant Mortality Rate: When ranked against other industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks second-to-last. However, Tajikistan isn't an industrialized nation and the U.S. crushes them in this race, as just 6.37 U.S. babies die out of a thousand births. While this lags far behind nations like Sweden (2.76) and Singapore (2.30), it's way better than Tajikistan (43.64).
Human Rights: An authoritarian state, there have been widespread allegations of torture in Tajikistan. In comparison, the United States, on average, rarely tortures its own citizens, and, for the most part, only tortures non-citizens when the President feels it absolutely necessary.
Health Care: Again, American dominance comes shining through. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. has the No. 37 health care system in the world, trailing such health-conscious nations as Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile. Tajikistan however ranks a lowly No. 154, which is even worse than Iraq (103).
Military: The U.S. has a military that is used to invade nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada, etc. Tajikistan has never invaded any nation worth noting, and, in fact, American troops are currently stationed in Tajikistan to keep them from getting any ideas.
Paris Hiltons: Not only does the U.S. lead the world in Paris Hiltons (1), it is also a leader in such stars as Britney Spears (1), Lindsay Lohans (1) and Olsen Twins (2). No one famous has ever come from Tajikistan.
So while Tajiks gloat over their victory over the United States, it is imperative that they not get too excited about this. Simple statistics prove that the United States is far superior to Tajikistan, in nearly every category.
And for Americans, chin up. The loss to Tajikistan could be construed as painful. But keep in mind, compared to the average Tajik, an American lives a life of luxury. And compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. settles in nicely in the upper middle area in most categories.
So in the end, it comes down to this: while the U.S. may not technically or statistically be the "Greatest Nation on Earth," it is a far greater nation than Tajikistan in everything that does not consist of teenage boys playing soccer.
--WKW
This fascinating article by John B. Judis on The New Republic online explores the link between conservative voters, 9/11, gay marriage and abortion, the Iraq War, and humanity’s capacity to contemplate and fear death.
The article talks about psychological research during the past 60 years, beginning with David Riesman, who wrote "The Lonely Crowd" in 1950, and Ernest Becker, whose last book, "The Denial of Death," won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974, culminating with the work of Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski who in the early 1980s (before 9/11) developed a theory they called "terror management," in the process coining the phrases "worldview defense" and "mortality salience."
“Worldview defense” refers to a range of emotions, from intolerance, to religiosity, to a preference for law and order, that the trio believes are triggered by thoughts of death—or what they call, “mortality salience.” In one of their first attempts to test their theory in the late 80’s, they
assembled 22 Tucson municipal court judges. They told the judges they wanted to test the relationship between personality traits and bail decisions, but, for one group, they inserted in the middle of the personality questionnaire two exercises meant to evoke awareness of their mortality. One asked the judges to "briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you"; the other required them to "jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you physically as you die and once you are physically dead." They then asked the judges to set bail in the hypothetical case of a prostitute whom the prosecutor claimed was a flight risk. The judges who did the mortality exercises set an average bail of $455. The control group that did not do the exercises set it at an average of $50. The psychologists knew they were onto something.No kidding! Over the years, Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski have tested their theory with a wide range of subjects and found—over and over again—that when people’s (understandable) fear of death is triggered, especially subliminally, even liberals react with a predictable shift toward conservative, authoritarian, and reactionary attitudes—they adopt what the trio call a “worldview defense” posture.
Their theory explains not only the success of the Bush/Cheney slate of candidates, but of their far-reaching agenda—everything from rolling back abortions rights and outlawing gay marriage, to legalizing torture, trashing habeas corpus and enabling electronic surveillance of American citizens.
Then, in late September 2004, the psychologists, along with two colleagues from Rutgers, tested whether mortality exercises influenced whom voters would support in the upcoming presidential election. They conducted the study among 131 Rutgers undergraduates who said they were registered and planned to vote in November. The control group that completed a personality survey, but did not do the mortality exercises, [subliminal reminders designed to trigger one’s fear of death and, thereby, their “worldview defense”] predictably favored Kerry by four to one. But the students who did the mortality exercises favored Bush by more than two to one. This strongly suggested that Bush's popularity was sustained by mortality reminders. The psychologists concluded in a paper published after the election that the government terror warnings, the release of Osama bin Laden's video on October 29, and the Bush campaign's reiteration of the terrorist threat (Cheney on election eve: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again") were integral to Bush's victory over Kerry. "From a terror management perspective," they wrote, "the United States' electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction."I’ve just ordered the trio’s 2002 book, “In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror.” Considering the subject, I’d be willing to bet the book owns a place of prominence in the libraries of folks like Karl Rove and Roger Ailes.
In their experiments, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski make a good case that mortality reminders from September 11 enhanced Bush's popularity through November 2004. But, on the basis of their research, it is possible to draw even broader conclusions about U.S. politics after September 11. Mortality reminders not only enhanced the appeal of Bush's political style but also deepened and broadened the appeal of the conservative social positions that Republicans had been running on.
For instance, because worldview defense increases hostility toward other races, religions, nations, and political systems, it helps explain the rage toward France and Germany that erupted prior to the Iraq war, as well as the recent spike in hostility toward illegal immigrants. Also central to worldview defense is the protection of tradition against social experimentation, of community values against individual prerogatives--as was evident in the Tucson experiment with the judges--and of religious dictates against secular norms. For many conservatives, this means opposition to abortion and gay marriage. This may well explain why family values became more salient in 2004--a year in which voters were supposed to be unusually focused on foreign policy--than it had been from 1992 through 2000. Indeed, from 2001 to 2004, polls show an increase in opposition to abortion and gay marriage, along with a growing religiosity. According to Gallup, the percentage of voters who believed abortion should be "illegal in all circumstances" rose from 17 percent in 2000 to 20 percent in 2002 and would still be at 19 percent in 2004. Even church attendance by atheists, according to one poll, increased from 3 to 10 percent from August to November 2001.
[emphasis mine]
A rather alarming find by Digby:
If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege [sic] while terrifying American enemies.The piece, which was posted by the conservative group The Family Security Foundation, Inc. and authored by a contributing editor to their website (and from which that's only a small excerpt), is entitled, I shit you not, Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy. You can't make this stuff up.
He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.
President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world?
FamilySecurityMatters.org is, by the way, evidently a front group for the conservative Washington think tank Center for Security Policy, among whose members can be found senior members of the Bush administration (and my fuckwit of a governor). Additionally, Dick Cheney "was an early member of Center's Board of Advisors (which is now called the National Security Advisory Council)."
A group affiliated with members of the administration right up to the vice president himself are advocating Bush becoming "President for Life" of the country. Anyone concerned about that at all, by any chance…?
[H/T Jill.]
Long, Straight, Curly, Fuzzy, Snaggy, Shaggy, Ratty, Matty: Hair!
| posted by Melissa McEwan | Tuesday, August 21, 2007Last week, Kate posted about the asshole Glamour editor who haughtily sniffed that "political" hairstyles like afros, dreadlocks, twistouts, etc. aren't appropriate for the workplace, and in comments I mentioned that Pam has written some great posts on the issue of hair (like this one, for instance) and has catalogued her own "Hair Journey."
Yesterday, Pam posted an interview she did in 2005 with Heather Barnes of Hair Stories, who was working on a documentary about women and hair. It's just fantastic.
Aulelia at Charcoal Ink also writes a lot about hair; this is one of my favorite posts of hers on the subject, in which she wonders how her hair can affect someone else to the point where they're compelled to comment negatively on it. Aulelia has also documented her "Natural Hair Journey."
And of course because I wouldn't be me unless I were a broken record, I'll link to A Girl Like Me again, which I hope by now every Shaker has watched at least three times.
Shaker Christine mentioned in comments of my post The Bush Economy that "there's a 93% increase in foreclosure notices this month over the same time period last year and 9% increase over the previous month." Which is, sadly, true—and if you'd like to depress yourself, you can read all about it here, and how the problem is being complicated by "lagging home sales and flat or decreasing home prices" which make it "more difficult for homeowners who fall behind on payments to sell their homes and clear the debt."
And for a double-dose of depressitude, then head on over to see Richard Blair, who notes: "In all of the hand wringing about the sub-prime mortgage market implosion negatively impacting financial markets in general (and homeowners tied to those mortgages, in particular) , not one pundit has mentioned the delayed impact of the bankruptcy bill." Oh yeah—remember that? And the 18 Democratic Senators and 31 Democratic Representatives along with practically the entirety of the GOP who voted for it?
Yeah.
If Pat Leahy hasn't already had an aneurysm from the White House telling him to piss off after his repeated tough talk, the fourth branch of government will certainly get that blood pumping furiously:
Vice President Cheney's office acknowledged for the first time yesterday that it has dozens of documents related to the administration's warrantless surveillance program, but it signaled that it will resist efforts by congressional Democrats to obtain them.Translation: I've got the ditto paper sheets for tomorrow's history quiz right here, but you can't have it.
Yea, sure. Contempt. Wev. I hope the folks in Congress are enjoying this little game while their perceived usefulness goes down the shitter like teh wet frenzy. Same goes for the White House, frankly. A lame duck playing school bully with a stoned collective. Yes, I know I should vent vile vitriol to the veep, but it's gotten boring. The government has turned into this boring and annoying show that has jumped the shark years ago and needs to have its remaining episodes yanked so as to put something new in the time slot.
Ideas, anyone?
HaloScan is being funny again, and every time it gets glitchy like this, people complain about losing comments, so I wanted to give you a little hint: If you hit Publish and get an error message, right-click and hit "Back" instead of refreshing or figuring your comment's just been lost. Most of the time, if you hit Back, the text you've input will still be there and you can just hit Publish again.
I also recommend, if you've spent a long time on a comment, copying it before you hit Publish, just in case.
Also, I wanted to let you know, because a few people have asked lately, that we're still working on getting our dedicated server set up, and will hopefully be back soon. Sorry it's taking awhile, and thanks so much for your patience and your willingness to hang with us wherever we are. Your support is hugely appreciated, Shakers.
Bush, Canadian PM Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, along with 30 CEOs from their countries, have been getting together for the past few days to discuss giving the CEOs more of what they want despite what anyone else might need. That's modern government, ya know -- in this case, in the form of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. (Yes, Virginia, there really is an SPP. No, it's not a goddamn highway.)
Anyway, some links from the Canadian side of the border:
Alison explains that not only do progressive Canadians who oppose the SPP have nothing to do with nutcases like the John Birch Society, but the JBS wants nothing to do with them either. She also explains an example of the SPP talks placing corporate priorities ahead of anything that the people as a whole might require.
Jennifer has several days' worth of photos and first-hand accounts from the protests.
Thwap explains again -- and this really can't be emphasized enough -- that the problem with the SPP is that its terms are being dictated entirely by thirty CEOs, with no input from anyone else, and that it is simply another example of the drive towards undemocratic globalization.
It's unprecedented for sure. But that's, um, not always a good thing.
Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows.So, ya know, if you're not feeling that Bush Boom we've been hearing so much about, that's probably why—because you're still living on less money than you were five years ago.
…Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience for the majority of Americans born since 1945.
While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show.The Bush administration, sympathetic as always, says, "Not our problem, douchebags." Or, technically: "[With] the significant wrenching hits that our economy took in 2001 and 2002…no one should be surprised that what a bubble economy created in the late 1990s and 2000, where economic data were skewed, would take some time to recover." Thank you, White House Spokesman Tony Fratto, for taking the time to create a new way of saying "Clenis!" + "9/11 changed everything" = "fuck you." Very refreshing!
Anyway…so yeah. The fact that Americans' incomes "remained lower in 2005 than five years earlier helps explain why so many Americans report feeling economic stress despite overall growth in the economy." What's more, there's this other little problem of, in addition to having less money generally, a large swath of Americans who "are also paying a larger share of their health care costs and have had their retirement benefits reduced, adding to their out-of-pocket costs." Ouch. Less money that needs to go further, and you end up feeling pretty quickly like butter scraped over too much bread, as our friend Bilbo would say.
If, however, you were among the Americans making more than $1 million a year, otherwise known as "the less-than-a-quarter-of-1-percenters," your income probably grew! Turns out that not only did your numbers grow "by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000," but you also "received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003." Wow. Good for you!
You're not really passing that windfall on to the rest of us, though, if you know what I mean—so get trickling! Trickle-down economics only works if there's trickling!
[Robert S. McIntyre, the director of Citizens for Tax Justice] said the tax savings at the top, combined with lower average incomes after five years, “shows that trickle down doesn’t work.”Huh. Fancy that. I never would have guessed.
More from Lambert, Attaturk, Steve M., and Oliver Willis.
White House Acts to Limit Health Plan for Children:
The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.Got that? Instead of the expected veto of legislation to provide healthcare to children, which passed both the House and the Senate (the latter by a 68-31 vote), Bush has just decided to totally undermine the legislation so that it can't work as intended. Why? Because the worst thing that could happen for people whose political philosophy is dependent on the premise that government can't work is a government-run healthcare program actually working. And it's more important for these corporate fuck-junkies to prove that the government can't do anything better than "the market" than to save kids' lives. Culture of life, my big fat ass.
Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.
After learning of the new policy, some state officials said today that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children by imposing standards that could not be met.
And once again, they're using the spooooooky specter of parents who will rip off the government ("make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage") to justify their horseshit decision, as if: A) there are actually massive numbers of adults who will abandon their private health insurance for no other reason than to rip off the government; and B) even if there were, that's reason to deny thousands and thousands of kids healthcare coverage. "Sorry, little Timmy—giving you coverage will require oversight to prevent abuse and that costs money, so if you want that kidney transplant, better start selling pencils, son. We've got nation-building to do. In, um, another nation. Oh, yeah—and tax cuts to keep subsidizing."
And here's where I rant again.
Conservatives love to babble about how progressives “hate America.” I don’t hate America—but I do hate certain things about America. I hate its promotion of avarice above social conscience, its fascination with wealth, its disdain of compassion for the weak, its delight in ignorance, its xenophobic nationalism, the immutable beliefs among so many of its citizens that the markets solve everything, that this country is the Almighty’s gift to the world, especially when it’s a still a really shitty place to live for lots of struggling people, that those people are always, only, to blame for their troubles, and that there’s something wrong with the rest of us who don’t wrap our hands around the throat of American Dream and wring every last bit of life out of it to our own benefit.
I hate that the idea that some of us could do with a little less so that others could have a little more has become a punchline.
Bush, and his administration, and his most enthusiastic supporters, represent all of it, even though they patently refuse to own up to it, instead calling us America-haters, wrapping themselves in the flag, and declaring themselves the True Patriots, so it’s all but impossible for someone like me to express my abhorrence of them without seemingly attacking America itself, so it’s easier for them to do what they really want to do—turn America into a place I really, genuinely do hate, by ridding it of everything that I love.
Because there are things I love about this country. I love that it is a beautiful mosiac of people and cultures and ideas; I love its landscapes; I love its spirit of adventure and innovation; I love that it produces some of the most generous and unique people on the planet; I love its humor; I love that it really does have the potential to be a land of opporunity for everyone, if we really gave that notion half the chance it deserved.
And those are precisely the things the Bush Brigade endeavors to crush, turning America into a nation where everyone who is not blandly, mindlessly like its self-appointed True Patriots are de facto threatening, where the natural and philsophical resources are raped and destroyed in the acquisition of more wealth, where philanthropy and empathy are relegated to little more than cute, clichéd memories, where the barrel-chested barons of a new Gilded Age stand astride the bodies of those who have been condemned to less fortunate fates, singing the praises of social Darwinism and bellowing about the superfluity of a social safety net. “The government never gave me anything!” they declare, as they deposit their million-dollar checks from their latest no-bid Defense Department contract then head off to Tiffany’s to get The Little Woman a bauble with their fat tax return.
They’re a truly disgusting lot. And the next time one of them has the temerity to accuse me of hating America, I’m going to tell them flat out, “No, I don’t hate America. I hate you.”
Gallant writes about a new study suggesting there may be a viral cause of fat in some people. Gallant reports on the study, mentions previous research that pointed to a similar conclusion, and includes this quote from one of the lead researchers:
"We're not saying that a virus is the only cause of obesity, but this study provides stronger evidence that some obesity cases may involve viral infections," Pasarica says in a news release. "We would ultimately like to identify the underlying factors that predispose some obese people to [the effects of] this virus and eventually find a way to treat it."Then Gallant steps away from the story, because that's pretty much all there is to it.
Goofus writes about the same study, using bad puns ("the buffet of reasons for why Americans are getting fatter"); barely speaks to the researchers actually involved in it (or chooses not to print anything they may have said, save one tiny quote); and then turns to "outside experts" for quotes like this:
"The cause for obesity in everyone is the same," said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "You eat more calories than you burn up; You can't get away from that basic law of physics."and this:
"We don't want obese people to feel that it's all their fault because it is not all their fault ... but clearly the buck finally lies with the person," Klein said.Goofus doesn't ask the good doctor Klein what percentage of fault lies with the person, or what a person might do to atone for getting fat, given the long-term failure rate of deliberate weight loss. Nor does Goofus ask Dr. Klein if he's considered all the variables that might affect the "calories in/calories out" paradigm in a live human being. Goofus is only interested in making the point that fat people should continue to feel guilty about being fat.
Gallant discusses the new scientific research and leaves any opinions about fat people out of it.
Boys and girls, do you want to be like Goofus or Gallant?
Crackpot sues noted science blogger for calling him a crackpot
| posted by William K Wolfrum | Tuesday, August 21, 2007Are we seeing the next step in the creationists battle against common sense and reality? Perhaps.
Stuart Pivar, author of the book "Lifecode" and it's re-release "Lifecode: From egg to embryo by self-organization", is suing noted science blogger PZ Myers aka Pharyngula for libel, after Myers reviewed said book.
Myers, a developmental biologist, was unimpressed with Pivar's work, which supports an alternative to some of Darwin's principles, namely in structuralism and self-organization:
This is not a scientific theory, and it isn't even a collection of evidence: it's a jumble of doodles. I read through it all this afternoon (there really isn't that much to read), and I have to conclude it says nothing about the development or evolution of biological organisms, although it is relevant to something else.and:
Pivar is a classic crackpot, and Lifecode isn't a science book by any measure. There is no theory there, and no evidence or observation. I can't believe any scientist would be taken in by it.Pivar, who has been pointed to as trying to further a creationist agenda by EvolutionBlog's Jason Rosenhouse, is a wealthy businessman who can afford to toss about lawsuits - he's been named as a plaintiff in at least 25 cases according to the Scientific America blog.
But can ordinary scientists and the science minded afford such lawsuits. And is this what our legal system is based upon? To keep creationists and the non-scientific from being debunked? Because Myers' criticism was harsh, but he backed it up. At the very least, this is part of the scientific method at its simplest form - scientists are notoriously brutal on work which they disagree.
"What if PZ didn't work for Seed? If people start going after individual bloggers without the resources to defend themselves, that would have a chilling effect on the whole field," wrote Scientific American's Christopher Mims in a comment to a blog post by Wired's Brandon Keim.
Pivar's lawsuit needs to be thrown out, with malice. The suit appears to be little more than a scare tactic to shut up the scientific. We already live in a world where science news is handled by the distinctly non-scientific in the mainstream media. If the truly scientific amongst us are scared away from giving honest, blunt opinions, we will have taken yet another large step to being a nation where pseudoscience and creationism reigns.
--WKW
Crossposted at Williamkwolfrum.com
Hurricane Dean, an extremely powerful Category 5 hurricane, has come ashore in the Yucatan Peninsula, near Chetumal, a city of about 140,000. Dean hit land at peak intensity, with central pressure of 906 millibars, making it the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the Atlantic. Indeed, as Chris Mooney notes:
It was also the first Category 5 Atlantic hurricane seen in the since the record-setting Hurricane Wilma of October 2005. In fact, Dean set some records of its own. Its pressure was the ninth lowest ever measured in the Atlantic, and the third lowest at landfall. Indeed, there hasn’t been a full Category 5 landfall in our part of the world since 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. Dean was in all respects a terrifying storm, and we can only hope that the damage will somehow be less than expected as it tears across the peninsula and then, after crossing the Bay of Campeche, moves on to a presumed second Mexican landfall.Dean is one of the ten most intense Atlantic storms in recorded history. Six of the ten most intense storms recorded have been in the past ten years. Five -- 2004's Ivan, 2005's Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, and now Dean -- have come in the past four years.
Of course, global warming cannot be a factor in this, because we all know hockey stick little ice age liberals taking our hummers and conoco says so. But if I lived in a coastal city, I'd be a bit concerned about this turn of events nonetheless.
Hopefully the residents of Chetumal ride out the storm okay, and if there's a silver lining in this, it's that Dean is moving westward at a fast pace, meaning that the Yucatan won't see the kind of incessant pounding that Wilma gave it in 2005. But Dean is not done by a long shot; it should reenter the Gulf of Mexico later today, and reintensify back into a major storm before striking Mexico yet again tomorrow.
This past Friday was the 25th anniversary of the compact disc. Even with downloadable media and iPods, CD's are still around, if nothing more than a way to transfer from one source to another.
I remember how I came across my first CD player when the technology was still quite new. There was a classified ad in the paper selling a black CD player for $85, which was really cheap back then. The reason the guy was selling it was because he was running a pirate radio station and had to get rid of all the equipment. Good day for me. As a bonus, he happened to have Pink Floyd's Meddle CD, technically making that my first compact disc. The next day, I went to Tower Records to purchase Dark Side Of The Moon, totally excited to listen to these pieces of work without any extraneous turntable noises. Nothing but pure silence during the quiet bits.
And so, Shakers, I pose to you: What was the first compact disc you ever listened to / purchased?
During a press conference this afternoon, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that the White House had still not responded to the committee's subpoena for documents relating to the legal basis for the warrantless surveillance program. "Time is up," Leahy said, "we've waited long enough." He went on to say, however, that he remained open to cooperating with the White House for the production of the documents: "I prefer cooperation to contempt." But if the administration has still not responded to the subpoena by September when Congress returns from recess, he said that he would pursue contempt proceedings in the committee "if that's what it takes."
For perspective on how ridiculous the White House is behaving, the subpoena for documents related to the wiretapping program was originally issued June 27th. The White House has requested (and been granted) two extensions for responding.
Just impeach them. Impeach them now.
"I love you—but I need to see your ID card."
Giuliani the Fascist Princess hails from the same faraway land as Albi the Racist Dragon. In case you were wondering. However, Guiliani the Fascist Princess is unlikely to have the sort of social awakening Albi did. Just trust me on that one.
I find this unbelievable. Washington Post, Aug. 15, In High Court Filing, It's U. S. vs. Investors. Whatever happened to Bubble Boy's great sense of humor (or something) at the charity fundraiser, telling the assembled rich and mighty, "Some people call you the elite. I call you mah base." I guess he meant they were something he'd stand on to wipe his shoes.
The Bush administration yesterday sided with accountants, bankers and lawyers seeking to avoid liability in corporate fraud cases, arguing that investors must show they lost money after relying on deceptions by third parties in order to proceed with private lawsuits.So if you relied on Enron's fraudulent annual reports to make investment decisions, you could sue Enron for fraud. What you couldn't do is sue the "independent" auditor who "verified" the annual report and said it was trustworthy.
If Arthur Andersen, Enron's accounting firm, still existed, you couldn't sue them either for aiding and abetting the fraud.
"Words or actions by a secondary actor that facilitate an issuer's misstatement but are not themselves communicated to investors, simply cannot give rise to reliance (and thus primary liability in a private action)," [according to US Solicitor general who filed the Administration's brief.]He's said, this pillar of the legal community said, that if accountants, lawyers, or bankers knowingly participate in a fraud, but don't send reports directly to investors, what the company does with the fraudulent numbers is nobody else's fault.
By the same logic, if I, as a botanist, tell someone exactly how to make ricin from castor beans, knowing that they need a method to kill one of their peskier in-laws, then it's nothing to do with me if the in-laws die of ricin poisoning. Yet the law would put me behind bars for years as an accessory to murder. So, what's the big difference between assisting a murderer or assisting in fraud that beggars thousands?
Business advocates pointed out that ... allowing such private lawsuits to proceed would have the practical effect of forcing businesses to settle cases rather than risk crippling jury awards.That isn't some pinko commie talking. It's the head banana of a financial trade association. According to him, the US economy is so corrupt and riddled with criminals that if we try to do anything about them the whole thing will collapse.
"Litigation, transaction, and compliance costs would soar -- squeezing bottom lines for companies in the U.S. and deterring foreign investment -- at the expense of the American economy, its workers and investors," warned Marc Lackritz, chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
He ought to know, I guess.
And the criminal Administration sides with ... the criminals. Why do I keep getting surprised by this? Why?
Crossposted at Acid Test
Now that the clergy response teams are ready for martial law, I think it's time we consider getting the fuck out of here. I believe our friend, eBay, can help us out with this. Now, work with me.
Sure, it would cost us $25,000,000 EUR, but look at the bright side. This would be our own Shaker island in Fiji. We would have palm trees, wine cellar entrances, fuel tanks, a hangar and runway. And we could pool our resources.
* Quixote could build a defense system that could detect and endlessly tickle any intruders that we don't like.
* Misty could fire up the Shaker Gourmet and create culinary delights all year round. (YUM!)
* The Heretik could help fund the island by creating amazing pieces of art with his mad photoshopping skillz and selling them.
* Brynn would patrol the shores while on surfboard.
* Melissa would simply be Queen Cunt of Fuck Mountain.
Et cetera. So, are all of you in or what?
Important Announcement: Space Cowboy and I cannot stop singing Chocolate Rain to one another. When we call each other other, the other answers with "Chocolate Raaaaaaaaain!" We have just had an entire conversation sung to the tune of Chocolate Rain:
"Martial Laaaaaaaaw! Clergy trained to take our guns away! Martial Laaaaaaaaw!"
"Oh mah gawwwwwwwd! Bush will destroy our country through and through! Oh mah gawwwwwwwd!"
Somebody help us.
Michael Vick to admit he's a twisted dog killer
| posted by William K Wolfrum | Monday, August 20, 2007Michael Vick's career as an NFL quarterback is over. Vick has accepted a plea deal and will plead guilty to federal dogfighting conspiracy charges, according to ESPN:
"Vick agrees to plead guilty in dogfighting case"
Michael Vick's lawyer said Monday the NFL star will plead guilty to federal dogfighting conspiracy charges, putting the Atlanta Falcons quarterback's career in jeopardy and leaving him subject to a prison term.
The offense is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, although federal sentencing guidelines most likely would call for less.
Prosecutors, who were seeking a prison term of 12 to 18 months, have yet to formally agree to the plea, a source told ESPN's Kelly Naqi.
"After consulting with his family over the weekend, Michael Vick asked that I announce today that he has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors regarding the charges pending against him," lead defense attorney Billy Martin said in a statement.
"Mr. Vick has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to those charges and to accept full responsibility for his actions and the mistakes he has made. Michael wishes to apologize again to everyone who has been hurt by this matter."
Vick is charged with conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and conspiracy to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture.
The career of one of the most physically gifted players in NFL history is done because of his sick mind. Michael Vick is officially untouchable now. No team or company will ever want to be associated with him again. And rightfully so. Because come next Monday when he stands before a judge, he will officially admit the he is unfit to live in a civilized world. He had it all, but he couldn't control his sick impulse to murder and torture dogs.
Next up: Jonathan Babineaux.
--WKW
Re: the "clergy response teams" about which Bill blogged over the weekend, and I blogged this morning, Shaker Amish451 noted in comments, "I believe the confiscation of fire arms is included in [the DHS program including clergy training] too," to which Wally Whateley replied, "Good luck with that. The GOP has been telling the True Believers for decades that the only amendment they cared about was the second one. Do they really think the GOP base, or anyone else, will just hand those over?"
Well, to add to Bill's rather dire list of fun weekend reading, and my declaration that it must be "Your Worst Tinfoil Fears Come True Day," I figured I'd better share this old video from ABC World News in which the confiscation of legally-owned firearms by our government is detailed. In the aftermath of Katrina, gun-owners were forced—at gunpoint—to hand over their guns, even in areas unaffected by the hurricane.
What else can we expect when our government declares martial law? They're going to let people keep their weapons?! Of course they aren't.
The guns were returned months later under pressure from the NRA, although owners claiming a weapon had to produce "either a bill of sale or an affidavit with the weapon's serial number" (right after a devastating hurricane in which many people lost all their records, mind you) and had to submit to a criminal background check.
Now, I don't think it's any secret around here that I'm not a fan of guns, but I'm even less a fan of the government using the excuse of a natural disaster (or a terrorist attack, ahem) to chuck existing civil rights out the window like day-old bread.
There were just so many basic humanitarian issues to worry about in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that stuff like this got lost. And, yeah, the more I read about "clergy response teams" and so forth and so on, the more I'm inclined to believe that the political fallout from that humanitarian crisis was a small price to pay to distract Americans' attention from their government's using the disaster as a dry-run for martial law population management.
Which is, um, scary.
I'm going to go ahead and take a wild and crazy guess that I don't really need to spend any time writing commentary on this one.
I will, however, point out that the still-disproportionately male dominated advertising industry sure seems to have a lot less respect for men than I do, even despite my reputation for being a crazed, man-hating feminist.
Which is, of course, to say nothing about their lack of respect for women.
[Via Jezebel.]
I flippin' love this clip (care of Petulant, natch; transcript below) from yesterday's Dem debate in Iowa. First of all, I just love the question: "My question is to understand each candidate's view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?" What a brilliant query! I almost can't imagine a finer question to help us choose our next president. I mean, sure—the candidates' positions on, say, getting our troops the fuck out of Iraq are pretty important, but even more important is whether prayer can offset the inevitable fucktastrophes of our underfunded, disregarded, and crumbling infrastructure. Fucking genius!
I also really love how Mike Gravel and Barack Obama were the only ones to pick up on the fact that asking a question about failed levees and a bridge collapse isn't asking about the will of God but about competent fucking governance. Yeesh.
But most of all, I love how this video totally proves all those rightwing paranoid fantasists right: The Democratic Party truly is the soil in which germinates the seeds of radical secularism and godlessness.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah. And he said, "My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?" I'd like each of you to answer it. Let me start with you, Senator Clinton.
…CLINTON: Well, I don't pretend to understand the wisdom and the power of God. I do believe in prayer. And I have relied on prayer consistently throughout my life. You know, I like to say that, if I had not been a praying person before I got to the White House, after having been there for just a few days I would've become one. (LAUGHTER) So I am very dependent on my faith, and prayer is a big part of that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Dodd?
DODD: I agree with what Hillary has just said here. I would not want to try and second-guess the lord's intentions here and to assume that part of his great plan includes some of these actions we see, for a variety of different reasons, here. And the power of prayer I think is important to all of us. I hope it is, recognizing that we don't do anything without His approval.
EDWARDS: I have prayed most of my life; pray daily now. He's enormously important to me. But the answer to the question is: No, I don't -- I prayed before my 16-year-old son died; I prayed before Elizabeth was diagnosed with cancer. I think there are some things that are beyond our control. And I think it is enormously important to look to God -- and, in my case, Christ -- for guidance and for wisdom. But I don't think you can prevent bad things from happening through prayer.
GRAVEL: What I believe in is love. And love implements courage. And courage permits us all to apply the virtues that are important in life. And so you can pray -- I was always persuaded or struck by the fact that many people who pray are the ones who want to go to war, who want to kill fellow human beings. That disturbs me. I think what we need is more love between one human being and another human being. And then we'll find the courage to dispel many of the problems we have in governance. The answer to governance is not up here on the dais. The answer is with the American people and the people of Iowa. That's where the answer is. And I have a proposal, and it's the only one that talks of change. The change is to empower the American people with a national initiative. And my colleagues, with all due respect, don't even understand the principle of the people having the power. (APPLAUSE)
RICHARDSON: I pray. I'm a Roman Catholic. My sense of social justice, I believe, comes from being a Roman Catholic. But, in my judgment, prayer is personal. And how I pray and how any American prays, for what reason, is their own decision. And it should be respected. And so, in my view, I think it's important that we have faith, that we have values, but if I'm president, I'm not going to wear my religion on my sleeve and impose it on anybody.
BIDEN: George, my mom has an expression. She says that, "God sends no cross you're unable to bear." The time to pray is to pray whether or not you're told, as John was and I was, that my wife and daughter are dead, to have the courage to be able to bear the cross. The time to pray is to pray not only before, but pray that you have the courage, pray that God can give you the strength to deal with what everyone is faced with in their life, serious crosses, serious crosses to bear. The answer to the gentleman's question is, no, all the prayer in the world will not stop a hurricane. But prayer will give you the courage to be able to respond to the devastation that's caused in your life and with others to deal with the devastation.
OBAMA: I believe in the power of prayer. And part of what I believe in is that, through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control. Most of the issues that we're debating here today are ones that we have the power to change. We don't have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn't going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma. We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan. And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that's what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government. We've got to express those values through our government, not just through our religious institutions. (APPLAUSE)
KUCINICH: George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me. And my... (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE) And I come from a spiritual insight which says that...
STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a direct pipeline, Congressman. (LAUGHTER)
KUCINICH: I come from a spiritual insight which says that we have to have faith but also have good works. So when we think of the scriptures, Isaiah making justice the measuring line; Matthew 25, "whatever you do for the least of our brethren"; where the biblical injunction, "make peace with your brother" -- all of these things relate to my philosophy. Now, the founders meant to have separation of church and state, but they never meant America to be separate from spiritual values. As president, I'll bring strong spiritual values into the White House, and I'll bring values that value peace, social and economic justice, values that remember where I came from. Thank you. (APPLAUSE)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you, Congressman.
[Full transcript here.]
People in the United States are living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it.Impeachment is healthier.
In case Rove's movin' and groovin' on the chat show circuit this weekend wasn't enough for you, there was also an item at Boing Boing sure to charm you, ahem, about Rove's daddy's solid gold cock ring. Right on.
You can read the whole story about Louie Rove here. And see pictures, should you be so inclined.
I kind of get the impression old Louie would have fit in just fine around here, which is certainly not something I could or would say about his hideous son.
[H/Ts to Alex and Petulant by email.]
Dr. John Johnson speaks on LaVena's death at VFP event
| posted by Philip Barron | Monday, August 20, 2007The father of PFC LaVena Lynn Johnson, Dr. John Johnson of Florissant, Missouri.
Dr. Johnson spoke last Friday at the Veterans for Peace speakout on sexual assault in the military outside the Robert A. Young Federal Building in downtown St. Louis. This was just one of many events and workshops comprising the 22nd annual national convention of VFP. More material relating to the convention will be posted here as soon as I can get to it.
In the video embedded here, Dr. Johnson talks about learning of LaVena's death, his suspicions about how she died, and the family's attempts to get the Army to reopen its investigation. He is introduced by antiwar activist and retired Army colonel Ann Wright.
As always, I ask you to help the Johnson family by signing the petition to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, and by directly contacting your Senator or Representative on those legislative bodies. Thank you.
(Video cross-posted at AlterNet.)
FOX News Channel bobblehead Sean Hannity is not a journalist, according to his employer. This makes his public shilling for Rudy Giuliani entirely appropriate and aboveboard. Transparency!
(Via Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central, and cross-posted.)
Reader Charlie sent me a link to this article in the September 2007 Scientific American, in which professors from the Harvard School of Public Health argue that the idea of fat not being intrinsically unhealthy is "complete nonsense." Specifically, it criticizes a 2005 paper by Katherine Flegal et al, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. People in the fat acceptance community know that paper well: it was the big one that said people in the overweight category have the lowest mortality rate, and suggested that previous estimates of the death toll of obesity were off by, oh, a couple or three hundred thousand a year.
For some reason, Scientific American decided it was time, two years after the study was published, to attack Flegal's research. So they gave the boys at Harvard a jingle.
[Harvard professor Walter] Willett thinks this assertion is simply the latest recycling of the notion that Americans have been somehow duped about the risks of obesity. “About every 10 years this idea comes along that says it’s better to be overweight. And we have to stomp it out,” he says. Willett’s research has identified profound advantages to keeping weight down—even below the so-called healthy levels.That's the kind of quote that might have caused me to despair if I hadn't remembered Willett's name from Rethinking Thin. See, there's a whole section in Kolata's "The Fat Wars" chapter (pp. 201-209 in the hardcover) about how, after Flegal published that paper, the Harvard School of Public Health went apeshit. They even
held a seminar to refute it, making sure that newspaper reporters were not only invited to the meeting but able to watch it and listen on a Webcast if they could not attend in person. It was an exercise in attack science.A seminar to refute one paper. Why on earth would they do that?
Well, The Harvard School of Public Health was home to one of the most important previous studies of the health effects of fat, a long-term one done on nurses. The nurses' study showed that being fat carried a substantially increased mortality risk. But Flegal's paper pretty much said, "You did it wrong and you got it wrong."
So that's pretty much what they said back to her in that seminar. And are now saying 2 years later in Scientific American.
The difference between the Scientific American article and Rethinking Thin is, Gina Kolata actually talked to Katherine Flegal and the other researchers with whom she published that 2005 paper. So, for instance, where the SA article just reports the Harvard boys' assertion that Flegal's study was fucked because she didn't exclude smokers or the chronically ill, Kolata adds that A) Flegal deliberately didn't, because she felt that previous studies (like, uh, the Harvard nurses' study) had cherry-picked their subjects, and she wanted a group that was actually representative of the general population, and B) once she and her co-researchers had all that raw data,
They looked at the results both with and without current or former smokers and people who had chronic diseases. They posted the extensive analysis on the Internet -- journals like the Journal of the American Medical Association allow for only so much additional data -- and the results always came out the same: There was no mortality risk from being overweight and little from being obese, with the exception of the extremely obese, whose death risk was slightly higher.Here's how Scientific American presented that:
Flegal has acknowledged that she did not exclude the chronically ill from her study but argued in a follow-up report that she had done further analyses that showed it would not have made a difference. The disagreement turns on subtle statistical arguments. What is clear, however, is that Flegal’s paper is one of a handful that contradict many studies that support the conclusion that being overweight is harmful. Flegal is not necessarily wrong, but the preponderance of evidence clearly points in the other direction.Do you see what just happened there? First, they make it seem as if Flegal acknowledged a mistake and scrambled to compensate for it, as opposed to acknowledging only that she deliberately included those populations and then analyzed the data both with and without them. Then, they bury the fact that she did it on purpose under the real point of this article: a gazillion obesity researchers can't be wrong!
Seriously, that's the entire argument the article makes. "Flegal is not necessarily wrong," but boy, a whole lot of other studies found something else! Um, yeah, that was kind of the point of Flegal's study. Flegal and David Williamson, an epidemiologist at the CDC, looked at previous studies, determined that those had gotten the statistics wrong, and designed a study that made a good faith effort to get the statistics right. Oddly enough, their conclusions turned out vastly different from those of previous studies. And two years later, this article is here to tell us Flegal, Williamson, et al, are wrong because... their conclusions are vastly different from those of previous studies.
Here's Kolata again:
Flegal says she had a real education in the politics of obesity.Paints a slightly different picture than the Scientific American article, don't it?
"Everyone thinks they already know the answer," she says. "Anything that doesn't fit, they have to explain it away or ignore it. All these people who just know weight loss is good for you. It's just taken for granted regardless of the evidence." She was not naive about her findings, she said. "I expected people would get perturbed, but I really didn't expect the way they did it. All these erroneous so-called fact sheets. And these misinterpretations and making up things we'd said."
And how many people who read that article are going to know off the top of their head that The Harvard School of Public Health A) did one of the studies Flegal and Williamson deemed egregiously flawed before beginning their research, and B) has apparently had a hate-on for them ever since their paper about that was published?
Not many, I'm guessing. But Gina Kolata took the time to look into Flegal and Williamson's side of the story -- like, you know, an actual journalist might -- so I knew it off the top of my head, and now you know it, too. And it changes everything, doesn't it? Knowing that, you can see quite clearly that the SA article isn't actually saying Flegal's wrong -- in fact, the author takes pains not to say that -- it's just saying a whole lot of people in the obesity research community don't agree with her. And I mean, duh. That's worth writing about two years later?
So the Scientific American article did not remotely convince me that Flegal is wrong and fat is bad for you. It did, however, strongly reinforce one thing I've believed to be true for most of my life: reading is good for you.
I guess today is "Your Worst Tinfoil Fears Come True Day" or something, because this story, also No Big Deal of course, is also true:
Law enforcement, emergency response and border control agencies have won greater access to the nation's spy satellites and other sensors to monitor U.S. territory.Uh-huh. All just to protect us, naturally. No worries, Shakers. It's in our best interests.
The sharing of imagery and data will be especially useful in policing land and sea borders and in disaster planning, Charles Allen, the Homeland Security Department's chief intelligence officer, said Wednesday.
The effort may eventually support domestic law enforcement activities as well, he said, but the legal guidelines for that are being worked out.Oh, great. No potential for abuse there at all. The Department of Homeland Security is in no way shaping up at all to be the sort of Orwellian nightmare that its opponents predicted. Nope. It's a perfect ray of sunlight in the dawn of America 2.0.
…A new agency within DHS, called the National Applications Office, will be the conduit for all domestic requests for spy satellite information. It will be up to the intelligence agencies to determine which requests they can honor.
"There's the possibility of a recurrence of past abuses -- surveillance used against political opponents as in the Civil Rights era, the McCarthy era," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.Hmm. The Federation of American Scientists criticizing the government. Conservative American clergy aligning itself with the government. Does anyone else feel the Ultimate Enlightenment Showdown of Ultimate Destiny breathing down their necks, or is that just me…?
"There's also an incidental erosion of personal privacy in which one now has to assume that anywhere you are, you are subject to overhead surveillance by the government. And that is a change in what it means to be an American," Aftergood said.
[H/T Oddjob.]
Godwin's Law notwithstanding, Karl Rove invoked the old Nazi defense yesterday while making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows: "I was just following orders, and nothing bad that happened was my fault."
Mr. Rove, who is leaving the White House at the end of the month, didn’t cut an especially heroic or villainous figure. The strategist who looms in the public imagination as a political mastermind and West Wing Svengali used a rare appearance on camera to deliver an exiting White House aide’s most time-honored Washington message: mistakes were not made, and it’s not my fault.The humility act only goes so far, and it usually works to your credit when you're being modest about your successes. However, when you're the president's deputy chief of staff and everybody inside the Beltway knows that you are in charge of everything from where the RNC spends campaign money to how the Iraq war is conducted, it comes across as both craven and cowardly to say that you were just an innocent bystander when the shit hits the fan.
He even denied responsibility for his hip-hop performance as a rapping “M.C. Rove” at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in March.
“They dragged me up there,” he told Mr. Wallace. “I was uncomfortable, and I said, ‘I’ve got a choice. I can be irritated and everybody will see it, or I can play along and try and show them I’m a good sport.’ ” He noted that his black-tie rap routine, shown over and over on television and the Internet, was his “most humiliating moment in Washington, bar none.”
The incident, and a video clip of it, didn’t come up during Mr. Rove’s appearance on “Meet the Press,” perhaps because David Gregory, the NBC White House correspondent who filled in on Sunday for Tim Russert, had also been dancing on stage that night.
Mr. Rove said he was blameless as well for his role in the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. White House officials were accused of seeking to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times in 2003 questioning the administration’s case for war in Iraq.
Asked by Mr. Gregory if he owed Ms. Wilson an apology, Mr. Rove gave a one-word answer, “No.”
Mr. Gregory asked Mr. Rove if he felt responsible for the downward slide of the Republican Party. “Well, look, everyone who identifies with the Republican Party ought to, ought to, ought to feel some responsibility,” he replied.
The implicit message is that if it's not Karl Rove's fault, then it has to lie elsewhere, and in his case the shit runs uphill, meaning that the person to blame is President Bush. That may easily be. George W. Bush is the one who hired Karl Rove, he's the one who gave him the job in White House, he's the one who didn't stop him from doing whatever it was that he now says he didn't do. But along the way, Karl Rove should have known that it is his job as a White House deputy to take the bullet for the president. He's the one who steps up when the going gets tough. He's the one, regardless of whether it's true or not, to take the fall when the wheels come off, and it's his job to protect the president at all costs. But here he goes, leaving the White House as if all of the problems are not his responsibility and without a word of regret or conciliation.
That's to be expected, though. If you look at Karl Rove's history of operations as a campaigner and as a White House operative, he makes very sure that he leaves no prints and is careful to have a ready excuse so that when he is finally brought to justice -- if that should ever happen -- he will be able to stand up and invoke the Eichmann defense: "I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from [George W. Bush] or any of my superiors."
And that goes for appearing on Sunday talk shows.
Bob Schieffer, who conducts interviews on “Face the Nation” on CBS as if they were chats over predinner drinks at the Metropolitan Club, asked Mr. Rove why he was subjecting himself to Sunday morning second-guessing.So, Karl, how's the weather in Buenos Aires this time of year?
“Somebody else made the decision for me,” he said. “I’m just doing what I was instructed to do.”
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
This is Melissa sneaking in here to post some video (care of Petulant) of the appearances to which MB refers:
[Transcript here.]
---------------------
Fox News Sunday
Answering Chris Wallace's questions about subpoenas, executive privilege, and Valerie Plame:
"Nice try."—What an asshole.
[Transcript here.]
[Approximate transcript of video here.]
If you're now asking yourself Did I seriously just see the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security confirming that they are recruiting clergy to help keep the sheep calm in the event of a declaration of martial law in the US? the answer is yes, why yes you did.
I honestly don’t know what to make of this. It seems like complete crockpottery, the real stuff of tinfoil hat legend—but there's a news report out of Louisiana, and a minister, and a DHS official, all confirming it like it's No Big Deal, just some population management training in case of a national emergency that forces our government to send in troops, that's all, ha ha. No big whoop.
Pam points to a World Net Daily (of all places) article about the program, and there's more at AlterNet. Oy.
Today is the birthday of one of my best friends, the oft-mentioned Londoner Andy, who "read[s] read this pinko fag blog but [does]n't comment at it." I wish, once again, that I were there to celebrate with him and slurp wonton soup while we machine-gun fire Woody Allen lines at each other until we are drunk with laughter.
In 2001, I was in London for Andy's birthday. I asked him what he wanted to do to celebrate, and he didn't want to do anything special; he'd come meet me at my hotel. We went for terrible pizza nearby, then walked and talked and eventually sat ourselves in Norfolk Square in a light rain, where we had a conversation I can remember as clearly as if it were yesterday—just a meandering tumble from subject to subject—Hitchcock, The Tracey Ullman Show, Bowie, this Scottish bloke I'd just met....
I remember that later that night, I took a shower, and realized only after I was soaking wet, there was no shampoo. I washed my hair with soap, which put it in an awful tangle, and as I sat on the bed slowly combing through it feeling a bit grumpy and lonely and miserable about leaving for home the next morning, the phone rang and I knew it was Andy and I smiled.
Andy's just become an uncle (again), sharing his birthday with a new niece. For her I wish a life rich with the sort of friendship I have with her splendid uncle.
Happy Birthday, Andy.
Mark Lilla, professor at Columbia University, has written a long article, "The Politics of God" in the Aug. 19, 2007, NYTimes. Shorter Lilla: people who think belief and state should be separated exist, but lots of people want God, the whole God, and nothing but the God. The article explores the history of and people's need for religion in politics.
[O]ur problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.Really?
Lilla's analysis is fine if you accept his premise, which is that this is about religion, about people's sense of their place in the world, about feeling comfortable in the world. But he seems to be forgetting some significant points from very recent history in the course of reaching back to the 1500s.
After 25 years of promotion by politicians, it's more important to respect fundamentalists than fundamental rights. I'm talking about the USA. Just one example: in a country founded on separation of belief and state, people -- publishers, parents, teachers, school board members -- try to accommodate creationists instead of laughing them out of the school. Sure, when the voice of reason gets its act together, they do get laughed out, but I'm trying to make a different point. The amazing and frightening sign of how badly our thinking has been clouded is that the creationists can get started at all.
In other examples (some of which are detailed in the article: "abortion, prayer in schools, censorship, euthanasia, biological research") the results can be much worse than nonsense in science classes, and the voice of reason can be struck dumb.
2) In the repressive parts of the world, the Middle East, North Africa, China, and the list goes on, religious dissent was the only remaining way of disgreeing with the powers-that-be. It wasn't necessarily safe, by any means, but the dictators (and therefore their Western enablers) made it the only feasible route of protest. There were democratic movements in, for instance, the Middle East. They weren't convenient because they interfered with the control of oil. Mossadegh of Iran was deposed in a CIA-instigated plot in 1953. The infant Saudi human rights movement was and is slaughtered every time it manifests itself. The regime doing the slaughtering has the usual unholy alliance with religionists, and with its suppliers in the industrial world so long as it keeps selling them oil.
None of this is evidence that people have some incomprehensible desire for repressive theocracy. The fact that some people hope to find Truth in science or in a political system is certainly evidence of existential confusion, and not one that's easy to resolve. That other people hope to find scientific or political answers in holy books is no less evidence of confusion. But these are individual struggles.
Lilla spends his whole time talking about that and never gets to the really significant point for politics. It is not confusion that makes people desire repressive theocracies. For that, they have to be pushed.
The pushing isn't done for the love of God. It's done by people who want power. It's that simple. Somehow, Lilla overlooks that most important point.
Yes, believers like to practice their religion with those of like mind ... when it's about religion. Once it's about power, that's different. Then suddenly force is involved. Then it becomes important to do things the way the loudest mouth wants them done.
The very fact that all the problematic theocracies are repressive, the fact that none of them live and let live, tells you that this is about power, not religion. And that includes the imposition of their beliefs that Christian fundamentalists would like to see in the US. The problem is world wide. There is no need to scratch one's head in puzzlement about what those crazy Muslims are thinking. They're thinking the same thing as anti-democratic politicians and fundamentalists right here.
Lilla is aware of the universality of the issue.
So we are heirs to the Great Separation [of church and state] only if we wish to be, if we make a conscious effort to separate basic principles of political legitimacy from divine revelation. Yet more is required still. Since the challenge of political theology is enduring, we need to remain aware of its logic and the threat it poses. This means vigilance, but even more it means self-awareness. We must never forget that there was nothing historically inevitable about our Great Separation, that it was and remains an experiment.But he's still talking about the wrong issue (if he wants to talk about politics and not individual existential struggles). The political problem is one of grabbing power. The words used for that are just so much hot air. Now it's religion. It could be the "free market," or the redistribution of wealth, or anything. The words don't matter. The hallmark is repression. Anyone who is depriving others of rights that they expect for themselves is grabbing power, no matter what the justification.
His solution to the problem shows what happens when you start from the wrong premise.
[A] world in which millions of people ... believe that God has revealed a law governing the whole of human affairs. [As opposed to countries] founded on the alien principles of the Great Separation. These are the most significant points of friction, internationally and domestically. ... we cannot really address them if we do not first recognize the intellectual chasm between us."Balderdash. I have never in my travels met a person who's really exercised about intellectual chasms. The things people are willing to throw bombs about is having control over their own lives and having resources. Does anyone honestly think that the US would have thrown bombs at Iraq if it had all the oil it needed and wasn't worried about being forced to "live like Europeans"? Even Lilla couldn't be thinking that Cheney sat there and said, "I can't stand this intellectual chasm. Maybe a bomb or two will fill it in."
The problem is not chasms or principles or religions. The problem is the abuse of power. That's what we have to be vigilant about. That's why rights can never take a back seat to some other goal, whether it's a progressive goal, or a conservative one, an economic, or an atheist, or a political one. As soon as rights are secondary, the door is opened to restart a new cycle of repression.
That's what is so horribly wrong with one of Lilla's conclusions:
we need to recognize that coping is the order of the day, not defending high principle, and that our expectations should remain low. So long as a sizable population believes in the truth of a comprehensive political theology, its full reconciliation with modern liberal democracy cannot be expected.That is the most dangerous nonsense there is. People who hope for tolerance are open to being tolerant unless they feel mistreated, impoverished, or despised. The solution to that is more human rights, not less.
Right now, we've opened the door to repression in the name of religion. But let's face it. Repression has nothing to do with God. God is just an excuse, and the loud mouths are hoping as hard as hell that we buy it. It doesn't help when experts who should know better fall for the ploy, and discuss the problem at length and with erudition as if it really had anything to do with religion or God.
Crossposted at Acid Test
Thirty years ago we lost a cultural icon. No, I'm not talking about Elvis Presley. I'm talking about Julius Henry Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), better known to the world as simply "Groucho."
Groucho Marx
More than just part of a vaudeville act that also made it big in the movies, Groucho was probably one of the funniest and most insightful observers and critics of life and humanity. Here are just few of his observations:
* A man's only as old as the woman he feels.I am proud to proclaim myself a Marxist...as in Groucho.
* A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke.
* Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
* Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.
* From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.
* Go, and never darken my towels again.
* I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
* I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
* I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.
* I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
* I remember the first time I had sex - I kept the receipt.
* I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
* In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.
* Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
* Marry me and I'll never look at another horse!
* Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
* Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.
* One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.
* Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.
* There is one way to find out if a man is honest; ask him! If he says yes you know he's crooked.
* Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
* Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
* Why, I'd horse-whip you if I had a horse.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Christianists will make Martial Law fun and easy - other Sunday light reading
| posted by William K Wolfrum | Sunday, August 19, 2007When you hear the term "Clergy Response Team," doesn't it make you feel good and warm inside? Because while you may not be ready for martial law, they are. And so is the U.S. military. So start tithing and hide your guns.
"Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared"
... gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"
Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."
Comforted yet?
Some more Sunday reading:
Finally, via Memoirs of a Skepchick, Bill Moyers says goodbye to the agnostic Karl Rove:
--WKW
Crossposted at Williamkwolfrum.com
