OPINIONS OF ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES, A MINOR GREEK GODDESS. She can be reached at: ECHIDNE-OF-THE-SNAKES.COM

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Next Step: Echidne to Head the Metropolitan Opera 



Logic would require this. Find the person without any experience or training in the field, make sure that she is totally opposed to the values of the institution, and then nominate her to run it anyway. Tralalah!


Paul Wolfowitz, known worldwide as an architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was approved as the World Bank's new president on Thursday.

His nomination by President Bush was sealed in a unanimous vote by the World Bank's 24 executive directors, the bank confirmed.


Cowards and wimps, all of those executive directors. It's hard to know what to call the person who wrote this Washington Post editorial, discussed on Brad Delong's blog and passed on through Atrios:


People who care about this institution and its mission -- as many of Mr. Wolfowitz's detractors do -- should think carefully before they damage it by attacking its new boss. Criticism of Mr. Wolfowitz's agenda for the bank may be healthy once that agenda emerges. But preemptive condemnation because of the Iraq war is not.


What about preemptive condemnation because he knows as much about international development and its economic theory as I know about the theory of singing? How is he going to be credible in front of a staff where even the office coffee-makers have PhDs in economics? What will his future agenda mean when he doesn't know what he is talking about?

I suffer from ranting fatigue. This is a poor and meager era for anyone who likes to write satire based upon exaggeration. You just can't exaggerate what these guys do. Now pointing out that common sense has flown out of the window is equated with trying to dismantle the World Bank brick by brick. Next I will read that criticizing Wolfowitz's nomination means that I'm in cahoots with Osama bin Laden or that I really, really hate the manufacturers of hair saliva for the smoothing-out of conservative curls.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/31/2005 04:06:00 PM

That Was Quick 



Of course, with a name like DeLay, it had to be quick. Here is what Tom DeLay has to say about Theresa Marie Schiavo's death:


"Mrs. Schiavo's death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo's friends in this time of deep sorrow."


To war, to war, to war we go... Or at least that's what Tom is probably humming under his breath.

Via ThinkProgress.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/31/2005 02:19:00 PM

On Age Discrimination 



The American culture worships youth to an extraordinary degree. Getting older here doesn't convey very many privileges unless you happen to be one of the few white men in power. Then you can go on to higher and higher things as you age. Just think of Ronald Reagan. For the rest of Americans getting older means becoming less desirable as a person. The process starts much earlier for women; somewhere around the age thirty many women start worrying about wrinkles and gray hair, but ultimately it affects most men, too. Hence the great demand for cosmetic surgery and botox and false rugs on tops of the heads of newsreaders. We all wish to look eternally twenty-eight.

Employers would like us to remain twenty-eight for ever, too, because younger workers are less expensive, not having had time to accumulate experience-related raises and not being as likely to need health care. This makes age-based discrimination a real possibility, and the Supreme Court has just given another decision about when an employee can sue on such grounds:


The Supreme Court made it easier Wednesday for any worker over 40 to allege age discrimination, ruling that employers can be held liable even if they never intended any harm.

About 75 million people -- roughly half the nation's work force -- are covered by the decision. However, the ruling makes it clear that older workers will have a high threshold to prove their claims.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that in some cases employers are within their rights to treat workers differently because of age.

"Age ... not uncommonly has relevance to an individual's capacity to engage in certain types of employment," wrote Stevens, who at 84 is the court's oldest member.

The ruling sides with older police officers in Jackson, Miss., in saying they do not have to prove that the city deliberately tried to discriminate against them, just that the policies disproportionately harmed them. Nevertheless, the high court dismissed the suit, saying officers did not demonstrate that.

The ruling means that older workers now have less of a burden to raise their claim in court when suing under federal law, although ultimately it may still be hard for them to win.


Having to prove that someone deliberately tried to discriminate against you would be extremely difficult unless you are dealing with a very stupid person. In most cases such intentions would be carefully hidden under some other excuse. Thus, it makes sense for the Court to state that workers don't have to prove deliberate intent.

But the Court doesn't give workers a completely free hand in this respect:


At issue was workplace polices that appear neutral but actually disproportionately hurt older workers. Advocates for the aging say few employers would ever be up front about intentionally favoring younger workers, making age bias claims hard to win absent the rare "smoking gun."

But employers say allowing disparate impact claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act would hinder their ability to make necessary decisions based on age-neutral factors, such as training or performance, even if the impact happens to be greater on older workers.

The ruling in some ways strikes a compromise between the two.

On the one hand, it allows older workers to make a disparate impact claim under the ADEA regardless of intent; but at the same time, it permits an employer to cite "reasonable" factors, such as cost-cutting, to justify a practice that penalizes older workers so it prevails at trial.


Firms compare the costs and benefits when they decide whom to hire or promote. Older workers are often more experienced and may* be more productive workers. On the other hand, older workers also cost more than younger ones because many of them have more work-experience and the raises related to that. They also cost more because of their higher average health care expenses. Delinking health insurance from employment would greatly reduce the incentives firms have to get rid of their older workforce.

As is often the case, it is tricky to define what discrimination means. An employer who fires someone just because that worker is old, no matter what the data on productivity and costs say, is clearly discriminating. But what if the firing is based on the worker's age-related health problems and their costs to the firm? It will be interesting to see how the courts will clarify these issues in the future.
-------------
*I say may be, because the effect of age and experience are intermingled here, and sometimes they have opposite effects on productivity, though not always. For example, a carpenter gets more skilled with experience which requires years to accumulate, but the physical demands of the job may make an older carpenter less productive in the physical sense. Slightly different considerations have similar effects for those who work in nonmanual jobs.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/31/2005 01:39:00 PM

Theresa Marie Schiavo 



She has died. May she find peace. May all who loved her find peace.

I wish that we didn't now have the second act of the melodrama but we will. There will be an autopsy, for one thing. And there will be continuous political wars on this issue.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/31/2005 01:27:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Today's Action comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council:

Kimberly-Clark is one of the largest disposable paper product companies in the world, producing the popular Kleenex, Scott, Viva, and Cottonelle brand facial tissues, toilet paper, and paper towels. Although Kimberly-Clark claims to be an environmental corporate leader, the company manufactures the vast majority of its disposable tissue paper products from freshly cut trees instead of from recycled fiber.

Many of the trees used in Kimberly-Clark products are logged in Canada's pristine boreal forest, an ancient forest that stretches across the country and is home to hundreds of wildlife species, including moose, caribou, lynx, bears, wolves, eagles, hawks, owls, and 30 percent of North America's songbirds. What this effectively means is that Canada's boreal forest is being destroyed to manufacture products that are used only once and then thrown away (often down the toilet).

What to do:

Send a message urging Kimberly-Clark to stop destroying Canada's boreal forest and to switch to post-consumer recycled materials for its paper products.

Here's a sample letter:

***************************************************************

Thomas Falk
Chief Executive Officer
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
351 Phelps Dr.
Irving, TX 75038

Dear Mr. Falk:

I am concerned about the lack of recycled content in your tissue products, and urge you to increase the post-consumer recycled content in these products, especially in the brands that I regularly see in the store (and purchase) such as Kleenex, Scott, Viva, and Cottonelle.

Kimberly-Clark is one of the leading tissue paper manufacturers in the world, yet your at-home products have roughly only 19 percent post-consumer recycled content. Most of the Kimberly-Clark products that I see in the grocery store do not have any recycled content at all.

I oppose destroying natural forests such as the boreal forest in Canada to produce toilet paper, paper towels, and facial tissues. Canada's boreal forest is a natural treasure of global significance whose health is critical to the survival of both people and wildlife.

A commitment from Kimberly-Clark to protect, and not destroy, these forests is long overdue. Again, I urge you to increase the post-consumer recycled content in your company's paper products.

Sincerely,

Your Name

*****************************************************

Thanks for taking today's action!

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Posted by: echidne / 3/31/2005 01:08:00 PM

"I Hate These People" 



Not me, I radiate loving-kindness towards most everybody. But Sean Hannity has anger management problems. Luckily he has a job on Fox in which he can express his hatred freely and get royally paid for it. If you want to know what Hannity thinks of Democratic politicians, click here and listen. Via Oliver Willis.

It's an interesting ethical dilemma whether I should post evidence on how much Hannity hates people like me. On the one hand it's most enjoyable to see him stripped naked this way in front of all and sundry. On the other hand I might be stoking reflex anger among our faithfuls, and that is not what an ethical goddess does. After a severe battle over this you can see which side of me won.

In any case, this thing is all over the net and even on the radio and I'm only blogging about it because I'm up with my friend Insomnia, the goddess of no-sleep.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/31/2005 04:46:00 AM

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

And Now To Something Completely Different 



Jokes. We need to laugh, too. It's good for the heart if nothing else. This is the first installment of religious jokes. These were sent to me by Prior Aelred.


The Lotus & the Mishpokkeh (read as: family)
The Principles of Jewish Buddhism

1. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the
wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with
such round shoulders.

2. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called,
you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

3. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

4. To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the
following: get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

5. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind
that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

6. If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

7. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this, and
attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

8. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The
Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take
sides. The Tao is not Jewish.*

9. Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy. With the
second, satisfaction. With the third, Danish.

10. The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all
sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being
who happens to be Jewish?

11. Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all
things faster.

12. To find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand
flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten
thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

13. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

14. Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then
what do you have? Bupkes!

---
*A bit of Jewish Taoism thrown in here.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/30/2005 03:10:00 PM

The Real News 



Don't read this if you are easily depressed. Instead, go and read something on Terri Schiavo. For we have another patient that will soon be on life support and that is our planet:


Humans are damaging the Earth at such an unprecedented rate that the strain on the planet may destroy about two-thirds of its ecosystem services, according to a landmark international study.

The consequences of humans' activities are severe and include: new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, creation of "dead zones" along the coasts, the collapse of fisheries, and shifts in regional climate, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report.

"At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning," said the 45-member board.

"Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it said.

The four-year, 2,500-page assessment was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations in an effort to inform global policy initiatives.


I hope that the wingnuts won't argue that this is another communist-liberal plot against the all-American SUVs. (Thirteen hundred researchers from ninety-five countries, and they are all radical lefty extremists! Why do they hate Rapture?) I hope that we can all come together and try to save this particular patient. At a minimum, we must get serious about curbing consumption levels in the West and about curbing fertility rates in general. Unless, of course, we are content to leave the future generations nothing but the final decision about when to turn off the life support.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/30/2005 02:40:00 PM

More on the Blogging Panel at the National Press Club 



This is a followup letter from Sean-Paul at the Agonist on the question whether Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert can adequately represent bloggers and online journalists in this august venue:


Members of the National Press Club,

In our previous letter, we noted with concern that serious liberal political bloggers are being intentionally excluded from the academic and media dialogue on blogging. We protested your exclusion of serious liberal political bloggers from an upcoming panel on which you have placed the conservative political operative Jeff Gannon, neé Guckert.

This panel portends to discuss the meanings of the words "journalist" and "blogger" and whether the two are different things or one and the same. We note that this topic has once again been raised in light of the Gannon case, although the debate on blogs as journalism has been going on for years here in the so-called "blogosphere." As Gannon is not a blogger, we feel his inclusion means that the panel is largely about Gannon himself and what his specific case means in context of the discussion. We also note, as you must have, that Gannon's presence on the panel will allow him to once again air his side of the story. Who will air the other side?

While we commend your about face by extending an invitation to Matthew Yglesias to sit on this panel, it ignores the larger issue. We think highly of Yglesias' work publicizing the mission of bloggers and don't want to exclude him, or anyone, from the panel, but he was simply not a central player in regards to the Gannon story. A panel on the case of Jeff Gannon, especially one including Gannon himself, should have representation from someone who did heavy lifting there, someone intimately familiar with the process that brought Gannon's identity and his relationship with the White House Press Corps to the public eye. That voice must be a blogger who was a key player in the investigation of Gannon, his role in the media and his background.

Many people at various blogs, including SusanG at Daily Kos, Media Matters, World O Crap, Atrios, and AMERICAblog were at the fore of this investigation. Traditional media ignored the story until bloggers uncovered it. That's why you're having a panel on it. However, not one of the individuals who worked hard on the story was approached with an invitation to speak on the panel. Even outside the context of right versus left, this exclusion raises a serious issue of journalistic imbalance. This was not a careless oversight. The institutional press is giving the investigated his voice while not allowing the investigator to have its say.

Thus, we cannot recommend strongly enough the inclusion of AMERICAblog's John Aravosis on this panel. He has volunteered to be the representative of those who worked on the Gannon investigation.

As we have noted above, you're discussing a story broken by blogosphere yet cutting out the very people who made it a story there. This exclusion is shortsighted and raises questions of journalistic imbalance and ethical malfeasance. Thus, we again must raise our collective voice and insist that John Aravosis sit on the panel.

Please continue your calls to Julie Shue or Rick Dunham at the The National Press Club and politely insist that they include John Aravosis of Americablog.org at their event. Here are there numbers: 202-662-7500 or 202-662-7501 or email at tglad@press.org and info@npcpress.org.

Sincerely,

Sean-Paul Kelley, http://www.agonist.org
Think Progress, Think Progress
DCMediagirl, http://www.dcmediagirl.com
Ezra Klein, http://ezraklein.typepad.com
Echidne of the snakes, http://www.echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com
Amanda Marcotte, http://www.pandagon.net
Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, http://www.BuzzFlash.com
Matt Stoller, http://bopnews.com
Democratic Underground http://www.democraticunderground.com/
Lindsay Beyerstein http://majikthise.typepad.com
Shakespeare's Sister, http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com and http://www.bigbrassblog.com
Bob Brigham, www.SwingStateProject.com
Dave Johnson, http://www.Seeingtheforest.com
Matt Singer, http://www.leftinthewest.com
Kos, http://www.dailykos.com
Kari Chisholm, http://www.blueoregon.com
Steve Gilliard, http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/
Kevin Drum, Political Animal
Crooks and Liars, http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Brian Balta, http://balta.blogspot.com
That Colored Fella, http://www.ThatColoredFellasweblog.bloghorn.com
Anna Brosovic http://annatopia.com/blog.html
skippy the bush kangaroo http://www.xnerg.blogspot.com
David Neiwert Orcinus http://www.dneiwert.blogspot.com
Julien 's List http://www.educatedeclectic.blogspot.com
General J.C. Christian, http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/
Laura Rozen, http://www.warandpiece.com/
Liza Sabater, http://www.culturekitchen.com
Chris Patil, http://www.marchingorders.org
Billmon, http://www.billmon.org
Ralph Dratman, http://newsfare.com
David (Austin Tx), http://supremeirony.blogspot.com
Ellen Dana Nagler, http://bopnews.com
Sean Carroll, http://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com
media girl, www.mediagirl.org
Joe Giblin
Stephen Anderson, http://steveaudio.blogspot.com
-Kevin Hayden, American Street
Elaine Supkis Culture of Life News II
Melanie Mattson Just a Bump in the Beltway

Kenneth Bernstein http://teacherken.blogspot.com
ZenYenta http://zenyenta.blogspot.com
James E. Shirk www.degenerateart.blogspot.com
Hugo http://hugozoom.blogspot.com/
Dennis Perrin -- Red State Son
Margaret Imber http://pudentilla.blogspot.com
Read The Otter Side http://otterside.blogspot.com
Kerry Lutz http://www.100monkeystyping.com
Kelly B http://spacetimecurves.blogspot.com/
Carla, http://preemptivekarma.com/
Wes Flinn, Walk In Brain
Greg Turner, http://www.independentreport.org
Jeremy, http://upyernoz.blogspot.com
Dean Lawrence Velvel, www.velvelonnationalaffairs.blogspot.com
The Purple Coalition http://purplecoalition.blogspot.com/
Erik Wilson, The Generik Brand
Clif Burns www.OutsideTheTent.com
Sandra Wooten, Dallas, Texas
Nico Pitney, Center for American Progress
Hughes for America, http://hughesforamerica.typepad.com/
Ben Varkentine, http://blogs.ink19.com/soundcrowd/
As I Please http://barneymac17.blogspot.com/
Lane Schwark, Dr. Laniac's Laboratory
stumpy, stumpysfindings.com
Jeff Tiedrich, Editor and Publisher, The Smirking Chimp
Ryan Pitts, Dead Parrot's Society
Paperwight, Paperwight's Fair Shot
The Farmer, http://corrente.blogspot.com
Mr. Thomas M. Fiddler, Somerset, KY 42502
Sidsel Anderson, http://www.newframes.typepad.com
Boadicea, We are the Resistance
Frederick Rhine, BeatBushBlog
Riggsveda, It's My Country Too!
John J. McKay johnmckay.blogspot.com
Larry Hosek, Silence Is Consent
ice weasel, private blog
James Benjamin, The Left End Of The Dial
exceive, http://www.moonwaves.com/exceive/Charles Kuffner, Off The Kuff
Chris Bowers, MyDD
Tom Burka, Opinions you Should Have
Bill Scher, Liberal Oasis
Amber Smigiel, www.yoyogurl.com/pcbnn.html
Carl Nyberg, Blogging Blagojevich's Blunders
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Posted by: echidne / 3/30/2005 12:35:00 PM

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Title IX in the News and Associated Random Ramblings 



The U.S. Supreme Court expanded today the role of Title IX, the Civil Rights legislation which requires sex equality in education:


A sharply divided Supreme Court expanded the reach of the landmark Title IX anti-discrimination law today, ruling that it protects people from retaliation when they complain about sex bias against others.

"Reporting incidents of discrimination is integral to Title IX enforcement and would be discouraged if retaliation against those who report went unpunished," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for a 5-4 majority.


It's fascinating that most everybody thinks Title IX is only about college sports. In fact, it's about equal access to all education, and as such it is a very important law for us womenfolk. The sports bit is actually pretty trivial from this wider point of view, but it's the one the media always talks about.

Even this case is about sports: It concerns the male basketball coach of a girls' team in an Alabama school. He argues that he was punished for complaining about the lesser access to resources his team had when compared to the boys' teams. A commenter on Pandagon (go and read Amanda's excellent take on this topic) appears to argue that this is fair because women's sports in general don't make as much money as men's sports.

Similar arguments fly about whenever Title IX is mentioned, together with arguments about how women don't want to play ball anyway and so on, and how unfair it is that schools cancel programs such as men's or boys' wrestling to make room for women's and girls' sports which nobody wants to practice. In other words, we are diving straight into the deep and muddy waters of what is innate and what is dependent on culture and what damage feminism is causing to the society and how great it is that the U.S. women win most everything in the Olympics because of Title IX. I don't really want to go there today. But let me just point out that the majority of men's sports don't make any money, either. Only a few do, mostly football and basketball in the schools with the best teams.

What interests me today is this: What are school and college sports for? The answer to this question is crucial in deciding how Title IX should be interpreted, but I rarely see anything written on this topic.

Suppose that such sports are for education. They increase the students' physical and mental health, keep them from getting led astray, teach leadership and teamwork skills. If this is the case then it's hard to see how we could argue that girls and women should not be given the same opportunities as boys and men.

If, on the other hand, sports are for the purpose of making money and gaining the school fame, the most rational solution would be to treat the players as workers, for example, to pay college football players a fair wage and other benefits. These workers would not have to be students at the institution though of course they could be if they had the academic preparation and time that are required.

Maybe sports have some of both of these roles and maybe that's why it is so difficult to agree on what equality of access means. But I think that college sports, in special, are also seen as amenities; like having access to a spa or chilled drinks and a blow-dryer in your hotel room. Some people wish to have these amenities and are willing to pay more for hotels which offer them, others don't care for them and go elsewhere. Except when we replace hotels with colleges the latter doesn't work as well because all U.S. colleges (that I know of) offer sports and students don't get a discount if they promise not to use these extra amenities.

This consumption aspect of college sports would make the arguments about Title IX very different. Why, a parent might ask, should I pay more so that someone else's son or daughter can play when mine doesn't care for sports? Because on average sports do cost the colleges money. And why, the same parent might mutter, do some students get scholarships (which are really reductions in the price of tuition), just because they want these special amenities?

There are other aspects of the college offerings which are similar to sports, of course, and students do get to enjoy them even if they don't enjoy sports. But the amount of money spent on sports is large and most of it benefits but a small fraction of the total student population.

So what is fair would seem to depend on what we assume that school and college sports achieve. Maybe we could fight over that next?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/29/2005 10:28:00 PM

Something Funny 



This is an interesting summary of what is going on with us liberals and progressives, from a caller on Randy Rhodes show today:


"Why do the socialists and communists who run the courts and universities want to see Terri Schiavo die?"


Quite.
----
Via Res Ipsa Loquitor on Eschaton threads

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Posted by: echidne / 3/29/2005 05:48:00 PM

Tea Leaves and History 



We don't know what our era will be called in the future tellings of history. We don't know if this is the beginning of the Second Dark Ages, with a return to religious oppression, anti-scientific thinking and strict feudal hierarchies for all humans, or if we are simply the eye-witnesses of the last, albeit powerful, death throes of an old, conservative worldview. Perhaps we are indeed sliding towards Rapture, and the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse will come galloping towards us just around tomorrow's corner. Mother Earth may shrug us off like so many annoying fleas. Or we might just go on, haltingly, just as we have been doing for some decades now.

What would you give for a quick glance at some future equivalent of a school history book? Alas, such glances are not allowed. All we have is our partial and imperfect knowledge of the past and the present and whatever ability we have to use these to predict the future. This is not that much more scientific than using tea leaves in the bottom of a cup to tell someone's fortune.

Which makes it very tough to tell whether Paul Krugman is correct in his latest column which warns us how perilous the current politics of this country are:


Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst. The desire to show respect for other people's beliefs all too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for democracy itself.

We can see this failing clearly in other countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of Islamic extremists until they turned murderous.

But it's also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence.

Before he saw the polls, Tom DeLay declared that "one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America." Now he and his party, shocked by the public's negative reaction to their meddling, want to move on. But we shouldn't let them. The Schiavo case is, indeed, a chance to highlight what's going on in America.


The title of this column, It Can't Happen Here, is also the title of a book by Sinclair Lewis, published in the early 1930s and describing a mythical fascist America. It is an interesting read, though not necessarily for its literary assets. It tells us how well-meaning but slowly-reacting people become enmeshed in the web of power held together by a small group of extremists with values that initially appear very American but soon turn into something very nasty indeed. When the people finally react it is too late.

Is it too late, today? That is the question I had after reading Krugman's column, though it was quickly followed by other questions: Does it matter what any individual does if the Zeitgeist is changing? Does Krugman assess the danger to democracy correctly? Am I reacting so strongly because he taps into my own nightmares so very precisely? What to do, what to do?

It is customary to assume that to mention fascism in debates about the current U.S. administration is inappropriate, extremist and insulting, that fascism was somehow a unique event which could not happen again, which could not, ever, happen in America, and which had such devastating consequences to its victims that talking about fascism as some theoretical future possibility is just plain heartless.

Perhaps, then, we should talk about Rwanda or what happened to the Armenians in Turkey or what happened, not that long ago, in Kosovo? We could call the trend in this country something else than fascism. Pseudo-fascism is a term Orcinus has proposed. Maybe what Krugman's column discusses is not fascism at all, or even the rise of fundamentalism but something totally new and yet unnamed? Would any of this mean that we should be silent, right now, because to speak would make us look extremist and out of touch with the slow-moving, oblivious rhythms of the American Main Street?

The answer depends on those tea leaves and what they would tell us if we only could read them correctly. The answer depends on history. But I am asking you one question: If the choices were to be ridiculously wrong in shouting out that the sky is falling or submissively silent when the world collapses all around you, which role would be yours?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/29/2005 02:35:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Today's action comes from the National Organization of Women. Go to their website at http://www.nowpacs.org/alerts/democrats-letter-03-05.html and sign their petition telling Democratic leaders NOT to move to the right. The Democrats need to understand that Republican-lite won't win elections; in fact, it will lose them.

Thanks for taking today's action.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/29/2005 01:21:00 PM

Monday, March 28, 2005

An Open Letter from Some Bloggers 



Agonist wrote a letter about the reactions of some of us concerning the blogger panel with Jeff Gannon as a major voice of blogging and online journalism. In other words, we want to be heard, too. Here's the letter:


We, the undersigned bloggers, are very concerned about how liberal political bloggers are being systematically under-represented and belittled in the mainstream media, academic settings and media forums. By being intentionally excluded away from these venues, we are effectively pushed out of the discourse of opinion-leaders. The result is that the conventional wisdom about blogging, politics and journalism, as it concerns liberal blogs, becomes a feedback loop framed by the Conservatives and their media allies.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago, The Brookings Institution hosted a panel that originally included no liberal political bloggers and yet while including numerous conservative political operatives in the event. We registered our protest and the Brookings Institution's response was simply to invite a few liberal political bloggers to attend, yet not sit on the panel, as we had originally insisted upon.

Today, however, we are faced with an entirely new situation that is more insult than misrepresentation. The discredited conservative media operative Jeff Gannon, nee Guckert has been invited to sit on a panel at the prestigious National Press Club to talk about the scandal surrounding his access to the White House and more generally, the similarities and differences between bloggers and journalists. Guckert's token liberal counterpart will be a gossip blogger and sex comedy blogger. While we have nothing but the greatest respect for Mr. Graff and Ms. Cox we believe that neither represents bloggers who write about hard-nosed politics. And as for Mr. Guckert, he isn't a blogger, he's barely a journalist, and not a single political blogger involved with the Gannon/Guckert scandal, or otherwise, has been invited to sit on the panel to counter Mr. Guckert's arguments.

Therefore, we the undersigned bloggers, respectfully but firmly insist that a serious political blogger such as John Aravosis, of Americablog.org be included on the panel to fairly and accurately represent our industry and us. Mr. Aravosis has agreed to our request that he serve on the panel as our representative and is available should such an invite be forthcoming.

This situation is simply unacceptable. We will push back against the growing bias and sloppiness we see in the mainstream media as it concerns serious political blogging. If we do not we will never achieve any semblance of balance in the media. If we do not, we abdicate our ability to tell our own side of the story. If we do not we leave it to others to define us and defame us.

Please call Julie Shue at the The National Press Club and politely insist that they include John Aravosis of Americablog.org at their event. Here are there numbers: 202-662-7500 or 202-662-7501 or email at tglad@press.org and info@npcpress.org.

Sincerely,

Sean-Paul Kelley, http://www.agonist.org
DCMediagirl, http://www.dcmediagirl.com
Ezra Klein, http://ezraklein.typepad.com
Echidne of the snakes, http://www.echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com
Amanda Marcotte, http://www.pandagon.net
Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, http://www.BuzzFlash.com
Matt Stoller, http://bopnews.com
Democratic Underground http://www.democraticunderground.com/
Lindsay Beyerstein http://majikthise.typepad.com
Shakespeare's Sister, http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com and http://www.bigbrassblog.com
Bob Brigham, http://www.SwingStateProject.com
Dave Johnson, http://www.Seeingtheforest.com
Matt Singer, http://www.leftinthewest.com
Kos, http://www.dailykos.com
Kari Chisholm, http://www.blueoregon.com
Steve Gilliard, http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/
Crooks and Liars, http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Brian Balta, http://balta.blogspot.com
That Colored Fella, http://www.ThatColoredFellasweblog.bloghorn.com
Anna Brosovic http://annatopia.com/blog.html
skippy the bush kangaroo http://www.xnerg.blogspot.com
David Neiwert Orcinus http://www.dneiwert.blogspot.com
Julien 's List http://www.educatedeclectic.blogspot.com


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Posted by: echidne / 3/28/2005 10:43:00 PM

Heh! 



This is really worth a laugh or two: A planned panel on blogging will have, guess who as a representative of us bloggers (and online journalists)? Well, of course Wonkette will be there, she always is, but I didn't mean her. Guess again.

I bet you didn't get it! Jeff Gannon aka Jim Guckert! YEAH!

Here is the explanation for his presence. If you can call it an explanation:


Jeff Gannon is back. At the National Press Club?

Yes, the same day that the prestigious Washington, D.C., journalism organization plans to present a lunch talk by former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, it will also allow the former White House reporter/sex site operator to be on a panel discussing bloggers and online journalism.

Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, resigned his job with the conservative Talon News last month after it was revealed he had used a pseudonym, had little journalism background, and had ties to male escort Web sites.

Still, Press Club leaders will include Gannon on the panel April 8 that includes Wonkette.com editor Ana Marie Cox, National Journal's John Stanton, and others.

Gannon told E&P today that he always considered himself a legitimate journalist, and "perhaps their invitation is recognition of that."

Press Club President Rick Dunham, who also covers the White House for BusinessWeek, called Gannon "a figure in the news" who is involved in an important journalistic issue.

"The panel came together because we wanted to discuss some issues that came about from the Gannon case," said Mike Madden, a Gannett News Service reporter and a member of the Press Club's Professional Affairs committee, which is organizing the free event. "So we thought, why not try to get him?"


Let me off the merry-go-round! I'm getting dizzy.
---
Tip and the second link via dcmediagirl, work on the topic by Agonist

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Posted by: echidne / 3/28/2005 04:30:00 PM

Tasteless 



This blog has no taste. The colors clash and quarrel with each other and the darker green on the lighter green is hard to read. I feel a little sick every time I come and check it out. In my defense, I have very little taste to begin with but I also didn't have much choice among the templates in 2003 and I was eager to start talking right away. So I picked the least annoying of the available off-the-rack alternatives.

Now I want a makeover! All the tucks and cuts and paddings that are needed to make the blog look properly divine. But what is a properly divine look? Give me some ideas here, please.

Then there's the whole question of Work. Like if it's work to change everything over I probably will get to it some time around the year 3005. Blogging is hard work anyway!

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Posted by: echidne / 3/28/2005 03:35:00 PM

Conscience Clause, Take Three 



This is the third post I've written on this topic which will not go away. Conscience clauses are provisions in state laws which allow health care providers to refuse to provide certain services and/or to treat certain patients for reasons of conscience. Four states currently have such clauses in their books and eleven others are considering adding them.

The Washington Post (via Atrios) introduces yet another article on this topic, this time with specific emphasis on pharmacists and their rights to refuse to fill certain prescriptions.

Well, not "certain" prescriptions. Let's state the obvious: Both the pharmacist conscience clauses and the hullabaloo about dispensing are about birth control pills, in either the usual form or the emergency form, and the conscience reasons that are the focus of legal protection are those of pro-lifers. But for obvious reasons the laws don't just single out this one group of believers for protection, and, in theory, at least, the conscience clause could be used to deny certain types of patients (such as alcoholics and drug-addicts) non-emergency services altogether. It could also be used to protect a provider who refuses to treat, say, gays and lesbians or anyone else the provider dislikes.

So far the actual cases of pharmacists refusing to dispense have all been about birth control pills:


An increasing number of clashes are occurring in drugstores across the country. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.

"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."


The "holding the prescription hostage" bit is essentially denying the patient the treatment indicated by his or her physician, and this is how it is justified:


Brauer, of Pharmacists for Life, defends the right of pharmacists not only to decline to fill prescriptions themselves but also to refuse to refer customers elsewhere or transfer prescriptions.

"That's like saying, 'I don't kill people myself but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.' What's that saying? 'I will not off your husband, but I know a buddy who will?' It's the same thing," said Brauer, who now works at a hospital pharmacy.


Now you know. Never mind that no research exists that would prove the contraceptive pill works as an abortifacient. The pharmacist knows better, somehow. Never mind also the many cases where women are prescribed the contraceptive pill as the treatment of some medical condition such as ovarian cysts or endometriosis. The pharmacist knows better, again.

The majority of pharmacists will not refuse to dispense contraceptives anytime soon, but the pro-life movement does seem to have moved to the second stage of its plan: get rid of contraception, even before the first stage: ban all abortions, was completed. Sadly, this probably means that the number of abortions will go up. Maybe Brauer should have considered this, too, in her gun parable?

More generally, increasing the religious rights of health care workers (a favorite project of Rick Santorum, by the way) will mean reduced rights of patients to receive suitable and timely care. Or at least care that complies with their own values.

Isn't it interesting how the extreme right-wingers are all for conscience clauses in health care yet totally opposed to anything of the sort in higher education? Wingnuts want professors to teach all theories even if they don't like some of them, but pharmacists should be allowed to refuse whatever they find unsavory. I bet that we'd have conscience clauses in academia, too, if they could somehow be made to apply to only wingnut professors and their teaching.

Which brings to mind Mr. Horowitz and his website of student complaints about lefty professors. Why not take a leaf from the wingnut book and start compiling a similar website of pharmacists with scruples? This would help consumers in shopping for the provider who is most likely to help them. Maybe this is what Atrios has in mind with his post on this topic?



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Posted by: echidne / 3/28/2005 07:37:00 AM

On Guns 



One of the three G's that keep the wingnuts going to the polls and voting against their own economic interests is guns. (The other two supposedly are gays and God.) I must come clean and admit that I have great difficulty understanding the American love affair with guns. I can see how banning guns now would be difficult to do, even if it wasn't against the basic beliefs of the country, because once you start riding the tiger it's hard to get off. Meaning that there are plenty of guns out there already, so that if you relinquish yours you might be toast when you meet someone who kept his or hers. But the idea that the right to bear arms is somehow a fundamental right is hard for me to grasp. Well, I have my lightning bolts and my magic, too.

Still, the National Rifle Association slogan about "guns not killing people but people killing people" is stupid. It's also true that nuclear weapons don't kill people and so on. What all these do is magnify the killing power of the people who use them, and the reason why the U.S. has such high murder death rates is in this magnifying power. Just think of someone who goes crazy in a school and decides to kill everybody in the building. How far would that person get with the plan without a firearm? Not very far at all.

Then there's the war against terrorism. One would think that making it hard for terrorists to acquire weapons would be an integral part of it. One would be wrong. In fact, terrorists could easily buy the most advanced weapons available in the United States, and if they did it in gun shows there might be no evidence of the purchase at all. If they shopped in the gun stores the evidence would be destroyed within twenty-four hours. Terrorists can't fly planes but they can buy automatic assault weapons! I hope that you sleep well knowing this little fact.

The reason for what looks like an inane policy by our administration has to do with the National Rifle Association (NRA). The Republican politicians are more afraid of the NRA than of the terrorists, as a new bill proposal makes clear:


But gun control advocates say they are dumbfounded by the timing of Congress' effort to indemnify the gun industry because it will come just weeks after the release of a troubling report on guns and terrorism. A Government Accountability Office report released earlier this month said that at least 36 individuals on the federal terrorist "watch list" have walked into gun shops and bought weapons. The report makes the current effort in Congress to provide immunity to the industry painfully ironic to the gun control crowd. "It really ought to be an embarrassment that Congress would push this bill in the wake of a report that terrorists are buying guns over the counter," said Dennis Henigan, legal action project director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Observers say the strange juxtaposition speaks to the momentous clout of the National Rifle Association and the gun industry -- and may have exposed like never before a glaring blind spot in homeland security. Where the Bush administration's "war on terror" has conflicted with the interests and raw political power of the gun lobby, mounting evidence shows that the war consistently loses. Henigan noted that suspects on the government's terror watch list cannot board airplanes or cruise ships, but they can buy assault weapons. "There is no question that this radical pro-gun ideology trumps the war on terror," he said. "It is quite striking."


"Striking" isn't the adjective that comes first to mind here, but it will do. This particular law proposal would make it even harder for the government to fight terrorism but it would make the lives of gun-dealers more pleasant. A fair trade, some might argue. But then those are the people who also keep telling us that guns don't kill people...

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Posted by: echidne / 3/28/2005 04:10:00 AM

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Chicks on Politics 



No, this is not about Easter and the lovely little yellow bundles of joy this time of the year (which will later on be eaten). It's about women in political programs on television. Atrios today posted on a show about religion which had no women amongst the experts who discussed the topic. As S in Mich in the Eschaton comments noted, there is good precedent for this omission, at least among the Christians:


I Cor. 14:34 and 35:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.

And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.


So. But of course the television screen is not a church, at least not yet. And in any case, the particular guy spouting off in the above quote was not God but an ordinary faulty human being, one who felt threatened by all the smart and uppity women amongst the congregants, one who could care less if the husbands of the said women understood anything at all themselves.

It's hard to fathom what is politics in these days of political fervor. I suspect that politics always played a big role in religion and now religion plays a big role in politics. Which is not good news for anyone who believes in progress over time as most fundamentalist religions are fairly stuck in an era at least a thousand years ago, and believe in maxims such as the one quoted above.

Even in the wider sense politics is not really a field in which women are prevalent as experts. A FAIR study that used data from 2002 came up with these findings:


While women made up only 15 percent of total sources, they represented more than double that share-- 40 percent-- of the ordinary citizens in the news. This reflects a tendency to quote men as the vast majority of authoritative voices while presenting women as non-experts; women made up only 9 percent of the professional and political voices that were presented. More than half of the women (52 percent) who appeared on the news were presented as average citizens, whereas only 14 percent of male sources were.

The balance was roughly equal among networks. NBC, with 18 percent, had slightly more female sources (of whom 53 percent were non-authorities), while ABC and CBS both presented 14 percent (of whom 48 percent and 55 percent, respectively, were ordinary citizens).

Even in coverage of gender-related policies (which made up 0.2 percent of coverage), women made up only 43 percent of the sources. On such issues as equal opportunity, gender equality and discrimination, partisan sources made up 24 percent of the total; 71 percent of these were Republicans and 29 percent Democrats. All of these partisan sources were men. Women were presented as non-expert citizens 77 percent of the time in gender stories. Men, by contrast, spoke as experts in their fields 100 percent of the time in such stories.


One might argue that these numbers just reflect the way our society is: most experts, after all, are still men. But are the actual gender breakdowns of experts the same as those revealed by these numbers? I doubt it, especially as even on gender-related politics it is mostly men that get the expert perches, while the "ordinary people", the ones that are assumed to be affected by the topic under discussion, were here overwhelmingly seen as women (77%).

It's funny, isn't it? How gender politics are really politics about women, not about gender at all. This is because of the way things are set in hierarchies in our minds. Like there is an "average human being" in our minds, and that tends to be a picture of a man, so when we talk about gender politics our minds interpret that as meaning anything which differs from the "average", anything which is on some side-ladder. Or this is my theory, anyway.

A more recent FAIR study looked at women's participation in Sunday morning talkshow panels:


FAIR looked at Sunday morning talkshow panels, where two to four journalists (political reporters as well as columnists) often join the shows' hosts to discuss the week's big political stories. The study examined six months (9/1/04-2/28/05) of NBC's Chris Matthews Show and Meet the Press, ABC's This Week and Fox News Sunday. (CBS had no consistent panel feature on analogous shows.)

Surprisingly, NBC's Chris Matthews Show came out almost exactly even on gender, with 51 men and 49 women. Unfortunately, the show is unique in its gender balance: This Week and Fox News Sunday hewed more closely to the print media's unspoken "quota of one" for female pundits, featuring 22 percent and 25 percent women respectively. Meet the Press—which occasionally included more than one woman per panel and once (2/20/05) even filled its panel with four—had 39 percent women.

All of the program hosts, who direct the discussions, are white men: NBC's Chris Matthews and Tim Russert, ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Fox's Chris Wallace.

But which women get to speak? Certainly not women of color. While the Chris Matthews Show did well on gender parity, every one of its 49 female panelists was white. The only two appearances by non-white women in the six months studied were PBS's Gwen Ifill (Meet the Press, 10/24/04) and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile (This Week, 2/27/05). And Brazile falls into a somewhat different category—unlike the other shows, This Week's pundit roundtable sometimes includes newsmakers like her in addition to journalists.

Male pundits showed more ethnic diversity. Most of the shows have either a regular or semi-regular non-white male panelist (Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday, Fareed Zakaria on This Week, Clarence Page on the Chris Matthews Show)—once again, essentially a quota of one. That unspoken quota system works against women of color: One "woman" is generally interpreted as one white woman, and one "person of color" as one man of color; once those quotas are filled, there's no room left for any more diversity.


If there is such an unspoken quota system, it's because of the hierarchy view I argued above. If white men correspond to our views of what is "average" then adding a pinch of women and a dab of blacks and so on seems sufficient to brew a diverse stew of opinions. If, on the other hand, we looked at actual population percentages of various groups these pinches and dabs are totally inadequate.

But should we base the argument on population percentages? Many argue that this is not fair because the real problem is in the lack of women and minorities among the groups from which guests on these shows are drawn. If, for example, there are very few black women in journalism then shows that invite journalists to speak can't have very many black women on. This would move the responsibility for change one step backwards, to those institutions that gatekeep journalism. - The crucial question here is to find out the numbers of black female journalists, in general, and then to compare them to the data presented above.

Should we care about the underrepresentation of certain groups in political tv debates? The answer depends on ones values and on what one thinks such debates contribute. My values argue that everybody should have a say in how we govern our shared matters. I also believe that women or minorities might come up with points that men or whites might not think of as important, just because, on average, our racial and gender makeups do affect what we experience in this life. This doesn't mean that, say, a woman should somehow be invited to a talkshow to give the "women's point of view", because there is no such thing, just as there is no such thing as "the black's point of view". But if we had true diversity in these shows we'd ultimately learn more viewpoints than we do if most of those contributing had exactly the same sort of lives.

For example, assume that the religion show that Atrios mentioned had included me as a minor goddess in its invitations. Surely my presence would have changed the debate somewhat, don't you think?

There are those who argue that women don't care about politics in the same numbers as men do and that therefore we shouldn't expect as many women's faces or voices in political media. Maybe. I'm not convinced by this argument until we define politics as the care of common matters and ask women if they are uninterested in this shared endeavor. Too often politics is defined as fighting and power-grabbing, and then we wonder why women, usually trained not to come across as interested in such activities, might state that they dislike politics.

Now, I love politics of both types. A good fight is great and I'll grab all the power I can because I can use it better than most politicans you could mention, but I'm also seriously interested in the way we take care of this planet and its inhabitants, and I suspect that the majority of other women are, too. And I'd really like to hear more ideas on how to do these chores, more ideas from whites and blacks, from men and women, from all of us, in fact.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/27/2005 02:32:00 PM

Time For Self-Flagellations 



In my religion, that is. While others celebrate with great joy I am ready for some heated self-criticism. Because of one comment in my comments, one among all the nice and praising ones, this one:


Funny. Kathra Pollit said that you were a good writer but once again, I am treated to typical angry defensive whining that confirms anti-feminist stereotypes rather than subverts them. Brittle sarcasms ahoy.

How do feminists manage to sound so much exactly like each other?

I would personally like to thank you for all the liberating tedium you've brought to the Democratic Party.


Of course this is really a compliment in disguise as the commenter mentions how Katha Pollitt likes my writing (yeah!). But then he or she (most likely he) complains that I'm whining and defensive and brittle. And that I sound just like all other feminists. And that I'm tedious.

Now, I happen to know the answer to the question why all feminists sound exactly the same. It's because we are all made from the same gingerbread dough in a secret feminazi lair somewhere in Limbaugh country, and the exact same mould is used every time, the one with a woman shaking her fist in the air. That explains the brittleness of my sarcasm, too, at least for anyone who has ever bitten into a gingerbread cookie. They are brittle and crunchy.

The tedium in the commenter's mind may come from the fact that I rarely write about sex, rarely mention my divine ability to have multiple orgasms while brushing my teeth, rarely include pictures of sweaty sex. Or perhaps it's because of all the long words I use? Like "gingerbread" and "democracy"? I will try to do better in the future, of course, I always do.

Whiny and defensive, that's me. Yes. When someone attacks me or my beliefs I defend, and I whine as much as I can. It's fun and it turns some people off which makes it even more fun. Of course I also attack a lot and boom and swear some, too, but this doesn't seem to attract the same anti-feminist attention. They are all too busy whining about their victim-status to notice, I guess.

This turned out all wrong. I was supposed to do deep self-examinations and to find many things in me to work on, to improve upon, and I was supposed to end up all penitent. Instead, I whined and defended some more. I'm clearly beyond any hope of improvement whatsoever.

That's probably because I'm a goddess and goddesses and gods are not very good at self-flagellation. We tend to find the idea quite funny, and then we just go on exactly as we were before. Like perfect.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/27/2005 12:55:00 PM

Merry Easter! 



For those who celebrate it, merry Spring for everybody! I have had another twenty-four hour sleep episode. That's what my human body does with migraine attacks these days. And it works, but of course the world goes on in the meantime and waking up is very odd. Not to mention the glued eyelids and the sore back.

I was dreaming about Wolfowitz! He was my bank-appointed custodian (I was an heiress in this dream), and he kept measuring the amount of water I consumed and telling me that I was drinking too much for the good of America. Then he argued that my parking place belonged to someone else, and I kept sneaking out to park in the woods. - A stupid dream as most of them are, but it has its connections to reality and the events in it.

This post is the stretching one, to get my writing going again. That's why it has nothing of importance in it and would usually end in my private files (with all the IHATEYOU posts), but I feel so guilty about not posting for a while that I will post this one, just to show that I still exist.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/27/2005 12:41:00 PM

Friday, March 25, 2005

The Minnesota School Killings 



This horrible event is not getting the same amount of publicity as the previous school massacres. Why the relative silence? Even our president is mum:


After tragedies of a certain order, it's standard operating procedure for the president to make a statement.

But Ceci Connolly writes in The Washington Post: "Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence. . . .

" 'From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing,' said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. . . .

"The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over whether her feeding tube should be reinserted."


There's the Schiavo case, of course, and it has all the hot buttons: emotion, anger, religion, difficult ethical questions and so on. Everyone agrees that the Minnesota victims are dead, after all. But so were the victims of previous school shootings and we never heard the end of the "deep" societal analyses on their causes.

No, I don't think that the Schiavo case is enough to account for all that is going on (or rather, not going on) about the latest tragedy in Minnesota. I smell racism here, or classism, or both. Hmm. Maybe I should check what wingnuts like Peggy Noonan are writing on the infinite value of the lives lost here?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/25/2005 04:36:00 PM

Friday's Embroidery Blogging 





Bird in Cage


This is something I dreamt about during the Taliban years in Afghanistan. The technique is mostly French knots.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/25/2005 02:03:00 PM

Peacekeeper Babies 



The United Nations has a small problem: babies left behind by the peacekeepers in the various war-torn countries that need peace keeping by an international organization. Now a new report argues for DNA testing and child support payments from any peacekeepers who are found to have fathered these babies.

The report is about sexual exploitation and rape by the United Nations peacekeepers, the ones who are supposed to be the good guys. Most of them probably are, but enough are not to acount for the concern:


Titled "A Comprehensive Strategy to Eliminate Future Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations," the document insists that U.N. interventions operate on the principle that they will not "in any way increase the suffering of vulnerable sectors of [a] population."

In the DRC, the report says, "sexual exploitation and abuse mostly involves the exchange of sex for money (on average $1-$3 per encounter), for food (for immediate consumption or to barter later) or for jobs."

Sexual exploitation by peacekeepers may threaten the security of missions, the study suggests, exposing them "to blackmail and violent retaliation." It also speeds the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

"Victims frequently suffer from psychological trauma as a result of their experiences. Victims and abandoned peacekeeper babies may face stigmatization by their families and communities, which deprive them of all support."


Proposals for change include things like banning all sex, having more sports facilities and internet facilities and introducing more female peacekeepers. This last idea made my hair stand up until I read that


"The presence of more women in a mission, especially at senior levels, will help to promote an environment that discourages sexual exploitation and abuse."


What the report might not address is the fact that the peacekeepers causing most of the problems come from a small group of countries. This suggests to me that it might be the values and traditions of some peacekeepers that need to be addressed for any real change to happen. But this is a touchy topic as the U.N. doesn't want to blame any country which would then huff and puff in indignation and maybe even withdraw its offer to send peacekeepers.

But something certainly needs to be done. Some of the sex discussed in the report was with children, and all the victims had just undergone extremely traumatic events in their lives, including violence, dislocation into camps, hunger and the loss of family members. They need protection, not exploitation.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/25/2005 01:12:00 PM

Thursday, March 24, 2005

A Cartoon By Artful Asp 




By Artful Asp


This cartoon may need to be clicked on for total appreciation. It's by Artful Asp, my darling sweet little teenage snake. Don't you think it shows some real talent? She finds humans very silly, of course.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/24/2005 09:47:00 PM

Freedom and Wingnuts 



Freedom is one of the most common words coming out of George Bush's mouth, but what he means by it is not at all clear to me. Who, in particular, is supposed to enjoy freedom?

Take the Terri Schiavo case. Maureen Dowd commented on the rising theocracy in the United States in her most recent column:


The president and his ideological partners don't believe in separation of powers. They just believe in their own power. First they tried to circumvent the Florida courts; now they're trying to pack the federal bench with conservatives and even blow up the filibuster rule. But they may yet learn a lesson on checks and balances, as the federal courts rebuffed them in the Schiavo case.

Mr. DeLay moved yesterday to file a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court asking that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be restored while the federal court is deciding what to do. But as he exploits this one sad case, Mr. DeLay has voted to slash Medicaid by $15 billion, denying money to care for poor people in nursing homes, some on feeding tubes.

Mr. DeLay made his personal stake clear at a conference last Friday organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. He said that God had brought Terri Schiavo's struggle to the forefront "to help elevate the visibility of what's going on in America." He defined that as "attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others."


I think that "freedom" is something Mr. DeLay is supposed to enjoy, not something that poor people on Medicaid might aspire to. Us lefties don't really seem to have the freedom to criticize this wingnut government, either. At least Mr. DeLay is pulling the victim card in talking about such criticism.

Then consider the concept of academic freedom. This was based on the idea that professors would not feel free to engage in scientific inquiry if what they study or publish could be grounds for their dismissal. Academic freedom never meant that professors could spout off anything they felt like. There has always been several safeguards in place against this possibility. On the most elemental level, students are free to change courses and to make complaints against specific professors. They are also free to write bad teaching evaluations for courses which they don't like, and a professor who gets consistently bad reviews will be in trouble. And students can also move to another college or university altogether, if all else fails.

Maybe all this is not sufficient. The wingnuts think so. They want academic freedom to work the other way round: not to enable professors to do research and teaching freely, but to enable the students to be protected from such endeavors. A new crop of state laws is trying to achieve exactly this outcome by making it obligatory for professors to teach all sides of an issue and by requiring that grading is not affected by any differences of opinion between the students and their teachers. Now, all this seems commonsense to me, and the vast majority of college professors are already doing exactly this. But the wingnuts don't see it the same way. They believe that the academia is the last powerbase of the left and they want these rats out.

Instead, they want all teaching to respect wingnut beliefs, even if there is no scientific basis for these beliefs. As an example, consider this Florida state proposal on one such academic bill of rights:


Republicans on the House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out "leftist totalitarianism" by "dictator professors" in the classrooms of Florida's universities.

The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, passed 8-to-2 despite strenuous objections from the only two Democrats on the committee.

The bill has two more committees to pass before it can be considered by the full House.

While promoting the bill Tuesday, Baxley said a university education should be more than "one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom," as part of "a misuse of their platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views."

The bill sets a statewide standard that students cannot be punished for professing beliefs with which their professors disagree. Professors would also be advised to teach alternative "serious academic theories" that may disagree with their personal views.


Nothing wrong with wanting professors to teach alternative "serious academic theories". In fact, that's what teaching in universities is all about: showing students all the different ways of thinking about a topic, and then showing them how to criticize each of these.

But this is not really what the Florida proposal aims to achieve:


According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for "public ridicule" – for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class – would also be given the right to sue.

"Some professors say, 'Evolution is a fact. I don't want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don't like it, there's the door,'" Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, warned of lawsuits from students enrolled in Holocaust history courses who believe the Holocaust never happened.

Similar suits could be filed by students who don't believe astronauts landed on the moon, who believe teaching birth control is a sin or even by Shands medical students who refuse to perform blood transfusions and believe prayer is the only way to heal the body, Gelber added.


Clearly, what is viewed as alternative "serious academic theories" is the crucial question here, and the wingnuts' ideas are not going to match normal scientific criteria.

I suspect that the real freedoms at stake here are two: First, the right of the student to leave the college unchanged by any new ideas, and second, the right of the students' parents (or whoever pays the bill) not to have the students' values challenged. Both of these "freedoms" are the opposite of what academic inquiry should achieve. It will be a very sad day for the United States when this is what higher education will achieve: nothing.

There is something very paternalistic in all this freedom-talk. It's the government who decides for us what our freedoms might be, it's the government who decides what we should be taught, and it's the government who decides when feeding-tubes will be disconnected or not. Maureen Dowd is correct in the above quote: it's not about freedom or about the separation of powers or about students' rights; it's all about wingnut power, the right of the wingnuts to have the world remade in their own image.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/24/2005 02:50:00 PM

In Love With Death 



Did you know that this is us? Us liberals and progressives, we are the pro-death party, the party that is in love with death. So Peggy Noonan tells us in her beautiful opinion column on the Terri Schiavo case:


The pull-the-tube people say, "She must hate being brain-damaged." Well, yes, she must. (This line of argument presumes she is to some degree or in some way thinking or experiencing emotions.) Who wouldn't feel extreme sadness at being extremely disabled? I'd weep every day, wouldn't you? But consider your life. Are there not facets of it, or facts of it, that make you feel extremely sad, pained, frustrated, angry? But you're still glad you're alive, aren't you? Me too. No one enjoys a deathbed. Very few want to leave.

Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous.

And those who are still learning--our children--oh, what terrible lessons they're learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They're witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society--their society, their people--on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life.

Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value.

Once you "know" that--that human life is not so special after all--then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.


Gulp. I'm in tears with the beauty and touchingness of Ms. Noonan's writing. Except when she calls me red-fanged and ravenous. I just had dinner, anyway.

Then I read what she wrote again and turned An Angry Goddess With Thunder in the Background:

So Ms. Noonan thinks every life is of infinite value, does she? Even all those lives in Iraq that are usually called collateral damage? Even the lives of Iraqis? If so, how does Ms. Noonan justify our going over there to nip so many lives in their freshest of buds? We probably killed some pregnant women there, too, and their fetuses would then be dead also, right? Were these lives of infinite value? And if they were, how does Ms. Noonan explain what her masters did over there, all those pro-life Republican neo-cons who think that freedom in the Middle East is worth any price, including thousands of innocent lives lost?

And the road to Auschwitz, the one that goes by Pinellas Park, Fla, does it happen to make a detour to Baghdad? And if not, why not? Did Haliburton embezzle all the money that was intended for paving this road to Hell?

The U.S. government doesn't usually act as if every life were infinitely valuable. If it did, there would be no mercury in the tuna that is being fed to our children. If it did, there wouldn't be a single bridge that needs maintenance work. If it did, there wouldn't be a single product sold in the country that fails the highest safety requirements. For the mercury in the tuna may kill a child one day, a bridge may collapse with cars on it and a faulty product may murder people one day. Even a traffic junction without lights can cause a deathly accident.

No, Peggy, your party doesn't think that human lives are infinitely valuable, not when it comes to actually spending resources to save them or when it comes to not attacking people with weapons of war. Your party finds only some lives infinitely valuable, and only when it suits the political aims of your party.

So much for the infinite value of human lives.

And what about Ms. Noonan's other arguments? She argues for the relativity of all human suffering in the first part of the quote I have extracted from her article:


But consider your life. Are there not facets of it, or facts of it, that make you feel extremely sad, pained, frustrated, angry? But you're still glad you're alive, aren't you? Me too. No one enjoys a deathbed. Very few want to leave.


What if the deathbed has lasted fifteen years so far? Would that make you change your mind, Peggy? And do you really intend for us to equate things like aching teeth and bad hair days with what Terri Schiavo's existence is like? Many people on their deathbeds actually do want to leave, in fact, desperately pray to be allowed to leave. Ms. Noonan has been very lucky so far not to know this.

Not that we know what Terri Schiavo feels or thinks, if anything. But people who write beautiful articles like the one I'm discussing here think that they know what should be done, and the right thing to do is to reconnect Schiavo's feeding tubes. If this happened and Terri Schiavo lived another fifteen years would Peggy Noonan go and visit her, say, once a month? Would she pay for the costs of Schiavo's care or would she at least ask her masters to pay for those costs? Would she pressure the administration to cover the costs of care for all people like Terri Schiavo? Or would she never write another beautiful article about Terri Schiavo again?

How rude of Echidne, you might mutter here. Why is she attacking Noonan like that? Journalists don't have to do any of those things she demands. Probably not. But journalists don't usually call people on one side of a political debate the pro-death party or talk about their ravenous red fangs. That is really rude in my books and Noonan deserves a good (imaginary) kick in the backside.

Consider her pro-death argument. She's using it because she is trying to fan the flames of the culture war, to make the fundamentalists hate people (and goddesses) on the other side even more than they already do. She's doing this to encourage the fundamentalists to turn up in the elections of 2006. But does she care about the dangers in fanning the flames of extremist anger? We have enough unstable individuals with guns in this country without Ms. Noonan pointing at liberals as something to use in target practice. And yes, the sarcasm of this paragraph is intended. Sometimes I wonder why no-one else notices that it is the pro-lifers who seem to be especially keen on violence.

What about the "bizarre passion" for death that Ms. Noonan attributes to us liberals and progressives? I don't actually have a definite opinion on the case of Terri Schiavo. That's because I'm not a medical, ethical or legal expert or someone who knew Terri and loved her. All I know about the case is what I have read.

But I do know one general thing and that is something that Ms. Noonan fails to grasp: that there is ambiguity in the borderline between life and death, that the very concepts of life and death are unclear and fuzzy, that the value of life depends on the actual concrete case we are looking at, that to value "life" even if this means to value pain and suffering and unbearable torture seems cruel, that to value "life" without valuing the dignity of the individual, his or her actual life and its meaning to that individual seems pointless.

All this is much too complicated and unclear for the wingnuts. That's why I'm not one of them.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/24/2005 04:43:00 AM

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Picture of the Day 



Worth a thousand words, isn't it?





----
Via P. O'Neill in Eschaton threads.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/23/2005 07:30:00 PM

Jeb Bush On the Schiavo Case 



You can hear the family likeness in Jeb's comments about getting Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reconnected:


Bush said he is "doing everything within my power" to get Schiavo's feeding tube restored. His announcement came as federal appeals court in Atlanta rejected her parents' latest attempt to obtain a federal court order restoring the feeding tube.

"I'm to make sure that Terri is afforded at least the same rights that criminals convicted of the most heinous crimes take for granted," Bush said. "If a prisoner comes forward with new DNA evidence 20 years after his conviction suggesting his innocence, there is no doubt that the courts, in our state or all across the country for that matter, would immediately review his case. We should do no less for Terri Schiavo."


Glad to see he's working so hard for his constituency. Or at least one named person in this constituency. And the pro-life voters of the Republican party. The rest of us will not get the same attention, I fear.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/23/2005 06:18:00 PM

My Random Travel Memoirs, Part I 



Thanks for all your good suggestions on what to do in NYC. Sadly, I had to do snake goddessing work there so I didn't have time to take advantage of all that the city has to offer. But I did go to the Guggenheim and I walked a lot. Here are some hasty memoirs of the trip:

1. New York City has lovely cabdrivers! Lovely! I had one today from Haiti who knows everything about Haitian politics and more about the politics of the U.S. than one George Bush. I told the cabdriver to run for the office of the president but he said he was too busy educating people in his cab.

2. Did you ever notice what Evian water spells backwards? And is it relevant? Especially given the large number of very wealthy people imbibing it?

3. Central Park is great. Things are sprouting from the ground and birds are beginning to tune up for spring concerts. The earth smells of Spring, too. And there are dogs everywhere, even in New York City. Though Hank and Henrietta said they don't want to move there, because barking is less efficient in those chasmlike streets than here in the open air of Snakepit Inc.. I think that I have been forgiven for deserting them for a few days, by the way, as the dogsitter has fed them steak!

4. Cell phone conversations are not very private, and I didn't really want to know, by overhearing someone else's phone conversation, that the water was cut off before someone had time to flush this morning, and that under no circumstances should the toilet lid be lifted before flushing. Though now I'm curious, of course. How big, I wonder...

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Posted by: echidne / 3/23/2005 04:40:00 PM

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Today's Action Alert 



Today's Action

Today's Action comes from the League of Conservation Voters.



********************

We need your help to stand up against the lifetime appointment of anti-environment extremist William Myers to be a senior federal judge. As expected, yesterday a committee voted along party lines to pass his nomination on to the full Senate for a final showdown vote. The vote is scheduled to tak place just after Easter, so we don't have much time to act!



The only way to stop this former mining lobbyist from undermining environmental laws for decades is to flood the Senate with phone calls. Call (202) 224-3121 and tell them directly.


Myers is being nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over some of the nation's most pristine wilderness areas, including California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii. We cannot take the risk of having a friend of the mining industry in this post. He's a danger to the Clean Water Act, our wilderness areas, and the Endangered Species Act.

Together we can send a message to George Bush that we don't want anti-environment extremists sitting in judgment of the laws that protect our air, land, water, and wildlife.


Thanks.


Sincerely,



Betsy Loyless
Vice President for Policy & Lobbying





Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Paid for by the League of Conservation Voters

The Action Alert is brought to you by:
League of Conservation Voters
1920 L Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20036



********************************



Thanks for taking today's action!
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Posted by: echidne / 3/22/2005 05:24:00 PM

Monday, March 21, 2005

Greetings from Gotham City 



I have walked all day long! I know nothing about today's political events, if any, and therefore I can't blog on them. Too bad.

But I've had a very interesting day, some wonderful food and really sore feet from all the walking.

The keyboard I borrowed is acting up. Must finish.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/21/2005 09:24:00 PM

Sunday, March 20, 2005

The Big Apple 



I'm going to New York City for a few days. It's not clear how regularly I can post until Wednesday evening. I will try for regularity, it's so important... but if I fail it's not because I don't love you all.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/20/2005 02:24:00 PM

American Politics in the Year 2005 



The Terri Chiavo case. We all eat, drink and sleep it, if we watch the so-called liberal media. We see pictures of distraught wingnuts crying over her impending death and we hear this astonishing piece of news: The Congress is going to sign a bill for just Terri Chiavo, a bill which will overrule the legal branch of the government and spit in the face of states' rights. Moreover:


President Bush said he will return early from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., to sign the bill, which would allow a federal court to review the case.


President Bush wouldn't leave his beloved ranch when the tsunami killed countless people but he will leave for the sake of one named person who has been brain-damaged for fifteen years.

The Republicans are not alone in this desire to wreck the Constitution by making the legislative branch take over the judicial one. Our very own wingnut in Democrats' clothing, one Harry Reid, has given this statement:


"I am pleased Senator Frist and I were able to pass the bill that protects the life of Terri Schiavo by allowing her parents to go to federal court.

If the House Republicans refuse to pass our bipartisan bill, they bear responsibility for the consequences."


So now we are bipartisan in our push to retire the Constitution of the United States of America. Gee, thanks, Harry.

Politicians know what sells, of course. Most Americans react emotionally to this stuff and the Democratic party doesn't want to be the party of death, even if the cost is the downfall of all democracy in this country.

Atrios quotes an article that goes and on about the boring legal implications of the case with not a single quote about grieving parents or horrible husbands, but I'm going to give you a snippet, anyway. Because it is important:



QUESTION: What does that concept do the regular give and take between the court systems, the idea of comity and cooperation between judges?

ANSWER: It destroys it. But that's the whole point of this Congressional action. Not liking a particular result in a case that has been litigated fully and completely by a court with competent jurisdiction, Congress now has said that the game must be re-done with new rules that heavily favor one side over the other. The implications of this move are astonishing. Just think about it. Anytime Congress doesn't like the result in a particular case, it could swoop in and call a "do-over," which is essentially what this legislation represents. And this from a Congress that has for a decade or so tried to keep all sorts of citizens-- including disabled employees-- out of federal court. If this law is declared valid, no decision in any state court in the country will be immune from Congressional second-guessing. It would throw out of whack the entire concept of separation of powers. The constitutional law expert Tribe calls it "trial by legislation" and he is right.


There you have the problem with this recent administration stunt. The real reason for it is that it's feeding time for the religious fundamentalist section of the party. They are not going to get a ban on gay marriages but they need to get something to keep them coming to the voting booths in 2006, and this is the payback for all their prayers. Besides, it promotes the anti-abortion goals of the wingnuts: if all this effort is made for the sake of someone who is severely brain-damaged and will never get better (except by miracle) then how can there be abortions at all?

Of course, the voting booths will be in the hands of Republican friends and there will be no paper trail so in some ways the Republicans don't need to worry. But it's always a good idea to make sure that the pre-election surveys show a lot of disgruntled wingnuts supporting Bush and his culture of life.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/20/2005 01:58:00 PM

They Just Don't Get It #5 



I was reading the Rude Pundit on the Terri Schiavo case and came across this paragraph:


Terry Schiavo was a vain woman, driven to bulimia by a sad desire to be thinner and thinner, afflicted, as so many women are and so many women aren't, by pop culture standards of thinness. Chances are it was the bulimia that led to the heart attack that led to the brain damage that led to the gooey being that is Schiavo being prayed over by the President and his brother. Now ask yourself: if Terry Schivao saw herself right now, knowing what we know about who she was and how she felt about looks, would she want to stay alive?


Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. It seems.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/20/2005 01:53:00 PM

Saturday, March 19, 2005

WAM And Other News 



I just returned from the Women And Media conference in Boston. The topics were very interesting, the cinnamon buns were good and we hatched many cunning plots to take over most of the so-called liberal media, "we" being progressive women and goddesses. I had a very good time and I'm usually quite allergic to networking. You will all benefit from the information I acquired today and yesterday, though it will trickle into my posts slowly over time.

In other news, the National Book Critics Circle prizes were announced yesterday. Marilyn Robinson's Gilead won the fiction prize. You can read about her and the other prize winners here. What's sad about these prizes is that they don't contain any money. They should at least have sent the winners some cinnamon buns.

I have not read Gilead yet but I have read Robinson's earlier book Housekeeping which is full of metaphors. Too full of them for me though it is exquisitely constructed. Perhaps also too full of mentally deranged characters which makes the book far too realistic in some ways.

If you are starved for more of my exquisitely constructed political commentary you can get it on American Street today as on all Saturdays.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/19/2005 08:15:00 PM

The Life And Times of the Female Blogger 



I'm a woman blogger, one of those desperate souls with bad hair and smeared lipstick, one of those slightly crazed looking creatures muttering to themselves at street corners while picking up months old topics for their blog posts. I'm made of no linkable material, I write boringly on boring things, I'm too rigid on my abortion rights, I seldom rant and rave about Social Security.

On top of all that, I'm totally without creativity, never come up with any truly new ideas and always go on about trivial secondary issues like whether Iran is executing women for the crime of being raped.

That's what an anonymous Important Blogger has told Shakespeare's sister, a great new blogger, a woman whose lipstick is always perfect if she chooses to wear any. Or more quotably:


In private emails, male bloggers who publicly wring their hands about how to solve the problem of the dearth of women bloggers in the upper echelon, will admit that the reality is the difficulty of finding women worth linking to.

Women don't give me much linkable material.

Women write on subjects that don't interest me.

Women don't know how to compromise on abortion rights.

Why don't women post about Social Security? It affects them, too.

Women don't write commentary, don't come up with new ideas.

Gender politics is all secondary issues.


Well, yes, a good woman blogger is worth her weight in gold. Or in chocolate. But equally hard to find, especially if the standards are suitably adjusted to keep her rare. I mean, come on! Linkability and boredom are subjective standards. There are days when I'm totally bored with myself and would delink if it was relatively easy to do and reversible. But I have to live in My Divine Presence all the time and that's very different from someone linking to me once a year or so. I'm quite nice consumed in small portions, and if you read my writings carefully you might even find something of interest. Such as my cup size which is 34C. Or what's wrong with Social Security, or the bankruptcy bill.

In fact, I post on Social Security all the time, I write commentary all the time (my life is commentary!), I suggest new theories and ideas all the time. But, alas, this is all so very unlinkable and boring. And then I do go on about gender politics which are not secondary if you belong to the other gender than the one that the Important Blogger inhabits. That's how it is.

I'm even willing to compromise on abortion rights: I'm willing to have them completely taken away from Important Male Bloggers if that helps with the discourse.

But I'm not going to change anything just to get linked by some anonymous Important Blogger. Nope. Even goddesses have their pride and this is where I will not stoop to conquer. Besides, I love the readers I have and value their opinion more than the opinion of someone who has not read my divine thoughts with adequate humility and attention.

If I could start my blogging career again I'd choose to use a pseudonym. Something like Bob the Slob or the Blogginator or Currer Bell or James Tiptree, Jr.. I'd talk a lot about my eight inches uncut and I'd swear a lot and I'd be one of the guys. Of course I might be one of the guys right now. There's really no way of knowing on the internets, is there? Now that's a worrying thought for all those who have lists of reasons for not linking to women's blogs.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/19/2005 03:44:00 AM

Friday, March 18, 2005

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock 



That's the biological clock ticking away your precious fertile moments, but this time it's ticking for the guys. Or so an article in the Salon states. It tells of a new movement of men who are "wife shoppers", who ask about your willingness to have lots of babies on the first date, or:


Another friend, Allison, a 30-year-old cable executive in New York, met theater producer Aaron through work. They shared a lusty kiss on a subway platform and planned a date. "At the bar he started quizzing me on what music was playing," she said. "It felt like I was being interviewed. He wanted to know how I would feel about living on the Upper West Side, if I would prefer a vacation home in the Catskills or in the Hamptons, and would I convert to Judaism. When I said I didn't know about conversion, he asked if I would consider raising my kids Jewish." Allison said the conversation quickly dampened whatever ardor she'd felt for Aaron. "The questions he was asking were questions you get to on maybe the 28th date," she said. "But because they were coming so early I felt stunned, and bummed because this guy clearly wasn't excited about me. This was a picture of who he saw his future with and he was trying to decide if maybe I could fit into the outline."


Then of course the women get scared of commitment and run away.

Do you believe in this stuff? I don't, not really. It is true that the male fertility rate has been found to drop by age a lot more than was previously thought and some studies suggest that older men may have poorer quality sperm, too. But there is a whole trend-making industry which churns out these kinds of stories.

The data consists of a nonrandom section of people one phones with leading questions, and then another book is published on whatever the most recent trend-to-be-created is. Sylvia Ann Hewlet has been writing crap like this for decades, mostly on women who yearn for babies, but now others have joined in the fray. At least writing about commitment-pining men is more fun as a novelty.

All these books talk about the upper classes only, but nobody ever notices it because the U.S. is supposed to be classless. That's why you can write an article like this and mention the opinions of a urologist, a journalist,a network news producer, a cable executive, an artist, an adult novelist and, as an example of inclusivity, a secondary school teacher. No electricians or cashiers or cabdrivers or cleaners. I want to know if men like them are equally commitment-hungry. It would be good to know before I open my house for all the roofers I'm going to need next summer...

This trend-making industry is a very odd aspect of the society. It often has very little to do with reality, at least until the trends have been created. Then what it says seems like common sense. I'm wondering if we now are actually going to start seeing men running around with a list of wife requirements. Other than cup size, I mean.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/18/2005 03:18:00 PM

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing... 



This Senate vote on the 2006 fiscal budget is not interesting only because of the Republican breaking of ranks on the Medicaid cutbacks but also because some Republicans really are Democrats and some Democrats are Republicans.

Take Olympia Snowe, for example. She would be considered as an extreme lefty in places such as Louisiana. Mary Landrieu would probably be regarded a wingnut in New England. It's funny to note how some of these misplaced politicians vote:


The income tax break for Social Security benefits was a Republican initiative sponsored by Jim Bunning of Kentucky.

Five Democrats — Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado — voted for the tax rollback, and a like number of Republicans — Chafee, Snowe, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, Ted Stevens of Alaska and George V. Voinovich of Ohio — voted against it.


All politics is local, perhaps, but this does cause some weird coalitions on the national level. Of course, the extremist wingnuts are trying to get rid of all moderate Republicans. If they are successful such odd couplings will probably end.

The Senate vote on the budget caused a lot of havoc for any attempts to control the budget deficit, mostly by gettting rid of the cuts that were planned in the Medicaid program. This program funds some of the health care for the poorest families in the country, and cutting it in order to accommodate the tax cuts for the wealty looked a little...un-Christian. But not to worry, the final reconciliation bill could still include the Medicaid cuts. Like a sleight of hand.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/18/2005 08:14:00 AM

Friday's Embroidery Blogging 




Big Snake Posted by Hello


This is a snake, obviously. The technique is a combination of reverse applique, embroidery and quilting. I used my old scarves for the material and the background is a linen summer skirt. The burgundy scarf was bought in London from one of those ripoff artists that haunt tourists. I never really wore it so it's nice that it can be part of my picture now.

Though clearly I need to work on my editing skills. The white border is irritating.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/18/2005 05:17:00 AM

An Open Season, Again 



On feminists. It's always open season for the hunting of the feminists. Feminists are the only liberation movement which it is perfectly safe to ridicule.

And who are the brave pukkah sahibs hunting us feminazis? Rush Limbaugh, for one. His take on the Atlanta courthouse murders is pretty much that feminists caused them by insisting on women as the guards of dangerous criminals. I was absent in the feminist movement where this demand was discussed but it seems that Rush Limbaugh was present. Which is interesting as he seems to be totally uninformed about the fact that many accused have managed to get away from even quite brawny male guards in the past and some of these have indeed killed people.

But not to worry. Feminists are guilty of even more bad stuff. According to Rush we don't appreciate the great powers of Ashley Smith, the woman who got the courthouse murderer finally apprehended. Why don't we appreciate her, I want to know. Rush answers:


He praised as gospel an e-mail sent to him by a fan named Julie McGurn, from Madison, N.J.: "Hey, Rush, the whole episode perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with feminism and how it fails to see the true nature of women. On the one hand you've got the PC feminist idea that giving a five-foot deputy sheriff with a gun will make her equal to a man in physical strength. On the other hand, you have an example of an authentic feminine strength in Ashley Smith. She was able to use her wits, her intuition, and even motherly concern. She made him pancakes when he said he wanted some real food, to figure out that this guy didn't have it in him to continue. She talked him down. Women are good at that. The first case plays to women's weakness, physical stature, the second case plays to women's strength, relationships and nurturing. But will the feminists get that? Doubt it."

"Not only will the feminists not get it," Limbaugh emphasized to his listeners, "they will actively oppose this notion of the outcome."


Ok. Glad to have feminism explained to me. I seem to recall a brand of feminism, quite popular, which argued for women's special powers and the strengths of their feminine character. But Rush must know better than me. What does he mean by "this notion of the outcome"? That all police officers should be women because women are so great at defusing difficult situations without any casualties? Somehow I don't think that was in Rush's mind. If he has such a thing as a mind.

He is really a little snot. Sorry, I know that I'm the polite political blogger but there are limits to courtesy. For example, I don't extend courtesy to green stuff that comes out of my nose. And I don't extend courtesy to Ann Coulter who pretty much pipes in harmony with Rush. It's such an unsavory thing to watch a self-hating woman, even when she does it for the money. So I won't watch. Or write about it, either.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/18/2005 03:30:00 AM

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Happy Lepricorn Day! 



Or St. Patrick's Day! Lepricorns are my distant relatives and they're having a ball today. With green beer and awkward jokes and some very bad singing of Irish songs. If you see them say hello from me.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/17/2005 03:14:00 PM

Whatever 



I woke up all grumpy today and continued that way, too. It may partly be caffeine which my human incarnation's body doesn't care for and which I decided to imbibe in large quantities just for the heck of it, but it's also all those nasty news these last few weeks:

We are going to get rid of the rail system as one of the few alternatives to cars, cars and more cars; we are going to drill in Alaska so that we can have more cars and fewer wild animals and we are going to remove every bit of a safety net under those cumbersome elderly acrobats or those poor tightrope walkers with their terminal illnesses and bad credit balances. We are going to be a new society! With family values and a jungle out there! And we are so patriotic and godly.

Then I tell myselves (both the divine and the human) that things political go in cycles and that surely this wingnut cycle is ending, surely the pendulum is turning back and won't hit my head on its return trip. Which sounds like a fairy-tale ending, to be quite frank. Especially after I read a book which stated that most Jews in the 1930's Europe didn't fight back publicly, partly, because they believed that the hatred cycle had reached its maximum and that things were finally getting better. After every new outrage they believed this. And of course they were wrong and this was terrible.

Now I have broken Godwin's law about bringing the nazis to a discussion about current politics. I didn't bring them up on purpose, the story has them as an integral part so they will be left in. And the lesson will be left in, too.

Back to my private worries. I have to work this weekend (which means that my Saturday posts will not be on the topics of that day) and if I still feel grumpy tomorrow I won't be very efficient at it. What to do? Other than going out with the dogs and letting Hank the Lab do my hair by licking it all over?

Maybe grumpiness is the proper attitude this season. I have to check my fashion magazines.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/17/2005 02:52:00 PM

Fairness in Academia, Again 



Go and read this excellent post by billmon. One of his quotes is this one:


For those on the right, true freedom requires more diversity--which, to them, means more conservatives in faculty ranks. "If the system were fair," says Larry Mumper, sponsor of the Ohio bill, "Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be tenured professors somewhere."


Now this is frightening. I wonder if Mumper knows what it takes to become a tenured professor? First you go to college for about seven years, most likely longer, and you write a doctoral thesis which is scrutinized by many. Then you spend several years teaching and doing research. In most colleges and universities your teaching is evaluated in each course and students are quite free to complain about you. Your research doesn't get published if your peers find fault in it, because academic journals mostly use an anonymous reviewing system and it is also customary to present research in seminars and conferences so that others can pick it apart. But publishing isn't enough for getting tenure; this also depends on how much you publish and the perceived quality of your publications. Most professors on tenure track work their asses off and still end up not getting tenured. Some of this is due to bias but the system is very stringent for everyone.

This is to guarantee that the final product, the tenured professor, is an expert in the field and knows how to look at an issue from all sides. And Mumper thinks that Hannity and Limbaugh are doing this? That if the system was fair they'd have their own endowed chairs somewhere? It makes me nauseous to think that Americans in powerful places have such a warped view of what academia entails. Like it's some sort of a baseball game where the rules can be changed at will.

Billmon's original post makes obvious the similarities of what the extreme wingnuts are doing and what the cultural revolution did in China. All extremist thought systems have similarities, of course, but it's true that in this case even the methods applied are very similar. Like the pretense that the revolution comes from the masses when in fact it comes from the party in power, and the desperate search for suitable enemies to attack. Ward Churchill is not a typical liberal professor, and Horowitz saying so doesn't change the truth at all.

But yes, it does remind me of the cultural revolution. Now where did I put my suitcase?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/17/2005 02:08:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Today's Action

Today's action is a little different. You don't have to call, or e-mail, or write a letter to anyone. Today's action is to spend some time enjoying nature. With the Senate agreeing to drill in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Reserve, we've lost one of the last pristine places left on the planet. Go for a walk in the park, spend some time with a pet, plant some seeds. Then, resolve to fight even harder the next time our planet is threatened.

Thanks for taking today's action.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/17/2005 01:40:00 PM

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

A Shorter Nicholas Kristof 



I'm stealing this stylistic device from Atrios. The idea is to summarize an article in a short and succinct manner, yet clearly revealing the idiocy of the original writer. Here it goes:


According to Nicholas Kristof, Hillary Clinton really gets it by kowtowing to the fundamentalist wing of the Republican party in her plan to become the president of the United States. That is the way for the Democrats to make new supporters in the Red States! Hillary's political strategy is really playing off; her approval rates in New York State are sixty-nine percent!

However, nationally her disapproval rates are still the same forty percent, because no woman will ever be voted in as president by the fundamentalists of the Republican party, certainly no uppity woman politician! So Hillary will not become the president. But it was a good idea, anyway.


Read the long version here.
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Link courtesy of deja pseu.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/16/2005 12:46:00 PM

Time For Some Deep Sighs 



A new Washington Post-ABC News Poll tells us how stubbornly Americans refuse to be informed or how well the Fox News manages to keep them uninformed. Either way, it is deeply frustrating. I want to tear my clothes and scatter ashes on my head when I read something like this:


In the new poll, 56 percent said they think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, and six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al Qaeda terrorist network that struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Also, 55 percent of Americans say the administration told people what it believed to be true, while 43 percent believe the administration deliberately misled the country.


This is not only frustrating but frightening. It shows how very easy the Orwellization of democracy might be. Or perhaps already is.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/16/2005 12:35:00 PM

The Big Brother Is Watching... 



If you don't think so, read on:

First, in Missouri:


A bill that seeks to overhaul Missouri's child abuse reporting laws could require teachers, doctors, nurses and others to report sexually active teenagers and children to the state's abuse hot line.

Until Monday, the bill had been sailing through the Legislature with little formal debate. It was scheduled for a House vote this morning, but on Monday the bill's author sent it back to committee for revisions.

Critics say the bill offers confusing and unnecessary changes to a law that has been in place for years. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Richard Byrd, R-Kirkwood, said the legislation offers a needed fix to a child abuse reporting law that has recently been contested in court.

Perhaps the most controversial provision of the bill is one that many say would require educators, medical personnel and other professionals to report "substantial evidence of sexual intercourse by an unmarried minor under the age of consent."


The proponents of the bill argue that it is intended to apply only to children under fifteen, and that for this group any sexual acts are against the law. Still, this law proposal does expand the ear of the Big Brother in ways that can conflict with the other duties of educators and others who work with children.

Next, in Indiana:


Planned Parenthood of Indiana is suing the state after the attorney general's office seized the medical records of eight juvenile patients, including five from the Lafayette area.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis seeks temporary and permanent injunctions against Attorney General Steve Carter and his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit from searching the records of 12- and 13-year-old patients.

The unit, since March 1, has seized records from clinics in Bloomington, Franklin and Lafayette.

"They're using a pretty intimidating tool and twisting it in an effort to get confidential records," said Betty Cockrum, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

She said of Carter, "He does not have, under the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the provision to seek the information he is seeking."

Spokeswoman Staci Schneider of the attorney general's office said the unit seized the records as part of an ongoing investigation to determine if Planned Parenthood has been reporting instances of child molestation.

Failing to do so constitutes abuse and/or neglect, she said.


Maybe there are valid reasons in this case, too, but surely patient confidentiality is important, too?

It's hard not think that all this has something to do with the Christian right and its interest in controlling all things sexual. I wonder if they noticed my she-blogger picture (below on this page) and if they did whether my internet connections are already monitored? Wouldn't that be fun!
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Links via M.E.N. (Esq.) and angryffemt

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Posted by: echidne / 3/16/2005 04:42:00 AM

Back to the 1950's? 



To a world of breadwinning men and housewife women? That's what young women in the U.K. appear to want, based on the writeups of a new survey done for the New Woman magazine. The survey asked fifteen hundred women in their late twenties questions about their career and family plans. Or so I surmise. It appears impossible to get hold of the actual survey which means that everything I say about the survey must be treated with caution.

Anyway, these fifteen hundred women have some very old-fashioned values: Two thirds of them thought that men should be the main breadwinners of the family. One in four of the respondents planned to stay at home with children full time, whereas only one in ten expressed an intent to stay working full time after children arrive. Seven out of ten respondents didn't want to work as hard as their mothers had.

The way this is written up is most fascinating, and I don't mean the obvious wingnut reactions or the obvious "Feminism Is Dead" stuff, but things like this:


Margi Conklin, editor of New Woman magazine, said the findings reflected "a fundamental shift in young women's attitudes towards life and work.

"They've watched their own mothers trying, and often failing, to 'have it all', and decided they 'don't want it all'. They don't want to work crazy hours while their children are put into nurseries and their relationships disintegrate under the strain.

"Young women today are increasingly putting their personal happiness before a big salary or a high-powered career. Above anything else, they crave a work-life balance where they can enjoy a fulfilling relationship, raise happy children and have a job that interests them, but doesn't overwhelm them."


Come again? How is it suddenly the case that all these fifteen hundred respondents had mothers who were in the upper eschelons of the society? Who had high-powered careers and big salaries? I beg to disbelieve this. It's much more likely that the mothers of these women were a cross-section of the British society (if the survey was properly done to begin with), and that therefore most of them were not very well-off or with very interesting careers. They just had the double-day of many working women.

What we see here is the usual myth-making about feminism as the business of upper-class career women. Everything that relates to women and work must be seen through such a crooked lens. Let's inject a little more reality here. How many men do you think would like to stay at home with their young children if they could? I suspect quite a few. Here the patriarchal traditions favor women in that it is more acceptable for them to state such a desire. On the other hand, it's less acceptable for them to express an interest in continuing career-minded when children arrive, so I'd interpret all these answers with some care. Public opinions are not the same as private opinions. Neither are wishes and dreams the same as reality. The vast majority of these women will not be able to afford staying at home for very long, even in the welfare state of the United Kingdom.

My title for this post is misleading. The 1950's was not the way it is often portrayed. For example, a large proportion of married women always worked and there was an increase in married women's labor market participation rate by the end of the decade. That was the real 1950's. The imaginary one is the 1950's that the wingnuts always look back to with fondness: the time when men were men and women were at home. Many wingnuts can hardly wait until these times return and every study that suggests they might is greeted with joy in Wingnuttia.

I have always suspected that the wingnuts are much more interested in getting women out of the labor force than they are interested in enabling them to stay at home, but that's just me. Well, sadly for the wingnuts they are not going to get their version of the 1950's back any time soon. The economy is far too dependent on the labor input of women and the cost of living far too high for most families to have just one wage-earner.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/16/2005 03:59:00 AM

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Movie Violence 



Members of the U.S. military who have been in Iraq (and probably in other war arenas) have their own movies about war and violence, movies in which they often star, too. They are not usually shown on the mainstream television programs, but at least one amateur moviemaker would be willing to trade:


"30-year-old Sgt. Benjamin Bronkema from Lafayette, Ind., said he was surprised no one had tried to sell the movies yet. 'If I had a copy of it, and MTV called, I'd sell it,' he said. The videos are no different than what's on screen at the cinema, showing glorified violence, he added. 'It's no more graphic than "Saving Private Ryan." To us, it's no different than watching a movie.'"


No different than watching a movie. There is so much sadness in this one sentence and so much guilt for the rest of us who have made saying it possible. Even if the sentence is part of the psychological defenses that humans set up in the face of horrible events.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/15/2005 05:31:00 PM

Maureen Dowd on Women Opinion Columnists 



This is a few days old, but I have been stewing it slowly in my head. Maureen Dowd wrote a column on the lack of women who write opinion columns and then gave her own diagnosis of the problem:


In 1996, after six months on the job, I went to Howell Raines, the editorial page editor, to try to get out of the column. I was a bundle of frayed nerves. I felt as though I were in a "Godfather" movie, shooting and getting shot at. Men enjoy verbal dueling. As a woman, I told Howell, I wanted to be liked - not attacked. He said I could go back to The Metro Section; I decided to give it another try. Bill Safire told me I needed Punzac, Prozac for pundits.

Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman. It taps into myths of carping Harpies and hounding Furies, and distaste for nagging by wives and mothers. The word "harridan" derives from the French word "haridelle" - a worn-out horse or nag.

Men take professional criticism more personally when it comes from a woman. When I wrote columns about the Clinton impeachment opéra bouffe, Chris Matthews said that for poor Bill, it must feel as though he had another wife hectoring him.

While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it's seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I'm often asked how I can be so "mean" - a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn't get.


For a good writer Dowd is astonishingly thick on psychology and women's issues. I sometimes think that she writes these columns in a cab and asks the cabdriver for some expert opinions on why women do the things they do. I have even wondered if she could possibly be a woman, given how little she seems to know of the Life of the Female.

Take these ideas in the quote I gave from her: that women want to be liked and that men don't want to be criticized by a woman. These are stereotypes, and Maureen doesn't actually ask if there is any truth in them. She just uses them as if they were the Truth. In the same article in which she writes:


The kerfuffle over female columnists started when Susan Estrich launched a crazed and nasty smear campaign against Michael Kinsley, the L.A. Times editorial page editor, trying to force him to run her humdrum syndicated column.


I have news for you, Maureen. Susan is not going to like you now. But maybe it doesn't matter as she is not a man so is safe to criticize?

My point is that Dowd doesn't dive deep under the facile explanations she uses, doesn't look for any other reasons for the dearth of female columnists than her stereotypical views of human psychology, and doesn't differentiate between the use of valid criticism and just plain nastiness (calling Estrich's column "humdrum" without explaining why) as an explanation why some dislike her writing style.

It is such an odd article. Dowd tells us how horrible it is to be a woman who writes political opinion columns and then urges all talented women to join her. Is this her intention? Probably not. It's something her columns seem to do pretty often, leave me hanging despondent at the end of reading them, wondering if there is any other hope for me but a quick and painless death. Though this might be something in me and not Maureen's fault at all.

I would like to read more women opinion columnists. I love Molly Ivins and Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt and many others. These are some writers! And they know their politics inside and out. They don't seem to mind arguing or the fear of being seen as castrating bitches, either.

More generally, women often have a different pattern of life from those of men and this gives them a different angle to events. Seeing political events from different angles would be good for us. It would also make political opinion columns more varied and interesting.

Why is it, by the way, that the wingnuts seem to promote most any woman who is wingnutty enough to her opinion column while truly great writers on the left slog away almost unnoticed? I have in mind the list I noted earlier and many others that I could add to it. Why does Ann Coulter sit on a high perch over all creation while Molly Ivins is hidden away in Texas? Hmh?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/15/2005 12:49:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Check out the website for

http://www.StopFakeNews.org

and send an email to the FCC asking them to stop the Bush administration from sending out propoganda disguised as news.

Thanks for taking today's action!

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Posted by: echidne / 3/15/2005 12:35:00 PM

Monday, March 14, 2005

A Picture of Me? 




This picture has been doing the rounds on all she-blogs but I have decided that it's a picture of me. It looks a little like me, anyway. Except for the hair color and the eye color and the cigarette. And the shape of the face and the body...
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Via Watermark.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/14/2005 10:11:00 PM

On Pillowcases 



I'm going out to buy some pillowcases. All the ones I have look like spider's webbing, worn through to almost nothing. That's when they are really comfy, sadly.

I could order them through the net but I can get a better price locally. I think, anyway. The last time I needed pillowcases I made them out of old sheets, with added lace and stuff, so I'm not an expert on the going prices for high-quality pillowcases.

By buying something I'm helping the producers of bed linen and maybe even supporting someone's job. So in a sense I have been a horrible consumer, all these years, when I have refrained from buying sprees of bed linen. But then I have been good for the environment by not adding to its spoilage. What to do?

This whole post is full of "I's". Should rewrite it but won't.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/14/2005 03:58:00 PM

Biased Election Coverage! 



See! The media is liberal, after all! A study by the Columbia School of Journalism established that the media gave Bush a harder time than Kerry, that Massachusetts liberal. This clearly proves that the media is all communist and loves Islamofascists and that we need affirmative action for the wingnuts in the press rooms.

Here is what the poor wingnuts must face:


The school's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 36 percent of reports on Bush painted him in an unfavorable light, while only 12 percent did the same to Kerry - according to Reuters.


Wow! Take out your paintbrushes, you liberal journalists, and retouch all the stories about Bush with more optimistic pink for the future of freedom.

Of course, the problem the journalists faced in keeping the coverage equally negtive was this:


On the Iraq war, for instance - which was a watershed issue for Bush - the study found that the three network nightly newscasts and public broadcaster PBS tended to be more negative than positive, while Fox News was twice as likely to be positive as negative, Reuters said.


We just don't have enough Foxes.

This silliness is like saying that it would be biased to give the flat-earthers any less praise for their scientific acumen than the other side. Bush gave the media a lot of stupid stunts and horrible mistakes as data. Should all this have been ignored? Or should artificial stories have been invented to make Kerry look equally incompetent? Oh, I forgot, they were! The Swift Boaters. But even that doesn't seem to be enough, no, coverage should have been exactly equally negative, never mind the facts.

Bias does not mean telling the facts, my dear wingnuts, and sometimes facts weigh more towards one side. Bias means not giving each side a fair hearing and not letting them give their explanations for why what happened happened and so on. Bias means weighing the same facts differently depending on whom they affect. But bias does not mean pretending that someone who is awful isn't, just because the other guy isn't quite as awful.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/14/2005 02:14:00 PM

Words 



This is not a political post, not at least in an obvious manner. It is a post about words and what they do. What some words do, or perhaps all words when dressed in their secret fancy clothes or when they are moonlighting. The thing that words do which words cannot do, the reaching to something in us which is not intelligence or logic, which is not even emotions, and when the contact is made there is this enormous thunder and an opening and a realization of something instantaneously. And then a flow of understanding and the feelings that this particular understanding carries in its arms.

Poetry does this covert work often. Here is Margaret Atwood on spelling:


At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.


Yes, yes.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/14/2005 05:47:00 AM

When PR=Journalism 



The New York Times recently published an important article on the use of government propaganda as a substitute for news. These items are slotted into the usual news broadcasts and they are not always clearly labeled as produced by the government. The practice started during the Clinton years but has picked up speed ever since George Bush got in power.

Here is an example of the problem:


"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.


This is good for the government, good for the large media networks which earn more, good for the PR firms and good for the small television stations which often cannot afford to have journalists cover all issues of interest. It is bad for those who consume the messages without realizing that they are consuming paid propaganda.

Is any of this illegal? I'm not sure but it is definitely unethical, and this from the Values-Are-Us administration. Not only have they employed paid shills to push their messages but also this general infiltration of what most of us thought were just ordinary news. No government-produced video piece is going to tell us what is bad in the administration's performance, of course, yet the viewers or readers or listeners believe that they are receiving objective reporting. To see how it is done, consider the case of Karen Ryan:


Karen Ryan was part of this push - a "paid shill for the Bush administration," as she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.

Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news - too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.

In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as far as one might expect. "It's almost the same thing," she said.

There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political benefits.

Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments.

The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."

The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.

And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets.


You might argue that this is just another example of the general blurring between journalism and public relations in this country, and that the trend is nothing new, and you might be right. But the government has a special role and a special burden: it is not supposed to exploit its citizens by feeding them propaganda as news. Or so I think in my divine naivete.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/14/2005 03:11:00 AM

Sunday, March 13, 2005

No Islamic State in Iraq? 



It seems that the Kurds won't have one and the Kurds are needed in the government:


The Kurds and the alliance officials said both sides agreed that Iraq would not become an Islamic state, a desire also expressed by the country's most powerful Shiite cleric - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, said the Kurds would oppose any attempt to turn Iraq into an Islamic state.

``I think the Shiites well understand that implementing an Islamic government ... will bring a lot of problems,'' Barzani told Dubai's Al-Arabiya television. ``We have an alliance with the Shiites. We were both oppressed, and we both struggled against the old regime, but if they insist on having a religious government we will oppose to them.''

An alliance member, Ali al-Dabagh, said there were no plans to turn Iraq into a religious state or a secular one.

``We neither want to establish a religious nor a secular state in Iraq, we want a state that respects the identity of the Iraqi people and the identities of others'' al-Dabagh said.


What does it mean, though, to neither want to establish a religious nor a secular state in Iraq? One or the other will be established, I would think. I'm rooting for the secular solution because it allows the religious people to live a religious life whereas the reverse would not allow the secular people to live a secular life.

As an aside, I'm slightly annoyed by the term "secular" in this context. To want a secular state doesn't mean that one is an atheist. I want all states to be secular and I'm a goddess! "Secular" means something more here than purely earthly matters; it means a state which is inclusive of people with various faiths and sensitive to human rights.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/13/2005 05:33:00 AM

Saturday, March 12, 2005

An Obituary for Someone I Loved 



She was a good woman, a good person. She was the salt of the earth and one of those whose voice was never heard. She honored her father and her mother and she honored all the obligations life loaded on her narrow back. She never complained, she never asked for more, she never seemed to turn bitter from having opportunities denied from her.

She farmed the land and fed people whom she had never met. Her animals loved her and she cared for them before caring for herself. She broke ribs when cows fell on her and she broke toes when they stepped on her feet. But she did not complain. She wore a path between the house and the barn, a path through the hard granite, day in and day out, not complaining.

She bent her back from carrying milk pails which weighed as much as a young calf, bent her back until it no longer straightened. But she did not complain.

She was the salt of the earth. She was quiet and she was deep. When help was needed she gave it, wordlessly. If she was thanked, she smiled, shyly, but she did not speak.

May her next life be one of orneriness and fire, of passion and rebellion. May she find peace in the meantime.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/12/2005 09:06:00 PM

On Blogs 



The mainstream media has recently woken up to the existence of blogs and so have many corporations. The business now is to decide where to slot the blogs and how to exploit them best for money. The media also often wants to silence all blogs, if possible, or at least make them look ridiculous and unprofessional. Blogs are a new form of competition for traditional media and some bloggers attack journalists nonstop. Just remember the Dan Rather scandal.

Many blogs are ridiculous and unprofessional, but so are some media columnists I could mention. Now, I have the utmost respect for the skills and experience that good journalism requires and I know that bloggers are not doing journalism in that sense, not to mention that few bloggers have the resources to send correspondents to the hot spots of this world. What bloggers do is commenting and if they have any power at all it is in pointing out obvious mistakes and in bringing up topics that the mainstream media chooses to ignore for all sorts of reasons, some good and many bad.

The other extreme view about blogging argues that blogs are the new democracy and that in the cacophony of all these voices everybody gets to have their say. I don't quite agree with this one, either, because though it is true that anyone can set up a blog with practically no money it is not true that having lots and lots of voices out there increases democracy if nobody hears them. The real impact that blogs have had has come from concerted action via a few large blogs or coalitions of blogs all saying the same thing at the same time.

This is democracy in action in some ways, but it is not the kind of democracy the idealized version of blogs has in mind. It is better than nothing, for sure, but it is not a new powerful voice in the public debate. For that one needs a distribution system like the television stations have or the kind of reader numbers that only a handful of the largest blogs attract.

Which brings me to the study comparing wingnut and liberal blogs. It has some interesting findings:


"The primary finding of the study (or at least the finding I think is the most interesting) is that conservative blogs have a stronger sense of community than liberal blogs -- a quality that I often wish liberals could emulate. Here's what Adamic and Glance found:

"Conservatives link to other conservative blogs at a much higher rate than liberals link to other liberals: .20 links per post compared to .12 links per post.

"Conservative bloggers have a more 'uniform voice' than liberal bloggers, as measured by what they link to. If you count only links to blogs, not media reports, the difference in uniformity is even greater. (However, on another measure, the 'echo chamber' quality of liberal and conservative blogs is about the same.)

"Liberal bloggers tend to link to a fairly small subset of other liberals. Conservatives spread the link love around. The study also found (unsurprisingly) that blogs are primarily a medium based on criticism, not support:

"Notice the overall pattern: Democrats are the ones more often cited by right-leaning bloggers, while Republicans are more often mentioned by left-leaning bloggers. . . . These statistics indicate that our A-list political bloggers, like mainstream journalists (and like most of us) support their positions by criticizing those of the political figures they dislike.


That the wingnuts march in goose-step is not surprising and neither is the emphasis on criticizing the opposition. I am not sure if the tendency of liberal blogs to link to a small group of other blogs is bad or good. On the one hand this serves to make the liberal side of the blogosphere more unified in what is talked about and thus more audible in the public debate. On the other hand it may serve to keep the lefty blogosphere smaller and less bonded.

This study and my post treat all blogs like they were political blogs. Of course most blogs are not political and very little is known right now about the influence of nonpolitical blogs on public opinion and similar things. Will these other blogs serve as competition for magazines and newspapers, too? We will find out in the future.

To be realistic, most blogs have as much influence as I have when I mutter aloud to my snakes at night which is none at all. Which makes me wonder if we bloggers are all crazy. I could use this time making money or shoveling snow or training Hank to be a more obedient dog (no, scratch that one), and the world would go on as it always does.

Maybe it's not a good thing to try to analyze blogging so much. Maybe I analyze everything far too much instead of just enjoying the absurdities of this life.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/12/2005 07:25:00 PM

Saturday Exercise 



This website is really fun! You are going to get hooked, I predict. The text is in German, but it's pretty easy to figure out where to click. The idea is to move your mouse left and right (no clicking needed) to keep the drunk from falling over. If you are successful, he will walk in a straight line towards you. The longer he stays upright the better. My record is 78 meters. So far.

The drunk sounds American, by the way.
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Via Lance

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Posted by: echidne / 3/12/2005 04:13:00 AM

Friday, March 11, 2005

Speaking in One Voice 



I was reading today about the scattered nature of the progressive resistance in politics. The wingnuts speak in one voice, including the blogs in Wingnuttia, whereas we righteous ones all muse about whatever happens to crop into our minds that day. In other words, we don't march in lock-step (or goose-step, either), which is mostly a good thing and necessary for true democracy. But there are days when it would be useful to coordinate the progressive blogs' messages a little bit more. Today is one of those days (and I'm sleepy), so I'm going to magnify something that Atrios talked about today. Which is Representative Rangel's excellent speech about the dirty tactics that the administration employs in trying to destroy Social Security. Here is Rep. Rangel:


Yesterday, as part of his pitch for privatizing Social Security, President Bush stated that opponents of privatization "say certain people aren't capable of investing...It kind of sounds like to me, you know, a certain race of people living in a certain area." (USA Today)

"It is clear that in their desperation to rescue their privatization plan, the White House has sunk to a new low. How far will they go? The White House strategy seems to be to sow divisions - young and old, men and women, Black and White, North and South - to achieve their political goals. The Republicans figure if they can divide the nation, they can conquer Social Security.

First, Republicans said that they would consider providing African American workers with a different level of benefits based on their race.

That did not go anywhere, so President Bush and his allies claimed that Social Security is a bad deal for African Americans, since African Americans tend to have a shorter life expectancy. But Blacks have a shorter life expectancy because of higher infant and teen mortality - problems that the Bush Administration has cruelly ignored. With its disability and survivor benefits, as well as retirement benefits, Social Security actually is a slightly better deal for African Americans than for the general population.

Now, the White House has changed its tune again and is saying that those of us who oppose privatization are somehow racist. This is totally outrageous. No one is saying that any certain group cannot invest - we are saying that no matter who you are, you need one asset that you can depend on, no matter what. That asset is Social Security. Without it, almost 60 percent of African American seniors would live in poverty as would millions and millions of other older Americans of all races.

The only thing easier than making money on Wall Street is losing money on Wall Street. That may be fine if you have the money, but for the millions of Americans that depend on Social Security for their survival, their independence, and their peace of mind, they can't afford to take the President's gamble.


Divide et impera, anyone? It worked for the Roman Empire, for a time.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/11/2005 05:46:00 PM

From Echidne's Mailbag: On Mattresses 



I get lots of nice e-mails from people. I love them! Even the ones which tell me that I have been signed up for the chatgroup called reallybigasses and other similar jokes. Even the prayer group announcements; I like the idea that people are praying for my salvation.

I also get ideas for the blog, and once in a while I'm going to talk about these ideas. One good one is from Psycho Kitty, who alerted me to a new upcoming law that requires all mattresses to be made flame-proof. The intention of this law is to save people from dying in fires, but the problem is that flame-proofing mattresses involves pouring a lot of possibly very harmful chemicals on them and then these chemicals will be in close contact with the sleeper. This is especially bad news for people who suffer from asthma and allergies, but it could be bad for all of us if these chemicals turn out to be carcinogenic, for example.

What is bad about the law is that it is not based on proper studies of the pros and cons of flame-proofing mattresses. Therefore, we don't actually know if the law will cause more deaths than it saves. It also takes away our ability to decide for ourselves which risks we'd rather take.

This is part of a wider human pattern: we tend to put a heavier weight on those disasters that have already happened than those that will happen because of the corrective action we are taking. Just like we find named deaths more upsetting than deaths which happen to some unnamed individuals. But governments aren't supposed to be subject to these psychological quirks. That's why they use expert advice.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/11/2005 02:58:00 PM

Friday Embroidery Blogging 




Wall Street Posted by Hello


This is a joke on two things: the idea that spiders created the world and Wall Street. If you click on the picture you can see more details on the spiders. The one in the upper left corner is a female spider, by the way. - I copied the web from one outside my bathroom window but the spiders are imaginary.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/11/2005 01:54:00 PM

Thursday, March 10, 2005

The Senate Vote on the Bankruptcy Proposal 



The proposed bill has passed the Senate as expected. For reasons why it should not have done so see my post here. Fifty-five Republicans (all of them voting), eighteen Democrats and one Independent all voted for the crummy proposal. Twenty-five Democrats voted against it, including Joe Lieberman who, however, voted for the cloture a few days ago. Which means that he didn't have to vote against the bill itself. Our Joe is trying to eat his torte while saving it, too.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/10/2005 07:40:00 PM

Cash for Parents of Girls 



In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh parents who have girls will get money from the government:


Families having a single girl child in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh will be given 100,000 rupees ($2,300) in an attempt to boost the female population.

The money will be given to the child when she turns 20 and both parents would have to undergo verified birth control operations.

The state government says it is concerned at the falling female-to-male ratio - in 2001 it was 943 to 1,000.

The rise in sex determination tests to abort female foetuses is also a worry.


The quote is a little confusing because the program appears to combine birth control with the cash program.

Andhra Pradesh is one of those Indian areas where the ability to determine the fetus's sex has led to a dearth of girls. Indian families rely on their sons for old-age security and the tradition of large dowries for brides makes having daughters an expensive proposition. Because some of the reasons why girls are not wanted are financial the idea to combat them with money might work, if the net effect of the program would make sons and daughters equally expensive for parents.

But it makes more sense in the long run to abolish the tradition of dowries and the tradition of sons taking care of their parents. I'm not sure how this could be accomplished without building a welfare state for the whole country. Surely it is the presence of pension schemes and general education for both boys and girls that has made the preference for sons less in the Western countries?

Something probably needs to be done about this problem in both China and India, though, or these countries will have a large number of perpetual bachelors. It would be better if girls were valued for their own sake, of course, and not just as future wives of the extra men.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/10/2005 04:36:00 PM

Today's "Boggles-Your-Mind" Fact 



Via Atrios, we learn that certain of our elected representatives are two-faced about porn. On the one hand, they preach against it, but the other hand is receiving contributions from porn providers:


Some of the findings of the report: Kansas Senator Sam Brownback - who
equivocates pornography with crack cocaine - accepted $17,000 from porn
peddlers.

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman - who has long campaigned against the
growing coarseness of our culture -- along with renown gambling addict
William Bennet, handed out "Silver Sewer" awards to those who made immoral
videos, and who has criticized MTV for having porn stars on the air,
accepted over $16,000.


Though this isn't the place for it I want to make three general observations on porn. First, I detest pornography which is based on the torture of living things. All such porn should be banned and its producers should be sentenced to being the victims in their productions forevermore. Second, I am worried about the misogyny in some of the porn that I have seen. People who consume this porn may assume that misogyny is ok. Third, I am concerned about the possibility that young men equate what they see in pornographic productions with sex. Much of what I have seen (which isn't an awful lot, to be honest) is solely geared towards male enjoyment. Consensual sex tends to be more egalitarian in who gets the enjoyment but young men may not learn this from porn. Which would leave their future female partners quite unhappy.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/10/2005 03:18:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Action of the Day

Last night at Eschaton, Atrios explained that Delegate John Cosgrove (R) from the Virginia legislature was on television criticizing Mora Kuehne, the blogger who alterted America to Cosgrove's plan to make criminals out of women who had miscarriages. Cosgrove ignored an e-mail from Kuehne but then complained that she'd dared to blog about his bill without first running her blog past him.

Contact Cosgrove, who apparently doesn't appreciate having to waste his time responding to, you know, voters and remind him that in a democracy, citizens aren't required to get a politician's permission before they tell other citizens about a bill introduced by the politician. Cosgrove represents Chesaeake, Virginia, where the zip code is 23328.

John Cosgrove: Del_Cosgrove@house.state.va.us

(800) 889-0229 or (804) 698-1078 (phone)

(804) 786-6310 (fax)

You might also want to check out Kuehne's blog at: democracyforvirginia.typepad.com

Thanks for taking today's action!

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Posted by: echidne / 3/10/2005 12:30:00 PM

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Silly, Silly 



I haven't had one of these for a long time. This site will make you feel better. Or totally annoyed. Either way, it's something to do...
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Thanks to phmnst for the link.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/09/2005 11:03:00 AM

This Bankruptcy Proposal 



Why do we need to change the federal laws* that cover bankruptcy? There are two theories about this: The first one says that Americans are addicted to their credit cards and other forms of reckless spending and that the current bankruptcy regulations allow all the crazy spenders to avoid paying for their feast. Instead, the extra costs are rolled into higher interest rates which are then paid by us prudent citizens. The second one says that while there may be some truth in the first theory, the real reason for the new proposal is that it will benefit the banks and credit card companies which have long fought (and paid) for just such a law. Finally they have the votes to get it through. The new proposal lets the lenders continue their practise of offering credit to people who shouldn't be offered any at the terms used but in a change from the past the debts thus incurred could not be skipped through bankruptcy by most debtors.

It is true that Americans are pretty indebted. The average household carries eight thousand dollars in credit card debt and a suprising number only pays the minimum allowable charges on their cards. One point four million couples or individuals declared personal bankruptcy last year, though at least some of them probably acted in anticipation of the changes now underway. Women and men appear about equally affected by bankruptcy.

It looks like the first theory is the correct one, doesn't it? Moral bankruptcy, some might even mutter. Time indeed to put a stop to all this frivolous consumption, and our caring government is doing just that.

But then we hear that a recent Harvard study which looked at data from five states in 2001 found the most common reason for bankruptcy filings to be serious medical problems. Other common reasons for bankruptcy were the loss of a job or a divorce. Suddenly our picture of the indebted changes from the frivolous shopper to something sadder and more serious. Maybe even something that could look a little bit like ourselves, especially when we learn that three quarters of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. This could happen to me, we might whisper.

Let's not get too carried away. Some of the bankruptcies must be frivolous and it could be a good idea to rein those in. And the proposed bill applies a means test which exempts people with lower than median incomes in their state from the harsher requirements. Only those who can afford to pay something back will be expected to do so. Isn't personal responsibility a good idea for everyone? Why should some of us spend and spend when others work hard and save for the things they need?

Why indeed? But what about those who file bankruptcy because of high medical expenses? Surely the proposal will allow them some extra slack? Actually, no. An amendment proposing a homestead exemption of $150,000 in home equity for this group was defeated by the Republicans in the Senate. So was an amendment asking for extra consideration for those in the military who had to file bankruptcy because their military service caused their private businesses to fail, an amendment asking for extra consideration for those who file bankruptcy because of identity theft and an amendment asking for a homestead exemption for the elderly. All defeated by pretty much every single Republican in the Senate.

Because being prudent is the right thing to be. Personal responsibility is good for all of us. Except for the very rich: Another amendment which the Republicans also defeated would have gotten rid of the loopholes which allow for "asset protection trusts" in several states. Such trusts are expensive to create, so only available for the wealthy, but they will let you have a homestead exemption in a bankruptcy for your manor house or two.

The Republicans were not totally alone in rejecting all these amendments. Some Democrats also helped in this noble endeavor to get frivolous spending in this country under better control. But they all had trouble when it came to controlling the other side of the equation: the behavior of the lending institutions: An amendment proposing a ban on usury was resoundingly defeated. Now the credit card companies are free to charge interest rates of over thirty percent for certain kinds of debt. Usury, by the way, is explicitly banned in the Bible but this didn't make the Republican fundamentalist Senators change their vote.** Weighty moral matters, these credit concerns, when fundamentalists go against their Bible. The Senate also rejected an amendment which would have required credit card statements to show how long it would take to pay the debt back just with minimum payments and what the total interest payments would be. Such information is not necessary, the Republicans decided.

The evidence seems to be mounting for the second of the two theories: that credit card companies and banks have paid for this bill for several years and now expect delivery of the product, and studying the donation patterns of these companies lends more support for this argument. But the bill also fits into a wider pattern, one that Paul Krugman discussed in his recent column on the bankruptcy bill: "the "risk privatization", a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity."

Check for yourself: Lifelong employment? Gone. Employer-provided health insurance? Going. Unemployment benefits? Shortening. Length of average unemployment? Increasing.

Add to that these recent attacks against bankruptcy protection and Social Security, and the picture becomes clear. And ugly, especially for the middle classes who can no longer rely on staying middle class.
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*You can get a summary of the proposals here. (Warning: very boringly written)

For a good summary of the criticisms, see Talking Points Memo and especially posts by Elizabeth Warren, one of the researchers of the bankruptcy study mentioned in my post.

**In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion...I will surely strike my hands together at the unjust gain you have made and at the blood you have shed in your midst.
Ezekiel 22:12-13

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Posted by: echidne / 3/09/2005 07:57:00 AM

This Topsy-Turvy World 




A new survey tells us what Americans would like to see the federal government spend its money on:


The American people would like to significantly change next year's federal budget, reversing key proposals by the administration of President George W. Bush, according to a new poll.
Given the chance to look at and make changes to the major areas of Bush's proposed discretionary budget for fiscal year 2006, which begins on Oct. 1, 2005, around two-thirds redirected money to reduce the budget deficit, said the poll released Monday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

''The American public as a whole takes a fairly coherent position. They favor redirecting a portion of defense spending to deficit reduction and social spending and look for savings by cutting spending on large-scale Cold War style capabilities,'' said PIPA director Steven Kull.

Republican and Democratic poll participants alike would take the budget axe to spending on defense and on Iraq and Afghanistan, plowing more funds into education, job training, veterans, and reducing U.S. reliance on oil, the poll found.

The changes they would make would amount to a major redirecting of U.S. foreign and defense policy and reverse key social spending cuts proposed in the Bush administration's budget.


Through The Looking Glass? Didn't we just have Americans vote in this administration? What did they think Bush would do with another four years? You know, I'm beginning to think that a stolen election is as likely an explanation as any other I can think of. Unless I have gone completely crazy. I better reread my Lewis Carroll. This current logic looks like something right up his alley.
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Via watertiger on Eschaton threads.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/09/2005 03:50:00 AM

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Joseph Biden's Vote on the Bankruptcy Bill 



Biden voted with the wingnuts. Guess why? Could it be because his major political contributor is a credit card company? Priceless.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/08/2005 07:46:00 PM

The GOP Abuse of Power 



This is a new report(a pdf file) by Nancy Pelosi and others. Representative Louise Slaughter of New York said this at a press conference today:


"What people learn in school about how a bill becomes a law isn't true anymore in Washington. Now, the Republicans have their lobbyists writing legislation in back rooms and the American people are shut out of the process. If the American people knew what the Republicans have done to the people's House, they would be outraged."

"This Republican leadership only convenes Congress two days a week on average, and they spend a good day and half each week renaming post offices and honoring foreign dignitaries. The business of the people is not being debated, it is not being considered and it is not getting done."

"The way the majority runs the House is a moral decision, it reflects the values of our Democracy, and it directly affects people's lives. The American values of integrity and decency are under attack by the Republicans in this body. They have corrupted the legislative process and have diminished this institution."


I suspect that the process described in school books was never exactly followed, but it is probably true that a one-party state will not even bother to pretend to follow such outdated ideas. What Slaughter is saying is that we indeed have the best democracy money can buy, and that those who paid for it are now deciding what will happen.

Hence the Social Security destruction campaign and the proposal to revamp the bankruptcy bill. They benefit the corporations. - I still blame those who voted for the wingnuts.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/08/2005 05:50:00 PM

Meanwhile, in Kuwait 



Women still can't vote:


Several hundred Kuwaiti women demanded support for women's rights outside Kuwait's parliament while the all-male assembly was considering a new law that would grant women the right to vote. Last May, Kuwait's cabinet approved a law granting women political rights, reports BBC News.

According to Reuters, Kuwaiti newspapers are reporting that Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah threatened to dissolve parliament if it did not approve the bill, saying "We have big hopes the female suffrage draft bill will be approved." However, Islamist groups in the assembly have stated that they will thwart the law, as they had done to similar measures over the past few years.

Kuwaiti women's rights activists have been fighting for the right to vote for over 40 years. Currently, women are not allowed to vote or be elected in only two countries, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.


Wouldn't it be nice if the Kuwaiti women got the vote to celebrate this year's International Women's Day?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/08/2005 03:02:00 PM

Bankruptcy Day 



I'm late with this topic because I started studying it late (thanks to Kathy Geier for getting me off my butt at all), and the Senate is voting on the new bankruptcy bill proposal today. If you possibly can, please call your elected representatives and tell them not to vote for the bill. You can go to Eschaton for information on numbers to call.

The reasons why this proposal is terrible is this: Its proponents argue that it will reduce "frivolous" bankruptcies, but they make no real effort to decide which bankruptcies are nonfrivolous. Thus, if the reason for your financial difficulties is in large medical expenses or in having been in military service you will lose everything in this proposal, but if you were wealthy enough to begin with to start a trust you will not.

Also, the proposal doesn't put the blame on "frivolous" bankruptcies on those who lure people into taking on debt which they shouldn't. The credit card industry offers cards to my dogs Hank and Henrietta! They offer cards to freshmen in colleges. They would probably offer cards to the Debtors Anonymous if they could find them.

This is not my proper post on the topic, just a request that you contact your Senators and tell them not to support this bill. It needs public debate which it has not received.
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Too late for today's vote, sorry.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/08/2005 02:39:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Today's Action comes from Greenpeace. Go to the Greenpeace's " target="_blank" ;website and send an e-mail to your mayor asking her or him to join Mayors for Peace and make your town a nuclear non-proliferation zone.

**************

Until we can rid the world of nuclear weapons nation by nation, we'll start town by town. That's the strategy behind the Mayors for Peace project - an international effort which began with the mayor of one city, Hiroshima, Japan, who in 1982 said "never again" to the suffering his own town endured.

Today, more than 700 mayors from 119 countries have joined Mayors for Peace.

These mayors know that the end of the cold war didn't mean the end of the nuclear threat. The world is still bristling with nearly 36,000 nuclear weapons. The US and Russia have in excess of 10,000 each. The pressure on smaller states to develop a nuclear capability to defend themselves is higher than ever, and for violent extremists of every ilk, a nuclear weapon is the ultimate prize.

The nuclear threat has quite literally scaled down in the last two decades. While the prospect of an all out exchange of arsenals between the Soviet Union and the US has receded, the 15 kilotons of destruction that obliterated Hiroshima could today be accomplished with a lunch-box sized bomb. George Bush talks openly of developing new "more useable" nuclear weapons. Even more alarmingly, this years US nuclear weapons budget talks of spending 100 million US dollars over the next 5 years on designing more robust, more 'usable' nuclear weapons.

The prospects of a nuclear weapon actually being used are perhaps greater today than during the cold war, when the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction provided an effective, if surreally sinister, deterrent.

The only thing that will stop the threat is the voice of the second superpower: world opinion.
"In any war, it is cities and the people living in them that suffer. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki attest, this suffering becomes total destruction when nuclear weapons are involved. To protect their citizens' lives, it is incumbent on all mayors to make every effort to prevent war and eliminate nuclear weapons." Mayor Akiba, current Mayor of Hiroshima, Japan
"What we need now is for individuals and communities to mobilise and help put nuclear disarmament back on the political agenda" Nicky Davies, Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner for Greenpeace, "the pressure has to come up from the streets. Abolishing nuclear weapons is not a pipe dream - it's a sensible step toward self-preservation".

In May, 2005, an international meeting will review the cornerstone treaty for nuclear disarmament, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "To add a community voice to this meeting, we are asking every Mayor to sign the statement supporting nuclear disarmament. We're asking our supporters worldwide to ask their mayors to sign. And we're asking them to ask their friends to ask their mayors to sign".

When nations signed the NPT, they signed up to a two-way deal. Non-nuclear states wouldn't seek nuclear weapons, and under Article 6, those who already had them agreed to get rid of them.

Mayors for Peace are simply urging nuclear weapon states to do what they promised. Until they do so, new countries will continue to pursue their own nuclear weapon programs; and the non-proliferation regime, along with the treaty that created it, will simply collapse.

*************************************

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Posted by: echidne / 3/08/2005 02:09:00 PM

Global Warming in Wingnuttia 



Some there have seen the light, joined the angels or drank the reality brew (water?). Or at least James Baker seems to acknowledge that Mother Earth is in some trouble:


"It may surprise you a little bit, but maybe it's because I'm a hunter and a fisherman, but I think we need to a pay a little more attention to what we need to do to protect our environment," he told the Houston Forum Club.

"When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen," Baker said.


James, too little, too late, I fear. Humans still appear to act as if we alone can decide the outcome. Despite evidence to the contrary. The tsunamis, for example. If Mother Earth decides to turn over in Her sleep we will all be pancakes. And given the way we have been annoying Her the last hundred years, She very well might turn over.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/08/2005 05:16:00 AM

Monday, March 07, 2005

The Fox and the Chicken Coop 



The new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and the United Nations. Nothing new with this plot, the wingnuts have been doing this for quite a few decades. If something doesn't please them in the laws of the United States they assign someone who hates those laws as their enforcer. This has been going on with civil rights enforcement for quite a while, and if you look at the health care field you see the same phenomenom.

But David Corn still finds reserves for being outraged about this:


If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United Nations. He once said, "If the UN secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."


Nothing new in any of this, except perhaps that we are now quite openly making faces at the rest of the world. Well, that's not news, either. I wish I could feel more upset about this, because it would show that things aren't as bad as they are.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/07/2005 06:31:00 PM

Ssssleeep! 



It's my new hobby. I tested the maximum length of sleep this weekend, the dogs being elsewhere, and it turns out that I can sleep about thirty-six hours without interruption! Why doesn't this administration sleep more? It would be good for world peace.

But my sleep leaves the lefty ramparts less protected so I finally got up and combed my tresses and rinsed my eyes and here I am! Ready to blog on everything under the sun and more.

Right now I want to talk about sleeping, though. Some call it the small death because when we sleep we don't exist in the usual sense of the word, but others view sleep as the time when we leave our bodies and go gallivanting in the Spirit Realm. Dreams, from this angle, would then be the messages we receive from the spirits. Which makes me wonder why the messages I receive are largely about building houses, being late for classes and angry ex-boyfriends. Why can't I get something about how to get the wingnuts out of power, for example? Am I not good enough for such messages?

Once I dreamt about being a dog, and it was wonderful! I was running across a flowering meadow with a pack of other dogs, my four legs moving, moving, and the whole pack rejoicing in the act of running. We could see the stream towards which we ran and we knew that we would get there, all together.

I have no idea if I somehow swopped dreams with my then-dog, Fang. If so, what did Fang dream about? Being late for classes or ex-boyfriends complaining about being dropped? And what did all that mean to Fang? Maybe the spirits were having a little bit of fun at our expense?

What do you dream about?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/07/2005 04:40:00 PM

What is Bill Moyers Doing These Days? 



He is supposed to have retired. Instead, he's trying to save the world, single-handedly:


I read the news and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency plotted to spend $9 million—$2 million of it from the President's friends at the American Chemistry Council—to pay poor families to continue the use of pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry concocted a scheme to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read that President Bush has more than one hundred high-level officials in his administration overseeing industries they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers, or corporate advocates—company insiders waved through the revolving door of government to assure that drug laws, food policies, land use, and the regulation of air pollu-tion are industry-friendly. Among the "advocates-turned-regulators" are a former meat industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a former drug company lobbyist who influences prescription drug policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while accepting payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps to determine how much of our public lands those former clients can use for oil and gas drilling.

I read that civil penalties imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency against polluters in 2004 hit an fifteen-year low, in what amounts to an extended holiday for industry from effective compliance with environmental laws.

I read that the administration's allies at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon-Mobil and others of like mind and interest, have issued a report describing global warming as "a myth" at practically the same time the President, who earlier rejected the international treaty outlining limits on greenhouse gases, wants to prevent any "written or oral report" from being issued by any international meetings on the issue.

I read not only the news but the fine print of a recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with ob-scure amendments removing all endangered species protections from pesticides, prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon, waiving environmental review for grazing permits on public lands, and weakening protection against development for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer —pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age twelve; Thomas, ten; Nancy, eight; Jassie, three; SaraJane, one. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then the shiver runs down my spine and I am seized by the realization: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

Why don't we feel the world enough to save it—for our kin to come?

The news is not good these days. But as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. The will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. We must match the science of human health to what the ancient Israelites called hochma—the science of the heart, the capacity to see and feel and then to act as if the future depended on us.

Believe me, it does.


Don't let him toil alone. At least read his plea.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/07/2005 03:48:00 PM

Santorum's Minimum Wage Proposal 



Rick Santorum may qualify as an Evil Man in my books. His newest proposal is one aimed at destroying any possible increase in the federal minimum wage:


Under a plan proposed by Rick Santorum, the minimum wage would go up in two bumps over 18 months, ultimately reaching $6.25 an hour. That's a dollar an hour less than the Kennedy plan -- we're quick with math here -- but that's not the worst of it. Santorum's plan would also exempt from the minimum wage, and a whole host of other federal labor laws, any employer with revenues under $1 million; allow some employers to offset minimum wage salaries with tips workers receive; and rob many workers of overtime pay by instituting federal "flex-time" rules. Thus, workers would receive a smaller increase under Santorum's plan, fewer of them would be protected by the federal minimum wage laws at all, and whatever gains some workers made through a minimum wage increase would be lost to offsets from tips or cutbacks in their overtime pay.


There is something deeply distasteful in a rich man's plans for destroying any pay increases for the really poor. To make it less distasteful, let's start paying the politicians with tips! Only those that do what we like get money from now on, and we send it in as tips which can then be used to reduce their regular wages.

The wingnuts don't like minimum wages, despite the Bible being very strong on the need to take care of the poor and on ethical behavior in business. This is one of those bipolar aspects of the wingnut values that I never understand. It has something to do with the idea that any two people should be allowed to enter a contract freely on anything whatsoever, and that no third person should interfere. Except in the bedroom, of course.

But in reality when an individual makes a contract with McDonald's, say, there is not much evenness or fairness to begin with, and the consequences for the two are entirely different. The wingnuts pretend that a server in a restaurant is as powerful as the IBM or any other large firm, and that the two have equal opportunities if the contract doesn't please them.

This is all rubbish, of course. The minimum wage is needed for many reasons that have to do with ethics and justice, but it is also needed as a counterforce against the oligopolistic nature of most labor markets. These markets are not the kinds of free markets that the wingnuts dream about, with very few exceptions.

As the article I link to points out, the Santorum proposal will not win because no proposal to raise the minimum wage will pass in this wingnut Congress. Such proposals would eat into the profits of those who are buying the current democracy we have.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/07/2005 03:29:00 PM

Saturday, March 05, 2005

A Reminder 



I blog on the American Street on Saturdays, too, and I need to remember to advertize it here. Besides, the American Street has loads of wonderful bloggers that you should read. All sorts of famous names. One day they will all be listed in history files on the Early Blogging Period of human development, so if you read them today you will be part of history!

I am about three quarters recovered from the flu. The one quarter that is missing is the quarter that works and does laundry and researches blogging topics. Which serves as an apology for any gaps you may notice in my prep work.

Being ill is good for reading, though. I have recently finished the wingnut bible by Frank Luntz, George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead and Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Also a book about fear in politics and a couple of evo-psycho books.

Truss's book about correct English left me all ashamed as I make the grammar up on the run. I don't even know how to spell in English and I pick between the U.S. and the British usage based on whatever I like better. Sometimes I suspect I make up words, too. I justify all this by not being a native speaker. Of anything, actually.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/05/2005 07:33:00 PM

This Ward Churchill Business 



I probably shouldn't write on this one yet as I have not had time to study the whole issue in detail, but then the issue is so complex that it would take a very long time to study it sufficiently, and by then the talk would be about something else. So I will just jump in.

Ward Churchill is a University of Colorado professor who compared the 9/11 victims to Nazis in an essay, or specifically:


Churchill's essay, which likened "technocrats" killed in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, attracted little attention until January when he was invited to speak at a college in upstate New York. The college and a handful of other schools canceled Churchill's appearances, citing security concerns.

Churchill says he wrote the essay after television networks characterized the attacks as senseless. He contends they were the logical result of repressive U.S. Policies.


Many people want Churchill's head on a platter and if that can't be arranged at least his immediate firing. The University of Colorado president is now saying that Churchill won't be fired if all that he's guilty of is inflammatory comments.

The deeper issues in all this are the meaning of academic freedom of speech and the wingnuts' view of universities as the last bastions of liberalism. Which they want to destroy, of course.

This creates some odd ideological combinations: Imagine extreme conservatives being all for affirmative action in academia. Imagine the kind of people who fight university speech codes now fighting against the freedom of expression. This shows that the words are just words, clad up in whatever way serves the Cause, and the Cause is to get wingnuts in the saddle everywhere.

Here is one example of the wingnut view on academia:


The debate stimulated by the Churchill affair has escalated into a long overdue exploration into the politics and processes of higher education. The sacred cow of tenure is under review, along with the limits of academic freedom and the shameful lack of ideological balance within college faculties. It's like peeling off the outer layers of an artichoke to get to the heart of the issue.

And this is it: 1) Ideology and politics. As Rorty proudly proclaims, the Left has taken over academe. We want it back. 2) Accountability. Self-important academics believe themselves to be beyond reproach, sitting as philosopher-kings, dispensing their wisdom to the ignorant masses. Nonsense. They're ordinary people, government employees dependent on their customers and the taxpayers for their income, and ultimately accountable to their bosses and the citizens who elect the Board of Regents. Academic freedom is not absolute.


There is a valid reason for the academic freedom of speech and the institution of tenure. They were created to guarantee the professors a work environment in which new ideas could be studied independently of societal and political pressures. If a researcher could be easily fired or disciplined based on what she or he writes then all research and teaching would be affected by this fear of consequences.

But of course neither the freedom of speech nor tenure are absolute rights, and they both have their disadvantages. How far we should go in modifying them, if we should modify them at all, is not clear. And the wingnuts' desire to bring what they call "ideological balance" into universities by hiring more wingnut professors is problematic because it would require affirmative action which wingnuts oppose with their very essence, and this affirmative action might have to force some wingnuts to become academics. There is a good reason why the academia is more liberal than the society on average, and why the business world is more conservative: money has a different role in determining the choices of individuals with different values. In any case, I think that universities are not dens of lefty iniquity. The vast majority of professors teach the course material and the students never know exactly how they vote if they do. But of course one can always find a Ward Churchill or someone similar from the other side of the political fence.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/05/2005 06:20:00 PM

What Serves as News These Days on CNN 



That Martha Stewart has been released from prison is news and so is a chimpanzee attacking a man. These are, like, major news items on CNN. Here is a snippet of the story on Marth Stewart (via daily Kos):


BLITZER: Back again now with more on Martha Stewart. Our guests, CNN's Mary Snow and Allan Chernoff. They're standing by live in Bedford, New York. That's outside the Stewart estate. And joining us from Manhattan, Dennis Kneale of "Forbes" magazine and Keith Naughton of "Newsweek" magazine there at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.

Let me start with you, Keith. The statement she released on the web, her prison experience, she said, was life-altering and life- affirming. Is there any indication she's going to become an activist for women's rights in prison?

NAUGHTON: That's what a lot of prison reform advocates would like. You know, she put out that letter while she was still in prison, imploring America to consider these 1,200 women she's incarcerated with, and in fact, all women who are in prison and look at sentences and look at the need for rehabilitation. So there's the hope that she steps forward as a prison reform advocate. But that's a delicate balance, too. You know, you also need the ability to show that you're moving on and that there is a new, reformed Martha, as well. So if she becomes too much of a prison reform advocate, that could, you know, sort of stick her in the past.

BLITZER: Do you agree with that, Dennis? Dennis Kneale of "Forbes" magazine. That it's a two-edged sword, if she starts becoming an activist for women's rights in prison?

KNEALE: I really think there's a big downside there...


Silly me, I thought that it would be good if Martha started thinking more about other people, especially those whose lives haven't gone very well. But that seems to be a big downside to something. I wonder what it might be? Could it, could it possibly be the commercialization of Martha Stewart's prison escapade and the juiciness of chewing over her character faults?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/05/2005 03:34:00 AM

Friday, March 04, 2005

Friday Embroidery Blogging 




Flying... Posted by Hello


This is not an embroidery, strictly speaking, but a reverse applique. With glitter. And I forgot to say that the shapes are snakes, of course.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/04/2005 09:55:00 AM

Today's Bible Quote 



This will not become a habit, but I thought that you might enjoy this one:


Malachi 2:1-4: And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, ... behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.

From Walter Neff on the Eschaton threads.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/04/2005 08:18:00 AM

The Conscience Clause 



This is an interesting piece of news about the sort of events that the conscience clause for health providers might cause to become much more common:


Wisconsin Administrative Law Judge Colleen Baird on Monday recommended that the state... Pharmacy Examining Board reprimand and limit the license of a pharmacist who refused to refill a woman's oral contraceptive prescription because of moral objectives to birth control, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports (Forster, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/28). Neil Noesen in July 2002 refused to fill university student Amanda Phiede's oral contraceptive prescription while he was working as a substitute pharmacist at a Kmart pharmacy in Menomonie, Wis. When Phiede confirmed that she was using the drug for birth control, Noesen told her that he would not fill the prescription. Phiede then asked him where else she could get the prescription filled, but Noesen refused to provide her with that information. Phiede later went to a Wal-Mart pharmacy, but when the Wal-Mart pharmacist called Noesen to have him transfer the prescription, Noesen refused, saying again that artificial contraception is against his personal beliefs. Noesen continued to refuse to fill the prescription even after two police officers and the Kmart assistant manager spoke with him. The police took no further action, and the managing pharmacist filled Phiede's prescription when he returned to work on Monday (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 10/13/04).


I am a vegetarian. If I got a job at a supermarket, could I refuse to sell people meat or refuse to tell them where to find it? Probably not. Even if I decided to act this way (during the short time before I'd be kicked out) not much harm would be done as there are lots of supermarkets and most people know where the meat department is. But pharmacists have quite a different kind of control over their inventory and sometimes there is no other nearby pharmacy that could step in. Also, if the pharmacist refuses to transfer the prescription the consumer could be in deep trouble. And I'm not even mentioning the possibility that a health care provider might act in this way in a medical emergency.

We are vulnerable when we need the help of health care providers. What would conscience clauses do to the trust that patients must have in their providers? Should each of us demand to see the list of things that a particular provider might oppose, and should we demand to see it while we are still healthy and strong enough to find another provider if necessary? Maybe providers could be color-coded? Those who oppose birth control could wear scarlet coats or something and so on.
---
Thanks to Kimberst for the link and many others for some of the ideas.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/04/2005 06:08:00 AM

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Plagiarism 



A sharp-eyed reader of Eschaton spotted some similarities between the Gibbons rant (scroll down a few posts) and an earlier one by Beth Chapman. Like that they are the same speech.

Please Mr. Gibbons, hire me. I could invent a new rant every two minutes.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/03/2005 05:08:00 PM

Housecleaning 



I have finally updated my blogroll (do any Brits think this is a funny term?) by adding some daily reads. Imagine my horror when I realized I didn't have American Street there earlier, and I blog there on Saturdays! Luckily they don't pay me or anything.

I still have to go through all the links to see that I don't have too many dead ones there. This is something that can be easily done in a flu, though my flu is finally packing its bags in preparation for a departure, I hope.

Then there will be some real housecleaning. The other day I dropped a jar of grated Parmesan in the kitchen and the dogs washed the floor in no time. I have to refine this a little and maybe one day I don't need to do any vacuuming, either. Then I can write a book combining dog-care and housecleaning.

The dogs are doing well. They are sleek and fat as seals because I haven't been able to let them run as much as usually. Hank is due for her shots this week and I have to put her in a corset to avoid the stern sermons from my excellent vets on the topic of fat Labs. Hank goes to the vet often, because of her obsession of grabbing large tree branches horizontally and then snapping her teeth together. The middle bit gets lodged in the back of her throat and I can't reach it. Then we drive to the vet with all the lights flashing and they take the branch out. I even bought some pliers to keep in the car but they didn't work as well as what the veterinarians have. They love Hank there, she keeps them employed single-handedly.

Which reminds me of the funny terms we use: single-handedly, when it's a dog I'm talking about. And single-mothers: what is the opposite for this one: multiple mothers? Don't tell me the proper answer.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/03/2005 04:31:00 PM

Guckert-Gate 



It doesn't exist, because we have a one-party administration, and it is the administration which decides what is important. Nevertheless, some Democrats are still trying:


The Ranking Members for House Committees on Rules, Judiciary, Government Reform, Homeland Security and Ways and Means have authored a Resolution of Inquiry, which would require the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security to turn over all documentation regarding James Guckert's (AKA Jeff Gannon) regular access to the White House.

The resolution comes on the heels of repeated requests by Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. John Conyers that the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, turn over any and all materials related to the GannonGate issue. To date, the White House, the Secret Service, The Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department have all failed to respond to such requests.

"We cannot allow the White House to stonewall the United States Congress and the American people on an issue of such importance. This is a matter of national security and unethical White House media manipulation. Everyday more questions are raised and so far, the White House is not providing any answers. We intend to find out what the White House is hiding." stated Congresswoman Slaughter.

"We had hoped that the half dozen congressional and senate requests for information would have been sufficient. However, to date, they have not even merited a response from the White House or its agencies. We hope that this resolution gets to the bottom of whether any processes were abused in favoring Mr. Guckert, a fake reporter from a fake news organization," Rep. Conyers said.


Making the right noises and all that.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/03/2005 04:24:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 



Today's Action

Senator Byrd is coming under attack because he was willing to stand up to the Republicans. Today's WaPo reports:

*****************************************************

In his comments Tuesday, Byrd had defended the right senators have to use filibusters -- procedural delays that can kill an item unless 60 of the 100 senators vote to move ahead. He is a long-standing defender of the chamber's rules and traditions, many of which help the Senate's minority party.

Byrd cited Hitler's 1930s rise to power by, in part, pushing legislation through the German parliament that seemed to legitimize his ascension.

"We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men," Byrd said. "But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends."

Byrd then quoted historian Alan Bullock, saying Hitler "turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

Byrd added, "That is what the 'nuclear option' seeks to do."

The nuclear option is the nickname for the proposal to end filibusters of judicial nominations because of the devastating effect the plan, if enacted, would have on relations between Democrats and Republicans.

**********************************************************

Today's action is to send Senator Byrd a message letting him know that you support him and asking him not to back down. You can contact Senator Byrd at:



311 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

WASHINGTON DC 20510



(202) 224-3954


Web Form: byrd.senate.gov/byrd_email.html



Thanks for taking today's action.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/03/2005 04:18:00 PM

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Gibbons Gibbering 



Representative Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., is one of those uniter wingnuts. He wants the whole country to unite behind his values and George Bush. If you don't share these values or his great adoration of George, you should leave the country. It's as simple as that:


He wondered what Lincoln's feelings would be at this juncture of American history.

"How would he feel, what would he be thinking about, all of the dissension, all of the division, that the liberals and a few others, including some our movie stars and song makers, are trying to divide this country over its efforts to establish freedom and liberty in countries around the world?" Gibbons questioned.

Gibbons answered with his own thoughts on the issue.

"We are all here tonight because men and women of the United States military have given their lives for our freedom," Gibbons continued. "We are here tonight not because of Rosie O'Donnell, Martin Sheen, George Clooney, Jane Fonda or Phil Donahue - they never sacrificed their lives for us or for liberty."

Gibbons said it was not movie stars but soldiers and sailors that defended freedom in the deserts of Iraq, the jungles of Vietnam, the sands of Iwo Jima and the beaches of Normandy.

"I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else," Gibbons said to another burst of applause.


Gibbons has been studying his wingnut bible, the rulebook written by Frank Luntz. This book tells all wingnuts what to say in each social situation; it's like an etiquette book for the permanently foot-in-the-mouth brigade. And Luntz tells that wingnuts should always compare real American values to false values which arise in Hollywood. Always.

I haven't read the whole wingnut bible yet (I keep falling asleep in the middle of it) so I don't know if Luntz advocates dehumanizing and objectifying the liberals and if he does so whether this is the first step in the final eradication of all liberals. Or maybe this little hate-variation was Gibbons's own invention?

Sarcasm isn't probably one of Gibbons's strong suits. Otherwise he'd notice that he is doing what he blames the liberals for: causing divisions and growing hatred. So. What else is new?
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Link via Big Daddy Mars on Eschaton threads.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/02/2005 08:23:00 PM

Bush Wants the Troops Out! 



So that "good democracy" can flourish:


President Bush raised the pressure on Syria today, saying the world was "speaking with one voice" in demanding that Damascus pull its troops from Lebanon.


There was a time, not too long ago, when the world was speaking pretty much in one voice, too, and speaking "loud and clear", telling one country not to invade another one. But that was something quite different, of course. Maybe "bad democracy"?

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Posted by: echidne / 3/02/2005 04:28:00 PM

Menopause: Bless You! 



About the only reason I can think for looking forward to menopause is this: At least then the society will leave my body alone. I can count the years and cross them off my almanac, and one day I will wake up - free at last! Maybe.

What brought up these musings you may ask (if you are still reading), as if there isn't quite enough material on all the pro-fetus stuff every day to make me fret. But you are sharp-eyed, there is indeed something extra that has made me hope for more rapid aging, and that is our dear U.S. Surgeon General, one Dr. Richard H. Carmoda. He is very concerned about the health of babies, and this concern comes out as - you have guessed - concern over the behavior of women. And not only the behavior of pregnant women but the behavior of all types of women who might, just might, get pregnant some day.

We get lots of advice from Dr. Carmoda:


U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today rolled out his 2005 agenda, announcing it as The Year of the Healthy Child. The Year of the Healthy Child agenda will focus on improving the body, mind, and spirit of the growing child. A healthy child begins before birth, so the Office of the Surgeon General will highlight steps that women should take to keep themselves healthy, especially when they are considering becoming pregnant. This includes a healthful diet, exercise, and eliminating tobacco use and alcohol consumption.


Do you know what this new prevention approach is called? It's pre-pregnancy prevention! It might seem as if Dr. Carmoda is just talking to women who are planning to become pregnant some time soon, but nope. He is actually talking to all menstruating women:


U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today marked Folic Acid Awareness week by reminding all women of childbearing age to consume the recommended amounts of folic acid each day.

Folic acid is a B vitamin necessary for proper cell growth to ward off such birth defects as neural tube defects, serious birth defects of the brain (anencephaly) and spine (spina bifida). Research has shown that, if taken before and during early pregnancy, folic acid can prevent 70 percent of these birth defects. Therefore, every woman of childbearing age, even if she is not planning on becoming pregnant, should supplement her diet with 400 micrograms of folic acid each day.


Even nuns living in convents should supplement their diets this way. Why? Because so many pregnancies are unintended. This means that the Surgeon General can trust no woman to plan her pregnancies and can trust no woman to remain childless. I am not making this up. You can read on all this in the archives of the Office of the Surgeon General.

And here's the most recent advice on alcohol and women:


1. A pregnant woman should not drink alcohol during pregnancy.
2. A pregnant woman who has already consumed alcohol during her pregnancy should stop in order to minimize further risk.
3. A woman who is considering becoming pregnant should abstain from alcohol.
4. Recognizing that nearly half of all births in the United States are unplanned, women of child-bearing age should consult their physician and take steps to reduce the possibility of prenatal alcohol exposure.
5. Health professionals should inquire routinely about alcohol consumption by women of childbearing age, inform them of the risks of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and advise them not to drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy.


So if you are a pre-menopausal woman, prepare yourself to hearing little speeches about alcohol when you go for your annual checkup. And about your folic acid intake. And possibly about your diet and exercize, too, if we find that these directly impact fetal health.

Ok. One can argue that the cause is a good one: to have only healthy babies born in this country. That is certainly true and it is good that the information is available for those women who need it. But I find it pretty insulting that all women are seen as potential receptacles for babies in this way, incapable of controlling their own fertility. Will the health professionals be advised to ask men about their alcohol consumption? After all, alcohol consumption is involved in many violent acts.

And what about the advice the Surgeon General gives prospective fathers? I see none on his website, yet a quick Googling brings up several studies that bear upon this topic: on the effects of father's exposure to radiation and various occupational health hazards before the birth of an affected child and on the effects of aging sperm on the child's health.

Maybe these studies are not good enough. Who knows? But I suspect that most studies look at women rather than men, not for any medically valid reasons, but because we all tend to think of women as the loci of parenthood, and the Surgeon General is unlikely to be free of this bias. That women are not the sole loci of parenthood or not just the loci of parenthood tends to be forgotten.

There is something very puritanical about all this, and it is most clearly visible in the information about alcohol and pregnancy which states:


* No amount of alcohol consumption can be considered safe during pregnancy.


What does this mean, exactly? Consider that the Italians and the French have been drinking wine routinely for centuries, including during pregnancies. Do these countries suffer from extremely high levels of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? Or what about the older generations in the United States?

I am not advocating drinking alcohol during pregnancy, but I wonder why the usual risk analyses we perform before making various societal recommendations don't apply in this particular case, why instead an absolutist standard is selected. Using the same method, we should reduce the allowable blood alcohol levels to whatever teetotallers might have in deciding when someone is driving under the influence. Or at least recommend zero drinks to anyone who plans to drive or to interact in general with other human beings. After all, most accidents and fights are not pre-planned.

Just think about that. This is what women are being told, right now.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/02/2005 03:49:00 AM

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

On Flu 



Which I have, again. Don't worry, I'm not going to write about the physical symptoms this time. What I want to write about is the funny effect that any illness can have on ones psyche. It's like I'm a different person when I'm ill, or at least like I'm living in a different room of my brain, one darker and less airy, with older furniture and odd memories piled up in the corners.

What interests me when I'm ill is not what usually interests me, and in some ways illness gives me the opportunity to be someone different. Maybe people who have trouble with empathy should think about themselves when ill? This might let them understand how someone else might feel about the world. For example, the weakness that has come over me is instructive for understanding how some of the elderly live every day, how they have to choose which parts of the chores to do and when. I have an orange marmelade jar in the kitchen which refuses to open in my feeble fingers. Why are jars made so that we can't open them unless we are healthy? And why do I want to get the hammer and smash the damn thing?

Then there is this feeling I have in illness of looking for something strong enough to break its shell and return me to the realm of the healthy, but I have no idea what that "something strong" is. Is it a food or a drink or a certain physical exercize or a thought that could suddenly blow all the heavy clouds out of the door? Or is the whole feeling just awkwardness in being unaccustomed to visit this particular room of my mind? And if so, should I fight back and start looking through the rubbish that is piled up in the corners? What are the memories that I have selected not to look at on my normal days?

Some of them crop up in my fevered dreams, like the memory of watching another girl lose her grip on some gymnastic equipment at school. She fell down head first. I can see why this particular memory has been stored in the back of my brain, but I don't really get why I should dream about it right now, unless my usual prohibitions are weaker and just let more stuff through.

Ok, this is turning into something morbid and I had better stop right now.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/01/2005 04:46:00 PM

On Capital Punishment 



The Supremes have ruled that capital punishment is unconstitutional if the murderer was under eighteen at the time of the crime. In a 5-4 ruling (squeaking tight, again), the Court decided:


that executing young killers violates "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," and that American society has come to regard juveniles as less culpable than adult criminals.

The ruling, which acknowledged "the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty," erases the death sentences imposed on about 70 defendants who were juveniles at the time they killed. Although 19 states nominally permit the execution of juvenile murderers, only Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma have executed any in the past decade.

The case decided today had attracted attention around the world. Briefs on behalf of the young Missouri killer, Christopher Simmons, had been filed by the European Union, the 45-member Council of Europe and other organizations. A brief filed by former United Nations diplomats asserted that the United States' failure to repudiate the execution of juveniles was an irritant in international relations.

Until today, the United States and Somalia were the only nations that permitted putting teenage criminals to death. The court's ruling today held that, while the "overwhelming weight of international opinion" was not controlling, it nevertheless provided "respected and significant confirmation" for the majority's finding.


The majority consisted of all those judges that Bush would like to see go extinct. If he's successful, the future resolutions will sound a lot more like this dissent:


Justice Scalia, in a dissent joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, said the majority opinion had made "a mockery" of constitutional precedent and was based "on the flimsiest of grounds."

"The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards - and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures," Justice Scalia wrote.


There is something deeply disappointing in a Supreme Court which bases its decisions on bickering of this kind. I want to look up to my judges, even though I know I can't. Well, I guess Scalia could have argued that the United States doesn't have to consider the opinions of the rest of the world as we are still in the middle of the thirteenth century or something, so the opinions of another era are irrelevant.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/01/2005 03:33:00 PM

Private Communism 



Did you know that this is what David Brooks advocates? He is one of those light-weight wingnut columnists, installed in the New York Times to irritate all correct-thinking progressives, and mostly he writes total rubbish. Like in his last column, about the holiness of shared financial accounts in families:


I'm not saying that people with separate accounts have marriages that are less healthy than anybody else's. I'm saying we should pause before this becomes the social norm. Private property is the basis for our market democracy. But private property in the home is an altogether trickier proposition.

For one thing, separate accounts can easily turn into secret accounts. A person's status and resources inside the home shouldn't be based on how much he or she is making outside it. A union based on love can easily turn into a merger based on self-interest, where the main criterion for continuing becomes: Am I getting a good return on my investment, psychic or otherwise?


This is a very revealing article, in many ways. We are told that you can be a selfish narcissistic pig in the public sector, to be a greedy hog in the markets, and that is all perfectly fine (sorry, pigs, I know that you are not really like that but we use you to reflect our lowest characteristics). But at home you must be a communist. Connect this with the hidden idea behind all this wingnut poetry: that it's the women who are supposed to be at home and the men who are supposed to be in the public sector, and you get David's point: women should not have independence.

This has something to do with Tolstoy:


Leo Tolstoy wrote a lovely novella called "Family Happiness," narrated by a young woman who goes out for a walk with a man she loves. They talk about nothing in particular - frogs, actually - but exchange looks and gestures. "He said goodbye as usual and made no special allusion; but I knew that from that day he was mine, and that I should never lose him now."

They are married but grow apart. She likes parties, while he doesn't. Then one day they are sitting at home and her heart suddenly grows light. She looks around and realizes that the courtship phase of their relationship has ended, but it has been replaced by something gentler and deeper:

"That day ended the romance of our marriage; the old feeling became a precious irrecoverable remembrance; but a new feeling of love for my children and the father of my children laid the foundation of a new life and a quite different happiness; and that life and happiness have lasted to the present time."

Tolstoy's story captures the difference between romantic happiness, which is filled with exhilaration and self-fulfillment, and family happiness, built on self-abnegation and sacrifice.



Too bad that Tolstoy had a terrible marriage which ended in dreadful rows about all the money that he decided shouldn't be given to the children. According to his wife, Tolstoy was a really bad husband, never mind his status as a writer. But yes, they had their finances pooled so all was fine, according to Brooks. Never mind that they ended up not talking to each other.

Of course Brooks is mostly just waffling, filling up the required space with something that would look good from the wingnut point of view but that wouldn't completely disgust the progressive readers of the New York Times. I mean, who could earnestly say that shared finances wouldn't be just fine? Of course they are. But so are separate finances, depending on the personalities of the people involved in the relationship, and on what works for them. So what's all the fuss? Let David write whatever he writes.

Sure. But it's interesting to think about what he might be really saying here when he talks about private communism. The traditional view of family finances was one where the husband owned all of them, including the moneys that the wife brought into the marriage, and where he could alone decide on their use. This was not private communism at all, and when we talk about pooled finances in families many have this arrangement in mind: where one person determines how the funds are being spent. And this is what such readers react to: the idea that women should not have control over their own incomes. Or that men should not have control if it is the woman in a particular family that decides on money. For such readers separate finances have a lot to say for themselves.

What I find interesting about Brooks's arguments is that the underwear of the wingnuts is showing so very clearly here, the playing rules of the capitalistic game, if you like. He's telling us that you can be as horribly self-centered and greedy as you wish out in the public, but in the private sphere of the family someone at least must be self-abnegating for the game to work. And I suspect that that someone would not be called David but more like Davida.
----
Thanks to NTodd for the link. See his take on the topic here.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/01/2005 02:17:00 PM

Today's Action Alert 







Today's Action

Today's action is simple. Contact Senator Joe Lieberman and tell him that if he helps Bush out of the political mess that Bush has created for himself on Social Security, you'll contribute to Joe's primary opposition. You can contact Liberman at (202) 224-4041. Thanks for taking today's action.

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Posted by: echidne / 3/01/2005 01:47:00 PM

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