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

Thursday, June 30, 2005

A Craft Idea 



For all of you craftspeople with itching fingers and nothing left to paint or decorate in the house or on your persons. Freewayblogger has a new project for you:

THE TIME HAS COME ...
to speak out against the Lies and Propaganda and let 25,000 of your closest friends know just how you feel about this war and the lying sons of bitches who dragged us into it.

Starting July 5th, freewaybloggers across the nation will begin placing signs on the freeways voicing their opposition to the war. These signs will continue going up through July and August and on until impeachment hearings begin in September.

The Founders of this Nation gave us the right to free political speech for a reason, and at least part of that reason was to sound the alarm if we felt our country, or its democracy was in danger. If you feel that this is an illegal and immoral war, speaking out is not just your right, it's your duty as a citizen.

Go here for instructions and the list of materials needed. All you really require is what is in this picture:





Though the rabbits are there just to be admired and not necessary to have. In particular, no rabbit parts are used in the craftproject!

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Divided We Fall 



Perhaps. Or we fall over from laughing so hard. The most recent Zogby poll says that the American voters surveyed don't like the divisiveness of current American politics:

A follow-up question found that seven-in-ten (70%) voters believe the parties should be broad-based, and should pursue compromise—while less than one-in-four (23%) favored putting base issues first, even if it means nothing is accomplished.

These views are held by members of both major political parties, as well as independents, although Republicans, whose party controls both houses of Congress, are more likely to favor the parties focusing on the desires of their base than are Democrats and independents, with 31% of Republicans favoring this approach—more than the 20% of Democrats and 17% of independents who hold that view.

Note the greater number of radicals among the Republicans. The "followup" bit above refers to the major findings of the poll:

Just one week ago, President Bush's job approval stood at a previous low of 44%—but it has now slipped another point to 43%, despite a speech to the nation intended to build support for the Administration and the ongoing Iraq War effort. The Zogby America survey includes calls made both before and after the President's address, and the results show no discernible "bump" in his job approval, with voter approval of his job performance at 45% in the final day of polling.

Where voters live has some impact on their perceptions. The President's job rating remains relatively strong in the South, with 51% rating his performance favorably; in all other regions, those disapproving his performance are in the majority.

And two in five of those surveyed would like to see Bush impeached if it's proven that he lied about the reason for Iraq war. All these questions show that the South still loves Bush and whatever he does while the rest of the country is not so inclined.

In other words, we are indeed divided between the southern and the northern parts of the country. Like in the Civil War. Not much has changed in some ways, and maybe we'd all be better off if there were two countries now rather than one. Though one of them would have to be Jesusland and have place for all the wingnuts, whereas the other one would be called Moonbattia and would host the rest of us. Sadly, there is no easy geographical division along these lines as there are moonbats (a wingnut name for people like yours truly) even among the rabidest Republicans.

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Weird News of the Day 



They may not look weird to you but they struck me as odd. Hollow or like deja vu all over again.

First, the newly elected president of Iran, a wingnut in full ripeness, may have met Americans in his past:

The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.

President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions."

"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN.

"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."

Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, "absolutely was not" part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.

Abdi later became a supporter of reformist President Mohammed Khatami and was recently released from jail for advocating closer ties with the United States.

Iranian officials also deny Ahmadinejad was involved.

Whatever the truth of the case, everybody knows that Ahmadinejad is as eager for a theocratic world as some other leader better to remain unnamed here.

Second, Bush spoke and the Americans...slept:

President Bush's latest address to the nation, urging Americans to stand firm in Iraq, drew the smallest TV audience of his tenure, Nielsen Media Research reported Wednesday.

Live coverage of Bush's half-hour speech Tuesday night from the Ft. Bragg military base in North Carolina averaged 23 million viewers combined on four major U.S. broadcast networks and three leading cable news channels, Nielsen said.

Designed largely to bolster sagging public support for the persistently bloody conflict in Iraq, the speech fell 8.6 million viewers shy of Bush's previous low as president, his August 9, 2001 address on stem cell research, which was carried on six networks.

I wouldn't be surprised if those 23 million viewers were of various wingnut stripes, except for us valiant bloggers, sitting there wrapped in tinfoil and wearing wading boots.

Speaking of sleep, did you know that insects sleep? So there wouldn't be much point in coming back as a fly: you'd fritter away those priceless hours in Sandyman's arms just like you do now.

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My Doctoral Robes - RIP 



They started life in a dim shop in London, one where the royalties and the wealthy oil sheiks got their shirts manufactured. I was measured for them by an eighty-year old gentleman who had taken the measures of Princess Margaret. The whole experience was surreal.

They were lovely robes, flowing around me as I walked, fitting perfectly around my shoulders and then rippling down my body like rivers seeking the ocean. The pleating below my shoulders was exquisite and the tag at the back had my name embroidered in beautiful letters. The jaunty little velvet beret went perfectly with the robes. Even the silly bib that is worn on the back in the most senseless of ways looked good.

Of course they didn't get worn that much. It's hard to pop into the supermarket in your woolen robes, at least without attracting a lot of attention. They mostly came out for ceremonial occasions and once or twice as a bathrobe. But I treasured them, even when they were taking up space in my closet, space that I desperately needed for things such as clothes one actually wears.

I treasured them because they were pretty much all I ever got from four incredibly painful years of studying economics. The robes and those little letters after my name: Echidne of the snakes, PhD. Something to show to those who doubted that I could possibly know what I was talking about. Something I might possibly convert into a burqa if things got really bad here. Something to keep, just in case.

But, alas, no longer. The moths, those cruel and heartless creatures, have devoured my robes. I could still wear them in some risque venues but they will no longer work for a burqa. The lesson: Never hold out for the woolen version. Go with the polyester. You save money and your heart from breaking.

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To Be An Internet Journalist 



I should write about shark attacks (why do sharks attack? because they are poor on defense) or about various white people disappearing, it seems, from a cursory reading of the topics of the day in the mainstream media. I'm not a journalist, obviously. But if I write this blog as a private goddess I might be in trouble, too:

Some bloggers who built their Internet followings with antiestablishment prose are lobbying the establishment to protect their livelihoods from federal regulations, working with a political action committee, lawyers and public-relations consultants.

"There's a certain responsibility I have to help protect the medium. I have the platform, the voice to be able to do so," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of www.DailyKos.com.

He testified Tuesday at a hearing on a Federal Election Commission proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Internet. He urged the FEC to take a hands-off approach.

At issue here is whether us bloggers should be exempt from campaign financing regulations in the manner of proper journalists, so I'm not personally threatened by the proposal. All I ever do is badmouth people. But this might also be the dipping-of-the-toes-in-water proposal, to see how far the Americans are willing to see their cyberspace regulated, and that does make me worried. Any future regulation would surely hit a pagan goddess hard. So I'm opposed to this regulation, too.

I also agree (!; maybe Hell has frozen over?) with the founder of RedState.org, a wingnut blog, who said:

"What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh's multimillion-dollar talk radio program, but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience?" Krempasky asked the commission.


The cynical part in me knows that regulation of the internet is just a question of time. What is happening is far too democratic to please any authoritarian government.

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Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Today's Action Alert 



This is from FAIR:

ACTION ALERT:
MSNBC's Pro-Bush "Town Meeting"

June 29, 2005


After George W. Bush's June 28 speech about Iraq, MSNBC's Hardball presented
viewers with a decidedly skewed "town meeting" featuring a panel
dominated by Iraq war boosters.

The two-hour coverage, hosted by Chris Matthews, was anchored by a panel
discussion that featured MSNBC reporter Norah O'Donnell, Islam scholar Reza
Aslan, and four conservative Bush supporters: Tony Perkins of the Family
Research Council, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, Bobbie Patray of the Eagle Forum of
Tennessee and Jerry Sutton, pastor of the Two Rivers Baptist Church in
Nashville, Tennessee, where the event was held.

MSNBC's coverage also included interviews with Newsweek's Jon Meacham,
Democratic Sen. Joe Biden (who called for "more boots on the ground"),
and Republican senators John McCain and John Warner.

In other words, MSNBC's "town meeting" excluded forceful critics of
the Iraq war--a war that polls show most Americans no longer support, or believe
the White House is mismanaging.

MSNBC's O'Donnell was careful to note that while war critics were the majority,
"at the same time, a majority of Americans also believe that we should stay
and finish the job. Only 1 in 8 Americans believe that we should cut and run.
There are liberal groups like Moveon.org that say we should get out. That's the
minority in America. People think that we should stay and finish the job."
O'Donnell was apparently referring to a Washington Post poll question (6/28/05)
that asked about increasing or decreasing troops, in which 13 percent of
respondents wanted U.S. troops to "withdraw immediately."

Most polls, however, show that support for withdrawing U.S. troops is
substantially higher than 13 percent. In response to another question in the
same poll, 41 percent said that the U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq.
In a recent Gallup poll (6/8-12/05), 46 percent said that the "U.S. should
bring its troops home as soon as possible," while a Harris poll (6/7-12/05)
found 63 percent in favor of "bringing most of our troops home in the next
year."

Audience participation also tended to support Bush, causing host Matthews to
comment: "It's been a great group. As you can see, the people are
passionate. And they have strong patriotic beliefs and moral beliefs, and yet
it's been very nice here. No fights or anything." Of course, having an
unbalanced panel discussion makes it easy not to have any "fights."
Matthews also praised the audience for being supportive of Bush, asking one
guest: "Why do you think the people in this part of the country seem to be
more manifestly patriotic about this president, and this war, and this
situation? What do you think it is, the separation from the coasts?"

Does Matthews really believe that supporting the Iraq war makes citizens more
"patriotic"? And is supporting a president the same as being
"patriotic about" the president? Were citizens who opposed President
Clinton being "unpatriotic" about him?

One member of the audience who disagreed with the consensus provided by MSNBC
was actually booed by the town meeting audience, causing Matthews to remark:
"Don't boo, now, please, ladies and gentlemen. It's been a good night here.
Howard Dean is going to come on our program tomorrow, a different point of view.
We have diversity run amok." Has it really come to the point where having
the leader of the Democratic National Committee on TV qualifies as
"diversity run amok"?


ACTION:
Contact MSNBC and tell them that serious discussion of the Iraq war should
include critics of that war. Ask Chris Matthews if he really thinks war
supporters and Bush supporters are more "patriotic."

CONTACT:
MSNBC
Hardball
hardball@msnbc.com

Phone: (202) 783-2615

As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you maintain a
polite tone.


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Social Conservatism and Feminism 



James Wolcott called himself a social conservative in a recent post*. Reading this made my stomach turn over as I am an admirer of his writings. In one tiny sentence he sentenced me to the dark side. That is how I interpret "social conservatism": that people like me do not matter very much in the important political battles, that my issues are fringe issues, that my rights are optional. Wolcott doesn't care for me.

Of course that is not what Wolcott really said but that is what I read on the screen. The reason is the fuzzy meaning of "social conservatism". It is one of those terms where the meaning is in the eye of the beholder. One never knows what a speaker means by "social conservatism" or by its brother term "cultural conservatism". But to many on the left these kinds of conservatisms are somehow less important or more trivial to fight than other weighty issues, such as political conservatism or economic conservatism. The social and cultural issues can be condensed to a few soundbites: abortion and same-sex marriage, and these are negotiable issues to many liberals and progressive. Especially to some heterosexual men, even to some heterosexual men who blog.

I don't necessarily blame them in taking this attitude. Abortion rights and the right of gays and lesbians to marry may not have much to do with their own lives, and if they are not good at empathy these may indeed seem like peripheral questions of little importance. But then a white person may find it difficult to imagine what it is like to wake up a minority every single morning and to receive those little mosquito bites of racism day after day after day. Racism might look like something that could be fixed after more important issues are settled. When we have time for it. Right before we tackle sexism.

This would be social conservatism, too. Many on the left are social conservatives in the sense of believing that existing social mores and traditions are nonpolitical matters, not worthy of spending time and resources on when there is so much of real importance in politics. It is not an accident that the existing social mores and traditions favor the individuals who think that way. What's not to like in such mores?

This long pre-amble is to explain why I went and Googled for definitions of social and cultural conservatism. I wanted to understand why many liberals and progressives can so lightly dismiss anything labeled as social or cultural as unimportant.

What I found is enlightening and confusing. The official definitions of social conservatism give us great detail but this detail is ultimately empty. Consider these definitions:

Social conservatism is a belief in traditional morality and social mores and the desire to preserve these in present day society, often through civil law or regulation. Social change is generally regarded as suspect, while social values based on tradition are generally regarded as tried, tested and true. It is a view commonly associated with conservative religious groups, militarism and nationalism.


Social conservatives emphasize traditional views of social units such as the family, church, or locale. Social conservatives are a product of their environment, and would typically define family in terms of local histories and tastes. To the Muslim or fundamentalist Mormon, social conservatism may entail support for polygamy. To the Protestant or Catholic, social conservatism may entail support for "traditional" marriage.


Social conservatism means a serious fidelity to those beliefs and traditions which keep us civilized and decent without resort to laws, regulations and bureaucrats.

Note the argument that social conservatives want to have laws which reinforce their beliefs and the argument that they don't have to resort to them. Note that social conservatism is whatever is regarded as traditional in a locality. Thus, bin Laden is a social conservative and so is Jerry Falwell. But this also makes the definition empty of practical meaning. What would be traditional in the United States is not traditional in Iran, and even within, say, the United States what is defined as "traditional" seems to vary by the speaker or writer. If the second wave of feminism took place thirty years ago, isn't the idea of gender equality traditional by now? And why does bin Laden have to dig back a thousand years to get at something he regards as traditional? More generally, a cursory study of history shows all sorts of egalitarian values to have existed at various places and at various times. Why are these not traditional? Why is the right to an abortion not part of social conservatism, given that it was only in the last two hundred years the church turned against the idea of early abortions being acceptable?

In short, social conservatism is not really conservative. It can be quite radical as the bin Laden example demonstrated. What it always seems to be is hierarchical. The view of the family social conservatives embrace has a father as its boss. The religious organizations are seen as determining how the masses live. The government is worshipped as an authoritarian power. And all these hierarchies use some sort of fixed identifiers: sex, race, age, for deciding who will be on top of the pile and who will support the whole pyramid.

Here is the link to feminism. Social conservative pyramids require that women have pre-ordained roles centered around fertility and the service of the home. Anything less is seen as causing chaos, and chaos is what social conservatives fear (unless it's caused by their own radical moves to return the world to some utopian era). Women can't have equal participation in politics and in the public sphere in general because who would then take care of the children? Someone else would have to pick up the slack and as these tasks are arranged at the bottom of the power pyramid this someone else would suffer a drop in power and social esteem.

I believe that social issues are central in politics. If you still doubt me, consider how you would have defined a social conservative in the year of 1850 in America. Surely, this definition would include the support of slavery at that time. And the support of a hierarchical view of the society in general.

The hierarchies of power are not based on gender and race alone, of course. There is also class, the word which must not be uttered in this country. A real social conservative accepts gender, race and class as the determinants of a person's life opportunities. Given this, no social conservative can be a feminist and I doubt that he or she can be a progressive, either. I hope that Wolcott reconsiders his self-definition. Either that or I will delink him**.
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*As several commenters noticed, Wolcott was using satire in his post. It's possible that the satire extended to his calling himself a social conservative, but I didn't read it that way. If I'm wrong about that my sincere apologies to Mr. Wolcott.
**This part is my satire.

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The Bush Speech on the Iraq War 



I planned to blog on it in great detail but there was nothing new. It was all about 9/11 and freedom and hard work. The only interesting quote is this one:

Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don't you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever – when we are in fact working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters – the sober judgment of our military leaders.

Passing the blame to the military. Not mentioning that there are no more troops to send.

It was boring.

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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Rape as Punishment 



The gang rape case in Pakistan is reopened:

Pakistan's Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to reopen an inquiry into the high-profile case of Mukthar Mai, an unlettered laborer's daughter from southern Punjab province who allegedly was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council in 2002.

The court decision overturned a judgment by the Lahore High Court, issued in March, that threw out the convictions of five of the men accused of involvement in the rape and commuted the death sentence of a sixth.

The Supreme Court also ordered the re-arrest of 13 of the original suspects in the case. The high court's decision, following two days of hearings, was a victory for Mai, 32, whose case has prompted an outpouring of international sympathy and also become a focal point for concern about violence against women in Pakistan.
...
The court began hearing arguments Monday on Mai's appeal to reopen the case. In March, a lower court overturned the convictions of five of the six men charged in connection with the rape on the basis of insufficient evidence. The men had been sentenced to death. The sixth man charged had his death sentence converted to life in prison.
...
In an episode that has become a focal point for concerns about violence against women in Pakistan, Mai was attacked in Meerwala, her village in southern Punjab province. The council allegedly ordered the rape to settle a score with Mai's brother, 13, who had been accused of an improper relationship with the sister of one of those accused

I have written about this case many times before, most recently in the context of the Pakistan government trying to stop Ms. Mukhtar (or Ms. Mai or Ms. Bibi; her names appear to vary) from traveling abroad. But the article I link to here reminded me of something that is central in this case: the way rape is used as a form of violence here, as a form of societal punishment. In this particular case it is a quasi-official form of punishment, and one decreed for the crimes of someone else (her brother). But it's still punishment. The debates about whether rape is sex or violence or both seldom address the possibility that there might be a touch of punitiveness about rape, a desire to remind the victim of the limits that she or he has crossed by going out/dressing a certain way/being in a certain place.
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A postscript: Heretik has good coverage of all this.

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Dog Stuff 



Henrietta goes to the veterinarian today for her six month checkup. She's an old rebel dog and her vet recommends twice-a-year checkups. Plus it keeps the vet in the manner that she's accustomed to, I guess. - In any case, Henrietta and I will have a struggle, as usual. She hates the vet's office almost as much as she hates humans. I'm prepared for some of her stratagems, such as slipping the collar to run away or trying to hide under the waiting room bench behind my legs, but I never get used to the way she starts crying. It's heart-breaking, especially in a bully dog who normally determines when and how I breathe.

Henrietta should be fine. She's in excellent shape for any dog age, and especially for her thirteen or so years. But there have been changes. She's no longer quite so interested in food as she used to be and she doesn't like standing around and watching what I might do next (will she brush her teeth in the same order? will she scratch both elbows?) as often as was the custom. Nowadays she likes to perch in an upstairs window (on a bed) and bark at everyone who goes by.

An old dog is wonderful, like a well-fitting piece of comfortable clothing, someone who knows you inside out and fits in seamlessly. But it is always there, that foreknowledge, that fear of the parting which is coming, like a slight aftertaste of bitter in some types of chocolates.

This makes every day precious, even the ones when we visit the dreaded veterinarian.

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Monday, June 27, 2005

New York Times: The Wingnut Edition 



The executive editor of the New York Times has written a memo about the future plans of the paper:

In a lengthy memo published the newspaper's Web site, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced several new policies in response to a recent report by the paper's Credibility Committee. Among them is a fresh attempt to diversify the Times' staff and viewpoints, and not in the usual racial or gender ways, but in political, religious and cultural areas as well.

The aim, he wrote, is "to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation."

The point, Keller wrote, "is not that we should begin recruiting reporters and editors for their political outlook; it is part of our professional code that we keep our political views out of the paper. The point is that we want a range of experience. We have a recruiting committee that tracks promising outside candidates, and that committee has already begun to consider ways to enrich the variety of backgrounds of our reporters and editors.

"First and foremost we hire the best reporters, editors, photographers and artists in the business. But we will make an extra effort to focus on diversity of religious
upbringing and military experience, of region and class."

In other words, the Gray Lady is on her knees (take that as you wish). The wingnuts have won. I used to hear the argument that true diversity is not racial and gender based but the acknowledgement of wingnut views (such as that minorities are lazy and women naturally unable to compete) on each and every issue. But I only heard this from wingnuts. Now the New York Times is repeating the same mantra.

Let's see. Why would the New York Times want to diversify its coverage of news by hiring more ex-military, more Evangelical Christians and more Republicans? For that's what the bland statement above boils down to. Isn't this just a way to pretend that one is increasing diversity while hiring more and more white men? Just consider the recent hirings among the opinion columnists: John Tierney and David Brooks. We don't need women columnists on the Times. One is plenty, even if she's on leave. After all, we have John Tierney telling us that women can't compete, and all the columnist boys telling us what their wives think.

Is it a question of profit maximization? But the majority of New York Times readers are New Yorkers and liberals, I bet. Is it a feasible strategy to try to garner the market which most hates New York Times and everything it stands for, the wingnuts? For every new wingnut the paper hires at least a hundred liberal subscriptions will be canceled. I made that up but I bet it's true. So why on earth is Keller going this way? Towards the chasm of no-return? If anything, the country appears to be turning around from increasing wingnuttization. Does the Times always want to be the last rat boarding the sinking ship with a large suitcase when everyone else is jumping off?

And what about the wingnut newspapers? Do their executives wring their hands and cry bitter tears because they are not diversified enough in their coverage and in their staff? Does Washington Times go out of its way to hire liberals born in urban areas? Does the National Review pine over the absence of progressive viewpoints among its columnists? Of course not. They are wingnuts and their rules are different: to win at any cost.

Keller is really stupid. I hope that he will long regret this idiotic plan. Note that I have nothing against covering all political views, religion or areas of the country, but that is not what the Times is doing. They are scouring the dregs of the journalistic community to find wingnutty mouthpieces with no writing or research talents. Now that is diversity for you in the year 2005.

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Speculating About the Next Supreme 



Whom could Bush possibly nominate? The candidate must be the worst you can imagine. He (it will be a he with Bush unless he's filling the token woman quota) will have to have a solid record of judicial activism of the neofascist kind and he must get terrible ratings from any board that assesses the competency of judges. He must have at least one sexist and one racist incident in his path, and he must talk to God daily.

Savonarola is dead. Too bad, he would have been most suitable. I think it might be Ashcroft, because he has proved his stupidity brilliantly and the Crisco stuff is most appealing. But it could be Bork, because it's always fun to install someone full of hatred and desires of blind revenge on the Court. Just look at what happened with Clarence Thomas: if there is a woman in a case Thomas will rule against her. To show all those feminazis who gave him a hard time. Though as someone said on Eschaton, the most enjoyable candidate would be Bill O'Reilly!

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Going Nuclear 



Iran's new ultra-conservative president on nuclear energy:

Hardline President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced an uphill task on Monday to assuage concern in the West that he will adopt a tougher policy on Iran's nuclear program and roll back freedoms at home.

The ex-Tehran mayor, who defeated veteran politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a crushing election win on Friday, has adopted a conciliatory stance since the vote, vowing to continue nuclear talks with Europe and to lead a moderate government.

But his track record as a former member of the hardline Revolutionary Guards and outspoken commitment to the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution have convinced some that what he says and how he will act may be very different.

"He's starting from a position of a confidence deficit," said one Iran analyst, who declined to be named.

"No matter what he says right now, people will assume the worst, even though what he's saying is not much different from what Rafsanjani would have said if he'd been elected or what the current government's position is."

Iran says it wants nuclear technology to generate electricity, not make bombs. It has agreed to freeze some nuclear work while it negotiates a long-term arrangement with the EU, talks on which are due to resume in August.

Meanwhile, in the U.S.:

The Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war, stirring debate over the risks and benefits of the deadly material. The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.

Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling site outside Idaho Falls some 100 miles to the west and upwind of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.

Project managers say that most if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and they declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices.

"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department, said in a recent interview.

The two countries share some other things too. Like wingnuts.

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So Much To Choose From 



The horn of abundance floweth over this morning. Should I write about the mad cow disease, the coming pandemic of bird flu which will kill twenty million people in the optimistic scenarios, the likely resignation of Judge Rehnquist? So much to choose from! And all of it pretty awful.

I'm going to take it easy this early in the morning and focus on our dear Donald Rumsfeld. He has been sent out to do a tour of all the media with the message that things will get worse in Iraq and that this is a sign of things getting better one day!

The way he speaks about the whole mess he started is as if he is an innocent bystander, an expert watching detachedly as history passes by:

"The insurgency could go on for any number of years," Rumsfeld said in a U.S. television interview. "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years"

Way to generalize, Rumsfeld. And to distance yourself from the question why there is an insurgency in the first place. Could this probably be the first steps in preparing the American people to accept failure in Iraq?

Will there be many more violent deaths in this war? You bet, as Rumsfeld would say. But this is only to be expected, and nothing to do with Donald Rumsfeld...

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Sunday, June 26, 2005

The Underbelly of Wingnuttism 



Bobo's World is a blog which follows news about religion and crimes. Here is a snippet from last week's summary:

# On Monday, a Lawrence, Kansas jury convicted Martin K. Miller, 46, a youth group leader and board member at Victory Bible Church, of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Kansas University librarian Mary E. Miller. Says the Lawrence Journal World:

The case included testimony about Martin Miller's four-year extramarital affair, pornography addiction, and desire to pursue more sexual relationships — all of which stood in contrast to his leadership roles at his church and his children's Christian school... Prosecutor Jones said in his closing argument that divorce wasn't an option because Miller stood to lose his roles as a youth-group leader at church and a board member for Veritas Christian School. "Murder?... Of course he knew it was a sin," Jones said. "But that was supposed to be a private sin. No one was supposed to know about that one."

# On Tuesday, a Mesa, Arizona Dennis Montoya, a minister at Word of Grace Church, appeared in court on two child molestation charges. The victim was reportedly an eight-year-old girl. Police said Montoya confessed and they fear there are more victims.

# A Rumson, New Jersey grand jury indicted Rev. Joseph W. Hughes, the pastor of Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, with charges related to the theft of $2 million from his parish. Hughes, who has a "fondness for expensive cars, upscale restaurants and Caribbean vacations," according to the Asbury Park Press, also bought a $47,000 BMW, jewelry and assorted household appliances for a church handyman named David Rogers who, it appears, is somehow related to Hughes. The moral bearings of the church community were perhaps revealed when a group of wealthy parishoners offered to repay the stolen $2,034,428 if prosecutors agreed not to send Hughes to jail. Officials rejected the deal, noting that "[t]his was money from fund-raisers and meant for charity. There are very few instances where we would even consider not seeking jail time for this kind of theft, and this is certainly not one of them."

I haven't done any statistical studies to determine if the clergy is any more or less likely to engage in crime than the rest of the population, but they have been given a position of trust in the minds of their congregations and to breach that trust is vile. When we hear endless arguments about the ethical superiority of those who go to church or run one over the rest of us, though, it's only fair and balanced to present both sides of the issue. This is why Bobo's World is important.

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Saturday, June 25, 2005

Peonies and Weeding 




Garden


Weeding can be a spiritual exercize in the garden. You pull out the crabgrass and think about how deep the roots of wingnuttism might spread, you admire the spider's web and wonder where bin Laden lurks.

You are in control of the weeds, or so you might think if you are a silly wingnut. In truth, the weeds control you and one day they will cover your grave or ashes. So what weeding does is extract some temporary compensation for this final truth. It's also a nice escape from the world if you manage to set aside the political comparisons I started with and just let yourself see, hear, smell and touch.

Today I was weeding under the peonies and almost got drunk on the scent. There is no sexier flower on earth than a full-blown peony. It is heavy, fragile and unbearably scented, and at the end of the weeding session my hands carried the same perfume into the house and onto everything I touched.

Peony buds refuse to open for many days. They sit there, while the sun and the ants, seeking nectar, tickle and kiss the tightly closed petals. The waiting seems endless but then one morning they burst open: flowers so exotic, so soft and silky, so overdone that the only word for them is sexy. Even the way the flowers finally fall apart and cover the ground in a vast silky matt is inviting. I want to lie down under the peonies, I want to roll around on the ground like dogs do. I might even want to be buried under the peonies.

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On Banning 



I don't want to ban commenters from this blog carelessly. But I have decided to ban David for saying this:

here you fucking people UNDERMINING soldiers as they try to defeat terrorists. Your worries about some fucking asshole from afghanistan being questioned under sometimes extreme duress, you piss and moan about being fair yet you are never fair, you cry about fox news but love NPR and AirAmerica, you should all go to classes to perfect spitting and get your slogans in order, Just like mommie and daddie, and your idiot tattered animal house professor did during Viet Nam. Because as far as I am concerned and as far as the vast majority of troops are concerned you can all go straight to hell.

Maybe because it is ninety degrees today, but I don't see any redeeming value in this.

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Friday, June 24, 2005

My Austrian Blinds 




Blinds...


Someone wanted to see them. I should have arranged them for the photograph but I didn't. And you can also see the ceiling which I have not replaced yet, except to the extent of digging those scars wherever the cracks were.

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Friday Embroidery Blogging 




Our Choices?


Back by popular demand! Well, not quite. This is a political embroidery. The inspiration came to me while I was walking by one of those large store windows full of mannequins in the newest fashions. This is my take on that.

The technique is mainly straight and satin stitch.

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Silly Jokes 



Thanks to HMJ:


Word Play

1. Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The
ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

2. Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, "I've lost my
electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first replies,
"Yes,
I'm positive..."

3. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve
you, but don't start anything."

4. A sandwich walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry we don't
serve food in here."

5. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

6. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and
says:"A beer please, and one for the road."

7. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this
taste funny to you?"

8. "Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home. '"
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome." "Is it common?"
"It's Not
Unusual."

9. Two cows standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to
Dolly, "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't
believe
you," said Dolly. "It's true, no bull!" exclaimed Daisy.

10. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing
to look at either.

11. Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.

12. A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's
cross-eyed, is there any thing you can do for him?" "Well," says
the
vet, "let's have a look at him." So he picks the dog up and examines
his eyes. Finally, he says, "I'm going to have to put him down."
"What? Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really
heavy."

13. Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there
are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either
my mom or my dad or maybe my older brother Calvin or my younger
brother Ho-Chin. But I'm pretty sure it's Calvin.

14. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I
couldn't find any.

15. I went to the butcher's the other day to bet him 50 bucks that he
couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, "No, the steaks
are too high."

16. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted,
"Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs!" The doctor replied, "I
know
you can't - I've cut off your arms!"

17. I went to a seafood disco last week and pulled a mussel.

18. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a
fire in the craft, it sank, proving that you can't have your kayak and
heat it too.

19. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.


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Prostitution and War 



Listen to this:

You might not even notice the Manara nightclub if it weren't for the gradual flow of cars leading right to it. Just behind the Mosque of President Hafez Assad, the club's parking lot is crammed with cars, many bearing plates from neighboring gulf states. Inside, disco lights pierce the smoky air. Patrons pack the seats as they sip beer and lazily gaze at the dance floor. They watch teenage girls dressed in snug, revealing clothes awkwardly shuffling to thumping Arabic music. Many girls wear stilettos so steep they can barely walk. Some dance in pairs, often tightly pressed together, fingers entwined. Most seem bored and some, noticeably, are uneasy.

Male customers summon waitstaff to inquire about the availability and age of select girls. A Syrian journalist and I, posing as patrons, consult the staff ourselves. Farah, a 15-year-old, is brought to our table, dressed in camouflage pants and heavy makeup.

Farah sits, swings her long dark hair, shakes hands all around, then pointedly asks, "Who am I speaking to?" I'm taken aback by her businesslike tone and point to the Syrian reporter. Farah pleasantly chats with him, negotiating how much time she'll share, and if a "next step" will be taken. Farah locks eyes with the waiter, nods, and a bottle of champagne is brought to our table. "That'll be 7,000 Syrian pounds," says the waiter. That's $140. The champagne signals the beginning of the process. Conversation is next, and "anything else" will cost more.

As we empty our bottle of champagne, Farah tells us her story. Like most of the girls at the Manara disco, she is an Iraqi, a Sunni from Fallujah, one of Iraq's most war-torn areas. She got married in the United Arab Emirates, divorced four months afterward, and found work at the disco through a cousin. She says she's working "just to make some money for my family," who also now live in Syria. Farah says she's the family's breadwinner.

The story of a Sunni girl from Fallujah selling herself in a Damascus nightclub represents startling new fallout from the Iraq war, one human rights organizations and experts are only beginning to address. An increasing number of young Iraqi women and girls who fled Iraq during the turmoil are turning to prostitution in Syria, although there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are involved. That might partly explain why so little reporting has been done on the topic. For journalists and human rights workers, securing contact with Iraqi sex workers in Syria is difficult and dangerous because the topic is taboo.

"It's a serious problem because there are young girls doing this -- 11, 12, 13 years old," says Abdelhamid El Ouali, the representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who's based in Damascus. "It's amazing at first. But when you fight for your life, what are you going to do?"

Read the whole thing, even if you have to sit through an advertisement. It's likely to give you shivers, of the not-so-nice kind.

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War-Weary 



Do you know what I'm tired of? The false dualism everywhere. It's really getting to me. Everything is good or evil, if you're not for us you're against us, if you're not "American" by agreeing to us in every single item you are "traitorous and anti-American". Then there is the unGodly accusations for those who are not literal Bible sniffers.

There are reasons for this way of acting, and they are many. It may be just an easy way for humans to think. It certainly contributes to anger and hatred and prepares us all for a civil war, and though nobody probably wants a civil war I have a feeling that Rove wants to keep us at the edge of it because that will keep him in power, with a little technical help. And false dualism is the answer one gives when attacked by another false dualistic snippet. But the dualism is still almost always wrong.

Take the debate about the Iraq war. I deeply believe that it was wrong to invade Iraq, especially because it was done on the basis of lies and at a time when we had a real enemy to focus on elsewhere. But this does NOT mean that I want the invasion to fail, that I want people to die in Iraq. And this is what I hear when I debate the issue on the many internets. Why is it so hard to expand the little thinking organ into something that can accept three or more alternatives simultaneously? Why is it so hard to accept evidence of all sorts before making up ones mind?

I spent years debating various political issues carefully, moderately, using all those rules about not alienating the opponent, about seeking common ground, about carefully proving my point. All I got for it was ridicule and scorn and lots of saliva sprayed in my face. That's one reason for this blog: the saliva doesn't carry. At first I thought that a blog would be a way of making my points somehow clearer but I soon learned that the form of presenting the arguments makes no difference. We are somehow mired in the world of false dualisms and if I want to participate I have to point out the errors in one extreme end point and root for the other.

To go back to the Iraq question: I didn't want a war there because it was based on false grounds yet real people died in it. - This, by the way, is one of the few cases where dualism is real: you kill or you don't - I also didn't want us to go there because theocracy is the only immediate alternative for those countries and theocracies are terrible torture devices for women and I care about stuff like that. But once we invaded Iraq and destroyed a lot of it we can't just drop it like a hot potato. We should leave as soon as possible, yes, but we should at least try to leave a relatively acceptable administration in place, one which can delay the onset of civil war a little.

Leaving is not the same as encouraging international terrorism. We encouraged that by going to Iraq in the first place, and it doesn't make much difference what we do next. If we leave they won. If we stay they won because we are colonial tyrants. So I wouldn't base that decision on the "war on terror". I'd base it on trying to kill any more people. That, in the long run, could be good against terrorism, too.

Ramblings, ramblings. It's Friday and I had a hard working week. My muse has taken off with his tattooed friends.

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Thursday, June 23, 2005

Today's Deep Troll Thought 



From Eschaton (where else?):

I also would like to say that I think all you traitorous libs should be shipped to Gitmo and tortured until you die, and then cut up into tiny pieces and fed to the sharks.

I'm glad that the wingnuts are shocked at the hatred Durbin demonstrated. Hatred is so un-American...

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The Prince 



Macchiavelli's The Prince is supposedly bedtime reading for our administration (even Georgie???), so when Karl Rove makes an odd move we all are digging into our own copies to find out exactly what it presages. The current odd move is Rove's recent speech with this message:

Karl Rove came to the heart of Manhattan last night to rhapsodize about the decline of liberalism in politics, saying Democrats responded weakly to Sept. 11 and had placed American troops in greater danger by criticizing their actions.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, "I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble."

This is very odd, very old hat and imitative of such great orators as Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan. Also, Rove gave almost exactly the same speech in early 2002. So why is he rehashing all this libural-hatred right now?

My answer to this question comes later in Rove's speech. He's trying to tie 9/11 to liberals and progressives, to make the equation terrorism=American left. You might not agree but consider that he said this:

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

Nothing looks odd anymore. Rush Limbaugh was told to cover the topic first, to prepare the ditto market, and then Rove comes out and expresses the same hatred. This is all to do with the bottom ratings of the Bush administration. Whenever this happens the wingnuts look for an external enemy which can be used as a scapegoat, which can be used to redirect the anger of the population. And now the American left is an external enemy. We have come far in a few years of this administration.


----
As a footnote, Karl Rove just earned a place in the lowest level of Dante's hell. To politicize the 9/11 slaughters in this way is so vile, so unspeakably vile that none of Rove's earlier truly egregious acts comes anywhere close. Did he stand for hours with a photograph pressed against his chest, asking bypassers for any news of a loved one? Did he haunt hospitals for days on end, desperately looking for one specific name? Did he gather together hair from hairbrushes to send in for DNA matching?

If everything didn't come back threefold I'd send Rove something to take his mind off politics for the next century or so.

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Freeway Blogging 



Freewayblogger is a one person hit squad, doing battle for the freedom of expression. You might enjoy the most recent war story:


Hello all... the first pic shows what happens when you keep taking down my signs and then replace them with a lame,inkjetted "support our troops" sign.



The 2nd pic shows the cops that saw me putting up the sign, and yes, did want to speak to me. They asked me what it said and when I told them one replied, "Probably be a lot more too." and that was it. No hassles, no lectures, no ID check. They didn't even ask me to take it down. In fact, the sign stayed up for three days. Man I love San Francisco.




My favorite is this one:


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Who Is Getting Caught in the Flypaper of Iraq? 



According to MSNBC, most foreign fighters on the insurgents' side come from Saudi Arabia. This is not surprising, not surprising at all. What should be surprising is the fact that the Bush administration pretends great friendship with Saudi Arabia. Yet the majority of the 9/11 suicide terrorists were Saudis and it is the Saudi form of islam, Wahhabism, that is the main breeding ground of muslim terrorism. Contrast our friendship with the fundamentalist Saudis to our invasion of Iraq, a country that used to be secular. Mindboggling, isn't it?

The MSNBC article asks why so many Saudis choose terrorism and answers it with explanations that are more like triggers than real reasons:

Why do they go?

Saudis captured in Iraq say it's because of pictures on Arab television network Al-Jazeera.

"We saw the Americans massacring the Iraqis," says one Saudi prisoner in Iraq via translation.

Radical Saudi clerics urge them to go to Iraq to kill Americans.

"I read the communique of the 26 clerics," says another Saudi prisoner in Iraq.

The underlying real reasons have to do with the unequal distribution of wealth in Saudi Arabia, with the thirty percent unemployment rate, with the lack of any real democracy and with the school system which resembles one gigantic madrasa for all students, with lots of religion and very little of anything that would be valued in the job markets. I suspect that the anger of the population is channeled towards the west, at least partly in order to protect the Saudi royals from becoming the obvious targets.

What is going to happen to all the terrorists that manage to avoid Bush's sticky papertraps? Who knows? But the likelihood is high that they will not calmly return home and resume peaceful lives. In fact, they might well reappear in places closer to our homes:

The war in Iraq is creating a new breed of Islamic jihadists who could go on to destabilise other countries, according to a CIA report.

The CIA believes Iraq to be potentially worse than Afghanistan, which produced thousands of jihadists in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the recruits to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida had fought in Afghanistan.

Mission accomplished, Mr. Bush?

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Wednesday, June 22, 2005

No Hand Shaking With Women 



The Associated Press reports that the prime minister of Iraq doesn't shake hands with women:

Photographers didn't have much luck getting pictures of Iraq's prime minister shaking hands with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, even though the United States was co-hosting an international conference on rebuilding Iraq.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met with Rice for about 15 minutes Tuesday at a downtown Brussels hotel and again at a working dinner Wednesday hosted by the European Union.

However, al-Jaafari -- a conservative Shiite cleric -- is rarely seen shaking hands with women. Islam calls for separation between the sexes, and many Muslim males who strictly adhere to the Islamic faith do not shake hand with females.

One photo shows EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner offering her hand to al-Jaafari -- and the Iraqi prime minister smiling, but with his arms firmly at his side.

A literal interpretation of religion, one which to me confuses the intent (to avoid extramarital sex and so on) with the letter. But also one which reminds us that the forces of democracy in Iraq might not offer very much for women. Not that shaking hands is that important, but the segregation of sexes bit is. For it will not mean some sort of a world with two parallel yet separate public spaces and two parallel yet separate governments. It will mean a world where the women are largely restricted to their homes and where women will not have the same rights and powers as men do.

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Molly Explains It 



Molly Ivins is not only an excellent writer. She also has this ability to cut through a complicated subject like a hot knife through butter. Suddenly it's all clear and easy to understand. It's not a common talent and she should get more exposure than she's getting right now.

For an example of Molly's skill, read her take on the media and the Downing Street memos. To whet your appetite, this is how she finishes:

I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense -- although I must say, I don't want to bring up the Clinton comparison again. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Heck, I'd settle for that again, over what we're looking at now.

The irony of Deep Throat surfacing after all these years in the midst of this memo mess is almost too precious. Does The Washington Post have any hungry young reporters on Metro anymore? I'd say, start with: Who did Dearlove meet with besides George Tenet?


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Some Really Stupid Research by Echidne 



It went like this:

Hmm. Fudge used to give me migraines. I wonder if it still does. Let's take a tiny piece and test. Mmmmm. No migraine yet. Maybe another tiny piece. Gulp. Delicious.

No migraine. This fudge is really good. Here is a large chunk, just waiting for my ivory snappers. Sooooo gooood.
...
No fudge left.
...
Migraine. Flashing lights. Nausea.


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Houston: The New Iraq 



Tom deLay thinks so:

From the "What Planet Is He On?" department, Tom DeLay has weighed in on how things really are in Iraq. And it turns out that Iraq is like ... Iraq is like ... well, it turns out that Iraq is a lot like Texas, actually.

"You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody'd go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston [would be about] violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways," DeLay says in an interview reported in today's Houston Chronicle. It's the media's fault, of course. People should just go to Iraq, DeLay says, and they'd see what's really happening there. "Everybody that comes from Iraq is amazed at the difference of what they see on the ground and what they see on the television."

I've never been to Houston but I doubt that twenty people have recently been blown to smithereens in a restaurant there or that roadside bombs are everyday events. I also suspect that people in Houston have electricity and water all the time. And if there is a war going on in Houston, Texas, the media really fucked up because I have heard nothing about it.

This story is like that old one about New York City being as dangerous as being a soldier in Iraq. If all this was true wouldn't you expect the wingnut politicians to enlist in large numbers, especially those from places like Houston?

Smarter politicians, please! From both sides of the aisle, actually. My job of ridicule is far too easy these days.

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On Fetal Positions 



Media Matters for America reports that Bill O'Reilly doesn't think being chained to the fetal position is all that bad:

REILLY: Well, I mean, you're telling the world, senator, that we're a repressive country because you don't like coerced interrogation. Now, the FBI report, for those of you whom missed it, centered around a detainee who was chained to the floor in the fetal position. You know what the fetal position is -- that's not an uncomfortable position. Most of us sleep in a fetal position. OK? So picture the fetal position, most of us sleep that way. But the guy's chained. Now he can't move, he's down there.

Then they either make the room unbearably hot or unbearably cold. And they keep the guy there for 24 to 36 hours in that position, so they can't go to the bathroom. OK? So that's what the FBI guy reported. That's what's got Durbin conjuring up images of Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin. So you make the call, you make the call. It's up to you. I'm not gonna tell you what to think.

Most of us like to each lunch, too. But it would be slightly different if we were chained to the plate and forced to go on having lunch for a few weeks. Without any bathroom breaks.

I'm annoyed at all the wingnut furor about Durbin's comments. It's the wingnuts who have monopolized the nazi terminology for the last ten years. Just google "Hitlery", for example. In fact, most of these types of comparisons have been made by right-wing commentators. I have a post about it somewhere in the archives which contains actual numbers and stuff. I should dig it up.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Beauty 




Mist


Something beautiful for you to see today, from Australia, courtesy of Helga Fremlin.

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What is a Mission? 



What is the U.S. mission in Iraq? Think Progress notes that it has been redefined every few months, from the early one of ridding the country of WMDs to being completed to not being completed, after all, to being the creation of free Iraq to completing some mission, whatever it might be, for the sake of world peace.

I sometimes write that way, too, when things are not going smoothly and the story veers away from the topic. Then I change the title and pretend that I had another topic in mind all along. But the government shouldn't have the same freedom in doing this as an anonymous unpaid blogger. There are missions and then there are missions. The lives of people depend on how the Bush government defines its mission. I wish they would decide on one definition and stick to it.

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It's Our Fault 



Everything is. But especially any future terrorist attack on the United States. That's how powerful we are, the lefties. So Rush Limbaugh said a few days ago:

LIMBAUGH: Let me tell you something, folks, if we are hit again, if we are hit again, we need to hold these people in our country who are undermining our efforts responsible. It ain't going to be the FBI's fault next time. It isn't going to be the CIA's fault next time. It isn't going to be some bureaucracy's fault next time. It's going to be the fault of politicians, left-wing groups and the like who have names and identities and spend their every waking moment trying to obstruct our ability to secure intelligence information for our own national security.

You want some names: [Sen. Patrick] Leahy [D-VT], [Sen. Joseph R.] Biden [D-DE], [Sen. Richard J.] Durbin [D-IL], [Sen. Barbara] Boxer [D-CA], [Sen. Edward] Kennedy [D-MA], [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid [D-NV], Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, Amnesty International. If we get hit again, these are the names of the people and organizations we need to look at when we're trying to find out why and how it happened.

This makes planning the future much easier. All the government needs to do is to intern us and the country will be safe! The real enemy has finally been revealed and the wingnuts can sleep safe in their little cots.

Which troll was it who recently foamed about how liberals hate everybody in this country? Sounds to me like it's the Limbaugh types who have some serious issues with misplaced hatred.

Sounds to me also like it might be Limbaugh himself who is stoking the flames of terrorism in the Middle East:

LIMBAUGH: Club G'itmo and our brochure at rushlimbaugh.com now features two T-shirts, ladies and gentlemen. We put them on sale yesterday, and they are going like hotcakes. They're a reddish-orange t-shirt and you can buy one or you can buy both. One of them says, "Club G'itmo" on the front and then on the back, "Your Tropical Retreat From the Stress of Jihad."

The other one says, "Club G'itmo" on the front, and on the back it says, "My Mullah Went to Club Gitmo and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." They're both $19.95. They come in sizes small up to double-X, and we're also still checking on prices to come up with Club G'itmo bathrobes and soap on a rope or just soap. Club G'itmo, whichever, and we've also added the fact that kids might want to be sent down to Club G'itmo, except Americans, because American kids are not allowed to pray in school or anything else. It's a great place for young jihadists to go and take a break from their training.


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Truth. What Truth? 



Truth is relative in the wingnut world, which is funny as it's us who are usually blamed for relativism of all types. But it's the wingnuts who view facts as just one more of those pesky things which hate America.

The most recent proof of this comes from some gentle rewriting that happened to a Bureau of Land Management report on the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public land. The Bush administration wants cattle to graze on such land, even though they are normally free-marketeers, but the report pointed out that easing limits on cattle grazing would damage both wildlife and the quality of water. These bits were edited out from the final report:

Last week, the Bureau of Land Management made it easier to graze cattle on public land, despite objections from its own scientists. Grazing cattle can denude the West's arid lands, a special concern given the recent drought in the region. Two BLM scientists -- a biologist and a hydrologist, both of whom recently retired from the bureau -- predicted that easing limits on cattle grazing would hurt wildlife and water quality. But their objections were edited out of a BLM report. Who needs to trouble with dissent when you can just delete it?

"This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada told the Los Angeles Times. "They rewrote everything," Campbell said. "It's a crime."

Campbell retired recently after 30 years at the agency. Here's more on how he was thanked for his years of service: "The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a 'significant adverse impact' on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are 'beneficial to animals,'" the Times reported.

Maybe these scientists made arguments which would not ultimately hold, or maybe not. In either case, why aren't the readers of the report allowed to judge that?

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Monday, June 20, 2005

Skippy Will Be Three Years Old! 



Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, a weird (in a good way) nonhuman blogger, is coming for the third birthday of the blog, and is approaching one million hits. If you click on this link you can help him achieve the goal of his life which is to hit both important events at the exact same point in time. Well, I made the "goal-of-his-life" stuff up but I'm trying to make you click on the link. Because that's how empty my life is.

And he is a nice guy and a good blogger, and I expect the same care and attention when I turn two.

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Research Findings 



After the interesting discussion on women as consumers of porn on the comments thread of this blog I went to the library and got out a few books mentioned in those threads as containing soft porn or erotica for women. Think of what I do in order to serve the gods and goddesses of research.

Yesterday I slaved over these books. Here is an excerpt from Laurell K. Hamilton's A Caress of Twilight:

His hands found my body, spilling my breasts bare to the wind. He drew his lips back from mine and lowered his face to my breasts, taking first one and then the other into his mouth, rolling the nipples in the warmth, spilling power.

It gets considerably more heated and more explicit. The heroine of the book is a half-elf who has to mate with as many elves as possible! She has an alphabetical rotation of lovers, sometimes more than one during the night. She also appears to have an insatiable appetite for sex and no menstrual cycle but such details are understandable in the heat and spilling warmth stuff.

Things do get a little repetitive. How many different ways can you combine six or seven elves and one half-elf? This is a problem in permutations but let's not go there.

I'm not sure if this book would qualify as soft porn for women, or erotica, or neither. It has other things happening in addition to sex though not many. I'm also not sure what the meaning of books like this is, except that there indeed seems to be a thriving market for the description of sex from the woman's point of view.

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And Still, In Pakistan 



The tale of great courage and cowardice continues. On the side of courage is Mukhtaran Bibi, on the other side the government of Pakistan:


Let me back up. Ms. Mukhtaran is the indomitable peasant whom I first wrote about in September after visiting her in her village. Three years ago, a village council was upset at her brother, and sentenced her to be gang-raped. After four men raped her, she was forced to walk home nearly naked before a jeering crowd.

She then defied tradition by testifying against her attackers, sending them to prison, and she used compensation money to start elementary schools in her village. She herself is now enrolled in the fourth grade; a measure of her passion for education is that the day after the government released her, she was back in class.

Ms. Mukhtaran is using donations (through www.mercycorps.org) to start an ambulance service and a women's shelter, and she is also campaigning against honor killings, rapes and acid attacks that disfigure women. But President Musharraf, defensive about Pakistan's image, regards brutality as something to cover up rather than uproot.

So when Pakistani officials learned that Ms. Mukhtaran planned to visit the U.S. this month, they detained her and apparently tried to intimidate her by ordering the release of those convicted for her rape. This wasn't a mistake by low-level officials.

Mr. Musharraf admitted to reporters on Friday that he had ordered Ms. Mukhtaran placed on the blacklist. And although Pakistan had claimed that Ms. Mukhtaran had decided on her own not to go to the U.S. because her mother was sick (actually, she wasn't), the president in effect acknowledged that that was one more lie. "She was told not to go" to the U.S., Mr. Musharraf said, according to The Associated Press.

"I don't want to project a bad image of Pakistan." he explained.

I sympathize. From Karachi to the Khyber Pass, Pakistan is one of the most hospitable countries I've ever visited. So, President Musharraf, if you want to improve Pakistan's image, here's some advice: just prosecute rapists with the same zeal with which you persecute rape victims.

Ms. Mukhtaran says she can't talk about what happened after the government kidnapped her. But this is what seems to have unfolded: In Islamabad, government officials ferociously berated her for being unpatriotic and warned that they could punish her family and friends. In particular, they threatened to have the father of a friend fired from his job.

Why am I going on about this case, especially as I have nothing to add to what is said by those better informed? Because in microcosm it is a story of any one individual fighting an unfair system. Because Ms. Mukhtaran indeed rises to the level of a hero and heroine, reflecting the best aspects of each of these terms: bravery and endurance. And because the whole case demonstrates how and why women's rights are not of great priority in so many places on this earth: they are awkward reminders that not all tradition is good, they demand rights for those who traditionally are idolized as not wanting any, and the society does need to change for such rights to exist.

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What Am I Thinking? 




AFP/Paul J. Richards
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Via derenegade.
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Sunday, June 19, 2005

Grrrr! 



President George Bush said this in his weekly radio address:

We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror.

I can barely type this shit in; it makes me so furious.

"We went to war because we were attacked,"

Yes, you did. But you went to war against people other than those who attacked us.

"we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens."

At war in the wrong place and against the wrong enemy. And we are still there because you goofed up magnificently, Mr. Bush. Most of the people who want to harm this country are fairly free to continue with their evil plots while we are mired down in Iraq.

"Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror."

This would be funny if it was published in something else than the weekly radio address of the most powerful man on earth. As it is, I weep. Bush is admitting that he has caused the terrorists to congregate in Iraq. He created a problem, and now we all must pay for it. The "flypaper" theory is disgusting, unethical and just plain wrong. You don't get rid of terrorists by siccing them onto some innocent neighbor and then bombing both the terrorists and the neighbor to smithereens. Or if you do this your other neighbors will hate your guts forevermore and they are right to do so.

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Porter Goss Knows Where Osama Is 



He boasts of this knowledge in a silly interview with Time:

WHEN WILL WE GET OSAMA BIN LADEN? That is a question that goes far deeper than you know. In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links. And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we're probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice. We are making very good progress on it. But when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play. We have to find a way to work in a conventional world in unconventional ways that are acceptable to the international community.

IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE A PRETTY GOOD IDEA OF WHERE HE IS. WHERE? I have an excellent idea of where he is. What's the next question?

I thought we already found an unconventional way of coping with those awkward international obligations. It's called pre-emptive war, though so far it hasn't been used against Al Qaeida.

The whole bin Laden question drives me nuts. Yes, he's just a symbol, and catching him would not kill the organization. But to ignore him so completely? He is a symbol for the other side, too, you know, and right now it looks like bin Laden is invincible.

Porter Goss says this about Iraq in the same interview:

COULD THE U.S. GO TO WAR AGAIN BASED ON FALSE INTELLIGENCE? I would not agree to surmise that America has gone to war based on false intelligence. I would say that the right question is: Should America be checking out threats to America? The answer is yes. And will we find some threats were more talk than real? Yes, we will.

Goss has been taking speech lessons from Rumsfeld. This doesn't hide the fact that he thinks facts are checked by riding roughshod over people who are most likely totally innocent. A drastic way of finding that a threat was just talk.

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Happy Fathers' Day! 



May you all get something else than ties today. May you all survive the teenage of your children and one day find revenge by becoming ornery old coots.

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Saturday, June 18, 2005

Let's Hope It's Not So 



Jim Lampley at the Huffington Post says this:

A Bush-watcher website identified as TBRNews.org is reporting under the byline of "domestic intelligence reporter" Brian Harring that the Department of Defense is using a cynical tactic to mislead the public regarding the true death toll for American military personnel in Iraq. Harring claims he has an internal pdf. file from the D.O.D. which establishes that nearly 9000 Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, but that the official number has been held to 1713 by designating as Iraq deaths only those who perish on Iraqi soil. The remainder, he says, are military personnel who have died en route to Germany or in German hospitals-- casualties of the war, but not listed in the official death toll.

If this is true it would explain the apparent statistical discrepancy between dead and wounded. A combat action which produces nearly eight times as many officially wounded-- 13000 plus-- as officially dead...well, it's not the norm. It goes without saying it would also further jolt a public majority already disturbed by the war's "progress" and eager to see the troops come home.


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Curtains - Saturday Miscellanea 



I'm making curtains for my dining-room. It's really the room in which the dogs and the snakes are fed but it looks like a dining-room. These curtains or drapes are proper ones. I start with measuring everything and figuring out how much overlap I want to have and how much fullness. Then I buy the material for the curtains and the lining, join widths together with the sewing machine, and then I sew the lining to the curtains by hand, including invisible stitches in the middle so that the linings don't billow out independently. The final step is to sew rings to the top so that the curtains can be hung properly from the metal rods with snake's head finials. (I don't do special headings because I like the simple look.)

Not many people do curtains this way, so there is some advantage for being a weirdo. I estimate that I'm saving at least a thousand dollars by doing the work myself, and the only real cost is developing these very thick leather pads on the fingers of my right hand, from the needle coming and going so many times. Of course, the people who get these types of curtains ready-made are in a rather different income bracket from yours truly. But still. All the stuff at Snakepit Inc. is made with the same care. That's why there isn't very much stuff here.

My computer room has Austrian blinds, made out of some 1950s material I found at a flea market. They are lined and the edges are piped. Normally I don't like frills but these are good to look at when I read something especially blood-curdling on my forays into the Wingnuttia. The other rooms have lined curtains as well, though the guest room has Roman blinds which I made out of muslin and some sheet material cut into stripes. I'm a proper little housewife goddess! Did you know, by the way, that overnight guests and fish both smell after three days? A gentle reminder.

Sheets are excellent material for curtains because they come in large widths. A hint for those of you who don't live near fabric stores or good flea markets. But don't try to make loose covers/slipcovers out of sheets; they don't wear well enough for all the work you need to put into making the covers.

This post has no politics in it. You could go to the American Street for a few of my more political writings, or you could imagine various ways of combining "curtains" and "George Bush" to make a political message.

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Blogging While Anonymous* 



Atrios has an interesting post on the topic, and I want to pipe in, too, given that some mean-spirited people might view "Echidne of the snakes" as a made-up handle, too.

Pseudonyms have been used in writing for a very long time, much before blogging was invented. Think of the Federalist Papers, think of Currer Bell and George Eliot. The reasons for writing anonymously are many and some are better than others. The Bronte sisters chose to write under male names because the literary markets of the era discriminated against women. The anonymous writers of the Federalist Papers didn't want their identities contaminate the message, perhaps. More recently, Carolyn Heilbrun chose Amanda Cross as the name to use when she wrote detective fiction, because she was an academic and the academic circles looked down on the detective novel genre.

The reasons for choosing anonymity vary, clearly, from protection of ones career or reputation to defenses against unfair markets to concerns with the purity of the message. In countries with authoritarian regimes anonymity may be the shield which stops a writer from being killed or his or her family from being hunted down.

But anonymity could be selected for more nefarious reasons. A writer might wish to cause harm and havoc and not be caught doing it, or someone might present a message in total conflict with that person's own lifestyle. There could be outright fraud involved or at least dishonesty. This is the case those present who dislike anonymous writing. How can someone attack Echidne of the snakes if nobody knows who she really is?

This argument is less powerful in blogging than it might be in the case of something like anonymous leaflets being spread all over a town, slandering a person's reputation, say. Bloggers tend to stay put on their little blogs and the same made-up handle stays put, too. If one becomes well-known enough, like Atrios, for example, then the pseudonym takes an equal validity to a real name. Atrios responds to his critics as Atrios. And so do other pseudonymous bloggers. Even I talk back to my commenters as Echidne.

The ability to Google people provides a very good reason for writing anonymously. I don't want my little mother harassed for what I say on my blog, and this might well happen if the harassers knew other names for me. (And, yes, I do get hate-mail. Nowhere near as much as love-mail, but I do get it.)

But none of these are the reason why I chose to start a pseudonymous blog. My impetus was the desire to write without the baggage that goes with who I otherwise am, the desire to recreate a personal voice. It is fun. And it was initially a purely literary exercize, with a little bit of magic thrown in. Now Echidne is someone who sort of exists, and if I started another blog under, say, "Olive the Omnivorous Ovary", I'd feel a fraud. Weird, isn't it?

Anyway, what do you think about anonymity in the blogosphere?
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*Strictly speaking, pseudonymous. I'm freely mixing the two here because most of the critics do so.

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Friday, June 17, 2005

Conyers vs. Milbank 



If you wish to see how the so-called liberal media covers the Downing Street memo and those who wish to have a debate on the issues it suggests check out this piece by the Washington Post Dana Milbanks. I find it fairly disgusting. Hard to stoop as low as this, I'd think, but maybe Milbanks's brains are unusually low in his body.

And if you'd like to know how John Conyers responded to Milbanks, go here. A snippet:

The fact that I and my fellow Democrats had to stuff a hearing into a room the size of a large closet to hold a hearing on an important issue shouldn't make us the object of ridicule. In my opinion, the ridicule should be placed in two places: first, at the feet of Republicans who are so afraid to discuss ideas and facts that they try to sabotage our efforts to do so; and second, on Dana Milbank and the Washington Post, who do not feel the need to give serious coverage on a serious hearing about a serious matter-whether more than 1700 Americans have died because of a deliberate lie. Milbank may disagree, but the Post certainly owed its readers some coverage of that viewpoint.
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Friday Dog Blogging 




Wookie!


This lovely dog is the dog of wookiemonster who gives good comments on this blog. Hank is shedding, by the way. I combed her out yesterday and made a pretend-wig out of all that hair. It was big enough to look quite realistic on me.

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Mukhtaran Bibi Still Not Allowed to Travel 



She is the Pakistani woman who was gang-raped in punishment for her brother's behavior, as a form of tribal justice. She then went on to fight the case in courts, to win and to give the money away for starting schools. She wanted to travel abroad to talk about her experiences and the Pakistan government stopped her by house arrest and by putting her on the list of people not allowed to leave the country. The government then released her and assured that she was no longer on the banned list but her passport was not returned. Right now she is back in her village, without a passport.

Amnesty International says this about her case:

Ms. Mukhtaran, who late last week was in effect put under house arrest and then disappeared, only to show up a day later at a press conference and state her intent to forego her invitation to the United States, was victimized first by her attackers and again by her recent treatment at the hands of her own government. This same government refused to intervene in her case at the time of her rape until it was shamed into action by international pressure.

Tom Watson is keeping an eagle's eye on all this.

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U.S. Foreign Aid 



In 2003, the United States government allocated one percent of its budget to foreign aid. As a country we give about 0.1 % of the gross national product in foreign aid. This is fairly embarrassing, even if the U.S. donations are the largest in dollar amounts (because we are the richest guys on the block). Embarrassing, because countries such as Norway, Sweden and Luxembourg donate a much larger GNP percentage. The Netherlands gives almost one third of the American portion and there are not very many Dutch people in this world.

Against this background, consider the following news item:

Rebuffing President Bush's wishes, a Republican-led House panel slashed the administration's request for a program that aids global development.

Under the Millennium Challenge Account, countries are eligible for extra aid only if they control corruption, invest in health and education and encourage trade and private investment.

In 2002, Bush called for "a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations."

He requested $3 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget, but the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Thursday recommended $1.75 billion, which is $262 million more than last year.

The U.S. military budget is about 350 billion dollars, excluding emergency funds for the continuing wars.

Might it not be cheaper to control terrorism by giving more foreign aid?

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For Whom The Poll Tolls 



A truly awful heading. Good.

Bush continues slippety-slipping downhill in the polls. For example:

Despite months of presidential effort, the nationwide poll found the public is not rallying toward Mr. Bush's vision of a new Social Security that would allow younger workers to put part of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts. Two-thirds said they were uneasy about Mr. Bush's ability to make sound decisions on Social Security. Only 25 percent said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling Social Security, down slightly from what the poll found in March.

It can be lonely at the top...

Or consider this one:

Moreover, only 37 percent said they approved of Mr. Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, down from 45 percent in February. A strong majority of Americans now say the effort by the United States to bring stability and order to Iraq is going badly - 60 percent, up from 47 percent in February.

What is there to say about this that I haven't already said? Maybe it's worth pointing out that this guy supposedly won an election only six months ago.

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Thursday, June 16, 2005

On Being "Easy" 



This post grew from the one below about a sexual etiquette for women and some of the comments on it, especially those that discussed the reputation of American women abroad as being easy lays, easy targets for sexual predators.

A feminist analysis of all this seems necessary to me at this point and I will offer my feeble attempt of one. Consider the selection of terms to describe these women: "easy", as opposed to difficult or challenging, and "target", like something that stays immobile and will be shot at. Both of these make the man into an active participant, a hunter or a predator, and the woman into an object or at most an animal that is hunted.

Both of them also assume that the woman doesn't want to be sexual, isn't in fact searching for the very intercourse that she is supposed to be an easy target for. Perhaps she is like a fisherman, sitting on the pier, patiently waiting for the big fish to bite the hook? See how the discourse is nonegalitarian? How the woman's sexuality is completely ignored?

Though of course the woman might not want to be sexual at all. In that case what we are describing is a raping game. But then the underlying assumption is that such a raping game is somehow acceptable, at least in the sense of it being unavoidable, in the sense of "this is how the world just is". Men want sex more than women and don't care how they get it, and it's up to the women and their chaperones to stop this from happening.

If I was a man I'd find this assumption incredibly insulting. The assumption that I am nothing but my testicles, and that I'm so weak I can't but follow their urgings, even if it makes me do violence. Yet though I see this reaction in some of the discussions on this topic it is a lot less frequent than I'd expect. Why is that the case?

Probably partly because we all tend to view the world in which we live as somehow unchangeable even if it changes all the time. But there is also a deeper reason, one that Amanda of Pandagon alluded to in one of her comments on Alas, a Blog, and that is the fact that there is a certain amount of sexual entitlement which goes to most men in our society. If the price of this entitlement is to pretend that men's sexual needs are so powerful that they can't be controlled, well, maybe this is an acceptable price for some men to pay.

Several commenters point out that men indeed appear to be more sexual than women. Just think of all the pornography that is available. Isn't it the case that men have a stronger biological urge to be sexual than women do? Isn't this why we can't really change the rules of sex, to stop calling women "easy", for example? Because it would spoil the hunt?

I have no idea how to compare the sexual imperatives of men and women in a biological sense. For that I'd need to strip away all the cultural imperatives that have been inserted into us for decades, and I'd need to somehow ignore the effect that potential pregnancy has on women's sexual behavior or the effect that the knowledge of the greater average power of men might have on a woman who considers a one-night stand with a stranger. I have tried to think these questions out for myself and find it incredibly difficult to see how we could even test women's sexual desires as compared to their culturally affected sexual behavior. I mean, "a good woman" is still one who has very little sex. Why would this rule be necessary if women indeed care less about sex in general? Why would so many societies put such enormous pressure on women to stay chaste or virginal if women are actually fairly lukewarm about sex? What about my own, er, rather passionate nature?

It's odd to find this whole business of being "easy" coming back at this late stage. It sounds Victorian to me. The corresponding term for a man would be a Don Juan or something similar. The associations are almost totally opposite to each other. A man who wants to have a lot of sex is a stud, a winner. A woman who wants a lot of sex is easy, a whore.

Then there is the darker side of the issues, the side where we talk about an "easy target" in the context of the terrible events in Aruba. Where death enters the discussion and somehow we still prattle about sex and whether the woman or her parents were to blame for her lack of knowledge on how to avoid a psychopath. As if death is a likely outcome of casual sex, something that every woman should be trained to avoid. Now contrast this with what I mentioned above: the idea of men as the more sexual beings. Do you see the societal influences here? Do you see how women are expected to bend and adjust and protect themselves even against psychopaths?

The Aruba case is about murder and, as Pseudo-Adrienne so eloquently stated, the guilty party is the murderer. Let's not forget that and let's not confuse this horrible reality with sex and with the many ways that women are expected to behave in this world.

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An On-Line Chat With Michael Smith 



Michael Smith is a reporter for the London Sunday Times and has written a lot on the Downing Street memos. You can read an interview with him here. Some interesting snippets:

Austin, Tex.: Has there ever been a historical equivalent to the Downing Street Memo that may help put it in better context with the American public? Also, do you think that it's possible since few Americans know what 'Downing Street' is or means, the significance of the document is just not appreciated on this side of the Atlantic?

Michael Smith: I think in journalistic terms we need to go back to the Pentagon papers, in terms of a US context you have to look at the answer I gave earlier comparing that meeting to an NSC meeting. That is its significance, that is its equivalent. It is highly damning and some of the self-serving nonsense from people who should know better in some, and it is now only some, of the US media is frankly depressing.


Edinburgh, U.K.: What do you think of the argument reported in Howard Kurtz's article that Sir Richard Dearlove may have came to his conclusion by reading the newspapers?

Michael Smith: This is the head of British intelligence, a man who has just had conversations with America's most senior intelligence and national security figures. He is reporting back at the highest level, to what is effectively a war cabinet and as I know to my own cost has no great regard for newspapers. He has made his own judgement, no-one better qualified to tell that meeting what was happening. No shadow of a doubt.


Anonymous: George W. Bush once slipped during a speech and stated he was upset that Saddam Hussein had tried to kill his father. Is this a possible explantion for his fixation over Saddam Hussein? Indeed, perhaps if he had been more honest about it, it might have been understood more.

Michael Smith: Maybe. That was clearly the view of Peter Ricketts when he said in one of the memos that it looked like a grudge match

Interesting.

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Etiquette for Women 



Via Pseudo-Adrienne on Alas, a Blog, I learned about Steve Gilliard's ideas about gender roles, especially when it comes to white girls going missing in Aruba:

I don't think it's not so much that "she got what she deserve", but a media refusal to look at their conduct and say these girls were placed in a less than optimal situation. I would also bet no one had an honest discussion with them about acting like adults and making adult choices. Of course not. It was a "Christian" school. So they could get drunk, fuck any cute boy and no one would say things like:

"Be careful. Don't just go off with any cute boy. He may not act that cute when you're alone."

"Carry condoms and lube"

"When you get drunk, you tend to make shitty decisions. So stick together and don't let someone go off alone."

Now, I've always been confused as to why a girl would go off with three guys. Was she going to pull a train? Or did she have two spare sex organs for them to use? Because otherwise, that sounds like a really bad decision. One which she should have been warned against. Boys in groups tend to do things they wouldn't do alone. And the expectation of sex must have been high.

Hmmm. Gilliard's etiquette reads interesting, and I have a terrible impulse to rewrite his instructions to apply for race rather than for sex. Because Steve is understandably very clear on the wrongness of racism, such a rewrite might make him see why what he says here is not that different. Though he probably would just blow his stack at me.

But let's look at the last paragraph above a little. Gilliard is confused why a girl would go off with three guys. As if the only reason a woman ever goes anywhere with a man or men is for sex. As if it's the natural thing to assume, even if there are three men and only one woman. It's not possible to have friendship between men and women, you know, and it's not even possible that a woman might go out with three men just to drink and chat and listen to music. Nope. She must be prepared to provide whatever number of vaginas are needed for the satisfaction of all the men present.

Even if she is a schoolgirl.

This is how things "just are" in Gilliard's world. Nothing can be done about it. It's all in our genes. Men are reptile-brained predators, totally driven by their cocks. But whites who dislike and discriminate against blacks are not doing it because the fear and hatred of the "other" is built into our genes, of course not. Racism can be fixed. Sexism, well, it's just how things are. So you gals better be ready for sex. Carry your condoms and your lube and your spare vaginas everywhere you go. Don't have a working lunch with more than the number of men you can satisfy. And if anything happens, well, you did ask for it.

And never forget that you are a target. Not a person. Well, that, too, but the way things just are is that you are a target. Especially if you are an American woman:

What also needs to be discussed with women going overseas, even to a vacation resort, is the perception of American women, courtesy of Hollywood. Which is this: they're easy. European men see American women on vacation. In a place like Aruba, it's even worse. So they expect American women are easy targets.

Osama bin Laden would agree. In fact, this whole line of thought isn't that different from what certain types of wingnuts spout. The "blaming-the-victim", the "men-just-need-sex-and-can't-help-it", and the focus on women as "targets"; all these are part of the basic belief system of one group of wingnuts.

Steve is a good writer and he's often very perceptive. But not when it comes to a discussion of gender roles and how they affect our lives. Too bad.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Some Days... 



Some days I think I'm going crazy. Some days I know that I'm crazy. But most days I'm fairly convinced that I'm a wholly sane goddess and it's the rest of this little overpopulated tennis ball that is out of its fucking mind. Though even admitting all this makes it look like it might be me who is the crazy one, after all.

One of the hardest things to do is to lead a good life, and a good life to me doesn't mean only enjoying life, but also trying to do something with it, trying to not at least hurt others more than one helps them, trying to leave the planet no worse off than it was when one began. All this and trying to eat as much chocolate and have as many orgasms as possible. This is my life plan, and the reason for it is that this is what feels right to me to do. No promises of paradise. No fear of hell. Just some internal judge or divine making me feel like a slimy piece of shit if I don't follow certain elementary ethical codes.

When I die I will go back to this earth, back to her arms. I will become something else. Perhaps the wings of a butterfly or the snout of a worm or a leaf in a maple tree. Or all of these. But whatever I become, I will still be here, still be in the wind and the soil and the water and the heat of the sun. And whatever I let happen to this planet today will affect my future incarnations. I might be born as the seventh leg of a very sick frog, for example. Or who knows, I might come back as the next queen of the universe. Either way, what I do today matters.

I have always thought that some universal justice would be beautifully served if people came back as whatever they have most hurt during their lives. Don't you just love it? All those who tortured little kittens will be reborn as kittens. Ayatollah Khomeini has just been born (the seventh time) as an unwanted little girl in some fundamentalist part of the world. And so on. - The only problem with this theory is that I might be reborn as a wingnut man as I do try to stop their dreams from becoming reality and in some heavenly book of punishments that might be judged as hurting them. Probably better not to know what happens to us after our deaths, if anything much.

What is the point of this post? Just that I have read too much that is totally absurd today. Some limit has been reached and the absurd has seeped into the rest of my life from the computer screen. I have learned that Theresa Schiavo was blind and extremely handicapped, that the whole hullabaloo about her chances of recovery was utterly, utterly idiotic. I have learned that almost any kind of governmental scandal can be swept under the rug in this country. I have learned that George Bush is like a train without an engineer, careening out of control, towards some destination that only he can see, and our reactions are pretty much to look away. Mind your own business, the rule seems to be.

But what is your own business? If you want to lead a good life, how oblivious can you afford to be? And if you are not oblivious, what is enough? What is enough for all of us who care? And how can we make a difference?

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Welcome to Wal-Mart! 



The store for the new Amerika. It's customer-friendly! It's willing to go to almost any lengths to please the customers, including requiring workers to be available even when they can't arrange childcare for that time slot, and including offering them the kick in the butt if they can't make new arrangements within seven days:

Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they're asked, even if they've built up years of seniority and can't arrange child care.

Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

"We have many people with set schedules who aren't here when we need them for our customers," said John Knuckles, a manager at the store, which is located in the Nitro Marketplace shopping center and employs more than 400.

"It is to take care of the customers, that's the only reason," he said.

Workers who have had regular shifts at the store for years now have to commit to being available for any shift from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. If they can't make the commitment by the end of this week, they'll be fired.

"It shouldn't cause any problem, if they [store employees] are concerned about their customers," Knuckles said.

Several single mothers working at the store have no choice now but to quit, said one employee, who would not give her name for fear of retribution.

"My day care closes at 6 and my baby sitter can't work past 5," said the employee, a mother of two who has been a cashier for more than three years. Neither of the services is available over the weekends, she added. "I have to be terminated; I don't know what I'll do."

But it's so good for the customers.
-----
Via this kosdiary.

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An Escape in a Golf Cart! 






This is the guvernator of California. Poor Arnold, he's not very popular these days, even at his alma mater, which he attended for a few years:

Schwarzenegger's face appeared to redden during his 15-minute commencement address Tuesday to 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, but he ignored the shouting as he recalled his days as a student and, later, his work as a bodybuilder and actor.

"Always go all out and overcome your fears," he told the graduates. "Work, work, work. Study, study, study."

Inside the stadium, the drone from hundreds of rowdy protesters threatened to drown out the governor's voice at times. Many in the crowd erupted in boos when a police officer pulled down a banner criticizing the estimated $45 million cost of the November 8 special election that Schwarzenegger proposed Monday.
...
Schwarzenegger left the stage almost immediately after his speech, speeding across the infield in a golf cart surrounded by sprinting security guards. Across the field, he pulled up toward a waiting SUV and a large steel gate was closed behind him.

Too bad that this sort of stuff is only happening in California. Other politicians need it even more.

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Meanwhile, in Pakistan 



Remember the very upsetting story about a Pakistani woman, Mukhtaran Bibi, who was gang-raped as a punishment for her brother's behavior? This was one of those village council decisions, and it created quite a furor, especially outside Pakistan. Ms. Bibi didn't commit suicide as the local custom expected. Instead, she became a public figure, took the rapists to court and gave the money she won to the establishment of schools for girls and for boys.

The Pakistan government didn't like it, though, when Ms. Bibi planned to go abroad. She was placed under house arrest and her passport was confiscated. Even the Pakistanis don't want to wash their dirty linen in public. Though that's what I'm doing here, anyway, and arresting Ms. Bibi just makes it all much worse. The wonders of technology.

Supposedly Ms. Bibi is now out of house arrest and free to travel. But they forgot to return her passport...

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A Note From the Paranoid Left 



Hi there! Here I am, waving at you through the little porthole that sometimes opens between you in the Saneland and me and other raving lunatics of the paranoid left. I have learned this and much else from the so-called liberal media. Here is Michael Kinsley on us and our tinfoil-wrapped conspiracy theories about the Downing Street memo business:

Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don't buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the revival of the left. Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the widely shared self-discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.


It takes, in short, what Hillary Clinton once called a vast conspiracy. The right has enjoyed one for years. Even moderate and reasonable right-wingers have enjoyed the presence of a mass of angry people even further right. This overhang of extremists makes the moderates appear more reasonable. It pulls the center of politics, where the media try to be and where compromises on particular issues end up, in a rightward direction. Listening to extreme views on your own side is soothing even if you would never express them and may not even believe them yourself.

I had to stop for a moment here and make horrible faces into the mirror. I wanted to see a real dangerous lefty weirdo. Looked good. In any case, I'm fairly middle-of-the-road, as divinities go (did I ever ask you to sacrifice anybody?). And Kinsley is full of shit as Billmon points out:

As I mentioned earlier, the latter argument is one the rest of the media poodles have been barking for weeks: "It was old news." "Everybody knew about it at the time." "We were having trouble with our flea collars."

Or, if you're the Associated Press: "We just never got around to it."

However, according to Kinsley, what everybody knew three years ago is a paranoid theory now, albeit one promoted to "the very edge of national respectability."

You have to admit: He's got us coming and going. By insisting that the media cover the story of Bush's illegal rush to aggressive war, we've demonstrated we're just a bunch of unreasonable extremists peddling a paranoid conspiracy theory -- one that "everybody" already knows is true.

How can you argue with logic like that?

You don't argue with logic like that. You enjoy its ludicrous nature. That's the way to stay sane, even if you are hanging onto the extreme radical lefty edge with your very toenails.

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Tuesday, June 14, 2005

My Thoughts on the Downing Street Memo 



Let me take you back to that horrible autumn of 2001. America was on its knees, grieving over an unspeakable butchering of the innocents. We were all stunned dumb with grief, trying to cope, trying to help each others to cope. The smoke and the smell of burning and death hung over New York City. I know. I lost a relative that day. He never came home to his waiting bride. His mother died recently. She gave up on life on 9/11/2001. She wanted answers, an explanation, something, and she got nothing, not even one speck of his remains. Then she grew tired and neglected her checkups and told nobody about the pain and then she died. Another victim, and there are probably many of them.

When we were finally ready for the questions to come we asked them. Who did this? Who is responsible? How can the culprits be brought into justice? And we learned about Osama bin Laden and the other Saudis, we learned about the Taliban and the support it gave Al Qaeda. The war in Afghanistan followed. Now put yourself back into the time in late autumn of 2001. Osama bin Laden had not been found. The Taliban were scattered but Afghanistan was not in any sense under control. Every day new information appeared on Al Qaeda, its presence in many countries and its plans.

America was grieving and burying its dead but it was finally ready for justice, for the hunt of the killers to be made real. And what did George Bush give us?

He gave us a long-hatched vendetta against Iraq, a country ruled by an evil dictator, true, but a country that had been ruled by the same evil dictator for a long time and once the Americans liked him well enough. But suddenly, in the middle of this major crisis, when bin Laden was using the world media to bare his butt to George Bush, suddenly, when there wasn't enough money to inspect the ships coming into the U.S. ports for nuclear weapons, suddenly, this was the right time to go and take Saddam out. Not to go after the real terrorists that threatened the U.S., but to take out someone who had nothing to do with 9/11.

When you are told that you suffer from a frightening form of cancer, do you go out and spend all your savings on getting those varicose veins removed? Well, that is pretty much what George Bush decided to do. Except that it's not just money we are spending on the varicose veins of Iraq but also lives. And all for what? Oil? Weapons of mass destruction? Some old Bush family quarrel having to do with prick sizes? Now, remember that in 2001 we were told nothing about the big boots of freedom marching all over the Iraqis. That's a later recreation of the events. In 2001 we were told that getting the varicose veins removed was more important than fighting the cancer that was spreading rapidly. So.

This is the place where the Downing Street memos fit. The proof that all I have said here is true. The proof of not only lying by our government but of incompetency, of voluntary sacrifice of all those lives that have been lost in Iraq. And what about Afghanistan? How are things going there? Where the hell is Osama bin Laden? Where are all those materials that disappeared in Iraq, materials which can be used to make biological weapons, for example? On some freight boat making its way across the ocean right now? Making its way towards whom? Think about this.

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This is Funny! 



Just when I posted on the Downing Street memo multiplying itself like those Biblical patriarchs I got this e-mail from FAIR:

A June 7 White House press conference with George W. Bush and Tony Blair offered the first public response from Bush to the memo, and with that came an upswing in U.S. media attention. But some in the media took it as a chance to lash out at the activists who have been bringing attention to the story all along. On June 8, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank referred to Downing Street Memo activists--some of whom were offering a cash reward for the first journalist to ask Bush about the memo--as "wing nuts." He also offered an illogical explanation for the memo's low media profile:


"In part, the memo never gained traction here because, unlike in Britain, it wasn't election season, and the war is not as unpopular here. In part, it's also because the notion that Bush was intent on military action in Iraq had been widely reported here before, in accounts from Paul O'Neill and Bob Woodward, among others. The memo was also more newsworthy across the Atlantic because it reinforced the notion there that Blair has been acting as Bush's 'poodle.'"



Milbank had reported the same day (6/8/05) that his paper's latest poll showed that only 41 percent of Americans approved of the Iraq war--which makes one wonder when exactly the war would cross Milbank's threshold and become unpopular enough to make the memo newsworthy. Secondly, Milbank argued the memo isn't news because other similar stories were once reported--a peculiar explanation, to be sure. Finally, Milbank's third rationale--that the memo was news in the U.K. because it confirmed existing suspicions--would seem to directly contradict the

It is such a beauty of...yes!, wingnut logic, that I'm going to just sit here quietly reading it over and over again.

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Today's Action Alert for Canadians! 



Yes, I do have several hundred Canadian readers. Or maybe even more if they share the computers as thrifty Canadians might. In any case, Dave from Canada suggested this action alert for all of you so that you don't have to feel slighted on this here blog:


Spring Convocation Honours Feminists, Leaders in Healthcare and Education
[...]
As a Humanist leader Dr. Henry Morgentaler has promoted the idea that
people have a right to control their own sexuality and reproduction,
without interference by the state. He founded the first abortion
clinic in Montreal in 1968 and in the years that followed he
challenged the criminal code by providing safe abortions for women in
his clinic in Montreal. His belief in a "Woman's Right to Choose"
eventually led to a change in the law. He has continued to campaign
province by province seeking to provide abortion services under
Medicare to women deprived of access - a struggle which continues to
this day. Today, Dr. Morgentaler operates six clinics in Canada
providing excellent care for women in need of abortion and
contraceptive services.
-----

A group called "Catholics For Life" has raised a petition against
granting Henry Morgentaler his honorary doctorate and at last count
have gathered 12000 signatures. Their arguments are typical wingnut
fare, mostly name-calling and insistence that Mr. Morgentaler has
"personally killed thousands of unborn children" and whatnot. They
even have a website that apes the design of the UWO site to give the
impression they are somehow affiliated with the university.

An online petition to uphold the decision to grant the honorary degree
is up at http://www.petitiononline.com/DRHM0605/petition.html , and
concerned Canadians (or Canada sympathizers) can write to Dr. Paul
Davenport, president of UWO, by email at pdavenpo@uwo.ca, or by postal
mail at:
University of Western Ontario,
1151 Richmond Street, Suite 2,
London, ON N6A 5B8

A sample letter follows.

Thank you,
Dave from Montreal
-----
Doctor Davenport,

I understand that you are currently under pressure from religious
groups to deny Henry Morgentaler the honorary doctorate UWO plans to
bestow on him this Thursday. I am writing to ask you to please stick
to your conviction that Mr. Morgentaler is a hero, not a murderer. I
am writing to remind you, in case the insistence of catholic
anti-abortion groups has worn at your resolve, that the Canadian
supreme court has repeatedly upheld a woman's right to dominion over
her own body and that no group may by force of numbers overturn that.
I am writing you, Doctor Davenport, because I know you have said that
you support Mr. Morgentaler's honouring by the university because of
his persistent efforts to first enact, then uphold a woman's right to
choose. While you are right to say that religious groups' opinions are
not to be dismissed or disrespected, neither may they be relied on to
create policy in any secular institution.

You have acknowledged the numerous and fiery responses from both sides
of this debate, and so I would like to make one point: my opinion on
abortion does not matter, and should be disregarded.

In matters of civil liberties public opinion should have no sway. I'm
sure I don't need to point out to you that were this not the case we
would have far more inequality than we do, and that "Tyranny of the
Majority" would rule. So please, heed the wisdom of the supreme court
and grant Mr Morgentaler, and whoever might come after him, the
respect and honour they are due as champions of the struggle for civil
rights and against oppression.

Thank you,
J Smith
Somewhereville


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The Downing Street Memo Has Had Babies! 



That would be a wingnutty and sweet way of telling you that there are now many such memos, all written in 2002 and all showing that George Bush lied. Now I can finally call lying lying. This weekend the Washington Post wrote:

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."
...
The "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," said the memo -- an assertion attributed to the then-chief of British intelligence, and denied by U.S. officials and by Blair at a news conference with Bush last week in Washington. Democrats in Congress led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), however, have scheduled an unofficial hearing on the matter for Thursday.

Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath.

In a section titled "Benefits/Risks," the July 21 memo states, "Even with a legal base and a viable military plan, we would still need to ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the risks."

Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

You can see a timeline of the events that led to the war and the associated memos here.

Some have said (this is how it is done on Fox News: "some have said") that none of this matters at all because people were talking about these kinds of possibilities all along. Including one Echidne of the snakes. But of course this matters. The talk was idle, based on hypotheses and guesses. Now we have evidence:

That memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith, who writes for the London Sunday Times. Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.

We have evidence to show that the Bush administration lied and that it was inept and never bothered to prepare for the aftermath of the war (which they probably saw as a computer game type event). Here are some of the things that we now have proof of:

British Knew Iraqi WMD Were Not a Threat: "There is no greater threat now that [Saddam] will use WMD than there has been in recent years, so continuing containment is an option." [Iraq: Options Paper]

Evidence Did Not Show Much Advance In Iraq's Weapons Programs: "Even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years on [the] nuclear, missile or CW/BW fronts: the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up." [Ricketts Paper, 3/22/02]

Evidence Was Thin on Iraq/Al Qaeda Ties: "US is scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al [Qaida] is so far frankly unconvincing." [Ricketts Paper, 3/22/02]

"No Credible Evidence" On Iraq/Al Qaeda Link: "There has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL and Al Qaida." [Straw Paper, 3/25/02]

Wolfowitz Knew Supposed Iraq/Al Qaeda Link Was Weak: Wolfowitz said that "there might be doubt about the alleged meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, and Iraqi intelligence (did we, he asked, know anything more about this meeting?)." [Meyer Paper, 3/18/02]

Representative John Conyers will hold a hearing and a rally on these memos this coming Thursday. Information is available on www.afterdowningstreet.org.

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Monday, June 13, 2005

Back Home in the People's Republic of Snakeland 



I am one happy goddess right now! Skipping and dancing around the Snakepit Inc., kissing the ground and otherwise making a racket. I am back safe and sound and even my hounds Hank and Henrietta are happy! We have all returned from our spying mission behind the enemy lines and we caught no deadly bugs, not even fleas! I do have several nearly uncracked 1970's dinner plates, from yard sales, and some broken costume jewelry that could be very good if someone quite skilled worked on it for a few days. Then I could give it away as presents. - These purchases were a necessary part of my cover in Wingnuttia: I had to go to yard sales on Saturday and various churches on Sunday. Those were the only places where Fox News wasn't on all the time. I swear that this is the reason why half of America has gone bonkers. The most expert decoders should start searching for the brainwashing messages in the Fox broadcasts.

Bill O'Reilly has a frightening face, especially when it is plastered on a wall-sized Wingnuttia television screen while you are trying to eat hot dogs (without eating the dead animal bits) and mayonnaise and lettuce with mayonnaise and Miracle Whip pizzas. The pores in O'Reilly's skin started looking like long escape tunnels to me, and I had to claw the plastic that covered the dining room chairs not to try to jump into his nostrils. At the same time someone's "very religious" Cousin Walt was trying to sink his nose into my breasts. There is so much very open and very vulgar sex going on in Wingnuttia and most of it is about tits.

So you can see why I couldn't blog very well. All this plus the difficulties my stomach had with the mayonnaise and the fact that I hate iced tea and it hates me and keeps me awake all night if the mosquito bites do not. I am knackered as the people in the north of England say. I'm also very snotty and uppity about all this, and before someone else points that out I wish to say it first: Yes, I am a very arrogant goddess and think that I'm better than the Wingnuttians. And no, they are not all bad or bad at all, and I will write serious and eloquent epistles about my experiences later on, so eloquent that your ears will tear up with the beauty of it all. But right now I need to be bitchy, because I'm covered with mosquito bites and tired and I have just driven nine hours with two large dogs breathing on my neck the whole time. And the reason for my trip was to be a kind and caring angel to an ailing quasi-relative which I did. I also cleaned a house and washed ten loads of laundry and organized a nursing rotation and de-flead someone else's pets. Just so you know that I have earned my bitching rights.

On the way back I passed a large advertisement for "adult entertainment". You know, tits and tits. Then, only a mile later, another large board advertized "adult housing". You know, nursing homes for the elderly who are not yet bed-ridden. This combination made me laugh for the last fifty miles. We humans are really a weird species. I'm glad I'm a goddess.

Real political blogging tomorrow.

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Saturday, June 11, 2005

Tourism in Wingnuttia 



We really should start a travel agency for those intrepid souls who wish to follow my pathbreaking footsteps and visit Wingnuttia in the real dimensions. For example, we need to put together all the immunization requirements, a list of suitable clothing (nobody told me about the need for high heels with jeans) and a list of unsuitable clothing (my "Got Democracy?" t-shirt didn't provoke cries of admiration). Also of reading materials that are vital for survival purposes. And a primer on suitable answers for all those questions one gets here, most of them impossible to answer honestly (Don't you just hate that Howard Dean?).

I don't know if the cuisine in Wingnuttia differs from that elsewhere except in the KoolAid department, but the particular town I'm visiting has the oddest cuisine in some ways. Everything has mayonnaise in it, even the breakfast cereal, and I'm coming out in divine spots. Sometimes called zits among humans. This may explain the need for such strong measures as very thick orange foundation on so many of the female faces here? Or am I just going really vicious here? Probably the latter. I miss Snakepit Inc. and it's solitude!

But think of the new material I will have at the end of this trip!

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A Misdemeanor??? 



This is truly awful and inexplicable:

The man whose wife's death in April 2004 was termed "violent, unusual and unnatural" in a report by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is now facing only a misdemeanor charge of domestic abuse - assault and battery.

John Wrabel, 65, had been charged with felony domestic assault and battery following the death of his wife Myrna on April 10, 2004, at Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Lawton, where she was flown by Air-Vac after being beaten April 7, 2004, at the family residence, 15836 S. County Road 206.

At a preliminary hearing conference in the case held April 22, Wrabel appeared with his attorney, Brad Leverett, and the District Attorney's Office reduced the charge to a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of $3,000, or both.

The "Amended Information" filed by District Attorney John Wampler states that Wrabel committed the abuse "by willfully and unlawfully striking Myrna Wrabel, the spouse, on the head, causing left frontoparietal and temporal acute subdural hematoma in the face, and on her legs and left buttock, causing bruises, with his hands, feet and/or unknown object, with force and violence and with unlawful intent to do Myrna Wrabel corporal hurt and bodily injury."

An autopsy report completed July 28 of last year by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner states that the probable cause of death of Mrs. Wrabel, also 65, was blunt force head trauma.

I'm stuck in Wingnuttia and can't go around seeking for an explanation for a rule which would call bludgeoning someone to death a misdemeanor. Maybe the legal eagles can help us here. But this is clearly so wrong.

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Friday, June 10, 2005

From Behind Enemy Lines 



SHHHH!
I'm typing this in an attic somewhere in Wingnuttia, after a day spent with people who think that George Bush is "cute" and that the Deep Throat was a scoundrel. I have watched Bill O'Reilly with people who don't laugh when he opens his mouth. I have stared at Fox News until I have prayed to go blind. This is the Other America.

So far my cover has not been broken, though some have the beginnings of a suspicion, probably because I couldn't help laughing at Dick Cheney's nutcracker jaws. The culturally sanctioned tradition here is awed silence and careful attention. I'm stretched to the limits of my divine ability to dissemble, but if I didn't have these few minutes of sanity in the attic I'd probably run down the local mainstream shooting anything that moves.

I'm not sure how often I can be in touch. I'm wearing a t-shirt with "God Bless America" stickers haphazardly scattered all over it, but will this be enough? If you hear no more from me do not worry: I am not an all-American blond girl which must mean that I will remain safe from all evildoers. Fox News tells me so. Until next time....

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Thursday, June 09, 2005

More on the Downing Street Memo 



The Salon has a good article on the idiotic situation we find ourselves in right now with respect to this "famous" memorandum:

Halfway through Sunday's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert, interviewing Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, asked about a secret, top-level British government memorandum. Consisting of minutes from a July 23, 2002, meeting attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his closest advisors, the memo revealed their impression that the Bush administration, eight months before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, had already decided to invade and that Washington seemed more concerned with justifying a war than preventing one.

The memo was leaked this year to the Times of London, which printed it on May 1. The story, coming on the eve of Blair's reelection, generated extensive press coverage in Britain. In setting up his question to Mehlman on Sunday, Russert said, "Let me turn to the now famous Downing Street memo" (emphasis added).

Famous? It would be famous in America if the D.C. press corps functioned the way it's supposed to. Russert's June 5 reference, five weeks after the story broke, represented the first time NBC News had even mentioned the document or the controversy surrounding it. In fact, Russert's query was the first time any of the network news divisions addressed the issue seriously. In an age of instant communications, the American mainstream media has taken an exceedingly long time -- as if news of the memo had traveled by vessel across the Atlantic Ocean -- to report on the leaked document. Nor has it considered its grave implications -- namely, that President Bush lied to the American people and Congress during the run-up to the war with Iraq when he insisted over and over again that war was his administration's last option.

Hilarious, isn't it? Or it would be hilarious if we were reading about it as a story happening in some other, preferably imaginary, place. The media is scared of this administration, and quite honestly, I don't really blame them on a purely personal level. But the old saying about the kitchen and heat applies here, nevertheless.

I'm naturally not the only one who has noticed all this. There is criticism of the mainstream media's cowardice, in all sorts of lefty places:

The fact that it took five weeks for more than a handful of Washington reporters to focus on the memo highlights a striking disconnect between some news consumers and mainstream news producers. The memo story epitomizes a mainstream press corps that is genuinely afraid to ask tough questions and write tough stories about the Bush administration. Worse, in the case of the Downing Street memo, it simply refuses to report on the existence of a plainly newsworthy document.

"This is where all the work conservatives and the administration have done in terms of bullying the press, making it less willing to write confrontational pieces -- this is where it's paid off," says David Brock, CEO of Media Matters for America, a liberal media advocacy group. "It's a glaring example of omission."

"I think it exacerbates the sense among some [of our] listeners that NPR is not taking on the Bush administration," notes Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman for National Public Radio, who continues to receive listener complaints about the missing memo story. As of Tuesday, NPR had aired just two references to the Downing Street memo, and both occurred in passing conversation, without giving listeners the full context or the details of the memo. Asked about the network's slim coverage, Dvorkin says, "I was surprised. It's a bigger story than we've given it. It deserves more attention."

Instead, attention in the media seems to be going towards stopping the use of anonymous sources. To avoid another Newsweek episode. This will also pretty much put a stop to all real revelations about any future government mistakes, I fear.

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Future Plans for George Bush 



If he ever decides not to be the president what will George do? According to the LA Times:

And in comments to the Los Angeles Times, Bush said that his return to private life probably would include work with Texas faith-based organizations that performed social services. He did not elaborate.

Bush will be 62 when his second term ends. The youngest former president was Theodore Roosevelt, who was 50 when he left the White House.

"He's going to be a very young man," said Evans, adding that he had not heard Bush talk about an intent to work with faith-based groups. "He will continue to serve his fellow man in some capacity. He's driven by serving others."

I'll be watching, with great interest! What are you willing to bet that the form in which George will serve others won't look anything like this? Unless you define "fellow man" as narrowly as it can be and assume that the article is talking about men who work in the oil industry? Just kidding...I think.

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That Rude Dean 



Yesterday's Jerry Springer show on Air America Radio asked this question: Is Howard Dean too wacky to chair the Democratic National Committee? This is because Dean called the Republican party a party for white Christians. He was using euphemisms, of course. What he really meant, I suspect, was that the people who currently benefit from the policies of the Republican party are wealthy and/or fundamentalist wingnuts. The majority of these two groups are white.

I'd like to ask a few questions related to the one Springer posed:
Is George Bush wacky enough to be the president of this country? Is Patrick Buchanan a mainstream personality? Does Dr. Dobson represent mainstream family values? Is Ann Coulter your average neutral journalist? Is what these individuals say about the Democratic party always reasoned, polite and mature? Ever?

And finally: Are the number of spined Democrats countable with the toes of one foot? Many Democrats have wasted no time distancing themselves from Dean and his uncouth comment. Why, Dean comes across almost as rude as...a Republican!

Welcome to the Upside-Down World.

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Jello... 



Just for the fun of it: When women bloggers go jello wrestling. This has to do with a post by Lance. Also with the idea of finding the miracle switch...

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Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Travelin' 



I'm going to be on the road from tomorrow morning until Monday night. I have a cunning plan for internet access but it may be sporadic. We'll see. The plan is to post as usual but the roadside gods are not always kind.

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Color Me Terminally Confused 



Some new poll results on Bush are out and the slide down continues:

The full results of the latest Washington Post/ABC news poll are in, with more bad news for President Bush. In addition to finding that Bush's approval rating remains at a career low and that a majority of Americans think he's not paying attention to issues that are important to them, the results show that 52 percent of Americans believe the war in Iraq has not made the U.S. safer. The Post points out that this finding marks "the first time a majority of Americans disagreed with the central notion Bush has offered to build support for war: that the fight there will make Americans safer from terrorists at home."

Ok. And Bush won. He has a mandate (not just a man-date). He's keeping us safe. The economy is roaring. Social Security will be eradicated. The war against terror (a feeling) is successful. But...Americans don't like Bush.

Neither do they like the Republicans right now. Even though the Republicans are ramming the most extreme judges through. Even though these judges don't respect the precedent. Even though some of them at least hate the government that they are supposed to serve. And all this is supposed to be the will of the people or at least the will of the wingnuts. But read this:

Poll results also showed that this month is the first time since 9/11 that more respondents said they trust Democrats than Republicans to do a better job in coping with the main problems the nation will face in the next few years -- with 46 percent putting their faith in Dems, versus 41 percent who favored the GOP.

Well, it's not an election. Elections are different, in all sorts of mysterious ways. For example, the Republicans are likely to win the next one, too. Don't ask me how I know this. I just do. That's something George Bush and I share: a straight line to a divinity. Mine is just a little shorter.

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Janice Rodgers Brown - Business As Usual 



Here we are, then:

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed California judge Janice Rogers Brown for the federal appeals court, ending a two-year battle filled with accusations of racism and sexism and shadowed by a dispute over Democratic blocking tactics.

The 56-43 vote to confirm Brown to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was the result of an agreement reached last month that averted, for the time being, a showdown between Republicans and Democrats over the filibustering of President Bush's judicial nominees.

What are we to make of this? It seems that Judge Brown is not extreme enough to allow Democrats to filibuster. She's really a mainstream voice, isn't she? These are some of her mainstream opinions:

* A 1999 dissent drafted by Brown suggested that the First Amendment allows employees to use racial epithets in the workplace;

* A Brown decision would have barred administrative agencies from awarding compensatory damages in race discrimination cases;

* A Brown opinion would have struck down a law requiring paint companies to help fund treatment of children exposed to lead paint;

* Rated "unqualified" by three-fourths of the state bar's examiners when nominated to the California Supreme Court;

* Brown told a meeting of the Federalist Society that "where government moves in, community retreats [and] civil society disintegrates";

* Brown has said that government leads to "families under siege, war in the streets…"

* Brown said that "when government advances, freedom is imperiled [and] civilization itself jeopardized."

* Brown told an audience that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots.

Or as a nice summary of what we have growing for eventual transplanting into the Supreme Court flowerbed:

A review of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown's record to date raises serious questions and grave concerns about her persistent and disturbing hostility to affirmative action, civil rights, the rights of people with disabilities, workers' rights, and criminal rights. In addition, Brown has often been the lone justice to dissent on the California Supreme Court, illustrating that her judicial philosophy is outside the mainstream. Not only does she show an inability to dispassionately review cases, her opinions are based on extremist ideology that ignores judicial precedent, including that set by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I look forward with great interest to the nominee that is actually regarded as extreme enough to allow filibustering.

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When Is A Job Offer Not A Job Offer? 



When the applicant changes sex in the middle of the process? This is what happened to David Schroer, according to this week-old story:

The job candidate interviewing to be a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress seemed to have exceptional qualifications: a 25-year Army veteran and former Special Forces commander who spent a career hunting terrorists and often personally briefed the vice president, defense secretary or Joint Chiefs of Staff on sensitive operations.

The interviews and salary talks went well for David Schroer. A job offer followed, and he accepted. Then the new employee brought up one last item: Once work began, the name would be Diane, not David.

The job offer, Schroer said, was rescinded the next day.

This case is unlikely to be about sex discrimination in the traditional sense though who knows for sure. But I suspect that it's about discrimination against transgendered individuals. I can't think of any nondiscriminatory reasons for rescinding the offer unless the medical operations Schroer is going to have done to transition would mean that she would lose lots of time from work. Otherwise, whether it's Diane or David shouldn't matter. It's the same skills and knowledge that are being employed.

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Lactivism And Its Foes 



Lactivism is the name of a new movement intending to make breast-feeding acceptable essentially wherever the woman can legally be. To bring it into the wider society. To point out that this is the way babies get their nutrition and that it's a little silly to force mothers to hide in public toilets in order to feed their babies.

Those who are opposed to public breast-feeding are opposed to the idea of bared breasts, mostly. Breasts are a sexual part of the body and should not be exposed publicly. Why not? Because they will affect some observers sexually? Or because they will upset children? Yet breasts are the organ which makes milk for infants, and we are told by various health experts that breast-feeding is beneficial.

Much of the embarrassment with public breast-feeding is caused by cultural traditions. The culture in the U.S. focuses on the sexual nature of breasts and demands them to be hidden except when they are used sexually. Like in ads and on tv and in porn. In fact, breasts are on show an awful lot, just not in the process of producing milk. My guess is that when public breast-feeding becomes more and more common we will forget all about the embarrassment.

This is an interesting dilemma for certain types of wingnuts who very much wish to see women focus on children but who also very much wish to ban anything sexual. Which way would they go on the desirability of public breast-feeding? They'd probably advocate that lactating women stay at home "where they belong". In fact, there are faint echoes in all this of the reasons for sexual segregation in some muslim countries: so much simpler and easier not to have to face evidence of difference anywhere.

Just so that you don't forget what we are ultimately talking about here: power, I'm ending this post with a quote from a troll poster on Eschaton on this topic:

I have a different position.
I think righteous women's studies types flaunt their boobiness when breastfeeding.
So I just stare...and stare...and drool...
We'll see how has the power as I imagine my spooge mingling with the dripping milk.
Go ahead...breast feed, little momma. Breast feed.

----
I stole the idea for this post from Atrios.

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Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Young White Women Missing 



This has been the major news item during the spring. Not the war, not the Downing Street Memo, not the economy, but young white women who have been murdered or who have disappeared, voluntarily or not. These stories are awful, of course, especially when they are about crimes but the way the media uses them to plaster over other important news items can't be explained by their national or global importance. Yes, they are important to report, but, no, they are not the only thing that should be reported, and that is pretty much what takes place.

The reasons for picking a particular story is in what people turn to in their media consumption choices. Because that is where the money for the media companies may be found. Thus, to understand the prevalence of the young-white-woman-missing stories requires a dive into the deep layers of the American consumer's mind.

The first thing we notice along this dive is that the victims portrayed are never black, are never older, and are almost always attractive. They correspond to the mythological ideas of a Desirable Woman in this society: pure, young and beautiful. Like the princesses that were captured by dragons in fairy tales, helplessly waiting for the valiant prince to come and set them free (or, rather, to marry them). Attractive young white women are not supposed to go missing, also, which makes these news stories interesting as rarities of a sort. In reality, many women go missing every day and many are murdered in terrible ways. But too many of these victims were black or older or otherwise not of interest in the myth-making sense.

As we dive deeper into the imaginary American consciousness we come across variations, and even these explain why the damsel-in-distress stories are so valuable for the media: They can be interpreted to reinforce almost any prejudice a person might hold. For example, for a conservative these stories are moral tales about what happens when women are given too much freedom, or proofs that the society is descending into a moral chaos, what with all those perverts being allowed to walk about, hunting for dainty young maidens. Never mind that the stories are rare; after the media has finished with them they appear to be commonplace occurrences.

For a progressive or a liberal these stories are a disgusting case of the media going haywire, chasing after cheap stunts and avoiding all serious debate. But even the liberal must read the story to find out how bad things truly are.

Then there are those who see these victims as getting their comeuppance, after years of being the Class Princess or whatever. And those who enjoy the thrill of fear and sympathy, as long as it's all vicarious. And of course those who really worry about the victims, who are drawn into deep empathy through the personification of fear and suffering that the media does so well. And those who wish for another runaway-bride story as further evidence of the treacherousness of all women. And so on.

But the truth still remains: That these sorts of events are rare and that when they occur they are more likely to have victims who are not white. When the media doesn't report this they are doing all of us a disservice, especially if they omit other news items which are crucial for us to learn.

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What We Are Missing in the New York Times Opinion Columns 



Lots of good writing, for one thing. Women's voices, for another. To substitute for them we get John Tierney who tells us why women can't be in the New York Times opinion columns: they are not competitive enough.

So here are the also-rans, the girls, the ones whose writing is not up to scratch? Note that I did no searching for especially juicy bits. I just googled the most recent articles by Molly Ivins and Katha Pollitt. Here's Molly on Texas politics:

So, the Texas Legislature decided it's OK for gay couples to be foster parents, but only if they're not married. I would explain what message that sends, if only I understood it.

Look at it this way: At least we can hunt inside city limits now. My personal fave was the day they voted themselves a huge retirement pension and the next day cut retirement benefits for the teachers. Classy move, boys. Retiring solons will now get $36,000 a year after 12 years in the Lege. The job pays $7,200 a year and requires 140 days of work once every other year. Welcome to a Republican-dominated state.

As all hands know by now, the Lege got nowhere on the Big One -- the interrelated issues of property tax relief and school financing. The whole state is screaming for property tax relief because of the rise in real estate values.

In order to lower property taxes, you have to raise them on something else. So of course the House decided to tax ordinary people, instead of taxing big corporations. Not for nothing is the House gallery, where the business lobbyists sit, known as "the Owner's Box."

And here is Katha in all her glory:

Penises were all over the news as I sat down to write this column. On May 22 faces blushed scarlet in New York State when it came to light that over the past five years Medicaid has handed out free Viagra to 198 sex criminals. Apparently the state thought federal rules required no less. The next day, researchers released a study showing excellent results for Johnson & Johnson's dapoxetine, a drug that prevents premature ejaculation and intensifies the male orgasm. True, rapists' access to taxpayer-funded stiffies vanished within hours, and they will probably have to buy their own dapoxetine too. But you have to admit, men are moving right along, sexually. They have drugs to help them get up and stay in and get out in a shower of sparks, and an array of private and public health plans to pay for these fleshly maneuvers: Last year Medicaid laid out approximately $38 million for impotence drugs; Medicare will start providing them for seniors next year at an estimated cost of nearly $2 billion over the following decade. Even the Defense Department covers them. Need I add that men don't have to worry that their pharmacist will ask to see a marriage license or plug their name into the sex offender registry before handing over those little blue pills?

Just the opening paragraphs of these pen-wielding masters. And they write equally well on any topic you care to mention.

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The Downing Street Memo 



Have you read it? If not, go here and do so. You can make up your own mind whether it's important or whether it matters not at all. I think that it is very important though I knew all that crap already.

Here is an example of what the Memo shows:

The Downing Street Memo reported that in a July 23, 2002 meeting between Prime Minister Blair and his war cabinet, attendees of the meeting discussed the fact that President Bush had already made up his mind to attack Iraq. According to the minutes of the meeting:

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action."

Yet, as the record below proves, President Bush claimed over and over after July 23rd until the war began that he had not made up his mind.

Bush: "Of course, I haven't made up my mind we're going to war with Iraq." [10/1/02]

Bush:"Hopefully, we can do this peacefully – don't get me wrong. And if the world were to collectively come together to do so, and to put pressure on Saddam Hussein and convince him to disarm, there's a chance he may decide to do that. And war is not my first choice, don't – it's my last choice." [11/7/02]

Politicians always dissemble, you might murmur. Indeed, but they have not always decided to attack a country and then pretended that they didn't really want to do so.

I feel silly even writing about this. In a normal sane world I wouldn't have to, because the stuff would be in every news program and in every political talkshow and we'd get to the bottom of it, one way or another. But not here and not now. Sometimes I fear that the KoolAid is in the water systems.

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Monday, June 06, 2005

Housekeeping 



How I wish someone would keep house for me. Anyway, I have started cleaning up my links and adding some. Let me know about any problems you spot. One I have noticed is that many blogs have official names which are not used as much as the name of the blogger. I have listed them under the official names but I wonder if a better system exists?

Another problem is that listing the links in alphabetical order doesn't tell very much about their contents. Some of the blogs I link to I do so because of the good writing, some because of good analysis, some because of the frequent news there etc.. Some are openly feminist blogs and others are not. But I really don't want to do the work needed to reclassify everything nicely, because a) it's extremely boring work and b) the minute I finish blogs jump out of their boxes and then I'm blamed for being inaccurate.

Then there is the problem of deciding when a blog is dead or at least resting. When should the last post be for me to keep a blog on the list?

I haven't added links to wingnut blogs. Should I do that? I have a secret list of blogs there I visit. Let me know if you wish to venture out on your own.

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The Medical Marijuana Decision 



The Supreme Court has decided that

Two California women have no right to use locally grown marijuana for medical purposes when federal drug statutes outlaw its use under any circumstances.

In an important decision announced Monday dealing with the balance of governmental powers, the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government has the authority under the US Constitution to override a state law permitting the medical use of marijuana.

The 6-to-3 decision is a defeat for California and nine other states with similar medical marijuana laws. It is also a major setback for those medical patients who have come to rely on marijuana as part of their treatment.

In addition, it marks a retreat by the high court from its so-called federalism revival. "There was a counterrevolution in progress, how far will they go. The answer appears to be not very far," says Douglas Laycock, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas Law School.

Digby has a good take on what this means, in terms of each judge's political stance and so on. To me it looks like a few of the wingnut judges are pure political opportunists: rule for the states' rights when that brings the country a step closer to wingnuttery, rule against the state's rights when doing so has the same effect. But I'm not a legal mind.

I hope that I will never need medical marijuana for pain relief, or that nobody I care about will need it. But then there is always someone who will need it, and this decision makes them into potential criminals. Too sad.

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Those Hips, Those Hips... 



This study, done by the Institute of Preventative Medicine in Copenhagen, is not to my liking. I don't have good breeding hips:

The Danish researchers examined almost 3,000 men and women aged between 35 and 65 from 1987 to 1988

They measured height, weight and body mass index - calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by the square of your height in metres.

They then looked at Danish health registers up until the end of 1998 to look at how many of the men and women had cardiovascular problems, and up to 2001 to see how many had died.

Compared to the group of women with the smallest hip circumferences, women with the biggest were found to have an 87% reduction in deaths.

They also had an 86% reduced risk of having coronary heart disease and a 46% reduction in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to the researchers.

Previous studies have found both men and women with small hips are at an increased risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure and gall bladder disease.

However the study, which has been published in Obesity Research, found a wider hip circumference was not linked with better heart health in men.

The general warning about studies of this kind applies here, too: It's very difficult to standardize for all the other causes while examining people outside laboratory circumstances, and correlations shouldn't be assumed to imply causality unless there are other good reasons for interpreting them that way. For example, if the people with narrower hip circumferences were already unwell they might have been slimmer for that reason and more likely to then come up in the death statistics later on. In this case, though, there is a hypothesis why wider hips could be good for heart health:

The researchers say hip fat contains a beneficial natural anti-inflammatory.
They said this anti-inflammatory, called adiponectin, prevents arteries swelling up and becoming blocked.

The hips need to be at least forty inches wide for the protection to apply, the researchers argue. This means size fourteen hips, m'dears. I have no hope in hell of getting there.

In any case, it's not clear if growing more fat would help or if it's the bone structure in the hips that matters. I'd probably just grow apple-shaped rather than pear-shaped, and that's even worse for your heart.

Oh well, if this study is true it's good news for all the women with wide hips. That's the best I can do right now.

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Feminism on DailyKos 



A recent ad on DailyKos caused some complaints to Kos and he answered those like this:

So over the weekend, certain segments of the community have erupted in anger over the TBS ad for their reality show, the Real Gilligan's Island. Apparently, having two women throw pies at each other, wrestle each other in a sexy, lesbianic manner, then having water splashed on their ample, fake bosoms is degrading to women. Or something like that.

Whatever. Feel free to be offended. I find such humorless, knee-jerk reactions, to be tedious at best, sanctimonious and arrogant at worst. I don't care for such sanctimony from Joe Lieberman, I don't care for it from anyone else. Some people find such content offensive. Some people find it arousing. Some people find it funny. To each his or her own.

But I am not Lieberman. I won't sit there and judge pop culture and act as gatekeeper to what I think is "appropriate", and what isn't.

And I certainly won't let the sanctimonious women's studies set play that role on this site. Feel free to be offended. Feel free to claim that I'm somehow abandoning "progressive principles" by running the ad. It's a free country. Feel free to storm off in a huff. Other deserving bloggers could use the patronage.

Me, I'll focus on the important shit.

There are over seven hundred comments about this post as well as an update in which Kos slightly apologizes on his condemnation of women's studies, though he then adds:

But I honestly didn't mean to smear anyone who has ever taken a women's studies course, or majored or minored or gotten an advance degree in it. Just what is, to me, a small, extremist set looking for signs of female subjugation under every rock.

It's hard to know what Kos means by "the important shit" in this context. Does he simply intend to say that this particular ad is not worth fighting over? Or does he imply that women's issues are not important? I don't know. But I have noticed in the past some hints that the latter might be the case. When Kos promoted certain writers to his weekend crew he explained that his choices were based on merit, even the small number of women in that crew (one?). "Merit" is the argument wingnuts use, too, though merit is often whatever the political biases of the assessor deem meritorious, and it would naturally be the counterargument of anyone accused of discrimination.

As I said, I don't know what Kos was trying to say in his post on these issues but he doesn't come across as a feminist himself. There is a subgroup of progressive or lefty writers who view women's issues as cultural ones, not as political ones, and hence less important or even irritating diversions of no value. Then there is the other subgroup that views feminism as an evolutionary impossibility, because men's sexual desires and the male dominance are given dominance and seen as impossible to change. These same writers regard racism as plain wrong, which I find interesting given that the hatred of the other can be explained every bit as dandily in the evolutionary psychology myth-making machinery.

There are some extremist women's studies programs, probably, just as there are extremist groups in all other political camps. But to refer to only the extremist wing of the feminist movement, as Kos did, is also the way one attacks an opponent. Just observe my writing for a while. So I'm beginning to lean towards thinking that Kos is not much into women's rights within the total Democratic package. It would be nice to be proved wrong on that count, of course.

Much of the anti-woman stuff in the society is fairly invisible unless you happen to be a woman, and a woman who has awakened to these issues, to boot. Some time ago I started to write a diary of my public radio listening. I noted down any programs that discussed gender issues or women, the topic and the conclusions, and I set the diary aside unread for a while. When I actually analyzed my notes I was shocked, and I'm a feminist. This was public radio, remember, so I expected fairly neutral coverage. What I found was something different: the programs about women or gender differences were always about the problems that women cause or that women have, always slightly negative in tone, and the solutions always privileged the idea that women should somehow change. The only programs taking the same tone about men were on men's medical issues, whereas the negative issues on women were not only on health but also on women working, women mothering, women not speaking in public, women not getting raises, women reacting worse to terrorism threats, women not being suitable for the military and on and on.

In short, and in an effort to be polite, I suggest that Kos doesn't see the sexism around him. That's the only kind explanation I can give for his response, whether the particular ad is harmless or not (I didn't look).

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Sunday, June 05, 2005

Iraq and the Democrats 



Atrios has two posts today on Iraq. He talks extensively on the possible stances that Democrats can and should take on Iraq. He also makes a distinction between the actual policies and the propaganda that goes with it. The wingnuts always have the two neatly separate, and reading the propaganda doesn't tell us much about the policies. For that you need to follow the actual deeds. Anyway, Atrios's point is that the Democrats have neither a good exit policy or good propaganda on Iraq. This is true.

Iraq is a mess for the United States. It was a country kept together by a ruthless dictator who nevertheless was not for theocracy. His removal took away the weak cohesion of the country and opened it for civil war. Or for theocracy. Only a theocracy seems strong enough an alternative to Saddam.

These are the tendencies in Iraq, and my prediction is that there will first be a civil war, then a fundamentalist theocracy. Not exactly "spreading freedom and democracy". If the United States wants something different it will have to stay for a very long time and guard the oil pipelines. This will cost many many lives and when the U.S. finally leaves there will be a civil war and then probably theocracy.

I base this prediction on what I have observed in the ex-communist European countries: none of the internal pressures disappeared during the communist era and all those countries are taking off where they ended before communism. So if we put a lid on Iraq we will just delay the unavoidable.

Attacking Iraq was not a good strategy, whatever the long-term reasons the wingnuts had for this cunning plan. It made this country hated by the rest of the world. People elsewhere knew that the Iraqis were not behind 9/11 and they questioned the timing of the attack, given that bin Laden had not yet been captured and that Afghanistan was also still a mess (which continues, too). To attack Italy when France pisses you off seems odd and illogical to foreigners. But to Democrats here going with Bush's silly plans was imperative: to do otherwise would be seen as unpatriotic and as being against the troops. Politicians fear the public opinion and the public opinion was firmly behind Bush.

But this has left the Democrats in a deep bind. They must either eat their earlier words about the wisdom of the Iraq war or keep sounding idiotic by stressing all the things that are going wrong there but still maintaining that doing all these things that are going wrong was the right thing to do. It's hard to make a good policy about the future on such unstable grounds, too.

Atrios points out that the wingnuts talk about grand, sweeping things like the sound of boots marching down the road of democracy and freedom, whereas the Democrats are limited to talking about statistics which show the enormous waste and the needless deaths. However more reality-based the latter are they don't appeal to the emotions of the American voters and mostly come across as minor whining about the details of the war. What the Democrats need to offer is a major ideological alternative to the freedom-in-military-boots argument. The truthful alternative narrative would point out that Bush went to war on false grounds and that the whole war was an immense mistake.

The problem I see with this approach is that it doesn't make the Americans look like heroes, it doesn't promise us a beautiful day tomorrow with money and power for every one and it doesn't reassure us that we have always been the chosen people of God. These are the things that Reagan offered and they still sell elections.

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Saturday, June 04, 2005

Odd Stuff I've Noticed About Blogs 



Because I've been redecorating the house. I moved Hank's collection of slimy dog toys from one corner to another, removed an artistic spider web from my bedpost and swopped two snake paintings with each other. Now the house looks all brand new and ready for one of those fancy-schmancy interior design magazines!

No, it doesn't, and not only because my furniture is almost all from Salvation Army. I also lack that divine touch which makes everything suddenly look perfectly right. But it's fun to try, and while I kept moving the torture rack two inches to the left and the poison shelves a smidgen to the right I compiled a list of questions which nobody has answered about blogs. I'm going to write them down here for your inspection. They are totally uninteresting but this is a good writing exercize for me if nothing else:

1. Why does almost all commenting take place in the forenoon hours of Eastern Time? This is on my blog and on other blogs where the number of comments doesn't reach to hundreds.

2. In what energy field is the commenting community real? It is real, and there is even something like a collective emotion which forces the blogger to post on certain topics whether she or he wants to, initially. I'm not sure if this is very clear because it's a new concept for me, but I'm absolutely convinced that there is some type of a public sentiment that affects what happens on the blogs, and this sentiment comes from the readers. So label me lunatic if you wish. I love the moon.

3. Why are all the trolls like the same troll over and over again? Do they really get their talking points from some central office and do they all memorize them in one long sentence covering everything that ever happened in this world so that it's impossible to discuss the points without taking the rest of your human life to do so.

4. Who are the people who find my blog googling for some truly disgusting stuff? Will I avoid ever meeting them in this life?

5. Why can't I clean up my links and add new links? Why am I writing this inane post when I should be doing just that?

Back to house decorating. See you later.

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The Nipple Wars? 



Women's breasts are not supposed to have nipples. Did you know that? Nipples are like erect penises, not suitable to be shown on television. Instead, breasts should be portrayed as large round mountain-like objects or like bowling balls (or tennis balls):

The good news is those weapons of mass destruction have finally been found.

The bad news is your mother, sister, aunt, and grandma are all guilty of having them.

Sixteen months after the Super Bowl's tempest in a C-cup, war has been declared on women's breasts. From Desperate House-wives' deployment of digital nipple-erasers to Victoria's Secret's nipple-negating bras, a campaign is under way to conceal one of the natural features of the female breast.

The producers of TV's Desperate Housewives have reportedly spent thousands of dollars digitally removing the nipples from on-screen images of actresses Teri Hatcher and Nicolette Sheridan.

In discussing the show's "nipple problem," series creator Marc Cherry tells the Philadelphia Daily News: "Certain actresses really don't like to wear bras. And we try to accommodate them as much as humanly possible. ... So we've done a lot of blurring."

Jeff Jarvis, founder of buzzmachine.com and creator of Entertainment Weekly, jokingly calls it "the nipple clause." As in, "I have the right to have them, you have the right to airbrush them."

What is going on here? One academic suggests nasty motives:

Gary Grizzle, an associate professor of sociology at Florida's Barry University, says the trend represents a shift from a way of thinking in which a woman's ambition, not her sexuality, was considered the greater menace.

"For most of the '80s and '90s, the real threat, as far as women go, had to do with their career aspirations," he recalls. "Normally, we assume that when the focus is on women, they'll be very sexual and very submissive. It's the ones in the three-piece suits that scare the hell out of us."

Mr. Grizzle says current anti-nipple sentiments are steeped in the same notions that cause some religions to keep women covered up and out of holy places because a woman's "sexuality disrupts everything that men try to accomplish."

Hmmm. Right now I'm more likely to believe that this nipple fear is related to the fear of right-wing Christians and their power in determining what is acceptable in the media. But the other motives are not dead, so who knows?

Am I allowed one small feminist rant here? Why is it that if something affects some men sexually in women (walking a certain way, showing an earlobe or a nipple, digging your nose) then it is always the women who must cover up or change or be erased? Couldn't the men who are affected try to learn to take responsibility for their own reactions? Couldn't they look elsewhere? The Koran, for example, tells both sexes to dress modestly and not to stare, but how is this interpreted in practice?

There are ways of dressing, for both men and women, which are intended to be sexual, and it's probably advisable to avoid these in the everyday world unless one wishes to be treated as a sexual provocator. But so much of this fuss is about non-sexual aspects of dress and behavior. Nipples are part of our bodies and something a woman can't just leave in the closet when she goes out. Nipples get hard from sexual excitement, true, but they also get hard from cold and even from anger or other feelings. They exist, and some people should just get over it.

Or they could always look away. This may sound like a sacrifice, but it's a lot easier than buying special nipple-containers and then wearing them on hot sweaty summer days.

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Friday, June 03, 2005

Urine 



So this is the Friday evening seven p.m."bad news" dump:

American jailers at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects splashed a Koran with urine, kicked and stepped on the Islamic holy book and soaked it with water, the U.S. military said on Friday.

U.S. Southern Command, responsible for the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, described for the first time five cases of "mishandling" of a Koran by U.S. personnel confirmed by a newly completed military inquiry, officials said in a statement.

In the incident involving urine, which took place this past March, Southern Command said a guard left his post and urinated near an air vent and "the wind blew his urine through the vent" and into a cell block.

It said a detainee told guards the urine "splashed on him and his Koran." The statement said the detainee was given a new prison uniform and Koran, and that the guard was reprimanded and given duty in which he had no contact with prisoners.

It may have been an accident but someone, somewhere, will die for this urine.

All these indications hinting at the onset of a religious war make me nervous. I've said this before but it's worth repeating: Most of us are inbetween two religious armies, almost equally fanatic, and the armies are coming at each other. Too bad that we are in the way of either. Too bad that we are not allowed to stay out of this idiotic medieval enterprise. Too bad that most of the victims of any religious violence will consist of the uninvolved.

Can you spot that I slept poorly last night? Perhaps you should take some salt with this post.

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Friday Australian Dog Blogging 




Kelly


This is Helga's pooch, Kelly, again, sitting in a lookout tower somewhere Down Under. My dogs refused to blog today. Hank is covered with mud and snoring after a good day of mud jumping and splashing, and Henrietta is tired from barking so much at the mason who is fixing the front steps to Snakepit Inc. It's getting to a point where I'm willing to pay the guy extra just to get him out and some peace and quiet back.

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The Revisionists 



There was a time, not that long ago, when "historical revisionism" was one of the codes the wingnuts used to attack any study that looked at the history of the oppressed. How quickly things change; now the wingnuts eagerly rewrite history. Some truly atrocious examples cropped up in the recent revelation of Deep Throat's identity:

Others have waxed far more serious about the revelation of Deep Throat's identity. Even "deadly serious," as in the case of Pat Buchanan. On Tuesday, the one-time Nixon advisor took the opportunity to clarify why the U.S. really lost the Vietnam War, and who the most odious political operatives of the day were: "There's something deadly serious here," Buchanan said on MSNBC's "Harball" with Chris Matthews. "People that brought down Nixon also resulted in the fall of South Vietnam, the death of hundreds of thousands of people. ... Nixon was brought down by people who were a hell of a lot worse than he was."

Buchanan got some solid backup from fellow history wiz Rush Limbaugh, who added that Woodward, Bernstein, Felt and company were also responsible for the genocide in Cambodia that left approximately 1.7 million dead. "Had they not brought down Nixon, we wouldn't have lost Vietnam," Limbaugh affirmed during his Wednesday broadcast. "Had [they] not brought down Nixon, the Khmer Rouge would not have come to power and murdered two million people in a full-fledged genocide."

Dazzling, these new theories about the recent past. I'm beginning to understand why everything bad that happens can be attributed to Bill Clinton and the blue dress in some circles: Take the big toe I broke in 2002. I broke it kicking a wall. I wouldn't have kicked the wall if I hadn't been angry at the chaos George Bush has caused. George Bush wouldn't have been the president if Bill Clinton hadn't ejaculated when he did, because Al Gore would have won had he not been smeared with the same stain. Therefore, my broken toe was Bill Clinton's fault.

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Fewer Perverts, Please 



This is what Ted Turner asks of the U.S. news reporters:

Mr Turner told staff at a celebration of CNN's 25th anniversary that he had tried to create a channel that would eschew the "trivial news" liked by local stations in favour of international coverage.

"I would like to see us return to a little more international coverage on the domestic feed and a little more environmental coverage and, maybe, a little less of the pervert of the day," he told staff in Atlanta.

Ted Turner no longer owns CNN so what he says has only symbolic meaning. I doubt that we can get rid of talking about perverts, even if all the newscasts focus only on U.S. politics...

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Angry Goddess Stuff 



I was watching C-Span2 on Thursday night. They were showing a blogger panel discussion with Atrios from Eschaton on it, among other famous bloggers. I expected the debate to be about blogger ethics or lack of same, but it wasn't. Instead, the talk went all around the place and then came, unsurprisingly, to the question why there are so few women bloggers. Perhaps the question was caused by the fact that all the bloggers on the panel were men. ( Wonkette had been preadvertized as being on the panel but she didn't appear.)

You, my dear readers, are not interested in this topic, most likely, but I am, and this is my blog so there. This is my blog, it's mostly political, and I'm mostly a woman, what with some snake bits added on. So when people ask about the lack of women in political blogging it affects me the same way as sitting on a nail. Just think about it: Usually the answer has something about women not being interested in the bloody battle that political blogging is. Well, if that's true, what kind of a woman am I, given that I'm interested in this crap? Not a lady, that's for sure.

The second answer to the where-are-all-the-women question is to point out that we do exist but that we aren't that famous. Imagine how that feels to me, a goddess with all the appetites of a proper goddess. I want to be adulated and worshipped everywhere, and all I hear is that I'm fairly good for a second-rater. Grrr.

To be fair*, Atrios said good things about women political bloggers on the whole but he failed to mention me. Which isn't completely satisfactory but I'll let it pass, this time.

I can do a proper analysis of this question, with all the different reasons carefully discussed, and I have done it in the past. But I don't feel like doing so now. Because I'm pissed off. This shit does wear me down.
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*To clarify, this part is satire.

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Thursday, June 02, 2005

Christopher Cox 



He is the new head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As expected, he's about the least suitable choice to this position if you use the standards of the average thinking person. But he's on par for the Bush administration. He was a primary sponsor of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 which helped to prepare the ground for the Enron case and other fraudulent accounting practices. Cox is known as a curber of investor lawsuits, ya know. Expect a lot more Enrons and WorldCom scandals in the future.

Billmon has more on Representative Cox.

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The Saudis and Women With Wheels 



A Saudi Conservative Council member got into trouble for suggesting a study about reversing the ban on women driving:

He just wanted his colleagues in the government's legislative arm to discuss the possibility of conducting a study into the feasibility of reversing the ban on women drivers -- the only prohibition of its kind in the world.

But Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa's proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country where the subject of women drivers remains taboo.

Al-Zulfa's cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is "driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower."

There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality.

I see all of this as being about control of women. Control of women is necessary in the Saudi society. If women are not controlled, things will change and quite rapidly. The feeling the opponents of Al-Zulfa's proposal have is something I can imagine, after working on empathy for a long time: like standing on quicksand, not knowing what will happen next and fearing total chaos.

But oppressing women is still wrong. And for each person imprisoned by society's suffocating rules a warden is needed. Thus, the system imprisons more than those intended. In Saudi Arabia, for example, drivers are needed for all those wealthy women who can't drive themselves, and in less wealthy families the men must be ready to chauffeur women every day (or else let them languish at home). All this takes resources that would be better spent elsewhere, if there wasn't that fear-inducing chaos waiting around the corner.

Somewhere in Massachusetts I came upon a cemetery which had a tombstone for the first woman who got a driver's licence in the United States. I know this because the fact was so important that it was engraved on her tombstone. I took a picture of the stone and if I can find it I will post it here.

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Publishing May's Recruitment Data 



This will be delayed. Specifically, until June 10, 2005, which is, can you guess it? A Friday. The day when the administration releases all bad news hoping that we don't read anything on Fridays and that we will have forgotten all about the bad news by Monday morning.

So I'm doing them a favor and giving the summary of past findings now when you are all still around. May is probably even worse:

Military recruiters have said potential recruits and their parents were expressing wariness about enlisting during the Iraq war. They said improving civilian job opportunities also were affecting recruiting.

The regular Army missed its recruiting goals for three straight months entering May, falling short by a whopping 42 percent in April. The Army was 16 percent behind its year-to-date target entering May, with a goal of signing up 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30.

The Marine Corps missed its goal for signing up new recruits for four straight months entering May and was 2 percent behind its year-to-date goal. It hopes to sign up 38,195 recruits in fiscal 2005.

Check the May numbers on Friday or on Monday morning.

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Today's Action Alert 



Today's Action is simple. Go to http://web.amnesty.org/pages/donate_now and make a donation. If your penny jar is empty, write a letter to the editor of your local paper and explain why Amnesty International's charges of torture are not "absurd" and should be taken seriously.

Thanks for taking today's action.

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Wednesday, June 01, 2005

What Wingnuts Read on the Beach This Summer 



When they wish to have those pleasant frizzons of fear crawl up their spine, they grab one of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the Twentieth Century, according to a wingnut survey of fifteen conservative scholars. Including exactly one woman scholar, Phyllis Schlafly.

The winner is The Communist Manifesto, and most of the other books are as one might expect. Many of the books are harmful because they advocate fairness and justice or an open attitude towards sexuality. Though to be fair, Hitler's Mein Kampf comes up second in the list. But even poor Lord Maynard Keynes, with his really very moderate theories, is included, and John Stuart Mills get an honorary mention. So does Darwin. And Rachel Carsons's Silent Spring is among the runners-up, too!

It would have been fascinating to learn which books these wingnuts would recommend as healthful lessons for young growing wingnuts, other than the Bible (and the Koran?). Not that there are that many wingnut classics, for reasons that I'm too polite to discuss here.

Feminism is well represented among the most harmful books. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique comes seventh and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex gets an honorable mention. I'm happy with this performance, given that the wingnuts think women are naturally uninterested in competition and general havoc-making. At least we give some of them nightmares, us feminists anyway.
----
Via Bibliosquirrel.

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A Wedding Announcement - Of A Sort 



I'm going to marry Rush Limbaugh. Bear with me. I know that this is sudden and unlike my usual divine sanity. But I have my reasons.

Reason #1. The best way to fight an enemy, if you are smaller in size, is to get right next to him, so close that he can't use his hands on you.

Reason #2. Ed Schultz (the liberal radio talkshow host) used to be a wingnut. Then he married his dear Wendy and she brought him to light. Or he pretends so. Either way, that's one wingnut less and one at least pretend-progressive more. You do the sums.

Reason #3. Someone must protect the innocent wingnut chicks from the catastrophe that goes under the name of Rush Limbaugh.

So I'm going to marry Rush. And no, he doesn't know it yet. Neither does his current bride or wife. I will let them know at the latest possible moment, like right in front of a Justice of Peace. I don't want his money or anything. I'm going to bring him to light or die in the process of trying. Or someone is going to die in the process.

This should earn me at least one monument in the Blue States.

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The Brig 



The following essay is by "Doc" Bruce. It describes some of the effects of isolation on the prisoner, and of being a guard in almost complete control of the prisoners. The events in this essay took place during another time period and during a different war (the Vietnam one) and no parallel to current events is intended, except for the obvious psychological ones, those that exist because of isolation and the psychology of being a prison guard. As was shown by the Stanford prison experiment, most of us can be made into cruel tyrants if the circumstances are right. Most of us can also identify with the feelings the prisoners in isolation have. So read and learn what we may be doing in places like Guantanamo Bay.


I was thrown in the brig during the process of applying for a Conscientious Objector status while already serving in the military. The first sense is one of isolation, a removal from the world into a place with no doors. This brig was located above the boiler room and the compartments comprising the brig were always very warm, ninety degrees plus with no ventilation. Okay, hot. Our working gear was t-shirts, dungarees, and boots. The prisoners' primary duty was to keep the brig spotless. On board ship, everything is made of steel, most of which is painted. The brig, however, is not painted but polished until it shone. Most of my time was spent on hands and knees, shining the deck with pads of double-ought wool. I would watch while a drop of sweat fell from my face onto the deck and, as if by magic, evaporate to become a miniature island group of rust.

I shared the brig with one other sailor, a Kansas flatlander (or so I imagined) who had fallen in love with a whore in Olongapo City, Philippines and missed the ship's movement. (All the information I had on him was through the guards; we were not allowed to speak to each other.) I'll call him Jimbo. Whenever there was another officer, sailor or marine around, we were to stand at attention with our noses pressed against the bulkhead, eyes straight ahead. We were allowed outside contact only with the assistant chaplain, who would ask if we had any problems or if we needed anything. These were, as you might imagine, pro-forma questions only. This seventeen or eighteen year old hadn't understood the program and actually complained about being beaten to the assistant chaplain one day. I heard him complain but had no way of stopping him. Thirty minutes after the chaplain's assistant left, the guard shouted "Officer on deck!" and we sprang to attention, noses to the bulkhead. The Lieutenant in charge of the Marine detachment on board walked past me, spun and slammed his forearm into the back of Jimbo's head, breaking his nose, spraying blood on me and down Jimbo's front. Before he could collapse, the Lt. spun him around, gut punched him and hit him in the chin with a right cross, knocking him to the deck. "Am I beating on you, puke?" Jimbo knew he wasn't supposed to lie and responded "Sir, yes sir!" I stayed still, nose to the bulkhead, hoping Jimbo would catch on soon. The Lt. grabbed him off the deck, spun a half circle, bounced him off the bulkhead, hit him with two short jabs to the floating ribs, held him up with a forearm over his windpipe: "Am I beating on you, motherfucker?" Jimbo chokes "Sir, yes sir!" So now the Lt.'s mad and he knees Jimbo in the groin who wheezes down the bulkhead in stages. "Am I beating on you, fuckwad?" Dimly, a light flickers for Jimbo and he finally gasps "Sir, no sir!" Lt. spins towards me, but I know the drill: his hammer fist hits the back of my head as I turn slightly at the last moment so my head bounces off the bulkhead with a rich hollow sound, bending my glasses but not breaking my nose; he kidney punches me and asks "Am I beating on you, asshole?" "Sir, no sir!" I shout. "Damn right, I better not fucking hear anyone is getting beaten on in my brig, do you understand?" Jimbo and I are together: "Sir, yes sir!" The Lt. is gratified at the clarity of his message and leaves.

We used paper towels to wipe up most of the blood, and some scrapers to get it out of the metal seams of the bulkhead and deck; blood clogs up steel wool, and makes a mess.

This is what I mean by isolation.


The brig is the worst duty for a Marine on board ship; it is just as hot for them as us. No one visits, there's no one to bullshit with, not much to do except read and make the prisoners jump. Jimbo and I were the only prisoners, so we normally just had one guard. They worked shifts but, essentially, Marines who were being punished or who were slackers, those were the guys who ended up guarding us. My least favorite was a guy I'll call Scooter.

Scooter was from Texas or Alabama (I forget), one of the Deep South states, young and lean, the kind of guy that you often see shirtless on television with a beer going "Woooo!" in that silly high pitched voice guys use when showing off. Regular good ol' boy, likes to shoot stuff to see it die, especially useless critters like coons and possum, small shit. Tough guy, cigarettes in one hand and billy stick in the other, always puffing himself up, talking about how he's gonna kill him some gooks, etc. etc. (Now, of course, it is a different vindictive invective…)

Scooter had "a real fun time" with me because we were so different from one another. That, and, of course, cause I was a traitor trying to sneak out of the military as a CO. He told me a lot about himself, not that I wanted to know anything at all about him; he was just bored. He regaled me with his understanding of The War and Religion and Our Place, crap like that. He was also an inventive sadist.

The doors to our cells were sheets of painted steel, drilled through with half inch holes "for ventilation", I guess. The cells were the hottest place in the brig which made it difficult to sleep. The heat and the banging on the cell doors every couple hours by the guard who pulled the night watch. Scooter would prop the doors open and have us do standing pushups with our index fingers stuck in the holes. The part that Scooter liked to show off to any other Marine that happened by at shift change or whenever was, if you take some spray boot polish and spray it through the flame of a lighter, you could get a flame that shot out two feet or more. He would play this back and forth across our fingers in the cell doors until we fell against the door trying to stop the pain. What a hoot.

But here is the interesting thing about Scooter. After I got out of the brig and before I was transferred off ship, I had opportunity to pull liberty in Hong Kong. I was sitting on the ferry, waiting for the quick trip across the Bay when who comes up and plops down beside me but my old buddy Scooter! "Hey, where ya goin'? No hard feelings, right?" If I hadn't been gritting my teeth, my mouth would have fallen open. The guy was truly guileless; he really thought "no hard feelings" would cover it.

At that time in Hong Kong, I had heard it said that you could have someone killed for fifty dollars. I had a couple hundred in my pocket: I told him to fuck off, instead. He got up, shaking his head somewhat sadly at me and sat down a couple rows away.

There are no seats left in the ferry.

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