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

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Saturday Hope Blogging 



This can be done by stealing Phila's Friday Hope Blogging. It's a useful corrective for the general sense of gloom-and-doom I and quite a few others spread in our attempt to change things. Because some good change is taking place, and it needs to be given attention, too.

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The Focus Of Terrorism 



Is to make people frightened. This is important to remember when judging the coverage of the recent car bombing attempts in the United Kingdom. It's perfectly fine to report on the attempts. But it's not perfectly fine to spread panic or to make the attempts into something more sophisticated than they really are. That way the media serves the goals of the terrorists. Or so I think.

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Lilies, Roses and Delphiniums 



Another garden essay. The picture doesn't show any of the plants I write about, but it does show some red daylilies at about this time of the year.





I love lilies, the tall-stemmed perfumed white ones with enormous flower cups. They look unapproachably regal, like the cold queens of some ancient barbaric tribe. Yet their scent in a summer evening evokes much earthier thoughts: one thinks of skin and lips, husky voices whispering endearments, the ladies of the night.

As much as I love lilies I hate the lily beetle. This small orange-red beetle lives for two things: to destroy lilies and to copulate, and it is extremely successful in both. It appears to have no natural enemies in my garden, myself excluded, and each year it comes out a little more victorious in the war I wage against it. I am also getting tired of the manner in which it has turned my daily garden strolls into beetle crushing campaigns. I am beginning to think that my lily growing days may soon be over.

Or perhaps not. There are no good understudies for lilies as August star performers, and some stars are necessary for each month of the gardening season.

Roses are similar divas of the garden. My climbing roses are finally large enough to be admired from below. Their June dance of ivory, silk and lace coincides with the flowering of honeysuckles and leaves me drunk with the garden for days. But once the perfect flowers are gone, the awkward disease-ridden bodies remain to demand the gardener's attention.

Never mind that my roses were bought as disease-resistant, they seem to get blackspot almost before they get leaves. Organic remedies have no perceptible impact, so my blackspot treatment consists of careful removal of the sickened leaves. By August, the roses are close to skeletal, and the lilies are then also needed to draw the spectator's eye away.

Deciding the destiny of my lilies and roses is not going to be easy. Most real choices aren't. For whatever I choose, something essential will be lost: satiny petals, intoxicating scent and beauty of the floral form on the one hand, time and peace of mind on the other. And when the choice is finally made, regrets follow.

I still miss the delphiniums (delphinium elatum) to which I dedicated most of my compost, waking hours and miles of stake and string for several summers. The last summer I grew them they stood seven feet tall with hundreds of slowly opening sky blue eyes. Then one night it rained hard, and the following morning the delphiniums were lying helter-skelter across other plants, looking like duchesses who were dressed for a ball but chose instead to stand on their heads in mud puddles. This may have seemed funny to them, but was not my idea of a star performance. It wasn't too difficult to let them go. But I still have some regrets.

The lilies and roses would be much more painful to lose, as they, at least, complete their performances, and all the understudies I know for them are just that, understudies.

So should I grow them or not? There should be a third answer to this dilemma, just like there should be one for other difficult choices in life.

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Friday, June 29, 2007

On The Fourth Branch 



That would be Dick Cheney. It's now acceptable to notice how he has amassed power out of all proportion to the actual role of the Vice President and how he uses secrecy and the refusal to acknowledge laws to go on holding it. Acceptable, because David Broder wrote a column on the topic:

Cheney, as described in a breathtakingly detailed series in The Post this week by reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, is something else.

What they discovered, in a year of work that reveals more about the inner workings of this White House than any previous reporting, is a vice president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends and purposes, often overriding Cabinet officers and other executive branch officials along the way.

Cheney used his years of experience, as a former White House chief of staff, as the secretary of defense and as the House Republican whip -- and all the savvy that moved him into those positions -- to amass power and use it in the Bush administration. He was more than a match for the newcomers to the White House, and he outfoxed even the veterans of past administrations when it came to the bureaucratic wars.

As Josh Marshall notes, most of this is not new for those who read progressive and liberal blogs. It is the mainstream media which has been finally given the green light to go after Cheney. It could be too late, of course.

Why did it take so long for Cheney to be properly criticized? Opinions vary (as they say), but my guess is that fear and proximity to the government have their role to play. Also that "he-said-she-said" schtick which means that Cheney could control the debate in many venues.

By the way, read the series Broder mentions. It's good reporting.

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A Deep Thought For The Day 



Caught on a wingnut blog:

The conservative court campaigned over for the last 25 years has finally come to fruition.

Remember this when the conservatives pretend that they don't want activist judges.

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Now Watch This Video 






It's about the Paris Hilton case. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski rebels on air about having to make the Hilton case the first piece in the news. Note how she is treated by Joe Scarborough.

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Bugs 



You know what happens usually this time of the year if you open a window without a screen at night and turn the lights on? Bugs come in. All sorts of flying insects.

Well, they didn't last night. Not only are there no honey bees around the Snakepit Inc., but I don't even see that many moths.

It's an odd feeling to miss something that is a bit of a nuisance. But I do miss the bugs. So do my resident spiders.

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Thursday, June 28, 2007

And The Third In My Series Of Deep Posts on a Humid Day 



This one has to do with Cuba. George Bush is anticipating the death of Fidel Castro and the events that might come about after that:

President Bush openly anticipated the death of ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro today, picturing it as an opportunity to bring freedom to the Caribbean island after nearly a half century of iron-fisted rule by the fiery Communist leader.

"One day, the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away," Bush said during a question-and-answer session at the U.S. Naval War College here. As the audience laughed and began to applaud, Bush seemed to realize that cheering the death of another head of state, even an enemy, might appear unseemly and quickly quieted the crowd. "No, no, no," he told them.

But he then imagined what it would be like once Castro is gone and forecast a debate over how aggressively the United States should try to open up the totalitarian system in Havana. "The question is, what will be the approach of the U.S. government?" he said. "My attitude is that we need to use the opportunity to call the world together to promote democracy as the alternative to the form of government they have been living with."

Wouldn't it be the horned guy who will come for Fidel in Bush's worldview? Never mind. What I wanted to write about is the question what Cuba would look like in the future if Bush's wishes are realized.

Many good things might happen, true. But if Cuba becomes a country of unbridled capitalism, what will it lose? Somehow the comparisons are always with Cuba as it actually is and some libertarian paradise of a society. A more realistic comparison might be between Cuba and other countries nearby. And then you might start to notice that there are things the Cubans might lose, too. Such as good education and fairly accessible health care. They might end up with a country which looks a lot like that Cuba from the 1950s, with few very rich people and loads of poor people without much hope for improvement. Perhaps that is a better country than the present Cuba. I'm not an expert enough to tell.

But it's never useful to compare some real-world society only to a phantom utopia, without telling us how that utopia might actually be achieved.

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The Countries Which Lead 



Today is the day for wide-ranging goddess posts. Probably because it is so very humid. In any case, I saved this story about how people all over the world rate various countries, because it woke up one of those humidity-related deep thoughts in me. Here's the summary of the survey:

Anti-American sentiments are on the rise in many parts of the world, driven by concerns that U.S. leaders are prone to act unilaterally and have widened the gap between rich and poor nations, a new international survey found.
At the same time, global attitudes about China have also declined, with residents of many countries expressing concerns about China's growing economic and military power, the survey concluded.
The survey of 45,239 people in 47 countries by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found ``worldwide support'' for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and substantial opposition to U.S. and NATO military operations in Afghanistan.
``There is a question as to whether we are living up to our own values, which is what is making people question what our policies are,'' former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at a news conference today announcing the poll's findings.
America's image ``has plummeted throughout much of the world'' over the last five years, the center said in its report on the survey, which was conducted April 6 through May 29.
It found ``sharp drops in favorability among traditional allies in Western Europe, as well as substantial declines in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere.''

Note that the United States is the greatest military power on earth and that China is the rising economic power. Also the factory of the rest of the world, right now, with minimal quality controls. And neither of these countries currently seems to care about the rest of humanity at all. Both are pursuing quasi-imperialist policies and navel-gazing. Both sound a little militaristic.

The easiest way I can think of this is with the parable of a school class. There are the wealthy kids who might be cool and admired, because they treat others well and offer leadership. Or they might be the class bullies, using their position and wealth to get even more from others while telling them what to do. To me the U.S. and China, too, look a lot more like class bullies right now. That's what the opinions reflect.

I think the world is quite leaderless right now, in the good sense of leadership.

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On School Integration and The Supreme Court of the United States 



Remember the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision? It argued that racial segregation of schools should be ended, because "separate" is inherently "unequal". One part of the evidence in that case was a sociological study which showed that black children thought white dolls were better and more desirable than black dolls. But most of the evidence was about the enormous inequities of resources between the racially segregated school systems.

Fifty-three years later, the Supreme Court of the United States has made another decision on school integration. Purposeful school integration should be ended because it is discriminatory:

In a decision of sweeping importance to educators, parents and schoolchildren across the country, the Supreme Court today sharply limited the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.

The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., declaring that the districts had failed to meet "their heavy burden" of justifying "the extreme means they have chosen — discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments," as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court.

Today's decision, one of the most important in years on the issue of race and education, need not entirely eliminate race as a factor in assigning students to different schools, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a separate opinion. But it will surely prompt many districts to review and perhaps revise programs they already have in place, or go back to the drawing boards in designing plans.

The opinion's rationale relied in part on the historic 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools — a factor that the dissenters on the court found to be a cruel irony, and which they objected to in emotional terms.

Guess which Justices were with the majority? Yup:

In the now familiar lineup, Justices Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. sided with the chief justice on most points.

The blogs at the National Review site (a conservative paper) had this to say on the decision:

Today's Supreme Court decision striking down Louisville's and Seattle's race-based student assignment plans will surely lead to much gnashing of teeth, recriminations, and accusations of America slipping back to the era of Jim Crow. Politically correct experts, educators, and advocacy types will express outrage and declare their intent to find a way — any way — to ensure that the remaining handful of white students in urban districts attend schools otherwise populated by black and Hispanic children.

They're wrong. Not because we shouldn't feel guilty that so many of our urban schools are racially isolated. Of course we should. And not because Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of an integrated society isn't compelling. Of course it is. But the surest route to such a society is to help all children achieve academically, prepare for higher education as well as jobs with futures, and enter the great American middle class. Because here's the good news: Middle-class black children living in suburbs are much more likely to attend racially diverse schools than poor black children are. The way forward is through progress — which starts with academic progress. That means shaking up the urban school systems that are producing such abysmal results.

When I read that response and also when I read the initial decision by the SCOTUS I had the same odd experience of parts of my brain separating and floating above me in the clouds. Because of that cloud-cuckoo-land aspect.

First, note that the National Review blog post doesn't tell us how we are going to achieve all the wonderful things we should do with inner-city schools populated predominantly by minority students. Schools are funded mostly from local property taxes, which means that poor areas get poor schools. Whenever a proposal tries to change this, the middle-class parents go into a rebellion. In short, there will be no improvements of urban schools as long as this is how the system works. So all that extra stuff in the blog post is meaningless.

Second, the whole SCOTUS decision smells of ignoring the fact that people of color are, on average, poorer and less powerful. To imply that a system that ignores this is somehow fair and balanced is silly.

Put it this way: If I had a child denied access to my most preferred kindergarten, say, I would have very little trouble taking that imaginary child to another good kindergarten or a private school, and I'm not especially rich. But if I was stuck in a ghetto, with two jobs and little education, the slot in a good kindergarten for my child might be the only chance that child ever gets. Now put the two Echidnes in the story fighting each other in a court system for the same kindergarten slot. The SCOTUS says that the rich Echidne must win if the slot is in her backyard. Because she will be a victim of discrimination otherwise. The poor Echidne can just get a third job to pay for a private kindergarten slot.

A hidden underpinning in this whole discussion is the question what integration was supposed to achieve. Was it better education for minority children? Was it an attempt to reduce racism in the society? An attempt to create a society where all children had equal opportunity? I don't quite see what the recent SCOTUS decision thinks it is achieving, but it's none of these things, for sure.

Yes, I am upset over this ruling. I'm one of those politically correct goddesses, I guess. Or perhaps I just happen to have a heart. I'm also frightened of a racially segregated world. It's not good for anybody's basic security.
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Scott Lemieux has a good piece from the legal eagle angle. He also makes a point I forgot to make in this post, which is the fact that this decision rules out most things courts could do to remedy the effects of past discrimination. Such remedies will always have effects on others in the present time. Hence remedying discrimination is...discrimination!

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Pointed Words 



This New York Times headline is an odd way of framing the conversation Elizabeth Edwards had with Ann Coulter on Hardball the other day:

Ann Coulter's Pointed Remarks Draw Edwardses' Pointed Reply
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

I know that the headline is most likely not written by Nagourney. But it's an odd headline to pick, because it somehow equalizes the remarks on the two sides. Yet if you watched the video of the encounter you can tell that Coulter was just being rude whereas Edwards tried to discuss actual topics. And what John Edwards said later on wasn't rude, either.

One reason why I don't like the "he-said-she-said" distortion of objectivity is shown in this example. It replaces objectivity with balance and the balance can be a false one. It's fine to give both sides of an argument. But to imply that the two sides are equally weighty is often wrong.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The FBI And Graduate Students Working Late 



Via No Capital:

THE FBI IS visiting the nation's top technical universities in a bid to stop students taking their holidays outside the country.

MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts, have all had a visit from the spooks to warn them about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research.

The FBI wants the universities to impose rules that will stop US university students from working late at the campus, travelling abroad, showing an interest in their colleagues' work, or have friends outside the United States, engaging in independent research, or making extra money without the prior consent of the authorities.

If this is true it shows that the FBI doesn't have anyone working for them who used to be a graduate student. Working late at the campus is what 99.9% of graduate students do. That's how you work. And not to show an interest in the colleagues' work! How are you going to network so that you will one day get a job?

This sounds paranoid to me. Maybe it isn't true.

Added: The original source seems to be this one. Hard to know if the Inquirer take above is correct or not. Thanks for the conversation on Eschaton for this link.

Added even later: Trademark dave on Eschaton linked to the actual FBI instructions(pdf). Remember that this is all about nonclassified research. The FBI document does warn about keeping unusual working hours, for example. But late night hours are actually not unusual, as I stated.

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Some Good News 



It makes me feel weird to write about good news from our side, but they do happen and I must pay more attention to them lest I push all of you over that high ledge.

Remember the post about the committee planning to raise the money spent on abstinence-only education, even though the well-done studies show that it doesn't work? The good news about that is that the committee reversed some of that. From an e-mail from ACLU on June 21:

The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the Senate
Appropriations Committee's decision to cut funding for the Community Based Abstinence
Education (CBAE) program and raise funding for the family planning program Title X. In a
markup Tuesday, subcommittee members voted to decrease CBAE by $28 million and increase
Title X by $16 million, a move the full committee ratified today.

That makes more sense, too.

The other piece of good news has to do with the recent Supreme Court finding that individuals (in this case women) who have suffered from wage discrimination have only a few months to sue:

On June 22, 2007, Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) and 23 other House co-sponsors introduced H.R. 2831, the "Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007," a bill aimed at fixing a recent Supreme Court decision undermining protections against wage discrimination that have been bedrock principles of civil rights laws for decades.

...

H.R. 2831, which addresses wage disparity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability clarifies that such discrimination is not a one-time occurrence that starts and ends with the first paycheck, but that each paycheck represents ongoing discrimination by the employer. This bill reaffirms the fundamental principle that our civil rights protections are intended to have a broad remedial purpose – to addres and correct injuries suffered because of unlawful employment discrimination.

It might not work, of course, but it's important that the bill is introduced.


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A correction to the last item. The bill is H.R. 2831: The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
of 2007 and is now available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110u
3rOy4.

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To Eat A Peach. Or Fruit Erotica 



There it sits, nestled in your warm hand, glowing with that internal peach glow. See the fuzzy fur? Will it tickle your lips? Notice the blushing cheeks and the hint of a cleavage between them?

Lift the golden globule slowly to your nose and inhale. What IS that scent? Come-hither? Does it remind you of cardamom and sandalwood and hot tropical nights in far-away places?

Now bite into the peach. Go on, use your teeth but gently. The peach will resist, ever so slightly and then it will burst with flavor. The waves of taste will spread and spread and spread, recede and spread again. Have another bite. And another. Feel the peach with your tongue and let it feel you. The juice! It runs down your neck and down your fingers like a perfume from a forbidden paradise.

And you will end up all sticky.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

What Religious Rights Really Mean 



For some people in this Christian country. Via Hecate:

Rita Moran is the Chair of the Kennebeck County Democratic Committee in Maine. She runs a local bookstore, Apple Valley Books, that sells Pagan books, including books related to Pagan parenting, a popular topic among Pagans, most of whom converted to Paganism as adults and are now having families that they want to raise in their religion. Moran is also a member of the Immanent Grove, a gnostic circle.

A group that goes by what I consider to be the un-American name The Christian Civic League has put up a web page with information about Moran's political position and her religious beliefs, including the terrifying fact that she sells books for Pagan parents. The Christian Civic League helpfully provides lots of contact information, including Moran's address, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. We all know the purpose of that.

Note that the Christian Civic League is attacking someone for the religion she has and posting information in a way which could be viewed as menacing. If atheists were doing this to Christians, we'd rightly hear complaints about oppressing the faithful. This case is no different. Should you wish to help, check out Hecate's original post for ways.

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Accolades for a Murderer 



Suppose that you find that a man has strapped his wife's legs together and then asphyxiated her. Suppose that the following day he asphyxiates his young son and that he then kills himself. Suppose that the man was a famous wrestler (of the pretend-type). What would be the proper media response to the events? It seems to be this:

After learning of what occurred, the WWE canceled its live Monday Night RAW, and USA Network aired a three-hour tribute to Benoit in lieu of the scheduled wrestling telecast.

"WWE extends its sincerest thoughts and prayers to the Benoit family's relatives and loved ones in this time of tragedy," the federation posted in a statement on its Web site.

Read the whole article. It stops just one inch from asking what the wife could have done to anger the poor guy so that he ended up killing his seven-year old son.

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Bread And Circuses 



The Romans knew that if you give people enough food and enough entertainment they are much less likely to rebel. Too bad about the Barbarians and the Vandals and so on. Today they wouldn't be much of a problem as we have television, and the Romans could have beamed the goodies all over the European continent. Imagine all the Huns (my people!) watching diet programs and ads for the latest in war gear! I'm not sure what would have taken the place of "missing white women" but I'm sure the Roman impresarios would have thought of something.

These are the thoughts that came to my mind when I read that Glenn Beck will guest host for Paula Zahn on CNN's Paula Zahn Now. I wonder if he will eat a rat on teevee? That would be the next logical step in the politics-as-entertainment trend that is so obvious in lots of television. Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck in our living rooms. Next: eating poop and live rats?
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Added later. Elizabeth Edwards called in to the Hardball show in which Ann Coulter was the main course. Here is the video of the conversation they had, if you have stomach for it. The point Edwards makes is a very important one, though.

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Those Activist Judges... 



It's one of the wingnuts' phrases, to call judges activist when they rule in a way the wingnuts don't like. Well, let's see how the new passivist conservative judges do:

In a series of 5 to 4 decisions, the United States Supreme Court today veered sharply to the right. The Court voted along strict ideological lines to side with the Bush administration in deciding four contentious, high-profile cases.

The four cases ran the jurisprudential gamut. They included challenges to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the Endangered Species Act, and taxpayer-funded faith-based initiatives, as well as a free speech case involving an Alaskan student who waved a sign reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" in front of television cameras during an Olympic ceremony. In the end, the Court opened loopholes in McCain-Feingold and in the Endangered Species Act, dismissed a suit objecting to publicly-funded religious programs, and upheld the suspension of the Alaskan student.

In all four cases, the majority consisted of the same conservative bloc and the minority of the Court's left wing. The conservative majority in all four cases included Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and the two Bush appointees, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer dissented.

Note that freedom of speech is important for electoral campaigns but not for students in schools.

I'm not a lawyering goddess, but even I can see that a lot of interesting information can be derived from these decisions simply by asking: "Qui Bono?" Or "Who Benefits?"

Because all these decisions benefit the Republican party. Odd, this passivist judging.

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Monday, June 25, 2007

Today's Action Alert 



Also today's humorous moment if you have a dark and sour sense of humor. The PBS is going to have Frank Luntz as the commentator on the next debate between Democratic candidates for the presidency. Now, Luntz is the creator of most wingnut memes (death tax for federal inheritance tax of the very wealthy, say, or the Clear Skies Initiative for pollution-producing policies). He is a dyed-in-the-wool wingnut, and to present him as a neutral analyst stinks to high heavens. See how funny it is, in the sense of the hollow laughter of zombies and those doomed to live in an upside-down world?

If you're not quite there yet, you can complain to the PBS here and to the Tavis Smiley show here. You can inform your friends about the problem at this site.

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Chris Matthews on Ann Coulter 



Watch the video at Think Progress. It tells us, in Tweety's own words, that Ann Coulter will be the honored guest on Hardball tomorrow. You might also notice, as I did, that Matthews describes Coulter as "dressed for success" in that black cocktail frock.

Tweety has a problem with women the size of Mount Everest. But Coulter's presence on Hardball is not explicable by just his desire to see a sleeveless mini-dress as the way women dress for success. Note that last time Coulter was on Hardball (in 2006) she called Al Gore a "total fag". But, according to Tweety, she sells books and that is enough of a reason to have her on.

I'd really love to know who pays for those books she sells.

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A Marine Tutorial on Speech 



This article in the New York Times is worth reading. It shows how the marines are taught to speak to the press in cases of, say, murder accusations.

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Murders Worthy Of Attention 



All murders are horrible. But I can't help noticing that certain murders are seen as more newsworthy than other murders. Compare this murder and the publicity it has attracted:

The boyfriend of a missing pregnant woman was arrested on two counts of murder charges Saturday, and a body believed to be hers was found nearly a week after she vanished from her home, authorities said.

To these murders and the publicity they have attracted:

A suburban Chicago man found shot near the bodies of his wife and their three children in the family sport utility vehicle earlier this month was charged Saturday in their shooting deaths.

The former is familiar to most of you if you live in the United States and watch television. The latter got a lot less attention, despite the fact that many more people were killed. What caused the difference?

I leave that for you to figure out, although I have my own theories.

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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Lawns 



(Something apolitical for Sunday: a garden essay. Well, as apolitical as I can be. The picture is of my ex-lawn last year. Heh.)





Gardeners fall neatly into two political parties: those who love lawns and those who see them as vacant space for more "real" gardening. I am a card-carrying member of the latter party. If I had my way, no lot would have a single non-ornamental blade of grass.

Given my political views, it should come as no surprise that I find lawn fanatics curious people. They spend time, money and water encouraging grass to grow. The minute it obeys, out comes the lawn mower. The process is then restarted. Lawn lovers continually fret over the turf and keep looking for solutions to improve it. It never seems to occur to them that cutting a plant's head off every seven days or so weakens it and may even cause it to lose the will to live. This is what creates most of the problems lawns experience: lawns don't want to be lawns; they want to be tall hayfields swaying in the wind, preferably with lots of other plants thrown in.

But lawn fanatics, and some city ordinances, don't let them fulfill this destiny. Not only is the natural process stunted but often the poor grass is expected to survive on infrequent high-calorie snacks of inorganic fertilizers. All dying vegetation (including grass clippings) is neatly removed so that the lawn never gets a decent meal. And when it throws in the towel, the lawn-obsessed turn to the myriad chemical remedies available in all garden centers. But none of them will work for long, for lawns are an aberration against nature; an aberration which may be successfully maintained in none but a few climatically favored (i.e. rainy) areas. Elsewhere keeping a lawn going is a task suited only to wealthy masochists.

Am I biased against lawns, you might ask. Of course. But I do admit that grass has its place in sports fields and perhaps also as a ground for sunbathing and picnicking; and if it required no upkeep it would even serve as a pleasant green frame for other plantings. I even admit that all gardening is an aberration against nature in that gardeners attempt to slow down nature's plans of making the garden into whatever ecoscape would take its place without human intervention.

But in most cases the natural process we tamper with would take longer than a few days, whereas a lawn unattended for a week's vacation is already well on its way to its natural destination. In fact, it sometimes seems that this is true for a lawn unattended for just an hour

This is my major objection to lawns. They require too large a chunk of gardening time in exchange for barely looking average. And I don't enjoy time spent caring for grass. Perhaps the lawn-obsessed do. If so, how come none of them has offered to take over the upkeep of my lawn?

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Me Opinionating in the Dallas Morning News 



Thanks to trifecta in the comments, I learned that my earlier TAP piece on research into gender roles is now available in the Dead Tree Press, too. So you can read it again. Or the first time should you have somehow missed it. The reprint doesn't have the links of the original piece, so some of the argument is weakened if you don't check the original, too.

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Saturday, June 23, 2007

Lies In - Disaster Out, Posted by olvlzl. 

Going over some old posts recently this one dealing with the role the media plays in insuring bad government got my attention. I think the argument it makes is valid, the disasters in Iraq and New Orleans don’t seem to have produced its contradiction. In an inversion of how it is supposed to work, media now regularly prevents responsible politicians and public servants from telling the public the simple truth that public services have to be paid for. It prevents public servants from doing their jobs honestly and efficiently. Anyone who is honest about that risks being ridiculed as an idiot, a tax and spender... we all know the words the media whores use. Safe in their air conditioned studios either having or aspiring to the good life of a media shill it’s no skin off their back that the cities, states and entire country are falling apart.

Starting from there the results spread. Anyone who is unwilling to lie about the necessity of paying for things will be removed from office and be replaced by someone who is willing, if not eager, to lie about the possibilities of cutting taxes while cutting essential services to the point of non-existence. Then the media will point to that situation as proof that the public sector can’t deliver and those should be contracted to private companies. But when those contracts don’t work out the way they are supposed to do the media liars mend their ways? Do the politicians who handed them the public sector reconsider?

The media is the problem, they are the source of the lies. A country that lives on a diet of lies can’t govern itself. It is as simple as that, as certain as water flowing and unsupported construction falling. Our media believes that lies are good for ratings and good for business. They think that telling the public lies they will want to hear will give them a ratings advantage. Their ratings and the profit those bring are the only thing they really care about. They won’t stop lying until the news is made not-for-profit, a requirement for holding a broadcasting license or other privilege granted to those companies. And it will take law to force them to stop lying.
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My Family Friendly Blog 



Via the awesome watertiger, I found a site which rates blogs as if they were movies. Her blog got an R-rating. Mine, of course, got this:


Online Dating


I must try harder.

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Silent Spring 



I had my morning coffee in the garden, watching the opening sage flowers and the roses at their loveliest. The sun was gently stroking their heads and the birds were taking a rest from their busy flying and feeding activities. Coffee tastes so much better outside, I thought. And the quiet is nice.

Quiet? Where are the bees? They love the sage and my nepeta has been flowering for days now. They love that, too. Last year those violet flowers often looked more like brown-and-yellow ones, because of the number of bees on them. Where are the bees this year?

I took a tour of the garden. All I found were butterflies and one wasp. There were some bumble bees earlier in the year. But no other kind of bees at all.

You may have read about the sudden death of so many bees and about the various theories explaining it. Or trying to explain it. I read those stories, too. But to go out into your own garden and to not hear that buzzing, well, it hits the message home.

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Saturday Cat Blogging 






The dog and cat above belong to Barry. The caption goes: "Honest, officer, I found her like that."





This one is FeralLiberal's Pippin again. I collected several Pippin pictures for leaner times. The picture looks very zen to me.

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Friday, June 22, 2007

Some Echidne Musings 



Time for my self-indulgent post of the week. I spent most of this week at the Take Back America conference, and there will be further posts on that later on. For example, I met the Billionaires for Bush at the cocktail reception on Tuesday night. They are very funny. One of them told me that I clean up quite well (I was in my best duds and had high heels n all) and if I only could get some funds I could be one of them! A new career path opened up for me. -- Anyway, I might write about them.

Also on the Code Pink people. I interviewed a pink police officer holding a large "Stop the War" traffic sign. They are an interesting bunch of people and the way they are downplayed is also fascinating. It has feminist links, too.

Then again, I might not write about any of these people. Blogging is hard to do to a formula and often really interesting topics fall down on the to-do list, as some of you know; those who offered me topics I said I would do and still have not. Guilt. It's always with me. I think guilt smells of estrogen.

You can probably guess where I am going with this post. Time, once again, to twist my hands and moan incoherently about the road ahead. Where should I go with this blog? Who is going to guest-post for me on weekends? And when I go to the snake rites on the big mountain? Should I just close up shop or turn this into a team blog of many fascinating feminists? But I'm very bad in social intelligence and all that admin stuff, and even worse at having someone else tell me what to do. Yet the future lies in team blogs, I think.

Even more importantly, is a blog of this type of any real use now that the feminist blogosphere is vibrant and full of all sorts of blogs? My good-cop schtick may no longer be of value if it ever was. And the low-tech setup stinks. No pictures or eerie snake music when you come to the site.

I don't take advice very well at all. Just ask my mom. But I would be interested in your ideas on all this, because a blog doesn't belong to just whoever is writing the posts. It belongs to those who read it and those who participate in the discussion.

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Friday Weirdness Blogging 







I saved these pictures a long time ago and the acknowledgements got separated from the pics. My apologies for therefore not saying who gave them to me.

These are food items on which we divines send you humans messages of great spiritual importance. The top is a piece of toast with the face of Ernest Borgnine. Now, what a message in that one might be is a very big mystery. But the bottom one is an easier one: a cinnamon bun with the face of Mother Theresa! To remind you not to eat more than your fair share of cinnamon buns.

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John Howard and the Aborigines 



Or "meanwhile, in Australia", I guess, to continue the format I've been using for short posts commenting on events in far-away places. The Australian government has decided to tackle the high rates of child molestation among the Aborigines by some swift and firm policies:

Australia's prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among them.

Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country.

Prime Minister John Howard was responding to a report last week that found sexual abuse of children to be rampant in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The report said the abuse was fueled by endemic alcohol abuse, unemployment, poverty and other factors causing a breakdown in traditional society.

'This is a national emergency,' Howard told Parliament. 'We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present.'

Howard announced the measures for the Northern Territory, an Outback region where the federal government retains powers it doesn't have over Australia's six states. He urged state leaders to apply similar tough rules in their jurisdictions.

The federal government can change laws in the territory with an act of Parliament, where Howard has a majority that ensures he can implement his policy.

What do you think of this approach? Should we ban alcohol and pornography in, say, Washington, D.C.? Only in Washington, D.C.? Should welfare payments be linked to alcohol tests showing no drinking, but only if you are a person of color?

Or perhaps a better comparison would be to do all this within an American Indian reservation. Only American Indians would be forced to stay sober and chaste. Everybody else could go on drinking and watching porn and all that would be paid from welfare checks if the person otherwise qualified. Yes, I like this comparison, because the Aborigines were also the initial occupants of a continent, pushed aside and put into reservations by the incoming Europeans.

I'm sure that the problems Howard talks about are real and horrible. But this solution seems unlikely to work, because it really is paternalistic, put in place from the outside, discriminatory and also wholly punitive. The underlying problems of poverty and unemployment are not addressed by it at all. This summarizes the main trouble with the action very well:

The plan angered some Aboriginal leaders, who said it was the kind of government behavior that has disenfranchised Aborigines and created the problems in the first place. They also complained they had not been consulted; the government had not previously indicated it was considering such action.

You can't feel ownership in a policy if you were never consulted.

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Thursday, June 21, 2007

On Pigs and Condoms 



Amanda at Pandagon wrote about a condom advertisement that has been rejected by Fox and CBS. You can see the ad on Pandagon. It uses pigs. More about that later. But the point Amanda makes is an important one:

Okay, when I first read about this Trojan ad, I thought it would probably be at least mildly offensive. But I found it vaguely amusing.

It trades in the same gender stereotypes common to ads like this, but overall, I didn't think it hit on them too hard. The ad doesn't argue that men are de facto pigs, but it does suggest that men who push for condom-less sex are pigs, and that's a pretty fair assessment of that behavior. But the stereotype issues aside, the issue with this ad is that Fox and CBS rejected the ad and not because it peddles in the same stereotypes that their programming uses. No, they took issue with advertising condoms as being used for what they are used for.

Which is for contraception. It isn't clear why those networks rejected the ad, or not clear to me, at least. If it really is because of fear of the fundamentalist anti-contraception crowd, well, that is very bad news indeed. The first and foremost function of condoms is to prevent undesired conceptions. The second, though also a very important function of condoms is to protect the users against some sexually transmitted diseases.

It could be that the ads were rejected because they are pretty unflattering to men. I found them sexist, even if Amanda did not. See how feminists don't have a hive mind? I read the ad as saying that men are pigs except the one who gets the condom from the bathroom machine and miraculously transforms into a guy. Yes, I know that it's sort of funny. But it's still sexist. It's also sexist in another sense: It assumes that all those men in that bar are there just to get some pussy as rude bloggers might say, and that the woman picks the lucky recipient by the condom rule.

I hate to do this prudish feminist bit but sometimes my inner prude requires it.

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On the Democratic Candidates' Speeches 



I wrote one of those gut-reaction reports on how Obama, Edwards and Clinton came across to me at the Take Back America conference. You can read it on the TAPPED blog. The idea is to show that I can do the Chris Matthews type of journalism. And then I will get loads of money for chocolate from the mainstream media.

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Digby Revealed 



You can see her speak here at the "Take Back America" conference where she accepted the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award we (the venomous rabid lambs of the left blogosphere as David Brooks once so memorably put it) were given.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Who Are You Gonna Believe? 



Byron York of the conservative National Review says that the "Take Back America" conference booed Hillary Clinton when she praised the American military:

"We're going to end the war in Iraq and finally bring home the troops," she said as a number of Code Pink protesters stood up in the audience. When she declared, "The American military has done its job," boos began to be heard around the room. As the boos increased, Sen. Clinton raised her voice. "The American military has succeeded," she said, to more boos. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed to make the tough decisions." Still more boos.

Bill Scher posted what actually happened here.

Now, the funny thing is that I was there, sitting among the journalists, pretending to be one hot babee journalist and stuff. And so I was actually present when the boos started and know what they were about. As Scher states, York is mistaken:

That's flat wrong. The Politics on the Hudson blog gets it right: "They jeered the Democratic presidential hopeful when she blamed the Iraqi government for the continued violence that has bogged down U.S. troops."

Indeed. Clinton used the moderate Republican argument that what has caused the war to bog down is the inability of the Iraqi government to take charge. There was nothing at all wrong with the planning of the invasion (assuming that it was planned at all), there was nothing wrong with dismantling whatever civil society Iraq used to have, and the new Iraq government is somehow supposed to be in control of a civil war which includes among the fighters many members of its own military and police forces.

The argument is weak as lukewarm water and really beneath Hillary Clinton's intelligence. That's why there was booing. I didn't boo, by the way, as I was just then devouring a cold bagel.

It's interesting to ponder why Clinton is so adamant about her pro-war stance and about the way she voted for the war to begin with. Everybody knows that not supporting Bush was political suicide in those days of solemn patriotism, and her vote is fully explained by that. Most people don't say it, but the reason lots of politicians voted to hand over the warkeys to Bush was because that's what the Americans, on average, wanted at that point of time. I remember.

Now, it's one of those slimy politician things to vote a certain way just because that might get you elected, and you might decide not to support politicians who do this in the future. Still, we mostly tend to forgive them for their inconstancy. Take Mitt Romney, for instance. His beliefs are swiveling around faster than a Utah weather vane, but mostly people don't seem to mind very much.

This brings me to the question why Hillary Clinton refuses to change her explanation about why she voted for the war to begin with. Perhaps she plans to continue the heroic effort George Bush began. Or perhaps she does not plan to do so, but believes that a woman can't change her mind. La donna e mobile, you know. My personal pet theory is that she thinks the danger from the latter option is greater than the danger of looking like a warmonger. I may be wrong.

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Effete, Effeminate and At Risk of Emasculation 



This is the American Man, at least in the opinion of many right-wing and anti-feminist writers and bloggers. I came across these adjectives in reading what right-wing columnists and blogs worry about in the male presidential candidates, indeed in the American men. Glenn Reynolds, for instance, is most concerned about the feminization of the American culture (don't laugh). He recommends, repeatedly, a new book entitled A Dangerous Book for Boys. The idea of this book is to teach boys how to be boys, not the effete and effeminate wimps us feminists would wish to make out of them. Honestly.

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post on the whole topic. He notes that the right-wingers think America is being emasculated, and they want to fight back before it is too late. Notice how the terms pile up: effete, effeminate and now emasculated. It is the testicles of boys that are at great risk, it seems.

The fragility of masculinity is an odd and important topic. I have never quite understood how masculinity can be so immensely fragile and at the same time so immensely powerful in the minds of some people. It is such a paradox: First, the traditionalists believe that men and women are biologically very different, in fact extremely so, and these "innate" biological differences are proposed as the explanation for anything at all that women might not excel at.

Why so few women in sciences? It's because women can't do math and don't find it interesting, silly. Evolution has built that into our genes. Or why do women get paid less than men, on average? Well, women "choose" to focus on children and the family. This is a biological imperative and nothing much can be done about it unless we want the Western civilization to collapse. Hidden in all this is the assumption that it would be similarly biologically impossible for men to take on some of those childrearing tasks. Because men and women are innately different and intended for different tasks. In a complementary way, natch. For instance, the low earnings of women compensate for the higher earnings of men. And so on.

But then suddenly this very concept of masculinity is at risk, threatened, something that needs to be taught to boys who would otherwise grow up to be something totally different. Turtles, perhaps.

This makes no sense, no sense at all. Either masculinity is biologically determined and will take a certain form in any case or it is not. You can't have it both ways, but the anti-feminists insist on this impossible combination.

Hence the need to change the education, upbringing and environment of boys (by, say, having them read books about how boys should act). Changing education, upbringing or the environment of girls is seen as totally futile, given the biological imperatives these folks embrace.

But of course this nonsensical view tells us much about what really lies behind the fear of the emasculation of American men. The fear is that men might end up not being any better than women are, and given the hierarchical world we still mostly inhabit, this would be a real loss for the men who currently stand on a high rung of the power ladder and also for the women who depend on these men. One of Ursula le Guin's books contains a snippet of conversation about this between Tenar and Ged. When Tenar wants to know why women in that book can't do men's magic, Ged answers by arguing that if women could do the same magic as men then men would be nothing but women who can't give birth.

I found that fascinating, because it is such an insulting statement and also such a revealing one about how women might be viewed. Note first that all women who live long enough will at some point be women who can't give birth and that some women are never able to give birth. Ged sees these women as something without purpose or without use. Then note how Ged defines women by their ability to give birth. This is revealing, because at its most extreme misogyny allows women now other area but the one in which men can't substitute for them. In a sense, the definition of femininity becomes the ability to give birth and this is then the totality of what it means to be a woman. In such an extreme case masculinity is pretty much everything else; all other abilities, characteristics and traits. Only female sexuality and fertility and practical tasks associated with them will be viewed as properly feminine.

This long preamble is to explain why I find the wingnut worry about the emasculation of American culture so frightening. To me it looks like yet another attempt to hoard all sorts of human characteristics under the title of masculinity, and to the extent this succeeds the allowable spheres for women's lives become smaller and tighter and meaner.

Consider the terms "effete" and "effeminate". I looked them up on the Internet and found this definition of effete:
depleted of vitality, marked by self-indulgence, trivial, decadent, overrefined, effeminate

Effeminate, in turn, is defined as follows:
having qualities or characteristics more often associated with women than men;
characterized by weakness and excessive refinement


The antonym of "effeminate" is "manly", which is defined as
having qualities traditionally attributed to a man;
courageous, strong


See the problem? The definitions of effete and effeminate are both circular, being based on what one deems as typical for women or men. But then the additional definitions assign good things to masculinity, such as courage and strength. By definition, then, femininity will lack those.

And this is why Glenn Reynolds worrying about the masculinity of American men and boys directly affects me and other women.


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My apologies for the writing. It's hard to do any at this conference. I promise I will rewrite this later on. Heh.

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Guest post by Kay: Pedro Guzman 

This is a story that's been floating around for the past week. Penny covered it, and Belledame at Fetch Me My Axe has too. From the ACLU press release:
U.S. Citizen Illegally Deported From Jail Is Missing in Mexico

ACLU and Law Firm Seek Federal Help to Find Developmentally Disabled Man


Monday, June 11, 2007

LOS ANGELES — Federal immigration officers and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department illegally deported a U.S. citizen last month, the ACLU/SC has learned. He is missing in Mexico, and today the ACLU/SC and the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking his safe return.

Pedro Guzman, 29, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Lancaster, California. He was serving time at Men’s Central Jail for trespassing, a misdemeanor offense, when he was deported to Tijuana May 10 or 11. Mr. Guzman is developmentally disabled, does not read or write English well, and knows no one in Tijuana. He declared at his booking that he was born in California.

He spoke to his sister-in-law by telephone from a shelter in Tijuana within a day of his deportation, but the call was interrupted. Family members traveled to the city in an attempt to find him and have remained there, searching shelters, jails, churches, hospitals, and morgues.

There are no circumstances under which government officials may deport a U.S. citizen. Federal officials have refused requests by family members and a private lawyer to assist in the search for Mr. Guzman.

"This is a recurring nightmare for every person of color of immigrant roots," said ACLU/SC legal director Mark Rosenbaum. "Local jail officials and federal immigration officers deported the undeportable, a United States citizen, based on appearance, prejudice, and reckless failure to apply fair legal procedures."

"What has happened to Pedro Guzman is a tragedy," said Stacy Tolchin of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale. "His life may be in danger, and the government must act immediately to locate him and return him to the United States."

Jail and Department of Homeland Security officials failed to identify Mr. Guzman’s disability and improperly obtained his signature for deportation from the United States. "The procedures for determination of legal status implemented by Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs … fail even minimal criteria for constitutional due process," the lawsuit states.

Sheriff's deputies trained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conduct immigration checks at L.A. County jails. The ACLU and immigrant-rights groups warned that involving local law enforcement in immigration policing would lead to mistaken deportations and violate the due-process rights of inmates.

Anyone with information about Mr. Guzman can call the ACLU/SC at (213) 977-9500.
As noted at And We Shall March:
Guzman, a Southern California native, was abandoned in a place where he knows absolutely no one, with no money and without cognitive ability to get himself back to his home. As of right now our government won't even formally ask Mexican officials to search the morgues. That's how little care is extended for someone who is not a missing white girl.

There are no circumstances in which government officials may deport a U.S. citizen.


Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade
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Guest post by Kay/Blue Lily: Kevorkian's Big Lie 

I'm the guest blogger that just won't go away, eh? With Echidne busy at that conference, I once again get a chance to share some more thoughts with her readers. Thanks.


This is written by Diane Coleman, president of disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, from an op-ed in the North Country Gazette:
Every time the courtroom doors opened during Jack Kevorkian’s weeklong trial in 1999, security guards allowed two wheelchair users to enter and sit in designated spaces, as well as three disabled but walking advocates, all representatives of the group Not Dead Yet. We rotated the opportunity to be in the courtroom among about 40 disability activists who came from several states to represent the majority of Kevorkian’s body count, people with non-terminal disabilities.

Kevorkian had been quoted in Time Magazine to say he would love to debate the critics who charge that he is too hasty in deciding who may die. “I will argue with them if they will allow themselves to be strapped to a wheelchair for 72 hours so they can’t move, and they are catheterized and they are placed on the toilet and fed and bathed. Then they can sit in a chair and debate with me.”

In response, our leaflets simply stated, “We’re here, and we demand the equal protection of the law: Jail Jack.”

Kevorkian claims involvement in over 130 deaths, and it’s been irrefutably documented in such respected publications as the New England Journal of Medicine that over 70% were not terminally ill, and 70% were women. Many disability rights advocates view him as a serial killer of people with disabilities.
Read the rest here.

Why is this important now? Because Kevorkian was recently released from jail and the misinformation about his actions and motives continues.

I do believe reasonable people can disagree about the issue of assisted suicide, provided they understand fully the inequality of providing the "freedom to die" for a class of people routinely denied basic freedoms to live. But Kevorkian has no place being named a hero for his actions.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade
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Facebook Feminism And Conferencing 



Check this out: If you search for feminist pages on Facebook you get many more anti-feminist sites than feminist ones. Given the average age of those using Facebook, this suggests that we don't have a very big third wave going at the present time. More like the backlash from the second wave is still hitting the shoreline. This is a topic which deserves a much longer post, and it will get one in the future.

I'm still attending the conference and collecting famous presidential candidates. This morning I saw Governor Bill Richardson, and this afternoon I will add Barack Obama and John Edwards to my collection. Wanna trade?

It's really hard to write proper posts in this setting. The bulk of my ideas will probably have to wait until I'm back home at the Snakepit Inc.. On the other hand, my muse has a hangover and might decide to work tonight. To atone, you know.

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Who’d o' Thunk It? 

A paper reports the news and the people read it. Posted by olvlzl.
Spending so much of my time bemoaning the media it was good to read a Buzz Flash piece by Rory O'Connor about a small paper that did some reporting, The Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The people at that paper did something like what the Boston Globe did in breaking and pursuing the clergy sex abuse scandal but it was the Boys Scouts and they went up against the Mormon establishment instead of the Catholics.

Here's what happened: after receiving a tip that a pedophile caught at a local scout camp in 1997 had not two victims (as the paper reported at the time) but actually dozens, Post Register reporters went to the courthouse to look for a civil suit filed by victims, only to be told that there was no such case. They later learned that the national Boy Scouts of America and its local Council had hired two of Idaho's best-connected law firms to seal the files -- thus covering up the entire affair.

Or so they thought... But the Post Register went to court and "dragged the case file into the light of day." What reporters found astonished them; scout leaders had been warned about the pedophile years earlier, but hired him (again!) anyway. Lawyers for the Boy Scouts knew about more victims, but never told those boys' parents. Top local and national leaders of the Mormon Church, which sponsors almost all area scout troops, had also been warned.

The Post Register ran a six-day series about the affair. The first story featured a 14-year-old camper -- "the son of a Mormon seminary teacher and a cinch to become an Eagle Scout" -- who forced adult leaders to call the police about the pedophile.

Then the backlash began. Mormon church members were among the first to complain, characterizing the paper's coverage as an attack on their faith. "The drums banged, and we were flooded with calls and e-mails and letters to the editor from readers who told us that holding the Grand Teton Council accountable was Mormon-bashing," Miller recounted.

The backlash came as well from advertisers, and the economic pressure built everyday the paper ran the series. "It's one thing to lose an account when you're an employee," Miller wrote. "It's quite another when you're also a stockholder; 140 employees hold close to 49 percent of the company's stock. For many families, this is their retirement." Nevertheless, he recalled, "Most of what I heard inside our building were words of support." Publisher Roger Plothow was also staunchly unapologetic throughout, "standing up with a stoic and clear-eyed defense... for the values of journalism."

The attacks weren't just financial, but personal as well -- including the outing of a gay staff reporter, Peter Zuckerman, by a local multimillionaire who bought full-page ads devoting several paragraphs to establishing that Zuckerman is gay. "Strangers started ringing Peter's doorbell at midnight,"

The local paper stood up for the right of their readers to be informed over what would seem likely to be a pretty severe punishment, financially and personally for its staff. Like what Bogart did in [“The Front Page”ct] Cut that, make it "Deadline".

But unlike in the movies and beyond what you, and the media itself, might expect, the paper that reported the news doesn’t seem to be suffering.

"One of the sweeter moments of our year occurred when we received figures from our circulation audit. While the sales numbers of other U.S. newspapers were in free fall, we were among the nation's faster growing daily papers."

Now that's a surprise ending. A story of a courageous newspaper staff and ownership that doesn't end in bitter-sweet cynicism and the paper closing. Maybe other papers should stop the presses and do a rewrite of their own story. Makes you wonder why they think people buy papers in the first place.

Update: My thanks to the poster who pointed out that I somehow got Charles MacArthur's play mixed up with one of Bogart's least appreciated movies. If you can rent "Deadline", it's worth watching.
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Monday, June 18, 2007

Take Back America 



I've been enjoying Washington, D.C. today, at the "Take Back America" conference. From my window I can see that phallic symbol of patriotism. More seriously, Washington is a pretty city, and I love the absence of tall buildings. What I don't love so much is the amount of street harassment I underwent in about thirty minutes. No, I don't want to get naked with you. And no, I'm not a sad young lady who needs some company. I'm an old grumpy goddess and ever so slightly drunk.

The conference has been interesting, though I arrived too late to attend the early sessions. I found today's deeper message to be the need to take care of the poor first. If we do that the middle classes will be propped up, too. More substantial posts tomorrow when I'm not quite so tired.

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The More Things Change... 



I recently posted on the stupid idea that one can make a tool or a gadget female-friendly just by painting it pink. Well, it seems that the marketing folks figured this out fifty years ago:

The Dodge La Femme was a product of the Chrysler Corporation's Dodge division between 1955 and 1956. The La Femme's Raison D'être stemmed from Chrysler's marketing department's observation that more and more women were taking interest in automobiles during the 1950s, and that women's opinions on which color car to buy was becoming part of the decision making process for couples buying an automobile. The La Femme was an attempt to gain a foothold in the women's automobile market.

...

The interior of the car also received attention and features. La Femme interiors were upholstered in a special tapestry material featuring pink rosebuds on a pale pink background and pale pink vinyl trim. The La Femme also came with a rectangular purse that coordinated with the interior of the car. The purse could be stowed in a special compartment built into the back of the passenger seat. Each purse was outfitted with a matching set, which included a compact lipstick case, cigarette case, lighter and change purse, all by designed and made by "Evans".

It didn't work then, either. I'm very saddened by this total lack of progress, perhaps because it implies that the group "women" are still not worthy of actual study by the marketing departments.

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Honour Killings in the U.K. 



Thanks for Jules for the link to this awful topic:

Dedicated teams of senior prosecutors are to be deployed in the UK's honour killing hotspots in the wake of the failings exposed this week by the case of a young Kurdish woman murdered by her family.

The prosecutors, who have all had experience of complex organised crime cases, will start work this month as part of an overhaul of how cases are handled. The move is designed to boost conviction rates and improve protection for victims.

...

The changes come after Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year-old Kurd, was murdered by her father and uncle because they disapproved of her boyfriend who was not a strict Muslim and was not of their tribe.

She was found dumped in a suitcase, with the shoelace used to kill her around her neck. She had repeatedly told police her family were trying to kill her. In one instance where she had escaped from her father, she was not taken seriously, and described as melodramatic and manipulative by an officer who interviewed her.

It is a horrible topic, and there isn't anything very bright I can say about it. I could say a lot about the feelings of despair that overtake me, the insistent disbelief I have that someone could do this to their sister or daughter or niece and yet be regarded as a good person, and what this all says about how the humanity of women is viewed in vast areas of the world.

But perhaps the wider lesson is that no family should ever be regarded as owning its members, that no family's honor should ever be regarded as lodging inside someone's vagina and that the police should not assume that families always want the best for their members, especially the women.



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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Happy Fathers' Day! 



Good fathers matter. So enjoy the ties and the baseball games and the monogrammed golf balls and the hugs.

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What Comes Next After A Quarter Of A Century Of Right-Wing Dominance? 

Posted by olvlzl.
One of the early posts I did talked about Victor Berger and the long lived, successful progressive-Socialist movement he was a part of in Milwaukee. I’m sorry to have to report that things don’t appear to be the same there anymore.

Next month in Milwaukee:

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

For those who have forgotten Paul Hill, he’s the murderer of the abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his escort James Barrett in Pensacola Florida in 1994. He also seriously wounded June Barrett in the attack. The “honoring” is timed to the week of the anniversary of Hill’s attack.

People everywhere should be putting pressure on political, community and religious leaders to condemn this, especially Catholic Bishops and Cardinals who have injected themselves into politics over the issue of ‘the right to life’. The three days of festivities is to include a 'Reenactment of 7-29-1994' (the murders of Dr. Britton and James Barrett and the wounding of June Barrett) we shouldn’t let them get away with a few mealy mouthed regrets. This is incitement to murder and recruitment of children into their ranks seems to be the primary motive of one of the cults involved. This is Jesus Camp-xtra. Let’s see how they really feel about the right to life.
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Saturday, June 16, 2007

Passage From An Unwritten Film Noir Script (Apparently) 

Committed and posted by olvlzl.
(S)he was so cool, icy, so logical. But that was only like the hard geometrically cut surface over a blazing gem stone. It made the fire inside brighter. The only way (s)he’d ever be wrapped around anyone’s finger was if it was the best way to catch the light for her(him)self.

Stuck in a 1974 notebook.

Did you ever come across something in your own notebook, in your handwriting many years later and wonder what the hell you could have been thinking? Please, share.
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Truth Has Consequences, Wing-nuttery Has Advancement Possibilities. 

Posted by olvlzl.
Steve Colbert mentioned the great heroine of sexual realism, responsibility and so of morality, Dr. Joycelyn Elders on his show the other night, I’m told. He contrasted her hisory with the Holsinger nutcase Bush has nominated for the post of Surgeon General. Even if you didn’t see his quite funny piece you know, of course, that the subject was “self-abuse”. It was the famous answer she courageously gave to a direct [set-up?] question with the camera rolling and the administration she was a part of under full media attack.

[masturbation ] "is a part of human sexuality, and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught."

She didn’t lie, she didn’t dodge the bullet she must have known the question was, she didn’t put her job or even her boss first, she took it on behalf of public health. She did the job she had been asked to do. It was the kind of raw of political courage that has become almost unknown in this country. A woman of her brilliance couldn’t have failed to know the entire consequences, the firestorm on hate talk radio and the cabloids, the pursed lips and disapproving squint of the “legitimate media”. She probably knew that it would cost her the position of Surgeon General, she’s no one’s fool. That doesn’t excuse Bill Clinton in her case. Not backing her up over what he must know was true was one of the most dishonorable things Bill Clinton did in office.

I think what Dr. Elders meant was that children should be taught that it was normal and nothing to be ashamed of and that it was a safe and uncomplicated means of dealing with sexual tension. She certainly knew that just about every one has, does or will do “it” anyway. It really wouldn’t have an impact on “incidence”. Actually, unless the person doing it is unusually careless I don’t think you could exactly call masturbating an “incident”.

Since Dr. Elders has had a long career of public service with many accomplishments I always felt kind of embarrassed that it was that one answer that would define her public life. But then there is this other quote from her:

"Our country talked about masturbation more in December of 1994 than they ever have in the history of the country - and you know, people would think you'd be embarrassed about that. I'm not embarrassed about that."

Only a true heroine could hold her head up and be unashamed to tell a politically inconvenient truth and promote the public’s welfare in performance of her duties and at her personal cost.

Who knows how much misery has been avoided over the centuries because of the near universality of masturbation? Unwanted pregnancies, venereal disease, fruitless yearning and the rash behavior that could be dissipated without anyone getting hurt? Hardly anyone really believes that it’s immoral, it harms no one so how could it be? Those benefits should be promoted and not suppressed. What other sexual practices are taboo anymore?* It’s really more of a housekeeping problem, when it comes down to it. The issue should be taken out of the hands of hypocritical conservative moralists** and handed over to people with an advanced knowledge of stain removal. The shame around it is just about the only health issue involved. Pretending anything else is simply a lie.

So, as a tribute to Dr. Elders, it is a duty to talk about masturbation and to make it accepted as valid a sexual practice as intercourse. The reason it’s always been such a school yard joke and a shame is because everyone was doing it, they didn’t know everyone else was and they didn’t want anyone to rank them among the “dubbers”. If they felt more comfortable with continuing to masturbate instead of engaging in sexual intercourse before they are wise enough to protect themselves or experienced enough to know a con when they see one many personal disasters could be averted. That’s what we should be working towards.

For another appreciation for Dr. Elders you can read this recent post by Kate Harding at Feministing.

Note: In a discussion on a thread on Eschaton about the Holsinger crack pot, it was speculated that given the disparity in numbers and the fact that a large percentage of gay men don’t practice anal sex, there might actually be more heterosexual anal sex than gay. I have been wondering how you would figure that out. Since he’s obviously quite interested in the subject perhaps Dr. H. might like to spend a little bit of his obviously too abundant time to expand his hobby research. His 1991 “paper” went into quite baroque detail about the possible tissue damage that can result from gay anal sex. To deny that some damage is possible is sometimes is, of course, dishonest. But maybe he isn’t as concerned with what happens to heterosexual women’s lower digestive tract as long as it’s a straight man doing it. Given the reports of the increase in unprotected heterosexual, anal sex among “chastity” teens, it could turn out to be quite acceptable to the chastity industry. Or it might be profitable to pretend it’s not happening.

*There are the controversies about “frottage” among some gay men. Some react with surprising vehemence to the suggestion that mutual masturbation is a more sensible alternative than anal sex. Some even claim that those who promote “frottage” as an alternative to anal sex are homophobes. That is an absurd idea. About a quarter of gay men surveyed in the mid-70s said that they didn’t engage in anal sex. Since that was before AIDS emerged you might imagine that an even large percentage doesn’t engage in anal sex now. I don't have any idea if the figures then were accurate, well, you've heard what I think about polling. But, don’t adults get to decide what they do among themselves, in private?

All of these decisions about sex have to be taken out of the hands, not only of the phony “chastity” industry but they also have to be taken out of the hands of those who are the reaction to the traditional moralists’ disapproval. These are personal decisions. Personal decisions will be different but they should be based on mutual respect and consent and with full knowledge of what will promote continued health, not on “doing it the real, right way” or on coercion. Luckily, the law isn't involved, for the time being.

** Who, exactly like the school yard bullies, all either did, does or will masturbate and they should know we know about it. If they deny it we should question them about their abnormality.
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My Thanks, 

To Echidne a great blogger, her hard work has produced one of the best blogs I know. It was a complete surprise to me last August when she invited me to be one of the guests covering her during her vacation, a great honor. And it was an even greater one when she took me on here weekends. It has to be noted that I've got some different ideas about things and there were bound to be some fireworks. Life doesn't follow the prescribed definitions and roles given to us by the media, social institutions or pop-culture. And then there's the length issue. I never felt less than entirely free to explore even the most off-the-wall seeming ideas and to call into question any commonly accepted idea. For that I thank the owner of this blog.

And I thank the members of her community who have read and commented on my ideas. Some have pointed out flaws in my arguments, some have shown me that I expressed myself badly. It's better to be corrected than to continue in error, even if it doesn't always feel that way.

And I thank those who have wished me well in my illness. It’s really more obnoxious and annoying than dangerous so don’t worry too much.

I didn’t, however, share with Echidne an even more painful and arduous trial which is about to overtake me, it is certain and it is guaranteed to happen on schedule. Within the week I am going to be under assault by a child who will harangue me to read her “the seventh book”. A word of warning. Think twice before agreeing to read a pre-literate child the first in a projected series of seven books. It won’t make any difference that she turns out to be in the top percentile of readers of her age group before the end of the series is published. Except she can catch your mistakes.
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Friday, June 15, 2007

History in Pictures 






Al-Askari shrine loses its minarets. Shiaites are upset and enraged.





Then a Sunni mosque is bombed. Sunnis are upset and enraged.

And so it goes.

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Thank You, Ovlzl! 



This weekend is the last one when olvlzl will blog regularly here. He has a recurring (but not life-threatening) health problem which must be seen to, and while he recovers he will not be able to write regularly.

I owe olvlzl a lot, especially given that I have paid him exactly zero dollars for his work. I have enjoyed his posts and the debates and discussions they provoke and the different ideas and thoughts that have entered this blog with him. His sense of humor is almost as nutty as mine and his knowledge in the fields of music, politics and other topics has enriched what goes on here.

He is always welcome to write here on weekends and I hope that he will do that when he is able to write again.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

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Friday Critter Blogging 



First, there is a turtle. FeralLiberal snapped a picture of it before it had a chance to snap back.





Next, there is William, a very zen cat. William belongs to Doug Watts. Or perhaps Doug Watts belongs to William.





Henrietta the Hound is happy, on the whole, though she would like to see more meal times and better quality snacks. She no longer runs, but we have very enjoyable leisurely strolls down the local woods. She's hard of hearing. Oddly, this only affects her when I give commands. If I whisper something about "walkies" in the other room, she has no trouble hearing. Curious.

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Dan Rather and Katie Couric 



You may have been following the debate about what Dan Rather said concerning Katie Couric's low ratings as the head anchor (in the position that used to be his):

From the June 11 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

SCARBOROUGH: You know, Dan, the thing that Chris Licht [executive producer of MSNBC's Scarborough Country] was talking about -- maybe you read in the Times, or I don't know where you read it -- but there was, seemed to me, this terrible miscalculation by Rome Hartman and a couple of CBS News execs that they were going to soften up the news, and that way they could expand their viewership. Yeah, I would think that if I'm sitting down at 6:30 to get the news, to see what's happened in the day, I don't want fluff stories. Do you think that's one of the problems that Katie Couric's had coming in -- that maybe they tried to re-brand the Evening News in a way that Americans just didn't want to accept?

RATHER: Well, I totally agree with you, Joe. That -- I want to make very clear that I have nothing against Katie Couric at all. She's a very nice person, and I have a lot of friends at CBS News. However, it was clear at the time -- and I think it's become even clearer -- that the mistake was to try to bring the Today show ethos to the Evening News and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience. And I just don't think people at 6:30 or 7 o'clock at night, or even 5:30 in the Central Time Zone or 6 o'clock when it's seen, that that's what they want. This is the continuation of a trend that we've talked about before, Joe and Mika [Brzezinski] and John [Ridley], and that is the combination of what I call the corporatizing of the news, has led to the trivializing the news.

I bolded the crucial sentence in that quote. Now, what happened next is that the well-known feminist and supporter of women everywhere, Russ Limbaugh, chipped in:

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, this is a clever technique, folks. I myself have used this technique. I love Katie Couric! Oh, I love CBS -- I've got friends at CBS News. A lot of respect for what goes on over there. And then you slam them. Tarting up the news. Dumbing it down and tarting up the news. The Today show ethos.

Now, when I saw this last night -- I was talking about this -- I said this is -- that's sexism. Dan Blather [sic], this is pure sexism -- dumb it down and tart it up. So we went back today. Here's a montage of Dan Rather on the air on election night November 2000. This is a montage of Dan Rather's coverage. And let's listen to dumbing it down and tarting it up.

And the public debate has been framed! Dan Rather is sexist! But Rush Limbaugh is not. I want to crawl into my bed and pull the pillows over my head. Wake me up when a saner world has been born.

Luckily, Jennifer Pozner has presented a more nuanced view of all this, and her arguments are available on video.

Here is my recap on the issues: There are two separate questions floating about in this discussion. One is about what the tone and contents of the news should be. The other is about whether women are up to presenting evening news and whether the audience wants to watch a woman in that role in general. It is quite feasible to keep the two questions separate for analytical purposes, and I intend to do that. But in terms of the actual decisions of the CBS they are rather deeply intertwined, and I intend to address that, too.

First, the selection of Katie Couric for that post was partly because the CBS wanted the news to become something different, something more like what Couric's morning program achieved. Perhaps the idea was that this would appeal to women, say. Or perhaps the idea was to just do something new, in the hope that people would be interested. Let's keep in mind that Couric wasn't the only woman CBS could have picked. There were several other possibilities, many of them very qualified indeed. That she was picked means that a certain tone and approach was preferred.

Now, this tone and approach is something I don't like in the evening news, and neither do many other people, I've noted. But this does not mean that it is Couric's gender that I would disapprove of. I disapprove of the way the program does the news.

Second, it is probably true that some viewers disapprove of Couric's gender, in that place of authority. Perhaps even many viewers do. Does Dan Rather? There is no way I could tell, but I haven't noticed him talking in the same way as Rush Limbaugh does about the dangers of "chickification" of the American culture. So perhaps Rather's statement should be interpreted with a certain amount forgiveness here. He may just have been carried away with his disappointment over the recent developments.

But here's where the two arguments must be brought back together: CBS must have known that picking a new approach to news and then picking the first female anchor for the evening news will cause the two decisions to be united in many minds. If the approach fails, then Couric can be blamed for that, or rather the sexism of the audience can be blamed for the failure, not the bad plan to begin with. And Rather's use of "dumbing down and tarting up" certainly contributed to the identification of what is wrong with the CBS evening news with the gender of Katie Couric. It also slapped lots of women right in their faces, whether he intended that or not.

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Pope Benedict and His Boys 



In the Catholic church don't think that women who get pregnant from rape should get abortions:

A senior Vatican cardinal said yesterday that Catholics should stop donating to human rights group Amnesty International because of its new policy advocating abortion rights for women if they had been raped, were a victim of incest or faced health risks.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, accused Amnesty of turning its back on its mission to defend human rights.

"The inevitable consequence of this decision, according to the cardinal, will be the suspension of any financing to Amnesty on the part of Catholic organisations and also individual Catholics," said a statement from Cardinal Martino's office yesterday.

"AI has betrayed its mission," Cardinal Martino told the US National Catholic Register in an interview.

Cardinal Renato Martino may sincerely believe in the message he conveyed. But then he also will never get pregnant after having been raped or possibly even gang-raped.

If you read the whole article I linked to (via No Capital), you have already realized that Cardinal Martino is playing straight into the rapists' hands:

Amnesty changed its neutral stance on abortion in April, but its Italy chairman Paolo Pobbiati insisted its new position had been misinterpreted by the cardinal.

"This has nothing to do with legitimising abortion as part of a campaign for human rights, it is to do with combating violence against women," he said.

"It was partly inspired by our experience in Africa where soldiers rape women in communities they attack to force them to have their children. We also believe women who have had abortions should benefit from medical care regardless of the reason for the abortion. Moreover we aim to promote education and contraception to reduce abortion rates."

So if the good cardinal has his way, the rape of women in African wars will be more likely to pay off in producing forced childbirth and children. Not so nice. On the other hand, his rule would also mean that no woman can ever be sure that she won't be forced to bear children. All that requires is one rapist at the right time. So there is that.

I am slightly bitter today, because the majority of African women have very hard lives and few rights and Cardinal Romano doesn't want them to have the right to refuse a rapist's child. He prefers to leave them permeable by the first successful sperm, even if it comes from the testicles of someone filled with hate.

I don't share Romano's views of conception as the onset of a separate human life. (You might remember that my theory is an older one which posits that it is the sperm cells which contain the life and that women are just fields for the men's seeds. This means, not-so-accidentally, that it is men who commit abortion every time they masturbate or have nighttime ejaculations.) But even if I did I would find an all-male hierarchy a horrible way of deciding when a woman should give birth or even possibly die giving birth.


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In other religion news, Southern Baptists today approved a resolution which admits that global warming is real but questions the idea that humans are responsible for it. So.
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Today's Action Alert 



From an e-mail I received today:

Today is one of those days when our work has especial significance. I just
learned that Martha Solay, the woman who so bravely told her story to
support the liberalization of abortion in Colombia , passed away. She died
because she was poor, because she was a woman, because her sterilization did not prevent a new pregnancy, and because having cancer she was not allowed to interrupt her pregnancy in order to begin chemotherapy and save her own life. She left orphaned four girls of 17, 6, 5, and 2 years old. They do not have a place to live, help us build a house for them. You can [read] her full story following this link (pdf).

You can send your donations (with a note to Martha's house) and/or buy the
t-shirts used during the process in Colombia , now part of the National Museum, to:

United States: Women's Link Worldwide, P.O. Box 415 Northfield , Vermont
05663 USA , or

Colombia : +57 (1) 345 1489, or

Send an email to info@womenslinkworldwide.org asking for more information.

The e-mail has been translated from Spanish. I think that you should add a note to your donation with the message that it is for Martha's house.

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Teacher's Pet 



That would not be Jonah Goldberg, whose recent article recommending the end of public schools made Ezra Klein point out earlier that many of Goldberg's preferred alternatives don't do even as well as the public schools in Washington, D.C.. And those public schools are indeed not doing well as Goldberg states:

HERE'S A GOOD question for you: Why have public schools at all?

OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.

The problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil — $12,979 — but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar goes to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.

In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days … for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.

It's possible that bad bureaucrats are causing some of these problems. But Goldberg fails to point out another reason, and that is the poverty level of Washington, D.C.. Poor families are unlikely to send their children to private schools. Poor children come to school saddled with more problems than children from more affluent families. To gather a large number of poor children into one public classroom is not going to create an easy educational experience for the students or the teachers. Comparing the achievement levels of these children to those of children going to private schools fails to standardize for the income differences. It also ignores the fact that private schools can refuse students they don't want to have but public schools have no such luxury. This means that school comparisons of the sort Goldberg wants to use suffer from selection bias. (To give an example of this bias from the field of higher education, Harvard is good at least partly because its incoming students are good. )

Goldberg's piece is an opinion column. Perhaps it's acceptable in that context to pick the worst possible example as a snapshot of how public schools in general are doing. But it's still a little bit odd to summarize the theories explaining why public schools exist as "bla, bla, bla" and "yada, yada, yada" , though of course it makes writing the piece much easier. Likewise, to state that "the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government" is quicker to type than any evidence for this argument. It also has the additional bonus of hinting that parents who have a child in a public school are "handing the child over", as if they'd never see the poor mite again. The horror!

And what about the general argument Goldberg makes that schools shouldn't be run by the public sector? He states that the government can't provide services and should provide money instead. A comparison between the Veterans' Administration system of health care (government operated and funded) and the Medicare system (only government funded) might suggest the opposite. But in reality the government provides certain services well and the private markets provide other services well. Which system to use depends not on some ideological statements but on the empirical facts in each particular case, though it's also worthwhile to point out that the countries with the best educational results rely mostly on a publicly funded and operated system, though it might not look like the American public school system.

Time to address Goldberg's "bla, bla, bla" abbreviation for the theories which try to explain why education is so often carried out by the public sector or at least by the not-for-profit sector, rather than by profit-making firms. There are at least four reasons for this.

The first one has to do with the fact that an educated nation provides better living conditions for everybody, not just pride and pleasure to the child and his or her parents. For a thought experiment, imagine a United States in which the majority of the people could not afford an education for their children. What would this do in a generation or so? The country would become a Banana Republic, with the wealthier few living in gated communities and the poor masses trying to get in. Labor would be cheap, true, but without many skills or abilities to acquire them.

In short, the benefits of education fall on a wider group than the students and their parents. But markets can't really enforce payments from that wider community of beneficiaries. Governments can, because they have the power to tax.

This explanation is sometimes used as a justification for publicly funded education. But public funding of education can also be justified by the desire to provide all children with equal opportunities for education. Its absence would mean that the children of the poor start the race several hundred yards behind other children, and might never be able to catch up, however hard they raced.

Now, Goldberg isn't arguing against the public funding of education, only its public provision. One might argue that public provision gives the taxpayers more control over the quality of the education they subsidize. If there is a public interest in the basic education of all children it is pretty unlikely that the government would ever limit its role to just writing blank checks. Some level of control and supervision would be required and the step from that to public provision of the services is a short one.

What makes it even shorter are the characteristics of the "output" of the school system. This output is difficult to measure. It depends not only on the teachers and the teaching tools but also on the child's talents, efforts and family participation, and in most cases years go by before the final effects of schooling are visible.

Whenever the product of some industry (education, health care) has this problem of verifiability (a particular type of informational asymmetry), we find that the industry tends to consist of a large number of not-for-profit firms. Perhaps the reason is that for-profit firms can't attract enough customers when selling products that are hard to verify. Perhaps not-for-profits and the public sector are better suited when the trust consumers have in the product is crucial. Whatever the reason, it is unlikely that a for-profit industry of educational firms would ever take over the schools in this country, never mind that such industries exist in the restaurant, bar and supermarket industries. If Goldberg wanted to offer an alternative to the current public schools a better example might be the U.S. health care industry.

Sigh. I now know why it's more fun to write "yada, yada, yada."
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Cross-posted on the TAPPED blog.

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More Bad News from Iraq 



From the BBC:

The two minarets of the al-Askari shrine in Iraq, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, have been damaged by two explosions, officials say.

According to witnesses the minarets collapsed completely after being hit by bomb blasts around 0900 (0500 GMT).

The shrine houses one of two tombs in Samarra for revered Shia imams.

The bombing of the dome at the mosque in 2006 is widely believed to have set off a continuing spiral of sectarian violence in which many thousands died.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says there are obvious fears now that this might give it yet further impetus.


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Embroidery Blogging 



I haven't had one of these for ages, mostly because I no longer have time to embroider, except with words. Or perhaps I've been having one of those creative pauses. Who knows? But I have a new idea in mind for a large wall hanging:

An Angry Chicken

It's going to have really frightening teeth and glowing eyes, while marching from right to left across the field. Very muscular and long-legged, with electric feathers and the talons should be frightening. It will leave an egg behind as it marches.

What do you think? A different kind of femininity? Or female power? Chicks and so on.

The more mundane reason is all those buttons I have, from always buying up old sewing baskets with their contents at yard sales and flea markets. I have ended up with a lot of buttons, and a pointillistic chicken might be a good way to use them in some creative way. I even have some rhinestone buttons which might work for the glowing eye. Or eyes. But I think a profile view is better.

Sigh. I haven't even finished the happy devil family yet.

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

And Another Thing 



Katha Pollitt has started a blog at the Nation magazine. It's called "And Another Thing". Her first blogpost is up today. Let me just say that the trolls there are unusually trollish. I'm quite envious.

Just kidding. But you might check out the blog. Also Pollitt's most recent column.

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Anchorwoman Wanted 



No experience in news required but must have DD cups in bras.

Now you think that I have finally fallen off the tightrope between so-so sanity and honest insanity. But you are wrong. I'm no more insane than I ever am. This is how a Texas television station has decided to address the job specifications of a female newsreader:

Some might say KYTX president and general manager Phil Hurley has decided to pull his station's news ratings out of the toilet by stepping into the gutter.

The Tyler, Texas, CBS affiliate will premier its latest news anchor next week – Lauren Jones, an actress, bikini model and former World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler with no journalism training or experience.

While Hurley admits his decision to hire Jones will attract criticism, he sees it as a smart business move.

"We think this will accelerate our growth and that people will see this as entrepreneurial," he told the Longview, Texas, News-Journal.

Jennifer Pozner addresses the feminist points about this experiment. It really is like spitting in the eyes of women who actually work in the field. It denigrates their work and their experience. It makes the assumption that women are on television in order to be eyecandy for guys. In an odd way this is not that different from the radical Islamists' argument that women shouldn't be on television because they are eyecandy.

Why not have naked men read the news? I bet quite a few women would check that one out.

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On Genarlow Wilson 



This case passed me by when it happened. Even goddesses don't spot every single thing. But I remember reading about it on various feminist blogs and the consensus everywhere was that Wilson had been treated very poorly indeed. The short explanation of the Wilson case is this:

A Georgia Superior Court judge today ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, who has served two years of 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with another teenager at a party when he was 17. Prosecutors said they would appeal the order.

...

The case began three years ago when Mr. Wilson was arrested for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year's Eve party in 2003. Under Georgia law, that offense qualified as aggravated child molestation, a felony charge largely intended for use against adult sexual predators, not teenagers like Mr. Wilson, who was 17 at the time of the incident. He had no prior criminal record and was an honors student and star athlete.

Critics pointed out that if Mr. Wilson had engaged in full sexual intercourse with the girl instead of oral sex, under Georgia law he could have been charged only with a misdemeanor, because of an exemption written into the molestation law specifically to cover contact between minors. But because that exemption did not mention oral sex, when Mr. Wilson was convicted, he received a mandatory sentence of ten years in prison without possibility of parole.

Mr. Wilson was also charged with rape for being one of several people at the party to have sex with a 17-year-old girl, but he was acquitted of those charges.

The 10-year sentence was widely criticized — including by former President Jimmy Carter — as disproportionate, and Ms. Bernstein likened it to "cruel and unusual punishment."

Which it is, of course. Now that Georgia law has been amended, and just because of this case. But the amended law didn't help Genarlow Wilson. Hence the order for his release.

Added later: Scott Lemieux says that Wilson has not been released, after all. And yes, Wilson is most likely not an angel at all. But ten years is too much for what he was found guilty of.

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President Bush in Albania 



They like him real good over there, as you can see from this video. Diane pointed out that Bush seems to lose his watch during the greeting ceremonies. Someone really wanted to have a piece that had touched his skin.

I'm becoming a vituperous blogger, I am. The watch most likely just fell off.




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Monday, June 11, 2007

Seeing Pink 






The way to market tools and technology to women is by painting it pink. Honest. Here is one example:

Not so long ago, pink was a colour reserved for little girls. It was the colour of Barbie and bubblegum, of plastic tat that parents were pestered into buying, of pre-teen bedrooms and pocket-money accessories.

Then, suddenly, it was everywhere - and being targeted at grown women. Next month, for instance, sees the launch of Fly Pink, a "boutique airline designed especially for women" which plans to operate from Liverpool's John Lennon airport. The airline will offer flights to Paris for "shopping breaks" in customised pink planes, and, to complete the experience, will also provide pink champagne and complementary manicures before take-off.

Which just underlines the fact that it is now possible for women to experience their entire day in pink. You can work out with a pink yoga mat and weights; adorn your windscreen wipers with pink wiper wings; cook dinner on a pink George Foreman grill and style your hair with hot-pink hair straighteners. You can even see off would-be attackers with a powder-pink Taser gun.

I don't want a pink computer keyboard, say. I don't even like the color pink especially, and in any case I think of it as "light red". I'd like a keyboard that I could clean without spending twenty years in isolation with Q-tips and saliva as my only weapons. And no, you can't have a look at my keyboard. It's mostly not visible under the various fossils.

The article I link to above makes a very good point. When marketers focus on some group, such as businessmen, they try to improve the product based on what the members of that group say. But when marketers focus on women, all they can come up is PINK! Girls like pink! Yes, that's the ticket.

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Immigration Judges Wanted: Democrats Need Not Apply 



An interesting article in the Washington Post explains how one can become an immigration judge under the Bush administration:

The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show.

Two newly appointed immigration judges were failed candidates for the U.S. Tax Court nominated by President Bush; one fudged his taxes and the other was deemed unqualified to be a tax judge by the nation's largest association of lawyers. Both were Republican loyalists.

Justice officials also gave immigration judgeships to a New Jersey election law specialist who represented GOP candidates, a former treasurer of the Louisiana Republican Party, a White House domestic policy adviser and a conservative crusader against pornography.

These appointments, all made by the attorney general, have begun to reshape a system of courts in which judges, ruling alone, exercise broad powers -- deporting each year nearly a quarter-million immigrants, who have limited rights to appeal and no right to an attorney. The judges do not serve fixed terms.

Neat. Even after this administration is but history, those judges will decide on immigration issues.

You really should read the whole article. It has sex or race discrimination as well. But this quote should get your juices going:

A few months earlier, another failed tax court nominee, Francis L. Cramer, a former campaign treasurer for Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), was appointed as an immigration judge. Cramer's bid for a seat on the tax court foundered after the American Bar Association's taxation section wrote a rare letter to the Senate Finance Committee, saying: "We are unable to conclude that he is qualified to serve."

Cramer was then hired by the Justice Department's tax division and was briefly lent to the department's Office of Immigration Litigation. Ashcroft approved him as an immigration judge in March 2004. The Government Accountability Office, a legislative watchdog, criticized the appointment, saying, "Converting a Schedule C [political] appointee with less than 6 months of immigration law experience to an immigration judge position raises questions about the fairness of the conversion."

Never give up.

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The Forced Birth Movement 



Reading about Sam Brownback's speech at the National Catholic Men's Conference made selecting a title for this post difficult, but finally I chose the same headline as Cliff Schechter. Among the many I considered (A Taste of Wahhabism, A Preview of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, Catholic Boys' Treehouses, Every Sperm Is Sacred) my favorite was "Rapists' Fatherhood Rights" -- but that's just too shrill. Well, it isn't, not really, when you consider the setting: A man giving a speech to a roomful of men. No women allowed at these conferences. And the speech includes this:

"Rape is terrible. Rape is awful. Is it made any better by killing an innocent child? Does it solve the problem for the woman that's been raped?" the Kansas Republican asked at the St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers gathering.

"We need to protect innocent life. Period," Brownback said, bringing the crowd of about 500 to its feet.


Remember that nobody in that audience has to worry about getting pregnant after rape or the possibility that he might die giving birth to the rapist's child. There is something extremely distasteful about the combination of the all-male audience and this particular topic, a topic about forcing women to give birth whether they wish to do so or not.
----
Cross-posted on the TAPPED blog. See Scott's response for some interesting arguments.



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Sunday, June 10, 2007

Chinaman, Laundryman 

"Chinaman!" "Laundryman!"
Don't call me "man"! I am worse than a slave.
Wash! Wash! Why can I wash away the dirt of
others' clothes, but not the hatred of my heart?
My skin is yellow, does my yellow skin color the clothes?
Why do you pay me less for the same work?
Clever boss! You know how to scatter the seeds
of hatred among your ignorant slaves.
Iron! Iron! Why can I smooth away the wrinkle of
others' dresses, but not the miseries of my heart?
Why should I come to America to wash clothes?
Do you think Chinamen in China wear no dresses?
I came to America three days after my marriage:
When can I see her again?
Only the Almighty Dollar knows!
Dry! Dry! Why do clothes dry, but not my tears?
I work twelve hours a day.
He pays fifteen dollars a week.
My boss says: "Chinaman, Go back to China, if you
don’t' feel satisfied! There, unlimited hours of
toil: Two silver dollars a week.
If you can find a job."
Thank you, Boss, for you remind me I know bosses
are robbers everywhere?
Chinese boss says, "You Chinaman, me Chinaman,
come to work for me.
Work for your fellow countryman!
By the way, You 'Wong', me 'Wong', Do we not
belong to the same family! Ha! Ha! We are cousins!
O yes! You 'Hai Shan', me 'Hai Shan'
do we not come from same district?
O come work for me, I will treat you better:
Get away from here! What is the difference
when you come to exploit me:
"Chinaman!" "Laundryman!" Don't call me Chinaman
Yes, I am a "Laundryman"! the Workingman!
Don't call me "Chinaman," I am the Worldman.
"Chinaman!" "Laundryman!" All of you workingmen!
Here is the brush made of study,
Here is the soap made of action.
Let us all wash with the brush!
Let us all press with the iron!
Wash! Brush! Dry! Iron!
Then we shall have a clean world.

H.T. Tsiang from the Daily Worker, Aug. 15th, 1928

You can consider this my comment on the G8 Meeting, The World Bank and the continuing disasters that flow from them. And you can throw in the present day government of China as well as the United States and Lou Dobbs.

Hear Also: Ruth Crawford Seeger Two Ricercari performed by members of Contiuum on
Naxos: 8.559197
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Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.* 

Posted by olvlzl.
We still have hemlock trees here, though it’s probably just a matter of time before the woolly adelgids kill them off. I can't imagine New England without hemlock trees, I don't know if I want to experience it.

The destruction of native species by invasive organisms isn’t much talked about, it’s just let to happen, treated like a minor matter in the religions of free trade and market economics. But even in the most pious activities of those faiths, the analysis of costs and figuring of monetary value, the losses are a major factor. The losses to the world in other terms hardly figure at all in the considerations of our corporate state which seems hell bent on reducing everything to a depressing half-life based on commerce and mind-killing entertainment.

You get the feeling that the reason they don’t talk about these kinds of things more is because people presented with enough information might come to the conclusion that giving up a huge amount of the biosphere for the enrichment of a tiny minority of the mega-rich isn’t worth it? Isn’t that fight, to save the living diversity we have now, worth more than the one over the analysis of dead fossils? Isn’t at least as important as the hundreds of thousands of words wasted over deploring the museum of superstition in Kentucky? The best way to fight that would be to turn it into a joke, and the people in charge of it seem to be doing their best to make that job easier.

Some of my friends in the life sciences resent the attention and resources that cosmologists and some of physics can command. More than one of them has talked derisively about “The Lords of Creation” in relation to the glamor attached to the search for the earliest particle of time in the universe while their research into living beings struggles for money. Maybe more emphasis should be placed on the living than on the dead and the inert. Without life the rest of it doesn’t matter.


* William Blake, Proverbs of Hell.
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Saturday, June 09, 2007

I Think This Joke Was Stolen From 

Joe Perham, my favorite Maine humorist.* At least I think he's the one I heard it from.

Posted by olvlzl.

My uncle went to Chicago by train and took a berth in the sleeper car. In the middle of the night the lady in the berth above said,
“Mr. it’s awful cold. Could you go get me another blanket?”
My uncle said, “ I’ve got a better idea, why don’t we pretend we’re man and wife.”
“Well, that could be interesting,” the lady said.
“Good, go get your own blanket.”

* I just found his site, no guarantees of its content is offered or promised. Though he is pretty funny.
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Hope... And on the strangest sea* 

Posted by olvlzl.
There is reason to be disappointed with the Democrats in congress, though their failure to override Bush’s veto of the original Iraq appropriation with time limits was entirely predictable. It was never going to happen since they don’t have veto proof majorities in either house. But when you’re throwing up your hands over that kind of thing remind yourself of what it was like when Hastert and Frist were in charge, Linked at Bouphonia, here’s a great example of why things are better now with Nancy Pelosi in leadership.

If you haven’t made Phila’s Friday Hope Blogging a habit, it’s one of those things on the blogs that makes life better.

You shouldn’t forget to gaze at the miracles of natural art, Friday Nudibranchs Blogging.

*
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson
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Stooping For A Dime And Finding A Dollar 

Posted by olvlzl.
Hearing that you should endeavor to broaden your experience as you age in order to keep the brain healthy, I picked up my first real hard-boiled, tough guy novel about this time last summer. Rescued from the pulp bin, it was a 1952 paperback of crumbling, acidified paper. The cover says “Kiss My Fist The saga of a racket big shot who lived, loved and died the hard way!”. The cover* illustrates this with a hard looking, if believably proportioned, man socking a woman, unbelievably decolee, on the chin. It wasn’t these endearing charms that kept me from putting the book down and washing my hands, however, it was the name of the author, James Hadley Chase. How could that name find its way onto Kiss My Fist? A tough guy with three last names? In researching this post I discovered that Chase was not the flower of the Eastern establishment I’d expected to write about, but a Brit who had a weakness for American tough guy fiction and who quite brilliantly relied on a dictionary of American slang to refine his dialogue. His adoption of such a respectable sounding name was certainly a career move, his birth name being Rene Brabazon Raymond. I can’t see the English language, tough-guy audience going for Rene Barbazon Raymond. My research said that “Kiss” wasn’t the original name of the novel, which entered 1939 England as “The Dead Stay Dumb”. I’m not sure what sociological significance there might be to the name change. Maybe they already had the cover art here and, given it’s undoubted qualities, they required an excuse to use it.

Looking at the notes I made last year maybe another reason for not putting it down was that this was the first thing I read in it:

Clem Gibson was someone in the town. He ran the bank, he owned a car, and he changed his shirt twice a week.

Though it made me smile for the next two days, this side-of-the-mouth passage is the best thing in the book. If you’re afraid this post will be a plot spoiler you can breathe easy. Ruining the book would be an act of supererogation, the author having saved anyone the trouble. It’s not the kind of book you so much read as skim in morbid fascination. An example, it is not to be regretted that I can’t give you the entire fight scene between Myra and Fanquist (called a “two-timin’ floozie”, though in the context of the book you wonder what makes either quality worth mentioning). It’s about the longest scene in the book covering more than two pages and in my copy it appears by far the most thumbed part of the book. Make of that what you will. I haven’t had such a bad time since I began some research into violent porn for a post I’ve shelved indefinitely.

Recently, while looking at something else, I happened on a masterpiece of book review by George Orwell** of another of Chase’s books from that era, No Orchids For Miss Blandish . The plot summary given in the review makes it sound as if “No Orchids” was an even less gratifying, if more widely read book. Orwell pointed out that Chase found enormous popularity during The War by the glorification of violence. Though the plot is largely accomplished through overtly sexual violence (rape) both the review and “Kiss” make me wonder if the all of the violence among all gender combinations didn’t achieve some kind of general gratification through horror and exercise of power. Orwell contrasted the lack of moral values in “No Orchids” with the minimal morality of the hero in the novel ‘Raffles’***. The contrast between the older kind of villain and the heros of Chase’s books would seem to be that there wasn’t even the pretense of morality in the modern age. He quite rightly calls the results “fascistic”. Fascism through generalized violence is the result of life without moral restraints, all activities have the exercise of power as their only motivation.

It’s worth pointing out that Orwell was talking about print in the review. TV, the movies and the web have had the effect of speeding up the delivery system of these drugs, something that Orwell anticipated in his other writings. You wonder what he would have made of 24 and the successor tough-guy genre in which the amoral thugs*** were no longer crime figures but a policy branch of governments. How did this tough guy genera relate to its cousin, hard-boiled secret agents climbing over a pile of bodies in service to the corporate state? Maybe we should yearn for, an assumption that the murderous thugs were outlaws instead of on the government payroll. Maybe we should also remember with fondness a time when the consumers of tough guy junk could master a sentence of more than six words. Read Orwell’s review, he says a lot more than I can, though I think he was a bit too hard on American pop culture as compared to Britains.

It would be most useful to know who would have kept Chase in business, he published dozens of pulp volumes right up into the 80s. A heck of a lot of stuff was published and made into movies. Someone was buying it. I can’t imagine his readership consisted of women. It must have been written with a male audience in mind. Would they have been Roosevelt Democrats? Supporters of Churchill? Would they have been the type who were about to fight Hitler? How would they vote after the war? Somehow I can’t picture them as enthusiastic supporters of civil rights or equality nor can I picture them as supporting women’s rights. I can imagine fans of Harvey Mansfield reading it for enjoyment though it might give V. D. Hanson nightmares. There is a surprising amount of J. H. Chase presence on the web, apparently he is very popular with a particular kind of audience. Wiki says he’s very popular in Africa, Asia, France, Italy and the last days of the Soviet Union.

Note: From experience I know I’d better point out that this isn’t a call for government censorship, that would be entirely unconstitutional. That doesn’t mean you have to like this kind of junk and to censor yourself in talking about it. I’d never give up the right to make fun of it and to tease its audience.

* You can judge for yourself. If you look find it notice that the cover carries the plain lie that it isn’t recycled material, though, I suppose, they might mean it’s printed on virgin paper. I had seen the original cover on line last year but can’t find the link anymore. There is this alternative modern cover of special interest to readers of this blog. I agree completely with this description given at that site.

Reading The Dead Stay Dumb by James Hadley Chase. The Finnish translation has one of the most awful covers I've ever seen - I'll post it here later. It's an early Chase, from 1939, and while it's pretty wild, it's also somewhat moronic. There's no real plot, no real characters - all the killings and counterfeits just happen almost out of nowhere. Maybe it's surrealism. (I know that the French are enthusiastic for Chase.)

Surrealism? No. Sous-realism would be a better word for it.

** Now that the centennial fad for Orwell has passed and Hitchens has changed getaway vehicles, maybe we can safely go back and look at some of Orwell’s occasional pieces, which I’ve always thought contained his best work.

*** Some here will know I’ve got a personal interest in Raffles.

**** Just this morning on NPR there was a report about the latest in the equivalent in slasher movies.
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Hopscotch Logic 

Posted by olvlzl.
This would be just another strange story of rather esoteric research into claims that people are able to do unexpected things while asleep if it wasn’t for these three things:

During his graduate research, Mangan came across a study detailing two cases where the subjects didn't recall what happened after being told of sexual acts that occurred while they slept.

The first case was a man who initiated sexual intercourse with his wife in the middle of the night, but could not recall it the next day.

The second was a legal case where a man had crawled into the sleeping bag of his 14-year-old daughter's friend and attempted to commit sexual acts against her. He also claimed not to have any recollection of the incident.

Mangan said he was fascinated by the cases because they detailed an apparent condition that hadn't been thoroughly detailed in medical publications.

And then there is this:

Mangan said most of his research on sleepsex is Internet-based. His website — www.sleepsex.org — asks people to submit their experiences, and over 1,000 already have done so.

From this we go, by means of modern logic, science and law to:

Mangan and two colleagues are seeking funding for a three-pronged study they hope will shed more light on the disorder.

The study would investigate the genetics of people who suffer from sexomnia, how many people suffer from it, and its legal ramifications.


What am I missing here? To go from two men saying “Honest, I can’t remember a thing,” through “over 1000 “ online testimonials to the search for “the genetic” cause of condition x would seem to me to be missing a few intermediate steps. Like trying to find out if there is really something there to have a genetic basis. You'll notice that they're already talking about taking the much larger and infintely more serious step leading to “legal ramifications”.

For further reference.
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As Rome Burns, The Freest Press Money Can Buy Fiddles 

Posted by olvlzl.


In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”?

Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.


The last sentence in this excerpt from Paul Krugman is the theme.

But, never fear, Paula Zahn is keeping her eye on whether those Catholic Democrats are taking communion.

ZAHN: Do you take communion?

DODD: Yes, I do.

ZAHN: And you are a pro-choice candidate.

DODD: Mm-hmm.

ZAHN: The Catholic Church does not believe in abortion. It views it as murder. How do you reconcile that view with your Catholic upbringing?

DODD: Well, abortion isn't something that I take any great joy in occurring. I think it ought to be a rare, safe, and legal. That has been my position on it for years. And we ought to be working together on how we reduce the incidence of abortion. Why not do more to help out in terms of expanding the opportunities for adoption, giving people other choices.

We've been screaming at each other about abortion now for 34 years. It's about time, with the law being what it is, that we try and reduce the number of incidents of it, provide the kind of support for families and women so they're not confronted with only that choice.

That hasn't happened enough, in my view.

ZAHN: The pope was highly critical of some Mexican politicians who were taking Communion and basically wants them banned from taking Communion because of their view on abortion. They also happen to be pro-choice. How would you feel if you were told that you could no longer take Communion because of your views abortion?

While I can't fault Democrats from taking the lesson that this kind of thing has been forced on them, I'd seriously consider throwing my support behind the first one who tells a major media figure that what they do at the communion rail is none of their or the voters' damned business.

I was going to write about the separation of church and state today, you remember that quaint idea, don't you? A quote I was thinking of using turns out to be of questionable authenticity. But I think this more certain document is better, anyway.

This act is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great barrier agst usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short of this principle, will be found to leave crevices at least thro' which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster, that feeding & thriving on its own venom, gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine & human.
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Friday, June 08, 2007

Dinosaurs and Noah's Ark 



Have you ever wondered how creationists manage to squeeze the dinosaurs into the ark? This is the sort of research problem one faces when believing in the Bible as the literal explanation of creation. But the creationists are up to the challenge:

The Ark easily had room for the dinosaurs (as you can see in other articles in this issue). First, the Ark was the size of a huge cargo ship (at least 450 ft [137 m] long). Second, there weren't many different kinds of dinosaurs (only about 50 "kinds"). Third, God most likely brought the smaller juvenile dinosaurs, not the aging adults, because they would be better suited for the voyage and the responsibilities of reproducing rapidly after the Flood.

You can find much more about the alternative prehistory at the Creation Museum. (Charlie Pierce wrote about it for Esquire in 2005.) What you might not see there any longer is the video showing Adam. This is because the actor playing Adam turns out not to be a very wholesome person:

The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

Why am I writing about this today? Because a recent USA Today poll found that 66 percent of the poll respondents think that God created human beings pretty much in their current form within the last 10,000 years. Confusingly, the same poll also finds that 53 percent of the respondents believe that human beings developed from "less developed" forms of live over millions of years.

Odd how seldom I read about the creation story as a metaphor in this country. While that treatment is fairly common among Christians in Europe, many American churches have decided to support a literal interpretation, come hell or high water. This is unfortunate, as a metaphoric interpretation could reconcile science and faith.
-----
Cross-Posted at the TAPPED blog.

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Where The Girls Are 



I have long intended to blog about political cartoonists and the percentage of women among them. That percentage is very small, and I want to study the reasons for that scarcity. But I have long intended to do about a million other things, too, and only about a hundred of those gets done every month. Which is not bad, really. But I would very much like to read that blog post about female political cartoonists. Could someone else write it, please?

This would be a good place to advertise Mikhaela Reid's new cartoon book: Attack of the 50 ft. Mikhaela.





Her book tour dates are here and you can buy the book here.

Where are the girls? Well, according to some they are going to take over the whole world and although female inferiority is but a natural biological fact this takeover attempt requires some serious testosterone injections to our national culture. If that sentence didn't make any sense to you, don't worry. I was just repeating the way wingnuts frame this issue.

But wingnuts have little to worry about. Even Mikhaela isn't really 50 feet tall.

And Shakespeare's Sister posted the logo of the blogs on the Atlantic Monthly:





Nice diversity of opinion there (click on the pic to see it better). But not much racial diversity. And none of those writers menstruate.

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Friday Pippin Blogging 









This is FeralLiberal's Pippin. Nice pictures and very relaxing to look at. I feel like having a nap now.

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A Tummy Bug 



President Bush is suffering from a stomach virus. When I read the story the picture attached to it was this one:





Weird.

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

On Blog Commenting 



While I was writing my response to Joe Klein's post about blogging I started thinking about something else, and that is the selection bias in blog comments, including those that are submitted at the Time's own blogs.

A "selection bias" is my borrowing from the literature on surveys in statistics. One problem with sampling a group of people and then generalizing from their opinions to some wider group is that unless we are very careful the people in the sample might not look like the people in the wider group. For instance, if you ask about people's opinions in some suburban mall you are going to have only people who visit malls, only people who are well enough to go out and very few rural people. So your findings are not necessarily going to reflect what those omitted groups think.

Similar problems apply to all those Internet polls. People self-select to participate in them, and those who find the time worth wasting are those who feel most strongly on the issue that the poll asks about. In general the more extreme opinions will be overrepresented in such polls, and that is why they always come with that warning about not being scientific. Which means that they actually are pointless things to have.

Now, comments on blogs are not intended to be a random sample of opinions but too often they are treated that way. Yet for me to comment on someone else's blog requires that I'm interested enough in the topic of the post, that I have the time to spend writing a comment, that I think I know enough about the question and often my emotions also need to be engaged.

What does this mean in terms of, say, the anger of the blogs? The people who are the angriest are most likely to comment, I suspect, and mostly it will be comments which are critical of the post, because just saying "hear, hear!" doesn't seem quite as necessary to do as expressing an opposing viewpoint. After all, the post itself expressed what you agree with. More controversial topics and topics which have to do with something we all feel we know about are also going to get more comments than, say, a post on research findings concerning the efficacy of abstinence education.

Based on my estimates from my own readership figures, the number of blog readers who actually comment is a lot less than one in a hundred. Yet the blogosphere is often characterized by the types of comments that appear, and this is where the fact that the commenters are not a random sample should be stressed.

In short, the people who read, say, progressive blogs, are not necessarily like the people who comment on those blogs and the two should not be treated as the same.

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The Mean, Mean Bloggers 



Joe Klein wrote a piece on the meanness of some lefty bloggers. Here is the gist of Klein's complaint:

But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn't move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable. Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

The revolution eats its children! See how big my maw is! No, you have to come closer to really see.

Klein gets at least three things wrong. The first one is the identification of angry bloggers with lefty bloggers. I'm not sure where the left is in this country, but many of the angry bloggers are quite moderate in their political ideology. The idea that anger=lefty here is incorrect. The Republicans have managed to drag the concept of center so much to the right that supporting progressive taxation stains you indelibly Maoist. In some ways "lefty" has no actual definition in the U.S.. Do you know a single well-known blogger, for example, who advocates socializing the means of production? Do you realize that the wingnuts think Hillary Clinton is a communist? It is all quite too much and Klein shouldn't really support the silly identification of everybody not wingnut as a commie.

Neither are liberal and lefty the same thing. In European usage, a liberal is pretty right-wing, actually. The American Democratic party would be viewed as moderately right of center in most European countries.

The second thing Klein gets wrong is the idea that the so-called lefty bloggers are copying Rush Limbaugh. They/we are not. What is happening is something a little different. Limbaugh has the support of capitalists with money and he has access to a microphone. So do people of the Ann Coulter type. Lefty bloggers don't have the support of the Democratic party or the financial backing of rich people. They are mostly single individuals who blog in their own time. Grassroots stuff. They are also much more likely to swear than Rush Limbaugh and much less likely to call people treasonists or to use racist and sexist language. Another difference is that the mainstream media has left Limbaugh pretty much alone, whereas the lefty bloggers have become a favorite complaint for all pundits, whatever their political affiliations might be.

The third mistake Klein makes is in his assumption that it is the "most radical" voices of the lefty blogs which keep everybody marching in lockstep. What actual institutional power do lefty blogs have? How can they force someone to march in lockstep?

Klein is right about the anger, of course. Many bloggers are very angry. There are several good columns waiting to be written about the real reasons for that anger. This post by Digby could give some of the details those need.

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The Flavors of Justice 



It's a funny old world. Paris Hilton was freed from prison after a day or so. Had she been a total unknown she would not have been and her sentence might have been longer, too, especially if she happened to be black, say. Though the whole case seems too trivial to comment on, the idea of justice as differentiated by money and fame is a dismal one. Yet we appear to be accustomed to that.

What is the lesson she learned from her experience? What is the lesson others learned? That it is possible to get away with pretty much anything if you have the right social signals. Well, this also suggests that it might be equally likely to be totally innocent, yet have the system fall on you like a ton of racist bricks if you lack those signals that are needed.

Remember the California case of the seventeen-year old who was taken to the hospital by some soccer players from a party where she supposedly wanted to have a train of young inebriated men? Remember how the DA decided that there was no case to prosecute anyone for sexual assault? Well, Jerry Brown is going to look into that case:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown will now look at the De Anza College rape case after the Santa Clara County District Attorney made the request.
A deputy in the office of DA Dolores Carr says she is confident Brown will reach the same conclusion, that there is insufficient evidence to file charges in the case.

In a move experts call unusual but not unprecedented, the Santa Clara County DA has asked the state attorney general to review her decision not to charge two De Anza baseball players in the alleged rape of a 17-year-old girl.

The victim told deputies it happened at the South Buena Vista home of one of the players. The National Organization for Women, which rallies for and counseled the alleged victim, says it's a victory.

Mandy Benson, CA National Organization for Women: "I think it means that they really heard the victim. The victim has asked for this."

Jerry Brown, Calif. Attorney General: "Just got the request. We're going to take a very hard look at this case, make an independent review, and when we've completed that I'll make an announcement, either take some action or to validate what's been done"

Is this a step for the old dame justice? Or just another layer in the whitewashing? We'll see, I guess.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Greed And Abstinence 



UPDATE: The subcommittee approved a 27.8 million increase for the program which does not work.
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Have you heard that giving more money to abstinence programs which have been shown not to work is the kewl thing these days? Indeed! Tomorrow the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee is expected to increase the spending on abstinence-only programs by 20 to 27 million dollars (to a total of perhaps 150 million dollars) without adding any requirements for the programs to be more medically accurate. The full vote of the committee is expected the following Thursday.

The Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) programs that we as tax-payers are funding don't work. The most recent study (pdf), from April 2007, states this:

Findings indicate that the youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.

We have a program which does nothing, and we are going to give it 27 million bucks more? Is that prudent fiscal governance? Or is it an outrageous form of pork, going straight into the pockets of the fundamentalist base of the Republican party? Note that some of the programs offer false medical information, too.

Here is what you can do:
1. Contact Nancy Pelosi and urge her not to support the measure (increasing the CBAE funding) or at least ask for medical amendments.
2. Contact David Obey with the same two messages.
3. Contact other members of the subcommittee with these messages.

This is truly a total waste of money, and consists of a transfer of income to those who voted for George Bush without helping the teens at all.

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Jessica Valenti on Colbert 



Jessica Valenti was on Steven Colbert's show last night, talking about her book Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters. She did wonderfully. You can watch the interview here if you missed it.

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American Life League And Poverty 



Jill at feministe posted about American Life League's press statement concerning poverty:

Abortion is an act that takes the life of an innocent human child," said Erik Whittington, American Life League's youth outreach director. "It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor and ignore the deaths of untold millions of babies. Abortion is poverty and the number one priority of our day should be its demise."

This past weekend, Sojourners opened Pentecost 2007: Taking Vision to the Street, a conference aimed at placing "poverty at the top of our nation's agenda." Today, Sojourners will host a march that will run from National City Christian Church to the Upper Senate Park. American Life League, through its youth outreach project Rock for Life, will be there to present to conference attendees the importance of putting abortion, not poverty, at the top of the list of social concerns.

"Mother Teresa, the universal icon for fighting poverty once said, 'It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.' While we commend Christians for working towards eliminating poverty," said Whittington, "we must not forget that abortion kills a human person, and leaves the mother spiritually and psychologically broken. Abortion ends the lives of more than 3,500 American babies a day. This bloodshed dwarfs any other issue, including poverty."

So. As Jill points out, this has been a week of utterly astonishing comments from various wingnuts and anti-feminists. Mr. Whittington also has not thought this thing through: A major reason given for abortions is economic hardship. Thus, poverty relief should lead to fewer abortions.

I got curious about the American Life League. Their website states that they don't believe in abortion under any circumstances, even when the mother's life is threatened:

ALL is opposed to all abortion, contraception and other threats to the human person and the family. This total protection approach separates us from many of the other major groups. ALL will not support abortion-related legislation that contains exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother, fetal deformity or other such condition.

You can find the ALL associates in various states on the website. You can also find the best way of treating ectopic pregnancies, where the fetus will always die:

Using the Thomistic Principle of Totality (removal of a pathological part to preserve the life of the person) and the Doctrine of Double Effect, the only moral action in an ectopic pregnancy where a woman's life is directly threatened is the removal of the tube containing the human embryo. The death of the human embryo is unintended although foreseen. Put another way, if there were a way to save both lives, which, of course, are of equal value, one would be obliged morally to do so. At this time, this is not possible.

It is acknowledged that it has become commonplace even in Catholic hospitals to open the tube and "suction out the human embryo" or administer methotrexate either via mouth or laparoscopy. Both of these procedures directly attack an innocent human life and are intrinsically immoral and never can be justified. In fact, they violate the Fifth Commandment, which under all circumstances prohibits a direct attack on innocent human life. There are absolutely no exceptions to the 5th Commandment as described.

While removing the tube containing the human embryo results in the death of a human being as does suctioning out the human embryo or administration of methotrexate, one cannot ethically conclude that all the actions have the same intended end result. The reason for this is that the "means" used to accomplish the "end" are not the same.

Refusal to make this distinction results in a Machiavellian approach employing any "means" to the "end" including the direct assault on the human being intended to result in his death. While it is acknowledged that removal of the tube containing the human embryo may result in sterility, it is not morally justified to directly attack human life by suctioning out the human embryo or administering methotrexate even though fertility is preserved.

Fascinating. I like the way these guys view women's lives: no contraception and if you get pregnant nobody will care about your life unless the fetus is going to die anyway, but even in that case your future fertility can be sacrificed. Why do they bother calling their organization ALL? They should insert some sort of a qualification that the "ALL" doesn't refer to women's lives or health.

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Politico Blogging 



Politico is a political site, full of serious bloggers who know all about electoral politics. But they also have a gossip blog appropriately called "Shenanigans" and written by a woman. This alone has made my jawline freeze whenever I click on the site.

But today my jaw was unusually clenched, because of a post by Jessica Valenti on feministing.com with the title "Two Words for the Politico: FUCK YOU." And why did she write that? Well, Politico is running a series on bloggers and the most recent one to be profiled is Ann Althouse. The post about her asks her for her biggest dust-up, and this is what the answer turns out to be:

Biggest dust-up: "Let's take a closer look at those breasts," a post about a female blogger who posed for a photo in front of Bill Clinton. Jessica Valenti, who runs and blogs on feministing.com, is standing at an angle with a slight arch in her back, making the focal point of the photo, whether intentional or not, her breasts.

Valenti isn't shy about her body; she just published a book called "Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters." Althouse riffed on the relationship between accentuated breasts and feminism, and Valenti and the rest of the blogo-feminist world lashed back at her. "That's still going on. That started like last year. I still get stuff about that," said Althouse. "But I don't regret it."

I wonder how they fact-checked that "arch in her back" comment? Or the one about "isn't shy about her body"? Or "accentuated"? A lot of insinuations in two short paragraphs. Why isn't this guy writing the "Shenanigans" blog?

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Obesity in China 



The British Guardian has a story about obesity among Chinese children and what the government is doing about it:

Compulsory waltzing will be added to the Chinese national curriculum in September under a new campaign to reduce childhood obesity.

From the start of the new school year, teachers across the country will be expected to put hundreds of millions of pupils through their paces every day, the state-run China Daily said today.

In preparation, a team of pioneering ballroom and folk instructors started training this month and video demonstrations of the mandatory breaktime routines have been filmed for DVD distribution to regional education departments.

Waltz seems on odd thing to pick. Why not some traditional Chinese dances? But what I found more interesting about the article was this:

The routines - which will supplement rather than replace regular physical education classes - are reportedly aimed at turning a generation of chubby cheeks into twinkle toes. Student waistlines have expanded almost as fast as the Chinese economy. Studies suggest one in five children are obese. Rising affluence, reduced exercise and the growing popularity of fast food such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds have hit school fitness levels badly. The average pupil today is slower and weaker than 10 years ago.

The Chinese might be conducting a natural experiment on the impact of fast foods on obesity. I suspect that Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds are not available all over China. If this is true it could be possible to compare childhood obesity in the areas where they have been operating for a while and in the areas where they are not available, always taking into account other pertinent differences (in income and rates of urbanization, say). Doing a study like that would be most useful.

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Mea Culpa 



I recently wrote about the Bush administration's determination to keep a meatpacker from testing all its animals for BSE or the mad cow disease. My take on the story was based on an AP article which stated:

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

This turns out to be incorrect. Hilzoy from the blog Obsidian Wings sent me the actual brief of the case and also a link to Stuart Buck's blog post on the same topic.

These show that the Department of Agriculture based its arguments not on the possibility of false positives (the test showing that the animal is diseased when it is not) but on false negatives (the test showing that the animal is healthy when it is not). Most tests have the likelihood of producing false negatives and/or positives. The BSE test kit the meatpacking firm wished to use was argued to produce a very large likelihood of false negatives for the following reasons (from the government's consolidated memorandum, via Obsidian Wings):

"As discussed previously, the vast majority of cattle that are processed into beef in the United States are less than 24 months old. See Ferguson Decl. ¶ 5. However, the average incubation period for the BSE disease is five years, meaning that on average it takes five years from the date a cow is infected with BSE for the cow to show any outward clinical signs of the disease, such as abnormal posture, inability to walk, or other impaired coordination. See id. Given that the earliest point at which current BSE testing methods can detect a positive case of BSE is only two to three months before a cow would demonstrate clinical signs of the disease, see id. ¶ 10; Rippke Decl. ¶ 9, testing all young normal-looking cattle for slaughter, as proposed by plaintiff, is not practical and offers no animal health or food safety value because testing a young infected animal with the current methodology would likely produce false negative results, Ferguson Decl. ¶ 10.23.

In short, if this argument is correct the use of the BSE kit in the manner the meatpacker wanted would not have provided useful information about the safety of its beef. Thus, the case is more akin to trying to prevent fraudulent advertising than to trying to stop a firm from offering additional services its competitors are not interested in offering.
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Cross-posted at the TAPPED.

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Meanwhile, in Ghaza 



A radical Islamic group is threatening women who work for the official Palestine television station:

All 15 women presenters reported for work at the official Palestine Television station in Gaza yesterday, in defiance of death threats by a radical Islamic group that is believed to have links with al-Qa'ida. The Righteous Swords of Islam warned that it would strike the women with "an iron fist and swords" for refusing to wear a veil on camera.

"It is disgraceful that the women working for the official Palestinian media are competing with each other to display their charms," it said in a leaflet distributed in Gaza at the weekend. "We will destroy their homes. We will blow up their work places. We have a lot of information about their addresses and we are following their movements."

The fringe group threatened to "slaughter" the women for corrupting Palestinian morals. "The management and workers at Palestine TV should know," it warned, "that we are much closer to them than they think. If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people."

About half the women TV journalists wear the traditional hijab head covering, but all show their faces and wear makeup. They mounted a vigil yesterday outside the Gaza City office of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, demanding protection and respect.

It is not quite clear from the story whether the radicals want the women to wear a niqab, a covering of the whole face except for the eyes. "If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people." Just imagine.

How odd that it is the women who are responsible for spirit and morals. How odd that any amount of a woman visible is seen as displaying her "charms". She is an object on which meanings are placed, not a subject.

Although radical Islam is by far the worst in the attempts to make women "behave", all fundamentalist religions do the same to some degree. It's pretty much the first thing on their agenda: to subjugate women properly. I've sometimes wondered if it is really the desire to subjugate women that drives some men to those types of religions rather than the religions themselves causing the subjugation.

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Monday, June 04, 2007

Idle Echidne Musings 



These are my payment for blogging, the time at a cocktail party when I grab your shoulder and will not let you go while I tell you all about my sore tooth or what the bartender told me the other night or about how clever it was to put thumb tacks on the boss's chair while her back was turned.

So I was musing over the concept of "opinions" the other night. Opinions (in this post) are those spicy things one finds quite obviously true, whatever the facts might tell. They are a little bit like your beloved children who can do no wrong, while other people's opinions are the neighbor's spoiled brats. It's very odd that anybody would be interested in other people's opinions, actually. Much better to just read here and get only mine.

But more seriously, opinions are something that comes out when you mix half a pound of evidence, add some quasi-evidence and whip it all up with enormous amounts of childhood memories. Then you bake it and if you're brave enough you will serve it to a large party, asking for comments on how well the cake turned out.

And this is where things may turn out nasty, because loads of people will not like your opinions at all and will tell you so in no uncertain terms. Depending on what those childhood memories might be you might then fall apart and crawl back home crying or you might take out those fancy sharp kitchen knives and do a little dance around the room. Or you might just yell back, with your eyes bulging out and your veins popping.

I don't seem to be able to stick to seriousness in this post. What I really wanted to say that having opinions and expressing them publicly can be quite frightening, especially if you belong to one of the groups who are not supposed to have opinions but to mainly listen to other people's opinions while holding that adoring glazed look. That would be lots of women. Thus, for me to have Public Opinions required the disguise of a goddess. Goddesses can have opinions, even bad ones.

Hence the birth of Echidne.

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Steve Gilliard, RIP 



Steve died on Saturday morning. It should have rained all weekend. All he got was forty-one years.

Steve was a blogger. A passionate writer, a righteously angry writer, a writer with a large heart. He was smart, opinionated, well-read and capable of learning and growing. I crossed swords with him and traded jokes with him, all on the net. I wish I could have met him in real life.

At least we still have his writings. His piece "I'm a Fighting Liberal" is from 2003 but it is as fresh today:

You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.

What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.

The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?

Steve's range was wide, from predicting the current mess in Iraq to cutting straight through the crap on Giuliani's third wedding. His special metier was military history and he spelled out the problems with the Iraq occupation clearly and correctly. He also wrote about food and his beloved New York City.

He should have had more time. Bless him for the time he spent with us. Now pick up the job he left behind.
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Added later: Steve Gilliard's site has a donation button. For help with the funeral expenses.

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Vomit in the Mouth 



You may have read about this case:

April Grolle, Lauren Chief Elk and Lauren Breayans never expected to be called heroes. But they never expected to be called names either.

The three, all soccer players on the highly regarded De Anza College women's soccer team, were thrust into the national spotlight when they rushed in and rescued a 17-year-old girl who was, they say, being sexually assaulted at a March 3 party in San Jose. They say the victim was so intoxicated she appeared to be comatose, and that eight or more men stood around watching one of them sexually assault her.

The three broke in, grabbed the girl and carried her out. They took her to the hospital, notified authorities and volunteered to testify in any court proceedings. What more could you ask?

To keep their mouths shut. To butt out. To mind their own business.

That's the message the soccer players got from the men accused in the case.

"People I didn't even know were coming up to me and saying, 'Stop your lying. Shut your f -- mouth,' " Chief Elk said in an interview last week. "We'd be walking around, and people would actually come up and get in our face."

It reached the point where they felt threatened. Cmdr. John Hirokawa of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department confirms that deputies were called to the campus on a complaint of harassment.

The seventeen-year old was lying on the ground, with one man having intercourse with her and several others sitting around in the same room. Doing what? Watching? Waiting their turn? She had vomit in her mouth.

Lauren Chief Elk and April Grolle are 20-year old De Anza College students and teammates on the school's soccer squad. They were leaving a party at a house when they realized something wrong was going on in a back room where the doors were closed and the lights were off.
"We heard and saw a girl tapping on this door in the kitchen saying 'There is a girl in there with eight guys," explains Chief Elk.
They say they tried to get into the room, but were confronted by a baseball player.
"[He said] 'Mind your own business; she wants to be in here' and slams the door," says Grolle.
What they saw through a crack in the door horrified them.
"When I looked in, I saw about ten pairs of legs surrounding a girl, lying on the mattress on the floor and a guy on top of her with his pants down and his hips thrusting on top of her," recall Chief Elk. "And when I saw that I knew immediately something wasn't right. It just didn't look right."
"I saw that this young girl did not want to be in there, and that's when we just went 'We're getting this girl out of there,'" says Grolle.
April and Lauren -- along with a third soccer player named Lauren Breayans -- broke down the door and were shocked with what they found.
"This poor girl was not moving. She had vomit dribbling down her face. We had to scoop vomit out of her mouth [and] lift her up. Her pants were completely off her body," says Chief Elk. "She had her one shoe one, her jeans were wrapped around one of her ankles and her underwear was left around her ankles. To the left of the bed there was some condom thrown on the ground."
"When they lifted her head up, her eyes moved and she said 'I'm sorry,'" says Grolle. "One of the guys who was in the room said 'This is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself.'"
Lauren Chief Elk didn't believe him: "You have to be conscious to consent to something, and that was not the case at all."

But the vomit wasn't hers. The vomit in her mouth. It was not hers. This turns out to be very important among the justifications DA Dolores Carr gave for not prosecuting anyone for sexual assault:

Is it sexual assault when a victim is too intoxicated to consent to sex? Yes, but we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was so impaired that she could not understand what she was doing. We must also prove that the defendant should have known that she was incapable of consenting. This can be very difficult when the defendant and witnesses offer competing versions of the victim's condition.
This case fits that mold. Many of the witnesses had been drinking, some heavily, and their stories were not always consistent. But most important, the victim told investigators that she did not remember anything that happened from shortly after the time she arrived at the party. The victim would be unable to counter claims that she had consented. The trial would be fought over differing versions of the victim's sobriety and behavior, with several witnesses and potential defendants motivated to paint her in an unfavorable light.
The result would be such a confusing and conflicting account of what happened that we would be unable to convince 12 jurors to convict. For example, the media reported that the victim vomited. But lab tests showed that the vomit did not come from her. The defense would challenge any account which depended upon the vomit to prove that the victim was too intoxicated to consent.

So let me get this right. According to California law having sex with someone who is too intoxicated to consent is a sexual assault. But somehow this seventeen-year old wasn't drunk enough to be considered intoxicated, because she was lying on the floor with someone else's vomit in her mouth? Somehow this seventeen-year old wasn't drunk enough to be considered intoxicated even though she stated that she remembered nothing of the events? Is it common for a person not under the influence of alcohol to remember nothing of the events like this? Why wasn't her blood tested for alcohol at the hospital?

It is very hard to read all this. Very hard. Even if this seventeen-year old, who was not intoxicated but just enjoyed having other people's vomit in her mouth, even if she lay down, spread her legs and invited the universe to fuck her, even so, how could the men in that room just sit there and not help her? Not even help her to the hospital when the soccer players arrived? That is what upsets me much more than the question whether the case should be prosecuted, for some reason.

Do you know what I think? I think that prosecutors everywhere are now scared of cases like this one, scared of ruining the perfectly good futures of upstanding young men, who just happen to sit around in a darkened room where a seventeen-year old lies with someone else's vomit in her mouth, with someone else on top of her. I think that prosecutors are afraid to touch cases like this one, because they remember the Duke lacrosse case and how it bit one of their own in the ass.

I also think that one day a woman will be gang-raped and she will not go to the police because what would be the point if all evidence must be absolutely clear and no witness statements can clash. This reminds me a little of the Islamic sharia rule of needing four male witnesses to prove that a rape has been committed. It always made me wonder what those four witnesses were doing not preventing the rape in the first place. But of course such rules as these will keep claims of rape down.

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Sunday, June 03, 2007

"What would I be doing in a lonely heart's club?" 

The reason Mae West gave when she initially refused to give permission to use her picture on the Sgt. Pepper's cover.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The person I could swear used to be on that cover but who I can't find now.
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What Happens When A Fool Won’t Learn In Experience’s School. 

Posted by olvlzl.
Ezra Klein, a liberal, someone I agree with on a lot of things, recently said something that made my blood boil.
Obviously I, like most coastal-bred elitists, don’t think voters make terribly good decisions.”
I cooled down considerably when I read on ...
“But I also don’t think economic actors are particularly rational.” But not entirely.

Going past the “coastal-bred elitist” phrase - guarantee to make me see red - it reminded me of one of the most disturbing lesson of reading the blogs, presumably the most democratic of all media. Democracy is not the universally assumed common ground of our politics anymore. While there is a lot of democratic talk and even some admirable examples of standing up for it, there is a lot more elitism and skepticism that democracy is possible or, perhaps desirable, among our allegedly educated class and on the left. Klein, I believe, doesn’t fall into that category so I don’t understand why he would associate himself with it even in jest.

This is a particularly disturbing article - book review by Christopher Hayes showing the growing overtly anti-democratic orthodoxy of the American academic and government establishment.

“If people are rational as consumers and irrational as voters,” Caplan writes, “it is a good idea to rely more on markets and less on politics.’

The first and most obvious problem with Caplan’s argument is that it quickly leads to some very dark places. He notes, enthusiastically, that education makes people think more like economists and that, luckily, the highly educated vote at higher rates than the less educated. But why leave it to chance? You could instead give more votes to businessmen and university graduates, as Caplan comes close to proposing, or simply require people to “pass a test of economic literacy to vote.?
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And the book’ s manifest elitism is not fringe. It is blurbed by economist Alan Blinder, who advised President Clinton, and N. Gregory Mankiw, who headed the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush. Over the last 30 years, conservatives have made political hay by railing against liberal ‘elitists’ who want to substitute the judgment of faceless bureaucrats, activist judges and pointy-headed intellectuals for that of the common man. Yet if you got some prominent conservatives off the record - after plying them with a few drinks -I bet more than a few would agree with Caplan: Voters are fools.

Good thing our campaign donors are the ones who really run things.

Anyone on the left who doesn’t believe in government of, by and for The People should ask themselves why they’re bothering. If the left isn’t fundamentally for democracy, insuring that The People have the information they need to cast informed votes for the purpose of benefitting the world at large and ensuring that their votes are cast and counted, it has no reason to exist. We’ve already got a political persuasion that is all about the interests of the elite, they’re the ones who were in power for the past six years and who have too much influence even within the Democratic Party. Caplan and his supporters seem to think they’re smarter than the Great Unwashed.

Experience keeps a dear school but a fool will learn in no other, said that most democratic of all our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin. We’ve had the experience of government under conservatives for most of the past thirty years. Franklin should have told us what to call people who don’t learn from the hard lessons of experience. Then we’d know what to call Caplan and his supporters.
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What Roger Said.
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Cracks In The Lyin’ Curtain? 

Posted by olvlzl.
Corporate media, at least those with any clue as to what the past sixty years have been like, can’t go on denying that Bush is not only entirely nuts but also as ignorant as your average Cabbage Patch Doll, can they?

Bush saying that the going on sixty year old Korean standoff is something like what he’s got in mind for Iraq is nuts on a Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenbashi level. Or maybe Kim Il Sung at his loopiest. Anyone in the Republican Party, the allegedly respectable media or any other branch of the American establishment who can read about Bush’s latest thinking on how to solve the disaster he set off and goes along with the tragic farce is criminally irresponsible, at best.

We, my friends, are witnessing the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the decline of the Roman Empire come horrifically to life. Remeber the school of thought that Cheney was the (self-selected) “adult” in the Bush II regime? Read this and weep.

If we survive with anything like representative democracy’s ruins intact, we are going to have to face the lessons of what happens to a democracy that allows its public information system to be corrupted to the extent ours is. It can’t be left to chance, it certainly can’t be a matter of laissez faire. Freedom of the press means that they are free to publish the facts needed by The People to cast a vote and to bring down would be tyrants. Ours has failed in both of these most vital reasons for them to exist. Six years into the Bush regime and just the smallest hints of what was clear from the start. Democracy can’t live with that situation.

P.S. Reading V.D. Hanson the other day, thinking about the Hellenic fad among the "intellectuals" of the American Right, how much do you want to bet that they were addicted to gladiator movies from the 50s?
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After the Storm: Back On Line On My Own Computer 

When a man is sitting before the fire on the hearth, he says,
"Nature is a simple affair."
Then he looks out the window and sees a hailstorm, and begins to think that
"Nature can't be so eas'ly disposed of."

Charles Ives
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Saturday, June 02, 2007

Saturday Emily Dickinson Blogging As The Thunder Approaches 

The Wind begun to knead the Grass—
As Women do a Dough—
He flung a Hand full at the Plain—
A Hand full at the Sky—
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees—
And started all abroad—
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands—
And throw away the Road—
The Wagons—quickened on the Street—
The Thunders gossiped low—
The Lightning showed a Yellow Head—
And then a livid Toe—
The Birds put up the Bars to Nests—
The Cattle flung to Barns—
Then came one drop of Giant Rain—
And then, as if the Hands
That held the Dams—had parted hold—
The Waters Wrecked the Sky—
But overlooked my Father's House—
Just Quartering a Tree—
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Bob Kerrey, What a Shame. 

Posted by olvlzl.
Did you hear Bob Kerrey on Moyer’s last night? It wasn’t a surprise to find out that the man from Nebraska who had started out as a fairly reasonable if moderate guy had transformed into a conservative. That was on display in his erratic performance on the 9-11 Commission. I’m beginning to think that the contrarian shtick should stand as evidence of a mind in decline. Last night I listened to his non-coherent mix of factoids and what I can only think of now as logicoids unable to figure out what the guy is getting at. His “ending the occupation without withdrawal” blather is about the most bizarre thing I’ve heard a Democrat of his stature say, ever. It was on the same level as Bush II or Reagan in free fall. And this is the guy who heads The New School these days? If he was the best of the presidential search I’d make sure my name was permanently kept off the list of also rans.

But nothing he said last night would have disqualified him from a position on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. Coherence will keep someone off of that sheet but not the sad spectacle of what was on Moyers. Bob, check out Zell Miller, that’s where this kind of thing untreated ends up. When Limbaugh starts praising a Democrat, that’s time to check in for some rational emotive therapy or to ask your nearest and dearest if you’ve lost it.

For more, read about what Kissinger is up to these days. He’s the pioneer who discovered that spouting the most obviously self-serving lies and nonsense is no bar to a career as a sage in a declining empire. It’s a job requirement.
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I'd Love You To Turn Yourself On And To Choose The Stations 

Posted by olvlzl.
I didn’t own a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, my brother did but like most other people my age I can sing every song on it. Allowing for getting the order of verses mixed up a bit. As I reminded myself here last week, I’m not quite 64 yet but it’s getting closer all the time.

The Beatles weren’t my favorites. I’m one of the minority of geezers who has never owned one of their albums, at least not yet. They were better than the Rolling Stones who I have always loathed. The Beatles did try new things and didn’t just rip off the blues and revel in racist stereotypes and male supremacy.

It was nice to find out the other day that some of the things I’d always believed they’d done with very sophisticated manipulation of tape were actually done live with session musicians in the Abby Road Studio. And they’d provided beer. Everyone knew that the Beatles had hired some of the best classical musicians in the world for their albums, Ray Premru, the very great trombonist, being just one. But I’d always figured that “A Day In The Life” was more the product of tape splicing and effects, in the end. Someone in The Beatles were listening to the avant guard of the time. Penderecki's Threnody, the tape music of Ussachevsky and a number of others must have figured into the listening of at least John and Paul and most likely all of them. George, of course was studying Indian classical music as well.

Hearing the album played on the 40th anniversary of its release brought back an atmosphere of freer thought. People seemed a lot less dogmatic about things back then. At least the ones I knew were. You could believe anything you wanted to as long as you didn’t hurt anyone in the process. Diversity, even eccentricity is as desirable in the intellectual life of the world as it is in the biosphere. It’s the free exercise in diversity that seems to be what was really lost over the years. Maybe it’s the constant pressures to conform to one of the several recognized ideologies that makes people so much more ill tempered than they were back then too. Maybe it’s what happens from the Stones still being around. I’m feeling nostalgic for a time when you could count on not being jumped on by thought police when you suggested alternative ideas.

It’s all right if young people never listen to their grandparents’ music, times change. But it would be nice if they could know what it feels like to be comfortable with thinking for themselves in an atmosphere of less hostility and violence. I’d rather see them getting by with a little help from their friends than from the culture of commerce and propaganda, the only flavors of thought allowed in today’s media.

* Rubber Soul and Revolver still seem more innovative to me, something I was stunned to hear Dan Damon of the BBC and I agree on. We don’t agree on much else. Day Tripper or Baby You Can Drive My Car are more likely to go through my head than anything from Sgt. Pepper. Something of a mixed blessing.

I also enjoyed the parody elements of Frank Zappa’s “We’re Only In It For The Money” too, though Zappa’s facile cynicism doesn’t wear as well for me as the more complex Beatles album. I’d rather end up making a fool of myself for the right reasons than to start out being one for the wrong reason.
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Friday, June 01, 2007

Where the He-Men Meet 



You might like a post I wrote on Tweety and the boys on the TAPPED blog.

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Friday Cat Blogging 






This lovely cat is FeralLiberal's Emma, enjoying the bounty of nature. The way cats do.





And this lovely cat is FeralLiberal's PippinEmma again, enjoying nature in a way cats normally don't.

Photography thanks to FeralLiberal.

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Labiaplasty 



That is surgery on the labia, the lips of the vulva. There are two sets of lips there, surprisingly, called labia majora and labia minora. Get it? Heh.

Anyways, given that women always need fixing it is now fashionable to have cosmetic surgery done on those lower lips. I wonder if they could insert some dentures in the vagina itself, to satisfy those who like the idea of a vagina dentata? Or to scare those who fear it?

Before I go and inquire about those dentures I listened to this audio. Did you know that labiaplasty can mess with the nerves leading to the clitoris? Nasty stuff.

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