On Polls

A CNN/USA Today poll just published tells us weird and wonderful things about the group of Americans that pollsters call 'likely voters'. First, 51% would choose Bush as the president and 47% would choose Kerry if only these two men were offered for s/election. Second, if Nader is added to the menu, 49% would pick Bush, 45% Kerry and 4% Nader. Third, half of the respondents believed that the Iraq war is a valid part of the war on terrorism. Fourth, president Bush's job approval percentage rose after a week of negative media headlines about the way the Bush administration handled the terrorist threat before 9/11. Fifth, 80% of likely Kerry voters trust Clarke's testimony more than the administration's, while 81% of likely Bush voters trust the administration's testimony more than Clarke's.

Well, not all of this is so weird and wonderful. The first result, for example, has a margin of error of plus or minus four percent, so it's even possible that Bush and Kerry would get the same number of votes if the elections were today and if all voters resembled the likely voters in this poll. Unless Nader entered the race, of course. Though, surprisingly, Nader seems to take votes away from both of the main runners. The fifth result isn't that unexpected, either, as the decision to vote for a particular candidate is pretty highly correlated with the opinions one has of that candidate. Of course, we can't tell which of these is the egg and which the hen...

But the remaining two findings are indeed miraculous. Think about it: there is no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with the terrorist attacks against the United States. Yet half of the respondents know something the world's elite intelligence professionals don't: the Iraqis had their fingers in the pie! Why aren't these people questioned by the 9/11 commission? Or better still, why aren't they hired to do the intelligence work for their country?

Even more awesome is the likely voters' reaction to Clarke's testimony: they now like Bush even better than before! I could understand Bush's job ratings not declining among those who are going to vote for him come whatever may, but for these ratings to rise? Once again, these likely voters are blessed with some extremely valuable inside information, and I want to know what it is.

Polls are silly things, on the whole. Imagine trying to make people answer a poll like this one: how many refusals do you think the pollster gets for each willing respondent? The answer is a lot. Then imagine trying to squeeze definite statements from people who often have but the fuzziest idea of the issues they are being quizzed about. The only scary thing about all this silliness is that it's rather reflected in the elections themselves: most stay away and those who participate often don't know what they are choosing.

Is NPR Ageist?

Not everybody listens to the National Public Radio's "Morning Edition", but those who do are familiar with the name Bob Edwards. Edwards has hosted the news program since it began twenty-five years ago. Last week he was forced to leave this post. Why? Linda Ellerbee believes that the reason is ageism. Edwards is 56 years old. Other than his age, what other reason could there be?

Were the ratings sinking, perhaps? They were not. "Morning Edition's" audience grew by 41% in the last five years; Edwards' is the most-listened-to morning radio program in the U.S.
A spokeswoman for NPR said only that the change was "part of a natural evolution." She said a new host would "bring new ideas and perspectives to the show." Uh-huh.

According to Ellerbee, NPR's thinking might have gone something like this: We want to attract a younger group of listeners. Younger listeners don't want to listen to boring old ways of presenting news. Old fogies present news in the boring old way. Therefore, we have to get rid of Edwards: he is too old.

If this scenario is true, NPR is ageist. It associates concepts such as rigidity and inability to evolve with the concept of physical age, and it also assumes that younger listeners are uniformly ageist themselves. I sure hope that Ellerbee is mistaken and that NPR has some other reasonable explanation for this firing, especially as I have always liked Bob Edwards. He has a voice like whisky-flavored honey.

Deep Thoughts for the Day

On Sex:

1. It's good.

2. It's even better with a partner.

Athena Is Coming For A Visit

Yes she is. In a few days' time she will land at the Snakepit Inc., and I haven't finished the cleaning and the polishing of the snakes, I haven't decided which way my hair would look most divine, and I still don't remember all her great deeds in a chronological order. I have butterflies in my stomach.

Does this surprise you, me being a goddess and all? Well, you shouldn't be surprised. Athena is a Much Bigger Goddess than I ever was, and the only reason she deigns to hobnob with me at all is that lots of her good pals have expired over the centuries. That's what happens to gods and goddesses when their believer base drops below a certain level. I'm lucky as the snakes were never really Christianized. This makes me one of the stronger goddesses now, but Athena will think of me as just the bothersome half-breed who never had tea with Hera. (As if I had ever wanted to have anything to do with that origin of the Phyllis Schlafly myth!)

And I'm not sure if I really like her that much, Athena, I mean. Sure, she's great to have around when logical thinking is needed or when an intricate long-term war needs planning. But all those shields and helmets, all that clanging of the pot lids! And she's such a daddy's girl. She even got a myth started about her birth containing no female assistance whatsoever. Which is a lie as all gods and goddesses know. Her real mother was probably a goat, but whoever she was, Athena never burst out of Zeus' head. Nothing burst out of his head except for lust and stupid ideas. I can say this now safely as he has long since expired. But Athena likes to think of herself the Exceptional Goddess: the one with no touch of femininity, all pure reason and military strategy. Poor thing, Zeus never cared for her anyway, and femininity is a very useful aspect in the goddesses' tool kits.

On the other hand, goddesses get lonely, and only another goddess really knows what it was like once. If only I could keep her off the topic of Ann Coulter. Athena thinks that Coulter is one of her acolytes or something, and I get so fed up with having to stare into corners with glazed eyes while she goes on and on about Ann. As I'm the hostess with the mostest I can't just bite Athena's butt. So annoying. I must write a list of suitable neutral discussion topics soon.

So what do you think about the hair? How would a goddess have her hair arranged? Would a few small baby snakes look cute peeking out on the temples? Give me some help here!

The World Stupidity Awards

This is the second year for these awards. Last year's winners of the Golden Dunce Caps included George W. Bush for the Most Stupid Reckless Endangerment of the Planet and the former Iraq information minister Saeed al-Sahaf for being the Stupidest Person in the World. You can now nominate candidates for this year's award competition. The categories are as follows:

Stupidest Man of the Year
Stupidest Woman of the Year
Stupidest Country of the Year
Stupidest Trend of the Year
Media outlet which has made the greatest contribution to furthering ignorance worldwide
Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet
Stupidest Movie of the Year
Stupidest TV Show of the Year
Stupidest Act of the Year
Stupidest Statement of the Year
Lifetime Achievement Award for Stupidity

Winners will be announced on July 23rd 2004 in Montreal. To find out how to send your nomination letter, go here.

The Unborn Victims of Violence

The law to protect them was passed today, and George Bush has promised to sign it ASAP. I have several questions about this law:

1. As Xexyx on ms. boards pointed out, does this law mean that every woman who becomes the victim of a violent crime will have to undergo a pregnancy test? Even if she doesn't want one? I suspect so. Welcome to a society that Margaret Atwood wrote about in the Handmaid's Tale.

2. How discriminatory is this law? A man who is killed will never sire children now. What about all those unborn victims of violence that also lost their lives because their potential father is now dead? The same goes for all women victims who are not currently pregnant, but might have become so in the future if they had not been killed in some heinous crime. I think that this law discriminates on the basis of sex and on the basis of actual and potential pregnancy.

3. The only logical basis for this law is to assume that human life begins at conception, not before that nor after that. As there is no evidence for this view (or any other), does this mean that if it becomes common our ages must now be counted from insemination rather than from birth? Imagine its effect on sudden retirements! Birthday parties having to be cancelled!

Sigh. I have to stock on some nectar for tonight.

Who Wears the Pants?

One October night in 1792 a young North European woman was returning home after her day's work when the town guard stopped her, took one look at her clothing, and arrested her. She was wearing trousers. The next day she was taken to court where she was accused of having had criminal intentions. Why else would she dress as a man?

The woman defended her choice of clothing by pointing out that the male garb was more practical in her heavy manual labor and that it was also warm. The court decided that it was 'selfish and shameless' for a woman to dress like a man, declared her a person of no fixed abode, and ordered her to be driven out of town. Should she return, she'd be sentenced to a certain number of lashes at the hand of the official beaters*.

In 2004, leaflets began circulating in Kenya telling women to stop wearing trousers and mini skirts by March 1. In January, 54 women were stripped naked in Oyugis town for wearing trousers or 'dressing shamelessly'. The men who attacked these women were local youth. One resident of the town told a radio station that the action of these men was justified and also warned that :

"If they continue dressing in ways that make us (men) suffer, we shall rape them."

These cases are very similar, aren't they? The women who are the pathbreakers in wearing what's regarded as men's clothing are 'shameless', threatening, to be driven out of town or to be raped. Never mind if trousers actually are more comfortable and practical than the traditional female garb, women who wear them make men suffer.

Why is that? The answer is simple and summarized in the old saying about 'who wears the pants in the family': male dress is a sign of authority in traditional societies, and if this dress no longer reliably signals real authority, the whole society will be in chaos. Consider some of the fears expressed by callers to the same Kenyan radio station referred to in the above quote:

In recent weeks, local radio stations have been receiving calls from emotionally charged men - and some women as well - claiming that by wearing trousers, women are not only provoking men to rape them, but are also largely responsible for the spread of HIV/Aids in the country.
Most of the callers argue that only men should wear trousers, with some quoting verses from the Bible to the effect that women should not wear men's clothing and vice-versa. Others even claim that some women wear trousers to disguise their intention of usurping their husbands' role as the head of the family.

Honore Daumier's prints from the mid-nineteenth century France express similar fears. In one**

"...a wife angrily refuses to sew a button back on her husband's pants. He, standing woefully with hands held limply in front of his phallus, comments that not only does his wife "wear the pants" but now she throws them back at him."

The question isn't really then who gets to wear the pants, the question is what women wearing pants means. To some men it means a threat, a horrible fear of authority lost, of dominance hierarchies upended. It isn't a fear of equality between men and women, but a fear of a total reversal: If women wear trousers, will they act the same as we did? Will they misuse the power this would give them as some of us did? Will we then have to wear dresses? Will we have to serve the women who now wear the pants? These are the monsters of the night that are behind the leaflets in Kenya, that were behind the public eviction of a trouser-wearing woman in the eighteenth century Europe, and that tortured Daumier to draw pictures about them.

Well, we know now that the world doesn't tip over just because women wear pants. More's the pity in some ways. It would be great if women-in-pants would mean the end of bloody wars and greedy battles for power, hunger and pestilence and crooked politicians. But it doesn't work that way. All this development really tells us that women in some country are trying to gain a few more freedoms, to wear what they wish, perhaps to be safer at an assembly-line job or more practically dressed for farmwork.

But that women in trousers can still provoke the punishment of rape tells us that real equality of the sexes is still far in the future for many. Perhaps it won't really have arrived until everybody, male or female, can wear dresses, pants, shorts or burqas, and nobody else raises an eyebrow. Though right now I think that the day when the Devil will build an ice-skating rink may come a little sooner.
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*I have lost the reference to this story which I had written down on an index card. It was in some book of European history. Sorry.
**Anne Higonnet: "Representations of Women" in A History of Women, Part Four, edited by Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot, 1993.

Darfur

Do you know where Darfur is? Do you know what's happening there?

Darfur is in the western Sudan, and what's happening there is ethnic cleansing. I hate that term with its associations to doing the dishes or the laundry; I hate its coldness, its perverted tidiness, its lack of gore and blood. Yet gore and blood is what's being spilled in Darfur, by armed Arab militias with, most likely, the full support of the Sudanese government.

Already 10,000 people have been killed, and another 110, 000 has fled to the neighboring Chad. But even there they're not safe, as the Sudanese attack across the border and bomb the villages on the other side of the border. The situation is dire. The United Nations coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, fears for another Rwanda and desperately wants more help with the humanitarian tasks of helping the survivors.

Why is this happening? The immediately preceding reason is the rebellion against Khartoum that two local armed groups started last year. Add to that a long-standing competition for good land between the African tribes and the Arabs. Many of the survivors believe that the Arab militia are attacking for purely racial reasons. The government of Sudan fears a situation where it would have enemies on several sides, and this is why it may be helping in the killing of the local villagers:

There are reports of Sudanese military planes bombing villages, after which Arab militias go in and rape and kill survivors.

These are the weapons of genocide: murder and rape. A few weeks ago the village of Tawila woke up at sunrise to an attack by the militiamen. Seventy-five people were killed and over a hundred women were raped. The militiamen also abducted several hundred women and children. I'm not sure which of these destinies I would choose if I were forced to choose, not to mention the fact that being raped, abducted and killed are not mutually exclusive fates for any one individual. But of course none of the victims were given a choice of any kind.

The Christian Science Monitor calls this 'a silent war', not because slaughtering people could somehow be done more quietly in Darfur or elsewhere, but because the rest of the world (which means us) hardly hears about it. Darfur is isolated, difficult to get to, and the area is full of bandits as well as the militiamen. The UN humanitarian efforts are also hampered by the remoteness and dangers of the area. All this plays into the hands of the thugs and murderers and must not be allowed to go on.

Maybe Mukesh Kapila is exaggerating as some argue. Maybe Darfur won't be another Rwanda. But those who thought the rumors of the Rwandan genocide were exaggerated now bitterly regret their scepticism. It's much better to stop an imaginary genocide than to fail to stop a real one. Make noise about Darfur!

My New Career Goal

I'm going to be Rushette Limbaugh, the slightly deranged, extremist voice for the liberal, high IQ dittoheads, especially the girls. I'm going to start with a radio show called "Kicking the Asses Out" or perhaps "Dr. Russette Will Spank Your Bottoms". Then I'm going to publish a litter of books with names such as "I'm All That's Left Because the Right Was Wrong" and "Fundamentalism isn't Funky". Then I'll get my own tv show on the now-repentant Faux network where I will use soap to wash the mouths of those who use naughty words like politically correct.

What do you think? The snake tail needn't be a deterrent in any of this, what with multiculturality and so on. And I can use it to wipe unpleasant guests off the stage.

Trees Are the Lungs of This Earth

Something to think about.

The Bush administration doesn't seem to care for trees, unless they can be felled and made into large desks for Republican managers. To encourage this,

The Bush administration on Tuesday eased restrictions on logging old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, completing a rules change that will allow forest managers to begin logging without first looking for rare plants and animals.

Why this change? Ostensibly it's because of a timber industry law suit. The industry doesn't like the hassle of having to look for rare plants and animals: it takes time and money. Much easier just to rev up the chain saws after relying on information provided by Washington, Oregon and California. And where does this information come from? Can you imagine hordes of civil servants toothcombing the wilderness so that all the available information on rare species will be ready for the eager loggers to scan? I smell a rat here, and it isn't one of the rare types either.

This 'easing of restrictions' on logging is part of the Bush administration's 'Healthy Forests' initiative. I wonder what their definition of 'healthy' might be? Not contaminated with all sorts of critters and weeds? With lots of open spots, conveniently provided by the timber industry?

Some logging of federal forests is needed for forest fire prevention. But the rules of the game shouldn't be decided by one party alone (the timber industry), especially as that party has an obvious incentive to cut as many good trees as possible. Still, all this is totally on par for this administration: it sees pre-emptive wars everywhere, and it probably is true that the forests won't attack us if we kill them first. Or who knows, maybe the Ents are real and not just something Tolkien made up. Maybe they'll wake up and start their slow, slow march to Washington, D.C.. If so, I'll go and cheer them all the way.

The Neutral Alan Greenspan?

An interesting question: Is Alan Greenspan as neutral and objective as he's supposed to be as the Fed chairman? Why is he holding the trend-setting federal funds rate at one percent? Is it because this is the right thing to do, given that hiring is still 'lagging' as the polite way puts it? Consider this:

Many economists don't expect the Fed to move up until the fall of 2004, and possibly not before the U.S. presidential election in early November.
But a few analysts, and even some of the 12 members of the Fed's interest rate-setting committee are growing uneasy about the easy money policy. They worry that keeping rates this low for much longer may cause a speculative bubble, in stocks and real estate, that could be hard to burst without inflicting collateral damage.
"Some members of the [committee] are already expressing concern that policy is remaining too loose for too long," said BMO Nesbitt Burns chief economist Sherry Cooper.
"There is increasing evidence that U.S. inflation has finally touched bottom and is beginning to stir."

There is indeed a bubble in the housing markets, and such bubbles have the unfortunate tendency to burst. When this happens, the consequences can be dire. Think of adjustable mortgage rates being adjusted upwards; think of suddenly owning a house with a lower sale price than your remaining mortgage payments, think of the chain-effects from this to other consumer markets, think of all those people who took out loans on the inflated value of their houses. As much as $3 trillion might vanish like a puff of hot air into the cold skies of a new recession.

The low value of the dollar is also creating inflationary pressures, and traditionally the Fed has viewed inflation as the worst possible outcome, and it has" even triggered recessions in order to fight real or imagined threats of even small increases in the rate of inflation." But not this time.

This time Alan Greenspan is reluctant to move, perhaps because he has truly decided that weak labor markets are more important than fighting housing market bubbles or inflation. Or perhaps because:

...Mr. Greenspan clearly doesn't want to be seen to be interfering in the coming election. As a result, there will likely be a rate hike blackout period between July and the November election...

But this is illogical: A rate hike blackout period is what the current administration most desires. I bet that it's the number one topic in many of the Bush prayer circles. How is doing the bidding of the Republicans 'not interfering' in the coming election? How is trying to guarantee that the housing bubble won't burst until AFTER the election good for objectivity?

I'm not convinced of Greenspan's nonneutrality yet, but I'm going to keep an eagle's eye on him from now on.

My Marketing Survey Results

Dear Readers!

Here are the results from my marketing survey. I decided that this is a good time to do the summary as the questionnaire is sliding into the archives.

Fourteen readers answered the questionnaire. Most were content with feminist (93%) and political (80%) stories, and half or more (50% and 57% respectively) were ok with funny stuff and expandind the field. The archaic format of the blog (just text) had 80% support. No snakes answered the survey. Of those who responded to this question 58% were human, 25% supernaturals and 17% both human and supernaturals, depending on the day.

Whether this can be generalized to my readership on the whole is tricky to say, as the sample was not random but based on self-selection. As a percentage of my readers n=14 is quite low ( unless the same fourteen people spend all their time on my blog, which of course would be understandable), but I will assume that the results are generalizable. Which means that I am planning to go on pretty much along the same lines. If you don't like something, speak up in the comments. Obviously if you do like something, you can send me a smooch in the same comments.

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As an aside, I found out by googling my divine self that a person called Glenn Sacks has listed my opinion about him on his website. This is what I say about him, according to him:

"Glenn Sacks is...misogynistic."

I couldn't remember having said anything about him on this blog, so I did quite a lot of searching to find the quote. It was in the comments threads to a story on ms. lauren's blog. The story concerned the anti-boy t-shirts which encouraged people to throw rocks at boys. Such t-shirts are absolutely vile, and Sacks had been saying so. What I said in the comments was as follows:

Actually, Glenn Sacks is one of those men's rights activists who are also misogynistic. Someone used to post his articles on the ms. boards and they are very painful reading if you're a woman. This doesn't mean that he wouldn't be right in this case; even a blind hen finds a worm once and a while.

I hereby respectfully petition that Mr. Sacks changes the quote attributed to me to:

"Glenn Sacks is...a blind hen."

Thank you.

On First Ladies

This story was to be about the First Lady, Laura Bush, but I have a congenital loathing of the job of First Ladies, so I'm going to write about the job instead. First Ladies have a job which nobody acknowledges to be a job. They are judged on the performance of this job which isn't supposed to be one, and the criteria for judging them are not objectively determined, but whatever the observer happens to see as criteria. Moreover, they are not really judged as First Ladies, but as Archetypal Wives.

And being an Archetypal Wife is pure hell, as nobody agrees with her exact qualifications. She should be demure, sure, but she should also have the right opinions to support her husband. She shouldn't compete, no, but she shouldn't be a ninny either. She should walk exactly three steps behind her husband, yet make it seem as if she's walking by his side.
And under no circumstances can she have interests other than those that are deemed proper for the Mother and Wife. For example, physicians who don't quit their jobs to join their husbands election campaigns are never to be entered into the caste of Archetypal Wives. A good Archetypal Wife drops everything when her husband calls for her, whether it's laundry or patients that gets dropped.

Hillary Clinton, in a perverse fashion, served as an excellent Archetypal Wife. For many in the United States she was the Evil Wife: the woman who is quite possibly smarter and more energetic than her husband, the woman who will not shut up. She was used as a target for all those murky, half-perceived fears and rages that independent women still provoke in many men and women; as a societal scapegoat for the wrongs of feminism, or what its opponents see as wrongs.

Only her humiliation in the face of her husband's philandering saved her from being the Archetypal Witch. This humiliation struck a cord in many Americans, something that they recognized. Now Hillary could be reclassified: she was clearly the Long-Suffering Victim Wife, the woman who silently endures all for the sake of family cohesion. This was something familiar, something that many churches had supported for centuries. Not all observers switched their views on Hillary, of course, so that media comments about her later in Bill Clinton's presidency came across as if they were describing two quite different women. Of course they were really describing two different archetypes, neither of which is the real Hillary.

Even Barbara Bush, the comfy-looking silver-haired grandmother, suffered from not fitting an Archetype precisely enough for the audience. The one that was fitted for her first was the Gentle Granny archetype: the benevolent matriarch of a vast family. When it turned out that she was quite strong-willed and politically astute, her archetype had to change for some; now she was the Old Bitch.

Nancy Reagan was fitted into the Adoring Wife mold, though Reagan's political opponents also saw her as an example of the Wasteful Wife, the woman who will drive her poor husband to bankruptcy. I think that Nancy was one of those First Ladies who actually understood all about the Archetypes, and she played hers to the hilt, having been an actress. Thus she also earned the Treacherous Wife archetype.

And what about Laura Bush, then? What archetype would we like to have now? Hers is an easy one: she is the Good Wife to counterbalance Hillary Clinton's Evil Wife. She will never embarrass George in public debates, never disagree with him openly, never show him up as a loser. She lives for George.

Or that's how the archetypists would have her. Or perhaps as a Stepford Wife, if the archetypists don't like George's politics, a cold unfeeling woman all surface and no soul. What she's really like doesn't much matter in this game. Still, a recent article in the Chicago Tribune shows that Laura thinks her stereotyping should be changed. She's not really a homebody. In fact, she doesn't even bake cookies. And she even has political opinions different from those George holds so dear. However, she won't tell us what these differences might be.

Laura's attempts to change her public image will not be successful, simply because the Archetypal Wife is not allowed to define herself. That's against the rules.

It would be a lot easier if every male candidate for the presidency was equipped with a human-sized mechanized Barbie doll for a wife, and the real wife could stay at home and go on with her life. The doll could be given any archetypal qualities that are in fashion, and she could be programmed to say only approved things. Her body would always be perfect, and if body-fashions changed she could be recast. So much easier for everybody. Besides, Mattel could then launch a new series of First Lady Barbies for little girls: The Archetypal Wives.

Rumsfeld in His Own Words

If you haven't seen and heard this yet, maybe you should. Click here.

Spring-Cleaning

Spring-cleaning is wasted on the organized and orderly, which is sad, because they're probably the only people who still do it. I never really cared for cleaning (so bad for the hands), but a recent experience has made me look at it quite differently: Don't think about dusting and scrubbing, lifting and rearranging. Think about 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', about archeology and ancient history, about pirates and their treasure-chests.

This experience was a necessary cleaning-out of several closets and cupboards; necessary, because opening the doors caused an avalanche. I expected to be bored to death. What I actually had was one of the most interesting afternoons of my life, and this is what I found:
Five Radios
Several Unopened Advertizing-Size Boxes of Cereal
A Pair of Bright Red Leather Shoes
Enough Cotton Balls/Wool to Keep the Ears of the U.S. Military Forces Clean
Six Blocks for the Quilt 'Dresden Plates'
One Mummified Boxing Shoe

You might not find this list very interesting, of course, and maybe it isn't. But what is interesting is the history it tells (well, some of it, anyway, I have no idea who owns the red shoes and how they got into the linen closet). The cereal boxes are a memento of a time when I had decided to see if it was possible to stay alive by only eating the free samples in stores. It isn't, by the way, but one meets an interesting class of individuals that way. The radios have to do with the striving to find the Perfect Radio and a natural laziness in returning duds. I'm going to give them to charity.

The cotton balls I inherited from someone who had an obsessive fear of running out of cotton to stick in the ears. I have enough for several lifetimes. The quilt blocks were the output of one of my homebody phases. They could make a quilt for a very short and a very wide person almost as they are. The boxing shoe was once one of a pair, and brings back many fond memories of broken noses (not all mine) and of the one fight I won because I pinched the guy. The referee was a coward and refused to accept my superiority. Sigh. I no longer box because I have seen the light (and my back hurts), but the smell of the shoe still makes me wax nostalgic.

It's like personal archeology in the making, isn't it? And this is possible for everyone of us who decides to tackle spring-cleaning. Tomorrow I will clean the shelves and put everything back from the floors. I swear.

An Update on the Urinals

I'm very happy to hear that Virgin Airways has decided not to go on with the installation of urinals shaped like women's mouths in their J.F.Kennedy airport Clubhouse:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: 203 750 2570

VIRGIN ATLANTIC WILL NOT INSTALL "KISSES" URINALS
AT JFK CLUBHOUSE

(Norwalk, CT) March 19, 2004 - Virgin Atlantic recently opened its new Clubhouse at JFK's state-of-the-art Terminal 4. As one of the more quirky features of the lounge, the airline had planned to install two unique "Kisses" urinals in the Clubhouse restroom, designed by a Dutch-based company, Bathroom Mania. In response to the public's concerns about the design, the airline has decided not to move forward with the installation of these urinals in the bathroom.

John Riordan, Vice President of Customer Services, said:
"Everyone at Virgin Atlantic was very sorry to hear of people's concerns about the design of the "Kisses" urinals to be fitted into our clubhouse at JFK airport. We can assure everyone who complained to us that no offense was ever intended."

"The urinals were intended to be one of the more fun and quirky features of the new JFK Clubhouse, a project overseen by Virgin's in-house design team led by two female designers. The urinals themselves were the idea of a female designer and we were therefore surprised by the reaction."
"However, Virgin Atlantic always aims to listen to our passengers and the general public and as a result we will not install the urinals in the bathroom at our new JFK clubhouse."(Bolds mine.)

But Mr. Riordan still doesn't get it. That the "urinals themselves were the idea of a femal designer and we were therefore surprised by the reaction" indicates that he thinks all women think the same. Yeah, just like Noam Chomsky and John Kerry and George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden must all think the same because they are all men...
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Thanks to o.a.g. and hollymo at the ms. boards ; o.a.g. for the information, and hollymo for the point about all women not thinking the same.

News from Scopes County

The good people of Rhea County, Tennessee are still fighting:

The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.
The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday.
Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county.
"We need to keep them out of here," Fugate said.

This was on Tuesday. But today the commissioners did a complete turnaround:

Rhea County commissioners took about three minutes to retreat from a request to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature. The Tuesday measure passed 8-0.
County attorney Gary Fritts said the initial vote triggered a "wildfire" of reaction. "I've never seen nothing like this," he said Thursday.
But Fritts said it was all a misunderstanding.
"They wanted to send a message to our (state) representative and senator that Rhea County supports the ban on same-sex marriage," he said. "Same-sex marriage is what it was all about. It was to stop people from coming here and getting married and living in Rhea County."
Not that the issue of banning homosexuals didn't arise.
"I'm not saying it wasn't discussed," Fritts said. "Sometimes you had five or six people talking."
Fritts said he advised the commissioners they cannot ban homosexuals or make them subject to criminal charges. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 struck down Texas' sodomy laws as a violation of adults' privacy.
Fritts said he doesn't believe the issue will come up again.
"I think they got all the publicity they need about it," he said.

So gays and lesbians won't be banned from Rhea County, after all. Before you expel that breath you've held in suspense, consider that Scopes County isn't really any one place at all but rather the mental homeland of a certain way of thinking, and there are other news from the same area:

Gay and lesbians in the entire federal workforce have had their job protections officially removed by the office of Special Counsel. The new Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, says his interpretation of a 1978 law intended to protect employees and job applicants from adverse personnel actions is that gay and lesbian workers are not covered.
Bloch said that the while a gay employee would have no recourse for being fired or demoted for being gay, that same worker could not be fired for attending a gay Pride event.
In his interpretation, Bloch is making a distinction between one's conduct as a gay or lesbian and one's status as a gay or lesbian.
"People confuse conduct and sexual orientation as the same thing, and I don't think they are," Bloch said in an interview with Federal Times, a publication for government employees.
Bloch said gays, lesbians and bisexuals cannot be covered as a protected class because they are not protected under the nation's civil rights laws.

My head aches. Let me see if I got this right: If I were a sexually abstinent lesbian or gay civil servant, I could be fired because of this without any protection from civil rights laws, but if I were a sexually active lesbian or gay the laws would protect me? No, this can't possibly be correct; the government being all hot for abstinence. What does it mean then? Quiet gays and lesbians can be fired at will, whereas noisy and belligerent ones will be protected? What about the "Don't Ask. Don't Tell" policies in that case? I give up. That's one of the things that tends to happen in Scopes County.

Is This Blog Sometimes Boring?

Of course. Is it going to get better? You betcha!

I've figured how to speak Republicanese at the face of any undeniable criticisms! It's really easy: all you need to do is repeat the accusation and agree to it, then strongly assert that remedy is already on the way, and you betcha! Were there any WMD in Iraq? No, of course not. Are we going to find them? You betcha!

This used the be the way only Donald Rumsfeld spoke, but all the other administration members liked it so well that they have also adopted it. I even heard a career diplomat Walter Slocum use it last night on NPR. He is a senior advisor to Paul Bremer on national security and defense. And today Richard Armitage joined in the spreading of this new way of speaking:

"So we think we're right on track with it.

Is it going to be easy?

No, it's not going to be easy.

Is it worthy work?

You betcha."

This is very clever. You restate the regrettable failure of your policies, but then immediately add a lot of fist waving and saliva flying and strong promises of a better tomorrow. I'm now going to use this device extensively. Is it going to be repetitive? Of course. Is it going to work? You betcha!

In Anything We Do, There Has To Be A Smile!

The 'we' is Virgin Airways, and the smile in this case is in the new men's urinals in the Virgin Airways Clubhouse in John F. Kennedy airport.

Even though they allow for high-volume servicing and back-in-a-flash trips to the john, the point-and-shoot-a-stinky-deodorizer-cake oddity known as the men's restroom urinal has been, for women, a constant enigma. But nothing will prepare you for the men's room in the newly-designed Virgin Airways Clubhouse in New York's John F. Kennedy airport, terminal 4: Urinals shaped like a woman's mouth, dolled up with red lipstick, wide open and ready for business.(Bolds mine)

I would have preferred an enigma to now knowing that there are men peeing into the wide open and ready mouths of women. What next? Make-up seats in the women's lounge shaped as African slaves on all fours?

Maybe nothing better can be expected of a company with the name 'virgin'. Do you want a pilot and a co-pilot to be on their virgin trip when you are sitting in the back of the plane? Still, the name is just silly, but this design feature is much more than that. Not that the powers-that-be at Virgin Airways think of it that way:

In anything that we do there has to be a smile, and that's the smile in this Clubhouse," said John Riordan, Vice President of Customer Services for Virgin Airways.

Well, I shall smile all the way to the competitors' ticket windows, thank you very much. Mr. Riordan may find that funny, too, given that he thinks urinating into a woman's mouth is a blast of a joke. Something we can all relate to, guffawing and elbowing each other while we zip up in front of all those helpless and harmless female mouths, right?

Wait a second...Maybe the mouths aren't so harmless, after all. If you click on the above link, or even better, here, you'll see a picture of the urinals, and what do we spot there, right inside the red-painted lips? Could it be.....teeth?
---------
Thanks for the link to cc.

Even Worse Poetry

I really have to share these!

Mother Goose,
were you married to Mr. Goose or not?
Did your webbed fingers
ever touch his
in a wedding trot?

Mother Goose,
were you charming in your feather dress?
When you swam around the pond
or nibbled watercress?

Mother Goose,
did it hurt to lay all those eggs?
Mother Goose,
did you ever wish for
drier legs?

---
Ms. Mosquito

Listen to the never-ending whine.
The darkness sleeps. You cannot.
You can hear her dance. It is hot.
When the dance is over she will dine.

You'll be her meal, laid out on bed.
Unless you rise and find her first,
and squash her, and her bloody thirst,
she will turn your pillows red.

-----
And this one is by far the best of the lot! A Truly Good Bad Poem!

Hundred and two in the shade
my eyes stand like hard-boiled eggs
in my crab-coloured face.
This country, she was not made
for people with snowpealike legs.
This country, she's on my case.

Ok. I promise there will be no more bad poetry, except perhaps for the feminist ones I was looking for when I found these.
Share yours in the comments thread.

More International Attitudes

Remember the recent post here on the attitudes of other countries' citizens to the United States? The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press just published the most recent results in their GAP project which maps out international attitudes towards the U.S., and the news are not good.

The gap between American beliefs and attitudes and those held by people elsewhere are growing. On the Iraq war, for example:

Majorities in all but the United States and Britain (33 percent) said they believed the Bush administration's main interest is to ''control Mideast oil'', while majorities in five of the countries, including France, said they believe his goals included ''dominat(ing) the world''.
Near majorities or majorities in all of the predominantly Muslim countries said another goal was ''to protect Israel''.
Majorities in France, Germany and each of the predominantly Muslim countries said they did not believe that Washington's ''war on terrorism'' was motivated primarily by the fight against terrorism. In Russia, a 48 percent plurality expressed similar skepticism.

...

The notion that Washington acts on its own without taking into account the interests of other nations was most prevalent in France (84 percent), Turkey (79 percent) and Jordan (77 percent), but even 61 percent of British respondents agreed with the statement.
By contrast, 70 percent of U.S. respondents thought Washington took other nations' interests into account.

It's as if the Americans live in a parallel universe from the rest. Various explanations might be offered for the growing divergence in attitudes, but one that certainly has an important impact is the stance taken by the media in each country, not only in the angle the news broadcasts adopt but also in what they choose to cover as news. I often listen to news on the shortwave radio from other countries. Try it if you haven't done so already; it can be very educational.

One very worrisome aspect of the international attitudes mapped in the survey is the prevalent support for Osama bin Laden in three of the four muslim countries included in the survey (Turkey, Morocco, Jordania and Pakistan):

Despite a reduction in the intensity of anger directed against the United States in the predominantly Muslim countries last May, GAP found that support for both bin Laden and the idea of suicide bombings remained disturbingly high.
Bin Laden was viewed favorably by 65 percent of respondents in Pakistan, 55 percent in Jordan and 45 percent in Morocco. Two-thirds of Moroccan and Jordanian respondents said suicide bombings against westerners in Iraq were justified; for Pakistanis, the percentage was 46 percent.
Even higher percentages said suicide bombings by Palestinians against Israelis could be justified -- from 47 percent of Pakistanis to 86 percent of Jordanians.

This is not good. Not good at all.
------------
The survey was taken in February and early March of 2004. Nine countries were included.

Too Awful For Words?

"I cannot relate to being obsessed with all this hatred. I just don't get it. It is unspeakable to me. It is dirty. It is wounding. "

Who said this? Some wilting wallflower Liberal? Some testosterone-deficient bleeding heart? Some un-American lefty?

Wrong. These are words uttered by Rush Limbaugh, the braying trumpeter of the boys' own populist conservatism. Rush is aghast at how low the Democrats have fallen, how full of hatred they are. He's trembling, he's shivering, he's full of confusion and dread. Poor Rush.

And what was the cause of his nervous breakdown? Two widows of 9/11 victims, Kristen Breitweiser and Monica Gabrielle, who have been actively demanding better explanations from the government about the events preceding the mass-slaughter. Most recently, they protested the use of the 9/11 material in Bush's election advertisements.

Rush decided that they were plants by the Democratic party, carefully coached to say the right thing. This is what he couldn't stand: that someone would go as far as to exploit the grief of others for a political purpose...

"I'm saying to myself, 'This can't be. The Democrats have not given these poor widows talking points. This just can't be,'" Limbaugh said on March 5, the first time he played the audio of Breitweiser and Gabrielle's statements. "They're going to make me level this accusation? They're going to?" I mean, I'm an observer of life. I watch the news; I see this. If you saw it, too, I'm sure you had to come to the same conclusion. And I'm sitting, saying to myself, 'Can it possibly be that the Democrats are out there accusing George Bush of running an attack ad and capitalizing politically on the attack of 9/11, have actually gotten hold of some widows, some family members, and gave them talking points?'

Because when you listen to what they say, they're all saying the same thing about where Bush was when this happened, and I keep saying, 'There's nothing these people do that will surprise me anymore, nothing the Democrats, nothing the liberals will do. They can't go any lower than they are. They can't have any more hatred than they have. They can't be more bitter than they are,' and they continue to surprise me. They can become angrier. They do become more embittered. They do get slimier!. . .

I do like Rush. He could keep a legion of bloggers in business with his incredible ability to spout inanities by the hour, and I appreciate the humor in the reversals that he uses here. This must have been an easy write-up; all Rush needed to do was to borrow any one of the many critiques of his own radio shows. But he's got his facts wrong as usual: anyone who knows snakes could have told him that Liberals don't even count on the sliminess scale.

What He Said

This is your koan for the day:

"God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear."—Los Angeles, Calif., March 3, 2004

By the president of the United States, G.W. Bush. E-mail me when the enlightenment strikes you.

---------------
Link via Atrios

The Mariana Mallard and the Guam Broadbill

Have you ever seen these tropical birds? If you haven't, it's too late. They are as dead now as the dodo bird. Species extinction has always taken place, of course, but many believe that the rate of extinction has risen thousandfold from the early figures of one to two species out of a million each year. The most pessimistic forecasts imply that in fifty years time we may lose a quarter to a half of all now-existing species. Much of this increase is due to human activity.

This planet might become quite a lonely place for the humans. That has its good sides, too. More space for shopping malls and new housing developments, more relaxing camping holidays with no bears or wolves to worry about, more space for industrial agriculture, which will be needed to feed all the people who move into the new housing developments and shop in the new shopping malls. But it will be lonely, especially for the children who can no longer read about the tigers and the rhinoceri or the elephants.

It may also be bad for adults, even those who hate all wildlife as vermin. The species on this earth are interlinked and each extinction unravels a small whole into the overall fabric. Some of those holes will be at unimportant places in the weave, and will not matter much for the overall design. Others, however, might break the very foundation threads of our existence and directly threaten the survival of everything, including homo sapiens.

Consider the humble bee. It stings, true, but it also makes honey. If it went extinct we'd lose both of these. But we might also lose apples, at least in some areas, as the bee is the major pollinator of apple trees. The bees may be only a tiny thread in the overall tapestry, but their loss would leave a big hole behind.

I don't know what will unravel because of the extinction of the Mariana Mallard and the Guam Broadbill, but there's bound to be something. If nothing else, the loss of their beauty and wonder is a loss for ever.

Marketing Research

I really should run this blog in a more business-like manner. This is the first step towards that, a real marketing survey to find out what my readers desire. You can answer the questions in the comments thread attached to this survey, or just write whatever you feel like!

Questionnaire:
1. Are you
a) a human
b) a snake
c) a supernatural

2. Which stories do you prefer
a) political ones
b) feminist ones
c) funny stories
d) other (I could write about literature, martial arts, embroidery, antiques, nature, religion or the best way to bite your toe nails)

3. Would you like more bells and whistles
a) yes, please add pictures and music and stuff
b) no, I like the archaic formulation
c) other

Simple and quick! And nobody will call you afterwards! I'll let you know the results with the modal values and margins of errors if anyone answers which is unlikely. Now I'm going out to enjoy a day off from the snakes. You have a great day, too!

The Odd Man Out

Some days I feel totally schitzophrenic. Like today: I was surfing the web toiling away in search of stories to amuse and irritate you, my dear readers, when I came across two articles which analyzed the ways in which the United States stands out of the crowd of other Western nations, and these ways are not pretty. Yet only a couple of hours earlier I had scintillated at a local block party with lots of very nice American humans, and not one evil power-broker or fundamentalist among them (I'm not counting me, of course). What is a goddess to think? Mainly that it's time for all good, normal Americans to get off their asses to vote so that I can hold my head up in international meetings of the supernatural. Should you think of no other reason to do so.

The first of these two stories is a tale on morality, the Right Way and the sin of sex. We've heard this one before, of course, but repetition doesn't make it any less weird. The events took place at a hemispheric health conference of the Americas which was held in Santiago, Chile. Forty countries participated in this conference, and all but one agreed on the importance of family planning programs. Guess which country disagreed? Right:

By acclamation, the more than 300 participants at the Santiago Health Conference added language over U.S. objections that reaffirmed and expanded the so-called "Cairo Consensus," the program of action endorsed by 179 countries, including the U.S., at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The Consensus asserts that promoting women's reproductive and sexual rights and services is central to reducing poverty and promoting economic development.

The U.S. wanted all language to 'reproductive health services' to be removed as it naturally means abortion, and it also wanted to insert language asserting parental rights over all teenagers' sexual and health decisions. I smell a fundamentalist Christian here, somewhere in the room.

Given that the majority of South American countries are quite traditional in their values and strongly affected by the Roman Catholic church, the isolation of the United States stance is all the more remarkable. But an empire doesn't need to think like others, of course, not even like most of its citizens.

And it doesn't even have to worry about the equality of the majority of its citizens. During the last week the United States has also decided to renege on its commitment to the 1995 Beijing Platform of Action, "a program adopted by a UN conference to promote the advancement of women throughout the world". So American women don't need any more promotion, I guess. Twelve percent is an acceptable number of women in the Congress, and the Bible never said anything different. What's next, I wonder? A change to the female voting rights would seem like the logical next step. The next elections might be a good time to use them or to lose them.

The second story of the odd man out concerns the worldly goods, greed and the ever free markets. This is where my schitzophrenia again rears its ugly head, for the U.S. in this story is a totally different bunch of people than the ones who went to Santiago. No Old Testament values are touted here; rather, the tale is about the religion of markets and the god of globalization. My bard is Joseph Stiglitz, a respectable economist, and the events take place at an International Labor Organization committee about the negatives of globalization. Stiglitz says:

A new report, issued by the International Labor Organization's commission on the social dimensions of globalization, reminds us how far the Bush administration is out of line with the global consensus. The ILO is a tripartite Organization's with representatives of Labor, government and business. The commission, chaired by the presidents of Finland and Tanzania, has 24 members (of whom I was one) drawn from different nationalities, interest groups and intellectual persuasions, including members as diverse as the head of Toshiba and the leader of the American Federation of Labor Congress of Industrial Organizations. Yet this very heterogeneous group was able to crystallize the emerging consensus, that globalization - despite its positive potential - has not only failed to live up to that potential, but has actually contributed to social distress.

This consensus, and a rather moderate one at that, as what people agree about is that globalization is not all roses and wine, is not shared by the United States. Stiglitz gives two examples of the U.S. rigidity in dealing with globalization: the Americans insistence on the liberalization of capital markets at an early stage of economic development, despite the fact that this has been shown to result in crises, the disappearance of the middle class and increased poverty, and a similar insistence on strong intellectual property rights in areas such as pharmaceutical patents, which seriously hampers the poor countries' access to drugs that are needed to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Only reluctantly did the U.S. agree to allow genetic (and cheaper) equivalents to be marketed in these countries, and only when an epidemic or other emergency was taking place.

What these two tales share is the impression of American heartlessness and rigid fanaticism. These are not the values of the Americans that I know and love, and it makes me very angry that a bunch of people in one itsy-bitsy town, Washington D.C., can so ruin the reputation of nice, hospitable folk with a lot of common sense.

The Scales of Justice

Here's an interesting legal case for your consideration:

A 30-year old man, one John Smith, had a son with incurable leukemia. Medical tests determined that the only suitable bone marrow donor for this child was his father. John Smith refused to donate any of his marrow; he said that he was scared of the medical procedure that would have been used. So not very fatherly, our John. But this is unsurprising; it was known that he had suffered from mental health problems most of his life, he took recreational drugs and otherwise acted in ways that proper people frown on. As a result of John's refusal, his son died. Should we now accuse him of murder?

Now change the sex of the person in question, make her name Melissa Ann Rowland, and her age 28 years, and change the circumstances into one where the mother refused a Caesarian section that might have saved her son's life. The son died here, too. Should we accuse her of murder?

What if both John and Melissa can be regarded as vain, narcissistic individuals who refused a little bit of surgery for purely trivial reasons? What if both John and Melissa were mentally ill drug-abusers living on social welfare? Though I have made the case of John Smith up, there is not much doubt in my mind that most legal commentators would not regard John as a murderer. On the other hand, Melissa really exists and the prosecutors in Salt Lake City are charging her with criminal homicide.

Try asking one of those people who voted in the msnbc poll in support of Melissa's murder charges whether John also should be tried for murder; not whether his act was morally reprehensible but whether he should be legally charged. It will be interesting to hear what they might say. I suspect that they see a clear difference between the two cases, though there is no factual difference.

Mothers are held to higher standards than fathers, and mothers of fetuses even more so. In fact, it's beginning to seem as if the only time a child's rights to life are really going to be guaranteed is before she or he has drawn one single breath. After birth, well, you're on your own, kid. And if you happen to be a girl, one day your rights to refuse surgery will not be awarded the same protection as they would if you had been born a boy.
--------
An excellent discussion on this topic is on Body and Soul.

Flotsam and Jetsam

Some funny things end up stranded in my e-mail box. It's most likely a variation of this resume (thanks to Scout for the information). Interesting.



RESUME

GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20520

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

Law Enforcement:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.

Military:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and the last year of my service is unaccounted for. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

College:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

• I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in Midland,Texas, in 1975.
  
• I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil inTexas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
• I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money.
  
• With the help of my father and our friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.
  

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:

• I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
  
• I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.
  
• I set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.
  
• With the help of my brother, the governor of Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
  

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

• I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.
  
• I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.
  
• I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
  
• I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
  
• I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-month period.
  
• I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
  
• I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market. In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month.
  
• I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. My "poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
  
• I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.
  
• I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.
  
• My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. History, Enron.
  
• My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
  
• I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.
  
• I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed. I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
  
• I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
  
• I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President in U.S. history.
  
• I created the Ministry of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in the history of the United States government.
  
• I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.
  
• I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
  
• I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
  
• I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
  
• I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
  
• I set the record for fewest numbers of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.
  
• I set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
  
• I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
  
• I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protests against any person in the history of mankind.
  
• I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.
  
• I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty benefits for active duty troops and their families -- in wartime.
  
• In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
  
• I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
  
• I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.
  
• I have so far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.
  

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

• All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
  
• All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
  
• All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.
  

Please consider this resume in voting for the president of the United States in 2004

Bad Poetry

There's a lot to be said for bad poetry, especially as it's the only type I create. The poetry market suffers from a terrible imbalance: many are able to write bad poetry, but only a few wish to read it. The only solution is to force-feed bad poetry to the masses, and I'm doing it here first!

Do not soak your silverware
You cannot go from here to there
The warning signs are everywhere
Do not soak your silverware.

The die is cast, and cast aside
My pain is gaping, gaping wide
And everywhere the other side
seeks for me, I cannot hide.

Do not soak your silverware
If you do, you do not care
and everybody over there
will know you soaked your silverware.

What do you think? On second thoughts, I don't think I want to know... Feel free to use the comments thread for more bad poetry.

This should be silence

There are some things that I can't write about, not really; yet I can't stay quiet about them either. Blogs are not the places to discuss bottomless despair and unbounded grief, but somehow to ignore them seems wrong, too. At least 190 human beings lost their lives yesterday in Spain, people who were traveling to work, to do the shopping, to school. People with spouses and friends, children and jobs; people who were thinking what to make for supper that night, who were checking the soccer scores, who were taking one more quick nap before the day's activities really started. People who loved and feared, hated and adored, felt bored and laughed at silly jokes. People who are now dead, ultimately to be remembered mostly as numbers in the political struggles for power by others.

For those who loved them today is the first day of the After: a horrible time, a time that nobody wants to live through, a time that doesn't seem possible to live through, yet something that must be lived through. There is no other way out but through the necessary suffering. My heart breaks for them, or would break for them if it would do any good at all. But only time, the horrible time, will do any good, and even that will be limited. The lives of the survivors will continue, yes, and slowly they will be patched together again, but they will never be the same: the scars will fade, but they will not stop aching, one will get used to the sudden gaping holes in ones heart, but the holes will not close.

This is what death does. And there are no words vile enough to describe those who use it like a chainsaw in their fanatically orchestrated plans for supremacy.
------
Postscript: If this sounds familiar, it is. As familiar as the violence that caused it.

The New John Kerry: A Rant

I stole this quote from corrente:

"[KERRY:]George Bush is running on the same old Republican tactics of fear — and they're already getting tired," he said. "It's clear that this president will fight like hell to keep his own job, but he won't lift a finger to help Americans keep theirs."

How do you feel reading it? This is what I felt: A warm wave of recognition and joy spread through my body, an impish delight at righteous anger played out tickled my laughing nerves and I found myself shouting "YES! YES!" at the startled snakes still half-asleep. Am I proud of these reactions? Well, yes, but then I'm not bound by the Christian rule of having to keep on turning the other cheek.

Republicans have been hammering away at us poor liberals for over a decade, and we've met this with self-examination and conscience raising sessions and carefully reasoned attempts at compromises. More hammering away, more attempts to remain cordial and polite and so on. The end result: "liberal" is now such a dirty word that it will no doubt soon be banned from all airwaves in this country, civil rights have become "special privileges", anyone daring to speak out for the poor or the oppressed is ridiculed as politically incorrect, and the people on welfare are called piglets at the nipples of the government sow while the Enron crooks gently slide into obscurity. Any war is pre-emptive self-defense, and the country is in furor over "death taxes" which affected less than one percent of all estates. We have given away much of our rights to privacy in exchange for security, but instead of security we get...more fear.

It would be nice to run politics as a civilized form of cooperation and compromise, but such endeavors take at least two willing participants. The Republicans have not been willing participants in anything for donkey's years (or rather, elephant's years) and ultimately even a kind, sensitive liberal runs out of cheeks to turn. Then the rabbit roars ( to really mix my animal metaphors).

And what will the Republicans say about all this? Let me guess, without even looking for a link to prove it. They will accuse Kerry of negative campaigning and the Democrats of nasty language and Hitleresque demagogy. They will raise their innocent eyebrows and shrug their innocent shoulders, as if to suggest that the sudden liberal anger is inexplicable, uncouth, nay, even un-American. Why do they hate America so?

Then they will point out that what we should really be concerned at is the fear that's lurking in the shadows, the fear that's made us silent and cooperative so far, the fear that can only be defeated by going on as we've done so far. What they don't tell us is that it's perfectly ok to change direction when you are heading straight down the cliff, it's even perfectly ok to change drivers of a vehicle that's careening out of control.

I've had it with fear, and I hope that John Kerry has had it with courtesy and manners until a little bit later in the election battles. First he needs to light the lanterns, only then can the light that they spread be celebrated.

Rara Avis VI: George and the Girls

Another Rara Avis, I'm afraid. This time I have dared to raise my gaze upwards, far far into the upper stratospheres. There, in his solitary royal thoughts, flies the King Of All Birds, the most powerful bird of all. The bird that we have raised above the rest, the one who is to protect the free world and the free markets. It's almost a sacrilege to view him as a mere avian among many, and perhaps even greater sacrilege to ask what this great solemn leader with so many real cares on his weary wings might think about women. But that's my topic for today.:

The International Women's Day was a good time to meditate on George Walker Bush and women. Not that there's much in this exercize for us prurient minds. George is either very good or very careful, or his minders even more so. Instead, I'm going to look at his attitudes towards women more generally, as human beings, as the objects of his policies and as voters.

To find out about these attitudes, it's necessary to examine not only what George has achieved in his four-year realm, but also what he has tried to achieve. Not all his brilliant goals have been met. Yet. That's why he wants another four years.

It's easy to decide that George has done very well indeed abroad. One of his very first acts as a president was the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule: no U.S. funding will be given to health care providers in developing countries who as much as whisper about the rumors that abortions are available somewhere. Providers could then decide between receiving American money for things such as condoms or counseling and screening for STDs and HIV/AIDS, and having the freedom to include the abortion as an option in their reproductive counseling. Many opted for the latter.

The Christian right is very pleased with this policy and its international success, especially as they have been less successful in their domestic efforts to illegalize abortion and to demonize birth control as well. Though it's early days still, and the next four years of George would most likely see a spread of these policies at home, too. The effects are hard to predict or measure, but many argue that these international policies have caused an increase in both abortions and maternal mortality rates:

What is known as the "global gag rule" is having a devastating impact on women and families in the developing world. Without U.S. assistance, health clinics have closed in Nepal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. The loss of USAID funding has forced others around the world to cut staff and services, including for HIV screening, voluntary counseling and education. At a time when the spread of HIV-AIDS has dramatically elevated the demand for condoms, USAID has stopped shipment of condoms to 16 countries because the sole recipients – local family planning organizations – have refused to sign on to the gag rule.

George's second foreign success must be the canceling of $34 million in funding to the United Nation's Family Planning Fund (UNFPA). This fund provides hundreds of thousands of women in 140 countries with family planning and maternal health programs. But the Bush administration decided that UNFPA had been engaging in coercive abortions in China, and the funds were cut. Four fact-finding missions and Colin Powell failed to find evidence for such Chinese coercion. But we all know that faith is stronger than facts.

I see George's third international success in the way he has shifted the U.S. diplomatic voice from the chorus of demons preaching for birth control and female empowerment to the higher registry of the angels singing for God and the religious traditions. No longer is the U.S. supporting "the right of couples and individuals to determine freely the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so." No longer is the U.S. supporting "reproductive health services and education" for teenagers, and no longer is the U.S. affirming the Beijing platform of gender equality, as somewhere within these there must lurk the devil of abortion. We now vote in bloc with Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on most matters pertaining to women.

These are the real, intended successes of George's policy in regard to women, and they should be used as the main criteria in judging how well he is doing, especially by those women who have a vote in the United States. But many women are too lenient: recently, a group of women's organizations in the U.S. rated the Bush administration on its foreign policy with respect to women, and this rating didn't even mention the great intended successes. Instead, they focused on several policies which had nothing to do with women's affairs in their initial intentions: the liberation of Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq and the AIDS crisis in Africa.

Keep in mind that George believed the Taliban to be a rock band only four years ago. That the war in Afghanistan destroyed the Taliban, at least temporarily, was a nice bonus of the campaign but not what we went to war for. The women's lot under the Taliban didn't perhaps look that unsuitable to some in George's base, and in any case the world was fully aware of the situation for several years, yet nothing was being done. No, I can't assign George any credit for wanting to liberate the Afghani women, and the lot of Iraqi women looks more precarious now than it did under the Saddam regime, as cruel as that was. The AIDS funding would help women as it would help men, too, if only the funding was forthcoming.

These women's organizations were wussy, I think, in handling George with kid gloves. Even so, he rated two "Ds" and one "Incomplete" in their final evaluation. Then again, you might argue that "Ds" from lefty women's organizations equal "As" from George's religious base. Maybe he's on the Dean's list, after all.

George's domestic successes are far fewer. True, he managed to close down the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach and he also ended the Labor Departmen't "Equal Pay Matters" iniative. Equal pay doesn't matter anymore, you see, because women are choosing to have less pay quite freely, and to have an office for women's initiatives and outreach would give women 'special rights'. He filled 26% of the vacant positions in government with female appointees, a respectable drop from Clinton's 37%, but he failed in his attempt to close the regional offices of the Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor.

His new budget will do away with programs that advocate gender equality in education. and John Ashcroft has been an excellent hitman in the area of Civil Rights enforcement, gradually turning it into the area of Special Rights Abatement. As an example:

when the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Federal Communications Commission's equal employment opportunity rules—which, according to the Washington Post, represented "the most inoffensive corner of affirmative action," because they only required broadcasters to make an effort to inform women and minorities about job openings and encourage them to apply—Ashcroft's department filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to review that regressive decision

George failed in his first attempt to do away with the 'special rights' that Title IX in education gives female athletes, but this was only the first battle of the war, and he has since regathered his troops to attack from a different angle: that of reintroducing gender segregation into the public schools without worrying too much about whether 'separate' can ever mean 'equal'. This may not hurt girls, of course, but if it doesn't it's quite likely to hurt boys. Given George's attitudes (as reflected in his other policies), I'd bet for the hurting of the girls here.

Actually, I can do better than just try to surmise George's attitudes from his policies. I can quote Condie Rice as his spokeswoman on this International Women's Day:

As President Bush has said, "No society can succeed and prosper while denying basic rights and opportunities to the women of their country."

Women should not be denied basic rights and opportunities, ok. But what about equal rights and opportunities? Here's Ari Fleischer, another spokesman for George:

At a recent press conference, George W. Bush indicated through White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer that he does not consider discrimination against women to be an offense as serious as racial or ethnic discrimination. According to Fleischer, membership in a group that excludes women is not "a disqualifying factor" for candidates to Cabinet posts. However, when prodded, Fleischer stated that racial or ethnic discrimination is a "very different category for the President."Sources: PR Newswire, "Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer," Dec. 11, 2002; Federal Document Clearing House, "Ari Fleischer Holds White House Briefing," Dec. 9, 2002

All is clear now. I think George doesn't believe that women's issues are as serious as racial or ethnic issues, and though women should be provided some basic rights and opportunities, it is not necessary to worry one's head too much over equality. If God had wanted equality of the sexes, He would have told George about it, I presume. You know, when He told him to attack Iraq and stuff.

I think that I can place George now. He's in the same category of birds as the late Ayatollah Khomeini, who appointed his daughter to run all women's affairs in Iran. Given this, it's interesting whom George selected as the representatives of the United States in this week's UN conference about gender equality:

President Bush's sister and Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter will be delegates to a U.N. women's conference next week aimed at promoting equality of the sexes, a U.S. official said.
More than a dozen ministers are expected at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which starts Monday, but the presence of Dorothy "Doro" Bush Koch and Liz Cheney in the U.S. delegation is likely to give the gathering a higher profile.
Koch, the president's youngest sibling and only sister, has recently been campaigning for his re-election. Cheney, a lawyer and deputy assistant secretary of state who focuses on Mideast issues, joined her parents last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Italy.
"These women leaders represent the best in America and are asked to serve as public delegates to this important U.N. conference," Richard Grenell, a spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, said Friday.

This was an easy one!

Now I know what George thinks about the girls. What do the girls think about George? Most women I have asked this question give me unprintable answers, but clearly there were many who voted for George in the first place, and there must be some who still like him. Or maybe not. All through writing this, I had that silly old nursery rhyme jingling in my head, and I think it's trying to tell something about George and the voting girls:

Georgie, Porgie, pudding and pie;
Kissed the girls and made them cry...

Don't let him make you cry again!

The International Women's Day

Today is the International Women's Day, though you might not notice it very much if you live in the United States. If I recall correctly, last year's IWD-related programming from my local public radio station consisted solely of a humorous debate about whether the Hooters restaurant chain should take over managing the Amtrak trains in order to increase male passengership. As the NPR is supposed to stand for the extreme liberal media, I was quite disappointed. The right wing mainstream media is more understandably silent about the IWD, given that it has its roots in the women of the American Socialist Party who arranged large demonstrations in 1908 to call for the vote and for political and economic rights to women. The day became an international one in 1910 in the second International Conference of Socialist Women.

From the beginning there was some disagreement about the meaning of the IWD. Should it be a time for celebrating women's progress, for taking stock of what has been achieved or for demanding remedies to problems that have not been solved? My review of this year's news from all over the world proves that the same disagreement still prevails. Some stories take on a festive air of celebration, others lay out starkly the immense problems that women in many parts of the world face. I also found some new interpretations of the meaning of the IWD: it might be a good time to promise Chinese women that a woman, some day, though not yet, might be, perhaps, selected to be a taikonaut in the Chinese space program, or that the women in Brunei have their rights, as defined by others, of course, extremely well guaranteed. And the Iraqi Governing Council chose to move the IWD in Iraq from March 8 to August 18, the date of birth of the prophet Mohammed's daughter, thus connecting women's issues to religion.

I'm sure that the original founders of the IWD would be very pleased to see the progress that has taken place in the last near-century, and celebration is the correct response to this. Women now can vote in the majority of countries in the world. The recent Constitutional Loya Jirga in Afghanistan produced a constitution for the country which safeguards the rights of women as equal to those of men (though with the usual caveat of possible limits to this dictated by Islam), and in Rwanda women won 49% of the seats in Parliament. Even in Iraq women might be guaranteed a quarter of the parliamentary seats. Looks very good from where I'm sitting, in the U.S.A where women's share of seats in the House and Senate hovers around a little more than one in ten...

The 1908 socialists would also rejoice in seeing how women can work in almost any field of their choice today (with the exception, as usual, of many religious fields), and though their pay on average is not equal to men's, the ratio is considerably better than it was a century ago. Women have gained access to education in many countries of the world, to a point where they now outnumber men in higher education in countries as diverse as the United States, Colombia and Iran. ( That this trend is an international one casts serious doubt, by the way, on the argument popular in the U.S. that the greater number of women in higher education is due to an Evil Feminist Plot, unless these evil feminists somehow got their fingers into the pie in Iran as well.)

There is, indeed, much to celebrate. At the same time, much more remains to be done for the girls and women of this world. The education for girls is a pressing need that has not been met in many Asian and African countries, and customs and laws concerning marriage are still nowhere near fair and equal for the majority of world's women. And I'd like to see more women in positions of political power everywhere, not just in places like Scandinavia. It would be good for the world.

The most widely reported themes for this year's IWD are violence and the AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa. Noeleen Heyzer, the Executive Director of UNIFEM has this to say about women and AIDS:

Ten years ago, women worldwide made up 38 per cent of people infected with the disease. Today they make up 50 per cent. In some regions this ratio has tilted further towards women: in the Caribbean it is 52 per cent, in Africa, 58 percent. Ten years ago, women were at the periphery of the epidemic. Today, they are at its epicentre. For young women the situation is particularly alarming. Young women in the developing world outnumber young men among newly infected 15-24 year olds by two to one. The social impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls is greater - they are the ones who assume the burden of care when family members are affected by the disease, putting severe constraints on their access to education, employment, food cultivation, and often treatment. Violence against women, both a cause and a consequence of the epidemic, adds another major risk factor for transmission. Rape, sexual violence and women's inability to refuse unwanted sex or to demand safe sex are serious factors in the spread of the epidemic. (bolds mine)

Violence against women is the Amnesty International's topic for the IWD:

In poor and war-torn countries women suffer some of the worst abuse, Amnesty's figures show. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, some 40 women a day are raped, and many are unable to get medical treatment or report the crimes to the authorities.
In Somalia, more than 90 per cent of women are subjected to genital mutilation.
In Pakistan, a recent survey showed 90 per cent of married women have been abused by their male partners.
But in industrialized countries like Russia, where the Soviet constitution has proclaimed women's equality for more than 70 years, they are still socially and legally disadvantaged.
Some 14,000 Russian women each year are killed by partners or relatives, but there is no law addressing domestic violence.
In strict Islamic countries, women fare badly, regardless of their economic background.
"Fifty schoolgirls were burned to death and dozens of others were injured in a fire at their school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on March 11, 2002," the report says. "Religious police prevented the girls from leaving the building because they were not wearing headscarves, and had no male relatives there to receive them. They also reportedly prevented rescuers who were men from entering the premises."
However, wealthy Western countries are far from immune from violence against women.
In Canada, government statistics show 50 per cent of women are victims of at least one act of physical or sexual violence after they turn 16.
In France, 25,000 women are raped each year, and in Ireland 20 per cent of adult women have reported a sexual attack. In Iceland only 21 per cent of reported rapes end in a conviction for the accused attacker.

Violence doesn't necessarily discriminate on the basis of gender, of course. But women face the threat of specific acts of violence solely due to them being women, and the legal and law enforcement systems of many countries lag behind in acknowledging the seriousness of these acts. It is sad that the sexual violence against African women has become truly newsworthy only when it can be shown to affect the spread of the AIDS epidemic.

This International Women's Day I'm going to raise a toast for those socialist women of 1908. Bless their hearts. I'm going to feel proud and happy about all the progress that has been made, and I'm going to be a Fierce Goddess in Her Wrath about the dreadful scourges that still remain. After all that, I'm going to write a second post about George W. Bush and the International Women's Day.

And the Moral of the Story Was?

This is a true story. A couple I know own a summerhouse with an old-fashioned outhouse. Every spring they clean out the base of the outhouse. This year some (misinformed) gardener asked them for the stuff to use as compost, and the couple (also unaware that human waste is not recommended for composting) agreed to save it for this gardener who lives in the same city as they do. They packed 'the compost' neatly into a black garbage bag, and then put the garbage bag inside a large corrugated cardboard box on the back of their truck. On their return trip to the city they stopped at a 7/11 for something to drink. When they got back to their truck, the cardboard box had disappeared. The box had a large picture of an expensive television set on the outside...