Computer Surveillance Systems

My computer had one of these in the most recent sweep. Its produced by Amecisco, and it's called Amecisco Keylogger. Supposedly it records every key stroke from the attacked computer, including visits to chat groups and what is being said there.

I feel unreasonably flattered by this. I am going to write a long monologue about footrot next, and then I'm going to find a chat group for people who have a footrot fetish.

Framing in Politics

George Lakoff has interesting ideas on the reasons for the rise of the radical right-wingers to power in the United States. He thinks that the radical right is excellent in framing:

Language always comes with what is called "framing." Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like "revolt," that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing. That's a frame.
If you then add the word "voter" in front of "revolt," you get a metaphorical meaning saying that the voters are the oppressed people, the governor is the oppressive ruler, that they have ousted him and this is a good thing and all things are good now. All of that comes up when you see a headline like "voter revolt" — something that most people read and never notice. But these things can be affected by reporters and very often, by the campaign people themselves.

Framing is present in almost all political slogans that I can think of, and Lakoff is right that the Republicans have mastered this skill. This, in turn, has led the Democrats to fight a largely defensive battle withing the same frame; a struggle that is doomed to failure. Consider the conservative framing in the term "tax relief". Here's Lakoff on this term:

The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.
"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

This quote is from an older interview with Lakoff and he points out that the Democratic usage of this term has now declined. But that is not really enough; the framing should be changed. For example, "paying your bills" or "sharing the common costs" or something cleverer but in the same vein would evoke a different frame about taxes.

And consider the most famous current term with framing issues: "the war on terror". This, according to Lakoff, is why the Republicans are controlling the issue of how to address terrorism:

You've said that progressives should never use the phrase "war on terror" — why?
There are two reasons for that. Let's start with "terror." Terror is a general state, and it's internal to a person. Terror is not the person we're fighting, the "terrorist." The word terror activates your fear, and fear activates the strict father model, which is what conservatives want. The "war on terror" is not about stopping you from being afraid, it's about making you afraid.
Next, "war." How many terrorists are there — hundreds? Sure. Thousands? Maybe. Tens of thousands? Probably not. The point is, terrorists are actual people, and relatively small numbers of individuals, considering the size of our country and other countries. It's not a nation-state problem. War is a nation-state problem.

All this made me think about the framing that anti-feminists also employ so cleverly. "Feminazi" is a very good example. It picks up the beginning from the term "feminist", but then appends it to a term which has enormously obvious framing intentions: "nazi". The nazis were an authoritarian rule bent on death.

This framing casts feminism as an anti-freedom movement, a movement to control and to kill. It leaves out the struggles for equality and freedom for women that the initial term "feminist" might convey. This is quite a preposterous reframing of a term. Nevertheless, the reframing has been successful, perhaps beyond the most ambitious dreams of Rush Limbaugh, the inventor of feminazism.

I even think that the now slightly stale term "political correctness" might have been created by some clever conservative playing with frames. My guess is that he (I'm pretty sure that it was a he) started with "civil rights" and then sought for the closest synonyms for each term which would sort of say the same except negatively. Though in some ways p.c. doesn't fit well into the framing theory, in other ways it's an excellent example of it as it allows the frame to be whatever the listener picks. Thus, a rabid racist or sexist hears the term as containing all that crap about equality and fairness which can therefore be attacked by just piping up with p.c. accusations, whereas a conscience-stricken liberal hears in the term only the most extreme exaggerations of attempts to be sensitive to various group issues. Then both can agree that political correctness is really bad!

But what is really fascinating about political correctness is how very upside-down it turns the world. In reality, of course, what is politically correct is that which those who hold political power prefer. So in the United States to be p.c. should mean to be for the values of Christian fundamentalists and neoconservatives. Yet nobody calls them politically correct...

How to Make A Cake

I want to make a birthday cake for someone, and given that I'm not the Goddess of Cakes I e-mailed someone who is and asked her for a recipe that would make the socks turn around on the eaters' feet, but that would also be relatively easy for someone who isn't really at home in the kitchen.

This is the response I got, pretty much:

First, make a four-egg base as usual. Slice it in as many layers as needed. Make enough strong coffee to moisten all the slices. Fill the cake with crushed chocolate, whipped cream and layers of hard fudge. Cover the top with cream and the sides with the fudge. Rum can be added as a flavoring if desired."

It reminds me of those car repair guides which start:"First take out the engine." What is a four-egg base? Do the eggs get peeled first? How do you slice eggs like that, and how do they stay upright? Where's the flour in all this? How do you make fudge? Where do you add rum?

I sent a plea for help and clarification and got back a recipe for a four-egg base (it turns out to contain flour and sugar, too, and something called potato flour...) and a recipe for fudge (a lot of work). But then she tells me to bake the cake as usual. What is usual for cakes might not be usual for goddesses. I assume the cake goes in the oven but for how long and at what temperature?

And how do you slice a cake? I assume horizontally, but where can I find a knife long enough for that? Maybe I could use long wire to do that? Tie one end to the doorknob and saw with the other end?

But I will try this recipe, and if it turns out wonderful I will post a thorough and easy-to-follow set of instructions, too. Unless potato flour must be made by first growing potatoes and so on.

Does This Ring A Bell?

From William L. Shirer. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Pan Books, 1981:

"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a cafe, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realised how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."

And no, goddesses are not subject to Godwin's law!
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Thanks to Connecting Dots on Eschaton's comments threads.

Samira Bellil

She died far too young:

Samira Bellil, whose book recounting gang rape she suffered as a teenager in a tough Paris suburb put her in the avant-garde of a small movement fighting for French Muslim women's rights, has died of stomach cancer. She was 31.
She died Friday in Paris, according to her publisher Editions Denoel.
Bellil's 2002 autobiographical narrative, "Dans l'Enfer des Tournantes" (In the Hell of Gang Rape), explores the violence she endured during her childhood in a tough Parisian suburb, from drugs to gang rapes at the age of 13.
The book, written in the street language Bellil grew up speaking, was the final step in her fight to regain a sense of self-worth and quickly became a best seller.
Bellil herself was rejected and abused for bringing charges against her aggressors following the gang rape, thus breaking the law of silence that reigns in the high-rise zones where men and boys hold sway.
The publication gave France a rare firsthand account of the troubles faced by girls in the heavily immigrant suburbs that ring major French cities.
It also put Bellil in the forefront of a small movement fighting to improve the lot of Muslim women and girls trapped in what she called the "cultural shackles" of the suburbs.
Bellil was considered the "godmother" of the womens' rights group "Ni Putes Ni Soumises" (Neither Whores Nor Submissive.)

To the Dead Children

This is the song of the earth to all the children who have died in wars and acts of terrorism, or maybe a faint echo of it:

These are my children, the dead ones, the beloved: the ones covered in mud and dirt, the bloodied ones, the limbless ones, the ones who were scattered by bombs like crumbs thrown for the birds. These are my children: the burned ones, the raped ones, the starved ones, the buried ones. See how beautiful they all are, my beloved children.

I seek for them everywhere, I call for them and at nightfall I find them. I gather them to me and give them sleep. The night I turn into a silken shawl, the sky into a blue blanket. I weave cradles and nests out of my hair, and I find a place for each one of my children, however hurt and frightened.

My lap is wide enough for all of them and their pain, and I give them dreams of pine forests, of fresh streams in sunlight, of young foxes gambolling in a clearing. I give them dreams of peace and quiet, of stars and sailboats, of flowers and meadows. I give them dreams of snow and sun and sweetness. I give them what was taken away from them and when I cannot do that I give them oblivion and rest. And the wind sings a lullaby, gently, in all my tongues.

It is my milk that feeds all, and my tears that sate all thirst, and these children, my beloved, will never lack food or drink or a place to slumber in my lap or a peace that cannot be broken..

How Low Will They Go?

The wingnuts, that is. Well, this is the newest low from the mouth of Dick Cheney:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.

(By the way, 350 supporters! What's the matter with the Republican campaign? Not enough faithfuls or too many loyalty oaths to sign?)

The funny thing about this statement is that the terrorists struck on Cheney's watch and that there is evidence that suggests people in crucial places ignored the threat. So a careful reading of the comment might convert many voters to John Kerry. On the other hand, it is probably true that the risk of terrorism will be higher in the future, whether it is Bush or Kerry in the White House, as this administration has done nothing to prevent new terrorists from being created and might in fact be argued to have contributed to the next wave of terrorists by their misguided foreign policies.

But on the third hand, this is just the same message the wingnuts have been campaigning from the beginnning: "Be afraid. Be very, very afraid."
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Link via Eschaton.

The Glass Cliff?

British psychologists Alex Haslam and Michelle Ryan are the researchers in a study which found that women who break through the proverbial glass ceiling may find themselves teetering at the edge of a glass cliff. (All this glass is getting on my nerves; I fear that they might shatter. And yes, I know that I have used similar metaphors before, but I did it much better.)

The 'cliff' refers to their finding that firms, political parties and so on tend to nominate women to important positions when times are bad, when the job is seen as impossible to perform. According to Haslam, this is not only true for the first appointments of new, eager managers or politicians but a recurring problem for women and, he speculates, for racial and ethnic minorities as well.

The Haslam-Ryan study can be summarized as follows:

Prof Haslam and a colleague, Dr Michelle Ryan, compared the stock market performance of FTSE 100 companies with their appointment history.
The 19 that had appointed women to the board in the previous year had done worse than those whose appointments had been all male.
"But in all cases women had only been appointed after the company performance had slumped," Prof Haslam told the British Association science festival in Exeter yesterday.
"If everything had gone swimmingly, then they carried on with the old jobs for the boys."
A similar pattern emerged in a study of candidates for the Scottish parliamentary elections. Women were more likely to be nominated as candidates for harder to win seats.
The glass cliff also emerged in experiments in which 300 students were asked to pick a candidate for a fictional senior management post.
Given a man and woman with identical qualifications, students were far more likely to pick a female candidate than a male one if the company was doing badly.
The reason for the discrimination is unclear. Prof Haslam believes it could be explained by overt sexism - that men were handpicked for the good jobs, leaving women to take posts in failing companies.
More subtle forms of discrimination could be in play, he said. The predominantly male managers of companies were likely to recommend desirable jobs to their predominantly male friends, but give "poisoned chalice" jobs to those they did not know.
Another explanation was that women were perceived as being better at crisis management, he added.

See how we can't get rid of the glass? Now it's a poisoned chalice.
But the results are interesting and even suggestive. I have often wondered if Condie Rice wasn't one of those appointments, given that her background made her a pretty astonishing choice for advising about current security concerns. Her selection could have been seen as a win-win solution for the Republicans: if she fails it's because she's a woman and a member of a racial minority, if she succeeds, well, then the Republicans can take the credit for being smart in their choice and gender- and color-blind.

What is serious about all these cliffs and ceilings is their real impact on fairness and on productivity, of course. Note the way the correlation with poor performance of stocks and the appointment of women into positions of power can be distorted:

It was reported in 2003 that UK business had gone downhill in the previous year as the number of female directors on the boards of FTSE 100 companies had risen by 20%. A newspaper commentator said: "The triumphant march of women into the country's boardrooms has wreaked havoc on companies' performance and share prices."
Professor Haslam said: "What we found was that in all of those cases, women had only been appointed after company performance had slumped quite dramatically."

The problem here was that old tiresome assumption that correlation implies causality or that the order of the causality is obvious from the correlation. If the bad performance preceded the appointment of women as Haslam stated, then to argue that the 'triumphant march' (what framing!) of women has 'wreaked havoc' (what framing!) is lying. In fact,

Haslam also said: "The appointment of a woman director was not associated with a subsequent drop in company performance. Indeed companies that appointed a woman actually experienced a marked increase in share price after the appointment."

I think that the real glass cliff is in the tongues of some journalists and public commentators who never learn to appreciate basic statistics as well as the glib sounds that so easily slide out of their mouths.

The Decadent Left

This term is something writers like Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens might use. It's not intended for general consumption but for the select few with the gastronomic tastebuds to appreciate its flavor in political discourse. Or so I surmise.

It would be fun to study this term from the point of view of an alien, and this is what I have done. The trick is to pretend that I don't know what decadent means (which turned out not to be much of a pretense at all), and to seek for its meaning in all the usual places.

I started with the Google. The impression Google gives on decadence is that it is a characteristic of kinky sex and chocolate gateaus. Only the third page gives a dictionary definition:

Noun 1. decadent - a person who has fallen into a decadent state (morally or artistically)
bad person - a person who does harm to others Adj. 1. decadent - marked by excessive self-indulgence and moral decay; "a decadent life of excessive money and no sense of responsibility"; "a group of effete self-professed intellectuals"

My Webster's Unabridged gives these synonyms for decadent:

corrupt, immoral, degenerate, debased, debauched, self-indulgent

It seems that the decadent left is an immoral, degenerate and debased left; that a decadent lefty is a person who does harm to others. This is strong language. But I doubt very much that most readers catch the intended meanings. The connections of decadence to chocolate cakes and exotic sex are just too strong in themselves.

When I see the term I think of old smoke-filled apartments with lofty ceilings and antique lace curtains covering the windows, Victorian furniture, bone-china tea cups erudite conversation carried out in languid voices. Perhaps there are small tarts with elaborate icing, expensive wine served in toothmugs, long rants about some revolutionary dead a hundred years. Somehow I can't imagine any kinky sex here but maybe I should try harder.

This may be an example of political sloganing where the framing has failed. Decadent sounds like a rather nice thing to be, on the whole, or at least an impotent thing as far as its politics are concerned. But more importantly, it makes me think of imaginary groups which have nothing to do with the real left.

A Labor Day Block Party

We have a very nice tradition in these parts of having all neighbors come together at the end of the summer for a block party. Everybody brings a dish or two, some lend their grills, some bring balloons and music, and the road is blocked off from traffic. And soon the street fills up with chairs and ballgames and children running to and fro with dogs and each other and adults standing eating and talking in large and small groups.

We had one these parties today and it was very successful! Nobody else even got near the chocolate ice-cream cake, though the side-effect was that I slept the rest of the day, and even got a little flegmatic before the party was over. This was why I sat down for a while just watching, and realized that the block party was like a big leap back in (imaginary?) history, to a real communal world where children could run free and take risks, where the parents could relax, knowing that many others watched over their children, where gossip and important information was equally exchanged, joys and griefs shared together with the food and the drink. I suspect that there were some Republicans there, but everybody was smiling and friendly. For one day, at least, we were indeed good neighbors.

That's what is going wrong with the public discourse in the United States. The atmosphere in the media is not that of friendly neighbors arguing over common matters but much more that of two armies negotiating a possible siegefire. The fault lies almost totally with the wingnuts who started this all with their slogans of culture wars, and trying to a be a good neighbor to someone who wants to raze down your house doesn't work. But I do wish we could try a little bit harder to build bridges across ideological chasms. For the other side are human, too, whatever else we sometimes imply.

More on Blogs

My recent political fervor has had some unpleasant side-effects. Like sleeplessness and devouring innocent bypassers. Also that I have been reading many more political blogs than usual, and commenting on quite a few of them.

Once again, this has brought me face to face with misogyny, even on the blogs that are supposed to be on our side. Why can't some people attack a female politician or a female journalist or the wife of a politican without discussing her breast size, her cunt, her general fuckability or the lack of it? What is it about this world that for some people being a woman is in itself a crime of a sort? A crime that then lends itself to various slurs, none of which can be isolated to apply to only the woman attacked. They apply to all women, unfortunately.

I'm the first person to admit that the wingnut women deserve criticism, but the criticism should be about the first part of the definition, 'wingnut', not about the second part of the definition: 'woman'.

Why is this so difficult?

Bush By Numbers

From this excellent article. A short quote:

1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.

104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.

65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.

$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.

1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States.

79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.

3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi "Visa Express" programme.

140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September.

14 Number of Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) agents assigned to track down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries where al-Qa'ida is active.

$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks.

$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.

$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS's existing terrorism budget.

$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia space shuttle crash.

$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalised gambling.

7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and mid-October 2002 for being gay.

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Thanks to rojopelo for the link.

It's All Emotion

My analysis of the Republican campaign has concluded that appealing to reason is so outdated. All that is required of a campaign is to cause the right emotions to surface. Never mind if they are not based on any facts at all. This worries me a lot, because if the Republicans succeed with this heinous plot it's pretty clear proof that democracy stinks.

The basic emotions the Republicans wanted to evoke were fear of terrorists, hatred of Democrats, especially Kerry, and a desire for a strong leader who views the Americans as ten-year olds needing an authoritarian father. And maybe they succeeded. Though the early polls were taken at a time when most Democrats were probably not paying attention to anything but the Labor Day weekend, and though there are some questions about the way the polls were conducted, they may show a post-convention bounce for Bush. Whether this will last is a question for the future. Maybe defreezing bin Laden is the next step in the emotional war of the right.

In any case, the Republican campaign asks the audience to leave their brains home. This I find very upsetting, not an emotional reaction that they intended. But then I won't vote for them so my upset doesn't matter.

Here are examples of the way fudging facts is done by the Republicans:

At last week's Republican convention, President Bush and Vice President Cheney repeatedly linked the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq, largely abandoning the rationale offered when the Bush administration invaded the Persian Gulf country.
Announcing the invasion on March 19, 2003, Bush said in a nationwide televised address that the United States "will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." Two days earlier, Bush had asserted in another address to the nation, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
But no such weapons were found after the invasion, and the subject was only fleetingly mentioned from the podium in Madison Square Garden. Instead, the war on Iraq was presented as a part of a seamless thread that stemmed directly from the terrorism of the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have fought the terrorists across the earth -- not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake," Bush said, before listing Iraq along with the struggle against terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

And:

The message of the week was: You know where Bush stands. You can't be sure about Kerry. But that headline also came with a misleading subhead: Bush is fighting the war against terrorism, and Kerry wouldn't. It was a theme that was pounded from the very start of the convention, and it depended on a sly conflation— the notion that the war in Iraq and the war against the 9/11 terrorists were one and the same. We heard far more about Bush in the World Trade Center rubble than we did about the U.S. in the Iraqi quagmire. And when Iraq was raised, it was done in a deceptive and simpleminded way. Even John McCain, who gave the most serious foreign policy speech of the week, presented a false choice: "Our choice [in Iraq] wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat."

You see what I mean? There is something very sad in watching a democracy shake and start crumbling by the use of such vicious and unethical tactics as simple lying and yelling louder and louder when one points out that the facts are missing. Never mind busing people in to Bush meetings, if it happens, here we are lying about the very blood and meat of the campaigns.

The Republicans have always appealed to the lowest common denominator, of course, and what's so worrying about it that it may just be working. According to Newsweek polls, 49% of Americans do believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 slaughter. And this is solely attributable to the Republican campaign to make it seem so. What are the conservative values nowadays that lying is regarded as a virtue?

In other political news, the wives of presidential candidates are once again judged. Theresa Kerry is seen as a potential negative for Kerry, while Laura Bush is all good news. This is another example of appealing to emotions, this time to those of the men who don't like gender equality of who fear their own wives, perhaps. Look, Laura is quiet as a mouse! A good traditional wife!

Why does it matter what the personalities of the candidates' wives are? After all, the candidates have been married to their respective spouses for some time, and coped just fine with that fact. Why would this suddenly change? Of course it doesn't, and it doesn't matter, but the point is to get people to vote with their lower animal minds, to focus on primal fears and desires, to ignore what is actually happening in this world and in their own lives. If this works it makes me very scared of living in this country. Just saying.

Happy Labor Day!

I hope that you have fun and enough rest and relaxation. Don't labor too much, in other words.

This is sent early in case I get infected with an Angry Writing bug in the near future. Now that I've been nice it's ok for me to rave and rant to my heart's content, isn't it?

On Jaws

Watching the RNC made me conscious of the large number of Republican men who have jaws like nutcrackers. Maybe they all suffer from TMJ disorder or something, but looking at them made me feel that one would have to pry their jaws open like those of a pitbull who has gotten hold of someone's sleeve or throat. How does one get a jaw like that? Were these people born that way or is the stiff jaw a consequence of decades of wild rage swallowed?

Well, it has not been swallowed much for the last twenty years or so, given that much of it has spilled all over the American public. And this has caused the stiff-jaw syndrome to spread. I'm beginning to see it in the faces of non-conservatives, and sometimes even in my own divine reflection.

Jaws are miraculous things, of course. There they hang, barely attached to the skull, but ready to chew, grind and chop like mad. I respect them a lot, but I don't think that they need to be so stiff and mechanical looking to work.

Take my dogs. They have enormous maws with large pink tongues and lots of vampire-type teeth. Yet their jaws are held in a relaxed manner, easily swaying as the dogs run or dripping saliva at the sight of a doggie biscuit. I bet they don't suffer from TMJ disorders, either. Wingnut politicians have a lot to learn from dogs.

Try this experiment: Stand on your head and try to open and close your jaw by moving not the jaw but the skull itself. Can it be done? I doubt it. That's how wonderful the jaws are!

And the Surprise Guest Is:......CODE PINK!

In three days in a row, Code Pink managed to infiltrate the Republican National Convention. Imagine this: a women's peace organization using the color pink managed to get through all the incredible security arrangements of this administration! I find this truly mindboggling, and perhaps a significant message from the higher powers.

Here is what happened yesterday:

...Thursday night at the front of the California delegation section when -- in the middle of Bush's speech -- June Brashares, 40, of San Francisco, an activist with Code Pink, stood up on her chair and unfurled a banner that read, "Bush lies, people die.''
Just minutes before, the blue-suited Brashares had been in the crunch of delegates and press in the aisle when former Gov. Pete Wilson graciously offered his seat with a prime sight line to President Bush. Brashares was wearing an alternate delegate pass, and I stepped aside to let her sit down.
It was 50 feet from the president and three rows behind Gerald Parsky, the chairman of the California delegation and chairman of the UC Board of Regents.
Brashares looked grateful and said her feet were killing her. During the speech, she started to stand up on her seat numerous times, holding onto cardboard signs of support for the president. She waved a tiny American flag.
Just more than 40 minutes into Bush's speech of longer than an hour, Brashares jumped on the chair, yelling "Bush lies," and holding up her homemade banner.

Later the same night another Code Pink member did something even more shocking:

Later, another Code Pink activist, Jodie Evans, 49, of Los Angeles, stood up in a seat under the Fox News skybox and pulled off her dress, exposing her pink lingerie with a hand-written message: "Fire Bush - Women say bring the troops home now."

There is a lovely surreal flavor to all of this.

Well, it's Over

And I am very happy about that. George Bush accepted the Republican nomination as expected (though I was hoping for some exciting developments here). He also gave a very long and a very boring speech in which he offered something for everybody, including working women! (they get flex time which, by the way, pays less), which didn't get much of an applause from the Republican faithfuls. The unborn were mentioned, something was said about the horrors of religious discrimination, Kerry was bashed, something was said in Spanish, God was implied to be on Bush's side and there was a lot of stuff about how all the things will now be done that were promised four years ago but were not done since. And then there was lots of war-talk, of course, and how everybody in the Middle East is very happy now. As I type this from memory some details may have been a little distorted. But I clearly remember a protester who got through somehow. So the president who vows to keep us safe can't keep his own Convention safe.

However, the well-known liberal rag called New York Times concludes as follows about the success of the RNC:

The predominant view in New York was that the Republicans had successfully inflicted some damage on Mr. Kerry, but to do so they had to spend considerable time on the attack and present a tough image to the viewing public before an election that will be decided by voters in the middle. Whether this success came at any cost will be determined later.

Interesting, isn't it? To see whether smears and lies and half-truths are more effective in determining the election results than the dislike of the way they were presented? But I suspect that the Republicans aren't trying for the undecideds anymore at all. They were speaking directly to the wingnuts and tried to make it sound unpleasant so that as few of the undecideds would bother to go out and vote at all. The wingnuts will come out in hordes, of course, so this is not a bad strategy for Rove to choose. We'll see if it works, though I hope it won't naturally. I am still relatively sane, and now I can stop listening to politicians for a while! Yes!

Republicitis Has Struck Me!

Meaning that I can hardly drag myself out of bed these days. I can't blog about this crap much longer without going craziers than I already am, but I can't stay away, either. Help!

Anyway, here are some of the thoughts that race around my tired brain right now:

First, the Republican platform indeed is more restrictive than any of the previous ones about abortion. Not only does it include the human life amendment proposal to the Constitution (that life starts at conception) but it also pledges to support anti-choice judges. Thus, there will be a Litmus test for all judges under a Republican regime. By the way, I can see my copy of the Handmaid's Tale from where I type. You should probably buy yours if George gets re-elected. It's a good guidebook. (A joke, though not much.)

Second, it strikes me as surrealistic that the whole tenor of the Republican National Convention is that of a struggling minority party: the anger, especially. Yet the reality is that the Republicans are ruling the presidency, the Senate and the House, and that their money is ruling the media. So how come so angry? Who is stopping them from doing whatever they wish? I read the same anger from Republican on the internet, too, and wonder the same thing. What would be enough for them? Anything at all?

Third, the other emotion much in the foreground of the RNC is fear. We are supposed to be afraid of the terrorists and we are supposed to be afraid of John Kerry because he's too wimpy to fight terrorism. We are supposed to be scared of the French and the United Nation, too. This is to prepare us to jump in the all-sheltering God-ordained lap of Papa Bush tonight, when he will open his arms wide and talk about good things and calm things and the great nation that is us.

Maybe he'll protect me against Dick Cheney and Zell Miller? I had a nightmare last night after watching those two speak. It had many scenes of climbing up fire-ladders with something slavering and foaming inching up the wall behind me.

Today's Joke

Via a commenter on Atrios whose name I failed to take down.

A New Yorker in a bar turns to the man next to him during the RNC and asks:

"Do you want to hear a dittohead joke?"

The man answers:

"Before you tell it you should know that I'm a dittohead and so is the man next to me and so is the man next to him. Do you still want to tell the joke?"

"Nah" says the New Yorker.

"I don't want to explain it three times."

Cheney and Miller in the RNC

What can I say? It was what might be expected, perhaps, given that the wingnuts had minded their manners for so long. Tonight was the night of the pitbulls.

Here are some quotes from Cheney:

From the beginning, the President made clear that the terrorists would be dealt with - and that anyone who supports, protects, or harbors them would be held to account. In a campaign that has reached around the world, we have captured or killed hundreds of Al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan, the camps where terrorists trained to kill Americans have been shut down, and the Taliban driven from power. In Iraq, we dealt with a gathering threat, and removed the regime of Saddam Hussein. Seventeen months ago, he controlled the lives and fortunes of 25 million people. Tonight he sits in jail.

Notice how deftly Iraq was slipped in there? As if it was part of the war against terrorism. Which it isn't, just to be picky.

George W. Bush is a man who speaks plainly and means what he says. He is a person of loyalty and kindness -- and he brings out these qualities in those around him. He is a man of great personal strength -- and more than that, a man with a heart for the weak, and the vulnerable, and the afflicted. We all remember that terrible morning when, in the space of just 102 minutes, more Americans were killed than we lost at Pearl Harbor. We remember the President who came to New York City and pledged that the terrorists would soon hear from all of us.

This I don't get. Was going to New York evidence of Bush's loyalty and kindness? Silly me, I thought that it was part of the job description of the president when the country is at risk. And never mind all that threatening of terrorists. Osama bin Laden has not been caught, terrorist acts are up in the world and the U.S. military is fighting in Iraq, a country from which exactly zero of the 9/11 murderers hailed.

But all this was expected stuff from the war hammer of the Republican party. He's supposed to provide the contrast to George Bush tomorrow night and to make the president look downright reasonable in comparison. Or so I have been told.

The rest of his speech was about John Kerry. I thought that this was the Republican Convention, yet the most talked about person so far has been the rival candidate for the presidency. The Republicans even invited a Democrat to talk about John Kerry, though an unusual type of Democrat to be sure: Zell Miller.

Miller's outburst was entertaining, but I hesitate to comment on it very much as I suspect that he might not be quite himself. Though I must mention that he said that he knocked on the door of Bush's soul and found someone home. Now this is one visit I would have liked to eavesdrop on.

The Republican Platform

This doesn't refer to the pulpit with crosses that is being used in the speeches at the RNC, but the contract that the Republican party has written on America. It's not that different from previous years, but it's worth pointing out that there are two important pillars of social conservatism in it, and they are a human life amendment and the marriage amendment to the Constitution.

These amendments declare that life begins at conception, not at some other time, and that same-sex marriages as well as civil unions and other arrangements of similar sort would be made impossible. Note that not only same-sex marriages would be banned; even less controversial arrangements would become illegal. This is compassionate conservatism.

The human life amendment has several problems. The major one for me is that I believe that life begins much earlier than at conception and that all Catholic priests, night ejaculators and menstruators are baby-killers. So the Republican party is far too slack and liberal here. I suspect that they've picked conception as the point because it makes it easier to limit the cultural war just to pregnant women. Everybody knows that pregnant women should have no human rights.*

The marriage amendment also has its problems. To really defend marriage, all people should be banned from entering into this holy state and thereby staining it by their less-than-rapturous intentions. I will not be satisfied until the marriage amendment bans heterosexuals also. Only then with the real purity of marriage shine through!**

"Ownership" is a new buzzword in the platform. We are going to have an ownership economy, everybody! This means that Social Security accounts will be freed from the horrible straightjackets of government control, and everybody can then learn about how stockmarkets work (may I offer you about twenty books that I have read on it?) and enjoy Las Vegas-level pleasures of gambling with their retirement incomes on Wall Street. Other aspects of ownership economy are not as much stressed in the document. For example, who will the owned ones be? I have my suspicions.

The rest of the platform consists of all the expected stuff: terrorism, terrorism, (Iraq), terrorism, terrorism, and so on.


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* This is a joke.
**This is also a joke.

Confessions

No, I'm not going to admit that I might not be divine. Just to prove that, I had a blazing, thunderous fight with someone today. I only seem to fight people who have power over me which is not good for my financial position or my career. But that's how it is. Maybe everybody else is so firmly under my thumb that they don't dare to argue with me?

The background for this fight is a long period of resentment on my part about money and other earthly matters. I prepared myself very carefully for this discussion; I made long lists of pros and cons, studied psychology guides about how to argue constructively ( never blame the other person for your feelings, always imply that the problem is a shared one that can be solved with cooperation, be prepared to compromise), and I practised in front of a mirror.

It all started exceedingly promisingly. I said all the right things in a calm and friendly way, and I was feeling smug with my mature approach. Then I was called paranoid and other less flattering things, and I lost it. I tried to retrieve the calm feeling by going over my 'thirty-five ways to kill someone with your bare hands", but that didn't work. So.

The problem is that when I get going with my viper tongue I'm deadly, and what's said can't be unsaid. Besides, it was all true. He is as thick as a wall of bricks and as subtle, too. But maybe I shouldn't have said it.

Enlightenment seems to be a long way in the future right now. Oh well, better to travel than to arrive.

More From the Wingnut Dictionary

This is a continuation of two earlier posts (here and here).

7. "Good and Evil"

Good is what Republicans do. Evil consists of worldwide terrorists, countries that the Republicans don't like and the U.S. Democratic party, the so-called liberal media, feminists, pro-choice people and gay-activists. Plus anybody else who might disagree with the Republican platform.

8. "Un-American", "Treasonous"

Un-American activities are treasonous. They include, but are not limited to, any criticism of president Bush's policies and especially the war in Iraq. There is a McCarthyish flavor to these terms, and many of the same ideas apply.

Notice that Arnold's speech last night equated being a good American with being a Republican. It is not really possible to be an American in this sense and to vote for the Democrats. It is certainly impossible to think that the Iraq war was wrong from the beginning and not to be regarded as treasonous.

Ich Bin Kein Berliner

Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke today and the Republican party listened. He told a beautiful tale of fortitude, courage and success, and the Republican party listened. He told about his dreadful roots in the third-world socialist (?) country called Austria, and his desperate struggles to somehow save up enough for the steerage to America, and how he was finally successful as the Governator of California. The Republican party listened.

They don't actually share Arnold's values at all. He's their frontman, brought in to lure the undecided voters into the Republican camp, not realizing that they will vote for The Handmaid's Tale when they think they are choosing a funny accent and a lot of muscles.

But politics is really not a serious concern in the minds of most Americans. It's not like you need a brain or some training to be a politician, after all, so why not choose Arnold and all that he stands for?

And what does he stand for? Well, he stands for the Republican party, of course. He tells us how to decide if you could be a Republican, too:

If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world, then you are a Republican! And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican!
There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people, and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be economic girlie men!"

So Arnold also believes that calling people 'girlie men' is a Republican thing to do. As I have said before, this is supposedly intended to be a slur against homosexuals, but it is also an insult against women. (Never mind the actual history of the term; the average viewer does not know this history.) In Arnold's world a man who acts in any way like a woman might is despicable.

That's a good thing to know.

What W Stands For

The RNC set out its agenda with respect to women yesterday. According to Womensenews Barbara Bush urged women to vote for her son:

"With George W. Bush, what you see is what you get," she said.

Well, we knew that already, Barbara. Besides, we have had four years of experience about the mysterious letter W, and we know that it doesn't mean women. You might want to read Molly Ivins' article in the latest Mother Jones. Ivins gives an excellent summary of the war that George has waged against women.

Thus, it's not surprising that women advocating for Bush had a tough job finding something that they could be joyous about:

The Bush-Cheney campaign laid out its appeal to female voters on the first day of the Republican National Convention Monday by boasting of the President Bush's character, his appointments of women to high positions and his decisions to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I can see how it would be hard to find something positive to say about Bush's domestic politics with respect to women or about his impact on the poor women of this world in general. But come on, Bush never attacked Afghanistan or Iraq for the sake of the women there. That's absolute hogwash.

What?

Rudy Giuliani's speech at the RNC las night thanked God for George Bush being the president during the 9/11 attacks. Now I'm really confused. I thought God was on America's side? Would God then approve of a president who didn't get his act together for some time after the crisis and who later decided to attack a country from which exactly zero of the suicide bombers came? As a sort of symbolic revenge, you know.

No, I think that Rudy is trying to blame God for this mess. Not very nice!

The Pulpit

This is the view Republican delegates have of their speakers.
Via Atrios.


Notice the red sky over the skyline of New York City? It could serve to remind everybody about 9/11. It could also remind to serve some about Sodom and Gomorrah, or the coming Apocalypse and Rapture. Notice the two crosses on the fronts of the pulpit and the lower level stand?

The setup is church-like, and that is no accident. It's intended to appeal to the base of the Republican party which now consists mostly of fundamentalists. It's also intended to imply that God is on the Republican's side, but I couldn't find that one in the Bible. In fact, the people that Jesus chased out of the temple look to me like they might have been Republicans...

Monday's (Disgusting) Dog Blogging

How the mighty are fallen! That's me, and not only because I'm actually listening to Republican crap today. The larger reason is as follows:

I walked the dogs this morning at sunrise as usual in the local park. "Walking" here is a euphemism for the two dogs barking the last two miles in the car before the park entrance and for them then to fly out like bats out of hell, for me to look for them the longest of times and then to finally spot them on the other side of the wilderness rolling in dead squirrels. I do this every morning so there's nothing new about any of this. What was different this time was that I was late so I went to the park clad in my fancy duds and carrying a handbag (imagine a goddess with a handbag...).

Anyway, the dogs pooped as is also the custom and I picked the poops up (a good liberal here) with some recycled plastic bags. Then I put the bags in my handbag and forgot about them.

This afternoon I stopped at the supermarket for some food. At the checkout I had trouble finding my wallet in the bag and while rummaging in there one of the plastic bags broke (I think). When I finally managed to locate the wallet and triumphantly bring it to the bored cashier's attention it was covered with shit.

There is a deeper significance to this chain of events, and I am going to meditate on it now.

More Wingnut Lingo

To continue from the previous post:

5. "Compassionate Conservatism"

This means sighing sadly and tsk-tsking while holding tight to the money bags. It also means farming out all government social services to various ultra-right wing Christian organizations who can do them very cheaply, given that they substitute drugs and therapy with prayer and brainwashing. It does notmean acting in a compassionate fashion, except in the sense that large grants will be made available for beginning struggling wingnut organizations such as the Independent Women's Forum.

6. "catastrophic success"

Thanks to Roxanne in the previous comments for reminding me about this one. Catastrophic success is what is happening in Iraq. It's winning the war so well that the peace never arrives, so it's regarded as a good thing. The more common interpretation of this term would simply abolish the second half of the term and call the outcome catastrophic. Which it is.

In Preparation for the RNC

This is a good time to have some language lessons in wingnut-lingo so that we can all understand better the messages that will be pouring out of New York City during the week of the Republican National Convention. Here are my favorite picks:

1. "the culture of life"

This means that there should be no tampering with embryos, whether in the wombs of women or in laboratories. It does not mean that the mercury in fish couldn't kill the embryos or make them deformed. Neither does it mean that there is anything wrong with executing people in general or with waging war in Iraq in which countless numbers of hapless bypassers get blown to a stage resembling shredded wheat. And, finally, it does not mean that assault weapons should be banned.

2. "the sanctity of marriage"

This means that there should be no same-sex marriage. It does not mean that irresponsible and careless marriages should not be entered into, or that adulterous spouses should be stoned (at least not yet). Neither does it mean that marriages should not contain violence or intimidation, or that divorce and remarriage would be frowned upon.

3. "family values"

This means that all families should consist of a male breadwinner, a female housewife and many children. It also means that families should be hierarchical structures in which the man is the leader and the woman a graceful submitter, and in which the children have no say about anything. Conservative family values also cover the desire to make abortion illegal. But they have very little to say about love among family members, about respect for their needs and desires and about the intricate web that ties us all together.

4. "God"

This is the god of the Christian right, the god that speaks to George Bush directly, the god who is planning to have the world end soon in an Armageddon, preceded by Rapture in which good conservative Christians are lifted into the heavens as naked as they were born, while everybody else is left behind to be roughly sorted out by a Rambo Jesus. This god needs to have a war in the Middle East as the Armageddon will begin there.

"God" does not refer to non-Christian images of god, and neither does it include the loving and caring god of the New Testament in the Bible.

More terms will be explained as they are used in the Convention.

Is The Earth Round? Pending....

The Bush administration released a new report on global warning:

ONCE AGAIN a Bush administration scientific report blames emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases for global warming, and once again the reaction of the Bush White House is to say the evidence does not warrant action. Kennebunkport is going to go the way of Atlantis by the time this administration gets serious about climate change. This week the US secretaries of energy and commerce and the president's science adviser signed a report to Congress stating that warming trends in recent decades cannot be explained by natural factors and are due to increases in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. But the report gave the administration license for additional foot-dragging by adding that the studies in the report did not "make any findings of fact that could serve as predicates for regulatory action."

Others see the new report as actually new in that the administration appears to have finally accepted the scientific evidence on global warming. What's old is that these findings are not seen as requiring any actions from the Bush administration. A nice double-think, if there ever was one:

A Bush administration report suggests that evidence of global warming has begun to affect animal and plant populations in visible ways, and that rising temperatures in North America are due in part to human activity.
The report to Congress, issued Wednesday, goes further than previous statements by President Bush. He has said more scientific research is needed before he imposes new restrictions on greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
In 2001, after the release of a National Academy of Sciences report on global warming, Bush said the concentration of greenhouse gases has increased, in large part, because of human activity, but he emphasized that other factors could have influenced warming. Referring to the NAS report, he said, "We do not know how much effect natural fluctuations may have had on warming."
Several administration officials characterized the study as a routine annual summary of scientific research on global warming. John H. Marburger, the president's science adviser, said the report has "no implications for policy."
"There is no discordance between this report and the president's position on climate," Marburger said.

It's like saying that though the new diagnosis confirms that the patient has tuberculosis, the best treatment is still to withhold the antibiotics.

Sunday Sermon - Of A Sort

Bad religious poetry! That is a fertile field. Here is a taste of it:

There is but one righteous God and that is mine.
I know, I know his gaze.
He speaks through me and his words do shine.
I run, I run in a maze.

There is but one righteous God and he is mine.
I own, I own his rage.
He is hungry and thirsty and I am his shrine.
His war, his war I wage.

There is but one true truth that I have written.
In me, in me put your trust.
And all who doubt it are righteously smitten
by God, by God in my lust.

There is but one true God and I am his servant.
He has spoken to me but he speaks no more.
His silence is fervent. I am his token.
Mine is his holy war.

Edited to add:

I wrote this about ten years ago, so it has matured nicely. Seems a lot more relevant today, in fact. What made me dig it up was hearing something on the radio which started me thinking about the meaning of religion in violent warfare, the way the certainty that god is on your side can cause human beings to become monsters, can make human beings into their self-created god's mouthpiece, and can cause such acts that would make any god or goddess weep for centuries. Religion gives people great comfort in its reassurances. But it can also give people something else that is not positive and life-affirming but of the tribe of death: the leave to relinquish conscience and personal responsibility, the leave to relinquish our god-given abilities to think and the leave to let our dark sides out while all the time pretending that they're not the dark sides.

It's the desperate search for answers, of course, that causes both the good and the bad in religion. It's human to seek for the reasons for life, to ask if there is anything after death, and it's human to grab a religious explanation which provides hope. Then it's also human to exploit this explanation to ones own benefit.

That's why I trust people who seek for answers but distrust those who think they have found the only answers.

In the Year 2004

Warning: This post is not comfortable to read.

In Iran, a young woman or a teenaged girl has been publibly hanged for adultery. The man who supposedly was her co-criminal in this act received one hundred lashes and was then released.

Ateqeh Sahaleh was hanged in public on Simetry Street and Rah Ahan Street at the city center after a sham trial, in which she was accused of committing "acts incompatible with chastity." The teenage victim had no access to a lawyer at any stage and efforts by her family to retain one were to no avail. Ateqeh personally defended herself. She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish those who force women into adultery, not the victims. The judge used harsh words to scold her for the way she had dressed.

It is likely that Ateqeh Sahaleh was sixteen years old when she died.

Rezaii, the religious judge who issued the original sentence, personally pursued Ateqeh's death sentence, beyond all normal procedures. He personally put the noose around her neck as she was taken to the gallows. After Ateqeh was hanged, Rezai said her offense did not call for execution, but that he had her executed for her "sharp tongue".

He had her executed for her "sharp tongue".


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Link from Colombemi

I Just Wanted to Say

that I'm a sunny, cheerful goddess most of the time. I don't especially enjoy reminding my readers so often about the unfairness, cruelty and pain of this world. I'd rather write about really fun stuff all the time.

However. These things happen, I see them happening and then I have a choice not to say anything or to rant a little. Ranting a little seems better in most cases, at least it seems like a divine obligation to me. If you have the eyes, use them. What would you do?

Still, next week will be a week of at least two really happy posts! I swear! Oops, I forgot about the RNC in New York City. Maybe the week after, then. Will that do?

The World's Worst Parents

I read this post at Eschaton this morning and the commentary to the post, and it led me to World O'Crap's column which proposes a competition to find the Worst Parents.

The column portrays three mothers as nominees, among them at least two conservatives, and gives examples of their bad child-rearing practices. One of the mothers, a Christian fundamentalist comes across as especially scary to me. Not because of the specific physical punishments she recommends (though they are pretty awful, too) but because of the overall impression I get from reading the quotes from her book that anything less than the total demolition of her child's individuality would be a defeat to her. Her daughter seems to be well on the way to a submissive, unthinking Christian womanhood. Scary, scary stuff, to watch when someone is being erased, especially as the erasure is completely legal, even praiseworthy, in the eyes of much of the society.

So yes, read the World O'Crap column. Then tell me why all three nominees for bad parenthood are women and where the fathers of their children are in this competition. Do they bear any responsibility for what their spouses are doing (if they are bad mothers)? Is an absent, emotionally nonexistent father not a bad parent? Why do the fathers get a free ride here? I'm thinking about the Christian fundamentalist mother, in particular, and wondering if she isn't just carrying out the orders of her preacher husband. Yet he has not been nominated as a bad parent. Hmmm.

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2003

The Bush administration tried to sneak this out while everybody is on vacation and before the Republican convention meets in New York. Naughty, naughty!

But just in case it was an honest mistake to bury the data pretty deep (and to give it in as raw form as possible), I am going to do my little bit towards greater publicity of the numbers.

First, the real median income didn't change from 2002. Second, poverty rates rose by 0.4 percent or by 1.3 million people. Third, the number of people without health insurance rose by 1.4 million. We now have 45 million people who lack health insurance, and slightly more than one child in ten is without any coverage whatsover.

Now to the interesting stuff: The Newsday summary of the report states the following:

Income inequality showed no change between 2002 and 2003 when measured by the Gini index. The share of aggregate income received by the lowest household income quintile (20 percent of households) declined from 3.5 percent to 3.4 percent, while remaining unchanged for the other quintiles.

The Census report itself says something a little bit different:

Income inequality can be measured in a number of ways. According to the most widely used measure, the Gini index, household money income inequality did not change from 2002 to 2003. Other measures do showed an increase in inequality. One such measure involves the income levels delineating each 20 percent of households. The income level separating the lowest 20 percent of households from the second 20 percent decreased by 1.9 percent, to about $18,000, while the level separating the fourth 20 percent from the highest 20 percent increased, by 1.1 percent, to about $86,900. A third measure involves the share of aggregate income that each 20 percent of households received. The share of income received by the lowest 20 percent of households declined from 3.5 percent to 3.4 percent, while the shares of the other groups did not change.

What all this economese is really saying is that the poor got poorer and the rich got richer. Using the Gini coefficient as the first measure of inequality mentioned is an attempt to hide this fact (The Gini coefficient is more sensitive to changes in the middle incomes than the incomes which are very high or very low). The gap between the rich and the poor grew, and in fact the gap between the rich and the middle classes grew, too:

For the first time, households at the 80th percentile have twice the income of those in the middle.

In other words, the households that are richer than roughly 80% of the population but poorer than roughly 20% of the population have double the incomes of those who are richer than roughly 50% of the population. Or did that clarify anything at all? Well, I tried.

Another thing hidden in the information of stagnant overall median incomes is the distribution of these incomes between various groups.
Though the report does mention them later on, beginning with unchanging median incomes gives the impression that everybody is somehow as well off in 2003 as in 2002. But in fact households with Hispanic householders saw their incomes fall by 2.6%, and the median earnings of women who work full-time declined 0.6% while those of men who work full-time remained constant.

This means that the wage gap between men and women (which calculates women's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings) increased. Women earned 76 cents for each dollar men earned in 2003, down from 77 cents per dollar in 2002.

This decline may not show a long-term trend of worsening earnings inequalities between various groups, though of course it's possible that it does and that this is the administration's intent. To examine these possibilities more closely I tried to find data on the median earnings of full-time workers by race and ethnic group as well as sex, but all I was offered were tables of classified data. To get the numbers I want, I need to download the data and run the analyses on my own computer. And I don't feel like doing that on a Friday afternoon. Maybe that's what the administration is relying on?

Just Some Innocent Fun

If you haven't received this as an e-mail yet, here's a chance to fill the hole in your liberal education:

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CONVENTION SCHEDULE
New York, NY
6:00 PM - Opening Prayer led by the Reverend Jerry Falwell
6:30 PM - Pledge of Allegiance
6:35 PM - Ceremonial Burning of Bill of Rights (excluding 2nd Amendment)
6:45 PM - Salute to the Coalition of the Willing (including military giants guam and papua new guinea)
6:46 PM - Seminar #1: Katherine Harris on "Are Elections Really Necessary?"
7:30 PM - Announcement: Lincoln Memorial Renamed for Ronald Reagan
7:35 PM - Trent Lott - "Re segregation in the 21st Century"
7:40 PM - EPA Address #1: Mercury: It's What's for Dinner
8:00 PM - Vote on which country to invade next
8:10 PM - Call EMTs to revive Rush Limbaugh
8:15 PM - John Ashcroft Lecture: The Homos Are After Your Children
8:30 PM - Round table discussion on reproductive rights (men only)
8:50 PM - Seminar #2: Corporations: The Government of the Future
9:00 PM - Condi Rice sings "Can't Help Lovin' That Man"; accompanies self on piano
9:05 PM - Phyllis Schlafly speaks on "Why Women Shouldn't Be Leaders"
9:10 PM - EPA Address #2: Trees: The Real Cause of Forest Fires
9:30 PM - break for secret meetings
10:00 PM - Second Prayer led by Cal Thomas
10:15 PM - Carl Rove Lecture: Doublespeak Made Simple
10:30 PM - Rumsfeld Lecture/Demonstration: How to Squint and Talk Macho Even When You Feel Squishy Inside
10:35 PM - Bush demonstration of trademark "deer in headlights" stare
10:40 PM - John Ashcroft Demonstration: New Mandatory Kevlar Chastity Belt
10:45 PM - GOP's Tribute to Tokenism, featuring Colin Powell & Condi Rice
10:46 PM - Ann Coulter's Tribute to "Joe McCarthy, American Patriot"
10:50 PM - Seminar #3: Education: A Drain on Our Nation's Economy
11:10 PM - Hilary Clinton Pinata
11:20 PM - John Ashcroft Lecture: Evolutionists: A Dangerous New Cult
11:30 PM - Call EMTs to revive Rush Limbaugh again
11:35 PM - Blame Clinton
11:40 PM - Newt Gingrich speaks on "The Sanctity of Marriage"
11:41 PM - Announcement: Ronald Reagan to be added to Mt. Rushmore
11:50 PM - Closing Prayer led by evil lord Cheney(oops, Satan)
12:00 PM - Nomination of George W. Bush as Holy Supreme Planetary Crusader #1

From MobyDick.

A Woman to Lead MIT

According to today's news:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology chose Yale University Provost Susan Hockfield as its new president, school officials said Thursday.
Hockfield, 53, will be the institution's first woman president, and its first with a background in life sciences at a school whose reputation was built on engineering.
She will replace Charles M. Vest, who announced his retirement last December. Hockfield is expected to take office this December.

Unfortunately, the same article then continues:

Hockfield will take over a school that has publicly examined its history of bias against women. In 1999, Vest acknowledged that MIT had discriminated against female faculty in pay and other areas, and set a goal of achieving gender equity.
The number of female professors rose from 96 to 169 during Vest's tenure but still constitute only 18 percent of the faculty.

I say unfortunately, because the impression this sequence gives is that Hockfield is selected in response to the bias accusations, not for being a very competent administrator.

More on Beach Volleyball Bikinis

Unfogged links to my previous post about women beach volleyball players and sets me right:

Folks, the men wear shorts because they're wearing really unattractive jock straps underneath them. They wear tops because they need somewhere to stick their number and their name. The women don't wear full tops because they'd have to wear a bra anyway, and don't want to wear two layers in 110 degree heat. They don't wear shorts because they'd have to wear undies anway, and don't want to wear (and shake sand out of) two layers in 110 degree heat. It . And yeah, they , and I probably wouldn't be watching if they weren't wearing bikinis, but the Olympics are at least half about ogling beautiful bodies.

Now I get it. Men wear shorts to cover the jock straps (which not all of us might find unattractive), but women don't wear a top to cover their bras. Men wear tops so that they have somewhere to stick their number and their name, but women don't need the same space for numbers and names? (Couldn't the men wear abbreviated bikini tops? Or names and numbers on their baggy shorts? Probably not.) Women don't wear shorts because they have to wear undies anyway, but men wear shorts because they have to wear jock strap undies. Ok.

Actually, what really got me going about unfogged's answer was that he implied I'm humorless. I, Echidne of the snakes, humorless! It's like saying that snakes don't have tails.

The O'Reilly Factor

According to mediabistro.com (via Atrios) the O'Reilly Factor had 2,200,000 viewers last Tuesday. I find this fascinating. Are all these two million plus people actually watching O'Reilly seriously, or is this the newest fad in really goofy things to do?

But of course they're serious. So are all the dittoheads salivating over every word Rush Limbaugh utters. And yes, there are times when I feel very strongly that trying to talk about politics in this country is so useless that I'd do better creating compassion camps for wingnuts.

I blame the schools. A school graduate should be able to analyze simple arguments and to see where evidence is missing. Or at least be open to learning about such analysis. It's not actually the right-wing bias of O'Reilly that worries me so but his total refusal to use evidence, facts, whatever you want to call them. If you want to see what I mean, consider the following:

FOX News Channel host and radio host does not seem to have been paying attention to anti-Kerry group 's accusations about Senator John Kerry's (D-MA) military service in Vietnam. Despite a flurry of media stories proving otherwise, O'Reilly erroneously claimed that members of the Swift Boat Veterans have not accused the senator of lying.
Speaking to a caller on the August 23 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, , O'Reilly described the anti-Kerry group's accusations as follows:
I think what they're doing is they're saying that in their experience, Kerry did X, Y, and Z. It's very -- it's nuanced [caller's name]. They don't say, "Well, he -- he lied about this." They say, "I didn't see any firing." Or, "I didn't see any Viet Cong."
The following are some examples of Swift Boat Veterans members accusing Kerry of lying about his service in Vietnam.
From the first ad sponsored by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which was narrated by members of the group:
Al French: "He is lying about his record."
: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart, because I treated him for that injury."
: "John Kerry lied to get his bronze star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened."
: "He betrayed all his shipmates. He lied before the senate."
From Swift Boat Veterans for Truth members' media appearances and interviews:
: "He lied about a war record in Vietnam, and he lied about his record in Vietnam, and we, more than anyone else in the world, we have the right to speak out about that record because we bought it with our blood and our service." [CBS, Early Show, 8/20 (video clip)]
: "I'm not quibbling about the award. I'm saying he lied about the account." [MSNBC, Hardball, 8/19]
: "It's a lie he's told over and over and over again. It libels everybody that commanded him. It's the typical prototype sort of war crime charge that John Kerry makes that is a lie." [MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 8/10]
Bob Elder: "[W]e believe he grossly exaggerated and even lied about some of the circumstances under which certain awards were given to him." [CNN, American Morning, 8/6]

How do you have a conversation with someone who is incapable of understanding the principles of logic and how evidence is used? I'm not asking this from some pompous liberal angle; I really want to know. How can I talk to someone whose worldview is based on O'Reilly's rants?

The answer may very well be that no dialogue is possible, that we are too far gone for that. I sure hope I'm wrong here.

Lest We Forget

Lest we forget what war is finally all about, you can read this link. Warning: It's not a fun one. Thanks to Carlton Yates for the link.

Costco is Cheap

Perhaps in more ways than the obvious one:

A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed against Costco Wholesale Corporation for bias against female employees on Tuesday. The suit is seeking class-action status to represent as many as 650 women, the San Francisco Gate reports. The lead plaintiff in the case, Shirley "Rae" Ellis of Colorado, claims that women are rarely promoted to high-level management jobs, and that openings for these positions are not posted. According to the Associated Press, while 50 percent of Costco's employees are female, only 12 percent of their store managers are women.

Filing a suit doesn't mean that it is justified, of course, but it's interesting that so many similar suits have been filed in the recent past about discrimination in promotions (Wal-Mart, Morgan Stanley, Boeing Corp.). It's also interesting that at least two of these suits cited the fact that openings are not posted. Lack of information about open jobs would certainly keep many employees from applying, don't you think?

It's worth noting that the percentages of women in the general labor force of the firm and in its management may differ for several reasons and discrimination by the firm is only one of them. Costco will probably try to argue that women don't apply for promotions as much as men do for reasons that are outside Costco's control. Like inherent sex differences in motivations or societal inculcation of different values. The plaintiffs have to provide evidence that shows the firm acting in a way which makes it harder for women to get promoted. Keeping new vacancies secret might qualify as one of those.

Deep Thoughts for the Day

This is Orcinus on today's media:

One of the more annoying tendencies of the mainstream press in recent years is the way it tries to "balance" news by posing a kind of equivalency between the right and the left. You know the thought process: "Sure, the right may be a bunch of lying power-mongers, but the left is just as bad."

Of course, the right and left are qualitatively quite different in many respects, and each is problematic in its own way, but for entirely different and unrelated reasons. The thinking that adopts this sort of equivalency is not just lazy, it badly distorts the truth -- which is what journalists are supposed to be aiming for in the first place.

One of the ways this shows up is in news reports that present an equivalency between reasonable and fact-based remarks (e.g., Richard Clarke's critique of the Bush administration's war on terror) and outrageous smears (Republican operatives' counter that Clarke was only interested in promoting his book) and falsehoods.

I so agree. Just today I heard a good example on this on PBS radio. This approach equates telling lies about someone with the telling of the truth about someone else. As an example, just consider the debate about John Kerry's military service versus. The journalists present the two sides as if each had an equally valid point. Taken to its logical extreme this would mean that if I started a flat-earth party I'd be allowed to foam away with just an occasional "She has not been able to prove that the round-earth people are lying" inserted in the commentary.

If the journalists don't have the responsibility to dig out the truth, who has? Nobody? The viewer, listener or reader at home certainly doesn't have the time and resources to judge every argument for its accuracy.

Men Washing Windows Are Sexy!

This title should prove very popular! It doesn't have very much to do with the topic of this post (if it has one), but it is true that I find men washing windows very sexy. The combination of the movements, the sweat caused by sun and the care and attention of the washer all combine to make my heart beat faster.

But, alas, it is me who has been washing windows. I hate washing windows at the Snakepit Inc. because the windows are those old-fashioned kind with ropes and they guillotine me every time I reach out to wash the outer sides on the second floor level. The windows are also eighty years old, so I need to open them with a rubber mallet and razor blades, and I always end up with long bloody scratches on my arms which smart when the cleaning spray hits them. I should replace them (the windows) but the god of finances doesn't agree. Maybe that's why I think window-washing men are sexy?

This is the day two of window-washing, and there are at least ten days to go. The Snakepit Inc. has a lot of windows. I hate this time of the year and wake up every morning wishing that I was all snake and didn't care about whether I can see out through the glass or not. There are times when I think that having servants would be a good idea, despite all my ethical reservations about it, and this is one of those times.

But washing ones own windows is good for the soul, ultimately. I just wish that it wasn't such a bitter lesson to learn, and that it didn't return so regularly. And that someone would notice and compliment me on my shiny windows like they do in tv commercials.

Beach Volleyball

An unnecessary event if there ever was one, or so I think. So remember that. But I watched some matches in it and even liked the athleticism, until I saw a women's match and found out that they play in bikinis.

Now, when something is called beach volleyball bikinis might be the proper thing to wear, I hear you mutter. Yes. But look at what the men wear! A Talibanized version of the traditional top and shorts. Do men swim in such gear? Not where I go to beaches.

So why this difference in rules or whatever? Let me guess! No, I better not. Instead, I'm going to tell what I heard one of the commentators say. Supposedly there have been many more ball handling errors in Athens than is usual, and according to this commentator the reason is in the ball being wet. The wetness comes from the forearms of the first player who touches the ball after it crosses the net. The correction to a wet ball is for the athletes to use their tops and shorts to dry their forearms.

Good. And what do the female athletes use for this drying operation? Their hair? I suspect that there are more ball handling errors in the women's games for this reason. Just remember that if you read that women commit more beach volleyball errors than men.

On the Slow Boaters

I stubbornly keep calling them that, but mostly they're called the reverse. Anyhow, if you are interested in the whole sordid debacle and what it means in some wider sense, read this article. Via Atrios.

Care for Girls

This is China's new policy program trying to combat the preference for boys which has led to all sorts of horrors as well as over thirty million eternal bachelors:

This past Wednesday, the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China announced a nation-wide pilot program aimed at correcting China's traditional bias for male children. BBC News reports that the program, entitled "Care for Girls," will offer cash and other incentives to families who have daughters. Other perks for families with daughters include exemption from schooling fees, insurance until their daughters are adults and further housing, employment and welfare privileges, according to Reuters.

The pilot program is primarily targeted at rural states where the ratio of boys to girls is extremely high. While China's national average is 117 boys to 100 girls, in southern provinces such as Hainan and Guandong the ratio is now 130 boys to 100 girls, reports BBC News. Many families in China traditionally prefer sons as they are seen as more able to provide for the family, support their elderly family and carry on the family line. Due to China's one-child policy, parents may give up daughters for adoption, abort female fetuses, or resort to infanticide. It is unclear exactly why the ratio is dramatically higher in the rural regions, although likely factors are poverty and laborious farming.

Will it work? We'll see. But I'm not very hopeful given that the alternative policy (in terms of male inheritance rights and marrying daughters away) has been in operation for millennia. At least this program needs to be allowed to run for a few generation for there to be any discernible difference, though I very much doubt that this would happen.

Isn't it funny how in general we condemn programs that try to increase the status of women if they have not worked within, say, thirty years? I'm thinking of all the "feminism has failed" articles that I have read, or the argument that if women are not now equal in numbers in all the top positions, well, it must be that women are just inherently uninterested in power. After all, they have been free to try for the top ladders a decade or two... Yet the alternative policies were allowed to have thousands of years without much criticism at all. Ah well, this is my viper tongue post of the week.

Clarification

The next post is an experiment that probably failed. I tested it on some people and they didn't get it. It's about a bee that flew into my house last night. I picked it up and threw it out of the window. But this doesn't sound very adventurous, so if you want to see the other side, read the next story.

And happy Sunday!

The Bee's Knees

"Oh man, you should've been there to understand" I said while I reached for the third ice-cold beer of the night. "It was pure hell and I swear to God I never thought I'd see daylight again."

"Tell us again, pal" pleaded Goggles as usual at this time of evening. I didn't mind repeating the story, not at all. It's only once in a lifetime a flyer gets thrown into a supernatural world and comes back to tell about it.

"Well, guys, it was like this" I started. "Some years ago I had this shipping job up in the North. You know, transporting plant oils and fragrances. The hours were long and hard and often I flew far into the night dead tired. But the pay was good, so I stuck to it for a while."

"Anyway, one night I had been harvesting and shipping for sixteen hours nonstop and suddenly darkness fell. I was still in the air and the engines didn't sound to good. The freight load was heavy and I was flying low. Maybe I had had a few too many the previous night, too, I don't know, but what happened suddenly was that I was lost. I couldn't find any land marks to use to find my way home, and when I looked up from my indicators I saw that I was flying straight into the side of a tall mountain."

The silence in the bar was absolute. You could've heard a flea fart. I took another mouthful of beer and went on with my story.

"I tried my damnest but I couldn't rise or turn. So I closed my eyes and prepared to kiss my ass goodbye. I braced myself for the crash, and went through all the evil deeds of my life asking for forgiveness from the powers that may be. And then I waited for death."

"But the crash didn't come. After a while I opened my eyes and you'll not believe this but I had flown inside the mountain! I was not dead but I was inside this hell of a mountain, and it was daylight! I looked up and I saw several suns and moons, all shining at the same time. I thought that maybe this was heaven after all, but my backside ached something awful and I was covered with fruit essences."

"Well, I was pretty disoriented, so I kept almost flying into things that looked like something out of a science fiction tale: large valleys covered with the hair of dead animals, frozen lakes in impossible shapes, gigantic spiderwebs covering the horizon. And all the time I could hear this noise, this eerie keening, like a million tortured souls pleading together. All my indicators were off. I felt air move suddenly, then stop, and the temperature went way up from what it had been just a little earlier. I felt weak and dizzy and I just had to try a landing."

Goggles was staring at me all bug-eyed with excitement. I fiddled with my beer to make it last longer for him.

"I managed to make an emergency landing on this large plateau under one of the suns. It was so hot and empty and I was parched. I started walking across the emptiness, fearing my own shadow, listening to that horrible howling sound."

"It seems like years of wandering now, but it was probably not that long when I finally reached the other side of the plateau. And what do you think I found there? A precipice straight down. It went on for miles. I was trying to decide whether to turn back or to try a liftoff from the edge when everything went dark. Dark and sort of heavy, and the ululating sound was now all around me. My ears hurt and my eyes stung and my body was shaking uncontrollably. Something really heavy was pressing on me, surrounding me, suffocating me. The stench was unbearable."

The bar had all its focus on me. Nobody even took a sip. They knew that the end was near and they appreciated every second of its horror.

"I struggled valiantly, pulled out my gun and prepared to shoot. I was that desperate. I felt being crunched to little pieces of some overwhelming power, the keening sound was breaking through my brain and sending all of me into outer space, and the stench was after my very heart, looking to stain it and burn it with its acid. I screamed and screamed and desperately tried to pull on the trigger. Then everything went black and I remember nothing more."

"Well, I woke up the following day, all splayed out on the grass near my working fields. I was alive! How and why I still don't know, but I was alive, and boy was I glad to be so! I spent a few hours doing maintenance to the engines and finally managed to make my way slowly back home."

"And to a cold beer!" I added while emptying my glass. Goggles got up to get me another one, and everybody in the bar gathered around me to shake my hand or to pat my back. They sure were impressed by the story.
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Editors note: This fragment of a manuscript was found in the recent archeological digs of some 21 century beehives in North America. It is an example of the early macho-style of the honey-gathering period of the bees' evolution. It has also been published in the annals of the Bees' Adventures, vol. XXI. We recommend its use in the early education of all young bees.