No Halo Today

Isn't that clever? Haloscan has been down today, I have been told, but it should be back up now. So you can add your immortal words in the most ephemeral of all media: the blogs.

Blogging is like doing the dishes: you work and work and then you do it all over again. Sniff.

The October Surprise - Rumors, Rumors

The Rovian surprise for October might be a trip to Iraq by our fearless leader. If it can be arranged safely, of course. This is what upyernoz heard from some legitimate source a couple of days ago, and archy blogged more about it today. Then it was picked up by Atrios. So it has good lefty legs, for a rumor.

I'm not sure if Bush's rectangular box would let him go, assuming it's either his conscience, his instructions or his medical treatment. But this is very mean-spirited and I must shut up.

Michelle the Malicious

Michelle Malkin is a very beautiful wingnut. She writes about the importance of using preventive concentration camps in the war against terror, and in general has decided that most money and fame is in finding those forgotten viewpoints that Attila the Hun thought too right-wing.

She has now directed her unusual mind to the task of chewing up the women who support Kerry in the presidential campaign. She calls them "hysterical" (this has a lot of anti-woman history, Michelle), a disgrace to a nation at war and Sniveling Sallies. This is a pun about the Rosie the Riveter concept of the second world war. Michelle really likes feminists who are safely no longer active. This is common among the wingnut gals, by the way, and a way for them to seem not as extremist as they are. But they would have been opposed to Riveter Rosies and the suffragists and all the other old-time feminists. I happen to know this.

Anyway, Michelle thinks that we should all be Riveter Rosies: we must do as the president tells us without any whining or complaining:

During World War II, young Rose Will Monroe was the face of American women in adversity: strong, supportive and resolute against the enemy forces that threatened our existence. Tens of thousands like Rosie rolled up their sleeves, gritted their teeth, and flexed their muscles in factories and shipyards and arsenals across the country.
They made rockets and rifles and bombs and boats. They painted and drilled and welded. When they got home to their kids, they cooked and cleaned and collapsed in bed after praying for their husbands and brothers and uncles on the battlefield. Rosie and her sisters in arms didn't have the luxury of complaining about their lack of "me time." There was a war to be won. And so, as this presidential campaign season has constantly reminded us, there is today.

I'm glad that Michelle is out there making airplanes and then going home and collapsing after praying for her husband. She knows what's what, obviously. This war is no different from the WW II!

I'm a little tired about addressing people who live in some different place from reality, and it's no longer even that fun. What can you write about someone who believes that being a Democrat is akin to treason? That women who want better treatment in the labor force are shameful at the time of this war? That we should use preventive concentration camps against Muslims?

Malkin should be ignored by all sane people. The problem with this approach is that it leaves her voice clear and audible to all who might not be noticing her insanity.

Red Sox Won!

The American League. This is about baseball for those of you who read this in some other country. Baseball is one of those American games which are hard to understand without life-long exposure, but the basic idea is the exact opposite of most games: instead of trying for a lot of movement you try to have nothing whatsoever happen except for one player throwing a ball over and over.

Now I'm going to be lynched by all the baseball fans. You would think that you get into the worst possible debates on the net about religion or politics or feminism, but no. The worst debates I ever got mired in were about baseball, and the trick was to say that baseball players are not real athletes. Try it if your life doesn't have enough drama.

But I'm very happy for the Sox! I am! And I swear I had nothing to do with their coming back from 3-0 in this impressive way, nothing at all.

Lightbulb

You may not have seen this one before, though I doubt it. I can't think of anything else to post tonight, so this must do:

'How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?'

None. There’s nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness.

-- John Cleese

John Cleese invented the ministry of walks, didn't he? I spent hours trying to learn to walk funnier than he did. I never managed it, but I can turn my eyes up so that nothing shows but the white eyeballs!

Skirts in the Navy

This is about skirts, actually:

Women serving in the United States Navy are no longer required to wear skirts as part of their uniform, due to changes to the Navy's uniform dress code issued earlier this month. Previously, women were required to wear skirts for formal events, as well as pack them for sea duty. The changes affect the more than 54,000 women in the Navy, and were recommended after 40,000 sailors were surveyed, the Associated Press reports.

The Navy is regarded as a path-breaker in this sense. What's even more exciting is that the new code allows women to run:

All skirts that are part of the Navy uniform will now also have kick pleats, allowing the wearer to break out into a run.

Imagine someone wearing the previous types of skirts trying to run after a terrorist! Or away from one. Sometimes I think that our priorites are a little upside down.

Kick pleats, by the way, are one of the most interesting sewing projects. Their design requires the use of intricate spatial thinking. I once made a skirt with a beautiful kick pleat. The pleat worked perfectly, I could make it flare out with a tiny flamenco style kick. But the waist line of the skirt was far too large for me so the whole construct fell to the floor after the kick. I still have the skirt if anybody needs one like that.

Shhh! Don't Mention This One!

(Written in a very quiet voice): The CIA names names in its new report about 9/11. It tells who actually should be blamed for failing to take proper action to prevent this mass murder. Isn't that interesting?(End quiet voice.)

The problem is that the report will not be published before the presidential elections in the United States:

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

Why is nobody allowed to see this document? Could it be that national security would be threatened by all its revelations? Nah:

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

What to think?

Learning to Blog in Boston

The Center for New Words is running a weekend course in blogging for girls and women who want to start their own revolutions this way. The course is taught by our own Natalie from the Liberal Coalition! If you know anyone in the area (like you or your baby sister or your mom or your best friend or the love of your life) who would really like this course, tell them that the deadline to sign up is this Friday! Then everybody can be just like me...

Is This Class War?

Something George Bush has said several times in his stump speeches has not attracted very much attention in the media, if any. Today several people are discussing it on one the Eschaton comments threads, and though I should save this post for tomorrow (what will I write about tomorrow if I don't hoard this: my philosophical problem concerning why our biggest toes are on the inside rather than on the outside of the feet?), it's too interesting to abstain. The usual problem with abstinence. Sorry about the babbling.

Anyway, George keeps repeating this remark:

THE PRESIDENT: That $2.2 trillion is a lot even for a Senator from Massachusetts. (Laughter.) So they said, how are you going to pay for it? How are you going to pay for this new spending? He said, we're going to tax the rich. Now, you've heard that before, haven't you? Here's the problem with that. You can't raise enough money by taxing the rich to pay for $2.2 trillion. There's a tax gap. And guess who always gets stuck with the bill? I'll tell you something else about that language, tax the rich. The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason, so you get stuck with the bill. We're not going to let John Kerry tax you, because we're going to carry Pennsylvania and win in November. (Applause.)

Here's another version:

Let me tell you one other problem he has with that. He says, oh, I'm just going to tax the rich. Well, the rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason -- that's to stick you with the tab. But we're not going to let him tax you, we're going to carry Iowa and the country in November. (Applause.)

The sitting president of the United States is openly admitting that he doesn't care enough about taxing the rich to enforce the tax laws that these rich people evade, or to make the tax laws fairer if they now allow the rich to escape taxes legally. And this is not commented on the Fox News? That George Bush has given up on any attempts to make the rich pay taxes? That George Bush actually thinks this idea is so good that it should be shared with all the faithful of the Republican party?

He's making this statement as if he's talking about the inevitability of the sun rising in the morning. It's a law of nature that the rich can avoid paying taxes, and the only realistic response to it is to urge other income classes to refuse any new taxes as these would just be rolled onto their backs. Talk about a class war! Well, nobody's talking about a class war except for me, and I don't count.

I would think that the rational approach to the rich not paying their taxes would be to a) work on better enforcement of existing tax laws and b) close the gaps that allow the rich to take their investments to offshore establishments in order to avoid taxes.
The least rational answer is the one that George Bush is advocating: let's not tax anyone because the rich will make sure that everybody else will pay but they will not, and this is fine and dandy with the president of the country.

It's almost like saying that we should have no laws against homicide because very wealthy defendants can buy the best lawyers and get their freedoms that way whether they're innocent of the crime or not.

That we hear nothing about this from the SCLM is a sign of something. I don't even want to think about what that might be.

Iran Endorses Bush!

This is getting to be so enjoyable:

The head of Iran's security council said on Tuesday the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country's nuclear ambitions.
Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body.
"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in recent decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another.
"We should not forget that most sanctions and economic pressures were imposed on Iran during the time of Clinton," Rowhani said of the former Democratic president. "And we should not forget that during Bush's era - despite his hard-line and baseless rhetoric against Iran - he didn't take, in practical terms, any dangerous action against Iran."

When will he hear whom Osama bin Laden endorses?

On Fear and Pockets of Distress

The military calls this "psyops", ways to wage the war using psychological tricks. The Republicans call it something different, but the idea is the same. Dick Cheney has come out with the clearest statement yet of how fear is employed by the current Bush reselection campaign:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept "you've got to get your mind around."
"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us — biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans," Cheney said.
"That's the ultimate threat. For us to have a strategy that's capable of defeating that threat, you've got to get your mind around that concept," Cheney said.

Cheney, speaking to an invitation-only crowd as he began a bus tour through Republican strongholds in Ohio, said Kerry is trying to convince voters he would be the same type of "tough, aggressive" leader as President Bush in the fight against terrorism.
"I don't believe it," the vice president said. "I don't think there's any evidence to support the proposition that he would, in fact, do it."

Fear has a useful role in human survival terms, but its use in an election campaign in this way is not useful, particularly when the Bush administration has no obvious plan to protect us against such an attack. For example, most of the freight coming into this country by sea is still totally uninspected. So is the freight that is sent by air.

Compared to that, the question of Kerry's decisiveness is just psyops. The fear is here to stay, and I'd rather have Kerry at the reins than also be scared of what Bush might do in one of his temper tantrums.

In other news, Alan Greenspan, the calm, kind and mysterious head of the Federal Reserves has called the rising trend of bankruptcies "pockets of distress". Or so my radio tells me right now (too lazy to go for link-hunting, and it's raining). I like the idea of pockets of distress, maybe even pants and jackets of distress. Or shoes. And "pockets" also reminds us of all the good stuff we can put in them like money.

Here the idea is to minimize fear, to make it sound something trivial and almost good. Imagine if we called the site of a terrorist attack a pocket of distress...

In A Subway Train

It was so hot. Though the weather was cold and rainy, something had happened to the heating system of the train and the heat rose, stop by stop. It awakened the dormant smells in the dust in the air and in the bodies of the people, packed tight into a too small space, grabbing hard onto the hard metal bars. On every stop more people streamed in, less stagnant air left and the pressure increased. The fat man across the aisle was slowly shrinking away into a puddle of sweat, the woman sitting spreadlegged on two seats kept unwrapping another layer of her manicolored garments. Small children screamed out of heat and lack of oxygen and the press of alien bodies against them. A man in an expensive suit carefully wiped the sweat off his neck before it dyed the white collar of his shirt yellow.

The young woman was standing next to me, unable to reach more than a little finger's worth of the metal bar. She looked pale, almost translucent with the sweat running down her face. She was holding her stomach with one hand and clinging on to the bar with the other. I estimated her about seven months pregnant. Every bump of the train, every screech of its brakes seemed to signal directly into her body, and I edged away to give her more of the metal bar. But soon she needed both her hands just to avoid the bodies that were swung against her when the train took a curve, and all I could do was to cushion her against the sharp edges of the car walls.

Then someone got up from a seat and the pregnant woman started slowly to move towards the freed seat. I pushed a young teenager away to keep it free for her, but someone else got the seat in the meantime. Now the woman's old place had been lost in a rearranged sea of umbrellas, bags and newspapers, and she was left standing in the middle of the crowded corridor with nothing to hold onto. I couldn't reach her anymore, and my requests to a young man who was sitting near her, deep immersed in his newspapers, were not heard.

All the time the heat was increasing, the air turned into a hot, smelly custard and nobody left on any of the stops where yet more people tried to squeeze their bodies into the tightness. When I left, the pale woman was still standing, still supporting her stomach in grim determination, and the air was as impenetrable as before.

"W" Wages War Against Women

That may be a little strong, but I always want to find titles that make you want to read more. I'm an unethical, self-centered goddess, after all. So what's Bush's excuse?

Here are some snippets from the unreported invasion of the country sometimes called "women's bodies", and how the administration is faring there:

A recent review of ten state evaluations on the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education has found that the programs, which forbid discussion of contraception except to highlight failure rates, have shown no long-term success in impacting the sexual behavior of teens. Specifically, the review released by Advocates for Youth (AFY) demonstrated that programs do not have a long-term effect in delaying the initiation of sexual activity among teens or in reducing their risk-taking sexual behavior. Debra Hauser, author of the report, concluded that "Some of the evaluations indicate that abstinence-only programs may have a negative impact on young people's willingness to use contraception or condoms once they do become sexually active."

Did you know that the House has already passed a 49% increase in abstinence-only programs for 2005? But as Suskind said in his recent important article, reality is not a very important concern when your marching orders are directly from God, and Bush appears to believe that this is the case.

How about this interesting fact about the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW):

CEDAW is the most comprehensive and detailed international agreement which seeks the advancement of women. It establishes rights for women in areas not previously subject to international standards. Moreover, the Convention establishes a committee to review periodically the progress being made by its adherents. Currently, 178 countries have ratified the convention. The United States is in the company of only a handful of nations that have not ratified CEDAW, including Iran, Sudan, and Somalia.

(Bolds mine.)

We share the values of Iran, Sudan and Somalia about women's rights! Does that surprise you? Well, strictly speaking, we share the values that women should not have rights over the country called "women's bodies" with those other countries. Whether we share their other anti-women values is not clear. Yet.

And this piece of news just strengthens the feeling I have that we have two invasion forces out there, though only one of them, the one in Iraq, gets much media attention:

10/15/2004 - Over 250 global leaders have endorsed a statement that reaffirms the plan of action created ten years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. President Bush has refused to join the 250 world leaders including 85 heads of state and governments in signing the statement that ensures the rights of women to education, health care, and to reproductive choice, the Associated Press reports. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kelly Ryan explained that Bush would not sign the world leaders' statement because it "includes the concept of 'sexual rights,' a term that has no agreed definition in the international community." The ICPD statement was signed by leaders from Mexico, Canada, all member countries of the European Union, China, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Botswana, and over a dozen other African countries, as well as 22 former world leaders including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton according to Oneworld.net.

The concept of "sexual rights" is the "right to make decisions concerning reproduction, free of discrimination, coercion and violence as expressed in human rights documents." It rules out a lot of very unsavory stuff, such as sexual slavery and forced pregnancies or forced abortions. But we are too concerned with the semantics of the term to agree to support an idea that might include something we don't want to have there. Like what? The right of dominatrices to whip wingnuts tied to the bedposts? The right of women to stuff loofahs down Bill O'Reilly's throat? Nah. The administration is never that funny. No, what they are worried about is that "sexual rights" might include the right for a woman to decide whether to have an abortion or not.

Putin Endorses Bush!

It takes one to know one, I suppose:

President Vladimir Putin on Monday made his strongest endorsement yet for his friend U.S. President George W. Bush, saying "international terrorism" will claim victory over the international antiterrorism coalition if Bush loses.
"I believe that the activities of terrorists in Iraq are not as much aimed at the coalition as at President Bush personally," Putin said. "The goal of international terrorism is to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term."
"If they achieve that goal, then they will of course celebrate it as a victory ... over America and, to a certain extent, over the forces of the international antiterrorism coalition," Putin told reporters in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, after a regional cooperation conference.
Putin, however, was quick to point out that his views on the U.S.-led war on Iraq continues to differ from those of Bush and that he will "respect any choice of the American people" for president.

Not unexpected and not even that new, but still hilarious. By the way, if you click on the link to the original article, have a look at the picture. All those stern old men in power... Russia and most countries that split away from the old Soviet Union have a long way to go before there is any equality for women. In fact, even a feminist awareness is still in the future there. If it ever happens. There are days when I truly believe that I'm stark crazy to blog on the issues I do. But what can a goddess do?

The So-Called Liberal Media

Here is an example of what goes for neutral commentary in the so-called liberal media (SCLM). It is from the CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, on October 17:

BLITZER: Thank you very much.

We've got a new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll just out right now, first time we're releasing these numbers, taken over the past few days. Among likely voters, take a look at this, 52 percent for President Bush, 44 percent for Senator Kerry, Ralph Nader at 1 percent. Registered voters, 49 percent for President Bush, 46 percent for Senator Kerry, 1 percent for Ralph Nader.

It looks good, at least those numbers. Other polls show slightly different numbers. By all accounts, though, I think you'll agree, Secretary Evans, it's going to be very close.

(Bolds mine.)

So do you think that Blitzer shows some liberal bias here, hmh?
-----
Customer warning: This is from the early transcript which may be altered later. Original link by donkey.

Breast Cancer in the News: A RANT

Just reading the words "breast cancer" strikes a fear in many women, if not most. Here is a disease that will not only kill us if it can, it will also assault our very femininity, strike us where we are at our most vulnerable, punish us for the mere fact of being women. And what are the defenses that we can use to combat this terrible scourge? Vigilance, vigilance and vigilance. We must vigilantly probe our breasts every month, memorize each individual shape we find there and keep a mental record of any change in them. After a certain age we must vigilantly seek mammographs which produce, after a varying amount of discomfort and pain, pictures resembling snowfalls and subject to all sorts of interpretation problems. And should we find a lump we must be vigilant in getting it biopsied and studied. All this before it is too late. For early detection is the only real defense against this misogynistic killer.

No wonder that some women have elected to have bilateral mastectomy just to avoid all this fear and vigilance. It almost seems sane. What else could we do to protect our breasts against a future cancerous growth?

Researchers have some ideas about this. I have read the following as possible causes of breast cancer, hence on the list of things to be avoided:
-family members with breast cancer
-obesity
-animal fats in diet
-having children later
-having few children
-having no children
-not breastfeeding your children
-alcohol
-herbicides and pesticides
-drycleaning chemicals
-antibiotics
-early onset of menarche
-late onset of menopause

Now new research adds to this list at least the following 'causes':
-high weight at birth
-a growth spurt during the time when breasts develop
-being tall and thin as a teenager

I think that my point is becoming obvious: Women are fed the fear of breast cancer in all sorts of different ways, and this feeding doesn't really make sense. Yes, breast cancer is a serious and frightening disease. But it's not the most serious disease that women face. In 2001, twelve women died of heart disease for each woman who died of breast cancer. In the same year, three women died of cancers of lung, bronchus or trachea for every two women who died of breast cancer. In fact, the number of women who died of influenza and pneumonia was three fourths as high as the number who died of breast cancer. Only fifteen percent of all cancer deaths among women were from breast cancer, eighty-five percent died from other types of cancers. Yet we don't see the same sort of media news or campaigns about lung cancer, for example, though more women are dying from it every year.

Breast cancer shouldn't be ignored, but it should be relegated to its proper place: as one of many types of cancers that exist and as a cause of death far less significant than heart disease. Any one woman randomly drawn among Americans is more likely to die of a heart attack than breast cancer, yet we are not seeing the same campaign against heart disease in women.

Breast cancer shouldn't be ignored, but it should be relegated to its proper place: as one of many diseases whose etiology is still poorly known. Making up long lists of possible causes may be helpful in some cases, but not when practically everything women do may turn up to be one of these 'causes'. If you were not a plump baby, you probably were a skinny and tall teenager or you had an early menarche or something.

What is truly frightening to me about these most recent research projects is that at least one of the researchers in fact advocates combating future breast cancer by seeing what could be done to change teenage growth spurts! You might as well advocate that women should have many, many children very early just so that their breast cancer risks will be minimized. Never mind if they are ready for these children, if they have found a suitable father for them and if they can support all these children. (And never mind that having many children early in life may increase the risk of cervical cancer.) This turns the concepts upside down: instead of using medical care to support our lives we are expected to interfere with these lives just so that we can avoid future medical care of a particular type. And in the meantime we are quite likely to succumb to a heart attack.

For What It's Worth

This wild rumor about Osama bin Laden being in China and ready to be handed to Bush just in time for the elections here has appeared in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

I don't think that it is true, but it's an interesting example of the speculation that has been going on, and just in case it is true, well, you read it here first. Though we could then kiss goodbye to any chances of getting someone normal into the White House. So I hope that this wild rumor is exactly that.

Just a Reminder

That there is a reason for my feminist rantings and ravings. This is the message on one Christian website about the role of women in the society:

Did you know that a woman can be cursed just for making her husband jealous?

Also, if a husband becomes jealous, it is not a sin to the man for becoming jealous but it is a sin to the woman for causing jealousy. The consequences of this are at an all time high right now in the World. A woman who is guilty of this will have two common characteristics.

Her belly will swell and her hip will rot. Hip replacement surgery is at an all time high and about the "belly to swell", well this is extremely evident, especially here in America.

Equal Rights??

ISA 40:25 "To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One.
Men and Women equal?

Women are made separate from man by substance, not to be equal, but to be made from the man, for the man?

Adam was made from clay. Eve was made from one of Adam's ribs. A Male and a Female.

One created from the dust, and one created from man.

One created to serve God. And one created to serve man so he can better serve God.

How did something so simple get so terribly screwed up?

A Woman and Man Equality is a dark, deaf, dumb and blind sin which causes confusion.

Why would a woman want to be equal with a man? Why not a woman be a woman, and a man be a man?

Plain and Simple.

Men are hard and women are soft. Opposite as they should be, to not be equal, but complete.

Men are Strong, Women are Weak. Not equals, but better yet, complete.

Women have Wisdom, Men have Knowledge, completed not by equality, but complete as one in the understanding thereof.

A Woman wanting to be equal with a different type of gender is shallow and is caused by confusion.

Women are not beneath men, unless of course, they are beneath them while raising them up to the Lord in Prayer.

A Man does not need a woman to be equal with him, he desperately needs her to complete him.

And no, these are not jokes. In case you haven't seen enough, here's a little bit more:

You will love your husband as though he were Jesus himself, or you will hate him the same,

yes as though he were Jesus himself.

You will love you man, or you will love your money. You cannot love both.

Who are you serving?

Are you at home serving him and the Kingdom of Heaven?

Or are you out in the world trying to be equal to man and his sin?

IF A WOMAN DOES NOT BUILD AND COMPLETE THE MAN WHOM SHE WAS CREATED FOR,

THEN SHE SEVERELY HARMS THE MAN, AND MAKES HIM INCOMPLETE.

LIKE JESUS SAID, "YOU ARE EITHER FOR ME, OR YOU ARE AGAINST ME." ONE OR THE OTHER.

NO GREY AREA.

One might argue that this is just one rather deranged person preaching on the internet. Perhaps. But it's not very hard for me to find many, many websites with essentially the same message. A message that seems to strike a chord in the hearts of many American fundamentalists.
----
Thanks to ECStanton for the link.

The Civil Rights Commission Report on Bush And Women

Sorry, no salacious stuff. But the Report does condemn Bush for a mixed record on women's rights. Mixed? Well, it turns out that the Bush administration has "launched a plan to improve women's access to capital by creating a Web site for women entrepreneurs and holding related conferences". This is the plus side of his record.

The minus side:

The Bush administration closed the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach and attempted to close the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor. It retreated amid objections from women's groups.

The administration withdrew Department of Education guidance on sexual harassment in schools from the Internet and ended distribution of information on workplace rights of women.

President Bush attempted to redirect Title IX enforcement, but ceased his efforts after overwhelming public expression of support for the law.

The administration abolished the Department of Labor's Equal Pay Initiative.

Bush's record on some other groups and their rights is worse than this. On the other hand, not all the anti-women acts of the administration appear to be counted by the Commission. For example, the effect that the fundamentalist base of the Republican party has exerted on the world's women via Bush's decision to cut international family planning funds to any recipients that even mention abortion as one choice is not counted in the Report.

On Group Maternity Homes

George Bush included a reference to group maternity homes in his presidential debate arguments. As he gave us nothing else specifically relevant to women in his election promises, I decided to study the potential of group maternity homes in some more detail. Will this liberate women? Help women? Make women happy?

It's hard to say. Group maternity homes are intended to be a substitute for abortions, so the intention here is not necessarily to help women but to help their fetuses. Though such homes may have been necessary in the past when pregnant single women were stigmatized and possibly kicked out of their parents' homes, it's hard to see why they would be so important today when having a child out of wedlock is not equally shameful. But maybe I am wrong, and there are large numbers of young women who really need to go to a group maternity home.

On the other hand, group maternity homes have a bad reputation. Remember the recent movie about the Magdalene Asylums, the Irish homes for unwed mothers and what happened there? Hard labor and punishment for the sin of getting pregnant? But surely Bush didn't have this in mind when he used the term? Surely such homes today would be enlightened and pleasant places for pregnant women?

I don't know. These are some of the house rules for a Christian group maternity home called His Nesting Place (a pdf file). Such an odd name to pick for a home for unwed mothers, isn't it? Anyway, the mothers at His Nesting Place are expected to act in very specific ways:

ATTITUDES
All mothers and children are expected to have a positive and willing attitude. Colossians
3:17 “Whatsoever you do in word or deed do it heartily as unto the Lord…not to be seen of
men.” Foul language, fighting, lying, hollering, gossiping, complaining, arguing, any and all
types of rebellion, sulking or any other such attitude will not be tolerated within or outside
the facility. There is a $10.00 fine for cursing. It is a mother’s responsibility to get along
with the other mothers. Mothers, who withhold information about any situation that is a
violation of any of these policies or regarding the security of the facilities, will be subject to
disciplinary action.
...
BOYFRIENDS / VISITORS
Mothers may visit boyfriends, relatives and other acquaintances after church services on
Wednesday evenings and Sunday’s mornings for one hour in the foyer, TV room or the
open-air courtyard, but never in the bedrooms. The only exception to this rule is mothers
and grandmothers of residents who may wish to see new babies. Permission from the
resident’s parents and/or grandparents and Pastor Al and Judy Howard is needed to
visit the facility at other times.
...
CHORES
All chores are to always be completed by 9:15 a.m. unless prior approval has been given by
the House Manager on duty (i.e. illness). An inspection by the House Manager on duty will
be made from 9:15 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. If a mother needs to be released from a chore,
permission must be obtained from the House Manager on duty. All mothers are to help with
all fundraising preparation such as the monthly newsletter and pro-life weekend roses.
CHURCH SERVICES
Mothers are expected to be neatly and properly attired. Please see Dress Rules. Mothers
should be seated quietly in the sanctuary at least ten minutes before service. Bible, pens
and notepads should be on hand. There is to be no moving around or whispering during the
service. All children should be in the Nursery or Jr. Church during the services and should
be picked up promptly after service. No babies older than one month are allowed in the
sanctuary during church service.
...
DAILY DEVOTIONS
Devotions are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30 – 10:30. Church services are
Wednesdays from 7:00 – 9:00. Attendance is mandatory.
...
Mothers are to be in their rooms by 10:00 p.m. Lights are to be out by 10:30 p.m. every
night except Friday. On Friday, residents are to be in their rooms by 10:30 p.m. Lights are
to be out by 11:00 p.m. Children are to be in bed by 8:30 p.m. Each mother is required to
adjust her child(ren)’s sleeping habits to fit with the schedule of HIS NESTING PLACE.7
DRESS RULES
Everyone is expected to be modestly and neatly groomed. Bras and proper undergarments
are to be worn at all times. Short shorts, tight or skimpy skirts, eccentric or outlandish attire,
excessively long fingernails and excessive make up are not allowed. Shoes must be worn
at all times. No nose rings, lip rings, tongue rings, eyebrow rings or rings other than one set
of earrings may be worn at any time. No see-through or low cut blouses or dresses. Slips
must be worn with all dresses and skirts. If a mother cannot fulfill these requirements they
should notify the House Manager and every effort will be made to assist them in meeting
these standards.

There are also rules which regulate if and when the mothers can go out and so on. This is a religious group maternity home, and the rules might not be the same in a secular one. Though whether there would be secular group maternity homes is not quite clear, given Bush's fondness for the faith-based initiative. It's hard not wonder, though, whether there indeed might be a punishment motive at work here.
----
Thanks to Zoe Is Short for the original link to His Nesting Place.

More on Mary Cheney

According to this source, the recent indignation of Dick and Lynne Cheney over Kerry's comments about their daughter's sexuality was orchestrated by Mary herself:

Sources close to the Bush-Cheney campaign tell 365Gay.com that the idea came up in a telephone call between Mary and her parents immediately after the presidential debate Wednesday night.
The younger Cheney, who serves as a backroom advisor to her father, suggested that she would continue to be a "issue" for Democrats unless something was done to stop it immediately.

If this is true, it worked. The possible wedge issue Kerry introduced to perhaps alienate some of Bush's fundie base has now become the major talking point about the debates.

Read This Now!

This article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times is a must-read for anyone interested in American politics. Or interested in the survival of this world.

For Fun: The New PBS Daily Schedule

After the conservative takeover, this is what we might get on the PBS stations:

1:00 pm Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?: Guest detective Pat Buchanan helps kids build a wall around the U.S.

2:00 pm William F. Buckley's Firing Line: Guests George Will, Rush Limbaugh, John Sununu, Pat Buchanan, James Kilpatrick, Mona Charen, G. Gordon Liddy, Robert Novak, Bay Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Joseph Sobran, Paul Harvey, Phyllis Schafly, Maureen Reagan, and John McLaughlin bemoan the need for more conservative media voices.

3:00 pm Nature: Join James Watt and Charlton Heston as they use machine guns to bag endangered species.

4:00 pm NOVA: "Creationism: Discredited, But What the Hell?"

5:00 pm Newt Gingrich NewsHour: Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood present in-depth personal reports on sexual harassment. Pat Buchanan says he's being shut out from national exposure.

6:00 pm Mystery Theater: Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, and Sherlock Holmes team up to investigate Whitewater.

7:00 pm Great Performances: Pat Buchanan is a guest conductor of Wagner's "Prelude to a Cultural War."

8:00 pm Masterpiece Theater: Ibsen's "A Doll's House." Phyllis Schafly adds to this classic with an added scene where Nora gladly gives up her independence while her husband chains her to the stove.

Jokes, of course. Well, aren't they?

The Earth IS Flat!

Here we go:

Scandal-hit Fox News moved yesterday to fire an employee who says she was sexually harassed by Bill O'Reilly - but wants a judge to declare the canning isn't retribution.
Andrea Mackris, 33, said she was served legal papers about her termination by a man lying in wait for her at her Manhattan apartment building.
The documents said Fox had asked a judge to let the TV station dump her from a $93,200-a-year job as associate producer on "The O'Reilly Factor" - and to rule that the firing was not in retaliation for her accusations about the show's host.
Mackris sued O'Reilly and Fox News on Wednesday, saying her boss had made "disgusting" phone calls to her. O'Reilly sued Mackris the same day, alleging extortion.

Sure, terminations after the employee sues someone in the firm for sexual harassment have nothing to do, ever, with the suit. Everybody knows that.

Can this possibly be true?

Kerry Not a Good Man?

Lynne Cheney called Kerry a bad man for mentioning that her daughter, Mary Cheney, is a lesbian. Mary Cheney is in her mid-thirties and out-of-the-closet. She has worked in gay-lesbian marketing. She has also worked in her father's campaign for vice-presidency. Her father has mentioned in a public speech that Mary is gay, and when John Edwards referred to her in complimentary terms in the vice-presidential debate, Dick Cheney thanked him. Yet suddenly it makes John Kerry a bad man to mention anything at all about the well-known fact that Mary Cheney is a lesbian.

Well, color me surprised. Sure, maybe Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney to point out that the party which tries to ban same-sex marriage is hurting their own members. This is politics, after all. But the reaction from Bush and the Cheneys is inexplicable at this point, except in the sense that they can't think of any other possible gaffe in the debates to talk about that wasn't perpetrated by Bush.

To be honest, this isn't really surprising. I was lying in the previous paragraph. What is surprising is that the cable stations and radio talk show hosts have decided to make this into the big issue of the debates. Not that Kerry won all three debates. Not that Bush lied in all three debates and in general came across as someone who doesn't know enough to vote in this country let alone lead it. This is despicable, even from the so-called liberal media.

If you want to read a different take on Kerry's comments, I recommend this one in the Washington Post.

More Nasty Campaigning

Via Eschaton. It seems that the Democrats have been making fun of the Special Olympics:

The gist is that someone went into Tennessee congressional candidate Craig Fitzhugh's office and "found" a bunch of fliers with George W. Bush's head pasted onto the body of a competitor in the Special Olympics, with the tagline "Voting for Bush is Like Running in the Special Olympics -- Even if You Win, You're Still Retarded."

Except that this doesn't make sense. Who would Fitzhugh convince with these fliers? Not someone still sitting on the fence. No, the whole thing smells of a Rovian plot, and probably is:

Fitzhugh's office put AP in touch with a woman named Katie Honey, who said she was one of the two volunteers in the office the day the fliers were delivered last week.
"Someone brought them in and they left. I looked at them and said, 'This is not something we need in here. This goes in the trash,' " she said. "Well, here comes a man up and raising Cain and Mr. (David) Reynolds (the other volunteer) told him they were out in the trash. He went and picked it out of the trash and said, 'Well, this is going in the paper.' "
She said the second man did not come back after picking the flier out of the trash.
"It really, really is strange. Who around town was putting out this stuff I'll never know," she said. "There had to be somebody printing them up, but who it would have been I don't know. I'm just so sorry this stuff happened I don't know what to do."

The man went out to dig in the trash to find one of these fliers...

Don't you find it interesting that there is so little about the Nevada vote suppression scandal in the so-called liberal media? You'd think that any self-respecting liberal would run with a story that shows how low some Republicans have fallen in their determination to hold on to power at any cost, but no. Nary a peep from the talking heads. Only vicious goddesses and people in the left Blogosphere mutter about this.

No Dog Blogging Today

I begged and pleaded, but Henrietta turned on her other side and just continued snoring. Hank raised one eyelid and said:"You've gone stark crazy, goddess. It's raining and all good Americans take naps. Now go away."

So you're stuck with me. Henrietta's tumor turned out benign so our neighbors will have many more years of wild barking to listen to. Plus seeing me dance in the street with wild happiness and a certain divine charm after hearing the good news.

It's shedding season here at the Snakepit Inc., not for the snakes, but for the dogs. Newly laundered sheets are covered with dog hair when they emerge from the dryer, and so is the mail before it has even entered the house. The place probably looks like the center of a duststorm from some distance. I'm used to this phenomenom by now, but like every year, I think about ways to turn all this hair to some good purpose. There must be something I could knit out of all the furry balls in the corners and under the stairs and in my mouth. Maybe little anti-Bush sweaters for all your dogs and cats? Would there be a market for them? I could embroider horrible George faces on them and also slogans that appeal to my dog market:"One Bush not even worth pissing on."

Dogs are lovely, though. Hank just woke up and came over to check what I'm doing, gulping down some water en route. Now that water is dribbling down my legs. This keeps me in touch with nature and the feelings of the physical world: cold, pain and dirt, mainly.

Dogs are also excellent kissers or lickers, with the exception of Henrietta who will not kiss anyone as she's the boss of the house. Hank's tongue is big enough to cover the American continent, and when she loves someone successfully, that person doesn't need to take a shower for some time. I recommend pets for everybody, especially goddesses who need to be taken down a peg or two.

Redefining Rights in America

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has released its report on The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2004. Read it while it's still available.

The report's conclusion is that George has done really well in his attempts to destroy the long record of the U.S. government as a protector of civil and human rights. I'm going to write more about the report soon. For now, I just wanted to give the link to any of you who'd like to have a closer look before November 2.

More on the Conscience Clause...

News from New Hampshire:

A pharmacist in New Hampshire refused to fill a prescription for emergency contraception last month, adding to a long list of related incidents across the nation in which women have been thwarted from obtaining their time-sensitive legally prescribed medication. According to the Concord Monitor, Todd Sklencar of Brooks Pharmacy in Laconia, New Hampshire refused to fill Suzanne Richards' prescription for emergency contraception (EC), also known as the "morning-after pill." EC can be taken up to five days after unprotected intercourse to prevent pregnancy, although it is most effective if taken within 24 hours. Sklencar's actions were in defiance of Brooks Pharmacy's policy that pharmacists are not allowed to refuse a prescription based on personal beliefs. The state of New Hampshire does allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions, but requires that the customer be give a referral to a pharmacist who will fill the prescription. By the time Richards found another pharmacist to fill her prescription, it was too late for the medicine to be effective.

No comments necessary.

O'Reilly's World

It's not ours, friends. His world is full of left-wing conspiracies and plots. Even a Republican producer working for Fox News is part of a left-wing plot if she sues O'Reilly for sexual harassment. This is what Bill said about it all according to Media Matters for America:

But be that as it may, everybody knows the power of the books, the column, the radio, the television and they -- people who don't like me, and they come from primarily the left, all right? We believe that the people behind this lawsuit are on the left. But on the right, too, I mean, I get a lot of lunatic-fringe right people screaming and yelling. And they want to do anything they can to destroy the voice. They want us off the air. They want FOX off the air; they want O'Reilly off the air; and the other commentators they don't like.

Reminds me of the cartoon family Simpsons watching Fox News on their television: a script on the bottom of the screen asked:"Democrats Responsible for Cancer? Coming Soon..." Or something very similar.

The Biggest Foot in the Mouth

After a day's worth of talking heads in the so-called liberal media it may be difficult to remember that the biggest gaffe of the third debate was not Kerry's mentioning Mary Cheney's lesbianism but this statement by Bush:

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.
Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.

No, we are not using every asset at our disposal to get bin Laden. Most of those assets are busy in Iraq. And yes, indeed Bush did say that he's not worried about bin Laden, or, rather, that he was not concerned about him:

I don't know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him.

In my dictionary at least, 'concerned' is a weaker term than 'worried', so that if Bush wasn't concerned you can bet that he wasn't worried. And this is not just wordplay:

Remember how everything is supposed to have changed after 9/11? Remember how Americans united behind Bush so that he could avenge this horrendous deed and bring its creators to justice? Remember the name of the man who is believed to have masterminded the slaughter of innocents on 9/11/2001? We should be angry at a president who has taken the power we have given him and who has then used this power to attack Iraq rather than to actually hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists directly responsible for the attacks. That he wasn't even concerned about bin Laden when the rest of the country was very concerned about the same man shows how poorly this man has protected the country.

But it's a lot more profitable to discuss what Kerry might have said instead.

Mainstreet Moms Oppose Bush

I infiltrated this organization tonight! We spent the whole evening writing nice letters to mothers in the swing states, telling them to vote for Kerry and Edwards and giving them the information that will show why they should. The idea is to write these letters by hand so that the recipient is tricked into reading the message. This worried me as my reaction to such trickery would not be pretty to see. But maybe it works.

I also managed to eat most of the goodies that were on offer. On the whole, a satisfying evening.

Alfred Nobel and Women

I very much doubt that Nobel ever worried very much whether his prizes would go to women or not. In general, they have not. But this year women won the Peace Prize, the Literature Price and a shared Prize in Medicine. This brings the total number of female Nobel Prize winners to thirty-two. A ten percent increase in one year! Do we hear mutters abour reverse discrimination? But it's very easy to raise a small number by ten percent, of course. For example, adding one to ten would do it. On the other hand, adding three women to the very small percentage that women constitute of the total number of Nobel Prize winners (around five percent of the total) isn't going to raise that relative proportion very much. Such are the wonders of mathematics.

The Nobel Prizes are selected largely on the basis of peer recommendations, and this can handicap women's chances in fields where the old boy network is live and kicking. Joan Robinson, for example, should have gotten the Economics Prize, but she wasn't in high favor among her peers for reasons that had a lot more to do with politics than economics. I once read a book which argued that the women who have won the prizes in sciences were almost totally in brand new fields of research where the old boy network didn't exist yet.

In any case, this year's women Nobelists are Linda B. Buck in Medicine:

American researchers Richard Axel, MD, and Linda B. Buck, PhD, won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine on Oct. 4 for their work on the sense of smell.
The researchers discovered a large gene family of about 1,000 different genes that give rise to an equivalent number of olfactory receptor types. Their effort clarifies how the olfactory system works.
Dr. Axel is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in New York. Dr. Buck is a member of the Basic Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Wangari Maathai in Peace:

Wangari Maathai, a 63-year-old Kenyan environmentalist, has won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. She rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Here are some facts on the first woman from Africa to be honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize.
* Wangari Maathai was born in Nyeri, central Kenya in 1940. She is an academic and has taught zoology at Nairobi University.
* She founded the Green Belt Movement, mainly with women members, which has gone on to plant some 30 million trees around Africa in a campaign to slow deforestation and erosion.
* As well as protecting the existing environment, her strategy is to strengthen the basis for ecologically sustainable development.
* In 1992 riot police clubbed her and three other women unconscious in central Nairobi during a demonstration. She has been teargassed, threatened with death by anonymous callers, and once thrown into jail overnight for leading protests.
* Maathai went to court numerous times to block forest clearances by the former government of President Daniel arap Moi. He lost power in 2002 elections in which Maathai won a parliamentary seat for the victorious opposition.
* Maathai was made an assistant environment minister but says forest clearances continue and has threatened to quit the government.

and Elfriede Jelinek in Literature:

Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek, whose works feature themes of feminist struggle between men and women, was 'in despair' after winning the Nobel Prize in literature today.

The Swedish Academy cited her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power".

Jelinek said in Vienna that she felt "more despair than peace" about winning the prize.

"It doesn't suit me as a person to be put on public display," she said. "I feel threatened by it. I hope it doesn't cost me too much. I hope I can enjoy the prize money, because one can live carefree with it.

The last two have been controversial, Maathai for receiving the Peace Prize for what some regard as unrelated pursuits of environmental protection and women's rights in Africa, though one could well argue that the roots of peace might be found in the respect for trees and women. Jelinek is a political writer and the Austrian right-wing dislikes her work. She's also a feminist writer, and this makes some others dislike her work.

But I could really identify with her reaction on hearing that she received the Prize. I think that she'd be an interesting person to meet.

Facts in the Debate

If you're one of the rapidly dying breed interested in facts rather than the way the candidates smile or don't smile, you can go here for a quick check on many of the things that were said.

I'll be happy not to hear another presidential debate for a while. They are not really a useful way of acquiring information except perhaps about the possible health problems of our sitting president. He still had something square on his back, by the way. And no, it's not his guardian angel. Good night, everyone!

The Final Debate

I'm suffering from an overexposure to George Bush, but I struggled valiantly and have survived it. So far. The third and final debate is in the bag, Kerry's bag, that is, as expected. But Bush did quite well in staying awake and stuff.

The big disappointment in this debate were the questions. They were not very sharp or interesting, and there was absolutely nothing about the environment. Also, Bush was offered opportunities for both a) talking about foreign politics once again and b) for flaunting his faith. I do believe that the moderator may have tipped a little in his moderation...

Other than that, there was very little to learn from this debate that you haven't heard before. The same soundbites were repeated with one addition, by Bush, and that was the expected one about the archliberal Kerry. Examples:

Bush: I'll tell you what PAYGO means, when you're a senator from Massachusetts, when you're a colleague of Ted Kennedy, pay go means: You pay, and he goes ahead and spends.
...
Bush: As a matter of fact, your record is such that Ted Kennedy, your colleague, is the conservative senator from Massachusetts.
...
Bush: And secondly, only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in funding for education was not enough. We've increased funds.

Why does Bush hate Massachusetts so much?

Kerry managed to bring in women's issues in a few places, Bush managed to assiduously avoid them altogether:

Kerry: I believe that choice is a woman's choice. It's between a woman, God and her doctor. And that's why I support that. Now, I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade. The president has never said whether or not he would do that. But we know from the people he's tried to appoint to the court he wants to. I will not. I will defend the right of Roe v. Wade.
...
Kerry: If we raise the minimum wage, which I will do over several years to $7 an hour, 9.2 million women who are trying to raise their families would earn another $3,800 a year. The president has denied 9.2 million women $3,800 a year, but he doesn't hesitate to fight for $136,000 to a millionaire.
...
Kerry: We also need to hold onto equal pay. Women work for 76 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. That's not right in America. And we had an initiative that we were working on to raise women's pay. They've cut it off. They've stopped it. They don't enforce these kinds of things.

I'm not holding these arguments against Kerry, though I admit that his interest in the economic difficulties of women has seemed less central to him earlier in the campaign. Bush is silent on these issues, naturally. He's more prone to mention homes for unwed mothers when women's issues are on the table.

Though both men were asked by the moderator to praise all things bright and beautiful, including strong women. It seems that they all have a parcel of this rare breed at home. So each candidate was given an opening to show that they, too, are human, that they, too, are lovable and that they, too, regard women as an admirable invention.

Sounds grumpy, doesn't it? There's nothing wrong in this little chivalrous gesture, is there? Well, yes, there is. Women are introduced into the debate as some sort of a post-dinner toast.
But maybe this is all that can be expected given the current state of cultural understanding.

O'Reilly and Sexual Harassment

It appears that Bill O'Reilly, a talking head on the Faux News, has been sued for sexual harassment, and that he has decided to countersue the plaintiff of that case. I don't have any additional information and it would be wrong to comment on the case any more at this point.

Pre-Debate Stuff

Here's another one of those weird news stories that have been pre-written:

In the last televised debate of the U.S. election campaign on Wednesday, President George W. Bush and John Kerry each hoped to break the deadlock gripping the race.
The crucial showdown on domestic issues at Arizona State University was the last big chance for the two candidates to woo large numbers of Americans before the Nov. 2 vote.
Kerry, credited in opinion polls with winning the first two debates, was favoured in the third face-off, focused on the pocketbook concerns of voters where he has traditionally enjoyed more support than Bush.
Health care, jobs, education and cheaper prescription drugs from Canada were among issues expected to dominate the 90-minute session. But the Iraq war and anti-terrorism, still the president's strong suits, were also expected to come up.

Well, I have not pre-written my debate comments and I don't plan to do so, either. That's the nice thing about being an amateur. The not-so-nice thing about amateurishness is that I'll have to watch the debate taped one hour later, and that will make my comments less fresh. But at least they were not predigested.

Charles Murray's Question For Kerry

The New York Times published something by this famous wingnut in their today's opinion columns. Specifically, Murray was one of the people asked to submit questions for tonight's presidential candidates. (These are not actual questions for the debate, just opinions about questions). This is one of the questions Murray chose to pose:

Five percent of Americans pay 54 percent of all personal income taxes. They do not use more government services than other Americans; they use fewer. Why is this fair?

There is a sense in which nothing that Murray says should be taken seriously, given his history as a supporter of pretty racist ideas and the belief that poverty is ones just desserts for laziness and sloth. But I can't resist his bait. So here it goes:

Murray appears to be using data from 2001 for his information, and the five percent he refers to are the five percent with the highest incomes of all Americans. No doubt these individuals also have wealth so that their total assets are much higher than just their earned incomes. Other types of assets are not taxed as strictly as incomes, and it's pretty likely that if we compared overall taxes paid as a proportion of total assets we'd find that this group pays less than 54% of the total. For example, the same five percent only paid 14.6% of social insurance tax liabilities during the same year.

Still, let's play Murray's game and focus only on the income taxes. What is the impact of this 'tremendous tax burden' on the highest earning five percents of Americans? The answer: while they earned 27.5% of all pretax incomes, their after-income shared dropped by an enormous three percent, to 24.5%.

This was to clarify Murray's first sentence. To clarify his second sentence, note that he makes an assertion backed with no evidence. How do we know if the well-paid Americans use fewer government services?

In fact, there is a pretty good case for the opposite argument: that the wealthier individuals benefit more from the government than the less wealthy. Who benefits from the legal system the most: those who hardly ever use it or those who use it routinely to acquire property rights to various inventions, to litigate over various issues and to resolve corporate lawsuits. Who benefits from the financial systems supported by government oversight and legislation? Those who have hardly a penny to set aside, or those who use all financial services to their utmost ability? And it's good to remember here that the whole society, including its markets, its educated workers and consumers, its national defence and so on benefit us all and surely benefit the higher earners at least proportionately.

So is this all fair? I could make a strong case for arguing that the higher earners should be taxed more than they currently are, given the above arguments and the fact that money can be argued to be worth more to those who are poor than those who are rich. Just consider being given a ten dollar tip by someone. Its effects on your well-being are very different if that's the first ten dollars you've earned today than if your name is Charles Murray, and your income is quite nice and well protected by government arrangements such as copyright laws, thank you very much.

But what this question reveals most clearly is the way a very simple and short question can hide a wealth of nasty secrets. John Kerry faces this sort of thing all the time, and the media appears to agree that long and careful answers are just another sign of flipfloppery. Never mind that truth often is long and complicated.
The Charles Murrays of this world prefer soundbites.

I Told You So!

Kerry knows his stuff:

At the time, founder John Kerry was practicing law, which he found to be "quite predictable and very boring". So this chocolate lover and his friend and business partner K. Dunn Gifford opened the bakery and named it after their mothers, featuring family recipes. In 1982, Lt. Governor Kerry bought his partner's shares of the business and sold them to Stanley and Linda Klein. A few years later, he sold his own shares to the Kleins. Even though Senator Kerry is no longer at Kilvert & Forbes, we hear that he still loves chocolate!

(Bolds mine.)

This should be enough for any yet undecided voter! A man who loves chocolate versus a man who loves...?
-----
Via Atrios.

Whenever I Feel Blue, I Start Breathing Again

This is a joke among many sent to me by my favorite boa constrictor. I like it because of its truthfulness, only slightly hidden by the joke. Breathing is a good thing to do. In fact, if you have no idea what to do in a hairy situation, breathe. You can't go wrong.

Like many truly crucial things, breathing doesn't get the attention it deserves. We only worry about it when it stops...

Breathing deep into the belly is one of the best ways to help yourself feel better. Try it during tonight's debates when you start going blue in the face.

Another one of boa constrictor's jokes is similarly meaningful:

There is a theory, which states that if ever anybody discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.

Meditate on that while you practise belly-breathing.

FCC's Indecency Fines

The FCC is keen on its task of getting rid of indecency in television. Even the Fox television stations have fallen under their keen scrutiny:

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday proposed a record-setting $1.2 million fine against 169 Fox television stations for an April 2003 broadcast of "Married by America" that featured whipped-cream-covered strippers and digitally obscured nudity.
It is the agency's most recent ruling in its stepped-up effort to police radio and television. Complaints to the FCC are at an all-time high as viewers and lawmakers object to the increasing raunchiness of over-the-air radio and television, and broadcasters compete to keep pace with edgier cable programming.

Perhaps this is "a stepped-up effort to police radio and television". Especially as the lack of any kind of media fairness doctrine to enforce leaves the FCC far too much time to twiddle its thumbs otherwise. It's not indecent to do what the Sinclair group is doing: requiring its stations to show an anti-Kerry propaganda film just before the elections.

The overall question of indecency in the media deserves a longer post of its very own. I have a lot of questions and ideas about what indecency means, and I could see the fines used much more effectively against hate and violence and misogyny. But that post must wait for more time.

Al Capone's Campaign

The politics in this country is developing a 1930's Chicago gangster flavor. For one thing, voters in Nevada who recently registered may not in fact be registered. The reason? Their forms have been shredded by a private firm called Voters Outreach of America:

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.
Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.
"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

This firm is largely financed by Republican sources.

For another thing, a website predicting electoral votes has repeatedly been attacked by hackers who seem extremely professional. The hate mail the site receives is entirely Republican in nature.

Now, I'm not arguing that only Republicans play with maffia rules. The Democrats might be as bad, though if they are, they are so incredibly skillful at it that we don't hear a peep from the Republicans. Nah, it's a lot more likely that Democrats are held back here by both their ethics and their wussiness.

That was about Democrats as a class. There are exceptions, of course, and I'm one of them. I'm quite ready to start throwing evil spells on various operatives of this Al Capone campaign. Karma be damned.
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Link to the Nevada disgrace by Kos.

Not-So-Deep Thought for the Day

Why is it that all the comments to my posts appear in the mornings?
Is it something about the refreshing effect of a good night's sleep on my dear readers or the busy requirements of afternoons and evenings? Or is it that the most eager writers read in the mornings? Or am I especially obtuse/wrong/exciting in the mornings and the reverse later on in the day?

This may be one of those eternal mysteries, like the reason why I can't learn to tie my shoelaces however hard I try. And it's probably of equal interest to anyone else. But you could add your own eternal mysteries if you like.

Chocolate-Coated Ramblings

Have you ever noticed the advantage Bush gets in this campaign by being the sitting president? All the headlines put his name first, and so do the other media. This may have an impact from just sheer repetition, though I naturally hope that the impact is like someone grinding their teeth in your ear.

And why is the current flu shot shortage not Bush's fault? Why did he outsource the manufacture of this vaccine, but doesn't let Americans buy cheaper drugs from Canada? Questions, so many questions, and not a single answer.

But we get plenty of answers from the talking heads after each debate. In fact, they tell us what really happened, so that we are not misled by our own eyes and ears. That nobody thinks this is really funny is a sign of the times. Is Rapture closing on us?

After all these thoughts that lead nowhere I went out and bought the most gorgeous chocolate tartlet in the whole world. It's filled with all sorts of French sauces and covered with several layers of chocolate: the only no-fail orgasm. I needed it!

Why isn't Kerry offering free chocolates to everybody? If it works for goddesses, think what it would do to ordinary mortals!

Rocco Buttiglione

This is not a name well-known in the United States, yet, but the man it belongs to would feel quite at home with our current administration. Who is he?

The answer:

The European Union has been plunged into uncharted constitutional waters following a parliamentary committee's rejection of Italy's nominee for European commissioner, Rocco Buttiglione.
The Civil Liberties Committee voted against his appointment as justice, freedom and security commissioner by a majority of 27 to 26, and also opposed his being moved to a different portfolio by 28 to 25.
MEPs were angered by his support for creating transit camps in Africa for asylum-seekers, by his views on the place of women in the family, and especially by his stance on homosexuality.

It's worth stressing that Mr. Buttiglione's post is one of overseeing women's and gays' rights! This doublethink to an excellent degree; in fact, Orwell would call it doubleplusgood!

Rocco is a good friend of the current Pope. He believes that homosexuality is a sin, that the purpose of marriage is for women to have children, and that men are to be the protectors of women.

Hard to see what else remains to be done in the overseeing of women and gay and lesbian rights...

The Ten Commandments and the Supremes

The Supreme Court has announced that it's going to review the constitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on government property. If you read between the lines this seems to be a possible victory for the conservative bloc of the court:

In the past decade, justices have refused to get involved in Ten Commandments disputes from around the country. Three conservative justices complained in 2001, when the court declined to rule on the constitutionality of a Ten Commandments display in front of the Elkhart, Ind., Municipal Building.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said the city sought to reflect the cultural, historical and legal significance of the commandments. Rehnquist noted that justices' own chambers includes a carving of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.

This suggests that we are going to find the Ten Commandments completely constitutional in various parts of our courtrooms. But I might be wrong: maybe Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas want to slam the door closed on this attempt to bring one very specific kind of religion into the public realm. And snakes might fly.

If putting religious monuments on government premises becomes an ok thing to do, I'm going to travel around the country erecting my statues everywhere. So that my dear Skin Shedders won't feel ignored.

Will You Vote in the Next Elections?

I hope you do. Saudi women will not be voting any time soon, certainly not in the forthcoming municipal elections next year:

In response to a question about women's getting the vote, Prince Nayef bin Sultan said simply: "I don't think that women's participation is possible."
An election law published in August did not explicitly ban women from voting.
This led many campaigners for women's rights to hope for a substantial breakthrough for Saudi women.
The Associated Press quotes an unnamed Saudi election official as saying that the main reasons for barring women from the election were administrative.
The official told AP that there were not enough women electoral staff to run women-only voter registration centres, while only a fraction of women in Saudi Arabia had photo identity cards.

One could argue that having at least the men vote is a baby step forwards in democracy, but it's still rather disappointing to find that women in Saudi Arabia will not be allowed to vote. Especially as the Saudis are our special friends and all that.
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Link via Kos.

I Hope You Like Greenhouses

As Mother Nature may have decided to give us the fruits of our decades-long polluting binge. The carbon dioxide levels have been double the usual levels for two years in a row:

The average rise in CO2 levels has been about 1.6 parts per million by volume in recent decades, although there have been several peaks associated with El Nino – a disruptive weather pattern in the tropical Pacific.

However, in the last two years the level has risen by 2.08ppm and 2.54ppm and neither were El Nino years.

Let's hope that this is not the beginning of a new trend. Let's hope that Bush is voted out of office before it's too late and Mother Earth decides to give the cockroaches another look.

We Are Safer Now?

Satellite imagery shows that entire buildings in Iraq have been dismantled. They once housed high-precision equipment that could help a government or terror group make nuclear bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.
Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also have been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, according to the satellite pictures, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said.
While some military goods that disappeared from Iraq after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, including missile engines, later turned up in scrap yards in the Middle East and Europe, none of the equipment or material known to the IAEA as potentially useful in making nuclear bombs has turned up yet, ElBaradei said.
The equipment -- including high-precision milling and turning machines and electron-beam welders -- and materials -- such as high-strength aluminum -- were tagged by the IAEA years ago, as part of the watchdog agency's shutdown of Iraq's nuclear program. U.N. inspectors then monitored the sites until their evacuation from Iraq just before the war.
The United States barred the inspectors' return after the war, preventing the IAEA from keeping tabs on the equipment and materials up to the present day.
Under anti-proliferation agreements, the U.S. occupation authorities who administered Iraq until June, and then the Iraqi interim government that took power at the end of June, would have to inform the IAEA if they moved or exported any of that material or equipment.
But no such reports have been received since the invasion, officials of the watchdog agency said.

U.S. officials had no comment on this report.

Both George Bush and John Kerry mentioned nuclear proliferation as the greatest international threat in their first debate. It would be nice to know where this material and equipment might be. Even if it is under the custody of our fearless leader.

What's Not News Anymore

Deaths in Iraq. They no longer come up first on my Google news page. They are no longer discussed in any length on television or radio news, and you have to search the newspapers to find any mention unless the carnage was unusually large in numbers.

So you may not know that at least three American soldiers died today in Iraq, together with at least two Iraqi civilians.* These people are dead now, they won't talk to their loved ones again or breathe even one short breath of dusty air into the lungs. They will rot away soon.

This is one of the nasty faces of war, one of many, but a face that we rarely focus on: that it brutalizes all of us, even the ones like me who are sitting and typing thousands of miles away. Another forty bombed to smithereens! Well, I wonder what's for dinner. I'm not proud of this, I'm deeply ashamed of this, but that's what war does. It coarsens our consciences until we feel nothing at all unless some new record in cruelty has just been broken.

Time to stop and think about where we are going. High time.
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*This link only refers to one American dead. The other two died in Baghdad, according to my NPR news.

Ouch!

Via Atrios:

You know, Josh Burkeen is our rep down here in the southeast area. He lives in Colgate and travels out of Atoka. He was telling me lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us?" -

This is Tom Coburn speaking, the Republican candidate for senator from Oklahoma. Funny. I imagine long lines of cross-legged girls standing in line, waiting, waiting...

But there is something not-so-funny beneath this blustering. Something a little scary and paranoid, hmh?

Christopher Reeve - Rest In Peace

Christopher Reeve died yesterday of heart failure. He is famous for playing Superman in the 1970s, but more famous for turning into one after he was paralyzed in an accident in 1995.

His work on behalf of the handicapped will live. I recently heard him speak about his goals and dreams for this world, and his humility and humanity shone through everything he said.

May his transition be smooth. May his rest be refreshing.

Faith-Based Marriages

President Bush's faith-based initiative is working wonders in the marriage markets. Look at this:

President Bush has some new troops in his crusade to promote "healthy marriage" and teen celibacy with federal funds -- followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean evangelist and self-proclaimed new world messiah.

The Reverend Moon is also the owner of the very right-wing Washington Times, and a firm believer in no separation between church and state. John Gorenfeld has a whole blog following Moon's escapades.

At least four of Moon's operatives have received government money for marriage initiatives:

In some ways, Moon is an unlikely ally for President Bush's crusade to promote traditional family values.
The 85-year-old Korean is perhaps best known for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies for devotees whose unions are arranged by Moon or other church leaders. After marriage, Unification Church couples are given detailed instructions for their honeymoon, right down to the sexual positions they are supposed to assume during their first three conjugal couplings.

And these are not egalitarian marriages that Moon proposes. Just in case you were wondering.

Martha Stewart: The Only Mention

I have not written about Martha Stewart before, and I don't plan to write about her again. But she's today's topic of fluffy entertainment in many newspapers. The joke is that a homemaker guru has to go to prison and forfeit her 900,000 dollar annual salary and her Egyptian cotton sheets. She got a five-month prison sentence for lying:

Stewart was convicted in March of lying to investigators about why she sold stock in a biotech company in 2001, just before its price plunged. She was allowed to remain free while she appeals her conviction, but asked to begin serving her time anyway, to help remove the cloud of uncertainty hanging over her and her company.

This is astonishing in a country where lying is the name of the game in everything from politics to business, and it's not even called lying.

Stewart is an extremely hated image in this country. Some argue that it's simply because she's a very unpleasant person, but this would not explain why so many who have never met her would detest her so heartily. I believe that she's a hate magnet for more complicated reasons than that.

First, she's a woman who has made it in what still in many ways is a man's world. I doubt that we'd ever have heard of a Martin Stewart in the exact same situation, or not at least on the front pages of newspapers. No, Martha's gender is central for the displeasure she evokes. She has broken the rules, and she has not done it in a pleasant way, the way women are supposed to break rules if they must. This alone would make many traditionalists hate her guts.

Second, she's a woman who has made a fortune from telling other women to refocus on the home, something she's not doing herself. This makes her suspect from a feminist point of view, and Martha has indeed stated that she's not a feminist. She belongs to the "honorary men" category of women. Many women with feminist leanings are angry at her for this, though feminist organizations have pointed out the sexist bias in the Martha hounding.

Finally, Martha angers many of the women who devour her homemaking advice, because the advice is largely ridiculously impossible to follow for anyone without a full-time staff of cooks, gardenerers and housekeepers. After hours of desperate crafting, a hopeful reader might end up with something that could be used to cover the toilet roll in the bathroom. In a sense, Martha is making fun of the traditionally female skills that she sells, and I suspect that many women understand this deep inside. Thus, schadenfreude is the proper emotion to feel when Martha herself lands in the dock.

Still, the subtext in Martha hating is femininity in various forms. Can it be escaped? Should it be celebrated? How is it celebrated? And what's the punishment for someone who plays games with these questions? Martha has the answer.

The Pucker

Much has been rumored in the blogistan about the mysterious bulge on the back of president Bush's suit jacket during the first presidential debate. What on earth could it have been? A rectangular patch, right between Bush's shoulder blades?

Speculation has ranged from a back brace via a Kevlar vest to a hidden radio receiver or its battery back. Even the possibility that this is where the key goes in has been raised. Now the mainstream press has caught up. A New York Times article contained this statement by a member of the Bush campaign:

"There was nothing under his suit jacket," said Nicolle Devenish, a campaign spokeswoman.
"It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric."
Ms. Devenish could not say why the "rumpling" was rectangular.
Nor was the bulge from a bulletproof vest, according to campaign and White House officials; they said Mr. Bush was not wearing one.

Supposedly this has been verified by Bush's tailor, who admitted to such bad tailoring like a pucker in the back seam of the jacket.

I don't believe this. I have made a suit, once, just to find out how hard it is, and no self-respecting tailor would leave such a pucker in. It's just not done, especially in a very expensive suit made for the president of a country. Nope. The tailor's admission is like a surgeon saying that he cut into a patient with a hacksaw.

My personal favorite among the theories is that the mysterious bulge was caused by Bush dressing himself and for a moment forgetting where extra padding goes...