Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock

That's the biological clock ticking away your precious fertile moments, but this time it's ticking for the guys. Or so an article in the Salon states. It tells of a new movement of men who are "wife shoppers", who ask about your willingness to have lots of babies on the first date, or:

Another friend, Allison, a 30-year-old cable executive in New York, met theater producer Aaron through work. They shared a lusty kiss on a subway platform and planned a date. "At the bar he started quizzing me on what music was playing," she said. "It felt like I was being interviewed. He wanted to know how I would feel about living on the Upper West Side, if I would prefer a vacation home in the Catskills or in the Hamptons, and would I convert to Judaism. When I said I didn't know about conversion, he asked if I would consider raising my kids Jewish." Allison said the conversation quickly dampened whatever ardor she'd felt for Aaron. "The questions he was asking were questions you get to on maybe the 28th date," she said. "But because they were coming so early I felt stunned, and bummed because this guy clearly wasn't excited about me. This was a picture of who he saw his future with and he was trying to decide if maybe I could fit into the outline."

Then of course the women get scared of commitment and run away.

Do you believe in this stuff? I don't, not really. It is true that the male fertility rate has been found to drop by age a lot more than was previously thought and some studies suggest that older men may have poorer quality sperm, too. But there is a whole trend-making industry which churns out these kinds of stories.

The data consists of a nonrandom section of people one phones with leading questions, and then another book is published on whatever the most recent trend-to-be-created is. Sylvia Ann Hewlet has been writing crap like this for decades, mostly on women who yearn for babies, but now others have joined in the fray. At least writing about commitment-pining men is more fun as a novelty.

All these books talk about the upper classes only, but nobody ever notices it because the U.S. is supposed to be classless. That's why you can write an article like this and mention the opinions of a urologist, a journalist,a network news producer, a cable executive, an artist, an adult novelist and, as an example of inclusivity, a secondary school teacher. No electricians or cashiers or cabdrivers or cleaners. I want to know if men like them are equally commitment-hungry. It would be good to know before I open my house for all the roofers I'm going to need next summer...

This trend-making industry is a very odd aspect of the society. It often has very little to do with reality, at least until the trends have been created. Then what it says seems like common sense. I'm wondering if we now are actually going to start seeing men running around with a list of wife requirements. Other than cup size, I mean.

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing...

This Senate vote on the 2006 fiscal budget is not interesting only because of the Republican breaking of ranks on the Medicaid cutbacks but also because some Republicans really are Democrats and some Democrats are Republicans.

Take Olympia Snowe, for example. She would be considered as an extreme lefty in places such as Louisiana. Mary Landrieu would probably be regarded a wingnut in New England. It's funny to note how some of these misplaced politicians vote:

The income tax break for Social Security benefits was a Republican initiative sponsored by Jim Bunning of Kentucky.

Five Democrats — Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado — voted for the tax rollback, and a like number of Republicans — Chafee, Snowe, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, Ted Stevens of Alaska and George V. Voinovich of Ohio — voted against it.

All politics is local, perhaps, but this does cause some weird coalitions on the national level. Of course, the extremist wingnuts are trying to get rid of all moderate Republicans. If they are successful such odd couplings will probably end.

The Senate vote on the budget caused a lot of havoc for any attempts to control the budget deficit, mostly by gettting rid of the cuts that were planned in the Medicaid program. This program funds some of the health care for the poorest families in the country, and cutting it in order to accommodate the tax cuts for the wealty looked a little...un-Christian. But not to worry, the final reconciliation bill could still include the Medicaid cuts. Like a sleight of hand.

Friday's Embroidery Blogging

Big Snake 


This is a snake, obviously. The technique is a combination of reverse applique, embroidery and quilting. I used my old scarves for the material and the background is a linen summer skirt. The burgundy scarf was bought in London from one of those ripoff artists that haunt tourists. I never really wore it so it's nice that it can be part of my picture now.

Though clearly I need to work on my editing skills. The white border is irritating.

An Open Season, Again

On feminists. It's always open season for the hunting of the feminists. Feminists are the only liberation movement which it is perfectly safe to ridicule.

And who are the brave pukkah sahibs hunting us feminazis? Rush Limbaugh, for one. His take on the Atlanta courthouse murders is pretty much that feminists caused them by insisting on women as the guards of dangerous criminals. I was absent in the feminist movement where this demand was discussed but it seems that Rush Limbaugh was present. Which is interesting as he seems to be totally uninformed about the fact that many accused have managed to get away from even quite brawny male guards in the past and some of these have indeed killed people.

But not to worry. Feminists are guilty of even more bad stuff. According to Rush we don't appreciate the great powers of Ashley Smith, the woman who got the courthouse murderer finally apprehended. Why don't we appreciate her, I want to know. Rush answers:

He praised as gospel an e-mail sent to him by a fan named Julie McGurn, from Madison, N.J.: "Hey, Rush, the whole episode perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with feminism and how it fails to see the true nature of women. On the one hand you've got the PC feminist idea that giving a five-foot deputy sheriff with a gun will make her equal to a man in physical strength. On the other hand, you have an example of an authentic feminine strength in Ashley Smith. She was able to use her wits, her intuition, and even motherly concern. She made him pancakes when he said he wanted some real food, to figure out that this guy didn't have it in him to continue. She talked him down. Women are good at that. The first case plays to women's weakness, physical stature, the second case plays to women's strength, relationships and nurturing. But will the feminists get that? Doubt it."

"Not only will the feminists not get it," Limbaugh emphasized to his listeners, "they will actively oppose this notion of the outcome."

Ok. Glad to have feminism explained to me. I seem to recall a brand of feminism, quite popular, which argued for women's special powers and the strengths of their feminine character. But Rush must know better than me. What does he mean by "this notion of the outcome"? That all police officers should be women because women are so great at defusing difficult situations without any casualties? Somehow I don't think that was in Rush's mind. If he has such a thing as a mind.

He is really a little snot. Sorry, I know that I'm the polite political blogger but there are limits to courtesy. For example, I don't extend courtesy to green stuff that comes out of my nose. And I don't extend courtesy to Ann Coulter who pretty much pipes in harmony with Rush. It's such an unsavory thing to watch a self-hating woman, even when she does it for the money. So I won't watch. Or write about it, either.

Happy Lepricorn Day!

Or St. Patrick's Day! Lepricorns are my distant relatives and they're having a ball today. With green beer and awkward jokes and some very bad singing of Irish songs. If you see them say hello from me.

Whatever

I woke up all grumpy today and continued that way, too. It may partly be caffeine which my human incarnation's body doesn't care for and which I decided to imbibe in large quantities just for the heck of it, but it's also all those nasty news these last few weeks:

We are going to get rid of the rail system as one of the few alternatives to cars, cars and more cars; we are going to drill in Alaska so that we can have more cars and fewer wild animals and we are going to remove every bit of a safety net under those cumbersome elderly acrobats or those poor tightrope walkers with their terminal illnesses and bad credit balances. We are going to be a new society! With family values and a jungle out there! And we are so patriotic and godly.

Then I tell myselves (both the divine and the human) that things political go in cycles and that surely this wingnut cycle is ending, surely the pendulum is turning back and won't hit my head on its return trip. Which sounds like a fairy-tale ending, to be quite frank. Especially after I read a book which stated that most Jews in the 1930's Europe didn't fight back publicly, partly, because they believed that the hatred cycle had reached its maximum and that things were finally getting better. After every new outrage they believed this. And of course they were wrong and this was terrible.

Now I have broken Godwin's law about bringing the nazis to a discussion about current politics. I didn't bring them up on purpose, the story has them as an integral part so they will be left in. And the lesson will be left in, too.

Back to my private worries. I have to work this weekend (which means that my Saturday posts will not be on the topics of that day) and if I still feel grumpy tomorrow I won't be very efficient at it. What to do? Other than going out with the dogs and letting Hank the Lab do my hair by licking it all over?

Maybe grumpiness is the proper attitude this season. I have to check my fashion magazines.

Fairness in Academia, Again

Go and read this excellent post by billmon. One of his quotes is this one:

For those on the right, true freedom requires more diversity--which, to them, means more conservatives in faculty ranks. "If the system were fair," says Larry Mumper, sponsor of the Ohio bill, "Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be tenured professors somewhere."

Now this is frightening. I wonder if Mumper knows what it takes to become a tenured professor? First you go to college for about seven years, most likely longer, and you write a doctoral thesis which is scrutinized by many. Then you spend several years teaching and doing research. In most colleges and universities your teaching is evaluated in each course and students are quite free to complain about you. Your research doesn't get published if your peers find fault in it, because academic journals mostly use an anonymous reviewing system and it is also customary to present research in seminars and conferences so that others can pick it apart. But publishing isn't enough for getting tenure; this also depends on how much you publish and the perceived quality of your publications. Most professors on tenure track work their asses off and still end up not getting tenured. Some of this is due to bias but the system is very stringent for everyone.

This is to guarantee that the final product, the tenured professor, is an expert in the field and knows how to look at an issue from all sides. And Mumper thinks that Hannity and Limbaugh are doing this? That if the system was fair they'd have their own endowed chairs somewhere? It makes me nauseous to think that Americans in powerful places have such a warped view of what academia entails. Like it's some sort of a baseball game where the rules can be changed at will.

Billmon's original post makes obvious the similarities of what the extreme wingnuts are doing and what the cultural revolution did in China. All extremist thought systems have similarities, of course, but it's true that in this case even the methods applied are very similar. Like the pretense that the revolution comes from the masses when in fact it comes from the party in power, and the desperate search for suitable enemies to attack. Ward Churchill is not a typical liberal professor, and Horowitz saying so doesn't change the truth at all.

But yes, it does remind me of the cultural revolution. Now where did I put my suitcase?

Today's Action Alert

Today's Action

Today's action is a little different. You don't have to call, or e-mail, or write a letter to anyone. Today's action is to spend some time enjoying nature. With the Senate agreeing to drill in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Reserve, we've lost one of the last pristine places left on the planet. Go for a walk in the park, spend some time with a pet, plant some seeds. Then, resolve to fight even harder the next time our planet is threatened.

Thanks for taking today's action.

A Shorter Nicholas Kristof

I'm stealing this stylistic device from Atrios. The idea is to summarize an article in a short and succinct manner, yet clearly revealing the idiocy of the original writer. Here it goes:

According to Nicholas Kristof, Hillary Clinton really gets it by kowtowing to the fundamentalist wing of the Republican party in her plan to become the president of the United States. That is the way for the Democrats to make new supporters in the Red States! Hillary's political strategy is really playing off; her approval rates in New York State are sixty-nine percent!

However, nationally her disapproval rates are still the same forty percent, because no woman will ever be voted in as president by the fundamentalists of the Republican party, certainly no uppity woman politician! So Hillary will not become the president. But it was a good idea, anyway.

Read the long version here.
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Link courtesy of deja pseu.

Time For Some Deep Sighs

A new Washington Post-ABC News Poll tells us how stubbornly Americans refuse to be informed or how well the Fox News manages to keep them uninformed. Either way, it is deeply frustrating. I want to tear my clothes and scatter ashes on my head when I read something like this:

In the new poll, 56 percent said they think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, and six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al Qaeda terrorist network that struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Also, 55 percent of Americans say the administration told people what it believed to be true, while 43 percent believe the administration deliberately misled the country.

This is not only frustrating but frightening. It shows how very easy the Orwellization of democracy might be. Or perhaps already is.

The Big Brother Is Watching...

If you don't think so, read on:

First, in Missouri:

A bill that seeks to overhaul Missouri's child abuse reporting laws could require teachers, doctors, nurses and others to report sexually active teenagers and children to the state's abuse hot line.

Until Monday, the bill had been sailing through the Legislature with little formal debate. It was scheduled for a House vote this morning, but on Monday the bill's author sent it back to committee for revisions.

Critics say the bill offers confusing and unnecessary changes to a law that has been in place for years. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Richard Byrd, R-Kirkwood, said the legislation offers a needed fix to a child abuse reporting law that has recently been contested in court.

Perhaps the most controversial provision of the bill is one that many say would require educators, medical personnel and other professionals to report "substantial evidence of sexual intercourse by an unmarried minor under the age of consent."

The proponents of the bill argue that it is intended to apply only to children under fifteen, and that for this group any sexual acts are against the law. Still, this law proposal does expand the ear of the Big Brother in ways that can conflict with the other duties of educators and others who work with children.

Next, in Indiana:

Planned Parenthood of Indiana is suing the state after the attorney general's office seized the medical records of eight juvenile patients, including five from the Lafayette area.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis seeks temporary and permanent injunctions against Attorney General Steve Carter and his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit from searching the records of 12- and 13-year-old patients.

The unit, since March 1, has seized records from clinics in Bloomington, Franklin and Lafayette.

"They're using a pretty intimidating tool and twisting it in an effort to get confidential records," said Betty Cockrum, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

She said of Carter, "He does not have, under the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the provision to seek the information he is seeking."

Spokeswoman Staci Schneider of the attorney general's office said the unit seized the records as part of an ongoing investigation to determine if Planned Parenthood has been reporting instances of child molestation.

Failing to do so constitutes abuse and/or neglect, she said.

Maybe there are valid reasons in this case, too, but surely patient confidentiality is important, too?

It's hard not think that all this has something to do with the Christian right and its interest in controlling all things sexual. I wonder if they noticed my she-blogger picture (below on this page) and if they did whether my internet connections are already monitored? Wouldn't that be fun!
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Links via M.E.N. (Esq.) and angryffemt

Back to the 1950's?

To a world of breadwinning men and housewife women? That's what young women in the U.K. appear to want, based on the writeups of a new survey done for the New Woman magazine. The survey asked fifteen hundred women in their late twenties questions about their career and family plans. Or so I surmise. It appears impossible to get hold of the actual survey which means that everything I say about the survey must be treated with caution.

Anyway, these fifteen hundred women have some very old-fashioned values: Two thirds of them thought that men should be the main breadwinners of the family. One in four of the respondents planned to stay at home with children full time, whereas only one in ten expressed an intent to stay working full time after children arrive. Seven out of ten respondents didn't want to work as hard as their mothers had.

The way this is written up is most fascinating, and I don't mean the obvious wingnut reactions or the obvious "Feminism Is Dead" stuff, but things like this:

Margi Conklin, editor of New Woman magazine, said the findings reflected "a fundamental shift in young women's attitudes towards life and work.

"They've watched their own mothers trying, and often failing, to 'have it all', and decided they 'don't want it all'. They don't want to work crazy hours while their children are put into nurseries and their relationships disintegrate under the strain.

"Young women today are increasingly putting their personal happiness before a big salary or a high-powered career. Above anything else, they crave a work-life balance where they can enjoy a fulfilling relationship, raise happy children and have a job that interests them, but doesn't overwhelm them."

Come again? How is it suddenly the case that all these fifteen hundred respondents had mothers who were in the upper eschelons of the society? Who had high-powered careers and big salaries? I beg to disbelieve this. It's much more likely that the mothers of these women were a cross-section of the British society (if the survey was properly done to begin with), and that therefore most of them were not very well-off or with very interesting careers. They just had the double-day of many working women.

What we see here is the usual myth-making about feminism as the business of upper-class career women. Everything that relates to women and work must be seen through such a crooked lens. Let's inject a little more reality here. How many men do you think would like to stay at home with their young children if they could? I suspect quite a few. Here the patriarchal traditions favor women in that it is more acceptable for them to state such a desire. On the other hand, it's less acceptable for them to express an interest in continuing career-minded when children arrive, so I'd interpret all these answers with some care. Public opinions are not the same as private opinions. Neither are wishes and dreams the same as reality. The vast majority of these women will not be able to afford staying at home for very long, even in the welfare state of the United Kingdom.

My title for this post is misleading. The 1950's was not the way it is often portrayed. For example, a large proportion of married women always worked and there was an increase in married women's labor market participation rate by the end of the decade. That was the real 1950's. The imaginary one is the 1950's that the wingnuts always look back to with fondness: the time when men were men and women were at home. Many wingnuts can hardly wait until these times return and every study that suggests they might is greeted with joy in Wingnuttia.

I have always suspected that the wingnuts are much more interested in getting women out of the labor force than they are interested in enabling them to stay at home, but that's just me. Well, sadly for the wingnuts they are not going to get their version of the 1950's back any time soon. The economy is far too dependent on the labor input of women and the cost of living far too high for most families to have just one wage-earner.

Movie Violence

Members of the U.S. military who have been in Iraq (and probably in other war arenas) have their own movies about war and violence, movies in which they often star, too. They are not usually shown on the mainstream television programs, but at least one amateur moviemaker would be willing to trade:

"30-year-old Sgt. Benjamin Bronkema from Lafayette, Ind., said he was surprised no one had tried to sell the movies yet. 'If I had a copy of it, and MTV called, I'd sell it,' he said. The videos are no different than what's on screen at the cinema, showing glorified violence, he added. 'It's no more graphic than "Saving Private Ryan." To us, it's no different than watching a movie.'"

No different than watching a movie. There is so much sadness in this one sentence and so much guilt for the rest of us who have made saying it possible. Even if the sentence is part of the psychological defenses that humans set up in the face of horrible events.

Maureen Dowd on Women Opinion Columnists

This is a few days old, but I have been stewing it slowly in my head. Maureen Dowd wrote a column on the lack of women who write opinion columns and then gave her own diagnosis of the problem:

In 1996, after six months on the job, I went to Howell Raines, the editorial page editor, to try to get out of the column. I was a bundle of frayed nerves. I felt as though I were in a "Godfather" movie, shooting and getting shot at. Men enjoy verbal dueling. As a woman, I told Howell, I wanted to be liked - not attacked. He said I could go back to The Metro Section; I decided to give it another try. Bill Safire told me I needed Punzac, Prozac for pundits.

Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman. It taps into myths of carping Harpies and hounding Furies, and distaste for nagging by wives and mothers. The word "harridan" derives from the French word "haridelle" - a worn-out horse or nag.

Men take professional criticism more personally when it comes from a woman. When I wrote columns about the Clinton impeachment opéra bouffe, Chris Matthews said that for poor Bill, it must feel as though he had another wife hectoring him.

While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it's seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I'm often asked how I can be so "mean" - a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn't get.

For a good writer Dowd is astonishingly thick on psychology and women's issues. I sometimes think that she writes these columns in a cab and asks the cabdriver for some expert opinions on why women do the things they do. I have even wondered if she could possibly be a woman, given how little she seems to know of the Life of the Female.

Take these ideas in the quote I gave from her: that women want to be liked and that men don't want to be criticized by a woman. These are stereotypes, and Maureen doesn't actually ask if there is any truth in them. She just uses them as if they were the Truth. In the same article in which she writes:

The kerfuffle over female columnists started when Susan Estrich launched a crazed and nasty smear campaign against Michael Kinsley, the L.A. Times editorial page editor, trying to force him to run her humdrum syndicated column.

I have news for you, Maureen. Susan is not going to like you now. But maybe it doesn't matter as she is not a man so is safe to criticize?

My point is that Dowd doesn't dive deep under the facile explanations she uses, doesn't look for any other reasons for the dearth of female columnists than her stereotypical views of human psychology, and doesn't differentiate between the use of valid criticism and just plain nastiness (calling Estrich's column "humdrum" without explaining why) as an explanation why some dislike her writing style.

It is such an odd article. Dowd tells us how horrible it is to be a woman who writes political opinion columns and then urges all talented women to join her. Is this her intention? Probably not. It's something her columns seem to do pretty often, leave me hanging despondent at the end of reading them, wondering if there is any other hope for me but a quick and painless death. Though this might be something in me and not Maureen's fault at all.

I would like to read more women opinion columnists. I love Molly Ivins and Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt and many others. These are some writers! And they know their politics inside and out. They don't seem to mind arguing or the fear of being seen as castrating bitches, either.

More generally, women often have a different pattern of life from those of men and this gives them a different angle to events. Seeing political events from different angles would be good for us. It would also make political opinion columns more varied and interesting.

Why is it, by the way, that the wingnuts seem to promote most any woman who is wingnutty enough to her opinion column while truly great writers on the left slog away almost unnoticed? I have in mind the list I noted earlier and many others that I could add to it. Why does Ann Coulter sit on a high perch over all creation while Molly Ivins is hidden away in Texas? Hmh?

Today's Action Alert

Check out the website for

http://www.StopFakeNews.org

and send an email to the FCC asking them to stop the Bush administration from sending out propoganda disguised as news.

Thanks for taking today's action!

A Picture of Me?

This picture has been doing the rounds on all she-blogs but I have decided that it's a picture of me. It looks a little like me, anyway. Except for the hair color and the eye color and the cigarette. And the shape of the face and the body...
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Via Watermark.

On Pillowcases

I'm going out to buy some pillowcases. All the ones I have look like spider's webbing, worn through to almost nothing. That's when they are really comfy, sadly.

I could order them through the net but I can get a better price locally. I think, anyway. The last time I needed pillowcases I made them out of old sheets, with added lace and stuff, so I'm not an expert on the going prices for high-quality pillowcases.

By buying something I'm helping the producers of bed linen and maybe even supporting someone's job. So in a sense I have been a horrible consumer, all these years, when I have refrained from buying sprees of bed linen. But then I have been good for the environment by not adding to its spoilage. What to do?

This whole post is full of "I's". Should rewrite it but won't.

Biased Election Coverage!

See! The media is liberal, after all! A study by the Columbia School of Journalism established that the media gave Bush a harder time than Kerry, that Massachusetts liberal. This clearly proves that the media is all communist and loves Islamofascists and that we need affirmative action for the wingnuts in the press rooms.

Here is what the poor wingnuts must face:

The school's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 36 percent of reports on Bush painted him in an unfavorable light, while only 12 percent did the same to Kerry - according to Reuters.

Wow! Take out your paintbrushes, you liberal journalists, and retouch all the stories about Bush with more optimistic pink for the future of freedom.

Of course, the problem the journalists faced in keeping the coverage equally negtive was this:

On the Iraq war, for instance - which was a watershed issue for Bush - the study found that the three network nightly newscasts and public broadcaster PBS tended to be more negative than positive, while Fox News was twice as likely to be positive as negative, Reuters said.

We just don't have enough Foxes.

This silliness is like saying that it would be biased to give the flat-earthers any less praise for their scientific acumen than the other side. Bush gave the media a lot of stupid stunts and horrible mistakes as data. Should all this have been ignored? Or should artificial stories have been invented to make Kerry look equally incompetent? Oh, I forgot, they were! The Swift Boaters. But even that doesn't seem to be enough, no, coverage should have been exactly equally negative, never mind the facts.

Bias does not mean telling the facts, my dear wingnuts, and sometimes facts weigh more towards one side. Bias means not giving each side a fair hearing and not letting them give their explanations for why what happened happened and so on. Bias means weighing the same facts differently depending on whom they affect. But bias does not mean pretending that someone who is awful isn't, just because the other guy isn't quite as awful.

Words

This is not a political post, not at least in an obvious manner. It is a post about words and what they do. What some words do, or perhaps all words when dressed in their secret fancy clothes or when they are moonlighting. The thing that words do which words cannot do, the reaching to something in us which is not intelligence or logic, which is not even emotions, and when the contact is made there is this enormous thunder and an opening and a realization of something instantaneously. And then a flow of understanding and the feelings that this particular understanding carries in its arms.

Poetry does this covert work often. Here is Margaret Atwood on spelling:


At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.


Yes, yes.

When PR=Journalism

The New York Times recently published an important article on the use of government propaganda as a substitute for news. These items are slotted into the usual news broadcasts and they are not always clearly labeled as produced by the government. The practice started during the Clinton years but has picked up speed ever since George Bush got in power.

Here is an example of the problem:

"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

This is good for the government, good for the large media networks which earn more, good for the PR firms and good for the small television stations which often cannot afford to have journalists cover all issues of interest. It is bad for those who consume the messages without realizing that they are consuming paid propaganda.

Is any of this illegal? I'm not sure but it is definitely unethical, and this from the Values-Are-Us administration. Not only have they employed paid shills to push their messages but also this general infiltration of what most of us thought were just ordinary news. No government-produced video piece is going to tell us what is bad in the administration's performance, of course, yet the viewers or readers or listeners believe that they are receiving objective reporting. To see how it is done, consider the case of Karen Ryan:

Karen Ryan was part of this push - a "paid shill for the Bush administration," as she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.

Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news - too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.

In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as far as one might expect. "It's almost the same thing," she said.

There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political benefits.

Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments.

The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."

The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.

And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets.

You might argue that this is just another example of the general blurring between journalism and public relations in this country, and that the trend is nothing new, and you might be right. But the government has a special role and a special burden: it is not supposed to exploit its citizens by feeding them propaganda as news. Or so I think in my divine naivete.

No Islamic State in Iraq?

It seems that the Kurds won't have one and the Kurds are needed in the government:

The Kurds and the alliance officials said both sides agreed that Iraq would not become an Islamic state, a desire also expressed by the country's most powerful Shiite cleric - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, said the Kurds would oppose any attempt to turn Iraq into an Islamic state.

``I think the Shiites well understand that implementing an Islamic government ... will bring a lot of problems,'' Barzani told Dubai's Al-Arabiya television. ``We have an alliance with the Shiites. We were both oppressed, and we both struggled against the old regime, but if they insist on having a religious government we will oppose to them.''

An alliance member, Ali al-Dabagh, said there were no plans to turn Iraq into a religious state or a secular one.

``We neither want to establish a religious nor a secular state in Iraq, we want a state that respects the identity of the Iraqi people and the identities of others'' al-Dabagh said.

What does it mean, though, to neither want to establish a religious nor a secular state in Iraq? One or the other will be established, I would think. I'm rooting for the secular solution because it allows the religious people to live a religious life whereas the reverse would not allow the secular people to live a secular life.

As an aside, I'm slightly annoyed by the term "secular" in this context. To want a secular state doesn't mean that one is an atheist. I want all states to be secular and I'm a goddess! "Secular" means something more here than purely earthly matters; it means a state which is inclusive of people with various faiths and sensitive to human rights.

An Obituary for Someone I Loved

She was a good woman, a good person. She was the salt of the earth and one of those whose voice was never heard. She honored her father and her mother and she honored all the obligations life loaded on her narrow back. She never complained, she never asked for more, she never seemed to turn bitter from having opportunities denied from her.

She farmed the land and fed people whom she had never met. Her animals loved her and she cared for them before caring for herself. She broke ribs when cows fell on her and she broke toes when they stepped on her feet. But she did not complain. She wore a path between the house and the barn, a path through the hard granite, day in and day out, not complaining.

She bent her back from carrying milk pails which weighed as much as a young calf, bent her back until it no longer straightened. But she did not complain.

She was the salt of the earth. She was quiet and she was deep. When help was needed she gave it, wordlessly. If she was thanked, she smiled, shyly, but she did not speak.

May her next life be one of orneriness and fire, of passion and rebellion. May she find peace in the meantime.

On Blogs

The mainstream media has recently woken up to the existence of blogs and so have many corporations. The business now is to decide where to slot the blogs and how to exploit them best for money. The media also often wants to silence all blogs, if possible, or at least make them look ridiculous and unprofessional. Blogs are a new form of competition for traditional media and some bloggers attack journalists nonstop. Just remember the Dan Rather scandal.

Many blogs are ridiculous and unprofessional, but so are some media columnists I could mention. Now, I have the utmost respect for the skills and experience that good journalism requires and I know that bloggers are not doing journalism in that sense, not to mention that few bloggers have the resources to send correspondents to the hot spots of this world. What bloggers do is commenting and if they have any power at all it is in pointing out obvious mistakes and in bringing up topics that the mainstream media chooses to ignore for all sorts of reasons, some good and many bad.

The other extreme view about blogging argues that blogs are the new democracy and that in the cacophony of all these voices everybody gets to have their say. I don't quite agree with this one, either, because though it is true that anyone can set up a blog with practically no money it is not true that having lots and lots of voices out there increases democracy if nobody hears them. The real impact that blogs have had has come from concerted action via a few large blogs or coalitions of blogs all saying the same thing at the same time.

This is democracy in action in some ways, but it is not the kind of democracy the idealized version of blogs has in mind. It is better than nothing, for sure, but it is not a new powerful voice in the public debate. For that one needs a distribution system like the television stations have or the kind of reader numbers that only a handful of the largest blogs attract.

Which brings me to the study comparing wingnut and liberal blogs. It has some interesting findings:

"The primary finding of the study (or at least the finding I think is the most interesting) is that conservative blogs have a stronger sense of community than liberal blogs -- a quality that I often wish liberals could emulate. Here's what Adamic and Glance found:

"Conservatives link to other conservative blogs at a much higher rate than liberals link to other liberals: .20 links per post compared to .12 links per post.

"Conservative bloggers have a more 'uniform voice' than liberal bloggers, as measured by what they link to. If you count only links to blogs, not media reports, the difference in uniformity is even greater. (However, on another measure, the 'echo chamber' quality of liberal and conservative blogs is about the same.)

"Liberal bloggers tend to link to a fairly small subset of other liberals. Conservatives spread the link love around. The study also found (unsurprisingly) that blogs are primarily a medium based on criticism, not support:

"Notice the overall pattern: Democrats are the ones more often cited by right-leaning bloggers, while Republicans are more often mentioned by left-leaning bloggers. . . . These statistics indicate that our A-list political bloggers, like mainstream journalists (and like most of us) support their positions by criticizing those of the political figures they dislike.

That the wingnuts march in goose-step is not surprising and neither is the emphasis on criticizing the opposition. I am not sure if the tendency of liberal blogs to link to a small group of other blogs is bad or good. On the one hand this serves to make the liberal side of the blogosphere more unified in what is talked about and thus more audible in the public debate. On the other hand it may serve to keep the lefty blogosphere smaller and less bonded.

This study and my post treat all blogs like they were political blogs. Of course most blogs are not political and very little is known right now about the influence of nonpolitical blogs on public opinion and similar things. Will these other blogs serve as competition for magazines and newspapers, too? We will find out in the future.

To be realistic, most blogs have as much influence as I have when I mutter aloud to my snakes at night which is none at all. Which makes me wonder if we bloggers are all crazy. I could use this time making money or shoveling snow or training Hank to be a more obedient dog (no, scratch that one), and the world would go on as it always does.

Maybe it's not a good thing to try to analyze blogging so much. Maybe I analyze everything far too much instead of just enjoying the absurdities of this life.

Saturday Exercise

This website is really fun! You are going to get hooked, I predict. The text is in German, but it's pretty easy to figure out where to click. The idea is to move your mouse left and right (no clicking needed) to keep the drunk from falling over. If you are successful, he will walk in a straight line towards you. The longer he stays upright the better. My record is 78 meters. So far.

The drunk sounds American, by the way.
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Via Lance

Speaking in One Voice

I was reading today about the scattered nature of the progressive resistance in politics. The wingnuts speak in one voice, including the blogs in Wingnuttia, whereas we righteous ones all muse about whatever happens to crop into our minds that day. In other words, we don't march in lock-step (or goose-step, either), which is mostly a good thing and necessary for true democracy. But there are days when it would be useful to coordinate the progressive blogs' messages a little bit more. Today is one of those days (and I'm sleepy), so I'm going to magnify something that Atrios talked about today. Which is Representative Rangel's excellent speech about the dirty tactics that the administration employs in trying to destroy Social Security. Here is Rep. Rangel:

Yesterday, as part of his pitch for privatizing Social Security, President Bush stated that opponents of privatization "say certain people aren't capable of investing...It kind of sounds like to me, you know, a certain race of people living in a certain area." (USA Today)

"It is clear that in their desperation to rescue their privatization plan, the White House has sunk to a new low. How far will they go? The White House strategy seems to be to sow divisions - young and old, men and women, Black and White, North and South - to achieve their political goals. The Republicans figure if they can divide the nation, they can conquer Social Security.

First, Republicans said that they would consider providing African American workers with a different level of benefits based on their race.

That did not go anywhere, so President Bush and his allies claimed that Social Security is a bad deal for African Americans, since African Americans tend to have a shorter life expectancy. But Blacks have a shorter life expectancy because of higher infant and teen mortality - problems that the Bush Administration has cruelly ignored. With its disability and survivor benefits, as well as retirement benefits, Social Security actually is a slightly better deal for African Americans than for the general population.

Now, the White House has changed its tune again and is saying that those of us who oppose privatization are somehow racist. This is totally outrageous. No one is saying that any certain group cannot invest - we are saying that no matter who you are, you need one asset that you can depend on, no matter what. That asset is Social Security. Without it, almost 60 percent of African American seniors would live in poverty as would millions and millions of other older Americans of all races.

The only thing easier than making money on Wall Street is losing money on Wall Street. That may be fine if you have the money, but for the millions of Americans that depend on Social Security for their survival, their independence, and their peace of mind, they can't afford to take the President's gamble.

Divide et impera, anyone? It worked for the Roman Empire, for a time.

From Echidne's Mailbag: On Mattresses

I get lots of nice e-mails from people. I love them! Even the ones which tell me that I have been signed up for the chatgroup called reallybigasses and other similar jokes. Even the prayer group announcements; I like the idea that people are praying for my salvation.

I also get ideas for the blog, and once in a while I'm going to talk about these ideas. One good one is from Psycho Kitty, who alerted me to a new upcoming law that requires all mattresses to be made flame-proof. The intention of this law is to save people from dying in fires, but the problem is that flame-proofing mattresses involves pouring a lot of possibly very harmful chemicals on them and then these chemicals will be in close contact with the sleeper. This is especially bad news for people who suffer from asthma and allergies, but it could be bad for all of us if these chemicals turn out to be carcinogenic, for example.

What is bad about the law is that it is not based on proper studies of the pros and cons of flame-proofing mattresses. Therefore, we don't actually know if the law will cause more deaths than it saves. It also takes away our ability to decide for ourselves which risks we'd rather take.

This is part of a wider human pattern: we tend to put a heavier weight on those disasters that have already happened than those that will happen because of the corrective action we are taking. Just like we find named deaths more upsetting than deaths which happen to some unnamed individuals. But governments aren't supposed to be subject to these psychological quirks. That's why they use expert advice.

Friday Embroidery Blogging

Wall Street 


This is a joke on two things: the idea that spiders created the world and Wall Street. If you click on the picture you can see more details on the spiders. The one in the upper left corner is a female spider, by the way. - I copied the web from one outside my bathroom window but the spiders are imaginary.

The Senate Vote on the Bankruptcy Proposal

The proposed bill has passed the Senate as expected. For reasons why it should not have done so see my post here. Fifty-five Republicans (all of them voting), eighteen Democrats and one Independent all voted for the crummy proposal. Twenty-five Democrats voted against it, including Joe Lieberman who, however, voted for the cloture a few days ago. Which means that he didn't have to vote against the bill itself. Our Joe is trying to eat his torte while saving it, too.

Cash for Parents of Girls

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh parents who have girls will get money from the government:

Families having a single girl child in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh will be given 100,000 rupees ($2,300) in an attempt to boost the female population.

The money will be given to the child when she turns 20 and both parents would have to undergo verified birth control operations.

The state government says it is concerned at the falling female-to-male ratio - in 2001 it was 943 to 1,000.

The rise in sex determination tests to abort female foetuses is also a worry.

The quote is a little confusing because the program appears to combine birth control with the cash program.

Andhra Pradesh is one of those Indian areas where the ability to determine the fetus's sex has led to a dearth of girls. Indian families rely on their sons for old-age security and the tradition of large dowries for brides makes having daughters an expensive proposition. Because some of the reasons why girls are not wanted are financial the idea to combat them with money might work, if the net effect of the program would make sons and daughters equally expensive for parents.

But it makes more sense in the long run to abolish the tradition of dowries and the tradition of sons taking care of their parents. I'm not sure how this could be accomplished without building a welfare state for the whole country. Surely it is the presence of pension schemes and general education for both boys and girls that has made the preference for sons less in the Western countries?

Something probably needs to be done about this problem in both China and India, though, or these countries will have a large number of perpetual bachelors. It would be better if girls were valued for their own sake, of course, and not just as future wives of the extra men.

Today's "Boggles-Your-Mind" Fact

Via Atrios, we learn that certain of our elected representatives are two-faced about porn. On the one hand, they preach against it, but the other hand is receiving contributions from porn providers:

Some of the findings of the report: Kansas Senator Sam Brownback - who
equivocates pornography with crack cocaine - accepted $17,000 from porn
peddlers.

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman - who has long campaigned against the
growing coarseness of our culture -- along with renown gambling addict
William Bennet, handed out "Silver Sewer" awards to those who made immoral
videos, and who has criticized MTV for having porn stars on the air,
accepted over $16,000.

Though this isn't the place for it I want to make three general observations on porn. First, I detest pornography which is based on the torture of living things. All such porn should be banned and its producers should be sentenced to being the victims in their productions forevermore. Second, I am worried about the misogyny in some of the porn that I have seen. People who consume this porn may assume that misogyny is ok. Third, I am concerned about the possibility that young men equate what they see in pornographic productions with sex. Much of what I have seen (which isn't an awful lot, to be honest) is solely geared towards male enjoyment. Consensual sex tends to be more egalitarian in who gets the enjoyment but young men may not learn this from porn. Which would leave their future female partners quite unhappy.

Today's Action Alert

Action of the Day

Last night at Eschaton, Atrios explained that Delegate John Cosgrove (R) from the Virginia legislature was on television criticizing Mora Kuehne, the blogger who alterted America to Cosgrove's plan to make criminals out of women who had miscarriages. Cosgrove ignored an e-mail from Kuehne but then complained that she'd dared to blog about his bill without first running her blog past him.

Contact Cosgrove, who apparently doesn't appreciate having to waste his time responding to, you know, voters and remind him that in a democracy, citizens aren't required to get a politician's permission before they tell other citizens about a bill introduced by the politician. Cosgrove represents Chesaeake, Virginia, where the zip code is 23328.

John Cosgrove: Del_Cosgrove@house.state.va.us

(800) 889-0229 or (804) 698-1078 (phone)

(804) 786-6310 (fax)

You might also want to check out Kuehne's blog at: democracyforvirginia.typepad.com

Thanks for taking today's action!

Silly, Silly

I haven't had one of these for a long time. This site will make you feel better. Or totally annoyed. Either way, it's something to do...
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Thanks to phmnst for the link.

This Bankruptcy Proposal

Why do we need to change the federal laws* that cover bankruptcy? There are two theories about this: The first one says that Americans are addicted to their credit cards and other forms of reckless spending and that the current bankruptcy regulations allow all the crazy spenders to avoid paying for their feast. Instead, the extra costs are rolled into higher interest rates which are then paid by us prudent citizens. The second one says that while there may be some truth in the first theory, the real reason for the new proposal is that it will benefit the banks and credit card companies which have long fought (and paid) for just such a law. Finally they have the votes to get it through. The new proposal lets the lenders continue their practise of offering credit to people who shouldn't be offered any at the terms used but in a change from the past the debts thus incurred could not be skipped through bankruptcy by most debtors.

It is true that Americans are pretty indebted. The average household carries eight thousand dollars in credit card debt and a suprising number only pays the minimum allowable charges on their cards. One point four million couples or individuals declared personal bankruptcy last year, though at least some of them probably acted in anticipation of the changes now underway. Women and men appear about equally affected by bankruptcy.

It looks like the first theory is the correct one, doesn't it? Moral bankruptcy, some might even mutter. Time indeed to put a stop to all this frivolous consumption, and our caring government is doing just that.

But then we hear that a recent Harvard study which looked at data from five states in 2001 found the most common reason for bankruptcy filings to be serious medical problems. Other common reasons for bankruptcy were the loss of a job or a divorce. Suddenly our picture of the indebted changes from the frivolous shopper to something sadder and more serious. Maybe even something that could look a little bit like ourselves, especially when we learn that three quarters of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. This could happen to me, we might whisper.

Let's not get too carried away. Some of the bankruptcies must be frivolous and it could be a good idea to rein those in. And the proposed bill applies a means test which exempts people with lower than median incomes in their state from the harsher requirements. Only those who can afford to pay something back will be expected to do so. Isn't personal responsibility a good idea for everyone? Why should some of us spend and spend when others work hard and save for the things they need?

Why indeed? But what about those who file bankruptcy because of high medical expenses? Surely the proposal will allow them some extra slack? Actually, no. An amendment proposing a homestead exemption of $150,000 in home equity for this group was defeated by the Republicans in the Senate. So was an amendment asking for extra consideration for those in the military who had to file bankruptcy because their military service caused their private businesses to fail, an amendment asking for extra consideration for those who file bankruptcy because of identity theft and an amendment asking for a homestead exemption for the elderly. All defeated by pretty much every single Republican in the Senate.

Because being prudent is the right thing to be. Personal responsibility is good for all of us. Except for the very rich: Another amendment which the Republicans also defeated would have gotten rid of the loopholes which allow for "asset protection trusts" in several states. Such trusts are expensive to create, so only available for the wealthy, but they will let you have a homestead exemption in a bankruptcy for your manor house or two.

The Republicans were not totally alone in rejecting all these amendments. Some Democrats also helped in this noble endeavor to get frivolous spending in this country under better control. But they all had trouble when it came to controlling the other side of the equation: the behavior of the lending institutions: An amendment proposing a ban on usury was resoundingly defeated. Now the credit card companies are free to charge interest rates of over thirty percent for certain kinds of debt. Usury, by the way, is explicitly banned in the Bible but this didn't make the Republican fundamentalist Senators change their vote.** Weighty moral matters, these credit concerns, when fundamentalists go against their Bible. The Senate also rejected an amendment which would have required credit card statements to show how long it would take to pay the debt back just with minimum payments and what the total interest payments would be. Such information is not necessary, the Republicans decided.

The evidence seems to be mounting for the second of the two theories: that credit card companies and banks have paid for this bill for several years and now expect delivery of the product, and studying the donation patterns of these companies lends more support for this argument. But the bill also fits into a wider pattern, one that Paul Krugman discussed in his recent column on the bankruptcy bill: "the "risk privatization", a steady erosion of the protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity."

Check for yourself: Lifelong employment? Gone. Employer-provided health insurance? Going. Unemployment benefits? Shortening. Length of average unemployment? Increasing.

Add to that these recent attacks against bankruptcy protection and Social Security, and the picture becomes clear. And ugly, especially for the middle classes who can no longer rely on staying middle class.
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*You can get a summary of the proposals here. (Warning: very boringly written)

For a good summary of the criticisms, see Talking Points Memo and especially posts by Elizabeth Warren, one of the researchers of the bankruptcy study mentioned in my post.

**In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion...I will surely strike my hands together at the unjust gain you have made and at the blood you have shed in your midst.
Ezekiel 22:12-13

This Topsy-Turvy World

A new survey tells us what Americans would like to see the federal government spend its money on:

The American people would like to significantly change next year's federal budget, reversing key proposals by the administration of President George W. Bush, according to a new poll.
Given the chance to look at and make changes to the major areas of Bush's proposed discretionary budget for fiscal year 2006, which begins on Oct. 1, 2005, around two-thirds redirected money to reduce the budget deficit, said the poll released Monday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

''The American public as a whole takes a fairly coherent position. They favor redirecting a portion of defense spending to deficit reduction and social spending and look for savings by cutting spending on large-scale Cold War style capabilities,'' said PIPA director Steven Kull.

Republican and Democratic poll participants alike would take the budget axe to spending on defense and on Iraq and Afghanistan, plowing more funds into education, job training, veterans, and reducing U.S. reliance on oil, the poll found.

The changes they would make would amount to a major redirecting of U.S. foreign and defense policy and reverse key social spending cuts proposed in the Bush administration's budget.

Through The Looking Glass? Didn't we just have Americans vote in this administration? What did they think Bush would do with another four years? You know, I'm beginning to think that a stolen election is as likely an explanation as any other I can think of. Unless I have gone completely crazy. I better reread my Lewis Carroll. This current logic looks like something right up his alley.
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Via watertiger on Eschaton threads.

Joseph Biden's Vote on the Bankruptcy Bill

Biden voted with the wingnuts. Guess why? Could it be because his major political contributor is a credit card company? Priceless.

The GOP Abuse of Power

This is a new report(a pdf file) by Nancy Pelosi and others. Representative Louise Slaughter of New York said this at a press conference today:

"What people learn in school about how a bill becomes a law isn't true anymore in Washington. Now, the Republicans have their lobbyists writing legislation in back rooms and the American people are shut out of the process. If the American people knew what the Republicans have done to the people's House, they would be outraged."

"This Republican leadership only convenes Congress two days a week on average, and they spend a good day and half each week renaming post offices and honoring foreign dignitaries. The business of the people is not being debated, it is not being considered and it is not getting done."

"The way the majority runs the House is a moral decision, it reflects the values of our Democracy, and it directly affects people's lives. The American values of integrity and decency are under attack by the Republicans in this body. They have corrupted the legislative process and have diminished this institution."

I suspect that the process described in school books was never exactly followed, but it is probably true that a one-party state will not even bother to pretend to follow such outdated ideas. What Slaughter is saying is that we indeed have the best democracy money can buy, and that those who paid for it are now deciding what will happen.

Hence the Social Security destruction campaign and the proposal to revamp the bankruptcy bill. They benefit the corporations. - I still blame those who voted for the wingnuts.

Meanwhile, in Kuwait

Women still can't vote:

Several hundred Kuwaiti women demanded support for women's rights outside Kuwait's parliament while the all-male assembly was considering a new law that would grant women the right to vote. Last May, Kuwait's cabinet approved a law granting women political rights, reports BBC News.

According to Reuters, Kuwaiti newspapers are reporting that Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah threatened to dissolve parliament if it did not approve the bill, saying "We have big hopes the female suffrage draft bill will be approved." However, Islamist groups in the assembly have stated that they will thwart the law, as they had done to similar measures over the past few years.

Kuwaiti women's rights activists have been fighting for the right to vote for over 40 years. Currently, women are not allowed to vote or be elected in only two countries, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Kuwaiti women got the vote to celebrate this year's International Women's Day?

Bankruptcy Day

I'm late with this topic because I started studying it late (thanks to Kathy Geier for getting me off my butt at all), and the Senate is voting on the new bankruptcy bill proposal today. If you possibly can, please call your elected representatives and tell them not to vote for the bill. You can go to Eschaton for information on numbers to call.

The reasons why this proposal is terrible is this: Its proponents argue that it will reduce "frivolous" bankruptcies, but they make no real effort to decide which bankruptcies are nonfrivolous. Thus, if the reason for your financial difficulties is in large medical expenses or in having been in military service you will lose everything in this proposal, but if you were wealthy enough to begin with to start a trust you will not.

Also, the proposal doesn't put the blame on "frivolous" bankruptcies on those who lure people into taking on debt which they shouldn't. The credit card industry offers cards to my dogs Hank and Henrietta! They offer cards to freshmen in colleges. They would probably offer cards to the Debtors Anonymous if they could find them.

This is not my proper post on the topic, just a request that you contact your Senators and tell them not to support this bill. It needs public debate which it has not received.
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Too late for today's vote, sorry.

Today's Action Alert

Today's Action comes from Greenpeace. Go to the Greenpeace's " target="_blank" ;website and send an e-mail to your mayor asking her or him to join Mayors for Peace and make your town a nuclear non-proliferation zone.

**************

Until we can rid the world of nuclear weapons nation by nation, we'll start town by town. That's the strategy behind the Mayors for Peace project - an international effort which began with the mayor of one city, Hiroshima, Japan, who in 1982 said "never again" to the suffering his own town endured.

Today, more than 700 mayors from 119 countries have joined Mayors for Peace.

These mayors know that the end of the cold war didn't mean the end of the nuclear threat. The world is still bristling with nearly 36,000 nuclear weapons. The US and Russia have in excess of 10,000 each. The pressure on smaller states to develop a nuclear capability to defend themselves is higher than ever, and for violent extremists of every ilk, a nuclear weapon is the ultimate prize.

The nuclear threat has quite literally scaled down in the last two decades. While the prospect of an all out exchange of arsenals between the Soviet Union and the US has receded, the 15 kilotons of destruction that obliterated Hiroshima could today be accomplished with a lunch-box sized bomb. George Bush talks openly of developing new "more useable" nuclear weapons. Even more alarmingly, this years US nuclear weapons budget talks of spending 100 million US dollars over the next 5 years on designing more robust, more 'usable' nuclear weapons.

The prospects of a nuclear weapon actually being used are perhaps greater today than during the cold war, when the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction provided an effective, if surreally sinister, deterrent.

The only thing that will stop the threat is the voice of the second superpower: world opinion.
"In any war, it is cities and the people living in them that suffer. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki attest, this suffering becomes total destruction when nuclear weapons are involved. To protect their citizens' lives, it is incumbent on all mayors to make every effort to prevent war and eliminate nuclear weapons." Mayor Akiba, current Mayor of Hiroshima, Japan
"What we need now is for individuals and communities to mobilise and help put nuclear disarmament back on the political agenda" Nicky Davies, Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner for Greenpeace, "the pressure has to come up from the streets. Abolishing nuclear weapons is not a pipe dream - it's a sensible step toward self-preservation".

In May, 2005, an international meeting will review the cornerstone treaty for nuclear disarmament, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "To add a community voice to this meeting, we are asking every Mayor to sign the statement supporting nuclear disarmament. We're asking our supporters worldwide to ask their mayors to sign. And we're asking them to ask their friends to ask their mayors to sign".

When nations signed the NPT, they signed up to a two-way deal. Non-nuclear states wouldn't seek nuclear weapons, and under Article 6, those who already had them agreed to get rid of them.

Mayors for Peace are simply urging nuclear weapon states to do what they promised. Until they do so, new countries will continue to pursue their own nuclear weapon programs; and the non-proliferation regime, along with the treaty that created it, will simply collapse.

*************************************

Global Warming in Wingnuttia

Some there have seen the light, joined the angels or drank the reality brew (water?). Or at least James Baker seems to acknowledge that Mother Earth is in some trouble:

"It may surprise you a little bit, but maybe it's because I'm a hunter and a fisherman, but I think we need to a pay a little more attention to what we need to do to protect our environment," he told the Houston Forum Club.

"When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen," Baker said.

James, too little, too late, I fear. Humans still appear to act as if we alone can decide the outcome. Despite evidence to the contrary. The tsunamis, for example. If Mother Earth decides to turn over in Her sleep we will all be pancakes. And given the way we have been annoying Her the last hundred years, She very well might turn over.

The Fox and the Chicken Coop

The new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and the United Nations. Nothing new with this plot, the wingnuts have been doing this for quite a few decades. If something doesn't please them in the laws of the United States they assign someone who hates those laws as their enforcer. This has been going on with civil rights enforcement for quite a while, and if you look at the health care field you see the same phenomenom.

But David Corn still finds reserves for being outraged about this:

If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation.

Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United Nations. He once said, "If the UN secretary building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."

Nothing new in any of this, except perhaps that we are now quite openly making faces at the rest of the world. Well, that's not news, either. I wish I could feel more upset about this, because it would show that things aren't as bad as they are.

Ssssleeep!

It's my new hobby. I tested the maximum length of sleep this weekend, the dogs being elsewhere, and it turns out that I can sleep about thirty-six hours without interruption! Why doesn't this administration sleep more? It would be good for world peace.

But my sleep leaves the lefty ramparts less protected so I finally got up and combed my tresses and rinsed my eyes and here I am! Ready to blog on everything under the sun and more.

Right now I want to talk about sleeping, though. Some call it the small death because when we sleep we don't exist in the usual sense of the word, but others view sleep as the time when we leave our bodies and go gallivanting in the Spirit Realm. Dreams, from this angle, would then be the messages we receive from the spirits. Which makes me wonder why the messages I receive are largely about building houses, being late for classes and angry ex-boyfriends. Why can't I get something about how to get the wingnuts out of power, for example? Am I not good enough for such messages?

Once I dreamt about being a dog, and it was wonderful! I was running across a flowering meadow with a pack of other dogs, my four legs moving, moving, and the whole pack rejoicing in the act of running. We could see the stream towards which we ran and we knew that we would get there, all together.

I have no idea if I somehow swopped dreams with my then-dog, Fang. If so, what did Fang dream about? Being late for classes or ex-boyfriends complaining about being dropped? And what did all that mean to Fang? Maybe the spirits were having a little bit of fun at our expense?

What do you dream about?

What is Bill Moyers Doing These Days?

He is supposed to have retired. Instead, he's trying to save the world, single-handedly:

I read the news and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency plotted to spend $9 million—$2 million of it from the President's friends at the American Chemistry Council—to pay poor families to continue the use of pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry concocted a scheme to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read that President Bush has more than one hundred high-level officials in his administration overseeing industries they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers, or corporate advocates—company insiders waved through the revolving door of government to assure that drug laws, food policies, land use, and the regulation of air pollu-tion are industry-friendly. Among the "advocates-turned-regulators" are a former meat industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a former drug company lobbyist who influences prescription drug policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while accepting payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps to determine how much of our public lands those former clients can use for oil and gas drilling.

I read that civil penalties imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency against polluters in 2004 hit an fifteen-year low, in what amounts to an extended holiday for industry from effective compliance with environmental laws.

I read that the administration's allies at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon-Mobil and others of like mind and interest, have issued a report describing global warming as "a myth" at practically the same time the President, who earlier rejected the international treaty outlining limits on greenhouse gases, wants to prevent any "written or oral report" from being issued by any international meetings on the issue.

I read not only the news but the fine print of a recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with ob-scure amendments removing all endangered species protections from pesticides, prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon, waiving environmental review for grazing permits on public lands, and weakening protection against development for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer —pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age twelve; Thomas, ten; Nancy, eight; Jassie, three; SaraJane, one. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then the shiver runs down my spine and I am seized by the realization: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

Why don't we feel the world enough to save it—for our kin to come?

The news is not good these days. But as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. The will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. We must match the science of human health to what the ancient Israelites called hochma—the science of the heart, the capacity to see and feel and then to act as if the future depended on us.

Believe me, it does.

Don't let him toil alone. At least read his plea.

Santorum's Minimum Wage Proposal

Rick Santorum may qualify as an Evil Man in my books. His newest proposal is one aimed at destroying any possible increase in the federal minimum wage:

Under a plan proposed by Rick Santorum, the minimum wage would go up in two bumps over 18 months, ultimately reaching $6.25 an hour. That's a dollar an hour less than the Kennedy plan -- we're quick with math here -- but that's not the worst of it. Santorum's plan would also exempt from the minimum wage, and a whole host of other federal labor laws, any employer with revenues under $1 million; allow some employers to offset minimum wage salaries with tips workers receive; and rob many workers of overtime pay by instituting federal "flex-time" rules. Thus, workers would receive a smaller increase under Santorum's plan, fewer of them would be protected by the federal minimum wage laws at all, and whatever gains some workers made through a minimum wage increase would be lost to offsets from tips or cutbacks in their overtime pay.

There is something deeply distasteful in a rich man's plans for destroying any pay increases for the really poor. To make it less distasteful, let's start paying the politicians with tips! Only those that do what we like get money from now on, and we send it in as tips which can then be used to reduce their regular wages.

The wingnuts don't like minimum wages, despite the Bible being very strong on the need to take care of the poor and on ethical behavior in business. This is one of those bipolar aspects of the wingnut values that I never understand. It has something to do with the idea that any two people should be allowed to enter a contract freely on anything whatsoever, and that no third person should interfere. Except in the bedroom, of course.

But in reality when an individual makes a contract with McDonald's, say, there is not much evenness or fairness to begin with, and the consequences for the two are entirely different. The wingnuts pretend that a server in a restaurant is as powerful as the IBM or any other large firm, and that the two have equal opportunities if the contract doesn't please them.

This is all rubbish, of course. The minimum wage is needed for many reasons that have to do with ethics and justice, but it is also needed as a counterforce against the oligopolistic nature of most labor markets. These markets are not the kinds of free markets that the wingnuts dream about, with very few exceptions.

As the article I link to points out, the Santorum proposal will not win because no proposal to raise the minimum wage will pass in this wingnut Congress. Such proposals would eat into the profits of those who are buying the current democracy we have.

A Reminder

I blog on the American Street on Saturdays, too, and I need to remember to advertize it here. Besides, the American Street has loads of wonderful bloggers that you should read. All sorts of famous names. One day they will all be listed in history files on the Early Blogging Period of human development, so if you read them today you will be part of history!

I am about three quarters recovered from the flu. The one quarter that is missing is the quarter that works and does laundry and researches blogging topics. Which serves as an apology for any gaps you may notice in my prep work.

Being ill is good for reading, though. I have recently finished the wingnut bible by Frank Luntz, George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead and Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Also a book about fear in politics and a couple of evo-psycho books.

Truss's book about correct English left me all ashamed as I make the grammar up on the run. I don't even know how to spell in English and I pick between the U.S. and the British usage based on whatever I like better. Sometimes I suspect I make up words, too. I justify all this by not being a native speaker. Of anything, actually.

This Ward Churchill Business

I probably shouldn't write on this one yet as I have not had time to study the whole issue in detail, but then the issue is so complex that it would take a very long time to study it sufficiently, and by then the talk would be about something else. So I will just jump in.

Ward Churchill is a University of Colorado professor who compared the 9/11 victims to Nazis in an essay, or specifically:

Churchill's essay, which likened "technocrats" killed in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, attracted little attention until January when he was invited to speak at a college in upstate New York. The college and a handful of other schools canceled Churchill's appearances, citing security concerns.

Churchill says he wrote the essay after television networks characterized the attacks as senseless. He contends they were the logical result of repressive U.S. Policies.

Many people want Churchill's head on a platter and if that can't be arranged at least his immediate firing. The University of Colorado president is now saying that Churchill won't be fired if all that he's guilty of is inflammatory comments.

The deeper issues in all this are the meaning of academic freedom of speech and the wingnuts' view of universities as the last bastions of liberalism. Which they want to destroy, of course.

This creates some odd ideological combinations: Imagine extreme conservatives being all for affirmative action in academia. Imagine the kind of people who fight university speech codes now fighting against the freedom of expression. This shows that the words are just words, clad up in whatever way serves the Cause, and the Cause is to get wingnuts in the saddle everywhere.

Here is one example of the wingnut view on academia:

The debate stimulated by the Churchill affair has escalated into a long overdue exploration into the politics and processes of higher education. The sacred cow of tenure is under review, along with the limits of academic freedom and the shameful lack of ideological balance within college faculties. It's like peeling off the outer layers of an artichoke to get to the heart of the issue.

And this is it: 1) Ideology and politics. As Rorty proudly proclaims, the Left has taken over academe. We want it back. 2) Accountability. Self-important academics believe themselves to be beyond reproach, sitting as philosopher-kings, dispensing their wisdom to the ignorant masses. Nonsense. They're ordinary people, government employees dependent on their customers and the taxpayers for their income, and ultimately accountable to their bosses and the citizens who elect the Board of Regents. Academic freedom is not absolute.

There is a valid reason for the academic freedom of speech and the institution of tenure. They were created to guarantee the professors a work environment in which new ideas could be studied independently of societal and political pressures. If a researcher could be easily fired or disciplined based on what she or he writes then all research and teaching would be affected by this fear of consequences.

But of course neither the freedom of speech nor tenure are absolute rights, and they both have their disadvantages. How far we should go in modifying them, if we should modify them at all, is not clear. And the wingnuts' desire to bring what they call "ideological balance" into universities by hiring more wingnut professors is problematic because it would require affirmative action which wingnuts oppose with their very essence, and this affirmative action might have to force some wingnuts to become academics. There is a good reason why the academia is more liberal than the society on average, and why the business world is more conservative: money has a different role in determining the choices of individuals with different values. In any case, I think that universities are not dens of lefty iniquity. The vast majority of professors teach the course material and the students never know exactly how they vote if they do. But of course one can always find a Ward Churchill or someone similar from the other side of the political fence.

What Serves as News These Days on CNN

That Martha Stewart has been released from prison is news and so is a chimpanzee attacking a man. These are, like, major news items on CNN. Here is a snippet of the story on Marth Stewart (via daily Kos):

BLITZER: Back again now with more on Martha Stewart. Our guests, CNN's Mary Snow and Allan Chernoff. They're standing by live in Bedford, New York. That's outside the Stewart estate. And joining us from Manhattan, Dennis Kneale of "Forbes" magazine and Keith Naughton of "Newsweek" magazine there at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.

Let me start with you, Keith. The statement she released on the web, her prison experience, she said, was life-altering and life- affirming. Is there any indication she's going to become an activist for women's rights in prison?

NAUGHTON: That's what a lot of prison reform advocates would like. You know, she put out that letter while she was still in prison, imploring America to consider these 1,200 women she's incarcerated with, and in fact, all women who are in prison and look at sentences and look at the need for rehabilitation. So there's the hope that she steps forward as a prison reform advocate. But that's a delicate balance, too. You know, you also need the ability to show that you're moving on and that there is a new, reformed Martha, as well. So if she becomes too much of a prison reform advocate, that could, you know, sort of stick her in the past.

BLITZER: Do you agree with that, Dennis? Dennis Kneale of "Forbes" magazine. That it's a two-edged sword, if she starts becoming an activist for women's rights in prison?

KNEALE: I really think there's a big downside there...

Silly me, I thought that it would be good if Martha started thinking more about other people, especially those whose lives haven't gone very well. But that seems to be a big downside to something. I wonder what it might be? Could it, could it possibly be the commercialization of Martha Stewart's prison escapade and the juiciness of chewing over her character faults?

Friday Embroidery Blogging

Flying... 


This is not an embroidery, strictly speaking, but a reverse applique. With glitter. And I forgot to say that the shapes are snakes, of course.

Today's Bible Quote

This will not become a habit, but I thought that you might enjoy this one:

Malachi 2:1-4: And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If you will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, ... behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.

From Walter Neff on the Eschaton threads.