Merry Christmas

If you celebrate it. Merry whatever you celebrate otherwise. The bird picture is by 1WattHermit. Thank you for making my life more interesting, dear readers.

A white Christmas in Texas (by Suzie)

This is my grand-nephew in Denton, Texas, which was experiencing near-blizzard conditions when I wrote this on Christmas Eve.

Friday critter blogging (by Suzie)

Here are more photos from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, including another mother-and-child statue, more orchids and a look straight up what I think is a strangler fig.

Ferruccio Busoni

Nuit De Noel

Alexander Bildau Piano

Revisiting Misogyny

Not that I especially want to and not that it wouldn't be one of the main topics of this blog. But it might be worthwhile to put a few posts together on this topic, from my older ones. (Did I really write better three years ago? So sad.) I once wrote a book review on this topic but Blogger archives don't go that far. Instead of that piece, I found these two which might be of interest to you:

First, this post goes off on all types of tangents on the bitter fruits of misogyny. Second, this post talks a little about the attractions of fundamentalism of all types for women in a misogynistic culture. It's as if those strict tenets might somehow offer you a safe cage rather than the alternative of flying around above the arrows. Of course those safe cages are not safe.
--------
Posted earlier.

The Ideal Women

This French video is interesting in terms of the history of what has been viewed as beautiful in European women across the ages. Note that large breasts really are not one of those things, whatever evo-psychos say, but more of a cultural thing.



----
Posted earlier.

Some Beauty

Eva Cassidy's voice in Time After Time.





----
Posted earlier.

The People Don’t Know The Truth So It Can’t Make Them Free by Anthony McCarthy

The health care bill’s attractive features are too few and those too weak to be able to be happy about its almost certain passage. The horrible parts are strong and really awful. We are beyond the point of killing the generally worse Senate bill, it will pass tomorrow. What comes out of reconciliation might be less awful, that’s about the best that can be said about it. Women, especially, have every right to be enraged that two right-wing, rural legislators were able to destroy decades of hard work and progress, we all have every reason to despise Stupak and Nelson as well as the other legislators in both bodies who promoted their attempts at poison pills. We have even more reason to despise the Republicans in both bodies, a mere handful of Republicans could have made the Blue Dogs into a non-issue. The lie of Republican moderation should die with the votes of Snowe and Collins, both of whom are better than Foxx and Bachmann only in that they are more discreet when they talk. The Republican Party is the force that destroys any chance that the corporations will not win in the end. That is a fact that the best Democrats, Senator Sanders or any proposed third party of the future would have to face. They are, to a person, opposed to the common good when it could hinder the profits of the elite.

Whatever is signed into law will represent the new field in which we fight on. This is what always happens. The highly imperfect, frequently inadequate and always mixed results of our corrupt federal system are what we live with.

Tomorrow will get here and we will have to plan for it. That is what we need to do instead of looking back. In listening to the endless discussions on the radio and TV about the progress of health care legislation this year, it came to me that not a single guest or anchor or host was without insurance. All those smooth, dispassionate voices were coming out of the fully covered. Those comfortable people are also disproportionately represented in blog discussions, though there are also a lot of us who know the issue first hand through our own experience. Just as the inadequate number of women in the House and Senate and on courts result in the experiences of women being ignored and discounted, the even greater absence of the currently poor in positions of power means that even their most desperate needs are eclipsed. The poor and the desperate need practical relief, not theory, they need it now and not in some imaginary future. Looking back in anger and pursuing impractical and losing fantasies are a luxury for those who are comfortable.

America’s political system is the major hurdle to progress. It was begun and has developed with corrupt, anti-democratic features embedded in it that those can’t be overcome by even the most popular and beneficial proposals. A real public option has been favored by a higher percentage of people than any president has ever won an election with. Olympia Snowe at one point said it would never have her vote because it would be too popular and would destroy the for profit system. I am certain she was right about that. It is why Lieberman and his fellow corporate tools had to kill it. Once The People found out that they’d been lied to and cheated for decades they would have opted to destroy the pirates that have been robbing and killing us all along.

The killing of the public option was just one more proof that the Senate is always going to keep us from government insuring the common good, its finest moments are so far between that they don’t make up for the malignant role it plays in our country. The 60 vote requirement, clearly in conflict with the Constitution, doesn’t seem to apply much to the majority of corporate representatives who sit in the Senate, it only applies to the minority who sometimes manage to represent The People. We must agitate to force the Senate to give it up if they can’t make it work on our behalf.

The Supreme Court is the worst offender, however, the manger in which the anti-Christ of the corporate person was born and which has nurtured it. The rulings that have created that monster and which has fed and given it real rights that can overcome even the majority of The People are the greatest evil that has a stranglehold over us. We have to do everything we can to expose the too little known abomination for what it is, make its destruction an issue in elections and Supreme Court nominations. Its manifestation in Buckley vs. Veleo is among the clearest hits that The Peoples’ right to self government has ever taken, the coming ruling on election finance will almost certainly make it worse.

The media which has become the opposite of what is required for democracy and which is almost uniformly a machine to misinform and lie to The People has to be split up and forced to fulfill its ONLY important function. You can’t be free if you don’t know the truth. You can’t be free if an effective majority of voters are spoon fed lies. Just turning the lie machine off so you can stew in a deceptively peaceful silence is a concept that refuses to face this most obvious truth.

The absurdity of libertarianism, that somehow an ignorant mass who are free to follow their transient desires, that the certain infringements of the rights of others by those free spirits can somehow be worked out by law suits, and the rest of that fantasy is a danger to democracy. People on the left who harbor that notion are deluded to the point of superstition. There is no reason in 2009 for anyone to not realize that.

Self government isn’t diverting or fun or stylish. It’s serious work, it always will be, that’s the nature of it. It is the nature of life that many of the most important features of the common good are downright tedious and boring. That used to be something that those achieving adulthood understood and took for granted. It took mass entertainment to create the loony lotus land that we inhabit. That’s what we have to fight against, ultimately. The People don’t know the truth and so the truth can’t make them free. The radio and TV, movies, video, I doubt when those have no higher purpose than to maximize profit that they are anything but killers of democracy. They destroy serious thought, they destroy the willingness to give up frivolous desires in order to give the necessities of life to those who need them. And that is when they don’t produce violence, paranoia, genocide and murder.

It comes down to The People as informed moral agents able to govern themselves or the conscious, planned, scientifically informed reduction of us into masses, manipulated, duped, controlled resources for the elite. I’m not optimistic, not after seeing what even the horrors of the Bush II regime has led to. If that slap in our face hasn’t woken up the left to give up its old slogans and fantasies, maybe it won’t get better.

But giving up is a luxury for those who are comfortable and the otiose who wallow in delusion. The work being harder is only more proof that it is necessary to try.

Reviewing the Gender Gap in Earnings

Because there will be a test later on. Well, no, but I get exasperated when people employ false arguments to explain the reasons why women earn less than men. I wrote a series of posts on this topic a few years ago, and though some of the data may be a little old now all the basic principles and the major findings apply. Here are the posts:

Part 1. The theories on why women earn less than men, on average.

Part 2. Empirical evidence, what it tells us and what it does not tell us.

Part 3. How to talk to wingnuts on this topic if you must (channeling Ann Coulter)
-----
Posted earlier.

Season's Greetings

I'm going to be on the road for about four days. I have scheduled several posts, some re-runs and some new ones, and my co-bloggers may (if they so wish) post something, too. Drive with care and eat lots of chocolate or something else equally wonderful.

Bubble-Gum Anti-Feminism

I sit here twirling my hair and chewing gum and come across this story:

Do successful women have trouble dating?

By Amanda May
Is it true that guys avoid powerful gals because their egos can't handle it? Relationship experts and real men weigh in.

Roundtable participants

* Diane Mapes, author, How to Date in a Post-Dating World
* Steve Nakamoto, author, Men Are Like Fish: What Every Woman Needs to Know about Catching a Man
* Andy, 30, entrepreneur
* Craig, 33, recruiter
* Alex, 25, lawyer

Q: There's been a lot of talk lately that successful, career-oriented women have trouble creating lasting relationships because men feel intimidated. Do you think that is true?

Steve Nakamoto: The traditional male role is to be the provider and protector. If a guy loses that, he may feel like he's losing his pride. Many men feel like their identity is wrapped up in what they do and how much they earn. It's an external validation of their success, and a woman who is more successful than they are may threaten how they view themselves.

Craig: Many men do get intimidated by a woman who earns more or is more successful. They're told that they're supposed to be the breadwinners. I think it's going to take awhile for society to get used to the fact that with more women working, traditional gender roles don't necessarily apply.

Andy: Of course it depends on the man, but to feel financially superfluous is emasculating. No one wants to be reminded that he's a failure, and I can definitely see that putting additional pressure on a relationship.

Pardon me while I finish pulling out all my head hair. The story goes on in the same vein, with the general idea that women are at fault here for being too emasculating, that it is women who must change somehow and that all this is Just. The. Way. Things. Are.

Nobody suggests that men should change. Only women. And the reason has to do with the definition of masculinity which, once again, is defined by what women are allowed to do. It's sooooo boringly depressing. (chews gum)

(Swallows gum.) Nobody draws any wider conclusions, either, though that's probably because the article is the equivalent of chewing gum. But it might just be worth pointing out that if all men felt this way the gender gap in wages could never disappear, ambitious women who want male partners would be permanently discouraged from actually succeeding and any married woman would take a humongous risk of ending up pretty poor after divorce, say.

Gah. Note that the story doesn't use any actual data on the question it tries to answer. And count the number of comments from the one woman interviewed in the story.

Not Under The Bus

It's always worth fighting for benefits as the post below shows. Women tend not to do that as a group. It's time we did. Here's one site which can get us there on health care.

Cosmetic Surgery And Tanning Salons

Remember the proposed five percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery to cover some of the costs of health care reform? It has disappeared. Instead, there will be an extra ten percent tax on tanning salons. The initial plan to tax cosmetic surgery smelled to me like a "sin tax": a tax levied on something that is regarded as morally reprehensible or dangerous. Alcohol and tobacco taxes are common examples of sin taxes.

Why did this plan change? Because cosmetic surgery is an income source for many physicians and a tax on it would have reduced demand and hence the physicians' revenues. The American Medical Association doesn't want to see its members suffer. It is, after all, a trade union though seldom viewed as one:

The American Medical Association announced its coveted endorsement yesterday after a series of changes. Among them: eliminating a 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery procedures, replacing it with a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services; eliminating payment cuts to specialty and other physicians that were to be used to pay for bonuses to primary-care physicians and general surgeons in underserved areas; and dropping a proposed $300 fee on physicians who participate in Medicare that was to be used to fight fraud in the program.

All this changes who ultimately will pay for the reform, by the way. Whoever has enough power will push the payments onto someone else.

What's even more fascinating is the feminist debate that ensued when the cosmetic surgery tax was first proposed.

It's largely women who have elective cosmetic surgery and one might argue that the pressure to have it rises with age, because of age discrimination in the labor market. Now add to that the idea that women should be paying extra for health care for all (while not getting medically required abortions covered themselves). That's just plain wrong. This is the approach the president of NOW took recently.

But one can equally well argue that women who have elective cosmetic surgery raise the bar for all women, making such surgery a requirement for keeping or getting a job in later life, and that getting elective surgery means succumbing to the pressures of popular culture and its biased molds into which all women are squashed.

For an example of how this works, just think of how the image of ideal breasts has begun to resemble a pair of barely tethered helium balloons because of breast enhancement surgery. The more women have such surgery the more likely it is that the artificially enhanced breasts are viewed as the proper ones, and any woman not having surgery as the weird one. Note that I'm not blaming the women who have such surgery. The roots of this phenomenon are in pornography and its spillover effect into celebrity culture and from there into popular culture.

The change of plans made this debate an academic one. On the other hand, it's probably true that tanning salons have more female than male customers, too?

Today's Good News

From Think Progress, about the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010:

Within the Appropriations Act is Sen. Al Franken's (D-MN) amendment prohibiting defense contractors from restricting their employees' abilities to take workplace discrimination, battery, and sexual assault cases to court. The measure was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. Many Republicans opposed the legislation — saying it was an unnecessary attack on their allies in the defense contracting business — and faced intense political blowback over their positions

I wrote several posts on Jamie Leigh Jones, and I'm so glad to see that her work on this topic has borne fruit. Because of her decision to fight her lack of access to courts other people in the same situation will have that access.

Deep Thoughts on Combatting Global Warming

These thoughts are deep only in the sense that I'm digging deep into the layers of the onion that has created the problem, going to almost the very middle, right outside the heart which is about fear and mineminemine! The next layer just beyond that, the one that causes all the problems we see now, has to do with the way most countries elect their political leaders. It also applies to any dictators who force themselves into power.

Those people are there to compete, to fight other people for a bigger piece of the cake. They are NOT there to grow the cake and they are NOT there because they are so eminently suited for cooperating with others on the global level.

I believe that it is essentially impossible for something like the Copenhagen talks to bring real results because every person there was trying to see how others could be forced to do something and not that person's constituency and the central question was always "what is in it for me?" Politicians are not rewarded for saving the earth. They are rewarded for saving their own country's employment or military powers and so on. And that is the fault of the system we use to bring people into power and the incentives we give them. Just cast your mind back to the recent presidential elections in this country: We all cheered when our guy seemed to be kicking butt. Butt-kicking global warming does not work.

Imagine someone like Ben Nelson making laws about global warming. He'd want special climate protection just for Nebraska! That's pretty much what he got as payment for letting the one-legged HCR limp on. But a person who thinks like that will NEVER combat global warming, never.

Then look at the way the U.S. lobbyist system works. Mother Nature does not have a lobbyist and neither do the citizens of this earth in general.

I can hear some of you mutter that all this is human nature, and it is. But if this is all there is to human nature we, my friend, are going to be fried fish. Or someone will be. Because nothing won't be done about global warming until a large number of people dies suddenly, dramatically and clearly in a way linked to climate change. Then we get a lot of yelling and blaming and some last-minute attempts which probably will not work.

Luckily, I don't believe that human nature is quite that short-sighted. Cooperation exists everywhere in our societies, for example. But we do need to change the incentives and the structure which brings people to power, at least in certain parts of the system. We need to select stateswomen and statesmen, not politicians. There are ways to do that if it is taken seriously.

More On Commenting

I'm not too happy with Echo right now. It doesn't have a master page for following all comments and most of the frills it offers I do NOT want. I want simplicity, and I want the person's comment to be the major focus rather than all the other stuff. I also want to keep the conversation here, not have it spread into the "social space" whatever fuck that is.

Pardon the language. But after spending time searching for a commenting system I find that they are all marketed with the very features that I detest. What's so undesirable about a simple column of intelligent comments, with names/handles and links to homepages provided discreetly? That's what we had. If I talk to people here I don't want to find my comments in all sorts of other places. That could be my Northern blood, of course.

I don't have time to attend to this now, so I'm stuck with Echo for a week at least. If you have any good ideas please let me know.

Short Meditation In Front Of The Local Cable News Show by Anthony McCarthy

How did that "Perfect Brownie Pan" guy decide to use that obnoxious voice? I wonder how the director coached him.

I wonder how many people figured out, after they'd used them a few times, that those $20 Shamwows were rags. Was that rumor your brother told you about their pitch man true?

Has it ever occurred to anyone that having Billy Mays pitching stuff from the grave is really weird?

How do people stand having this stuff on all day?

Not Under the Bus (by Liz)

Poor Erika Smith, the aide to Congressman Bart Stupak, who sent an email to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life, the Family Research Council and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office in attempt to derail the Nelson abortion compromise. Yesterday, Politico obtained Smith's email, which read, "Guys - when will we see your letters of opposition to the managers amendment?? We need them ASAP!”

Later in the day Stupak claimed he had nothing to do with the email exchange. From his website, "Earlier today an unauthorized email from a member of my staff was sent to interested parties. I was unaware of this email and it was sent without my knowledge or approval."

Now that Smith has been thrown under the bus by her boss, perhaps she should check out "Not Under The Bus," a project by the Women's Media Center. Not Under the Bus is "a platform for a unified media message that supports and defends women’s rights in the national health care reform debate." It is also "a call to action to keep women safe and treat them with respect and dignity."

What do you say Ms. Smith? Are you ready for that?

An Unavoidable and Unpleasant Topic by Anthony McCarthy

It’s always true that people in a minority, or women in the majority, are always made answerable for others in their group. That’s an burden that anyone in those groups carries. You will notice that just about everyone opposing real health care are nominally “christian” and white, and straight, and male ..... But they won’t be the face on it when the chips fall.

In the enraged blog chatter this past week it was an unfortunate but predictable thing, the identification of Lieberman and Emanuel as Jews came up. That’s predictable because Lieberman has turned his alleged religious values into a political pose and Emanuel’s family and personal history makes his devotion to Israel an issue with him. For a lot of people, and not necessarily all of them gentiles, that places both of these politicians into a category and no more is needed to place that package where it will be shifted around in a simulacrum of thinking. For some this produces hateful attack, for a few, it produces support, invincible even by wretched behavior.

Responding to the people who wanted to make the treason of Lieberman and Emanuel a Jewish issue, I realized that I don’t know a single Jewish person who doesn’t despise Joe Lieberman and only a few who are not known to me as ardent single-payer supporters. Several have also expressed disapproval of Rahm Emanuel, one I recall has said that you can’t trust him because he’s just as crooked as he is smart. Anyone who looks at the members of the House and, to a lesser extent, the Senate might consider those who have been among the champions of national health care far longer than most blog babblers have been alive. Any believable polling I’ve seen places people identifying themselves as Jewish as among the most reliable of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Indeed, right-wing Jews are some of those who slam most American Jews most severely. Some of those who I’ve read rely on a stereotype and rhetoric not far removed from the traditional discourse of Know Nothings and Klansmen. About the only thing missing is the most febrile, paranoid, and racist language.

In my reading of the greatest Jewish scriptures, the prophets, I don’t find anything that you could intuit from the behavior of Lieberman or Emanuel. I re-read Isaiah several times over the summer and am at a loss to think what he’d make of them.

One of the more troubling things I read this week trying to comprehend the duplicity and swinish behavior of Lieberman theorized that he was doing what he did to extort support for the worst of Israeli policy from the Obama administration. That part of the present Israeli government policy that is, so awful that even the timidity of our government is overcome. It’s plausible that he might do that. I can’t imagine Lieberman doing what he has for his constituents in Connecticut who he seems to hate regardless of their ethnicity. But I think his real motives have little to do with anything other than his pathological self-regard and his wife’s source of income. I doubt Joe Lieberman believes in anything except himself and the bizarre self-image that he has constructed. If his wife figures into that other than as an accessory and source of income, I really don’t care to speculate. He is a sociopath who uses the pose of morality and religion as part of his con job. In that he is exactly the same the worst of the phony “christian” moralists of his party, the Republicans or the odious Tony Blair, the newly minted Catholic. Religion for these people has nothing to do with the teachings of an ancient prophet, they certainly don’t have anything to do with the most important part of the Jewish tradition - which Jesus was certainly a part of - JUSTICE.

I think Lieberman would sell anyone out to get his face on TV. And I really do believe that.

The explanation for what makes Rahm Emanuel tick isn’t as clear. He’s less of a known personality, less addicted to getting his face on TV. Here the always valuable Neal Gabler* does some of what I chose not to do yesrday, trying to find an psychological explanation that could apply to the Chief of Staff as well as the President. He makes a good case for the major weakness of Barack Obama being his determination to remain aloof and detached. Cool and macho, in my language. I think that could explain a good part of his attraction to Rahm Emanuel who seems to have ice in his heart. There’s a difference between being cool and collected and being cynical. I won’t go into the personal distinction but only into its political manifestation.

Back when the Carter Presidency was going down under concerted Republican attack, I used to think that having a more savvy president less guided by principle might be a good idea. The reasoning was that even if such leaders were lacking in morals at least their desire to preserve themselves and their small circle of loved ones would prevent nuclear catastrophe. Consider that it was the psychopaths in the Pre-Perestroika Reagan wing of the Republicans who were going to be the clear successors to Jimmy Carter.

I don’t think that anymore. At bottom, what is destroying democracy is the same thing that is destroying the biosphere, selfishness, self-regard, greed, .... in other words the failure is more a failure of morality than of knowledge and reason. As seen in the Republican right, even those who are undeniably intelligent and certainly can grasp that we are destroying the very basis of life, are unwilling or unable to overcome the disease of greed and the extensions of ego that obtaining power provide.

The decisive question for the coming year is whether or not Barack Obama has a moral core, one which he isn’t willing to dispose of in dickering with the Republican-Blue Dogs in order to be able to claim victories that are not victories for his dwindling supporters who are motivated by the tradition of JUSTICE and knowledge. Neal Gabbler has raised the question. We will know the answer to that by this time next year. Let’s hope it’s apparent in time to salvage the possibility of Democratic government, on which democracy and the basis of life certainly depend.

* Neal Gabler has become one of the best columnists writing today.

Nelson vs. Stupak

Bart Stupak doesn't think Ben Nelson's achievements go far enough:

Current law prohibits federal funding from being used for abortion, but Nelson and several Republicans wanted to take the language further. Nelson's office today said the new provisions would ensure that no public funds go toward abortion services, mandate that every state provide an insurance plan that does not cover abortion and gives each state the right to pass a law barring insurance coverage for abortion within state borders.

"I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree," Nelson told reporters today. "But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions."

The move upset some anti-abortion lawmakers such as Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who this week told ABC News he will not vote for the final health care bill if it did not include his abortion language, which is in the House health care bill.

Since current law already prohibits the federal use of funds for abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest and the pregnant woman's life being endangered, what expansions do these gentlemen want?
----
Cross-posted on Eschaton.