Yeah, The Right Wing Is Sooo Pro-Pothead
David Bernstein worries that the outlook on Randy Barnett's case to allow medical marijuana (Raich v. Ashcroft) looks glum, according to Nina Totenberg, then blames it all on the "liberals" (a code word used by right-wingers for "turds who stand for everything that's wrong in the universe). Now, I'm no liberal, but I can smell horseshit just fine when somebody sticks it right under my nose; for example:
...I think that Randy did a great job. Whether that will be enough to overcome the statist liberal obssession with ensuring that every aspect of human life may be regulated by the federal government (despite a profound lack of constitutional legitimacy for such a position)...
Oh, please. Like the nutbag fundamentalists (read: right wingers, mainly) aren't riding the lead horses for the dumbass war on drugs -- along with about a dozen other dumb wars; all based on their selective interpretations of their favorite book of fables. And I say that as a libertarian more than anything else. Certainly not a Democrat. Or a turd...I mean, liberal.
Getting back to the case, here's an interesting excerpt Jim Lindgren pulled from Larry Solum's account of the proceedings.
Souter: Suppose that 100,000 people are in chemotherapy in California. Then couldn't there be 100,000 users of medical marijuana?Barnett: There could be.
Souter: If there are 34 million people in California, then there could be 100,000 people in chemotherapy.
Barnett: It is important to remember that the law confines medical cannabis use to the people who are sick and have a physicians recommendation. Wickard v. Filburn's aggregation principle does not apply if the activity involved is noneconomic.
Souter: But isn't the argument that it is economic activity if it has a sizeable effect on the market?
Barnett: No. The effect on the market is only relevant if it is market activity.
Souter: But in Lopez wasn't the effect on the market much more remote than the effect involved in this case?
Barnett: The point is that economic activity and personal liberty are two different categories.
Souter: That is not a very realistic premise.
Barnett: The premise is that it is possible to differentiate economic activity from personal activity. Prostitution is economic activity, and there may be some cross substitution effects between prostitution and sex within marriage, but that does not make sex within marriage economic activity. You look at the nature of the activity to determine whether or not it is economic.
Breyer: If marijuana is medically helpful, can't your clients go to the FDA and get it rescheduled. Then if the FDA rules against them, they can go to court and the FDA ruling can be reviewed for abuse of discretion. And if there is no abuse of discretion, then wouldn't I believe as a judge and an individual that it is doubtful there is a medical benefit? Is medicine by regulation better than medicine by referendum?
RB: I would simply ask you to read the account of obstruction of research in the amicus brief and the Institute for Medicine report cited by both us and the government. It is true that marijuana is smoked, but that is because it saves the lives of some sick people.
Truth Or Mere Conspiracy Theory?
Translator Sibel D. Edmonds and friends have something to spill about 9-11. Here's a letter about the letter -- posted by a guy who calls himself "a conservative Christian Republican." The actual letter follows at the link above:
A Conservative Christian Republican Says Listen To Whistleblower Sibel D. Edmonds
By Karl W. B. Schwarz
Online Journal Contributing Writer
11-21-4The following is an open letter to Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General for the State of New York and William Casey, Chief Investigator for the Attorney General's Office. In fact, this was hand delivered to Mr. Spitzer's office before it was published as was a three-part expose I have written titled Pop Goes the Bush Mythology Bubble. That three-part article will break soon and is in the hands of investigators at this time.
Sibel D. Edmonds was one of the many multilingual translators hired by our FBI to help track down terrorists and anticipate their next moves. At least, that was the plan and the purported "job description."
Once Sibel was working inside the FBI she uncovered something, tried to go public with it when Attorney General John Ashcroft and her FBI superiors would not, and the Bush-Cheney-Ashcroft team slapped a gag order on her so you could not hear what this lady has to say. What she has to say directly relates to 9-11 and it totally disputes the Bush Mythology they want Americans to believe.
So listen up, America. Here is what Sibel uncovered - she found "drug trafficking, money laundering, foreign names and American names directly involved in the financing of the 9-11 attacks on WTC (World Trade Center) and the Pentagon." It was not the Saudis, folks. Americans were involved and Bush does not want you to know that. That exposes the Bush Mythology as the lie that it is.
Some of the names on our list are also on the list that Sibel Edmonds knows and found inside the FBI. We came at the problem through telecom fraud, international securities fraud and kept finding trails that led to the Caspian Basin, Pakistan, and former BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce) scam artists. Some of you might remember BCCI and that many called it Bank of Crooks and Criminals International and did so for good cause.
There was something else "odd" about what Sibel Edmonds found. The facts did not surface out of counter-terrorism (Richard Clarke's group); they surfaced out of ongoing investigations by the FBI, some of which date back to 1998.
Here's what Edmonds spilled previously: Her contention that the Department Of Justice asked her to retranslate and adjust her previous of terrorist intercepts to wash them of damning information.
(via Metafilter)
To The Mannerless Born And Raised
Jason Stone has a few tips for the boors in baggage claim. My favorite excerpts:
...If there is barely enough space between me and the person standing in front of me at the belt, please do not wedge yourself in between us. I really have no desire to see the 6 cm hair growing out of your ear or the moles on the back of your neck....While I find the site of all of the manly men hovering around the “opening” where the luggage first appears pretty funny, because it reminds me of bears when they are just sitting in the stream waiting for the salmon, I, also, find it really inefficient. Please spread yourselves out a little. The two minutes you are going to save by being the “first” to get the luggage will really not get you home any faster than me, because we all still have to wait for the bus/train/taxi next.
My personal pet peeve: People whose "carry-ons" could comfortably accomodate a dead body; maybe two; leaving zero room in the overhead bin for your handbag -- or even your change purse.
Elmo Got Tickled A Few Times Too Many
How Lovely Are Your Labia?
Lip-lift, anyone? No, the other lips. Plastic surgery "down there" is, apparently, the next big thing. Mireya Navarro, poor dear, who is apparently assigned to the pussy beat at The New York Times, goes deep under cover to find out why:
"The women feel undesirable or unpretty," Dr. Stern said. "Even if nobody sees it, they see it."The yoga instructor from Boston, who flew to Dr. Alter in Beverly Hills for a labiaplasty four years ago, said she was "asymmetrical": part of her inner vaginal lips extended about half an inch beyond the outer labia.
"The only women I could compare myself to was women in pornographic movies," she said. "They were tiny and dainty and symmetrical. Nobody looked like me."
...One patient, a 22-year-old college student from Toronto, said she had never had intercourse until after her labiaplasty because she felt "insecure and ugly" about excess labia tissue.
"It's just that when you feel bad about your body, especially this part of your body, it's kind of impossible to let your true feelings and passions show," she said.
Now, after the surgery last May, she said, "I have nothing to hide."
Some sex therapists are troubled that the emphasis on a youthful look in the doctors' ads are creating demand. And some pointed out that there are dissatisfied customers as well.
Dr. Laura Berman, director of a treatment clinic for female sexual dysfunction in Chicago, the Berman Center, said some of her patients complained that they ended up with pain or could no longer be sexually aroused after undergoing some of the procedures. Unlike most other cosmetic procedures, she said, genital plastic surgery has the potential to harm function.
"Any time you're having surgery that involves any kind of intervention in the genitals you're asking for trouble in regard with your sexual function," she said.
...Some plastic surgeons, who note that there is no such thing as "normal" female genitals, are scratching their heads.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, to be honest," said Dr. Young, of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, who said he does a small number of labiaplasties in his practice in St. Louis. "I try to discourage most patients."
Even people in the pornographic film industry say there is no universal standard of beauty for genitals and that, in any event, men fantasize about the woman, not any one body part.
Mark Kernes, a senior editor with the trade magazine Adult Video News, said, "I really don't think most men care."
I know a very pretty (and horny) woman who had a few pounds on her, and was worried that men wouldn't want to have sex with her because of it. I told her most guys are just grateful that you're having sex with them; they aren't sitting around taking measurements of your thighs. Unless you can swing your labia round your neck and wear them as a scarf...are they really a problem?!!
The Most Important Lady In The Whole World!
Do you know who I am? I am verrrry important. Well, I must be, because, although I appear completely able-bodied, as does my ?grandson in the back seat, I felt compelled to park my Mercedes so it blocked the fire lane for over a half hour. Yes, I took up an entire lane just to park my car -- at exactly the point where cars need two lanes to get into the parking lot. While no fire engines or ambulances needed to get through, this caused many cars (and Hummers, ha!) to line up and wait for access to the single lane I left open. Well, that's the breaks, when you're as imporrtant as I am!
God's Won't
An Amish guy named Curtis Selby, 55, "doesn't believe in health insurance," writes Lucette Lagnado in The Wall Street Journal -- well, not when he's paying for it. How nice that he found his way to believing in other people kicking in when he got prostate cancer and treatment was projected to cost between $80,000 and $100,000. How come "god's will" becomes other people's generosity when it involves bringing out one's checkbook? The guy (who, Lagnado wrote, could afford health insurance, but chose not to have it because it doesn't agree with his religious beliefs) ended up sucking up "charity" funds that could have been used for somebody who "believes" in health insurance, but has fallen on hard times and doesn't have the money to pay for it:
...Mr. Selby threw a monkey wrench into the hospital's financial-aid apparatus by refusing to apply for Medicaid or Medicare, citing his religious principles. While his church doesn't forbid accepting Medicaid, Mr. Selby says that "individual convictions based on scriptures," guide him and others on health-care issues.That was a big problem for UCSF. According to the hospital's policy, UCSF can write off some medical care as charity, but only if the person has been turned down for Medicaid or Medicare.
Mr. Selby and his wife went to meet UCSF's admissions director, Myriam Cabello. She decided to invoke a religious exception to the hospital's policy. She cited the fact that Mr. Selby couldn't apply to government health-care programs because of his beliefs, as a way to get around the rule. She also dipped into a private, philanthropic fund the hospital maintains to help cancer patients. The fund now stands at $213,000. Mr. Selby wasn't opposed to private charity.
The decision to decline health insurance is left to individuals, says Kenneth Landes, 72, a church elder. The Old German Baptist Brethren isn't a hierarchical organization. The estimated 6,000 to 7,000 members have local councils, and a standing committee of a dozen elders who meet once a year. Mr. Landes, who has served on the standing committee, says he has steered clear of commercial insurance out of a sense of community. "I felt that it is probably better that we would take care of ourselves and each other," he says.
In and around his community of Eldorado, Ohio, church members are assessed money each month for an "assurance" program to help pay medical bills of members who also haven't bought into health plans or HMOs. Some Brethren do purchase commercial insurance, Mr. Landes notes. He and others accept Medicare, he says, because they have paid into the system with their taxes. Others decline government health care.
Mr. Selby says UCSF delicately tried to determine what he could afford to pay for his cancer treatment. The figure $25,000 was suggested by a staffer at the cancer center, he says. He thought that was fair. He told them he would try to come up with that amount of cash.
At the same time, he was checking out other options. Months earlier, he had contacted Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., which is well-known for its prostate-cancer treatment. The institution first quoted him an $80,000 treatment plan, he says.
After several phone discussions with officials at Loma Linda, the price came down dramatically, Mr. Selby says -- to between $36,000 and $38,000.
Cindy Schmidt, executive director of the patient-business office at Loma Linda said while they have a record of Mr. Selby's calls, they don't have records of any negotiations and can't comment. She added: "We make every effort to ensure that cash patients do not pay more than what an insurance company would pay."
Still, Mr. Selby was hoping that UCSF could work out a financial package for him. It did -- agreeing to do the treatment for one-fourth the cost of its initial estimate. Ms. Cabello approved the $25,000 price tag in late June 2003.
Mr. Selby's first radiation treatment began in July. At times, Mr. Selby would lug bins of sweet corn, tomatoes, and other fresh fruits and vegetables to the hospital -- and distribute them to therapists, the receptionist, office secretaries, and Dr. Roach, the physician recalls.
The UCSF hospital lost money treating Mr. Selby, says Ms. Cabello. Based on the hospital's list prices, his treatment cost $88,652. He came up with $25,000, and the philanthropic fund chipped in $34,000 -- for a total of $59,000. The rest will be written off as charity care.
And that makes me boil!
The Latest In Grilled Cheese Iconography
A miracle in Hello Kitty! Sold on eBay for $61!
Best of all, in the words of the seller:
I would like to add that this is item has 100% more miracles than other icon-in-grilled-cheese-sandwich auctions you may find on e-bay....Yesterday before the sandwich was even made my wife found over $4.00 in change while cleaning out her purse, Every single sock that has gone into the laundry has come back out, While making the sandwich we were able to get tickets to a sold out Jimmy Buffett concert, I can show the ticket stubs to the high bidder if they are interested, I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is Hello Kitty, That is my solem belief, but you are free to believe that she is whomever you like...
(via Volokh.com)
House Of Me Toos
Thursday night, while my boyfriend was cooking our Thanksgiving dinner, I went for a run along the nearly desolate Sunset Boulevard, from Fairfax to Doheny and back. Street traffic was extremely light, and the sidewalks were bare except for the occasional homeless person.
A handful of people were eating dinner at Mel's and the few tourist trapperies open on the north side of the street. The only crowds were consolidated at two places: The Laugh Factory, for their annual freebie dinner for starving actors, and the House Of Blues, for "Cradle of Filth with Bleeding Through, Arch Enemy and Himsa." A few hundred people, mostly 20-somethings, snaked out of the club, clogging the sidewalk and spilling onto the street for an entire block.
The funny thing was, they were about as uniformly uniformed as an army of Wal-Mart employees: 400 sullen, aging children, rebelling against the dictates of a conformist society by looking almost exactly alike. Almost every single one of them was dressed in black -- either in a t-shirt with some parent-displeasing message (guys, mostly), or in a raggy melange of grunge and goth (most of the girls). Snarling faces and snarled, unwashed hair were unisex de rigeur. Not one seemed to pick up on the obvious irony: To be non-conformist in this particular sea of non-conformity, you'd have to show up wearing a raspberry cardigan sweater and a pair of jeans from The Gap -- or a McDonald's uniform and a smile.
Thanksgiving Culinary Tip
Come on, be honest: Unless you're a particularly good cook, your turkey probably tastes like crumbled particle board! In my life, I have had one tender, juicy serving of turkey, and it was cooked by Mark Gaito, one of my favorite food whores, in New York City, in the late 80s. I would predict that occasional left-coast restaurant critic and fellow foodie, Nancy Rommelmann, makes a mouth-worthy one, too. As for most people's turkeys, however, Nicole Hollander offers some excellent advice -- which could be expanded to turkey in the pre-leftover stage:
Cooking tip. Wrap turkey leftovers in aluminum foil and throw them out.
Jesus As A Serial Killer
"Roast the non-believers!" This is not your kinder, gentler Jesus that best-selling novelists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins write for the fundamentalist set, but, as Nicholas Kristof notes in his New York Times column:
The "Left Behind" series, the best-selling novels for adults in the U.S., enthusiastically depict Jesus returning to slaughter everyone who is not a born-again Christian. The world's Hindus, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, along with many Catholics and Unitarians, are heaved into everlasting fire: "Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and . . . they tumbled in, howling and screeching."Gosh, what an uplifting scene!
If Saudi Arabians wrote an Islamic version of this series, we would furiously demand that sensible Muslims repudiate such hatemongering. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the co-authors of the series, have both e-mailed me (after I wrote about the "Left Behind" series in July) to protest that their books do not "celebrate" the slaughter of non-Christians but simply present the painful reality of Scripture.
"We can't read it some other way just because it sounds exclusivistic and not currently politically correct," Mr. Jenkins said in an e-mail. "That's our crucible, an offensive and divisive message in an age of plurality and tolerance."
Silly me. I'd forgotten the passage in the Bible about how Jesus intends to roast everyone from the good Samaritan to Gandhi in everlasting fire, simply because they weren't born-again Christians.
I accept that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. LaHaye are sincere. (They base their conclusions on John 3.) But I've sat down in Pakistani and Iraqi mosques with Muslim fundamentalists, and they offered the same defense: they're just applying God's word.
What their particular word of god got me, as a little Jewish girl, was chased down the street in a Detroit suburb by Christian kids shouting "dirty Jew." When they weren't busy doing that, or throwing chairs at me in the junior high school hallway, or toiletpapering our trees, they were smashing pumpkins on our driveway or egging our house or shaving creaming the words "Dirty Jew" on our garage door. Want to talk reality, Mr. Jenkins and LaHaye? THAT is the reality of the shit you're shoveling.
Religion is about irrational belief in god, and it's based in primitive fears, and it leads far too many of the irrational believers to hate, be violent to others, and go out of their way to discriminate. It's backward, it's primitive, and it's depressing how many people believe in god, sans any reasonable proof (see Sam Harris quote) that there is one, instead of using their ability to reason -- which would get them to where I am: I have no idea whether there is or isn't a god, and I couldn't care less.
It's perfectly possible to be a good person without believing that somebody's going to smite you if you don't do as some book, supposedly handed down from the heavens, says you should. In fact, it's far more virtuous if you're good for goodness' sake, rather than because you think you're going to get something out of the deal. So, exactly how righteous are all of these believers?
Andrew Gumbel Talks Turkey About The Election
Okay, you can stop tapping your ruby-red slippers together. Listen to Andrew:
Okay, deep breath, and repeat after me: George Bush won the election. George Bush won fair and square. He won in Ohio. He won in Florida. And he carried the national popular vote by a margin of well over three million. He may be a bum, a bozo, a corporate shill, a reckless bomb-thrower or any of the other things his opponents like to call him, but the brute fact is that he’s the guy a clear majority of voters picked to lead the free(-ish) world for the next four years.It might seem eccentric to have to insist on this point more than three weeks after John Kerry’s crystal-clear concession. But I keep having conversations with otherwise reasonable, intelligent people who are unshakable in their belief that the election was stolen. Some believe the fraud will come to light as soon as journalists like myself get off our rear ends and start digging. Others believe the evidence is already available for those with eyes to see it, and seem incredulous that I refuse to join their number.
Here’s what I tell them. Yes, there are ample grounds to question whether this election was conducted according to international standards of transparency and fairness. Yes, there are questions concerning just about every aspect of the vote, from registration to absentee procedures to provisional balloting to polling-station access to the reliability of the voting machines and the accuracy of the final count.
Precisely because of those concerns, however, it is essential to work on the basis of real evidence and real numbers, not wishful thinking. And the real evidence, to date, indicates that Bush won by too wide a margin for any of the irregularities to make a difference to the outcome.
But but but, my friends and e-mail correspondents counter, how can the exit polls have got it so wrong? How come the variance in the actual results consistently favored Bush, never Kerry? What about the Florida counties with high Democratic registration which were recorded voting overwhelmingly for Bush? What about all the uncounted punchcard votes and provisional ballots in Ohio?
Unfortunately, many of these questions are based on published reports that are wild, grossly irresponsible and, in many cases, flat wrong. Take Greg Palast’s assertion, days after the election, that Kerry won Ohio and therefore the presidency, because the uncounted ballots were more than enough to overcome his 136,000-vote deficit. Palast had absolutely no basis for knowing how the uncounted votes might pan out, and his arithmetic made assumptions about the levels of hidden support for Kerry that simply did not withstand serious analysis. (Salon’s Farhad Manjoo has done a particularly good job of demolishing his numbers.)
Or take Thom Hartmann’s piece on the Common Dreams website alerting the world to the Democrat-registered Florida counties which voted for Bush. He and his source, a mathematician called Kathy Dopp, said the tabulation of these optically scanned votes was so out of line it must have fallen victim to partisan hacking, starting as early as 2002. Clearly, Hartmann and Dopp were unaware that these counties were part of the redneck Solid South which long since started switching allegiance from Democrat to Republican. And they didn’t bother to check that every one of them voted for Bush over Gore in 2000.
Picking Up After Your Dogma
A remarkable comment about our theocratic, ever-so-sure-he's-doing-god's-will president, by John Johnson, of Encino, in Tuesday's LA Times:
An Abiding Faith in Democracy's PowerAfter reading Jonathan Sacks' commentary, "Religion's Eternal Life" (Nov. 19), I wished he had expanded more on his key premise. In describing why the world began to reject theocracy in the 18th century, he states, "men and women of goodwill lost faith in the ability of religious believers to live peaceably with one another." This a remarkable observation because it marks the point in history where the world split into two camps: Those who were sure they were right, and those who weren't so sure.
Theocracies are driven by dogmatic, uncompromising belief systems, while secular governments are more tolerant and accommodating. A democratic leader is, by definition, unsure of his decisions. He seeks the counsel of others, considers opposing views and frequently agonizes over the consequences of his decisions. His self-doubt governs his behavior, while the people who "know" have no such inhibiting mechanism.
Only those who are totally certain of their place in heaven can strap on a suicide vest and blow themselves up on a busy street crowded with women and children. A person uncertain of his salvation, or even of God's existence, is more likely to seek understanding and place a higher value on his or her life.
The great irony here is that the person who is unsure is the one who is acting on faith, because real faith cannot exist without a seed of doubt.
Tuesday's Fascinating Construction Update
Lucy Riccardo here. I made a bit of a techno-mess by pushing the wrong button at 3am, which is why the site still has a few bugs in it. To the uninitiated, this page is my blog (we're bouncing the old URL to this page, but if you're looking for columns or articles, click the red links to the left). Gregg is gluing the shards of broken glass back together into a Web site. You can comment now, although you may get an error message, but your comment will post. We're getting closer!
Hugs And Juggs
For all those out there who are up nights wondering if I'm a real redhead, I should soon be moonlighting as a stripper, in the airport nearest me.
Lucy, the sock thief, picks up the slack after an in-home strip session.
There was yet another article about TSA pat-downs in today's New York Times, by Joe Sharkey, complete with tales of passengers (mainly female) enduring boob and genital feelie sessions by security workers:
A provision in the new rules - which says that a screener's "visual observation" of a passenger is enough to order a secondary screening - seems to single out women, something that many women searched attribute to a belief that bras are good places to conceal nonmetallic explosives.The provision states, "T.S.A. policy is that screeners are to use the back of the hand when screening sensitive body areas, which include the breasts (females only), genitals and buttocks."
At the Fort Lauderdale airport on Nov. 5, Ms. (Patti) LuPone says she removed her shirt after vehemently protesting, revealing the thin, see-through camisole that she was wearing. Next, she was given a pat-down by a screener who, she said, "was all over me with her hands," including touching her groin area and breasts.
Ms. LuPone said she demanded an explanation. "We don't want another Russia to happen," she said one of the screeners told her.
Nancy Davis Kho, a financial data developer from Oakland, Calif., said, "They're totally overlooking the need to preserve a person's dignity." Ms. Kho said she was mortified at La Guardia Airport in New York on Sept. 28, when a female screener patted her down, "running her hands under bra straps and just about everywhere else," while other passengers gawked.
Lu Chekowsky, an advertising executive from Portland, Ore., said her cosmetics case set off the alarm at the airport there a couple of months ago. Since then, she says, she has been patted down so many times that she has taken to wearing baggy trousers, flip-flops and a big sweatshirt to make the procedure less onerous.
"Routinely, my breasts are being cupped, my behind is being felt," Ms. Chekowsky said. "And I feel I can't fight it. If I were to say anything, I picture myself being shipped off to Guantánamo."
Male screeners can do the pat-downs when female screeners are not available, but female passengers have the option of waiting until a woman can be found.
Ms. Maurer, the executive from Washington, reluctantly agreed to a search by a male security officer when a woman was not available. After he gave her a full body pat-down, she said, "he lifted my shirt and looked down the back of my pants.''
"I said, 'I am really uncomfortable having you feel me up,' but I basically had no choice. It was either that or miss my flight."
Well, I'm glad I'm a runner, because I will lickety-split strip right down to my bra and thong -- or less -- before I let some TSA worker start groping me. Moreover, if I'm feeling huffy enough about it (because this wouldn't be happening if nobody believed in god), I will not wait until I get behind some curtain to do it. In fact, I might just make people in line wonder what happened to the flashing strobe lights and the greased-up pole. Just stuff your 20-dollar bills in my thong, people!...just as soon as I can yank it out of the TSA guy's teeth and get it back on.
Dial-A-Dong
Porn might be just a cell phone call away, writes Peter J. Howe in The Boston Globe:
The lure of pornography helped drive the mass-market adoption of videocassette recorders, satellite television, and the World Wide Web.Now, history could repeat itself in the world of cellphones -- specifically, the newest generation of cellphones, which sport high-resolution color screens and connections to super-fast data networks that can stream X-rated photos and film clips straight to the handset.
Adults-only wireless websites have begun sprouting in many regions, including Europe and Australia, that are generally a year or more ahead of the United States in adopting advanced wireless technology. In Britain, the profusion of adult sites and the interest in them has forced the six major British wireless carriers to develop ways to block people younger than 18 from getting access.
As implausible as the idea of trying to look at pornographic images on a screen of only three square inches may seem, some industry analysts think a combination of novelty, and especially privacy -- unlike a computer, a phone can be used almost anywhere -- make cellphones an appealing way for some to view pornography.
Almost all of the content available today via cellphone is found on foreign websites. US cellphone users with Web access plans can already download images -- as explicit as anything that's found on the Internet -- without dialing an overseas number. They simply use the Web browsers in their cellphones. Usually, the sites offer free access.
Playboy Enterprises Inc., which recently added Spain and Portugal to the dozen other countries where it is licensing adult content for cellphones, says it hopes to reach the US market within the next several months.US wireless carriers already offer pictorial and digital content, including television-style news clips, and roughly one-fifth of the 171 million US cellphone owners carry handsets that can receive full-color digital photos and video.
Since it seems unlikely a cell porn user will have a screaming orgasm while seated next to me at a café, cell porn calls might just be a major improvement over loud cell phone calls by the poorly raised.
(via ObscureStore)
Soak The Middle Class
In short, that's George Bush's idea of a tax plan -- eliminating incentives for employers to offer health plans, AND disallowing the deduction of state taxes from federal ones, write Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum in The Washington Post. No, I'm not making this up:
The Bush administration is eyeing an overhaul of the tax code that would drastically cut, if not eliminate, taxes on savings and investment, but it is unlikely to try to replace the existing tax code with a single flat income tax rate or a national sales tax, according to several sources familiar with ongoing tax deliberations.During his reelection campaign, President Bush piqued interest among conservatives and liberals alike when he said replacing the income tax with a national sales tax was "an interesting idea." Just after the election he signaled that tax policy would be a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, reiterating his pledge to name a bipartisan panel to draft a fundamental tax reform proposal. That sent conservatives scurrying into either the flat tax or sales tax camp to muster political momentum.
Administration officials have begun dialing back expectations that they will move to scrap the current graduated income tax for another system.
Instead the administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth, according to several people who are advising the White House or are familiar with the deliberations.
The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.
Smart guy, that George Bush, charging the people who didn't vote for him the most (that would be New York and California, the states that have disproportionately high taxes).
How To Be A Good Houseguest
The chapter I wrote for the book, The Experts' Guide To 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do, is mentioned in today's New York Times Styles section:
Amy Alkon, also known as the Advice Goddess, can come stay with me anytime. Her advice on how to be a good houseguest — be neat, be quiet, leave soon — flows from this essential truth."People are annoying," she writes. "All people. Including you, me and Jennifer Aniston. Like the rest of us, you're loud, messy, demanding and unsightly, with numerous irritating habits, which degenerate from irritating to excruciating the longer you're around."
I guess, now, I should write another whole book, not just go chapter by chapter.
The People Have Spoken! (But What Were They Saying?)
Math prof John Allen Paulos finds it difficult to draw statistical conclusions from the Bush victory:
George Bush's election has generated far too many ill-founded conclusions about the US electorate. Despite Bush's assertions to the contrary, the voters certainly did not give him a mandate to further "traditional moral values" (or, indeed, to do anything else).No deep theorem in arithmetic is needed to see that the 51% of the electorate who voted for him constitute a bare majority. The outcome looks even more questionable in the electoral college. Bush received approximately 130,000 more votes than John Kerry in Ohio, so if 65,000 Bush voters in the state had switched, we'd now be talking about president-elect Kerry.
Looking back over recent elections strengthens the view that no seismic realignment of the electorate has occurred. Of the last four presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has received a greater popular vote in three and a greater electoral vote in two.
Excuse my mathematician's obsession with coin flips, but consider this. There is a large bloc of people who will vote for the Republican candidate no matter what, and a similarly reliable Democratic bloc of roughly the same size. There is also a smaller group of voters who either do not have fixed opinions or are otherwise open to changing their vote.
To an extent, these latter people's votes (and thus elections themselves) are determined by chance (external events, campaign gaffes, etc).
So what conclusion would we draw about a coin that landed heads two or three times out of four flips (or about a sequence of two or three Democratic victories in the last four elections)? The answer, of course, is that we would draw no conclusions at all.
He has some interesting ideas about the propensity for conclusion-drawing:
One reason we tend to draw far-reaching conclusions about elections is the charming superstition that significant events must be the consequence of significant events.This psychological foible is illustrated by an experiment in which a group of subjects is told that a man parked his car on a hill. It then rolled into a fire hydrant. A second group is told that the car rolled into a pedestrian.
The members of the first group generally view the event as an accident; the members of the second generally hold the driver responsible. People are more likely to attribute an event to an agent than to chance if it has momentous or emotional implications. Likewise with elections.
The List Of Things That Don't Grow On Trees
Well, I guess we can cross off Hostess Ding-Dongs.
Letters From The "Dissent Not Welcome Here" Democracy
After posting this piece critical of notsorryeverybody.com, I got a few well-reasoned letters...like this one:
Amy, if, as you say, you're really "ashamed of our country", then why don't you just get the HELL OUT, and move to Iran, Cuba, or North Korea?? I'm sure they would love to have people who are ashamed of America as their citizens. America is MY country, and right or wrong, she is still my country!! How dare you say that you're ashamed of MY AMERICA!! By the way, if you do decide to leave, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out....good riddence!!
This was my response:
You don't get it, do you? America has been about freedom of speech. I'm ashamed to live in a place where people vote to discriminate against other people. This is horrible -- as was denying blacks civil rights -- another shameful chapter in our history. It doesn't mean I am not American, or proud of many other things in our as-of-yet still-free society. The solution, when something is flawed, isn't to leave, but to change things so they are right. I don't see a better country than America, but I'm deeply disturbed at the way irrational religious fanatics are taking over. It's people with views like yours, who want to end discussion rather than be honest about what's wrong, that promote the wrongs continuing. -Amy
Let's Keep The Crooks In Power!
The GOP apparently doesn't care if you're a crook, as long as you're one of their crooks, according to a Washington Post story by Charles Babington. House Republicans proposed changing their rules to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in their posts. Surprise, surprise, this might just benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay, in case he's charged by a Texas grand jury, that's already indicted three of his political associates:
House GOP leaders and aides said many rank-and-file Republicans are eager to change the rule to help DeLay, and will do so if given a chance at today's closed meeting. A handful of them have proposed language for changing the rule, and they will be free to offer amendments, officials said. Some aides said it was conceivable that DeLay and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) ultimately could decide the move would be politically damaging and ask their caucus not to do it. But Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), another member of the GOP leadership, said he did not think Hastert and DeLay would intervene.House Republicans adopted the indictment rule in 1993, when they were trying to end four decades of Democratic control of the House, in part by highlighting Democrats' ethical lapses. They said at the time that they held themselves to higher standards than prominent Democrats such as then-Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (Ill.), who eventually pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to prison.
The GOP rule drew little notice until this fall, when DeLay's associates were indicted and Republican lawmakers began to worry that their majority leader might be forced to step aside if the grand jury targeted him next. Democrats and watchdog groups blasted the Republicans' proposal last night.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last night: "If they make this rules change, Republicans will confirm yet again that they simply do not care if their leaders are ethical. If Republicans believe that an indicted member should be allowed to hold a top leadership position in the House of Representatives, their arrogance is astonishing."
Just Another Deadline Night In Paradise
There are worse places to be huddled over a paragraph.
Jeff Jarvis Is My Free-Speech Hero
Guess how many viewer complaints the FCC got before they levied a 1.2 million dollar "indecency" fine on Fox: 3,000? Nope. 300? Nuh-uh. Just three. Jeff Jarvis is calling the FCC's sweaty little autocrats on their shit -- here -- and here. Here's a copy of the e-mail (simply brilliant) he wrote to protest the use of "the 'F' word" on "Saving Private Ryan":
I am filing a complaint regarding the airing of "Saving Private Ryan" on WABC TV in New York between 8 and 11 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 11.I heard the word "fuck" -- or variants of it -- three times in one sentence.
I personally believe that the FCC should not be regulating or overseeing speech in any way and should not be in a position to fine speech. I further believe the FCC's actions in this arena are unconstitutional as is the new indecency legislation about to give you further power to fine.
However, because you have declared that Bono violated the law for saying "fuck" you must find that WABC and every other ABC outlet that aired "Saving Private Ryan" violated the law. There is no difference. Because you have fined Howard Stern far more for what many would argue is far less -- even for mere fart sounds -- you must fine WABC and other ABC outlets.
You made this bed, FCC. Now lie in it.
I am very serious about this complaint. I am not just making a statement. I am making a formal complaint and believe that you must be consistent in your enforcement of this law and regulation. Yes, I will tell you that I relish your embarrassment at having to fine very ABC outlet that aired "Saving Private Ryan" for every instance of a "bad" word or deed. I relish the opportunity to point out the absurdity and Constitutional offensiveness this law and of your inconsistent enforcement. And thus, I file this complaint with all seriousness. I received no reply to a prior complaint I filed against Oprah Winfrey for the same alleged sins that brought Howard Stern huge fines. I expect a reply to this complaint.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Jarvis
Go to the links above, and pitch in a letter of your own. Or just copy his! That, apparently, works just fine with the profanity nannies at the FCC.
Rewriting Private Ryan
Syndicated editorial cartoonist Jeff Danziger gets janitorial:
Tentatively titled "Praying for Private Ryan," the story cleans up some of the gore and all of the language. Here are some examples:Off camera, a howitzer tears Tom Hanks' friend in two. "Well, double hockey sticks to that," exclaims Tom, speaking from the heart.
Up the beach we go, through enemy fire, crawling over bodies and wrecked materiel. Finally unable to stand any more carnage, Tom cries out: "Darn these Germans, anyhow!"
In one of my favorite scenes, Tom is approached by a fresh-faced young corporal. "I'm worried, sir," the soldier says. "We've run out of ammunition!" "Fudge!" Tom says.
"What?" asks the young lad, appropriately shocked.
"I mean fiddlesticks!"
It's not easy writing this stuff, trying to be accurate and yet OK for prime-time TV. But I and my fellow script doctors have done our homework, and we've based the best lines on actual soldiers' memoirs. Some of these lines are just great, punctuating the fire and smoke of battle with pithy, yet morally valuable, sentiments. For example, "Drat, there goes my leg!"; "I'd like to kick Hitler in the pants!"; and the searing, "By Jiminy, we're all going to die."
Finally, Private Ryan is located, ("There you are, you son of a biscuit!") and a happy ending is appended. The audience is happy, the FCC is happy and the execs at the ABC affiliates are happy. Most important, the true picture of men at war is provided to a country now somewhat fearful about the nature of armed conflict, even when led by men of towering faith. The lesson is that if soldiers are fighting for freedom and democracy they can get the job done without a lot of bad words.
The Lotsa Spin Zone
According to "knowledgeable sources," The White House has ordered CIA director Porter Goss to purge the CIA of those who don't march in lockstep with the Bush party line of "Everything's A-OK, Everywhere, All The Time." These would be "leakers and liberal Democrats," according to a former CIA official quoted by Newsday's Knut Royce:
Tensions between the White House and the CIA have been the talk of the town for at least a year, especially as leaks about the mishandling of the Iraq war have dominated front pages.Some of the most damaging leaks came from Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, who wrote a book anonymously called "Imperial Hubris" that criticized what he said was the administration's lack of resolve in tracking down the al-Qaida chieftain and the reallocation of intelligence and military manpower from the war on terrorism to the war in Iraq. Scheuer announced Thursday that he was resigning from the agency.
Remember democracy? You might not remember it much longer. Every day, the news is peppered with evidence that it's on its way out -- like the disturbing purge above of any agents who aren't literally "right-thinking" -- and the pressure on Arlen Spector to march in toy-soldier lockstep with the Bush administration...or else. I'm sorry, but am I living in Santa Monica, CA, or Santa Monica, USSR?
Whatever Happened To The Muumuu?
(With emphasis on the Moooo! Moooo!)
This "pregnancy-positive" business has gone way too far. If you are pregnant, the world will thank you not to let it all hang out, big, round and distended, in some teeny-weenie little tee-shirt. No, it is not sexy. It is not even attractive, no matter what you'd like to believe.
Yesterday, Lena and I saw a woman at our local hippie haus of coffee whose huge abdomen seemed to be swelling and forming new stretch marks while she stood there talking to us. She apparently saw no reason to cover the offending swath of naked skin bloating out from what effectively was her baby-tee. "Sexy Mama"? Sure -- to the casting director for Roger Corman's next alien horror movie. The rest of us will just have to avert our eyes.
Somebody Else's Child Left Behind
From The New York Times Magazine's Letters page, this woman has a point:
I loved the letter (Oct. 31), in response to Ron Suskind's Oct. 17 article from a writer who said that her vote goes to George Bush because he would "call out the Marines" in the war on terror, whereas John Kerry would seek world support and consensus, and she wants her kids to be safe. Clearly, she's counting on some other mother to supply those marines. Patricia Monger Hamilton, Ontario
Deeply Disturbed By Off-Color Jokes?
Well, then don't take a job that involves hearing a lot of off-color jokes! Seems simple, huh? Except to Amaani Lyle, a former writer's assistant on Friends, who's looking to score some cash via her harrassment case now before the California Supreme Court. She did try to play the racism card, too, with zero proof that there actually was any, but that didn't fly:
After being told that she was fired for typing too slowly, Lyle filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television Productions Inc. and the producers and writers she had worked under for four months in 1999. She alleges that they created a hostile work environment.The writers counter that they have the right or even a need to discuss personal sexual experiences as they search for compelling and often titillating plots.
The case, which is before the California Supreme Court, represents a collision of sexual harassment law and the 1st Amendment's protection of free speech.
The state's highest court must decide whether the suit can go to trial, and, in the process, answer a question that few appeals courts have tackled: Does an employee have a right not to be to subject to offensive sexual conversations and profanities at work even when the work involves writing for a show that deals with sexual material?
The court's ruling may determine whether laws designed to protect workers from sexual, racial and other kinds of discrimination in the workplace should be limited when the offensive conduct occurs during a creative process.
The entertainment industry and the media have lined up behind the writers, arguing that their controversial remarks were protected by the 1st Amendment.
The comments were not aimed directly at Lyle and were made while writing a show about sexually active young adults, they point out. And Lyle has acknowledged that she was warned before she was hired that she would be subjected to racy discussions.
"The show deals with sex and sexual references and anatomical references," said Adam Levin, a lawyer for Warner Bros. and the writers and producers they employed. "It is axiomatic that writers need to talk about sex, joke about sex and laugh about sex."
Women's legal groups, legal aid lawyers and employment attorneys are siding with Lyle. They fear the case could decimate anti-discrimination laws by limiting them in so-called communicative industries such as television, movies and newspapers.
"We are dealing with [the entertainment] industry, where I am sure there has been longtime sex discrimination," said Elizabeth Kristen, project director for the Legal Aid Society's Employment Law Center. "Do they think they should get a pass from age discrimination as well by saying they are making TV shows for a youthful audience?"
Some of the show's writers, in sworn depositions, admitted that they told stories of oral sex, simulated masturbation as a way of saying they were wasting time, talked about anal sex and altered an inspirational calendar to change the word "happiness" to "penis."
Lyle complained that one of the writers, Gregory Malins, often spoke of his fetish for blond cheerleaders, how he liked "young cheerleaders with pigtails and short skirts."
Ooh, the horror...the horror! I guess, as a woman, I'm supposed to be deeply disturbed -- wounded, even -- at hearing about Malins' alleged cheerleader fetish...but I'm not too sure why. What this suit should put a chill on, if Lyle wins, is not just free speech, but hiring women (who are more likely to be prissy -- or see the opportunity to get prissy for dollars).
Red State, Blue State
A Blue Stater tells the Red Staters where to put it:
Lets talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? Its fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, thats right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think thats just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes.
Not Surprised
It had to happen: notsorryeverybody.com, in response to sorryeverybody.com, the site created to apologize to the world for electing the cowboy fundamentalist yet again (or rather, for the first time). Here's the e-mail I sent to the twit who put up the "notsorry" site:
Great. Another guy standing up for killing people after taking over a sovereign nation and voting to deny people rights. Not everybody who didn't vote for Bush is a "liberal" -- a word which has come to mean turd. Fiscally, I'm just to the right of Genghis Khan -- a big Cato Institute, small government, free minds, free markets fan. I don't want government-subsidized NPR, and I think people with kids should pay for their own damn brats to go to school, not rely on property taxes of others. HOWEVER, I am a staunch libertarian, and I loathe the effect that fundamentalist, anti-science monkey-in-chief is having on civil liberties. Moreover, what kind of moron sees our country attacked by Osama and goes after Saddam? If it was a human rights kind of "nation-building," well, why aren't we in Sudan? Moreover, after being a proud and patriotic American all my life (I just thanked all the Veterans I saw at breakfast for fighting to protect our country) I'm ashamed to live in a country where primitive religious fanatics (anybody who believes in god or the easter bunny, sans any real proof of their existence) vote to deny other people rights based on their primitive religious beliefs. I'm sorry Bush was elected, and I'm sorrier still, that so many people are boneheaded and bigoted enough to vote for him. Read Andrew Gumbel's piece on why voting for Bush is like driving an SUV.-Amy Alkon
That Andrew Gumbel piece is posted below. P.S. I just heard on the news that TV stations are balking at showing Saving Private Ryan, out of concern for the FCC crackdowns on what can be shown on television. It's amazing how fast a formerly pretty modern nation can whoosh backward, huh?
The SUV Vote
Great think piece by Andrew Gumbel on why voting for Bush is like driving an SUV:
In his book High and Mighty, denouncing the insanity and corporate glad-handing behind the rise of the SUV, Keith Bradsher tells the story of a North Carolina woman involved in a side-on collision between her Chevrolet Blazer and a Toyota Tercel.The Tercel driver was rushed to hospital and died three days later, but the woman suffered no more than a minor shoulder injury thanks to the sturdiness of her vehicle. She might have felt a twinge of guilt at the other drivers death, or reflected on the unintentional havoc that SUVs like hers wreak by causing smaller vehicles to crumple like tin foil on impact. But she did neither of these things. Instead, she went out and bought an even larger SUV, a Chevrolet Tahoe, so she would feel better protected next time.
Is it such a stretch to see this story as a microcosm of what just happened in the presidential election? Weve heard a lot about the importance of moral values and religion to the rural and small-town voters who swung the race for President Bush. But really these were manifestations of the insecurity and fear that have run rampant through this country since September 11. People voted for Bush not because he has made them safer, but because he makes them feel safer. In this regard he truly is the SUV President: steadfast and sure in outward appearance and marketing strategy, even as he proves in reality to be unreliable, wasteful, over-dependent on Middle East oil, a creature of corporate influence, downright dangerous to those who cross his path and prone to catastrophic failure.
The predatory, reptilian streak that the Detroit marketing consultant Clotaire Rapaille has long sensed in American SUV consumers can also be detected in the countrys voters. As Rapaille told Bradsher, people do not tell themselves they want to live in a safer world. What they say is: If theres a crash, I want the other guy to die. Bushs doctrine of pre-emptive warfare is merely a more forthright, and more public, expression of the same sentiment.
There is a name for this impulse, especially in the context of a country whose soaring self-confidence has been shaken by a devastating and wholly unexpected attack on its soil. That name is nationalism -- the tendency not only to stand by ones flag and ones country in times of trouble, but also to rally around a chauvinistic, narrowly defined sense of national identity and lash out against anyone who appears to dilute it, deviate from it or threaten it head-on.
Abortion's Only Step One
This woman couldn't get her birth-control prescription filled:
For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control."I was shocked," says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. "Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician."
Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.
On one hand, it seems a free-market thing -- nobody should be forced to sell what they don't believe in. But, here's a what if: What if the fundamentalists recognize this, and start a big push to send people to pharmacy school? Don't laugh -- they spent years stocking up AM radio with Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity, Savage, and the like. And what if the pharmacist "doesn't believe in" some drug you need?
Take me: I take Ritalin for ADHD -- have taken it for maybe five years. What if a pharmacist doesn't think people should be "medicated" to concentrate better? Or, what if they, like some religious nutcases, don't believe in messing with "god's will" at all -- and they see it as god's will that you should die from some dread disease instead of taking two pills a day to keep it from killing you?
I have a few right-wing friends who are rather blithe about the dangers of voting in fundamentalism by voting in George Bush -- and they really shouldn't be so blithe. And it's not just freedoms that are in jeopardy. Here are a few good points from BushFlash.com (sorry, no permalink to the piece):
IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN COMING HERE TO GLOAT......save your breath
Bush may have won...but YOU lost.
Here's why:
When overtime pay is eliminated, it won't just be terminated for liberals. You're going to lose yours, as well.
You're going to have to live in the same polluted America as the rest of us.
When the next terrorist attack hits us -- and it will -- the al-Qaeda isn't just going to target Democrats only.
When Social Security goes bankrupt, there won't be any exceptions made for Bush supporters.
The drug companies aren't going to cut Republican seniors any slack with the new Medicare prescription-drug plan either Your folks will also have their coverage changed arbitrarily whenever Merck, Pfizer, et al. feel like it.
( And they won't have any better access to cheaper pharmaceuticals from Canada than anyone else. )
Body armor and armored vehicles in Iraq are not going to doled on the basis of political leanings.
Bottom line, you're in the same leaky lifeboat as the rest of us -- you just don't know it yet.
Wisconsin Is For Morons
A Wisconsin school district is going to teach creationism:
Members of Grantsburg's school board believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum "should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory," said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.
No, it should not. And if anybody can come up with any other SCIENTIFIC theories, please feel free to teach them.
An Outline Of Intellectual Rubbish
An old essay by Bertrand Russell. Sadly, it's quite timely. Here are a few choice excerpts:
Old-fashioned people still say "bless you" when one sneezes, but they have forgotten the reason for the custom. The reason was that people were thought to sneeze out their souls, and before their souls could get back lurking demons were apt to enter the unsouled body; but if any one said "God bless you," the demons were frightened off....Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in biology...
Make that fight against Darwin.
...Although we are taught the Copernican astronomy in our textbooks, it has not yet penetrated to our religion or our morals, and has not even succeeded in destroying belief in astrology. People still think that the Divine Plan has special reference to human beings, and that a special Providence not only looks after the good, but also punishes the wicked. I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious-for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: "Oh, but you forget the good God." Apparently they conceive of the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. This view strikes me as curious.The whole conception of "Sin" is one which I find very puzzling, doubtless owing to my sinful nature. If "Sin" consisted in causing needless suffering, I could understand; but on the contrary, sin often consists in avoiding needless suffering. Some years ago, in the English House of Lords, a bill was introduced to legalize euthanasia in cases of painful and incurable disease. The patient's consent was to be necessary, as well as several medical certificates. To me, in my simplicity, it would seem natural to require the patient's consent, but the late Archbishop of Canterbury, the English official expert on Sin, explained the erroneousness of such a view. The patient's consent turns euthanasia into suicide, and suicide is sin. Their Lordships listened to the voice of authority, and rejected the bill. Consequently, to please the Archbishop-and his God, if he reports truly-victims of cancer still have to endure months of wholly useless agony, unless their doctors or nurses are sufficiently humane to risk a charge of murder. I find difficulty in the conception of a God who gets pleasure from contemplating such tortures; and if there were a God capable of such wanton cruelty, I should certainly not think Him worthy of worship. But that only proves how sunk I am in moral depravity.
...Modern morals are a mixture of two elements: on the one hand, rational precepta as to how to live together peaceably in a society, and on the other hand traditional taboos derived originally from some ancient superstition, but proximately from sacred books, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, or Buddhist. To some extent the two agree; the prohibition of murder and theft, for instance, is supported both by human reason and by Divine command. But the prohibition of pork or beef has only scriptural authority, and that only in certain religions. It is odd that modern men, who are aware of what science has done in the way of bringing new knowledge and altering the conditions of social life, should still be willing to accept the authority of texts embodying the outlook of very ancient and very ignorant pastoral or agricultural tribes. It is discouraging that many of the precepts whose sacred character is thus uncritically acknowledged should be such as to inflict much wholly unnecessary misery. If men's kindly impulses were stronger, they would find some way of explaining that these precepts are not to be taken literally, any more than the command to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor."
...Belief in "nature" and what is "natural" is a source of many errors. It used to be, and to some extent still is, powerfully operative in medicine. The human body, left to itself, has a certain power of curing itself., small cuts usually heal, colds pass off, and even serious diseases sometimes disappear without medical treatment. But aids to nature are very desirable, even in these cases. Cuts may turn septic if not disinfected, colds may turn to pneumonia, and serious diseases are only left without treatment by explorers and travellers in remote regions, who have no option. Many practices which have come to seem "natural" were originally "unnatural," for instance clothing and washing. Before men adopted clothing they must have found it impossible to live in cold climates. Where there is not a modicum of cleanliness, populations suffer from various diseases, such as typhus, from which Western nations have become exempt. Vaccination was (and by some still is) objected to as "unnatural." But there is no consistency in such objections, for no one supposes that a broken bone can be mended by "natural" behavior. Eating cooked food is "unnatural"; so is heating our houses. The Chinese philosopher Lao-tse, whose traditional date is about 600 B.C., objected to roads and bridges and boats as "unnatural," and in his disgust at such mechanistic devices left China and went to live among the Western barbarians. Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.
...I admire especially a certain prophetess who lived beside a lake in Northern New York State about the year 1820. She announced to her numerous followers that she possessed the power of walking on water, and that she proposed to do so at 11 o'clock on a certain morning. At the stated time, the faithful assembled in their thousands beside the lake. She spoke to them, saying: "Are you all entirely persuaded that I can walk on water?" With one voice they replied: "We are." "In that case," she announced, "there is not need for me to do so." And they all went home much edified.
Perhaps the world would lose some of its interest and variety if such beliefs were wholly replaced by cold science. Perhaps we may allow ourselves to be glad of the Abecedarians, who were so-called because, having rejected all profane learning, they thought it wicked to learn the ABC. And we may enjoy the perplexity of the South American Jesuit who wondered how the sloth could have traveled, since the Flood, all the way from Mount Ararat to Peru-a journey which its extreme tardiness of locomotion rendered almost incredible. A wise man will enjoy the goods of which there is a plentiful supply, and of intellectual rubbish he will find an abundant diet, in our own age as in every other.
WeHo Hot Rod
Sunday afternoon, Melrose and Fairfax, Los Angeles.
Was The Vote Hacked?
Evidence mounts that it was writes Thom Hartmann at Common Dreams:
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat."It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the touch-screen counties, where investigators may have been more vigorously looking for such anomalies, high percentages of registered Democrats generally equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. (I had earlier reported that county size was a variable this turns out not to be the case. Just the use of touch-screens versus optical scanners.)
Good thing Olbermann says that "no Presidential candidates concession speech is legally binding. The only determinants of the outcome of election are the reports of the state returns boards and the vote of the Electoral College." I guess that's why they're counting the ballots in secret in Ohio, as Olbermann reports:
...County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security.Gotcha. Tom Ridge thought Osama Bin Laden was planning to hit Caesar Creek State Park in Waynesville. During the vote count in Lebanon. Or maybe it was Kings Island Amusement Park that had gone Code-Orange without telling anybody. Al-Qaeda had selected Turtlecreek Township for its first foray into a Red State.
The State of Ohio confirms that of all of its 88 Counties, Warren alone decided such Homeland Security measures were necessary. Even in Butler County, reports the Enquirer, the media and others were permitted to watch through a window as ballot-checkers performed their duties. In Warren, the media was finally admitted to the lobby of the administration building, which may have been slightly less incommodious for the reporters, but which still managed to keep them two floors away from the venue of the actual count.
Nobody in Warren County seems to think theyve done anything wrong. The newspaper quotes County Prosecutor Rachel Hurtzel as saying the Commissioners were within their rights to lock the building down, because having photographers or reporters present could have interfered with the count.
You bet, Rachel.
To think I joked that the U.N. should have shipped in observers from Chil to make sure there were no hijinks on election day. Turns out we could've used the Chileans -- and a few from Cuba, too.
Beaten And Bruised, But Still Kicking
It's a long story, but we upgraded my site software to MT 3.11, and MT Blacklist (the spam-fighting plug-in) refuses to install on a Win 2003 server.
Because I don't want to ask people to register to comment on my site, Gregg is installing a comments plug-in that will merely ask you, as you post a comment, to type in a series of four or five numbers that are visible to the naked eye, but not to spam-bots. Intalling this should get the CGI error that's currently showing up to go away. Or, so we hope!
This is just a note to say that there may be some glitches -- but we'll get them worked out as soon as we can (probably within hours or a day). Gregg doesn't anticipate problems -- but in the wild world of blog technology, anything can happen.
Welcome To The Primitive States of America
Are there many (or any) atheists, agnostics, or anti-theists out there, who are against allowing gays to marry? Doubtful. A NY Times letter to the editor from a man in New York named Richard Yoder made me realize something: Marriage, as it's currently practiced, is unconstitutional. Here's what Yoder wrote:
The proponents of same-sex marriage make the mistake of treating marriage as primarily a legal issue instead of a religious one. In a logical world, any government that aims for separation of church and state would concern itself solely with defining civil unions and the legal benefits that accompany them, and leave it entirely up to the religions to define "marriage" in any way they see fit. Perhaps proponents of same-sex marriage would be more successful if they worked diligently toward that end.
We should not have the state in the marriage business, but the civil unions business -- civil unions for whomever wants to legally formalize their relationship...whether it's two men, three men, a man and a woman, or an entire sorority. Marriage belongs in the church, synagogue, or other institution where people practice the irrational worship of god...when they aren't too busy worrying about how everybody else is having sex, and with whom.
Here's another excerpt from another New York Times letter, from Michael Lee Jacobs, in Rochester:
I am gay. More important, I am an American. As a patriot, I have grown up in a society where the ideals of freedom, equality and independence define our very existence. America's strength comes from the diversity of its people and the plurality of their beliefs, the rights to which are defended and codified by the federal and state constitutions.I hold fast to the ideal that we as a people "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" and that we are still endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. I do not accept that in order to be free and equal in the eyes of secular law, I need to emigrate to Canada.
Our values are indeed under attack by special interests with an agenda, and they have just enshrined discrimination into our constitutions.
Yes, but Saskatchewan just legalized gay marriage. It's the seventh Canadian jurisdiction to do it. Yeah, it's cold up there...but it's looking a lot more modern and civilized.
Thank George Bush For The High Price Of Broadband
Squeezing out competition is what did it, according to a Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America report:
Allowing cable and telephone companies to squeeze out competition is a double-barreled failure, said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. Americans pay ten to twenty times as much as consumers in Korea and Japan for broadband, and the U.S. has fallen from third to thirteenth in the world in the percentage of citizens with broadband service. Meanwhile, the percentage of households that have the Internet at home has stagnated at about 60 percent.
Great Moments In Miscasting
I saw a billboard on Sunset and La Brea advertising "Val Kilmer As Moses!" Hello? Moses was a swarthy Jew. What's next, "Dick Van Patten As Arafat!"?
English As A Fourth Or Fifth Language -- One Hopes
From today's mail bag:
hello amy tomarrow is my boyfriend and i 2 year anniversary and i havent no clue is to what to get him canu help?
Your Apology Here
Let the world know all Americans aren't warmongering fundamentalists, at sorryeverybody.com
(via David Rensin)
My Problem With Halloween?
It only comes one day a year. Wouldn't the world be a better place, or, at least, seem like one, if your boss came to work dressed like Barney or a mean nurse (especially if your boss is a man)? Check out this guy:
As for me, I don't dress up in anything special on Halloween. Every day is Halloween for me.
Kerry Won Ohio?
Greg Palast talks about "spoilage" -- ballots voided because they're inconclusive. If you count "spoiled" and provisional ballots, did Kerry win Ohio? And a number of other states? It seems likely:
CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100 percent' of ballots cast.New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precinctsDemocratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.
Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'
Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.
I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.
Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.
"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?
Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.
Your Kerry Victory Party
So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerryif we count all the votes.
But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again. Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.
What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count under PATRIOT Act III.
I Brake For Genius
I love people who write like theyve taken a lot of LSD. If every word in the LA Times was written by Dan Neil, Id read the paper cover-to-cover -- twice. I try to do for advice writing what he does for copy about cars. Check out his take on the Ducati 999R:
If you enjoy the wide-open freedom of a motorcycle, the wind in your face, the carefree, horizon-chasing moment, then by all means avoid the 2005 Ducati 999R.This thing is misery on two wheels, a wickedly disposed and temperamental exercise of sheer mechanical narcissism upon which you assume a posture like it's flashlight inspection day in prison. Its 150-hp V-twin motor runs on damned souls and is lubricated with the fat of unbaptized children. All this bike wants to do, all it dreams about at night, is catapulting you over the handlebars or pitching you backward onto the streaming concrete so you make one of those slo-mo, Evel-Knievel-at-Ceasars-Palace death rolls in your fancy Italian riding leathers.
So plan your day accordingly: After riding this bike, you will need some time to unwind. Go for a Polynesian fire walk, perhaps. Play some "Deer Hunter" roulette. Or, if so equipped, have a vasectomy.
Im starting to feel about Dan the way I feel about Julie Andrews; namely, that if I saw her Id tear off my top and ask her to autograph my breasts with a Sharpie. (Dan, Im sure Colleen? Corine? in LA Times Legal can help you fill out the paperwork for a restraining order.) P.S. I did manage to listen to Julie speak without rushing the stage at a recent Walter Mirisch tribute. Then again, I was with my boyfriend, Gregg, who is very supportive of his batty, outspoken broad - with only one caveat: Im free to mouth off at anyone I want - except when hes at my side.
I can respect that. And usually I do. But once, when we were driving alongside an older woman with a Marriage Is Between A Man And A Woman bumper sticker, I did ask him to make an exception. Cant I just yell Lesbian! out the window at her? Request denied. I do have to admit that Gregg was a very good sport about The Tampa Airport Incident -- the time when he got strip-searched because his overpacking clothes-horse of a girlfriend had given him a little desk set she'd bought, with a tiny stapler, tiny ruler, and tiny rounded-pronged scissors (oops!) to pack in his carry-on. (Of course, you could more easily wound somebody with one of the rock-like bagels they serve on Northwest.)
After I went through the metal detector, I finally spotted Gregg -- putting his belt and shoes back on while the TSA guy searched his bag. This was odd, I thought, because hes a frequent traveler, and knows what to carry and not to carry. When the TSA guy mentioned that it was the tiny scissors that flagged Gregg for a search, I leapt onto my soapbox: Do you know why were all inconvenienced at airports!? Its because people believe in god! Luckily, the agent either chose to ignore me or typically takes pity on men with mouthy broads -- or Gregg might now be sitting in a cell muttering to himself about the reason certain men are inconvenienced by jail terms.
Who Would Want To Kill The Village Idiot?
The usual barbarians, that's who. When Dutch Filmmaker and provacateur Theo Van Gogh flippantly tossed around derogatory remarks about both Christians and Jews, both got pretty peeved at him, but they only used words to express their displeasure, as civilized people are wont to do. Then, he made a serious film about the abuse of Muslim women. When he received death threats from Muslim barbarians, he refused protection, insisting, "No one can seriously want to shoot the village idiot."
Big surprise: It was a Muslim fundamentalist who hunted him down, while he was riding his bicycle, then shot him as he begged for his life, slit his throat, and planted a note (in or) on the body (depending on which news report you read). This one below is by John Henley in The Guardian:
The Dutch justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, said yesterday that the suspect, captured after a shootout with police and currently in a prison hospital with gunshot wounds, "acted out of radical Islamic fundamentalist convictions" and had contacts with a fundamentalist group that was under surveillance by the Dutch secret service. Dutch media also reported that the suspect was a close friend of Samir Azzouz, an 18-year-old Muslim of Moroccan origin who is awaiting trial on charges of planning terrorist attacks on targets including a nuclear reactor and Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.The assassination has sparked a heartfelt national outcry in the traditionally tolerant Netherlands, sparking fears of a dangerous rise in racial tension in a country whose population of 16 million includes some one million Muslims, mainly of Turkish or North African origin. Fanning fears further, a recent government estimated that by 2010, several large Dutch cities like Rotterdam, Amsterdam, the Hague and Utrecht would have Muslim majorities.
Recent opinion polls show the Dutch to be increasingly hostile towards immigrants and fearful of Muslim extremism. Islam, immigration and integration have shot to the top of the political agenda since the rise of Pim Fortuyn, the populist anti-immigrant politician who was himself shot dead by an animal-rights activist in May 2002, and whose party finished second in general elections just days later. The centre-right Dutch government has only succeeded in fanning the flames by calling for greater integration of immigrants through language tests and citizenship classes, and recently fuelled even more controversy with plans to repatriate up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers.
In the midst of this tinderbox, insisting on their right to speak freely and with the support of many Dutch people, Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh scattered their sparks - a blistering critique of Islam - with magnificent disregard for the feelings they might be offending.
How long before this kind of violence -- personal attacks on individuals speaking out against the barbarians -- starts happening in America? By the way, don't be so sure there aren't a few atypical-looking converts to the barbarian point of view.
Obama Speaks
Read the whole thing here.
(via David "Tell Me Everything" Rensin)
The Outlook On 11/3
As I ponder what it's going to be like to live in a fundamentalist nation (unofficially fundamentalist, perhaps, but increasingly fundamentalist in policy), where the national wildlife refuges are about to become gas stations and coal mines, where "a woman's right to choose" may soon mean between a coat hanger and an beaker of bleach, and all the rest that a Bush presidency will likely hold...I looked around for a little balance, and found some, posted by "Meteor Blades" on Daily Kos:
We lost on 11/2. Came in second place in a crucial battle whose damage may still be felt decades from now. The despicable record of our foes makes our defeat good reason for disappointment and fear. Even without a mandate over the past four years, they have behaved ruthlessly at home and abroad, failing to listen to objections even from members of their own party. With the mandate of a 3.6-million vote margin, one can only imagine how far their arrogance will take them in their efforts to dismantle 70 years of social legislation and 50+ years of diplomacy.Still, Tuesday was only one round in the struggle. Its only the end if we let it be. I am not speaking solely of challenging the votes in Ohio or elsewhere indeed, I think even successful challenges are unlikely to change the ultimate outcome, which is not to say I dont think the Democrats should make the attempt. And Im not just talking about evaluating in depth what went wrong, then building on what was started in the Dean campaign to reinvigorate the grassroots of the Democratic Party, although I also think we must do that. Im talking about the broader political realm, the realm outside of electoral politics that has always pushed America to live up to its best ideals and overcome its most grotesque contradictions.
Not a few people have spoken in the past few hours about an Americanist authoritarianism emerging out of the countrys current leadership. I think thats not far-fetched. Fighting this requires that we stick together, not bashing each other, not fleeing or hiding or yielding to the temptation of behaving as if whats the use?
Its tough on the psyche to be beaten.Throughout our countrys history, abolitionists, suffragists, union organizers, anti-racists, antiwarriors, civil libertarians, feminists and gay rights activists have challenged the majority of Americans to take off their blinders. Each succeeded one way or another, but not overnight, and certainly not without serious setbacks.
After a decent interval of licking our wounds and pondering what might have been and where we went wrong, we need to spit out our despair and return united - to battling those who have for the moment outmaneuvered us. Otherwise, we might just as well lie down in the street and let them flatten us with their schemes.
He's At Homo With It...Kinda
MSNBC's Chris Matthews tells Ron Reagan, Jr., that he "respects" that he was "a dancer." Translation: "I'm not that comfortable that you're a homosexual, but I'll pretend to be."
Has Ralph Nader Had A Stroke?
We're watching him now on CNN, and it looks like the left half of his face is frozen.
Bloggermann Likes Zogby
And Zogby likes Kerry. Bloggermann is MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, and here's what he calls the "Redskin rule and Carter corollary," posted at 5:51 p.m. EST (sorry, wouldn't give me a permalink to the exact item):
John Zogbys polling was generally considered the most accurate during the crazed 2000 election, and if he maintains that measure of reliability, you can go to sleep now.Zogbys final tracking poll, state by state, released at 5:30 EST, suggests the prospect of a Kerry win by a margin of 311 Electoral Votes to 213, with only Colorado and Nevada too close to call (and representing just fourteen votes between them).
Oh and by the way, he has Mr. Bush winning the popular vote, narrowly an irony of biblical proportions that one Democratic pollster rated a one-in-three chance just last week.
It should be noted Zogby is doing a lot of extrapolating. In the two from Column A (Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania), two from Column B (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin) states, he gives them all to Kerry. But Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are listed as trending Kerry based on exit polling. The smaller three states show Kerry up by 5-6%.
If hes right, it upholds both the Redskin Rule (a bloody football team would be 18-0 predicting who gets to run the country) and the Carter Corollary (no incumbent is reelected nor defeated narrowly).
A lot of people remaining uncertain that hes right.
Uncertain, but hopeful. With all the butterflies in my stomach right now, I could start an insect zoo.
Billionaires For Bush
Hilarious site:
Billionaires for Bush is a grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies. Headquartered in Wall Street and with over 60 chapters nationwide, we'll give whatever it takes to ensure four more years of putting profit over people. After all, we know a good president when we buy one.
Daddy Starbucks
Sunday's adventure in underparenting: I'm writing at my usual Starbucks, and a "dad" comes in with his two brats, a girl and a boy. Girl brat looks to be about five, boy brat, about six. They're both playing video games, and the boy's video game has the sound up. (Remember books? They develop more than eye-hand coordination, and they don't disturb adults with hangovers trying to read the newspaper in peace and quiet.)
Both brats are kicking the bottom of the table while dad is getting them food. I quietly tell them to stop, knowing I'd better sneak in a little disciplining before dad comes back to let them get their rotten on. Dad delivers food, brats complain: "It's too hot, it's too cold, I don't like it." Brats fight. Boy shoves girl. Dad is loud, brats are also loud. Neither dad nor brats notice the existence of any other patrons, a number of whom are looking pained at the noise. The Brat Family stays far too long.
The kids begin going through the toy ads from the paper, greedy little curs, behaving as greedy little curs will behave -- shouting their toy orders at Daddy. The finishing touch? The dad opts for bribery as a substitute for parenting, plaintively asking the little girl, "If I buy you this, will you sleep in your own bed?" The little girl, who clearly knows who's in charge, responded as expected: "NO!"
As I wrote in my column a few weeks ago, "I recognize that I'm self-involved, self-indulgent, and impulsive, and thus unfit to be a parent. There are others who are also self-involved, self-indulgent, and impulsive, but see no reason for that to stop them from accessorizing with a couple of children."
Presidential Priorities
Straight from the terrorist's mouth:
Bin Laden also said that Bush's reaction toward the Sept. 11 attacks was slow which gave the hijackers the time they needed to carry out the attacks."It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.
"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.
I think the best way to thank George for being "presidential" in the time of crisis would be a vote for Kerry...don't you?
Eeeeeeuw!
"Ceci n'est pas une serviette." (This [New Orleans antique store bedspread] is not a napkin.) Apologies to Rn Magritte.
A word to the wise and weak-of-stomach: Avoid all hotels where LA Times staff writer Brady MacDonald has stayed. It doesn't even seem to occur to Brady to keep his icky manners under wraps. Here's the offending paragraph from Brady's piece on New Orleans from Sunday's Travel section:
We ordered our po' boys to go. Back at the hotel, I gleefully assembled my roast beef po' boy with "debris" the slow-cooked roast beef that falls into the gravy while cooking. Yes, that is roast beef with roast beef on top. I forked the debris, which came in an 8-ounce foam cup, onto the sandwich one bite at a time. After the euphoria of my first taste, I realized we'd forgotten napkins. I wiped my hands on the bedspread and plowed onward. (Italics, mine.)
GROSS! Double gross! Luckily, there's no need to guess which hotel to avoid, since Brady helpfully lists it below his piece:
Chateau Hotel, 1001 Rue Chartres; (504) 524-9636, http://www.chateauhotel.com. I stayed at this historic French Quarter hotel with 48 rooms and a courtyard; breakfast is included. Doubles from $79.
(Probably not including bedspread dry-cleaning. And let's just hope it wasn't just the po' boy theme that kept Brady from writing about peeing in the pool.)
The Wal-Fare State
Who pays for the health care of Wal-Mart's employees? We do, writes Reed Abelson in The New York Times:
A survey by Georgia officials found that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state's health program for children at an annual cost of nearly $10 million to taxpayers. A North Carolina hospital found that 31 percent of 1,900 patients who described themselves as Wal-Mart employees were on Medicaid, while an additional 16 percent had no insurance at all.And backers of a measure that will be on California's ballot tomorrow, which would force big employers like Wal-Mart to either provide affordable health insurance to their workers or pay into a state insurance pool, say Wal-Mart employees without company insurance are costing California's state health care programs an estimated $32 million a year.
While I'm against forcing employers to cover employees, I'm even more against forcing the public to cover employees because employers pay such a low wage. Especially when the employers are already getting major handouts from the public. (To go to the PDF about the handouts, click the link under the word "tax dollars.")