Welcome To Venus, Uh, Venice
Hood ornament on truck parked outside the post office at Windward Circle.
Slowing The Spread Of Affection
Ever been in a relationship with somebody who's only half there -- because they're always doing one or more things while they're on the phone with you? That's the topic of a column I just posted from a guy dating a doctor. Here's an excerpt from my answer:
I can just see her at work: Some poor old guy is flatlining, and she's on her cellphone making a hair appointment while crawling around on her hands and knees looking for the back of her earring. "Hang in there, Mr. Jones, I just have to see if the colorist is in on Wednesday."And there you are, all “emotionally available,” spilling your guts to her over the phone: “I was a loser as a child, and my hamster was my only friend, and then the fat little neighbor girl sat on him.” All you’re looking for is a bit of empathy on the other end of the line -- preferably something a little more heartfelt and personal than “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!”
There was a right time to say, “Hey, why don’t you call me back when you aren’t busy?” and it was the first time you caught her typing, watching seals getting it on, and playing “Greensleeves” on the harp with her toes. But, because you didn’t put your foot down then, and are still only flirting with putting it down now, the power balance in this relationship is probably blown. Your first clue? How freely she tossed off her howler of an excuse that she’s not rude, just “scared of loving somebody too much.” (Where does she get her lines, out of the recycling bin over at the “Guiding Light”?)
The question and the rest is at the link. P.S. On a pathetic note, that's my childhood autobiography in there, and my hamster was named Squeaky.
Frosty The "Snow" Man
According to a letter to the editor writer in Lakeland, Florida, the Polk County School Board is getting out of hand:
Frosty the Snowman is the personification of cocaine!The Polk County School Board and Superintendent Gail McKinzie, in their infinite wisdom, have banned the wearing of Frosty or any other likeness of the lovable snowman.
...Watch out, Santa Claus may be next. He smokes a pipe and there just might be one person who says there is crack in that there pipe.
When does common sense take over from absurd political correctness?
TONY I. HILL, Lakeland
Tony, we're still waiting.
Caveat: From one news report, it does sound like it's only Frosty the thug snowman they're banning in Polk County. I'm still against that!
But, here, all depictions of Frosty have been banned. Guess they won't be showing this seedy drug movie at the school assembly! Here's the version of Frosty that started the controversy:
And just a thought for the banners: There's no better way than a ban to make every kid out there want that shirt!
It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
Casa Del Mar, Santa Monica. Somebody went a little wild with the glue gun.
High Tech, Low Smarts
Too many people are afraid of all the wrong things. Andrew Kantor writes:
My son had a birthday party last week — he turned three. We invited about a dozen kids from his pre-school and elsewhere to a local spot where they could run and paint and eat and be kids. Naturally, as the proud father I took a lot of photos of the ruckus.I posted these photos to Sam's website so all the parents — and our families back home — could see them. I post lots of photos to the site.
One of the parents, who isn't exactly the brightest light on the family Christmas tree, decided (incorrectly, but more on that in a second) that I was putting the kids in danger by posting their photos. The Internet is a scary place, after all, filled with all sorts of bad people.
She proceeded to call every parent whose kid was at the party to tell them what horrible people we were and how having their kids' images on the Web was a Bad Thing.
Keep in mind: We didn't post the kids' names, just their pictures.
Of course these people are parents, and when another parent called to say their children might be in danger, no amount of logic was going to change their minds. It's the same mechanism that convinces people to buy SUVs, thinking they're safer. They aren't, but that's marketing for you.
The photos-are-dangerous story was nonsense (and, to be honest, I think the woman who called everyone knew it). So does having photos on the Internet pose a threat? No, not the way we had them. Having a child's photo on a website, especially when you don't use a full name, doesn't put the child in danger — unless, of course, the parents often leave him unattended (more about that in a sec).
Now, if a teenage girl posts her photo, and her bio, and where she lives — that's another story. But a photo of a toddler? No.
In her former life, my wife was a crime reporter, and her beat was missing children. She's as paranoid as they come with this sort of thing and putting the photos up didn't bother her. But when you have someone sowing the seeds of paranoia, well, suddenly the Internet becomes scary. It's, you know, technology.
But here's the thing: That same woman who called every parent to scare them? She lets her four-year-old son run around in public places out of her sight. But that's not the Internet. That's not technology.
The parents who got scared about the photos? The doors are unlocked at the pre-school their kids attend. In fact, my wife found a homeless woman roaming the halls there once; she had walked right in. (And, by the way, the kids' photos and names were all over the walls there.)
Perspective: The chances of someone stumbling on their kids' photos, finding out where they lived, and going through the trouble of stalking them? Just about zero. Non-family abductions are usually crimes of opportunity when it comes to three-, four-, and five-year-old kids.
But the chances of someone walking off the street, into the pre-school, and snatching a child? It's still pretty darned low — but much greater relatively speaking.
When we asked one of the parents what she thought might happen, she responded that she just didn't think it was safe to have her child's photo "on the Internet." No reason, no logic. Just… because.
"Deviant Behavior"
That would be the behavior of officials in the barbarian regime of Dubai, where over two dozen gay Arab men could face "government-ordered hormone treatments, five years in jail, and a lashing":
The Interior Ministry said police raided a hotel chalet this month and arrested 22 men from the Emirates as they celebrated the wedding ceremony.The men are likely to be tried under Muslim law on charges related to adultery and prostitution, said Interior Ministry spokesman Issam Azouri.
Outward homosexual behavior is banned in the United Arab Emirates, and the wedding has alarmed leaders of the Muslim country as it grapples with an influx of Western culture.
Police acting on a tip raided the hotel and found a dozen men dressed as female brides and a dozen others in male Arab dress.
On Friday, a government official called on parents to be vigilant for "deviant" behavior.
The 26 men arrested have been questioned and were undergoing psychological evaluations Saturday. Azouri said the Interior Ministry's department of social support will try to direct the men away from homosexual behavior, using methods including male hormone injections.
Where's our government? Are we going to lean on this government to get them to treat human beings a little less like test animals to be medicated against their will? Or will this meet the same fate as family planning centers in Africa that provide un-fundamentalist Christian information and services? That would be: Turn the other cheek so far we pretend we can't see a thing.
Are All Men Chester The Molester?
According to a couple of airlines, they are.
A leading psychologist has dismissed as "offensive" and "insane" a policy adopted by Qantas and Air New Zealand's not to seat men next to unaccompanied children.The policy came to light when an Auckland man, Mark Worsley, was asked to shift seats on a Qantas flight because an unaccompanied child had been assigned the seat next to his.
"At the time I was so gobsmacked that I moved. I was so embarrassed and just stewed on it for the entire flight," Mr Worsley, a 37-year-old father of two-year-old twins, told the New Zealand Herald.
Qantas and Air New Zealand have both confirmed it is their policy not to allow unaccompanied children to sit next to men.
But Dunedin-based clinical psychologist Nigel Latta, who has 15 years experience with sex offenders and victims, told NZPA he disagreed entirely with the policy.
"I think it's completely insane. It's a crowded plane. For a start you've got to have someone who's sexually interested in children who just happens by chance to get sat next to an unaccompanied child who then in a small, crowded airplane is going to molest a kid on a flight.
"It's insane. It's political correctness and cautiousness gone made."
Latta said the policy was sending an "awful" message to society that "all men are pariahs".
If This Is What A Midlife Crisis Looks Like...
Let's hope more people start having them. Sunday, around 4:30pm, Ocean Park and Main, Santa Monica.
Is He Crying Because He Was Unethical?
Or because he got found out?
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham said Monday he is resigning from Congress after pleading guilty to taking more than $2 million in bribes in a criminal conspiracy involving at least three defense contractors.Asked by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns if he had accepted cash and gifts and then tried to influence the Defense Department on behalf of the donors, Cunningham said, "Yes, your honor."
Cunningham's plea agreement with federal prosecutors stemmed from an investigation of the 2003 sale of his California home to a defense contractor for an inflated price.
Under the agreement, Cunningham acknowledged a conspiracy to commit bribery, mail and wire fraud and tax evasion. He also pleaded guilty to a separate tax evasion violation for failing to disclose income in 2004.
Prosecutors said Cunningham had taken bribes from contractors, which enabled him to buy a mansion, a suburban Washington condominium, a yacht and a Rolls Royce.
One man's Congress is another man's cash register!
How Come The Biggest Idiots Are Always The Ones In Charge?
The "media shield" law won't protect bloggers, writes Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy In Media:
In our recent awards ceremony honoring the Freepers, people who post comments and articles on the FreeRepublic website, Accuracy in Media was demonstrating an understanding of the power of new media. We cannot let the Big Media monopolize the concept of journalism. When we honored Harry MacDougald and Paul Boley with the Reed Irvine Investigative Journalism award, we were recognizing that ordinary citizens can be journalists, too.Unfortunately, the sponsors of the so-called Free Flow of Information Act, or the federal media shield bill, do not understand this critical fact. In an October 10 article by Mark Fitzgerald on the Editor & Publisher website, he noted that Senator Richard Lugar, main sponsor of the shield law in the Senate, has said that bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the bill. On the other hand, Rep. Mike Pence, the main sponsor of the bill in the House, says some bloggers will be covered, but only those involved in "gathering news." He says those covered by the bill would have to be evaluated on a "blog-by-blog basis."
This confusion is a terrible indictment of the bill and its sponsors. They don't know what they're doing. It demonstrates the tendency of politicians to get behind something that sounds good but which is impractical, even dangerous. After all, who can be against the "free flow of information?" But when you get down to the nitty-gritty of who is actually a "covered person" or journalist under the bill, the sponsors seem to throw up their hands, leaving definitions to others. That's irresponsible.
Not to mention moronic.
Not The Truth But The Other Truth
Frank Rich (unpassword-protected) pulls up the rug at The White House and peers at all the nasty stuff swept underneath:
Much more: each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless. The more the president and vice president tell us that their mistakes were merely innocent byproducts of the same bad intelligence seen by everyone else in the world, the more we learn that this was not so. The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House. The real point of the Bush-Cheney verbal fisticuffs this month, like the earlier campaign to take down Joseph Wilson, is less to smite Democrats than to cover up wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe.The cover-up is failing, however. No matter how much the president and vice president raise their decibel levels, the truth keeps roaring out. A nearly 7,000-word investigation in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times found that Mr. Bush and his aides had "issued increasingly dire warnings" about Iraq's mobile biological weapons labs long after U.S. intelligence authorities were told by Germany's Federal Intelligence Service that the principal source for these warnings, an Iraqi defector in German custody code-named Curveball, "never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so." The five senior German intelligence officials who spoke to The Times said they were aghast that such long-discredited misinformation from a suspected fabricator turned up in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations and in the president's 2003 State of the Union address (where it shared billing with the equally bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious African uranium).
Right after the L.A. Times scoop, Murray Waas filled in another piece of the prewar propaganda puzzle. He reported in the nonpartisan National Journal that 10 days after 9/11, "President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."
The information was delivered in the President's Daily Brief, a C.I.A. assessment also given to the vice president and other top administration officials. Nonetheless Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney repeatedly pounded in an implicit (and at times specific) link between Saddam and Al Qaeda until Americans even started to believe that the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by Iraqis. More damning still, Mr. Waas finds that the "few credible reports" of Iraq-Al Qaeda contacts actually involved efforts by Saddam to monitor or infiltrate Islamic terrorist groups, which he regarded as adversaries of his secular regime. Thus Saddam's antipathy to Islamic radicals was the same in 2001 as it had been in 1983, when Donald Rumsfeld, then a Reagan administration emissary, embraced the dictator as a secular fascist ally in the American struggle against the theocratic fascist rulers in Iran.
What these revelations also tell us is that Mr. Bush was wrong when he said in his Veterans Day speech that more than 100 Congressional Democrats who voted for the Iraqi war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" he did. They didn't have access to the President's Daily Brief that Mr. Waas uncovered. They didn't have access to the information that German intelligence officials spoke about to The Los Angeles Times. Nor did they have access to material from a Defense Intelligence Agency report, released by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan this month, which as early as February 2002 demolished the reliability of another major source that the administration had persistently used for its false claims about Iraqi-Al Qaeda collaboration.
The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A simpler question might be: What was not a lie? The situation recalls Mary McCarthy's explanation to Dick Cavett about why she thought Lillian Hellman was a dishonest writer: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.' "
If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've been exonerated by two commissions that looked into prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed possible White House misuse and mischaracterization of that intelligence - they should just release the rest of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar documents that are now trickling out. Instead, incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release of any such information, including unclassified documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard. As Scott Shane reported in The New York Times last month, Vietnam documents are now off limits, too: the National Security Agency won't make public a 2001 historical report on how American officials distorted intelligence in 1964 about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for fear it might "prompt uncomfortable comparisons" between the games White Houses played then and now to gin up wars.
Meanderthals
A definition from the October Playboy:
\me-AN-dur-thols\ n, aimless, slow-walking pedestrians who mindlessly get in everyone else's way on sidewalks, in malls and in crosswalks, often while preoccupied with a cell phone.
Those of the cell phone wandering ilk are also known as "rude assclowns." My favorites, though, are the cellphoners behind the wheel, who respond to a honk from you by giving you the finger and staying exactly where they are, green light or no greenlight...as if to say, "Can't you see I'm on the phone!?"
Back When Breasts Were Pointed, Not Round
A too-rare treat -- my friend Hillary Johnson on, among other things, the lunkheadedness of women who think aping men is the path to power:
In a bizarre form of appeasement, women with aspirations in the male-dominated worlds of business and politics have sacrificed the power of beauty in order to share in the power of brains. They have colluded in the corruption of beauty as a path to power, consenting to its denigration and trivialization. Today you won’t see women in positions of political power using the full spectrum of their physical being. Feminine magnetism is taboo in politics, and women who rise to political power, like Senators Clinton, Feinstein and Boxer, cleave to the uxorious uniform—the pastel suit, the pearls, the helmet of curls, a stiff body language that screams “Take me seriously!”Yet if you look outside of politics, at the prominent women of power—those who have a public profile to go with their economic clout, they are often women who have taken a distinctly feminine path to power. Martha Stewart has built an empire upon the power of beauty—not her own personal beauty, but her mighty aesthetic. When it comes to the beauty instinct, you could liken Martha Stewart’s nose for the powerful to Warren Buffet’s investing acumen (unfortunately, she didn’t turn out to be as talented in Warren’s turf as she should have been—but then I hear his home décor is less than stunning). Oprah Winfrey parlayed a more spiritually-branded sense of beauty into an even more dominant empire. She has even used her own body as a tool, elevating the yo-yo diet into an iconic piece of performance art, hypnotizing and enthralling millions of women and men around the world with the power of her raw feminine physicality; who but Oprah could be so breathtakingly open and so mighty all at once? Given the run of personal debacles we’ve seen in politics since the downfall of presidential candidate Gary Hart, it would seem that the next class of politicians to enter the arena would do well to manifest some of Oprah’s fearless, magisterial vulnerability. Her achievement in doing so is nothing less than a form of feminine, physical genius.
Great details in this piece about the great inventor and screen beauty Heddy Lamar.
Living While Alive
Best says it best:
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.--Soccer legend George Best, who died on Friday aged 59.
Meow Mix
A girl journalist commits the crime of being pretty and using it to her advantage observes Jacques Steinberg in The New York Times:
Writing in The Spectator, one of Ms. Logan's rivals, Julian Manyon of the television network ITN observed, "Some of our jealous competitors have unkindly suggested that the unique access we have hitherto enjoyed to Bagram has less to do with my journalistic talents than the considerable physical charms of my traveling companion, the delectable Lara Logan of GMTV."He added that Ms. Logan "exploits her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy."
Over a recent lunch in Manhattan, during a break in her coverage of the Saddam Hussein trial, Ms. Logan said, "There isn't a journalist alive who won't admit to you they use every advantage they have."
In that respect, she said, she was no different from the generations of male reporters who had employed various means to ingratiate themselves with the military. "Some guys come from a military background, and they'll use that," she said. "Some guys are very sporty, and they'll play on the sporty thing."
And they'd be idiots not to. The idea that the playing field is level or "should" be is ridiculous and irrational. Imagine if she said that about some guy who plays racquetball with a source.
Public Mannerlessness Reaches A New Low
Last night, I found myself having to argue with the girl behind me at the movies about why she couldn't keep her big shoe on the velvet armrest of my seat. I was with Gregg, who will always bail me out of jail if I get in trouble, but whose rule is no verbal confrontations when I'm seated or standing right next to him, especially if the offender in question is employed by the TSA.
Recognizing this, I simply snarled, "Excuse me." She slowly removed her foot.
You'd think being caught in the act of mannerlessness (ie, do you put your feet on the velvet armrest of grandma's couch? [answer: if you're her, probably]) would have nipped her rudeness into submission. Nope. Moments later, her dirty sneaker sole was right back up there, playing footsie with my lavender shawl. I longed to spontaneously grow my arm another 14 inches and reach back and slap her. Instead, I turned and glared at her in a way that translated to "Remove your shoe, cur! Before I remove your foot."
She actually said, "It isn't bothering you." I couldn't believe believe that I had to do a dissertation on why it's improper to have your foot on the velvet armrest of my chair, but such, it seems, is life these days. Well, my little boorette was a lucky girl, because, since Gregg was there, I just said, "Yes, it actually is." I then used my elbow to block off her foot rest for the remainder of the attempted movie
PS Skip Syriana: no story, no main characters, no characters you care about, no point, no movie.
The Myth Of Climate Change
Nope, there's no climate change, and no, we aren't causing it with our reckless disdain for the environment. There's just more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any other time in the past 650,000 years, with the rate of increase just off the scales. From a Sploid.com link, the story by the BBC's Richard Black:
Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the last 650,000 years.That is the conclusion of new European studies looking at ice taken from 3km below the surface of Antarctica.
The scientists say their research shows present day warming to be exceptional.
Other research, also published in the journal Science, suggests that sea levels may be rising twice as fast now as in previous centuries.
Treasure dome
The evidence on atmospheric concentrations comes from an Antarctic region called Dome Concordia (Dome C).
Over a five year period commencing in 1999, scientists working with the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica) have drilled 3,270m into the Dome C ice, which equates to drilling nearly 900,000 years back in time.
Gas bubbles trapped as the ice formed yield important evidence of the mixture of gases present in the atmosphere at that time, and of temperature.
"One of the most important things is we can put current levels of carbon dioxide and methane into a long-term context," said project leader Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
"We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years."
The Wicked Witch Of The West Returns
Lest anyone think I'm going soft after my recent childosaurus posting, here's a Gregg-ism from yesterday. He'd just gotten to my place, and my neighbors had some friends over. The adults were indoors and the kids were out. Gregg said:
Isn't that wonderful, the sound of children, and the knowledge they aren't ours?
My sentiments exactly.
Alkon On Dowd
On her new LATimes.com blog, Styles & Scenes, my pal Elizabeth Snead posted yet another naive comment from Maureen Dowd. Dowd made the remark on a night she was interviewed for Writers' Bloc by her former boyfriend, The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin:
Why, when women are running four of the six major studios, is Hollywood is still making moves portraying women as maids, shopgirls, hookers, ghosts and geishas?
My reply:
It's basic evolutionary psychology. Perhaps Dowd didn't actually read the Stephanie Brown study about how men tend to prefer subordinate women that she mentioned in her confused diatribe/book excerpt in the NYTimes.It's also basic drama. The character has to go somewhere. Lady vice-president does what, apply for a transfer to the San Francisco office?
The biggest problem is not what jobs women hold in movies, but the fact that Hollywood makes piles and piles of tripe. Whether the woman in a particular piece of tripe is a manicurist, an executive, or an assassin is immaterial. Dowd makes the (sexist) mistake of expecting female studio heads to be responsible to women, not their stockholders. It's just as sexist as people who lament the absence of a woman president or supreme court justice. Thanks, but I'll settle for the best person for the job, man, woman, or hermaphrodite.
And PS, they should've gotten David Rensin to interview her.
(They instead had Aaron Sorkin, her former ex, who apparently played all kissy-wissy with her instead of challenging her remarks.) And regarding the study by University of Michigan's Brown which I referenced in a recent column, men prefer subordinates for relationships. They might do the boss for a night or two.
Don't miss Snead's account of Sorkin, Dowd, and the shoes:
Sorkin admitted he often thought of Dowd while writing witty banter for actresses. And he did tell a funny, if slightly embarrassing, shoe fetish tale about Dowd, whom he met during the first season of "The West Wing” when he was shooting scenes in Washington, D.C.“I wrote an off-screen character who was a powerful, highly feared female columnist for the New York Times. One of the White House staffers had inadvertently made a joke about her shoes and was afraid that the administration was going to suffer if he didn’t apologize.”
To thank Dowd for being “a good sport” about the thinly veiled reference, Sorkin sent her a slew of expensive shoes from Barneys the day the show aired.
“She liked them a lot,” recalled Sorkin. “But she told me that because she sometimes covers Hollywood in her column, to accept the gift was unethical. But she didn’t give back the shoes. What she has done, and this was five or six years ago, is, every once in a while, she will just give me cash. Forty, sixty, one hundred dollars … It’s not clear to me how giving me cash makes the ethical picture less murky, but it was terribly important to Maureen that this be done right and this is her version. She just gives me cash.”
“It’s gonna take me to the year 2030 to pay off those shoes,” confessed Dowd, still smiling, albeit not quite as sweetly.
The woman is a New York Times columnist and she can't pay off the shoes in one fell swoop? And she doesn't have a strong sense of ethics and real personal policies around them? Sad. As in, pathetic.
AnySoldier.com
Give thanks today in a truly meaningful way: Support our troops. Send letters and care packages by clicking on a soldier's address at anysoldier.com. Here's how it works, from their FAQs:
You select one or more soldiers from the Where to Send page. You will notice the Soldier's address includes the line, "ATTN: Any Soldier" . The Soldiers are volunteers for this effort, they will see the "Attn" line, and will put your letters and packages into the hands of Soldiers who don't get much or any mail. This effort is 110% voluntary.We provide help on the What to Send and How to Send pages.
You send your support, and maybe some stuff, directly to whatever unit or units you want, you don't send us anything. PLEASE read the entire web site before you send anything as we want you to be informed and comfortable with this effort.
This CNN link has the faces of those who've died, along with a few details about each. We saw some soldiers on our way back from New York. A number of them looked tiny and/or very young -- like teenagers. Probably because they are teenagers.
Here's one from the list -- 18 years old:
Lance Cpl. Andrew Julian Aviles, Headquarters & Service Company, 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Tampa, Florida. Killed when an Iraqi artillery round struck his amphibious assault vehicle near Baghdad, Iraq, on April 7, 2003
This guy, from Missoula, Montana, was just 19 when he died:
Pfc. Andrew D. Bedard, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Expeditionary Force, Missoula, Montana. Killed by a homemade bomb that detonated during combat operations against enemy forces in Ramadi, Iraq, on October 4, 2005
And here's a girl from Wisconsin, age 19:
Pfc. Rachel K. Bosveld, 19, 527th Military Police Company, V Corps, Waupun, Wisconsin. Killed during a mortar attack on the Abu Ghraib Police Station in Baghdad, Iraq, on October 26, 2003
Total dead and wounded coalition forces from the CNN link above:
There have been 2,296 coalition deaths, 2,097 Americans, one Australian, 98 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, two Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 26 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of November 23, 2005, according to a CNN count. The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose deaths have been reported by their country's governments. At least 15,568 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon.
Moronism Goes Super-Mainstream
This is scary. Now, corporations are afraid to fund the Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, lest they tick off the religious freaks. The Creationist Museum, on the other hand, has raised $7 million in donations. Nicholas Wapshott writes in the Daily Telegraph:
The entire $3 million (£1.7 million) cost of Darwin, which opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York yesterday, is instead being borne by wealthy individuals and private charitable donations.
How moronic are we in this country?
Creationism is increasingly widely backed in America. A CBS News poll last month found that 51 per cent of Americans reject the theory of evolution, believing instead that God created humans in their present form. Another poll in August found that 38 per cent of Americans think that creationism should be taught in schools, instead of evolution.In Dover, Pennsylvania, last week, a jury began considering a case brought by parents against a school board that insisted that "intelligent design," which argues that a supernatural force populated the earth, be taught alongside evolution in science classes.
Yes, the world was created by a giant purple talking doughnut.
Sounds implausible?
Well, there's no more evidence that "god" did it. And that's what science is about -- evidence-based knowledge, not blind belief, more politely called "faith."
Oh, but there's one more thing:
The museum will have to depend more heavily upon the profits of its Darwin-related merchandise to finance the cost of staging the exhibition, including a 12-inch Darwin doll, Darwin finger puppets and, for a $950, a replica of the vessel Beagle, made in China and assembled in Vietnam.
Support the museum here.
Finally, Some Intelligent Design In Kansas!
Somebody has come up with a college course to put the dimwits in their place:
LAWRENCE, Kan. - Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."
"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.
"Creationism is mythology," Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."
...John Calvert, an attorney and managing director of the Intelligent Design Network in Johnson County, said Mirecki will go down in history as a laughingstock.
Um, no dear...that's your job. And it's admirable how well you and your fellow nutters manage to do it.
Where The Wild Things Are
You've gotta love a boy who goes around dressed like a dinosaur when it isn't Halloween. I think the world would be a much better place if more people ran around in costume. I mean, how can you order people tortured and killed while dressed like a giant bunny?
Give This Man A Standing Ovation
An actor on London's West End makes short work of a woman whose cell phone rang during a play:
The actor Richard Griffiths has launched a furious tirade against mobile phones after ejecting a member of the audience from his West End play when her ringtone sounded for the third time.Griffiths, known for his roles as Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter films and Uncle Monty in the cult hit Withnail and I, was somewhat less than avuncular when his lines in the tense penultimate scene of the play Heroes were interrupted by the mobile phone call on Saturday.
He stopped mid-scene and asked: "Could the person whose mobile phone it is please leave?"
When he pinpointed the female offender, he addressed her directly, saying: "Is that it, or will it be ringing some more?
"The 750 people here would be fully justified in suing you for ruining their afternoon."
As the woman left the auditorium at the Wyndham's Theatre, the audience gave Griffiths a standing ovation before the play, also starring John Hurt, continued.
Griffiths was unrepentant yesterday about his zero tolerance stance. He said: "It was one of the last scenes of the play and I had already had to restart the speech twice because her phone had gone off.
"I didn't say anything until the third time, when I just thought it was too much. It is a question of respect and it goes right across the board of society.
"It's like delinquent youths on the street and the attitude of people on trains - people just do not think about the other person's point of view any more and mobile phones going off in the theatre are part of the problem."
David Pugh, the play's producer, said ringtone interruptions were a nightly problem for theatres, despite pleas for people to switch their mobiles off before productions start.
It is not the first time Griffiths has come up against the problem of mobile phones.
Last year, he was in the middle of a particularly dramatic scene of The History Boys at the National Theatre when a phone belonging to a man in the front row went off for the sixth time during the course of the play.
The actor stopped in the middle of his speech, fixed the offender with an icy stare and said: "I am asking you to stand up, leave this auditorium and never, ever come back."
Other members of the audience applauded as the man left the theatre, although it later emerged that he was hard of hearing and had not heard the mobile ringing.
Lawrence Fishburne did likewise -- I think he was the first, in fact -- in the middle of "A Lion In Winter" on Broadway in New York, giving the offender his patented glare (which could strip paint) and snarling something like "turn the fucking thing off!"
In my own little personal stage, I was just in Daffy's in New York, futilely searching for a warm coat that didn't make me look like the Michelin Man, when a woman going through the rack next to me was bellowing into her phone. She showed no indication that she'd notice other life forms besides herself on the planet, so I was, imagine that, forced to take matters into my own hands. My solution? Singing the Hari Krishna song, with a few creative additions about how her conversation was annoying the hell out of me. Her response (to the person on the other end). "I have to get off, there's a really rude crazy woman next to me, and I can't hear a thing."
Catastrophic Conservatism
I don't agree with everything Bill Moyers says, including that what's being practiced by those "leading" us now is "conservatism," but he's got some good points here, from a speech at the Texas Observer's fundraiser:
Some years ago the classicist scholar, William Arrowsmith, writing in The Texas Observer, described the “worst of Texas attitudes—the rock-bottom conviction, expressed in stone throughout the state and in the hearts of politicians, that what counts is always and only wealth, that everything is for sale and can be bought.” Including now the Faith of Our Fathers, the Old Time Religion, the Rock of Ages. Right-wing religion provides the political and corporate forces running America a cloak of “moral values” with which to camouflage the plunder of America. It is the Texas machine duplicated many times over. For, as The Texas Observer once put it, “The men who run the Lone Star State, through a tacit but powerful interlocking directorate of politicians and corporation executives [joined now by preachers] are perpetrating and perpetuating a monstrous deception on the public” —namely, the illusion of self-government.Everything President George W. Bush knows, he learned here, as the product of a system rigged to assure the political progeny needed to perpetuate itself with minimum interference from the nuisances of liberal democracy. You remember liberal democracy: the rule of law, the protection of individual and minority rights, checks and balances against arbitrary power, an independent press, the separation of church and state. As governor, Bush was nurtured by the peculiar Texas blend of piety and privilege that mocks those values. With the election of 2000, he and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in.
The results have been disastrous: reckless tax cuts, a relentless assault on social services, monumental debt, pre-emptive war, an exhausted military, booming corporate welfare and corruption so deep and pervasive it has touched every facet of American government.
Much has been made of the president’s inept response to Hurricane Katrina. His early response was to joke the fun he had as a frat boy in now-grieving New Orleans. When a reporter pressed him on what had gone wrong after the hurricane struck, he sarcastically asked: “Who says something went wrong?” His attitude would surprise no one who read the 1999 profile of Bush by a conservative journalist who reported how the then-governor had made fun of Karla Fay Tucker’s appeals to be spared the death penalty. The journalist—a conservative, remember —wrote that Bush mocked and dismissed the woman, like him a born-again Christian, as he depicted her begging him, “Please don’t kill me!” But this is not what she had said. Bush made it up.
Such contempt for other people’s reality is embedded in a philosophy hostile to government except as an instrument of privilege and patronage. This is the crowd, remember, that was asleep at the switch in the months leading up to 9/11 when the intelligence traffic crackled with warnings about terrorist attacks (look it up in the official commission report). It’s the same crowd that made a mess of the occupation of Iraq—and then awarded themselves Medals of Freedom for the wreckage they had created. Their mentality was well summed up by Donald Rumsfeld, who, after Baghdad’s libraries and museums were sacked, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Stuff happens.’
Hurricane Katrina uncovered what the progressive advocate Robert Borosage calls the “catastrophic conservatism” of the long right-wing crusade to denigrate government, ‘starve the beast,’ scorn its purposes and malign its officials. We are seeing the results of an economic policy focused on top-end tax cuts and deregulations to reward private investors, as opposed to public investments in the country’s vital infrastructure. On the day that Katrina struck the coast, the census bureau reported that last year, one million people had been added to the 36 million Americans living in poverty. A few weeks earlier, the Labor Department had reported that while incomes had grown impressively last year, the gains had gone mostly to the top—the people with stocks and bonds and income other than wages. But the 80 million people who live paycheck to paycheck barely stayed even. It took a natural disaster to expose the stunning inequality and poverty produced when people are written off and shoved to the margins. And to remind us, as Borosage writes, of the dearth of basic investment in the boring but essential public works vital to civilization—schools, public transport, water systems, public health, and yes, wetlands and trees.
We are seeing now the results of systemic and spectacular corruption and cronyism and the triumph of a social ideal—the “You get yours/I’ll get mine” mentality—that is diametrically opposed to the ethic of shared sacrifice and responsibility.
The Right To Get Your Rocks Off, Paid By The State
Belgium says a severly handicapped man has no right to a state-hired hooker.
Jurgen Van Acker is 27 years old and severely handicapped. He cannot walk, talk, sit or eat, but mentally there is nothing wrong with him. With the help of his computer he can communicate. Recently he became a television celebrity in Belgium when he asked that the welfare office pay his prostitutes.When Jurgen turned 18, his mother Frie Van Acker told him all about sex and asked whether he would like to have sex. Jurgen indicated “No.” One evening three years later, however, he wrote on his computer: “I want sex.” That same evening, Frie contacted a prostitute. Every month for the past six years prostitutes have come to the house for Jurgen. They charge 100 euros for half an hour. Jurgen finds one session a month inadequate. He wants sex at least once a week, but his mother cannot pay that much. Jurgen and his Mum are now demanding that the government subsidize the sex sessions, but the Fund for the Social Integration of the Handicapped only finances masturbation equipment, including vibrators and pumps, for the handicapped in Belgium, but not prostitutes.
The Fund cannot pay prostitutes, its chairman Gui Abrahams explains, because prostitution is illegal in Belgium. The authorities turn a blind eye to prostitution but feel that financing it would take matters too far. Moreover, in order to reimburse a service the fund needs official invoices, which prostitutes cannot provide. “Do not say that we are not trying to help,” the spokesman of the Fund stresses: “We reimburse masturbation equipment but we are not in a legal position to subsidise the use of prostitutes.”
“My son cannot masturbate, but he is entitled to have sex at least once week,” Frie Van Acker says. “Giving him a free masturbation set does not help. He cannot use it. As I am his mother I cannot assist him there. That would almost be incest.” Jurgen and his mother have gained the support of Dr. Bo Coolsaet, a well-known Belgian sexuologist. “The healthcare system provides for inflatable penis prostheses for men with erection problems. These cost up to 10,000 euros.” According to Dr. Coolsaet handicapped people are being discriminated if their sexual needs are not adressed. “In homes for the handicapped either nothing is done at all or, sometimes, nurses help patients. The Fund should call the prostitutes ‘sexual aides’ and finance them as such.”
Should prostitution be legal? Of course. It's your body, sell it if you want to. And I think "sexual health" -- getting off regularly from time to time is important for mental health. Especially for a guy who can't exactly get up and go out for a run. But, once you start paying for physically handicapped people to get off, what about emotionally handicapped people -- the ingrown-toenail personalities who can't get girls? Where does it end?
Condoleezza Rice Panders To Public Opinion
I saw her talking about troop draw-down on CNN about an hour ago, suggesting it wouldn't be long now since the Iraqis are pulling it together themselves (hah!):
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States will probably not need to maintain its current troop levels in Iraq "very much longer," though she declined to provide a precise timetable for reduction in U.S. forces.Rice appeared to set the stage for such a reduction, saying the Iraqi forces are doing a better job of holding their own against insurgents.
"I do not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now because _ for very much longer _ because Iraqis are stepping up," Rice told Fox News in an interview Tuesday. "This is not just a matter of training numbers of Iraqi forces, but actually seeing them hold territory."
My take on her little talk? The woman was palpably uncomfortable and physically out of tune with what she was saying, her eyelids pulled into a squint, and her eyeballs rolled back in her head. (Next time, send Scott McClellan.)
Colleges Without Borders
Let the furiners in, dimwits. An interesting point in a letter to the editor by Douglas Kneeland, Rome, in the IHT:
Studying abroad
In addition to the advantages Stuart Anderson cited in making it easier for foreign students to study in the United States ("America's future is stuck abroad," Views, Nov. 16), there is another huge plus.
Thousands of foreigners who have studied in the United States are now running their home countries. This forms an important base of support for the United States.
As an American who works for the United Nations, I am surrounded by foreigners who understand the United States because they have lived and studied there. This is true of government leaders I meet in virtually every country in the world.
Were it not for this base of support, the United States would be far more isolated and less understood by leaders around the world.
Like The Rest Of New York, He's Freezing His Ass Off
This guy could at least use a leopard-skin loincloth. Maybe that's why he looks a little pissed off.
Gregg and I had an amazing time in NYC, but damn, that town was cold. To all the PETA nutballs out there: You freeze your scrawny, vegetarian asses off; I'm getting a mouton coat. I don't like shearlings; they make you look like a woodcutter with an Amex gold card. But, I found a few vintage mouton coats at a thrift store/vintage store on 31st or 32nd. None really fit (ladies apparently had much shorter arms back then -- Tyranosaurus Rex-style), but these coats seem really warm, and I'm now after one...like a baby seal on a socialite's left shoulder blade.
Droop Therapy
I just put up a new column: A lady's a little tweaked that guys think younger women are hotter (um, duh!). Here's a canapé from my reply:
Think about it: If men evolved to be attracted to grandmas, and women to men who do bong hits and nap a lot, the human race would’ve died off before it ever got out of the cave.
I particularly loved all the huffy letters from women in their 40s who suggested I was being rude to "my older sisters." (Um, at 41, I am my older sister.) Then there was the "lady" who thought she was being clever with this one:
Know why men don't get mad cow disease!!!? Because they're all pigs!!!!!
There's a woman who's got a calendar full of dates!
Jeb Bush's Reading With Jesus In Florida Public Schools
From a Tucker Carlson transcript:
CARLSON: Welcome back. “The Passion of the Christ” was a huge box office hit. Odds are, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” based on the stories of influential Christian writer C.S. Lewis will do pretty well too, but the first book in the series is hitting some resistance.Americans United for the Separation of Church and State wants the state of Florida to stop pushing “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” in its state-wide reading contest. The group says the state should only permit nonreligious books in reading programs.
Here to defend the group‘s position, executive director, Barry Lynn, who joins us live tonight from Denver, Colorado.
Barry, thanks for coming on.
BARRY LYNN, AMERICANS UNITED FOR THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE:
Nice to be back.
CARLSON: Thanks. So you spend your life fighting against religious fundamentalism, and here you find yourself trying to ban a book. You have become what you despise, have you not?
LYNN: No, I have not, because I‘m not trying to censor this book. I‘m not trying to take “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” out of any library or classroom in the state of Florida.
I‘m just trying to figure out why it was that Governor Jeb Bush chose this obviously Christian-themed book to be the sole book for his state-wide reading contest that goes from elementary to high school up to high school. All we were asking him to do this year was to come up with an alternative along with this book. I mean, it could have been the book you wrote, Tucker. That would have been an alternative.
CARLSON: I think it would have helped sales. But look, you‘re trying
so you‘re not trying to prevent kids from reading this book in the reading contest?
LYNN: Absolutely not. I love this book. I‘m going to see the movie, but it is inappropriate for the state of Florida to use an obviously Christian themed book. C.S. Lewis, the guy who wrote...
CARLSON: Wait a second.
LYNN: ... the book said that the whole purpose of the Narnia series was to discuss Christ.
CARLSON: Well, as you know...
LYNN: That‘s what he said.
CARLSON: Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. As you know, and I can tell you, as a book author, authors have all sorts of intentions that don‘t sort of permeate through the book and trickle down to the people who read the book.
People have no idea why books are written, and in a lot of cases it doesn‘t matter. I had no idea this was a Christian allegory when I was little, any more than I knew “Scooby-Doo” was about smoking pot. I had no clue at all. So why do you expect kids to see this as an allegory?
LYNN: Well, let me tell you what could have given you a clue. I‘m not blaming you for not having a clue. It‘s just that here is the Aslan the lion. He is the savior of this world called Narnia.
But in order to be the savior of the world, he has to be tortured and die. Even though he could have prevented his own death, he chose not to do that. And then he is resurrected.
And then we learn, just in case there needed to be a capper, that Aslan the lion is also the creator of the world of Narnia. I mean, how many more analogous elements to the Christ story do you need?
Just another bit of (supposedly) benign religion intervention in public life.
The Difference Between Grief And Mourning
By Joan Didion. From an interview by Mary Ann Gwinn in the Seattle Times:
Q: One thing you talk about in the book is the difference between grief and mourning.A: I think I said that grief is passive. It creeps over you in those famous waves, you know, whereas mourning is an active process of remembering, reliving the good and the bad, and defanging it in a way. Until you have examined all those memories, they don't lose their power to undo you.
Just got back from NYC an hour ago, which is why I didn't blog sooner. Very exciting trip with Gregg, with a visit to The New York Times, an incredible dinner at Bouley, and lunch (quite a thrill) with Jill Krementz and Kurt Vonnegut, among other things. More about the trip soon. More blog items, too.
Neue York, New York
When you're in Manhattan, you have to visit my new favorite museum, the Neue Gallerie, showcasing my favorite period in art, German and Austrian drawing and painting from about 1870 to the 1940s; much of it rife with sex and death. The Egon Schiele show, on now, is just fabulous. A Schiele self-portrait shown here doesn't do the work justice, but will give you some idea of what you're missing. This one below is an even worse representation, but it was fun posing.
Religious Nutters Are Gaining On Us
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League writes:
In 1994, we sounded an alarm. In our book, The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America, we said that "an exclusionist religious movement in this country has attempted to restore what it perceives as the ruins of a Christian nation by more closely seeking to unite its version of Christianity with state power."Alas, our call was not well heeded and we are beginning to see some of the consequences of what we identified.
As a result, today we face a better financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized, and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us!
Who are the major players? They include Focus on the Family, Alliance Defense Fund, The American Family Association and the Family Research Council. They and other groups have established new organizations and church-based networks, and built infrastructures throughout the country designed not just to promote traditional "Christian values," but to actively pursue that restoration of a Christian nation.
To quote D. James Kennedy, one of the most important and influential of today's evangelical leaders: "Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society." Make no mistake: We are facing an emerging Christian Right leadership that intends to "Christianize" all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and locker rooms of professional, collegiate and amateur sports, from the military to SpongeBob SquarePants.
In 2002, leaders from ten conservative Christian organizations formed the "Arlington Group," an alliance of more than 50 of the most prominent conservative Christian leaders and organizations. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation described it this way: "For the first time, virtually all of the social issues groups are singing off the same sheet of music... when we are working together, we are a mighty force that can't be ignored."
If their agenda was hidden 15 years ago, today it is in full public view. Just take a look at their Web sites, where they document in considerable detail an agenda on a wide range of issues: judicial nominations, same-sex marriage, and faith-based issues - and an agenda that, let us be clear, goes well beyond legitimate engagement in controversial social and political issues to a fundamental usurpation of all that America represents.
Good News For Girls Who Don't Grocery Shop
Like me. It seems old food still kinda works...even after decades. Joanna Glasner writes in Wired:
Next time you feel compelled to clean out the pantry, don't feel bad about putting it off.A lot of the old food that's gone beyond the manufacturer's expiration date could still be edible for years or decades longer.
Such are the findings of food science researchers who recently subjected a panel of human tasters to samples of really old food. They discovered that artifacts like 20-year-old dried milk and 28-year-old rolled oats were still perfectly edible and sometimes even tasted OK.
"You'd think that shelf life would be much shorter," said Oscar Pike, one of the professors of food science at Brigham Young University who conducted the study. "But that's not the case."
Food scientists have long maintained that certain foodstuffs, like salt, granulated crystal sugar and wheat kernels, can be stored indefinitely at room temperature or below. But Pike said he was uncertain whether a more processed grain, such as a rolled oat, would also stand the test of time.
To find out, researchers prepared oatmeal from 16 samples of regular and quick-cooking rolled oats that had been stored up to 28 years in sealed containers. A panel of tasters rated the oats on aroma, texture, flavor, aftertaste and overall acceptability. Scientists also analyzed the samples' nutritional quality.
The conclusion? Tasters rated the quality of the old oats from 4.8 to 6.7 on an ascending scale from 1 to 9. Three-fourths considered them acceptable in an emergency.
Makers of long-lasting food products aren't surprised that people weren't keen on the taste of 1970s oatmeal.
"Palatability will decline before edibility vanishes," said Gary Hansen, owner of Pleasant Hill Grain, which sells food packages for emergency stockpiling.
Properly stored food, Hansen noted, can be edible longer than one might infer from manufacturers' expiration dates, which typically indicate when a product starts to taste worse or lose some nutritional value.
The other day, I even took Sudafed that expired in 2002. Worked just dandy!
Eyeball Jazz
That's New York.
And you can take the girl out of New York...
(FYI, after all my years in New York, taxis are drawn to my hand as if it's a giant magnet. And then there are the times I shout for one at a decibel level consistent with one of those cruise ship-protecting sonic weapons...or those times I simply throw my body on a taxi's hood. And, believe it or not, sometimes they even stop. The rest of the time, I'm forced to run 20 blocks with my backpack on my back like a peasant being chased by the Cossacks.)
photos by Gregg Sutter
Just Say Yes To Death
Is a little pot all that damaging? Not as damaging as "the choking game," which is allegedly killing a bunch of teenagers:
For a 30-second rush, it can cause brain damage, cardiac arrest, physical injuries from falling or death from asphyxiation, according to doctors.Medical examiners across the country are just beginning to realize that some teenage deaths ruled suicides may actually be accidents. A conference in Los Angeles last month of the National Assn. of Medical Examiners featured a seminar suggesting that coroners have been slow to recognize the phenomenon of "asphyxial games."
Los Angeles police say the occasional accidental strangulations they encounter seem to reflect a different mission — autoerotic self-asphyxiation by young men to heighten sexual sensations.
And UCLA's online advice forum for school mental health professionals suggests that the choking game appeals to disturbed, destructive teens for whom "getting high" is a "disguised behavior to temporarily release unbearable pain from emotional wounds."
But are our kids really sexobsessed emotional cripples, or just bored and restless teens, bred to be afraid of drugs but craving momentary escape from the pressure to get good grades, excel in sports, manage busy social lives?
Adults unwind with a drag on a cigarette, a stop at happy hour, a glass of wine with dinner. Why does it shock us to imagine that our kids come home from school, finish their homework, then retreat to their closets with a belt?
It just feels good.
That's the explanation I got from a friend of mine who admitted playing the game 35 years ago in his basement with buddies. Listening to him reminisce about its heady rush and dream-like floating sensation, I wonder if I should hide his belts.
And suddenly the choking game frightens me. Not because it is hard to fathom, but because I understand how a curious 14-year-old might consider it worth the risk.
UPDATE: Here's a link from France, but in English, about the same "game."
Simply Salsa
That's the title of a fantastic CD we heard last night in a tapas bar in Manhattan. I just bought the boxed set for $15.98 off Amazon. Four CDs in the set. One CD set for me and two for presents. Great deal. And when you buy it through my link above, it supports my costs for my blog (woohoo, maybe I get 45 cents!)...although my server and other costs (not to mention my time!) will soon be offset somewhat by Open Source (formerly Pajamas Media), which I'm joining. When somebody from the alt weekly world wrote me to snark:
Oh, girl! You’re the new goddess to the lovelorn neo-cons! :-)
I corrected her fast:
You're funny. Star New Times columnist Jill Stewart is their editorial director, and Hillary Johnson, another editorial director, was the (AAN award-winning) editor of the Ventura County Reporter. I believe leading neo-con Marc Cooper is also involved. It means taking ads from them and making money from my blog (and they pay very well), which means I can maybe eventually give my assistant a bigger raise than I just gave her...evil neo connie that I am!
I included no emoticons in my message.
Judge Dread
Alito is just plain wrong -- and scarily so -- for a number of reasons says The New York Times editorial board;
Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s insistence that the U.S. Constitution does not protect abortion rights is not the only alarming aspect of a newly released memo he wrote in 1985. That statement strongly suggests that Alito is far outside the legal mainstream and that senators should question him closely about it. They should be prepared to reject his nomination to the Supreme Court if he cannot put to rest the serious concerns that the memo, part of a job application, raises about his worthiness to join the court.
When Alito applied for a job with the Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan, he submitted a Personal Qualifications Statement that outlined his approach to the law. That statement raises three major concerns:
First, he has extreme views on the law. Alito said he was particularly proud of his work on cases that tried to establish that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." He did not merely oppose Roe v. Wade in the abstract - he worked to reverse it. He also noted his "disagreement with Warren Court decisions" in many important areas, including reapportionment. The reapportionment cases established the one-man-one-vote doctrine, which requires that congressional and legislative districts include roughly equal numbers of people. They played a key role in making American democracy truly representative, and are almost uniformly respected by lawyers and scholars.
Second, Alito does not respect precedent. Judicial nominees who appear extreme often claim that because they respect precedent, they will vote to reaffirm decisions they disagree with. The Senate has specific reason to be skeptical about Alito. Not only did he work to overturn Roe v. Wade, but he also said he had been inspired to go to law school by his opposition to Warren Court precedents - presumably by a desire to see them overturned.
Third, he is an ideologue. The White House has tried to present Alito as an impartial judge without strong political views. But he said just the opposite in the 1985 statement. "I am and always have been a conservative," he wrote. He strongly suggested that he would have been active in Republican politics if the law had not prohibited him, as a federal employee, from doing that.
Of course, he's not a real conservative, but a George Bush-style conservative, which is no conservative at all, but, in large part, a religious ideologue with a more passable name for his fundanutter beliefs.
Claim Your Baby
Suddenly, I'm reminded of my favorite New York Post headline: "Headless Body In Topless Bar"
From The Press Release Vomitorium Of Fame
The most recent contender:
Interfaith holiday celebrations by mixed faith families and individuals, Chrismukkah, became a new holiday tradition last year. This year, no holiday gift guide or holiday story would be complete without including Chrismukkah.
Savage On Griswold
Dan Savage on the right to privacy:
In 1961, Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, opened a birth-control clinic in New Haven. She was promptly arrested for dispensing contraceptives to a married couple and was eventually convicted and fined $100. She appealed, and when her case reached the Supreme Court in 1965, seven of nine justices voted to overturn the conviction, striking down Connecticut's law against selling birth control (effectively overturning similar laws in other states). Americans, the court ruled, had a fundamental right to privacy.Much of American jurisprudence since then flows from Griswold - including Roe v. Wade, which found that women had a right to abortion, and Lawrence v. Texas of 2003, which found that the right to privacy prevents the government from banning sodomy, gay and straight.
Problematically, however, a right to privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. The majority in Griswold held that it was among the unenumerated rights implied by the Constitution's "penumbras" (which sound like something a sodomy law might keep you away from). The Griswold case didn't settle the matter, and the right to privacy quickly became the Tinkerbell of constitutional rights: clap your hands if you believe.
...Now it is Samuel Alito's turn. Senator Specter says he believes the nominee accepts the idea of a constitutional right to privacy. But we can still count on Judge Alito to be grilled about Griswold during his confirmation hearings next month. Does he believe in a right to privacy or not? Can he locate it in the Constitution or not?
Well, if the right to privacy is so difficult for some people to locate in the Constitution, why don't we just stick it in there? Wouldn't that make it easier to find?
If the Republicans can propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, why can't the Democrats propose a right to privacy amendment? Making this implicit right explicit would forever end the debate about whether there is a right to privacy. And the debate over the bill would force Republicans who opposed it to explain why they don't think Americans deserve a right to privacy - which would alienate not only moderates, but also those libertarian, small-government conservatives who survive only in isolated pockets on the Eastern Seaboard and the American West.
Of course, passing a right to privacy amendment wouldn't end the debate over abortion - that argument would shift to the question of whether abortion fell under the amendment. But given the precedent of Roe, abortion rights would be on firmer ground than they are now.
So, come on, Democrats, go on the offensive - start working on a bill. Not only would enshrining the right to privacy in the Constitution secure a right that most Americans rightly believe they are already entitled to, it would also allow Estelle Griswold to finally rest in peace.
I'm in total agreement with Dan -- from a fantasy perspective, that is. Sadly, the Democrats are utter nincompoops without a message or a plan, and seem unlikely to offer anything of practical value anytime soon.
Wrongful Life Suit
An Australian woman is suing her doctor for letting her disabled daughter be born writes Emmanuelle Grinberg on CourtTV.com:
A blind and deaf Australian woman who claims she never should have been born is suing a doctor for a lifetime of suffering in the country's first "wrongful life" suit.Alexia Harriton, 24, is seeking compensation from the doctor who misdiagnosed rubella in the first trimester of her mother's pregnancy, claiming Olga Harriton would have aborted her had she been aware of the potential birth defects arising from the illness.
Lawyers for the Sydney woman argued in Australia's highest court Thursday that Dr. Paul Stephens is liable for the costs arising from a lifetime of medical treatment that Harriton needs to survive.
His negligence resulted in the birth of a child who is "profoundly disabled," a media spokesperson for the law firm representing Harriton told Courttv.com.
...Harriton's lawyers claim that Stephens had a duty to Olga Harriton and to her unborn daughter to inform her of the risk of the infection passing to her child.
"Had the rubella been diagnosed, Olga [Harriton] would have exercised her lawful right to terminate the pregnancy," court documents state.
The suit says Harriton, 24, who was born mentally retarded, spastic, deaf and blind, is in need of constant round-the-clock care from which she "can look forward to no improvement" in the future.
...Alongside Harriton's suit is a similar claim from a 5-year-old Australian boy who was born with permanent brain damage and cerebral palsy after doctors failed to detect a blood disorder present in his father's system.
Keeden Waller's parents have filed suit on his behalf, claiming they would have sought out other methods of conception had they been aware of the potential for birth defects.
Waller's claims were also heard Thursday in conjunction with Harriton's, after a New South Wales appeals court rejected both their claims in 2004 in a 2-to-1 decision.
Those justices also said it was impossible to determine whether no life was better than a life of suffering, or to assess liability for that suffering.
Appeals Court Chief Justice James Spiegelman also found that the doctors did not breach any duty to the children.
The dissenting justice, however, found the doctors' negligence especially grave in light of the fact that the disabilities were easily detectable and preventable.
I know people love their disabled children, but just as I wouldn't want to live as an aging vegetable on money that could be spent on children with a future ahead of them, I think people should reconsider the politically correct notion that every fetus should be allowed to grow into a child.
Better Living Through Chemistry
In The New York Times, Amy Harmon writes that people are increasingly self-prescribing and managing their lives through medications. Horrors! (Or is it?) I take Ritalin for ADHD, and have been for maybe five life-changing years. But, what if it helps a college student without ADHD focus better? Side effects, for me, are minimal. The benefits are great. Why shouldn't others be allowed to take Ritalin if it makes them more focused and productive?
For a hefty markup, dozens of Web sites fill orders for a drugs, no prescription required, though to do so is not legal. Instead, customers are asked to fill out a form describing themselves and their symptoms, often with all the right boxes helpfully pre-checked.Erin, 26, a slender hair stylist, remembers laughing to herself as she listed her weight as 250 pounds to order Adipex, a diet pill, for $113. One recent night, she took an Adipex to stay up cleaning her house, followed by a Xanax when she needed to sleep.
Like many other self-medicators, Erin, who has been on and off antidepressants and sleeping pills since she was in high school, has considered weaning herself from the pills. She wishes she had opted for chamomile tea instead of the Xanax when she wanted to sleep.
"I feel like I have been so programmed to think, 'If I feel like this then I should take this pill,' " she said. "I hate that."
But the problem with the tea, she said, is the same one she faces when she is coloring hair: "It's not predictable. I know how these drugs are going to affect me. I don't know if the chamomile tea will work."
Online pharmacies are not the only way for determined self-prescribers to get their pills. Suffering from mood swings a decade after his illness was diagnosed as bipolar disorder, Rich R., 31, heard in an online discussion group about an antidepressant not available in the United States. A contractor in the Midwest, Rich scanned an old prescription into his computer, rearranged the information and faxed it to pharmacies in Canada to get the drug.
"My initial experience with physicians who are supposed to be experts in the field was disappointing," Rich said. "So I concluded I can do things better than they can."
I would never trust a doctor's opinion without doing research myself as far as any medication goes. My favorite doctor was the one who flirted with the idea of putting me on lithium! when I was in my 20s...because I mentioned a minor malaise that mainly had to do with my extreme lack of a boyfriend combined with a living situation that resembled grinding poverty, but for the rather obscene rent. I didn't need lithium. I needed a raise, a boytoy, and a move to California.
Some Like It Grim
On Slate, Meghan O'Rourke spanks the old white guys playing out their midlife crises by pontificating on the sad, pathetic sex lives of young women:
The need to tell young women how to behave often comes over middle-aged men—it's an itch right up there with buying a flashy new car. And Mansfield's case for modesty is merely a new version of, say, Leon Kass' argument in "The End of Courtship," a 1997 article currently posted on the Public Interest Web site, which I happened to stumble across after reading Mansfield's remarks. One similarity between them is particularly worth note. Mansfield and Kass don't suggest that female sexual activity is immoral or wrong. They suggest that it makes women unhappy: "Young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused," Kass writes, voicing an avuncular worry about our "grim" lives. Like Mansfield, he goes on to express concern that contemporary sexuality isn't morally but erotically bankrupt. The best sex, he argues, is stimulated by reading poets like Shelley, and, "if properly sublimated, is transformable into genuine and lofty longings—not only for love and romance but for all the other higher human yearnings." Reading these two pieces back to back, one finds oneself envisioning conservative elders gathered over brunch with teary-eyed twentysomethings, Sex and the City-style, nodding and patting hands: I feel your pain, honey, they soothe. And I'll tell you how to really get your groove on. First, go get a ring.Forty years after the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the terms of the debate over sexuality have irrevocably changed, and it is curious to watch middle-aged male traditionalists trying to keep up. If they have not quite absorbed the notion that women need to have a voice in shaping their own sexual identity, they acknowledge that it is no longer permissible, or at any rate very popular, simply to pronounce that premarital sex is wrong. Thus they cast the sexual revolution as something that makes women unhappy, couching their critique in the fuzzy language of gratification and personal gain that we Oprah-raised kids can relate to. Beneath Kass' pronouncements on what is erotic is a struggle not to come off as a prude; beneath Mansfield's, a quest to establish his credentials as not anti-sex. By adopting a soft stance of empathy, they conveniently skirt the need to supply any facts and figures about just what is going on in the hearts and bedrooms of America's youth.
In a way, this shift in rhetoric (from morality to gratification) makes it look like the argument about the criteria Americans should use to shape our ideas about relationships and marriage has already been settled. But it's more complicated than this. There's something slippery about the "sex will make you unhappy" position. It relies on a retrograde notion of female vulnerability while pretending to take women's side. It's offered in the name of an open-mindedness that is something of a pretense: Professor Mansfield does not exactly wish that sexual freedom had panned out for us—or recognize the extent to which it has. He presumes, for example, that all women have similar experiences and want the same things: love and marriage, the baby in the baby carriage, and so forth. Finally, this position holds women responsible for the supposed unwillingness of American young people to get with the marriage program and settle down. But what evidence is there that women are deeply unhappy in their sexual relationships with men? And if women really are, why is it up to them to "fix" what's broken by insisting on early marriage rather than on, say, serial monogamy followed by marriage later? If things are so bad, how do we explain the fact that social indicators are, for the most part, on an uptick over the past decade?
I've been having "sad, lonely, and confused" premarital sex for a whole lot of years, and I have to say, I highly recommend it.
Bush Approval Rating Watch
Which is higher, Bush's approval rating or your age?
Wow, Here's An FDA Shocker!
It's possible that the FDA turned down the morning after pill for availability sans prescription without hearing all the scientific evidence. Jeez...yuh think? Lauran Neergaard writes for the AP:
Congressional auditors reported that the Food and Drug Administration's May 2004 decision on emergency contraception deviated from 10 years of agency practice in evaluating over-the-counter sales of prescription drugs - and was unusual in several respects.Critics in Congress declared their suspicions confirmed and urged the FDA's boss to intervene to assure that a still pending reconsideration of the pill's fate isn't based on ideology.
"We are deeply opposed to this subversion of science," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and 17 other lawmakers wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt on Monday. "It appears that the decision ... was preordained from the outset."
Also, the lawmakers asked Leavitt to probe whether the FDA illegally destroyed documents from the office of then-Commissioner Mark McClellan, now the government's Medicare chief, that might have shed more light on the controversial decision.
Leavitt's office didn't return phone calls seeking comment.
But in a statement, the FDA stood by its rejection and said the independent Government Accountability Office "mischaracterizes facts."
"We question the integrity of the investigative process that results in such partial conclusions," the agency said.
Monday's report is the latest blow to the credibility of an agency that by law is supposed to base decisions on science, not politics or industry pressure. Top-ranking FDA officials have acknowledged they overruled their own scientists' decision that nonprescription sales of emergency birth control would be safe - and the agency's women's health chief resigned in protest.
A high dose of regular birth control, the morning-after pill lowers the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. The sooner it's taken, the better it works, but it can be difficult for women to get a prescription in time.
In December 2003, FDA 's scientific advisers overwhelmingly backed over-the-counter sales of one brand, Plan B, for all ages. They cited assessments that easier access could halve the nation's 3 million annual unintended pregnancies.
Conservatives who consider the pill tantamount to abortion intensely lobbied the Bush administration to reject nonprescription sales, saying they would increase teen sex.
In May 2004, FDA leaders rejected the nonprescription switch, saying there was no data proving anyone under 16 could safely use the pills without a doctor's guidance.
Maker Barr Laboratories reapplied, seeking to sell Plan B without a prescription to women 16 or older, much like the way cigarettes are sold with age restrictions, while younger teens would still have to get a doctor's note. In August, FDA leaders postponed that decision indefinitely, saying it wasn't clear how to enforce an age limit.
The GAO probed the FDA 's initial rejection, and cited "unusual" practices - including conflicting accounts of whether the decision was made months before scientific reviews were completed.
No data proving anyone under 16 could use the pills without doctor's guidance? Lemme tell you, the directions are pretty damn simple: "Take the first tablet as soon as possible within 72 hours of having unprotected sex." There's no data proving anyone under 16 can use mascara without guidance either, but somehow, somehow...they manage! (It's the part about not letting the first coat dry before you apply the second coat that always gets me.)
Literary License In Family Values-Land
"He asked if they should fuck the deer."
The above words were written by Scooter Libby in what The New Yorker's Talk Of The Town calls Libby's "1996 entry in the long and distinguished annals of the right-wing dirty novel."
More from the literary Libby:
"At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest."
Suddenly, my sexual fantasies are looking very vanilla.
Perrspectives.com takes stock of the hard liners' soft porn here -- including Lynne Cheney's lesbo page-turner, Sisters, excerpted here. My favorite bit is Cheney's "Eve and Eve" bit with two women (reminiscent of the fundanutters complaining about "Adam and Steve") "loving one another as they knew they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit."
Just wondering, but are there lots of lesbian-centric novels (or any at all) written by straight chicks?
Perrspectives continues:
As it turns out, poorly crafted, soft-core pornography seems to be quite the cottage industry among America's conservative chattering classes. Much to the dismay of the family values merchants in the American Taliban, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly ("Those Who Trespass" - 1998) and Second Lady Lynne Cheney ("Sisters" - 1981) also write - as well as talk - trash. And speaking of conservative...um...mouthpieces, who could forget male escort turned White House press stooge turned blogger, Jeff Gannon?
O'Reilly isn't just a bad soft-core porn writer. He's a one-man suggestion box for terrorists. Hmm, suddenly, I'm a little unclear on the family values platform: Bestiality and encouraging large-scale murder?
(I guess all bets are off once you're out of the womb!)
Wonder what Pat "Yer Gonna Burn In Hell, You Science Freaks" Robertson thinks of O'Reilly, Libby, and Mrs. Cheney's louche literary aspirations?
France And The Muslim Myth
Jason Burke explains the riots:
...It is clear that the rioters were not seeking to destroy the French state but were demanding a greater stake in it. Otherwise, there would have been many more direct confrontations with the security forces. The point the rioters made again and again was that they felt rejected by 'the Republic', not that they wanted to tear it down. With all other channels of communication blocked, they sent, literally, smoke signals instead.To dismiss claims that the violence was Muslim in origin, rooted in simple racism or in cultural representations of 'the Turk' or the satanic, scimitar-wielding Saracen, would be wrong. Instead, it should be seen as part of a strand of conservative thought that, though varied, has many common traits and which deserves far more attention than it has so far received. Phillips says that to confront the menace of Islam, we need to 'reassert British identity and British values', though she does not define what they might be. This rhetoric, married to trenchant if somewhat unspecific statements about threats, is typical. In France, a significant proportion of the population is falling back on an inchoate but powerful amalgam of zealous republicanism, Gallic exceptionalism, fear of a supposed flood of migrants and last-ditch resistance to an 'Anglo-Saxon conspiracy' apparently intent on imposing bad food, worse films and long working hours.
In the USA, religious fundamentalists who strive for a return to the 1950s and a society where everyone - women, blacks, whites, children - knew their place now wield unprecedented influence.
In Russia, there is a virulent and widespread racism and a yearning for the good old days of the gulag. In India, a popular demagogic concoction of Hindu-Indian nationalism is still strong, exacerbating sectarian divisions. And then there is Islamic radicalism. The modern contemporary Muslim militant discourse is rooted in a rejection of change, a twisted vision of history, a belief that modern 'Western' societies are decadent and a hoped-for return to what is certain and true. These strands all depend on a nostalgia for an imagined ideal society, an emphasis on racial or religious difference, a powerful sense of injustice, a sense that weakness threatens moral corruption and a sense of imminent invasion. They unite into a sort of negative version of the largely left-wing, anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation movement that is rarely noticed.
This discourse is potentially dangerous. The conservatives, be they French republican diehards, extremist mullahs or newspaper columnists, are likely to find in the age of the budget airline, the internet, satellite television, communities of second- or third-generation immigrants that number in their tens of millions, not to mention massive and growing pressure from migrants beyond European borders, huge flows of capital and even greater movements of cultural exchange that it is impossible to try to turn back the clock. Pulling up the drawbridge will not work. History is flowing in the wrong direction.
This means their actions are likely to get more desperate, their logic more twisted, their conspiracy theories more barmy and their rhetoric more rabid. The paradox is that the faster globalisation moves, the more radical and possibly more numerous they'll become. The real clash of civilisations is not between East and West but between those who believe they stand to gain from the steady coming together of communities, nations and religions that globalisation, if not simply used as an excuse for rampant free market capitalism, can bring and those who see this continued integration as a menace to everything they hold dear.
Fewer Jews, Christians, and Moslems, And More Buddhists, Please
There is one religious leader more interested in seeking truth than squashing it. The Dalai Lama writes:
If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.
For many years now, on my own and through the Mind and Life Institute, which I helped found, I have had the opportunity to meet with scientists to discuss their work. World-class scientists have generously coached me in subatomic physics, cosmology, psychology, biology. Our discussions of neuroscience have proved particularly important. From these exchanges a vigorous research initiative has emerged, a collaboration between monks and neuroscientists, to explore how meditation might alter brain function.
The goal here is not to prove Buddhism right or wrong but rather to take these methods out of the traditional context, study their potential benefits, and share the findings with anyone who might find them helpful. After all, if practices from my own tradition can be brought together with scientific methods, then we may be able to take another small step toward alleviating human suffering.
More From Paris
My friend Sue writes:
As you may have heard, rioters didn't make it into Paris last night - they did get to part of Lyon and we're told that's because the district in question was the only one not to impose a curfew. Paris didn't have a curfew either, as far as I know, but the police really covered the areas of potential attack, as well as frisking people coming into Paris from the suburbs. Franck and I live in a very central part of Paris, and nowhere near any of the "hot" spots for protests.The number of cars burned in France decreases every night - but it's still anyone's guess as to how this will finish.
I'm wondering if the unemployed youth burning cars and buildings are perhaps trying to create a future job market for themselves in automobile manufacturing or construction...
Do I Mind If You Smoke?
Do you mind if I kick you in the shins?
What A Man Shouldn't Know Unless His Girlfriend's A Man
And even then! From an article on designer denim by Louisa Thomas on Slate:
"Is it bad that I make snap judgments about girls based on what jeans they wear?" a male friend asked recently in an e-mail. "When I see a girl in Sevens, I dismiss her. If she's wearing Citizens, I'm skeptical, especially in recent months. If she's in Diesels, that's legit, as that's an enduring brand. But right now, I'm looking for girls in Hudsons."
I can't even identify which is which. Of course, while I have an ass, I prefer not to be one by paying $100-300 and up for "premium denim." Luckly, all my boyfriend can tell you is whether I'm wearing pants and what a particular pair of pants does for my butt.
Possible Attacks Tonight In Paris
An email from my friend Sue in Paris:
Just to let you know we've heard the police expect a mass attack on central Paris, today or tonight. They've put 3000 police on the streets to keep the rioters out. Apparently the revolutionaries are organizing this in a viral way via sms (telephone text messages) and the internet. We heard the govt has shut down some internet traffic...We are fine, have cancelled our plans to leave home - we'd planned to sort out our storage locker in the suburbs, and really needed to do it today! Our car is in an underground parking structure, so hopefully safe.We'll be staying at home, until further notice!
From an article in the IHT by Craig S. Smith and Hélène Fouquet:
While the urban unrest that has swept the country since Oct. 27 appeared to be abating in much of the country, it has persisted in the Paris region, raising concerns that the youths behind the violence may be regrouping for a renewed effort over the long weekend to raise the violence back to the level that drew international attention during the week.
Those concerns were strengthened by a number of recent postings on French Web sites calling for minority youths in the country's poor neighborhoods to attack the city. Several of the postings urged readers to rally Saturday night on the city's most famous avenue, the Champs-Élysées.
"We're seeing a decline in activity nationwide, with some resistance in the Paris region," Michel Gaudin, the head of France's national police, said at a news conference Friday.
The unrest, which began after the accidental deaths of two minority youths who were hiding from police officers, has touched nearly every urban center in the country and has alarmed the nation.
Politicians, intellectuals and celebrities have taken to the airwaves to debate the causes of the violence, which has mostly been in the form of arson attacks against vehicles. The sole death so far has been a 61-year-old man who was punched by a hooded youth in the Stains suburb north of Paris. He died from injuries suffered when he hit the ground.
Even if the level of violence dies down, it has started a nationwide debate.
The public focus on subjects ranging from police comportment to racial discrimination, unemployment and educational inequalities is certain to preoccupy the government as it searches for a way to address the problems that have alienated millions of young French-Arabs and French-Africans. Many of those people, born in France to immigrant parents, feel abandoned by society.
The police deployed 3,000 officers in the city Friday to watch for trouble on the third weekend since the unrest began.
The police authority has banned all public gatherings likely to provoke a disturbance in the capital from 10 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday. "Messages sent over the past few days via the Internet and text messages have called for gatherings and violent acts in Paris on November 12," a police statement said. "To enforce the ban, the police and gendarmes already deployed in the capital will be considerably reinforced, and reminded of their instructions to arrest troublemakers."
The statement said that people gathering in defiance of the ban could face up to two months in jail and a fine.
Many of the police on the streets of Paris on Friday were gathered around the Champs de Mars near the Eiffel Tower, where a peaceful demonstration had been called by an alliance of minority associations to protest the recent violence. The area was ringed with police vans and flooded by journalists, but no more than 300 protesters showed up.
Brownie's Next Of Crony
Better hope Bird Flu doesn't hit in the USA. Because we've got yet another underqualified crony in charge. Jeremy Scahill makes the introduction:
Meet Stewart Simonson. He's the official charged by Bush with "the protection of the civilian population from acts of bioterrorism and other public health emergencies"--a well-connected, ideological, ambitious Republican with zero public health management or medical expertise, whose previous job was as a corporate lawyer for Amtrak. When Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently speculated, "If something comes along that is truly serious...like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence," many of those professionally concerned with such scenarios couldn't help thinking of Simonson. They recalled his own unsettling words at a recent Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on government response to a chemical or biological attack: "We're learning as we go.""Great. What we need in the middle of a crisis is somebody learning on the job at that high level of government," says Jerry Hauer, Simonson's immediate predecessor at the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness (OPHEP) and a veteran public health expert who served as Rudy Giuliani's director of emergency management from 1996 to 2000.
"If I was in charge, he wouldn't be in that position," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "We don't have the best and brightest in the key positions, and this leaves us in a very, very precarious situation."
So how is it that Simonson ended up in a position that could impact the lives and health of millions? Simonson's qualifications can be summed up in two words: Tommy Thompson. Simonson was a protégé of the former Health and Human Services secretary and longtime Republican governor of Wisconsin. Thompson hired him out of the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1995 and put him on the political fast track, eventually naming him as his legal counsel. Thompson then used his influence as chair of Amtrak's board to place Simonson as the rail service's corporate counsel. When Bush named Thompson as HHS secretary, Simonson again went with him, and he has been rising through the ranks of the Administration and the Republican Party ever since. "He's a political hack, a sycophant," says Ed Garvey, a prominent Wisconsin attorney and the state's former deputy attorney general. "People just laughed when he was appointed to Amtrak, but when the word came out that he was in charge of bioterrorism, it turned to alarm. When you realize that people's lives are at stake, it's frightening. It's just one of those moments when you say, Oh, my God."
What is particularly disturbing to public health professionals and others is that Simonson is in charge of insuring that the country has adequate vaccines and antivirals to combat an avian flu outbreak. "Mr. Simonson is a lawyer, not a medical expert," declared Representative Henry Waxman, who highlighted Simonson in a list of five "inexperienced individuals with political connections." The California Democrat warned that the appointment of people like Simonson has "led to legitimate public concern that those in government, particularly those who are relied upon to keep us safe from harm, are not competent or independent in their judgments." As evidence of this, Waxman cited Simonson's July appearance before the House Government Reform Committee, where Simonson "claimed he had sufficient funds to purchase influenza vaccine and antiviral medication for the nation. The next day his office submitted a funding request to Congress seeking an additional $150 million for flu vaccine and antiviral medication."
Kill The Tax Exemption For Churches & Synagogues
It's wrong that the business of religion gets to operate tax-free. Here's a link from American Atheists with some info on this. (I don't know whether their $925 estimate is right, but even $1 is too much for me to pay to support religion):
...The average family in the United States pays a minimum of $925 a year in hidden taxes to keep churches from all taxes -- on real estate, on non-related businesses, on income, and on their enormous wealth in stocks and bonds. Churches pay no sales tax, inheritance tax, income tax, personal tax, or ad valorem tax. They may own and operate businesses exempt from corporation tax.The Wall Street Journal, CBS television, and United Press have found that the holdings of the Roman Catholic church alone exceed the total assets of the five largest American corporations (General Motors, Exxon, Ford, Mobil, and Texaco). The Protestants own nearly as much. Internal Revenue Service reports that the cash donations to churches annually are at least $49 billion (1991). This does not include profits from businesses, property, wills, stock holdings, bond holdings, retirement centers, or lease-back arrangements. The "lease back" gimmick is a particularly pernicious method that churches use to take advantage of their tax-exempt status. A church purchases a business on paper for an agreed sum like $1.00. Ownership passes with the sale; the business is exempt from property tax and corporate income tax. The church then leases the business back to the original owner for a set monthly fee. The lease payments to the new owner, the church, are tax-deductible by the business as a donation to the church. Thus government is swindled out of the tax it would have collected on the land on which the business is located, the business's income generally, and the amount deducted by the business as a contribution to a church. The church wins, the business wins -- but the government and ordinary taxpayers lose!
Every tax dollar that the church or any business avoids paying, you as an individual taxpayer must make up. If taxes are necessary to run the United States, and the church takes a percentage out of those taxes, someone must take up the slack.
The churches in the United States, on the average, own 20 percent of all the privately owned land in every state in the Union. When 20 percent of the land is removed from the tax base, the individual land or home-owner must make up the difference. If the churches paid their fair share of the property tax in your community, your tax bill would be much smaller and would not need to be raised each year to make up for the deficit. We hold that anyone has the legal right to be religious, but that the cost of religion should be borne by those who practice it.
We have the right to be free of an enormous tax burden in order to support the few people who do go to church regularly. The federal government, under various programs of assistance, is spending $50 billion a year in both direct cash grants and tax relief for religious purposes. There are about 250 million persons in the U.S., including babies, which means that we all pay, each one, at least $211 in federal taxes to assist the churches a year. How many are in your family? This does not include the money the churches receive from direct donations by individuals and corporations, which averages an additional $196 per person.
We think that the individual taxpayer who does not care to participate in organized religion and who stays away from churches should not be forced to endure an additional tax burden through any programming, planning, or legislation by members of any of the governing bodies, whether city, county, state, or national. We think that giving churches subsidy by permitting them to remain tax-exempt is an unconstitutional violation of the basic principle of separation of state and church.
Miss Your Chance To Look Like Shit In The 70s and 80s?
Today's your lucky day! For sale in an unmarqueed clothing store, Third Street, just west of Fairfax, Los Angeles:
And no, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Those are inflamed molars:
Freedom Of The Press Release
Geoff Boucher writes (recopies?) in the LA Times Calendar section:
If your evening commute takes you by the Hollywood & Highland shopping hub you may want to start planning an alternate route for next Tuesday; pop star Mariah Carey, one of the hottest stars in music this year, is setting up a table at the complex's new Virgin Records Megastore to meet fans and sign copies of her hit CD.Carey's "Emancipation of Mimi" has sold 3.7 million copies in the U.S. since its release in April, and its hit "Shake It Off," with its message of resilience, has been a metaphor for Carey's comeback to the pop music fore.
On Tuesday, the Virgin Records recording artist will be at the new 20,000-square-foot Virgin store to draw attention to a new "platinum edition" repackaging with four additional tracks. It is also available with a tie-in DVD.
Get Your Brat Out Of My Face!
Some coffee shops dare to educate parents on the difference between a coffee shop and a nursery school, writes Jody Wilgoren in The New York Times:
CHICAGO, Nov. 8 - Bridget Dehl shushed her 21-month-old son, Gavin, then clapped a hand over his mouth to squelch his tiny screams amid the Sunday brunch bustle. When Gavin kept yelping "yeah, yeah, yeah," Ms. Dehl whisked him from his highchair and out the door.Right past the sign warning the cafe's customers that "children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven," and right into a nasty spat roiling the stroller set in Chicago's changing Andersonville neighborhood.
The owner of A Taste of Heaven, Dan McCauley, said he posted the sign - at child level, with playful handprints - in the hope of quieting his tin-ceilinged cafe, where toddlers have been known to sprawl between tables and hurl themselves at display cases for sport.
But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at the implied criticism of how they handle their children. Soon, whispers of a boycott passed among the playgroups in this North Side neighborhood, once an outpost of avant-garde artists and hip gay couples but now a hot real estate market for young professional families shunning the suburbs.
"I love people who don't have children who tell you how to parent," said Alison Miller, 35, a psychologist, corporate coach and mother of two. "I'd love for him to be responsible for three children for the next year and see if he can control the volume of their voices every minute of the day."
I'd like Alison to keep her children far away from me until they learn to shut up. Maybe if she can't handle three children...she shouldn't have pumped them out? Just a thought! Or, at the very least, she could keep them home until they learn to use their "inside" voices. Another quote from the story:
"I think that the mothers who allow their kids to run around and scream, that's wrong, but kids scream and there is nothing you can do about it. What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?"
Awww, poor dear. Not if it makes it a misery for everybody else in the place. Take your inconsiderate, self-involved ass home and keep it there until your brats are civilized.
Here are a few previous examples of underparented children in coffee shops. From Starbucks on Montana:
This little girl in the photo has just finished a screaming tantrum on the floor: "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy! Waaaaaaah! Waaaaah! Etcetera." (Mommy is busy talking to her friend, it seems.) The rest of us are busy having our ears blown out. Unfortunately, while it takes a license to cut hair, it takes only working ovaries to have a child.
From the Rose Cafe. And more from the Rose Cafe.
Why are children bratty? In Toward A Psychology Of Being, Abraham Maslowe writes:
Much disturbance in children and adolescents can be understood as a consequence of the uncertainty of adults about their values. As a consequence, many youngsters in the United States live not by adult values but by adolescent values, which of course are immature, ignorant and heavily determined by confused, adolescent needs.
Oh, I'm so sorry, does parenting get in the way of your yoga appointment, your hair appointment, your manicure, your date with your guru? As Pasadena's Michael Lifton wrote in a letter to the editor about my LA Weekly piece on the brats in the Rose Cafe:
I love Amy Alkon’s report of her encounter with a screaming toddler. “Mommy” could obviously benefit from the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt, who said, “Discipline your children, or the world will do it for you.”
Regarding cafe boycotts urged in The New York Times story: I'd actually like to urge parents with loud, underparented chlidren to please boycott cafes I like (email me and I'll provide you with a list). My hope is that these cafes will become a big draw for people like the guy next to me at Starbucks the other day, reading the paper silently before heading off to work. Next to him, a shouting child decimated a muffin, which went all over the table and floor. Not to worry, the customer who came in after the brat left with her "parents" went and got a bunch of napkins and cleaned up the table. The stuff on the floor, unfortunately, just got ground into the bottoms of her shoes.
Sorry, Did My Driving Get In The Way Of Your Phone Call?
Perhaps because she was engrossed in her call, it took her a while to come to the realization that she was being photographed and cover her face. Just like it took her a while to realize she was coming into my lane. Right next to me. While I happened to be occupying it. Charming.
Death's Doormat
No, I don't call myself a cynic. I prefer the term "disappointed optimist." Here are a few words from my Advice Goddess column that I just posted on the front of my site:
There are those who always look for the best in people. “Despite everything, I still believe people are good at heart,” wrote Anne Frank. And then the Nazis dragged her off to death camp. It’s nice to be nice. It’s nice to believe other people are nice. It’s nicer still when they actually turn out to be nice. Okay, so nothing says “I love you” like a background check. But if you’re looking to find love, you can’t just cross your fingers and hope you won’t end up with somebody who has all the humanity of a tire iron.
Virginia Is For Lovers
And Kansas is for dumbshits. Kansas votes to teach school children new standards of "science," refusing to limit it to the search for natural explanations of phenomena:
The 6-4 vote was a victory for "intelligent design" advocates who helped draft the standards. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.Critics of the language charged that it was an attempt to inject God and creationism into public schools in violation of the separation of church and state.
All six of those who voted for the standards were Republicans. Two Republicans and two Democrats voted against them.
"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.
...The standards will be used to develop student tests measuring how well schools teach science. Decisions about what is taught in classrooms will remain with 300 local school boards, but some educators fear pressure will increase in some communities to teach less about evolution or more about intelligent design. (Read how Kansas came to this point)
The vote marked the third time in six years that the Kansas board has rewritten standards with evolution as the central issue.
In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution, a move Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said was akin to teaching "American history without Lincoln."
Two years later, after voters replaced three members, the board reverted to evolution-friendly standards. Elections in 2002 and 2004 changed the board's composition again, making it more conservative.
Many scientists and other critics contend creationists repackaged old ideas in scientific-sounding language to get around a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1987 that banned teaching the biblical story of creation in public schools.
An terrific article on the subject (thanks, Jake) by Pat Shipman in American Scientist explains why scientists need to stop rolling their eyes about the ID idiots and go on the attack:
The Intelligent Design movement is a deliberate campaign to undermine the teaching of science in America, and the evidence of this intent is brazenly posted on ID Web sites. The movement's founder and chief theorist, lawyer Phillip Johnson, and most of its advocates are fellows of the Center for Science and Culture at a conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. The Center's publicly stated aims include:
challenging various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory; ... developing the scientific theory known as intelligent design; ... [and] encouraging schools to improve science education by teaching students more fully about the theory of evolution, including the theory's scientific weaknesses as well strengths [sic].With these statements, the Center hides its true agenda behind a false claim that it is promoting intellectual freedom when, in fact, it is doing the opposite: stunting intellectual growth by encouraging students to believe that a scientific theory is the same as a philosophical assertion.
Intelligent Design is part of a calculated strategy that Johnson calls the "Wedge," referring to the tool used to split a solid object—in this case, the cornerstone of biological science. According to a document that appeared on the Discovery Institute's Web site in 1999, the goal of this plan is "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies." The document also makes sweeping, inaccurate claims such as "new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature." This statement is pure propaganda. (The document can still be found on the Discovery Institute's Web site by searching for "wedge," although it is now prefaced by 12 pages of insistent justification.)
In the ID lexicon, "scientific materialism"—the idea that the world around us can be explained without resorting to supernatural forces—is the enemy. ID advocates favor instead something they call "theistic realism," which "assumes that the universe and all its creatures were brought into existence for a purpose by God." The most revealing word in this statement is assumes. Scientists rely not on assumption but on evidence, and there is none for ID. Theistic realism and ID are statements of religious faith, which does not require evidence.
California Votes With The Lobbyists
Maybe it's Schwarzenegger hatred, or maybe people are just dumb, but California voted against every single one of the ballot initiatives last night (I voted weeks ago by absentee ballot). The stuff they voted against includes giving union members a say in where their dues go, restricting California legistlators from spending money they don't have, and making teachers more accountable. Here's an article about it by Charles Burress on SFGate:
Schwarzenegger has been a frequent target of criticism from unions, which waged a vigorous campaign against the measure....Proposition 77, also supported by the Republican governor, would have transferred the redistricting power over California's heavily gerrymandered legislative districts from the Democratic-controlled state Legislature to a panel of three retired judges.
Other failed measures included two for drug prescription discounts -- which saw the pharmaceutical industry pour in the most money ever spent on a ballot issue in California. Both Proposition 79, a consumer and labor-backed initiative, and Proposition 78, a counter measure from the drug industry, saw voter support drop dramatically in the polls as the election drew near.
Voters also soundly rejected Proposition 80, which would have repealed key parts of the state's 1996 energy deregulation and restored regulatory authority to the state Public Utilities Commission.
One of the closest measures, which I was not for, was Prop 73, which would have required doctors to notify the parents of a teen seeking an abortion. What I am for, however, which was not on the ballot, was comprehensive and responsible sex education.
Thousands Of Mail-Order Brides Killed Every Year!
By their own husbands! Well, not thousands. Well, not even hundreds. In the last 10 years, CNN reports that three were killed by their spouse. Luckily, that hasn't stopped Representative Rick Larsen (D-Virginia) from, in Ken Layne's words, "presenting a bill to end the bloodshed":
One of the provisions of the bill would require that brides be informed of their husbands' criminal records....Assuming the average over the past decade is in the middle, there have been about 100,000 mail-order marriages over the past decade. This means one in 33,333 MOBs have been murdered since 1995.
According to the American Institute on Domestic Violence, 1,232 women are killed each year by an intimate partner. So roughly, 12,320 women have been killed by their "intimate" over the past decade. From 1994 to 2003 there was roughly 23,127,000 marriages in the U.S. This works out to one murder per 1,878 marriage. So "legitimate" marriages are about 18 times more likely to end in murder.
But, they're probably much less likely to end in headlines for Congressmen. It's always interesting when you see the rare person in the news biz draw out the reality of the statistics.
Are Your Breasts Loud and Bossy?
Or are they just big dumb boobs? This question came up recently in the legal arena, thanks to the Breasts Not Bombs ladies. Lynda Gledhill and Greg Lucas tell the tale 'o the pups in the SF Chron:
A federal judge denied on Friday a request from a group of Mendocino women who wanted to protest topless on the grounds of the state Capitol.U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell said the group made no compelling argument that showing their breasts constitutes free speech.
"Being topless is not inherently expressive" speech, Burrell said. The group, Breasts Not Bombs, had scheduled a protest for noon Monday. The California Highway Patrol threatened to arrest anyone who went topless.
Sherry Glaser, a leader of the group, said the protest may take place without bare breasts.
"All we really have is the power of ourselves," she said. "Our bodies bring attention."
Group members, whose protest on the west steps of the Capitol is intended to contrast the "indecent" initiatives backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the November ballot with their "natural and decent" breasts, sought a temporary restraining order prohibiting CHP officers from arresting women who protest topless.
The First Amendment protects their right to protest bare breasted, the group argued. "The very act is a dynamic and fully expressive statement worthy of constitutional protection," their brief asserts.
But Burrell didn't buy that argument.
"Do you think the founding fathers had this in mind when they drafted the First Amendment?" he asked Matthew Kumin, the lawyer representing Breasts Not Bombs.
Cohen v. California, 1971 (the case of the guy with the "Fuck The Draft" jacket) said that one man's profanity is another man's lyric statement, and sometimes the wrong words are precisely the right words to communicate a message. While I don't get all worked up about nudity, and in fact, generally like it when the naked people are 26-year-old movie stars, what, exactly, does a naked boob communicate? In words, I mean. If you can answer that, maybe the judge is wrong. On a cynical note, it's generally the people whose tits should be extremely well-covered (like, by tarps and such) who feel most compelled to let them flap around in the wind.
The GAO On GWB
Still no doubt that President Bush isn't "President" Bush? Still unwilling to listen to Andrew Gumbel? Well, listen to the non-partisan General Accounting Office:
The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines." The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.
Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.
Among other things, the GAO confirms that:
1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.2. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.
3. "Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level." 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.
4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.
5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.
6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.
7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.
8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.
In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.
The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives -- or less -- to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software.
The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:
The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County
Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties were suspiciously low.
A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.
In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.
In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail.
In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.
In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.
Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts," technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive.
In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place.
In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation---only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used.
In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better."
But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.
Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear that's exactly what happened.
Unofficial Ban
On the use of "Paris Is Burning." Kindly refrain from titling email or articles with it, as it's seen more use in the past week than the lone working urinal at a packed stadium. Thank you.
When Are Democrats Indistinguishable From Republicans?
When there's an opportunity for hypocrisy, of course. A letter to the editor from the St. Pete Times:
Who's the bigger hypocrite, the Democrat screaming for the Republican politico's head for lying under oath after steadfastly defending President Clinton's lying under oath, or the Republican steadfastly defending his politico, accused of lying under oath, after calling for President Clinton's head when he lied under oath?...Nobody should be surprised by perjury. Go to the courthouse, to a trial. The best is a divorce and next best is a criminal trial. You have to look very hard to find a husband or wife who isn't lying in the divorce trial to get what he or she believes he or she is entitled to. Jailhouse snitches lie every day to curry favor with prosecutors in order to get their sentences reduced, and co- defendants do the same, or simply lie to deflect blame from themselves. Nobody is searching for the truth anymore. We just want to win . . . at any cost.
The fact is, until we start charging and punishing perjury, our judicial system will continue to decline in both credibility and effectiveness. Then what?
Rob Hoskins, Safety Harbor
Let's End Birthright Citizenship
We shouldn't be rewarding illegal immigrants with citizenship for their children:
Birthright citizenship is of critical importance—and not only to fighting terrorism. The current interpretation invites and gets no end of abuse. It is well known around the world that all you have to do is get a baby born in the United States to manufacture an instant U.S. citizen. Then, because of the “family reunification” emphasis in current immigration law, that “U.S. citizen” becomes the anchor in American soil that will allow the immigration of an almost unlimited stream of relatives (and then their relatives, and then…).As a result, heavily pregnant Mexican women are smuggled across the border to give birth here. According to the General Accounting Office, in 1995 there were almost 80,000 Medicaid-funded births to illegal alien women in California alone. That is probably more than half of California’s births to illegal aliens in that year. Seven years later, the number is probably much higher.
In South Korea and other Asian countries, travel agents sell package tours to pregnant women, flying them to Los Angeles so they can give birth in the United States (in clinics run by immigrants of their own nationalities, naturally).
Whether or not the alien mother and child stay after the birth, they make sure they get that all-important Social Security number and passport for the little “American,” so the family can eventually move to America.
The Citizenship Clause was put in the Constitution in 1868 for a very different purpose: to ensure that freed slaves could not be denied citizenship because they had not been citizens when they were born. It says
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”The current interpretation ignores the critical phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” That phrase means that citizenship requires allegiance—which is more than the accident (even if it is not accidental) of being born on U.S. soil.
Yaser Esam Hamdi’s parents were Saudi. They were in the U.S. temporarily with no intention of staying and pursuing American citizenship. They were not fully “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. Mr. Hamdi could not be drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces. Mr. and Mrs. Hamdi could not be guilty of treason to the U.S.–they owed no allegiance. Neither does their Saudi son, no matter where he was born.
The point of the jurisdiction language in the Citizenship Clause was precisely to make it clear the United States is not asserting full jurisdiction over everyone born within U.S. territory. The exception that mattered in 1868 was the American Indian. Indians dealt with the Federal government through treaties, and were citizens of their tribes, not the United States. (U.S. citizenship was extended to them later by statute, which only proves the point.) Nor, as one of the Citizenship Clause’s authors, Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan, said in Senate debate, would the Citizenship Clause extend to persons born in the United States who are foreigners or aliens—including diplomats’ children.
Nevertheless, that is exactly how our Federal government interprets it today.
And how shameless is Mexico in promoting illegal entry into the USA? Much-missed temporary Angeleno Heather Mac Donald writes:
For starters, it publishes a comic book–style guide on breaching the border safely and evading detection once across. Mexico’s foreign ministry distributes the Guía del Migrante Mexicano (Guide for the Mexican Migrant) in Mexico; Mexican consulates along the border hand it out in the U.S. The pamphlet is also available on the website of the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior, or IME (Institute for Mexicans Abroad), the cabinet-level agency that promotes Mexicanismo in the U.S.Nodding to U.S. law, the guide does briefly remind readers that “mechanisms for legal entry” into the U.S. exist and are the surest way to get in. But the book primarily consists of “practical advice” for entering illegally: do drink salt water and cross when the heat is lowest; don’t wear heavy clothing when fording a river. Do keep your coyote in sight; don’t send your children across the border with strangers—a Mexican variation on the usual parental advice. And don’t “throw rocks or objects at officials or at patrols since this is considered a provocation by those officials.” (This last piece of advice clearly hasn’t taken hold: attacks on the border patrol have steadily increased in number and viciousness.)
The guide’s recommendations on how to avoid detection once in the U.S. are equally no-nonsense: do keep your daily routines stable, to avoid calling attention to yourself; don’t engage in domestic violence—the Marvel comic–type illustration shows a macho man, biceps bulging, socking a woman a big one in the jaw. Don’t drink and drive because it could result in deportation if you’re arrested.
Mexico backs up the publication with serious resources for the collective assault on the border. An elite law enforcement team called Grupo Beta protects illegal migrants as they sneak into the U.S. from corrupt Mexican officials and criminals—essentially pitting two types of Mexican lawlessness against each other. Grupo Beta currently maintains aid stations for Mexicans crossing the desert. In April, it worked with Mexican federal and Sonoran state police to help steer illegal aliens away from Arizona border spots patrolled by Minutemen border enforcement volunteers—demagogically denounced by President Vicente Fox as “migrant-hunting groups.”
Disseminating information about how to evade a host country’s laws is not typical consular activity. Consulates exist to promote the commercial interests of their nations abroad and to help nationals if they have lost passports, gotten robbed, or fallen ill. If a national gets arrested, consular officials may visit him in jail, to ensure that his treatment meets minimum human rights standards. Consuls aren’t supposed to connive in breaking a host country’s laws or intervene in its internal affairs.
The border-breaking guide is just the tip of the iceberg of Mexican meddling, however. After 9/11, Vicente Fox’s government realized that the immigration amnesty that it had expected from President Bush was on hold. So it came up with the second best thing: a de facto amnesty, at the heart of which is something called the matricula consular card.
Mexican consulates, like those of other countries, have traditionally offered consular cards to their nationals abroad for registration purposes, in case they disappear. In practice, few Mexicans bothered to obtain them. After 9/11, though, officials at Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) ordered their consulates to promote the card as a way for illegals to obtain privileges that the U.S. usually reserves for legal residents. The consulates started aggressively lobbying American governmental officials and banks to accept matriculas as valid IDs for driver’s licenses, checking accounts, mortgage lending, and other benefits.
The only type of Mexican who would need such identification is an illegal one; legal aliens already have sufficient documentation to get driver’s licenses or bank accounts. Predictably, the IDs flew off the shelf—more than 4.7 million since 2000. Every day, illegals seeking matriculas swamp the consulates. Every seat and place to stand in the modest, white stucco Santa Ana, California, consulate was filled one morning this July, most of the people there seeking the 200 or so matriculas that the consulate issues per day.
As a friend suggested last night, the people we should start throwing in jail are those who hire illegals. Do you have an illegal immigrant cutting your grass or cleaning your house so you can pay them cents on the dollar of what you'd pay a citizen? I don't hire illegals. I consider it unpatriotic and wrong. Sure, it costs me double or triple to get my house cleaned ($75 for a tiny one-bedroom cottage). Seems a small price to pay not to contribute to the problem.
What Wilson Wrote
Thanks, Crid, for reminding me of this piece, which there's been so much conversation about, but I had yet to post -- What I Didn't Find in Africa, by Joseph C. Wilson 4th, first published in The New York Times, Sunday, July 6, 2003:
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.
It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.
(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)
Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
Note that there's no mention of his wife, and whether she's home baking brownies for the PTA or working for the CIA.
The Government Decides Whether You Can Drink Your Tea
Okay, it's hallucenogenic tea, but why should that be any of their business? Here's the story:
An obscure religious sect today pleaded with the US Supreme Court not to ban the import of hoasca, a hallucinogenic tea, from Brazil for sacred use in its rituals.The nine Supreme Court justices must decide whether to side with the US Government, which argues the tea is harmful, could be diverted to recreational drug users and is barred by an international treaty.
Or they may hold that a 1993 US law on religious freedom means that the church, O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, (UDV) deserve an exception for the tea which believers feel brings them closer to God.
The church is an unusual mix of Christian and indigenous South American spiritual beliefs, and has around 130 members in the United States.
UDV rituals involve sipping hoasca tea, made from the roots of two indigenous Amazonian plants, in communion.
The case arose in 1999 when US customs officers intercepted a shipment of brewed hoasca liquid from Brazil.
136 liters was seized from the home of Jeffrey Bronfman, the head of the church's American chapter and a member of the famed Canadian whisky making business family.
The US Government argues that the tea should not be allowed into the United States because it is a health risk, it could be diverted to non religious users and it is barred by the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, designed to stem drug trafficking.
But lawyers for the UDV disputed that the treaty covers hoasca, argued the substance had never been passed to outsiders and said US religious laws meant the church should be allowed to use the tea.
Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that Congress has the right to override a treaty through domestic law -- in this case, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, enacted in 1999.
"Isn't it well established that statutes trump treaties?" he asked.
Here's a bit of commentary next to the story, which makes the point I would:
There’s a wonderful concept called freedom, but in America, it’s pretty much irrelevant.This entire court case would be absurd, in a society that gave a dang about freedom. What could be more ludicrous, than to have attorneys argue and judges decide whether people may drink the tea they choose or worship the way they wish?
Why should you or your government give a damn what tea someone drinks? Or whether or not it brings hallucinations or hiccups? Or whether it might be sipped during or outside of some church’s services? Or whether complete strangers are allowed cream or honey with their tea? Why is any of this any of your business, or your government's?
I’m sorry -- I was born and raised in America, so I should understand American insanity by now ... but I still haven’t a clue. Help me understand:
What kind of Taliban jackass worries about what tea his neighbors might drink, and calls in lawyers to make sure it’s an appropriate tea? Why is the federal government wasting time and money preventing freedom? Why is it up to Antonin Scalia to decide what tea Americans can drink, and what tea will land Americans in prison?
Insanity …
-Helen & Harry Highwater
Suburban Paris Riots
From today's IHT:
The greater issue for the French is the validity of their cherished approach to integration, which stresses the equality of all citizens, no matter what their ethnic or religious origin, so long as they embrace the fundamental French values of "liberté, egalité, fraternité." The French have long regarded this as superior to the British and American approach, with its emphasis on diversity and ethnic pride. But the myth of equality in France also serves to hamper affirmative action and community outreach.
At the same time, efforts at imposed integration, like the celebrated ban on Muslim girls wearing veils in state schools, often serve only to antagonize. Over the past week, many French officials publicly acknowledged that the state has done far too little for the suburbs.
The rioting of the past week is not yet a revolution. But unless Sarkozy's "zero tolerance" for crime is joined by better opportunities in jobs, housing and education for the new citizens, the suburbs will get a lot hotter.
That ending seems overly optimistic -- the fact that opportunities are a solution. Here's a more pessimistic, and probably more realistic take on it -- a letter I posted a few months ago from a friend in France:
...Like said in one of the articles I sent you, they want to impose the dark ages back upon us, which is a difficult pill to swallow for us in the Occident, children of the Siècle des Lumières. Since the end of the 18h century, in aspiration of freedom & equality, most western countries, starting with the United States & France, went thru some type of revolution (rather violent in France). It has taken us over two centuries to attain all the rights for all citizens & as we seem to reach to point of accomplishment, these dark fanatic knights want to bring us back to the time of Inquisition.
And more from my friend:
You ask if there is a difference in the way immigrants are dealt with in France vis-à-vis English “multi-culturalism” vs French “integration”. The way I understand it, this is not the problem. Whether they are treated well or not, put in ghettos or not, are given equal opportunities or not, nothing will change the fact that they want to do away with our way of life. Period. France has been a land of immigration & integration for centuries. Refugees came to France for the same reasons tourists do. Its freedom, its way of life, its facility of assimilation after one generation, i.e. thru their children who attend French schools, l’école de la République. It is very much the same in the United States. On the other hand, the Muslims do not want to assimilate or to integrate, whichever way you want to say it. They do not want their children to be educated as petits Français. You should see how these kids disrupt classes, how they refuse to study certain subjects.My hair stands straight on my head when I hear Americans speak of the way Muslims in France live in “ghettos” & how they are treated by the French. It simply is not true. If in their quarters there is violence (knifing, gang rapes, beatings, delinquency, drug dealing etc.), it is not gangs of French kids going there to do it, it is the Muslims (or whatever they should be called) who are doing it. It is Muslim gang against Muslim gang. The many gang rapes are of their own young neighbor Arab girls! Then they go out & gang up against the French. When you hear of anti-Semitism in France, of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, do you believe one minute French people do it? No, it is the delinquent Arabs in France. But nobody is saying it because these “Arab kids” are second or third generation, thus French nationals. And also because stupid "political correctness" is a must. So, who destroyed graves in a Jewish cemetery? “French” people!
...In the opinion of most French people, it is only a matter of time for terrorism to hit again. And it is my opinion also. What will be hit in France beside public transportation, department stores & markets? I see the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, Versailles, nuclear power plants, schools, hospitals…I also think that Arabs will be killing Arabs in France, Arabs such as the rector of the Mosquée de Paris. They’ll slit his throat right in the Mosquée because he shows no hatred for the French.
Amy, forgive me for sounding so pessimistic, but that is the way I see the future in Europe. With these people, there is no talk possible, no common grounds, only escalation of the hatred & killing of the Infidel. It is going to be a bloody war of religion. And yes, it is going to be WWIII.
The entire letter is at the link above.
Brownie Was Doing "A Heckuva Job"
...Finding a dog-sitter during the crisis in New Orleans:
From a CNN.com story:
The lawmaker (Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Louisiana) cited several e-mails that he said show Brown's failures.For instance, two days after Katrina, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that "the situation is past critical."
"Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes," Bahamonde said.
"The dying patients at the DMAT (Disaster Medical Assistance Team) tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for [Superdome] evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.
"FEMA staff is OK and holding own. DMAT staff working in deplorable conditions. The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out. Phone connectivity impossible."
Brown's entire response was: "Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?"
Two days later, on September 2, Brown received a message with the subject "Medical help." At the time, thousands of patients were being transported to the New Orleans airport, which had been converted to a makeshift hospital. Because of a lack of ventilators, medical personnel had to ventilate patients by hand for as long as 35 hours, according to Melancon.
The text of the e-mail reads: "Mike, Mickey and other medical equipment people have a 42 ft. trailer full of beds, wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, etc. They are wanting to take them where they can be used but need direction.
"Mickey specializes in ventilator patients so can be very helpful with acute care patients. If you could have someone contact him and let him know if he can be of service, he would appreciate it. Know you are busy but they really want to help."
Melancon said Brown didn't respond for four days, when he forwarded the original e-mail to FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler and Deputy Director of Response Michael Lowder.
The text of Brown's e-mail to them read: "Can we use these people?"
Melancon also charged that few of the e-mails from Brown show him assigning specific tasks to employees or responding to pressing problems
On September 1, FEMA officials exchanged e-mails reporting severe shortages of ice and water in Mississippi. They were to receive 60 trucks of ice and 26 trucks of water the next day, even though they needed 450 trucks of each.
Robert Fenton, a FEMA regional response official, predicted "serious riots" if insufficient supplies arrive.
Brown was forwarded the series of e-mails about the problem, but no response from him is shown in the e-mails provided to the committee, Melancon said.
Smart & Final Is Wildly Unbelievable
The latest email, from yesterday, is at the very bottom. A few weeks ago, I pressed to find out how Smart & Final got my home number and made one of those recorded annoyance calls to me. Smart & Final's Director Of Corporate Communications Randall Oliver wrote:
Our calling list was generated from information provided to us by our customers on their SmartAdvantage Card applications. We did not obtain that information through any kind of intrusive search. The service that transmits the voicemail message checks all of the numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry prior to sending the message. We regret that your number was somehow missed in that process.
I wrote:
It is so against my principles and utterly out of habit for me to fill out anything other than "Mrs. Klaus" on one of those intrusive, irritating cards your stores and others use to bribe customers into giving up information in exchange for savings. I absolutely cannot imagine that I put my number on that card. I just never do that. I'd like to see my application to see my number on that card. Otherwise, I'd like to know how you got it off my credit card or by what other method you might have extracted it.
I added, in a subsequent email, that I was on the Do Not Call list. Oliver wrote:
We do not have an application in your name or in the name of "Mrs. Klaus". The only way we can think to identify your application would be to search by your telephone number. I do not know what that number is. Do you want to share it with me?
I wrote back and gave him my number:
Sure, as long as I don't get any machines calling my telephone. It is possible I lapsed and used my own number, but I doubt it.
Next, I got this:
It looks like someone else listed your number on his application as his work telephone . I will ask the individual who oversees our CRM database to delete that. Again, I am very sorry to have disturbed you, and I do hope that you will continue to shop with us in the future.
I wrote back:
Thanks...can I please see that application? I find it really hard to believe that somebody listed my number at random. I mean, really unbelievable. Come on...aren't you getting phone numbers some other way? Credit card data? Using some other kind of data you bought? And I really have a hard time with the idea that you checked this against the Do Not Call list, since I no longer get annoyance calls from businesses, just political organizations, which are still permitted.
Next stop, the California Attorney General! But, let's see if Oliver writes back with a more plausible answer. Just a guess, but this company will think twice before they willynilly tele-abuse people again. My hope: that my response to this will inspire other people who get bothered at home to go on the warpath like this, and to think twice before giving out their personal information to people who may misuse it by making your time their time.
Alito On Notification
A friend told me he didn't have a problem with this yesterday, and I could see men's side, that it isn't fair to have responsibilities if a child is born, but not rights (not over a woman's body, but simply of notification). Well, it isn't that simple. Saletan puts it well, down to the final slippery slope (but there's a lot in his piece, so read the whole thing at the link):
Why does the man get all the breaks in your legal reasoning, Judge? Why does only the woman get treated like a child?I see the chairman motioning for me to wrap this up, so I'll end with a question. Actually, I'll let Justice O'Connor ask the question. Here's what she wrote 13 years ago, replying to your opinion in Casey:
If a husband's interest in the potential life of the child outweighs a wife's liberty, the State could require a married woman to notify her husband before she uses a post-fertilization contraceptive. Perhaps next in line would be a statute requiring pregnant married women to notify their husbands before engaging in conduct causing risks to the fetus. After all, if the husband's interest in the fetus' safety is a sufficient predicate for state regulation, the State could reasonably conclude that pregnant wives should notify their husbands before drinking alcohol or smoking. Perhaps married women should notify their husbands before using contraceptives or before undergoing any type of surgery that may have complications affecting the husband's interest in his wife's reproductive organs.What do you think, Judge? Is she right? If we put you on this court, would you strike down any of those laws she's talking about? Or is it open season on pregnant women?
Let's See, Should We Prevent Cancer Or "Promiscuity"?
Fabulous news! There may be a vaccine soon against HPV, Human Papilloma Virus, which causes cervical cancer. Naturally, this brings the dimwits out, with the contention that vaccinating all middle school students against it will lead to premarital sex. (Horrors!) For the record, I've had premarital sex during most of my life, and it has yet to scar me. On a common sense note, since "studies have indicated that 4-out-of-5 sexually active teen girls are infected with the virus," it doesn't seem getting HPV is actually topping the list of teen concerns...hence, not getting HPV probably isn't going to be a big motivator either way:
Some question the ethics of universal inoculation against a sexually transmitted disease.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are considering the recommendation of a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for every 12 year old, a proposal that some are applauding for its medical benefit, but that others are criticizing on ethical grounds.
If the CDC accepts the recommendation, it could lead to states requiring boys and girls to be vaccinated for the sexually transmitted disease before they enter middle school.
..More than 10,000 American women each year are diagnosed with cancer or precancerous cells caused by HPV, and 3,700 of them will die. Eighty times that number will die worldwide. A vaccine could prevent nearly all those deaths according to Dr. Reginald Finger, an immunologist.
"The vaccine would have the potential of preventing against infection acquired in adulthood in marriage, or in a sexual assault or from any sexual risk throughout the lifespan," he said. "Our intent is to do all we can to benefit health, so long as you don't cross an ethical or bioethical barrier in doing so."
But Dr. Hal Wallis, an obstetrician / gynecologist and chairman of the Physicians Consortium, argued that giving this vaccine to every child crosses that barrier.
"We're going to be sending a message to a lot of kids that you just take this shot and you can be as sexually promiscuous as you want and it's not going to be a problem," he said. "That's just not true."
Don't be fooled by the bland name or professions of objectivity. Wallis' Physicians Consortium looks to me like a thinly disguised fundanutter organization masquerading as objective. Here's one of their member organizations, the Arkansas Family Council, and a few words from a letter on their site:
The Arkansas Physicians Resource Council (APRC) is a group of physicians (either active or retired) whose mission is to influence public policy (from a pro-life, pro-family perspective and encourage and equip physicians to live out their faith in their family, practice and community....The APRC is a division of Family Council, the state associate of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. There is a national PRC, which serves mainly as an advisory group to Dr. Dobson on bio-medical issues. Almost twenty states now have their own state PRC, and according to Focus on the Family the Arkansas PRC is one of the most successful in the nation.
The APRC was founded in 1998 through the primary efforts of Dr. Bill Benton, Dr. Skip Fine, Jr. and Jerry Cox, Executive Director of Family Council. The issue of opposing physician-assisted suicide (PAS) was key in our early formation and support. We gained passage of a bill banning PAS in Arkansas, thus avoiding a referendum on the subject. The APRC has also sponsored conferences with nationally renowned speakers on bio-medical ethics and other topics. Many Christian physicians, as members of the APRC, have supported the group or benefited from our conferences, newsletters, or legislative updates. Several of us have served on the Executive Committee (the leadership team) under Drs. Benton and Fine.
As encouraging as these events have been, those of us deeply involved in the APRC have felt that something might be missing. After all, the State Legislature only meets for 3-4 months every other year. So in addition to addressing key political and social issues, we must also engage our world as spouses, parents, physicians and citizens. We all know that balancing our duties, and being an active Christian, in all those jobs—not to mention being active in the life of our church—is not easy. Shouldn’t our public policy group try to address those issues too?
How about your private policy addresses those issues, and you leave the rest of us alone?
To Be Or Not To Be
Truck at the Ironworkers' picnic in Whittier.
Debt-Beat Dads
So, the guy wasn't exactly in a rush to get a DNA test. Should he really have to pay child support, considering the test he eventually had showed he isn't the father?
Russell Goodrum has been fighting this case for 22 years. The Hamilton County Child Support Enforcement Agency is, again, hauling Goodrum into court Friday, demanding more than $13,000 in child support. Hamilton County knows this man is not the father. "I don't want to give them nothing, because he's not my son," said Goodrum. "If he's my son, then true enough. I have to pay that price, but he's not my son. Why should I have to give them anything? I don't want to give them a penny." Goodrum is facing a felony, and is scared he could be sent to jail Friday. In a legal brief, the Hamilton County Child Support Enforcement Agency admits a court-ordered DNA test, completed 10 years ago, confirmed Goodrum is not the father. However, argues it took Goodrum five years to get the test, and he should pay for the support that added up over that time. Goodrum said it's not fair. The mother was needed for the blood test, and she was living in Georgia at the time. "It could take me 100 years. I am not the father! I'm not the father!" Goodrum is now married and has twin boys. He could now be taken from his family if he doesn't pay. "They don't care man, they just want their money. They don't care how they get it, or who the father is, they just want their money." The "child" Hamilton County officials want Goodrum to pay for is Djuan Bell, 22. He is serving 20 years to life in prison for aggravated murder. The state Court of Appeals said Goodrum did not question if the child was his until four years after he was ordered to pay child support, and the courts gave him ample time to complete the DNA test.
Related links: My column on paternity rights for men, and Matt Welch's excellent Reason magazine story on paternity fraud.
