Amy Alkon Is A Big, Dumb Meanie Who Won't Apologize
According to this thin-skinned "polyamorous" blogger chick, I'm supposed to be "haunted." (I'm working on it, really I am!)
The blog item excerpted below pretends to be about the beauty of apologizing. Amy Gahran, the girl who wrote it, apparently googled "polyamory," which led her to my syndicated column mentioning it in the headline in the Ventura County Reporter.
Complaining about perceived slights against the "poly people" in my column, Gahran e-mailed me repeatedly, copying the editor at the VC Reporter. (Wooooo!) In one of these e-mails, Gahan made sure to give me the link to the piece on her blog. Poor dear, most of her posts have zero comments. I guess she needs the traffic. Let's all help her out.
But, first, the big issue, in Amy Gahran's words:
The Ventura County Reporter yesterday published an advice column by self-described "Advice Goddess" Amy Alkon bearing the headline "Along Came Polyamory." Unfortunately, the article involved an issue of blatant sexual/emotional irresponsibility in a relationship, not polyamory (which means being open to having more than one intimate, committed partner at a time with the full knowledge and consent of all involved). Alkon claimed in e-mail that she clarified that distinction, making her headine merely "ironic" -- but in fact she did not. Her off-target attempt at humor ended up perpetuating offensive misinformation and stereotypes about a growing community. That ain't funny.Seeing polyamory conflated so prominently with irresponsibility bothered me, so I contacted Alkon to politely let her know about her error. I promptly received a very snarky e-mail response from Alkon accusing me of not grasping her "irony." Hey, that's something you shouldn't say to an editor -- something I just clarified by e-mail to Alkon and the Ventura County Reporter.
I'm hoping Alkon or the paper will apologize for the error -- but it's a shame that, given a polite opening to acknowledge her error and rebuild her credibility, she instead opted for denial and dismissal. I'll bet that will probably haunt her worse than simply owning up and moving on...
Oh, please. First, the definition of polyamory in Webster's:
participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships
And here's a reply I posted on her blog:
Regarding apologies: Amy, you seem intent on hammering me, and seem to take some enjoyment from repeatedly e-mailing me and the VC Reporter about how wrong I supposedly was -- despite the fact that what you clearly didn't read the column closely enough to see that I'm quite precise (and quite correct) about what ethical polyamory is.Perhaps you were just looking for fodder for your apologies blog item -- regardless of whether it really fit the bill? I have to tell you, I'm big on accountability, and when I make a mistake, I own up to it. About a month ago, my friend Rob Long told me I'd been a jerk about something. My response: "Yeah, you're right. I was."
In this case, I maintain my point from before: The headline was ironic and I made clear in the column that what they had wasn't polyamory, but a case of a guy cheating.
The real shame here is that I have about 30 requests for advice, just from today, and I'm repeating the same thing over and over to you, which is kind of a waste. By the way, I got only three complaints, all from Ventura. None from any other paper that runs me, and there are quite a few.
If I felt I'd been cryptic, I'd apologize. If I felt I didn't understand polyamory, and didn't advise well on it, I'd also apologize and educate myself further. On the contrary, I put a lot of work into that column, into being precise about stating what polyamory is and isn't, and I feel I stated it rather clearly.
By the way, Nena O'Neill herself was a fan of my work and of my thinking. Obviously she certainly had a clear grasp on what it means to have a sexually open marriage, as do I. -Amy Alkon
In response to a comment on her blog from Howard Owens, who really didn't understand why she was getting her polyamorous panties in such a wad, and said he thought most columnists don't write their own headlines:
I do write the headlines for my column. Daily papers tend to write their own. Alts will run mine.I hope it isn't all polyamorous people that have such a hard time with irony! Here, I'll strip it down and explain it for the oversensitive and in need of assistance:
The headline in question: "Along Came Polyamory." It wasn't consenting polyamory, but the guy was groping a whole bunch of women; ie, he was forcing polyamory on his girlfriend without asking for her consent. To explain further: Along came polyamory without her consent...well, how fun for her.
There's a book I recommend often to readers called The Ethical Slut. It talks about consenting polyamory - that's the ethical part. Fantastic book.
Ultimately, this has been a really silly waste of time spent on a manufactured problem. I wish I'd spent it giving free advice to people with real problems, but there are women with blog space to fill with huffy bits about uppity people who won't apologize, so...so be it!
Additionally, I'd never get out of bed if I were this sensitive. Luckily, I'm a godless harlot with a rather thick skin.
There has been one pleasant note -- connecting with Howard. Hi, How, hope you're well. Hope to see you down here in LA one of these days!
More fun at the link above, including my policies on remarks that "could be construed as offensive to people in the poly community."
Oh, how tragic. Guess what: If you don't have a sense of humor...don't read my column.
UPDATE: Play "Spot Amy's Huge Member" at this link.
Why You Should Drink Your Coffee Instead Of Shoving It Up Your Butt
Orac's got the goods. He debunks coffee as a detoxifier for the human liver:
So, let's take a look at s. a. Wilson's Therapy Blend Coffee.Regular readers will probably guess right away what sort of "therapy" Wilson is talking about when referring to "therapy blend coffee." Even not-so-regular readers will probably figure it out fairly quickly. However, for those of you unfamiliar with the true depths to which woo will sink and yet another manifestation with the altie desire to purge and cleanse the body of undefined and unnamed "toxins," let's try to put it as gently as possible. The "therapy" for which this "therapy blend" coffee is intended involves putting coffee where it was never intended to be placed and where its taste is irrelevant.
Yes, as disgusting as it sounds, I'm talking about coffee enemas:
On the following pages you will find a good deal of information on coffee enemas, as well as the improved enema coffee blend developed by s.a. Wilson's. For the first time there is an organic coffee available that has been specifically blended and roasted for enema use.Be still my beating heart. Actually, considering that the colon can absorb lots of drugs (why do you think that some drugs are given as suppositories?) including caffeine, anyone using one of these enemas is likely to need to have his heart slowed down. He could get really hopped up on coffee, given that the volumes used in an enema tend to be quite a bit more than a cup or two. (Heck, he might even need beta blockers after that.) So, why should you start putting coffee up your butt? Let s. a. Wilson tell you (what's with the small letters?):
The coffee enema is quite simply the best means for detoxifying the human liver. Using s.a.Wilsons Therapy Blend Coffee will make it even more effective. What does a coffee enema do, and why is it better using Wilsons coffee?When you do a coffee retention enema the Caffeine in the coffee relaxes the smooth muscles in the body. This allows the Liver and the Gallbladder to almost immediately dump all the bile and toxins that they were holding. The Liver is then free to do its job at full capacity, removing the toxins and poisons from the body.
Also, and more importantly the coffee enema contains Palmitic Acid, this ingredient gets the liver to produce an Enzyme that cleans the blood. Tests show that while doing a coffee enema the Liver will produce up to 700% more of this Enzyme than it normally would. That, very simply, is what happens while you do a coffee enema.
Yippee. Just what I always wanted, to relax all the smooth muscles in my body while I'm tightening my anal sphincter to try to keep coffee in my colon. Where do I sign up?
Orac explains "Palmitic Acid":
There are a lot of articles on palmitic acid and the liver, but a perusal did reveal an interesting little paper that shows that palmitic acid activates Bax in hepatocytes (liver cells). What, you ask, is Bax? I'm happy to tell you! It's a protein that induces apoptosis (i.e., programmed cell death). Indeed, long chain fatty acids like palmitate can induce apoptosis in the pancreas as well. I suppose it's possible that these guys mixed up "palmitate" and "palmitoleate" (the latter actually demonstrating a protective effect against the proapoptotic effect of palmitate), but I doubt it. In fact, there is even a hypothesis that chronic exposure to free fatty acids (like palmitic acid) injures pancreatic islet cells and contributes to type II diabetes. As for the immune system, in one cell culture assay using macrophages (a type of immune cell), palmitic acid was the most toxic of the fatty acids tested. Yes, the science may not be entirely settled yet, but there's enough evidence to suggest that pumping palmitic acid up your behind may not be such a great idea. So why on earth would these guys want to put it in the coffee?
My own favorite part of the s.a.Wilson claims is this bit:
All the coffee used for our enema coffee is 100% certified organic. It is also bird friendly and shade grown.
You know, if I'm going to shove coffee up my ass, I want it to be bird-friendly.
For coffee consumption at the other end, fuck the birds, I'll have me some Ristretto.
Jesus Camp
Meet a lady looking to grow little Christian monsters. Pastor Becky Fischer runs the North Dakota bible camp shown in the new documentary, Jesus Camp, and sounds intent on creating suicidal little freaks for Jesus. In her words from the ABC piece at the YouTube link above:
This means war. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan, in Israel and Palestine and all those different places.
Awww, how sweet...just like ice cream comes in chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, it seems primitive barbarians come a variety of religious flavors. In other words...
Suicide (or perhaps, homicide) in the name of primitive belief in god: It's not just for Muslims anymore!
Little Shiva Goes To Burning Man
With her tranny wife Jenn. Pictures here, here, and here of their trip. In addition to these tasty morsels below.
All photos copyright 2006, Little Shiva, no reproduction without her permission, ya thieves. Which I, naturally, got before posting these.
Scooby-Doo Did It
In an trash-strewn alley with Shaggy, SpongeBob, Professor Plum, and Mrs. Peacock.
Why blame lax parenting for kids' fat asses when you can blame television? Sam Hananel writes for the AP that the FCC is hovering around TV as a cause of childhood obesity. Listen to what the FCC Chair-nanny has to say about it:
"Small children can't weed out the marketing messages from their favorite shows," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Wednesday at a news conference. "Especially when the marketing campaigns feature favorite TV characters like SpongeBob or Scooby-Doo."Martin cited reports showing the average child watches 2 to 4 hours of TV per day and views about 40,000 TV ads every year, most of them for cereal, candy, toys and fast food.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said he urged the commission to form the task force, which will include FCC officials, members of the food, television and advertising industries, along with consumer advocacy groups and health experts.
"Judging by the sheer volume of media and advertising that children consume on a daily basis, and given alarming trends in childhood obesity, we're facing a public health problem that will only get worse unless we take action," Brownback said.
The task force will begin meeting early next year and issue a report with recommendations on how industry and media can work to reduce the childhood obesity rate.
Guess what? The three girls in my family weren't fat kids, because we weren't allowed to watch TV. It's call parenting, and it's a form of fascism if you're a kid, and your responsibility if you're an adult who's squeezed out some spawn.
How do these kids get all the junk food, anyway? Do they plant a little remote control in Mommy's brain and steer her away from the veggie aisle at the supermarket?
via Reason
The Calendar Of A Killer?
A friend's very sweet boyfriend (a guy who buys my dog clothes!) was just falsely accused of threatening to kill his next-door neighbor, a woman who'd just cemented over several feet of his girlfriends' property, and was given a cease-and-desist order from the board of their association (to rip out the cement on my friend's land).
The woman had begun to put plants on my friend's now-cement-covered land, right up against the window of my friend's boyfriend's ground-floor office, blocking the light (from what he told me). When he tried to move one of the plants (with his hand, from his window) she was there with her camera (hmm, rather suspicious -- as if she'd tried to provoke him by putting the plant there). He gave her the finger. She then called the police and said he'd threatened to kill her with garden shears.
The police came, and told my friend it'd go better for them if he and she let them search her house. They acquiesced, and, of course, the police found no shears, because there never was a threat (and I've known him for about 10 years, and frankly, he's just not that kind of guy).
The cops talked to the neighbors up and down her street, and all said there was no history of violence from my friend and her boyfriend. Yet, it seems, yet again, anybody can take out a restraining order, for any reason. No matter whether it's true. And that's just what my friend's land-grabbing next-door neighbor did. Yesterday, at 5:45 a.m. the marshalls came to deliver a restraining order against my friend's boyfriend. Yes, the guy with the fluffy doggie calendar who buys tiny dresses for my dog, and basically just wants to do his day job and write songs and play his guitar.
And then, there's the since-dismissed restraining order against me (for which I still have to take up a friend's offer to assess the likelihood of winning a SLAPP case against the people who maliciously filed it):
Now, I’m no delicate flower in the way I speak to people. In fact, a sound looping business near me that refused to stop using our limited residential parking (despite the 12 mostly perpetually empty spaces in their gated lot) once took a restraining order out on me for calling the snippy blonde manager a name. The first time, I asked the manager nicely, explaining that we have a drug problem in our neighborhood, and need to park reasonably close to our homes and apartments. She said they’d use their lot in the future (pure lip service, apparently, since their parking habits changed not an iota).The second time I went over there, after one of their guys took the last spot in the neighborhood the day my neighbor was coming with her infant and toddler from Costco, the manager responded with a sneer, “It’s a public street.” Um, no, it’s not. It’s zoned residential, and their building was required to provide the parking spaces in their lot because there wasn’t room for their employees and clients to park in our neighborhood. Then she said, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you get permit parking?” Well, we can’t, because of complicated issues with availability of spaces for non-residents and Coastal Commission issues. At that point, I knew we (residents) were simply screwed, so I expressed my displeasure in the way most likely to disturb a disagreeable little blonde woman about my age. I said, in a low, calm tone, “You know, you’re really a cunt.”
Her jaw dropped. I said, “Oh, did that make your head roll off your shoulders and fall on the floor? I don’t think so.” The owner of the business came over. She told him what I’d called her. He said I should apologize. I explained that they were being very bad neighbors and I wouldn’t apologize, “Because…she kind of is.” Two weeks later, there was a temporary restraining order summoning me to court in my neighbor's mailbox. (Amazing how people supposedly living in fear of you and watching your every move thinks you, an extremely white woman who lives in a white house, reside in a purple house occupied by three women who are the color of dark chocolate.) Besides, this is known as a SLAPP violation -- A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation -- since I went over there not as a general looney, but as a neighborhood activist complaining about a neighborhood issue. (I call myself "the block bitch" -- I'm the one with the community policing team on speed-dial.)
Anyway, the idiots didn't know I was a newspaper columnist, or they probably wouldn't have brought what was clearly a malicious nuisance suit. Being me, I responded, point-by-point, to their sloppy, hand-scrawled, libelous application for a restraining order against me with a 26-page typed response on legal pleading paper. Since they'd intimated in their document that I was nuts, I tucked in a few words Albert Ellis said about me at a lunch we had a few years back, and later confirmed in writing on his stationery so I could send it out with my column samples:
"I have spoken and corresponded with Amy Alkon and find her to be saner than most of the therapists I know."(If you know any therapists, you'll discount this a great deal. Nevertheless, I still consider it quite a compliment.)
(By the way, the appropriate cunt-calling defense, for all you law buffs out there, was Cohen v. California, 1971 -- the "Fuck The Draft" case. I discovered this -- and a lot of other interested law stuff -- after constitutional scholar and UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh gave me a copy of his book, The First Amendment: Problems, Cases And Policy Arguments, autographed "To Amy Alkon -- Hope you find this interesting. But stay out of trouble! --Eugene Volokh.") Naturally, the restraining order against me was dismissed. While I am, of course, "hostile and unpredictable," as the manager charged in court, I am not violent. The "cunt," by the way, has left the company.
Oh, by the way, the company is Ravenswork, and the phony baloney restraining order was filed by Robert Feist, who should be ashamed of himself, and his shamelessly vengeful then-office manager Katherine Morgan.
The day before we were scheduled to go to court, Feist called me to try to make peace. He talked about how silly the restraining order was. If only I'd apologize to Morgan, he said, they wouldn't go through with the court case. Oh, I see, I'm terribly dangerous, but eating crow will make me undangerous? Right. Pretty disgusting, huh?
Here's a photo of Ravenswork's mostly car-free parking lot from the days just before they took me to court.
Their employees, by the way, still park in our neighborhood. I'm still too afraid to speak up again. (I believe this is called "a chill on free speech," but I can't afford to take more time out of my writing to chance fighting these creeps another time).
In their defense, as they said in their case, they have to leave these spaces open and park up our neighborhood because, well, what if Tom Arnold comes over with an entourage?
Wow, I feel for them, don't you? And maybe he will, but why should that be my problem? Or that of the other residents on my residentially zoned block?
P.S. Feist never responded to my e-mailed letter from last year asking for compensation for the time I put into defending their false accusations, and asking them to remove them from the public record. What a stand-up guy.
Islam Is Religious Communism
via Andrew Sullivan, Bashir Goth gives a sense of what it's like to be a journalist in Muslim society:
The writer in a Muslim society is in shackles. Every time I put pen to paper it is a struggle against the tyranny of community-imposed self-censorship. Nowhere is Rousseau's statement that "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains," truer than in the House of Islam.Everything is a taboo. Whenever a Muslim writer takes up a pen he starts tiptoeing in a minefield. You have to follow the flag signs of religious, cultural and social taboos. You should tread carefully avoid shame, social estrangement or even death.
The beheading of the Sudanese journalist Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed in early September was the latest example of community punishment of a journalist/writer...
In the House of Islam, you cannot have a principle other than that of the community. Every thing you do is referred to Islam. The mantra is "that's stupid BUT ... But we cannot do this because we are Muslims." One hears this expression ad nauseam. In the Islamic world you cease to be a human being. You become only a Muslim, whatever that entails.
You are not allowed to be a person with vices and virtues, you cannot follow your own reasoning, and you cannot be unpopular or defend an unpopular idea. You cannot go out of the circle. To express yourself freely means to risk death. And death indeed if you change your faith. Invention itself is considered as an act of blasphemy.
I am obliged to remind my readers however that Islam had its good days of freedom of speech in the middle ages when the Mutazilites and Asharites debated in public and in the royal courts about sensitive issues such as the creation of the Koran. This golden period has since been buried in the thick dust of history. With the rise of Islamic extremism in the present age, one can only hope for the return of such rationale.
But, don't get too comfortable or start feeling too superior, all you Christians. Seems communism has come to Christianity, too. From one of Sullivan's readers, notes on the recent Family Research Council/Focus on the Family/American Family Association "Values Voters" summit. Here's an excerpt from his report:
There is no room for disagreement, because it is tantamount to evil. Dissent is the same as blasphemy, and everything is approached in orthodox terms. I've always been a conservative because I believe that there is such a think as good and evil and that moral relativism is a crazy road on which logic can rarely stick. I believe in limited government and individual liberty. I know I can do things better than any bureaucracy ever will. But what conservatism has become with these people is horrifying. They'd trade liberty for a handshake from W., compassion for power. And they've got one amazing plan in place to make sure that future generations have a tighter, more limited, and clearly more hostile worldview. I went there hoping to prove myself wrong about what I thought was happening, but I just couldn't do it.
Be Skeptical, Be Very, Very Skeptical
Luckily, you don't have to be too skeptical about whether the link to the 44th Skeptics' Circle is up. Just click right here, courtesy of Swedish blogger and archeologist Martin Rundkvist. In his words:
The Circle is a biweekly carnival for bloggers who apply critical thought to questionable stories. On Sunday 1 October I will be hosting the Carnival of the Godless as well, so you'll have to wait until then for entries skeptical about omnipotent fictional characters in the stratosphere. (There will be a whole section on creationism.)No hell below us, above us only sky. But today we're just going to be skeptical about earthbound issues. Well, planetary ones, to be exact.
Will She Or Won't She
If I'm in a coma or otherwise incapacitated, kindly refrain from standing over me with a big crystal, recalibrating my "aura," reading my tarot cards, or trying to jam slippery elm up my nose. An excerpt from my will, which I just wrote, lest I get hit by a car as I'm walking across the street while reading:
For direction as to my wishes on my medical care, I do not believe in “alternative medicine,” and want data-based, scientifically driven medicine.
Orac of Respectful Insolence just posted on what happens to women who choose "alternative" medicine for breast cancer. ("Alternative" typically means the alternative to medicine proven to work.)
Here's an excerpt from the study by Chang et al, entitled "Outcomes of breast cancer in patients who use alternative therapies as primary treatment" (Am. J. Surg. 192:471-473):
CONCLUSIONS: Alternative therapies used as primary treatment for breast cancer are associated with increased recurrence and death. Homeopathy instead of surgery resulted in disease progression in most patients. These data may aid patients who are considering alternative therapies.
Orac writes:
One thing that is rather fascinating is the variety of alternative therapies that the study population opted for, including coral calcium, coenzyme Q10, herbs, dietary therapy, high dose vitamins, mushrooms, chelation therapy, poison hemlock (I'm still scratching my head over that one, particularly given how alties so frequently lambaste chemotherapy as "poison"), and a variety of unspecified therapies. At least there were no examples of coffee enemas that I could see. In any case, because of the sheer variety of therapies used and the low number of patients using each individual one that, as the authors put it, it was not possible to "identify particular alternative modalities that were particularly ineffective."Who says scientific papers don't occasionally have sarcasm in them?
Sid Schwab, a retired surgeon I've linked to before, comments on Orac's post:
Forgive me if I've mentioned this before: our local paper ran a three-day series, breathlessly (and credulously) describing the bravery and take-control of a woman who'd been cured by conventional methods of cancer in one breast a few years earlier. She developed a new one in the opposite breast, and didn't what those "poisons" again. So she refused conventional therapy and followed alternative diets, meditation, and the bogus ministrations of a license-revoked MD who made potions of her urine (the paper helpfully provided contact info.) This was front page stuff with nice sidebars for three days running. The news of her death, around a year later, was buried on page 6, section four. At the time I'd left messages for the reporter, saying she was doing a disservice to women, but she never returned my calls.
When Cars Had Faces
Boo Hoo, Americans Are Investing In Mexico's Economy!
Mike Davis (author of what California state librarian Kevin Starr demeaned as a historical "work of imagination" on California, and, in Jill Stewart's words, a "city-hating socialist raised in a remote desert town so small it no longer exists") strikes again. This time, via Alternet, his problem is all those gringos pouring money into dirt-poor Mexico:
The visitor crossing from Tijuana to San Diego these days is immediately slapped in the face by a huge billboard screaming, "Stop the Border Invasion!" Sponsored by the rabidly anti-immigrant vigilante group, the Minutemen, the same truculent slogan reportedly insults the public at other border crossings in Arizona and Texas....The ultimate irony, however, is that there really is something that might be called a "border invasion," but the Minutemen's billboards are on the wrong side of the freeway.
The Baby Boomers Head South
What few people -- at least, outside of Mexico -- have bothered to notice is that while all the nannies, cooks, and maids have been heading north to tend the luxury lifestyles of irate Republicans, the Gringo hordes have been rushing south to enjoy glorious budget retirements and affordable second homes under the Mexican sun.
Yes, in former California Governor Pete Wilson's immortal words, "They just keep coming." Over the last decade, the U.S. State Department estimates that the number of Americans living in Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million (or one-quarter of all U.S. expatriates). Remittances from the United States to Mexico have risen dramatically from $9 billion to $14.5 billion in just two years. Though initially interpreted as representing a huge spike in illegal workers (who send parts of their salaries across the border to family), it turns out to be mainly money sent by Americans to themselves in order to finance Mexican homes and retirements.
American money pouring into Mexico? How tragic! This must be stopped, so Mexico can be maintained as a giant slum teeming with poor brown people! (Oh, the romance!) Hint, Mike: Maybe if they had infusions of dollars at home, they...wouldn't be endangering their lives crawling across the border?
Here's Veronique de Turenne on Mike Davis' "imaginative use of facts" in the past.
Boo Hoo, Wendy McElroy's A Big Meanie
More silliness on Alternet today to complement the Mike Davis idiocy -- a piece by Christy B. knocking Wendy McElroy, of iFeminist.com. The piece is blurbed like so:
'Ifeminists' have no problem with sexual harassment, oppose affirmative action, and think there's nothing sexist about porn. Meet a new women's group that seeks to prop up male power.
Oh, please. How about, Wendy McElroy's the kind of "feminist" I am. I hate to be associated with the Christy Bs of the world (clamoring not for equal treatment, but for special treatment), so if I call myself a feminist at all, I qualify it by referring to myself as an "Elizabeth Cady Stanton feminist." In other words, I'm for two things for women: Women should have the right to vote, and should get equal pay for equal work. And that's equal work -- meaning, you don't get to go home at 4pm to pick up the kid from school and make the same money as a man...or as I do, working well into the evening.
Christy B. sniffles in the Alternet piece:
I came to discover that Ifeminism, formally known as "Individualist Feminism," premises itself on the goal equal rights between the genders. That makes perfect sense to me. After all, isn't that our goal? So does that make me an ifeminist? I didn't see why not.But as I continued to read, I began to feel less and less sure. States Wendy McElroy, the founder of ifeminism.com: "Ifeminists believe that freedom and diversity benefit women, whether or not the choices that particular women make are politically correct. They respect all sexual choices, from motherhood to porn."
According to ifeminism, "freedom and choice do not threaten women. Government and orthodoxy do." Functioning within a libertarian, post second-wave politic, ifeminists propose that women are both intelligent and empowered enough to know what is right for them. They believe that telling women what is or is not best for them by enacting legislation against pornography is "paternalistic" to women who choose to work in the sex-industry, and affirmative action only "embeds gender privilege" for women in the law.
So then what's wrong with ifeminism?
Plenty.
As feminists, we all want equality. But according to ifeminism, "equality" is synonymous with equal treatment under the existing legal, economic and social systems. In other words, rather than opposing the status quo, ifeminism operates within it. While other feminists view the law as inherently unjust and in need of reconstruction, ifeminists have absolutely no desire to prosecute pimps, legislate against sexual harassment, or otherwise compromise and challenge the default male standard.
And this is supposed to help women progress as a class how?
Um, isn't that women's job, not the government's? And why "as a class"? Can't we all just be responsible for our own progress?
Take me, for example: As a fierce individualist (read: weirdo who doesn't suffer corporate fools gladly), I don't do well in a "real job." Hmmm, what to do, what to do? Mope about how "the man" has squashed me under his boot? Clamor for legislation with "positive discrimination" (how is discrimination against one group of people for another group of people in any way positive?). Or...I could...start my own business! Write an advice column and syndicate it myself to a whole bunch of papers! (No, I do not answer questions on syndication, which bore me senseless.)
Which brings me to a word about Alternet. Both Dan Savage and I were initially distributed by them to alternative papers. And both Savage and I had enormous trouble getting them to collect from papers who were running us. Oh, I was told by one of the staffers at Alternet, we don't have very good accounting practices. Really? Just a thought, but why don't you...change them?! I have to say, the commie-pinko weepy feminist way is not only a stupid, irrational one, but a highly unprofitable one!
Groping For More
There's been a pretty amazing research breakthrough in "low sexual desire" in women who are married or in relationships, and it's detailed in the Advice Goddess column I just posted -- and almost nowhere else. Here's the question:
My fiancée and I have been together for two years and living together since December, but around March, her libido took a nose dive. Otherwise, our relationship is ideal: We’re mutually respectful, affectionate, supportive, understanding, generous, and our trust is rock solid. I’m completely baffled about her sudden lack of desire for sex, and she can’t explain it either. She fears it’s a sign we aren't supposed to be together. I worry that she doesn’t want me anymore and doesn’t have the courage to say it.--Withholding Pattern
And here's my answer:
In the movies, when two lovers fall into each other’s arms and suck face like they’re looking for lost tonsils, it’s generally because the guy’s back from prison or the war, not because he’s just come in from taking out the garbage.You’ve probably heard warnings that living together before marriage makes for ho-hum sex. Of course, so does living together after marriage, but then you’ve already got a foot in the trap. Most conveniently, the marriage lobby never gets around to mentioning that the institution wasn’t invented so couples could have a really hot time in bed. Just a guess, but that’s why there are marriage vows, but no such thing as casual sex vows to keep people from cutting out early on no-strings-attached nude fun. And whether a couple is married or just “committed,” note that there’s a huge market for self-help manuals like “Hot Monogamy,” and none whatsoever for books titled “Sex With Anonymous Hussies Needn’t Be Dull.”
You aren’t the only couple crawling around under furniture to look for the woman’s lost libido. In a series of studies published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, sexual medicine specialist Rosemary Basson noted data showing that a third of women lack sexual interest. A third? Hmmm…could the problem be not in women, but in the expectation that desire in women works exactly like desire in men? Well, that’s what Basson found. When a relationship is new, or when women are away from their partner for days or weeks, they’re more likely to have “conscious sexual hunger,” just like men. But, once women are in long-term relationships, they tend not to have the same “spontaneous sexual neediness” men do, but they can be sexually arousable, or “triggerable.” In other words, there’s a good chance the problem isn’t with your girlfriend’s desire for sex, but in how you’re both waiting around for it like it’s a crosstown bus.
A better approach is what marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis calls “The Nike Solution” (i.e., “just do it”) in her smart but depressingly titled book, The Sex-Starved Marriage. Jumping off from Basson’s work, Weiner Davis explains that women may not feel desire initially, but if they just start fooling around, they’re likely to get there. You should also reconsider the notion that sharing a life means sharing living quarters. Since you might have a little more sex if it’s a little less available, why not rent the apartment across the street and just do a lot of visiting? If your girlfriend’s pilot light still can’t be lit, she should have herself checked out by a specialist in female sexual medicine -- who probably won’t be the corner gynecologist. Finally, consider the unpleasant possibility that love isn’t the answer but the problem. Maybe your girlfriend never was very attracted to you, but believed the hoohah that if you love somebody, attraction will follow. Wrong. Not gonna happen. But, minus attraction, there’s still plenty of opportunity for sleeping together -- as in, lying perfectly still in flannel pajamas after you’re both spent from 20 minutes of the hottest nonstop hugging ever.
We Did It For Democracy!
Or...did we? Regarding Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Scheid told the Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Va., that months before the invasion:
..."Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq."At one point, the newspaper reports, Scheid said Rumsfeld warned " 'he would fire the next person' who talked about the need for a post-war plan."
Clearly, he meant it. Gen. Eric Shinseki, then Army chief of staff, was publicly contradicted and shunted aside for telling Congress that controlling Iraq after Saddam Hussein was deposed would take "hundreds of thousands" of troops, which contradicted the administration's estimates.
Scheid's revelation would be more shocking than it is if there weren't already ample evidence, both through reporting and from the obvious facts on the ground, of the failures of the administration's post-war plan -- if you can call it that.
At the moment, the perilous state of security in Iraq has its roots in post-war failures, most especially the failure to commit enough troops.
It already has been well-reported that the Pentagon and the administration believed the conflict would be over quickly, and that most U.S. troops would return to the United States within months, after the expected end of the war.
Now a high-ranking Army general says the defense secretary purposely prevented meaningful planning for the post-war period.
Why?
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid told the Daily Press.
"We would not do the planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.
"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."
In other words, don't tell the American people the truth.
Kevin Drum writes:
As much as it beggars the imagination, there's been plenty of evidence all along that Bush never took the idea of rebuilding Iraq seriously. The plan was to remove Saddam from power, claim victory, and get out.However, this is the clearest evidence I've seen yet. The guy who was actually in charge of logistics has now directly confirmed that Rumsfeld not only didn't intend to rebuild Iraq in any serious way, but threatened to fire anyone who wasted time on the idea. Needless to say, he wouldn't have done this unless it reflected the wishes of the president.
And this also means that all of Bush's talk about democracy was nothing but hot air. If you're serious about planting democracy after a war, you don't plan to simply topple a government and then leave.
So: the lack of postwar planning wasn't merely the result of incompetence. It was deliberate policy. There was never any intention of rebuilding Iraq and there was never any intention of wasting time on democracy promotion. That was merely a post hoc explanation after we failed to find the promised WMD. Either that or BG Scheid is lying.
This is an astounding interview, all the more so for the apparently resigned tone that Scheid brings to it. It belongs on the front page of the New York Times, not the Hampton Roads Daily Press.
Well, at least our Iraq invasion has made us so much safer from terrorists. Well, except all the terrorists it has spawned. Mark Mazzetti writes in The New York Times:
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
Naturally, the White House says different:
“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.
The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”
...More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”
Sweet! Thanks, George. And a big kiss from all the servicemen and women coming home missing limbs. On the bright side, they are coming home alive, unlike a number of their buddies. And this while President Bush is writing off the Iraq war as something that will one day be seen as "just a comma." Bush, smiling slightly, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer:
"Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy."
Editor & Publisher's Gregg Mitchell proposes some slightly different punctuation:
...including "?" for the 140,000 Americans still deployed there, "!" for the cries of the gravely injured, and "$" for Haliburton and other contractors.Or perhaps, as in the comics pages, when an angry character really wants to curse: "!@#%^&*()#*"
But I'd like to offer one more, the simple period, to replace the hopeful comma. Below you will find some 2,700 periods, each standing for an American life lost in Iraq. Space does not permit a full accounting of the Iraqis killed, or any of those damaged for life.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I walked through the airport in Ft. Worth fighting back tears at seeing all the servicemen and women there. I appreciate that they're fighting on our behalf, and mouthed "thank you" to them. I just wish they weren't stuck fighting in Iraq. And I hope the American people at least begin to understand the cavalier obscenity of the Bush presidency. But, again, look on the bright side: At least we don't have exposed boobies and dirty words on TV.
Sure, You Can Get Plan B In Rural Ohio
Plan B (the morning-after pill) is available, in a timely manner, in rural Ohio for only $2326.35! (That's the price of a last-minute flight to Paris, plus 8 euros for the pills):
This poor woman was literally fucked when the condom broke:
But I didn't panic, I thought to myself, with a huge sigh of relief, "Wow, thank goodness it's over the counter now!" and I fell asleep (since there are absolutely NO 24 hour pharmacies within 100 miles of me). Saturday morning I awoke and phoned the pharmacy. I asked them about EC and was told that they won't be stocking it until January 1st, until then it was still by prescription only.Soooo, I phoned my doctors office which informed me that the office was closed and that I had to call the local hospital and have her paged in order to reach her on the weekend. So I called her and had them page her. A little while later she called back and I answered the phone immediately. She sounded tired and really grumpy; I apologized for having to page her for a thing like this and then asked her if I could get a prescription for EC. She explained that I needed to go to the Emergency Room to get it.
My heart fell, the ER has a 100$ co-pay attached to it. "Well," I thought to myself, "that's still better than the price of a kid" so I called the Emergency Room to verify the information and to ask what their procedures were. When I called the hospital they transferred me to the ER. I asked the nurse what the procedure was for EC and what would be the best time to come down there (I didn't want to wind up behind 3 critical people and end up waiting for 12 hours). The nurse responded in a small, questioning voice, "EC?" and so I explained. "Yes, Emergency Contraception. Plan B. You know, right?"
"Oh" she replies. "Hold on just a sec" and she puts me on hold.
A few moments later another nurse answers the phone. "Can I help you" he says.
"Yes," I reply "My name is BB and I was told that I need to come here to get a scrip for Plan B."
"Oh," he says, "Can you hang on a second?"
"Sure" I reply, becoming decidedly nervous.
He puts me on hold and I sit on the edge of the bed frowning and fiddling with a pen. I wait on hold for 15 minutes before he finally comes back on.
"Have you talked to your doctor?" he asks.
"Yes, I talked to her this morning and she told me to go to the ER" I reply.
"Oh, so she won't prescribe it for you?" he asks.
This possibility hadn't occurred to me. I just assumed that the ER was standard procedure, "Hmmm" I say, "Well, I guess not. It's not just standard procedure to go to the ER?"
"No, not really. We don't really have this happen much." He replies and then he says, "Well I called the pharmacy to ask them because I had heard that it was going over the counter. They told me that they won't sell it til the first of the year" I finished the sentence with him and explained that I had called the pharmacy first thing this morning and was told the very same thing.
"Well see," he begins, his voice dropping a little, "the problem is that you have to meet the doctor’s criteria before he'll dispense it to you."
"Criteria?" I question.
"Well," the nurse sounds decidedly nervous as though what he really wanted to do was hang up the phone completely, "Yes, his criteria. I mean...ummm...well, are you ok? Is there any, ummm....trauma?" he asks me.
My face changes expression and I hurry to explain, "No, no" I said, "No. I haven't been raped. This was consensual sex."
"Oh..." he trails off.
I wait expectantly.
"Well, ummm....*clears throat*...So you haven't been raped?" he asks again.
"No. I have not been raped. The condom broke". I state, becoming very frustrated at this point and wondering what the hell is going on.
"Ok, well ummm....Are you married?" he mumbles the words so low I can barely hear them.
Suddenly I get this image of the poor nurse standing at the hospital reading from a cue card that was given to him by a doctor.
"No." I state plainly. "I am not married. I've been in a relationship for several years and I have three children, I don't want a fourth." I respond tersely.
"Oh, I see." He says and then he hurries on, "Well, see. *I* understand. I want you to know that I understand what you're saying. But see, the problem is that we have 4 doctors here right now but only one of them ever writes EC prescriptions. But see, the thing is that he'll interview you and see if you meet his criteria. Now, I called the pharmacy but I also talked to him and well....*clears throat*....you can come down and try to get it. You know, if you meet his criteria he'll give you a prescription, I mean, there's really no harm in trying." the nurse trails off, his voice falters as I realize what I'm being told.
And no, this woman's doctor wasn't much help and the woman wasn't too aggressive about this -- but why should she have to be?
Thanks again, Bush voters. As I said just before the first GWB election:
I loathe John Kerry, but I'd vote for an autistic monkey before I vote for that fundamentalist, anti-science George Bush.
Here's a link for some women to get prescriptions, getthepill.com. Unfortunately, they say:
At this time, getthepill.com does NOT submit prescriptions to pharmacies that are located in the following states: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CT, DE, FL, IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, ME, MO, MS, MT, ND, NE, NH, NV, OK, RI, SC, SD, TX, UT, VT, WA, WV, and WY.
Thanks, Deirdre, for the link.
Gonna Shoot Him In His Toodles
Granny gets a gun.
Getcher Groovy Vintage French Sunglasses
Here I am in mine, from Allyn Scura. I think they were about $80 (about five years ago), and they were brand new, never-worn vintage frames.
Allyn Scura is coming to Venice's Abbot Kinney Festival, Sunday, September 24. Very reasonably priced, high-quality stuff, and they put in lenses for you with your prescrip or preferred shade and mail them to you. And the Allyn Scura people are very nice! If you go, tell 'em I said hi. (I'll be slaving over a hot computer.)
What Happens To Moderate Muslims
In some countries, it takes a lot of courage to speak out against primitivism, violence and murder. Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi Muslim journalist and editor, was arrested and could be sentenced to death if convicted -- for the "crime" of advocating peaceful resolution with Israel. Michael Freund writes in the Jerusalem Post:
As editor of The Weekly Blitz, an English-language newspaper published in Dhaka, Choudhury aroused the ire of Bangladeshi authorities after he printed articles favorable to Israel and critical of Muslim extremism.Bangladesh does not recognize Israel's existence and refuses to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
In November 2003, Choudhury was arrested at Dhaka's international airport just prior to boarding a flight on his way to Israel, where he was scheduled to deliver an address on promoting understanding between Muslims and Jews. His visit to Israel would have been the first by a Bangladeshi journalist.
Choudhury was charged with sedition, held in prison for 17 months and was reportedly tortured before being freed in April 2005. But the authorities in Bangladesh, which is ruled by a coalition government that includes Islamic extremists, decided to continue pursuing charges against him.
Dr. Richard Benkin, an American Jew who led the fight to win Choudhury's release, told the Post that the situation facing the beleaguered journalist was dire.
"Choudhury has angered the Islamists, who both engineered his arrest and continue to see this as an important case," Benkin said. "He is a pro-Israeli, anti-terrorist Muslim who will not be cowed into silence."
After his release from prison last year, Choudhury proceeded to reopen his weekly newspaper, continuing to publish articles calling for greater interfaith understanding and warning of the dangers posed by fundamentalist Islamic terror.
Please, somebody, tell me again how I'm "racist" for calling the likes of people jailing the Choudhurys of the world "primitive," "savages," and "barbarians." P.S. And here's a tip: Islam is not a race.
Did Einstein Believe In God?
Nope, but nice try to those who keep perpetuating the fiction that he did. Here's an excerpt from the comment on that from my Dennett post:
I really don't understand what you are trying to say in this posting. I think you are saying that only stupid believe in God. Many great thinkers (like Steven Hawking, William Buckley, and Einstein), far smarter than your friends, I suspect, believe.
I call that kind of thinking -- the notion that one should accept what others think based on their impressive credentials -- monkey-see/monkey-do-think. But, let's unsmear Einstein, shall we? The man, if anything, was rational. In Einstein's words:
"It was, of course, a lie that you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
--Albert Einstein
Dr. Ray Bradley, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, explains that Einstein was a pantheist:
Pantheists believe that nature itself deserves to be called "God" since nature itself deserves our feelings of reverence and awe. For the pantheist, nothing is more worthy of reverence, or even worship, than the awesome power and beauty of the cosmos itself.Pantheism caters to the emotional need that many people feel for so-called "spiritual (as opposed to materialistic) values", a need to value something beyond themselves or even the human race.
Pantheism has a long and distinguished history. It has included several philosophers such as the seventeenth century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Certain versions of Taoism are pantheistic. So is Therevada Buddhism. As Einstein pointed out:
[Therevada] Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.
Bradley continues:
Clearly, Einstein's "God" is not at all like the God that most people think of when they hear the word. Neither is the "God" of the famous cosmologist and mathematician, Stephen Hawking, whose talk of "the mind of God" has given comfort to many religious believers. Hawking also is a pantheist. When asked by CNN's Larry King whether he believed in God, Hawking answered:Yes, if by God is meant the embodiment of the laws of the universe.We began by asking "Did Einstein believe in God?" The answer, as Hawking pointed out, depends on what you mean by "God". In one sense (the Pantheist sense), Einstein did believe in God. But in another sense he didn't. Indeed, except for his deciding to use the term "God" in a way that is unfamiliar to most people, his views are indistinguishable from those of someone who is an unabashed atheist.
Atheism
The term "atheist" is usually reserved for someone who doesn't believe in any supernatural God or gods whatever, and who - in order to avoid being misunderstood - doesn't use the word "God" to refer to anything at all.
Although the term "atheist" has negative connotations for many people, it is worth remembering that in the strict sense of the word, the term applies to many of the most thoughtful and highly moral people throughout history. As we have seen, it applies to many liberal Christians, Jews, and Muslims; it applies to Deists; and it applies to Pantheists like Einstein.
It is worth remembering, too, that atheists are not alone in their disbelief. Theists don't believe in the existence of any God other than their own. A Christian, for example, no more believes in the existence of any of the pagan gods such as Mars, Venus, or Pluto, than he or she believes is Santa Claus or the tooth-fairy. An atheist just adds the theist's God to the list of those in whom he or she sees no good reason to believe. All, an atheist would say, are products of superstition.
Clinton Kicks Some Fox Ass
And then wipes the floor with the sneaky fuckers. Clinton taped an interview with Fox' Chris Wallace. Deal apparently was, they'd focus on his efforts to raise $7 billion to alleviate global poverty and other problems. Early on, Wallace asked the kind of questions they never ask Republicans, and Clinton was having none of it:
WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.CLINTON: OK..
WALLACE: …may I just finish the question sir. And after the attack, the book says, Bin Laden separated his leaders because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is 20/20.
CLINTON: No let’s talk about…
WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?
CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.
When is the last time anybody on "Fair and Balanced" TV ever asked a hard question of a Republican? A sincerely hard question? And why is it otherwise smart, reasonable Republican friends of mine refuse to admit this?
How Much Is That Booby In The Window?
A Finnish court said $32,000 was too much for 10 titty-grope sessions. Via Reuters:
The court jailed a couple in their twenties for more than a year for charging a 74-year-old who suffers from dementia a total of 25,500 euros to enjoy the woman's breasts on 10 occasions."Based on general life experience alone, it is indisputably clear that a 25,500 euro charge is disproportionate to the compensation in question," Judge Hasse Hakki, who heard the case, told Reuters Friday.
But he said the court in Kokkola, about 300 miles north of Helsinki, would not decide "the proper financial value of the compensation."
Of course, titty-grope selling should be legal (it's your body, you should be able to sell it or rent it if you want to). But, if you had to price it, what do you think is the fair-market value per five-minute titty-grope session?
Make Charlotte Weird
My friend Little Shiva, with her tranny wife Jenn and a few other people, threw a "fairy tea party" in Charlotte, NC.
Besides little Shiva, look at Jenn, Hardin Minor, and the guy in the leaf jacket -- among others. (photos at fairy tea link)
Little Shiva's a writer and designer -- designing everything from graphics like this fab stamp above, to wearable trash, to these amazing collages -- via her company called bold design for a bland world (Little Shiva link above). I want to have her collage animation for any TV show I do (see Weird Charlotte link below).
I persuaded her and Jenn to come to the alt weeklies conference in Little Rock because it's been getting a little staid over the years, and staid makes me itch.
Little Shiva has taken it upon herself to keep Charlotte weird. Here's her site, weird Charlotte, with all the weird events happening. Some reporter recently wrote about it in The Oregonian, but most lazily, they didn't bother to contact Little Shiva or find out anything about her.
Here we are at the alt weeklies convention, looking for trouble (and coming up empty).
And here we are with Jenn.
What's My Sign?
That's it below. As I've mentioned before, I don't have an astrological sign, because astrology is irrational crap-think, and I'm not a crap-thinker.
Via Respectful Insolence, Skeptico's post on why astrology is bunk. He points to confirmation bias, copying Austin Cline's notes on it:
Confirmation bias occurs when we selectively notice or focus upon evidence which tends to support the things we already believe or want to be true while ignoring that evidence which would serve to disconfirm those beliefs or ideas. Confirmation bias plays a stronger role when it comes to those beliefs which are based upon prejudice, faith, or tradition rather than on empirical evidence.
And points to "The Forer Effect," copying from the Skeptic's Dictionary:
The Forer Effect refers to the tendency of people to rate sets of statements as highly accurate for them personally even though the statements could apply to many people.Psychologist Bertram R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone.
And he proposes "The Astrology Challenge":
Here’s my challenge to proponents of astrology: show me how those ancient people figured it all out. You know, all those detailed rules, and charts you use. I’m not talking about the astronomical data – where the sun and planets were at given times. I’m talking about the meaning given by astrologers to the astronomical data: how did they ever work out which specific astrological aspect affected which personality characteristic and in what way? Because if they didn’t derive it somehow, they must have just made it up. And if they made it up, it’s very unlikely to be true. So my challenge to you is prove me wrong: show me it was not made up.How do we know what we know?
I’ll give you an idea of what I mean. If you want to know how we originally figured out any scientific fact, the information is available somewhere, and you can often repeat the experiment to test it for yourself. For example, if you want to know how Galileo knew that the planets orbit the Sun and not the Earth, you can read how he observed the phases of Venus through his telescope. What he saw was exactly what you would expect to see if Venus did orbit the Sun. If you have a decent amateur telescope you can confirm Galileo’s observations yourself.
Remember, as I gently reminded a woman who found great significance (she called it "proof numerology works") in the fact that her father died on the day her grandson was born: Coincidence is not causality. And if you believe in astrology, no, you're not "an air sign" or anything else, just an airhead.
Businessbib
It's basically a half suit that you can put on over virtually anything, to give you that professional appearance during video conferences or web chats. Each Businessbib has a slit back Velcro-sealed design and can be slipped over your T-shirt and shorts to give you to that sophisticated look in a jiffy. Once you're done with the meeting, you can remove the Businessbib and get back to your casual lifestyle. Since this will work only for videoconferences, its usage is pretty much limited to telecommuters. Also, the product is a no-no for people who use their hands to do the speaking or have a habit of moving around during meetings. For those adventurous ones, who believe that they can try this out in face-to-face meetings, it would be nothing short of suicidal.
Men Always Make Passes...
Yes, advicegoddess.com -- beastiality at its most adorable.
"My Parents Went To Bible Study And All I Got Was This Lousy STD"
Should you die because your parents are irrational? Yes, it's the HPV vaccination issue -- where bodily autonomy and public health meet. From Ayn Rand Institute:
Irvine, CA--Following the landmark discovery of a vaccine that prevents infection by the most dangerous strands of HPV, a sexually transmitted disease known to cause cervical cancer, Michigan wants to require girls to get vaccinated. Yet some parents are refusing for fear their children will see it as a license to have premarital sex. It's an issue of morality, these parents claim."This is a false alternative," said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. "It is true that it is wrong for the government to force vaccinations for a disease spread only through sexual contact. But it is also wrong for parents to deprive their children of a life-saving vaccine, in the name of the puritanical view that premarital sex is inherently sinful.
"Parents should be free to have their children vaccinated or not, but they should make that decision based on medical evidence--not on religious dogma."
And sorry, but what's "immoral" about premarital sex? The prohibition of it was really all about money, wasn't it? Daddy didn't want to pay for his little girl after she got knocked up by some hippie a few generations out of the Garden of Eden, so they made rules against naked frolic before marriage. Just like peep shows. No penny, no lookee. (Yes, I know they cost more than a penny, but "no quarters, no lookee" didn't sound right.) Apart from the cost discrepancy, am I missing anything, or is that about it?
Furthermore, what's the deal with polygamy being illegal? As with gay marriage, if two guys want to marry, or one guy wants to marry a mob, (providing the mob won't be state-supported), why is that anyone else's business?
Even furthermore, how weird is it that people have their relationships licensed by the state? Mmmm, romantic!
Nobody thinks about this stuff; they just go along with it. But, every now and then I stand back from it all and think it's all pretty weird.
Senaturds And Congress Scum
Meet the people who think serving our country means taking a nice big portion for themselves. Here, via Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are the 20 most corrupt members of Congress:
The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (most of whom are Republi-scum):
* Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)
* Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN)
* Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
* Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO)
* Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
* Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA)
* Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
* Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL)
* Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)
* Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
* Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA)
* Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
* Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
* Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)
* Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
* Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
* Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY)
* Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC)
* Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
* Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)Dishonorable Mentions
* Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT)
* Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL)
* Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
* Rep. John Murtha (D-PA)
* Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA)
Links to what they're guilty of or accused of at this link.
Airline Scum
Via Consumerist, airlines just petitioned the government to be able to advertise their prices with "fuel surcharges" in small print below. So, a $139 ticket would actually cost you, maybe $179. Luckily, there's somebody at the Transportation Department who isn't being blown by lobbyists. John Hughes writes for Bloomberg:
U.S. airlines were rejected in their attempt to list fuel charges separate from fares in ads, as the government said the current approach protects consumers.The Transportation Department in December said it would consider loosening 22-year-old advertising rules as U.S. air carriers struggled with record fuel costs. The carriers' trade group, the Air Transport Association, had requested the change.
"We have concluded that the public interest will best be served by our maintaining the status quo," the department said in a decision Tuesday in Washington.
I was shocked the other day when I got the bill for Fedexing my book proposal to my agent in New York: $40.42! And for afternoon delivery! I looked at the back and the actual package delivery cost was $32.75, but they'd added $2.10 for residential delivery (his office is in an apartment building), and then...$5.57 as a "fuel surcharge"!
That's a 17% fuel surcharge. Okay, so I understand gas prices have gone up, and those FedEx trucks aren't exactly hybrids, but one little package, $5.57? And in Manhattan? It isn't like nobody else has a package they overnighted 53rd and Park.
Angry Atheists
It's about time. From a Jerry Adler Newsweek piece:
Atheists "are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public," according to a study by Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered "don't know"—and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll—which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.) "The End of Faith" struggled to find a publisher, and even after Norton agreed to bring it out in 2004, Harris says there were editors who refused to come to meetings with him. But after winning the PEN/Martha Albrand award for nonfiction, the book sold 270,000 copies. Harris's scathing "Letter to a Christian Nation" will be published this month with a press run of 150,000. Someone is listening, even if he is mostly preaching, one might say, to the unconverted.This year also saw the publication in February of "Breaking the Spell," by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—"Because they're true"—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study "religion as a natural phenomenon," the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ("The Selfish Gene") weighs in with "The God Delusion," a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that "[t]o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland," Dawkins responded: Precisely. "It's time to get angry," he wrote, "and not only with Islam."
Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."
Midnight Blow Job
The Cowboy Is Confused
It's relevant even today because the video is so telling vis a vis what's happening at the WTC and what a president with the capacity to run the country should be doing. It's the incredible 9/11 footage you haven't seen -- not the truncated two-minute version, but the long version of Bush sitting there listening to "The Pet Goat." Be sure to play the video; don't just look at the stills.
Here's Andy Card supposedly whispering to President Bush that a second plane had hit the WTC:
"A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
Note that he doesn't wait around for instructions -- perhaps because George Bush isn't the man really running anything. Even if you like George Bush, and think he's a genius, you have to admit the behavior here is rather odd, considering. From whatreallyhappened:
"Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack. I would have done everything I can. My job is to protect the American people."G.W. Bush 4/11/2004
This video demonstrates how Bush "moved mountains" to defend the American people when he was informed America was under attack on 9/11.
You may have heard the strange story of how George Bush claimed to have seen the first plane hit the World Trade Tower on a television in Booker Elementary School before going into a classroom to hear some children read. This is a strange story because there was no video of the first impact until a day later, when a video shot by a documentary film crew that captured the first impact surfaced.
Still stranger was Bush's reaction on being told of the second impact by chief of staff Andrew Card. There was none. Bush simply went on with the school visit and listened to children reading about a pet goat. For twenty minutes.
But far more telling than Bush's reaction is that of Card himself who, as can be seen in the above clip, steps in to inform Bush of the second impact (without mentioning the fact that more hijacked planes were in the air), then immediately steps back without waiting for a reply. Bush's job is to make decisions. How does Card know that Bush will not make one then and there?
...What damns the Bush administration is not what is in this video, but what SHOULD be in the video and is not. Ostensibly, Bush and Card are reacting to a surprise attack, but Card acts like he is delivering a progress report to which he knows there will be no immediate response rather than unexpected news, and Bush does not act surprised.
Seems Bush only comes off like the cowboy in staged appearances. Here's the lie he was caught in about that day. Here's the snippet of Card saying the second plane had hit.
Here's an explanation from cooperativeresearch.org. It's just an excerpt below, but there's a fascinating full account of the entire day at the link:
The Photo-Op Goes On After Card told Bush about the second plane and quickly left, the classroom was silent for about 30 seconds or so. [Tampa Tribune, 9/1/02] The children were about to take turns reading from a story called The Pet Goat. [AFP, 9/7/02] Bush picked up the book and began to read with the children. [Tampa Tribune, 9/1/02] In unison, the children read out loud, “The—Pet—Goat. A—girl—got—a—pet—goat. But—the—goat—did—some—things—that—made—the—girl’s—dad—mad.” Bush mostly listened, but occasionally asked the children a few questions to encourage them. [Washington Times, 10/7/02] At one point he said, “Really good readers, whew! ... These must be sixth-graders!” [Time, 9/12/01]
Who was really in control? Certainly not Bush. In the back of the room, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer caught Bush’s eye and held up a pad of paper for him to see, with “DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET” written on it in big block letters. [Washington Times, 10/7/02] Some person or people had overruled the security who wanted Bush evacuated immediately, even as Vice President Cheney was taken from his White House office to a safe location. Bush’s security overruled Bush on security matters later in the day on Air Force One, but who overruled them that morning?
When Did Bush Leave the Classroom? Nearly every news account fails to mention when Bush left the classroom after being told America was under attack. Three mention 9:12 a.m. [New York Times, 9/16/01 (B), Telegraph, 12/16/01, Daily Mail, 9/8/02] Remaining in the classroom for approximately five to seven minutes is inexcusable, but the video of Bush in the classroom suggests he stayed longer than that. The video contains several edits and ends before Bush leaves the room, so it also doesn’t tell us exactly how long he stayed. One newspaper suggested he remained “for eight or nine minutes”—sometime between 9:13 and 9:16, since Card’s arrival is uncertain. [Tampa Tribune, 9/1/02]
When Bush finally did leave, he didn’t act like a man in a hurry. In fact, he was described as “openly stretching out the moment.” [Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism—From Inside the Bush White House, by Bill Sammon, 10/02, p. 89] When the lesson was over, Bush said to the children: “Hoo! These are great readers. Very impressive! Thank you all so much for showing me your reading skills. I bet they practice too. Don’t you? Reading more than they watch TV? Anybody do that? Read more than you watch TV? [Hands go up] Oh that’s great! Very good. Very important to practice! Thanks for having me. Very impressed.” [Transcribed from Booker video, Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism—From Inside the Bush White House, by Bill Sammon, 10/02, pp. 89-90] Bush still continued to talk, advising the children to stay in school and be good citizens. [Tampa Tribune, 9/1/02, St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/02 (B)] One student asked Bush a question, and he gave a quick response on his education policy. [New York Post, 9/12/02]
The only source to describe what happened next is Fighting Back by Bill Sammon. Publishers Weekly described Sammon’s book as an “inside account of the Bush administration’s reaction to 9-11 [and] a breathless, highly complimentary portrait of the president [showing] the great merit and unwavering moral vision of his inner circle.” [Publisher’s Weekly, 10/15/02] Sammon’s conservative perspective makes his account of Bush’s behavior at the end of the photo-op all the more surprising. Bush is described as smiling and chatting with the children “as if he didn’t have a care in the world” and “in the most relaxed manner imaginable.” White House aide Gordon Johndroe, then came in as he usually does at the end of press conferences, and said, “Thank you, press. If you could step out the door we came in, please.” A reporter then asked, “Mr. President, are you aware of the reports of the plane crash in New York? Is there anything...,” But Bush interrupted, and no doubt recalling his order, “DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET,” Bush responded, “I’ll talk about it later.” But still the president did not leave. “He stepped forward and shook hands with [classroom teacher] Daniels, slipping his left hand behind her in another photo-op pose. He was taking his good old time. ... Bush lingered until the press was gone.” [Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism—From Inside the Bush White House, by Bill Sammon, 10/02, p. 90]
Does this man seem like he's running the show? Now, don't get me wrong, I was never a Kerry fan. Not in the least. But, all you Bush voters, are you still clinging to the notion that the man is competent to be president? And if you don't think he's president; if, maybe it's a group job, who's running the country? Dick Cheney?
People talk about Hillary Clinton meddling in affairs when Bill Clinton was president. I don't like her health care plan or some of the other things she's done, but the lady is whip-smart and has done a good job as New York's senator. She's not a dry drunk who'd sit there like a lump while New York City is crumbling.
A caveat: The footage links come from a conspiracy theorist's site. Still, the video is the video is the video.
Check Out The Rhyming Flame-War
Again, it's about exposed mommy-titties. Via Consumerist, another flap about public breastfeeding, and the hilarious comments that ensued. A doulah (midwife) started it with this Seuss-propriation:
Would you nurse her at the park?
Would you nurse him in the dark?
Would you nurse him with a boppy?
And when your boobs are feeling floppy?I would nurse her in the park.
I would nurse him in the dark.
I'd nurse with or without a boppy.
Floppy boobs will never stop me.Can you nurse with your seat belt on?
Can you nurse from dusk til dawn?
Though she may pinch me, bite me, pull,
I will nurse her til she's full.Can you nurse and make some soup?
Can you nurse and feed the group?
It makes her healthy strong and smart,
Mommy's milk is the best start!Would you nurse him at the game?
Would you nurse her in the rain?
In front of those who dare complain?
I would nurse him at the game.
I would nurse her in the rain.As for those who protest lactation,
I have a perfect explanation.
Mommy milk is tailor made
It's perfect food, you need no aid.Some may scoff and some may wriggle,
Avert their eyes or even giggle.
To those who can be cruel and rude,
Remind them breast's the perfect food.I would never scoff or giggle,
Roll my eyes or even wiggle!
I would never be so crass or crude,
I KNOW that this milk's the perfect food!We make the right amount we need,
The perfect temp for every feed.
There's no compare to milk from breast-
The perfect food, above the rest.Those nursing smiles are oh so sweet,
Mommy milk is such a treat.
Human milk just can't be beat.I will nurse, in any case,
On the street or in your face.
I will not let my baby cry,
I'll meet her needs, I'll always try.
It's not about what's good for you,
It's best for babies, through and through.I will nurse her in my home,
I will nurse her when I roam.
Leave me be lads, leave me be ma'am
I will nurse her, MOM I am.
Hillbilly Haute Wheels
Daniel Dennett On The Pope's Remarks
Well, truth be told, he didn't comment directly on the Pope's remarks, because I heard him talk this past July at this year's Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference at Penn.
be Brigham Young's grandson, with Leda Cosmides looking on behind.
Dennett spoke out against the prissy way in which we're supposed to regard religion, making the point that religion shouldn't be sancrosanct, but should be examined as dispassionately as other subjects. In Dennett's words to me at dinner:
Give religion no more respect than you’d accord to animal husbandry.
Of course, when he said it, he was looking out across a dining room filled with a few hundred evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists, and ethologists, not a sea of homicidal nutwads. As a friend e-mailed me today:
...I have this summary about all the anger with the Pope:“We’re so mad about your comments that Islam is violent that we’re going to kill you if you don’t apologize.”
Dennett made a fascinating point -- and I think he's right -- that some people believe in god, and some people believe in the belief in god. I think of intelligent people I know, and I can't really imagine they believe, without proof, in a big Imaginary Friend in the sky. I think they just try not to think about it too much because they find it more comfortable to recede into irrationality. Or, as it relates to organized religion, as Dennett said in his talk:
People do the believing and leave the understanding to the "experts."
Another reason for this might be that they need the group belongingness religion provides -- and they'll suspend disbelief to have it, same as they do in a movie. Unfortunately, real-world suspension of disbelief has real-world consequences. For more on that, see the Sam Harris blog post below. Regarding work on religious group-think, I'll try to post David Sloan Wilson's talk and contribution to the poster session at HBES soon.
Dennett’s one policy recommendation –- education on world religions (for kids):
Dennett explained:
Toxic religions depend on enforced ignorance of the young –- and a religon that can flourish in an informed (citizenry) is a benign religion.
Here's Dennett's book, Breaking The Spell.
Who's Afraid Of Dick Cheney?
I have my problems with the LA Times, but problems with the op-ed page aren't among them. It's the best section in the paper, and Monday, I was reminded of that when I read this extraordinary piece by author Sam Harris, who sounds like a liberal yet thinks the liberal view on terror is dangerously stupid:
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a "war on terror." We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.
This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.
Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.
In Harris' words below there there are shades of Dennett from the blog post just above:
Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.
Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
I don't know how many more engineers and architects need to blow themselves up, fly planes into buildings or saw the heads off of journalists before this fantasy will dissipate. The truth is that there is every reason to believe that a terrifying number of the world's Muslims now view all political and moral questions in terms of their affiliation with Islam. This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
...We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.
Here's Harris' brand new paperback, Letter To A Christian Nation, published yesterday. And here's the paperback version of his fantastic book I already have, The End Of Faith.
Jokes For Geeks
Loved this Danny Shanahan cartoon, originally in the New Yorker, now available framed, on t-shirts, and on note cards, which I ordered.
To explain it for any who aren't that apprised of the details of a bug's life, I'll post this old short question from my Advice Goddess column, entitled "Getting Royally Flushed":
My boyfriend is not only my best friend, he treats me like a queen. The problem is, it's not love anymore, not for me. He's preparing a huge dinner for our one-year anniversary. Should I try to make it work, at least through our anniversary dinner?
--Over And Almost OutJust because the guy treats you like a queen doesn't mean he's looking to be treated like one of your subjects. Let's see...not only do you plan to leave him, you plan to leave him with a big pile of dirty dishes. Sweet! Not only that, you'll leave him feeling really stupid for believing all your "me, too" stuff. (I guess you were planning on crossing your fingers under the table.) A kinder, gentler idea is crossing the anniversary dinner off the agenda. There's a right time to tell a guy how you (don't) feel, and it's the moment the news bounces into your tiara. He won't get to toast "happily ever 20 minutes from now" with you, but this story still has a happy ending...of sorts: At least he didn't treat you like a praying mantis, since girl mantises have a bad habit of biting off boy mantises' heads after sex. Anniversary or no anniversary.
Back Seat 'Diver
Inscription on car, Ft. Worth antique auto show.
Pope On The Ropes
I'm often amazed that people go to houses of worship and pledge their allegiance (and time and money) to a ruler they have no evidence exists. The primitive childishness of making wishes to god is stunning and weird, especially in the 21st century. And yes, loads of people do it, but that doesn’t mean it makes the slightest bit of sense. More on that from Daniel Dennett tomorrow (notes from my attendance at the 2006 Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference at Penn).
I'm particularly amazed by the people who insist god wants them to be rich. God wants this, god wants that. How the fuck does anybody know what god wants? They don't -- they make it up; whatever best serves their needs: "God wants me to eat off 24k solid gold silverware in my million-dollar yacht!" “God wants me to murder everyone who doesn’t think like I do!” How come god never wants you to think rationally and act globally, and maybe even mind your own business instead of peering into your gay neighbors' windows?
Of course, this week’s Back-To-The-Middle-Ages moment was brought to us courtesy of the gay-hating, contraceptive-denying, AIDs-promoting, ex-Hitler-youth Pope -- in conjunction with that “religion of peace,” Islam. I know, I know, there are peaceful Muslims. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be doing shit to stop all the unpeaceful Muslims.
Where does this leave the rest of us? Stuck in a real-life game show: Battle Of The Primitive Thinkers! Or do you prefer Families Feudal? Or The Amazing Race -- except with chemical weapons and 16-year-old girls wearing belly bombs?
Now, it isn't often I cheer the head propagandist of the biggest pro-irrationality organization in the world, but it's nice that the naked emperor pointed out the nudity down the block -- the violent kind.
In the speech in Germany, the Pope referred to criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus.The emperor said everything Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
Sam Harris writes about the Pope's his Prada-clad foot in his speech:
The world is still talking about the pope’s recent speech—a speech so boring, convoluted and oblique to the real concerns of humanity that it could well have been intended as a weapon of war....While the pope succeeded in enraging millions of Muslims, the main purpose of his speech was to chastise scientists and secularists for being, well, too reasonable. It seems that nonbelievers still (perversely) demand too much empirical evidence and logical support for their worldview. Believing that he was cutting to the quick of the human dilemma, the pope reminded an expectant world that science cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps: It cannot, for instance, explain why the universe is comprehensible at all. It turns out that this is a job for… (wait for it) … Christianity.
Best of all, the Pope only sorta apologized -- apologizing only for making the Islamicists angry. Yet, other religions -- Christianity, especially -- haven't exactly been a walk in the park, either. Remember the Inquisition, anyone? The Crusades? The people who hate gays and lesbians and call them sinners (when they aren't beating them up and murdering them)? Oh yeah, that doesn't take much remembering, does it?
But Islam is the only current religion that advocates violence. Not all Muslims are violent, no, but far too many of them are. By the way, my recent favorite quote was that of the Pakistani foreign minister, Tasnim Aslam, whose Daily Show-ready response to Pope’s remarks was:
"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence."
Well, what a surprise:
West Bank churches attackedIn the West Bank city of Nablus, Jabi Saadeh, a member of the Anglican Church in the city, said about four or five masked men in a white car threw several fire bombs at the wall of the church, without causing damage.
A similar attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Nablus set ablaze one of its walls, leaving part of it charred. George Awad, head of the Greek Orthodox church, denounced what he called “a childish act.”
In a phone call to The Associated Press, a group calling itself the “Lions of Monotheism” claimed responsibility. The caller said the attacks were meant as a protest against the pope’s remarks about Islam.Relations between Palestinian Muslims and Christians are generally peaceful, and clergy played down the attacks as isolated incidents.
But they said they’d worry if more Christian sites are targeted. On Friday, two small explosions went off near a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza, causing minor damage.
Yes, to show us all what a religion of peace it is, why not kill a nun in revenge?!
… an Italian Catholic nun was shot dead in a children's hospital in Mogadishu. A senior Somalian Islamist said: "There is a very high possibility the people who killed her were angered by the Catholic Pope's recent comments against Islam."The nun, in her mid-sixties, identified as Sister Leonella Sgorbati, was shot dead with her bodyguard by two gunmen at the hospital for mothers and children in northern Mogadishu.
The bodyguard died instantly, but the nun, from the Missionaries of the Consolation order based in Nepi near Rome, was rushed into an operating theatre after being hit by three or four bullets in the chest, stomach and back.
"She died in the hospital treatment room," a doctor, Ali Mohamed Hassan, said. "She was shot outside the hospital, going to her house just across the gate."
Islamic security chiefs said two people had been arrested over the shootings.
Was she killed because the Pope spoke out against the irrationality down the block? We don't know yet for sure. But Theo Van Gogh was, and so many others were. And think of all of those -- like Salman Rushdie -- who've been visited with death sentences simply for their words. What kind of religion is Islam if so many of its members respond to mere criticism with slaughter?
In a civilized society, that kind of behavior has no place. If Muslims wish to live in free democratic societies, perhaps they should play by the "When in Rome..." rule, and restrict the violence, hatred, murder, persecution (excerpt below), and abuse to their own societies:
The kidnapping of Christian girls by Muslim Arabs and Kurds in Iraq in the last few years -- and the suicide of at least one Assyrian girl following rape by her Kurdish master -- is a subject that can be found discussed at Assyrian websites. None of this has been reported in the Western press.This is not strange. The world press simply has not bothered to study Islam; as a consequence, it usually ends up offering “mere” reportage which does not delve, does not comprehend, and repeats the latest Arab or Muslim propaganda and shuns matter which might call into question the Muslim-friendly view of things.
Take, for example, the coverage of the “Palestinian” conflict with Israel -- that is to say, the Arab Jihad against Israel, where the local Arabs renamed themselves post-1967 the “Palestinian people,” and with a little help from Edward Said and a cast of thousands made everyone forget that 1) Jews in Israel came from Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, where for more than a millennium and a half they were cruelly mistreated as dhimmis (and in some places, such as Yemen, as chattel slaves) and not only from Europe.
Here's Dhimmi Watch:
Dhimmitude is the status that Islamic law, the Sharia, mandates for non-Muslims, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, "protected people," are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, is part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race.
Modernity and civilization anyone?
Couching Towards Bethlehem
via LAObserved, the abandoned couches blog, by "Peggy Archer" of Totally Unauthorized.
Traffic Jam, Fort Worth Style
Hezbollah Is Poopy!
Liked the rant over at Reason by Jeff Jarvis about Bush letting the shit fly when he was talking to Tony Blair about Hezbollah; as in, Syria should tell Hezbollah to "stop doing this shit." I posted on July 17:
Do you think the FCC will try to fine him and CNN thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for use of "profane" language?
Jarvis writes:
Oh, if only every broadcast outlet in America had let that little s-bomb onto the air, unbleeped. The so-called Parents Television Council could have unleashed its barrage of computerized complaint. The Federal Communications Commission would have fined each station $325,000, per the legislation just signed by the Cusser in Chief. At last we would have had a meaty court challenge to indecency law and the FCC’s inconsistent enforcement of it—an opportunity to stand up for the First Amendment against the cynical political prudery of both parties, the overblown influence of religious pressure groups, and the censorship of the FCC.This spring, the FCC declared s-words, like f-words before them, to be a step beyond merely “indecent.” Now they are “profane.” That means that these “most offensive words in the English language” will “provoke violent resentment,” and that uttering them on the public airwaves is as good as guaranteed to be punished.
The commissioners crossed a line there. For as the president himself demonstrated, shit and its variants are political speech. If Bush had told Tony Blair at the G-8 meeting that Syria needed to get Hezbollah to stop this “humbug” or this “no-no,” it would have lost impact. How can you talk politics without these words? Isn’t calling bullshit on politicians the essence of free speech and reason in a democracy?
And so the FCC now censors and chills political speech—even that of the president, for most broadcast outlets did choose to bleep him for fear of fines. Mind you, the commission does recognize some constitutionally protected speech. That is why it has not ruled racial or religious epithets to be profane: because those words can be political. In the FCC’s skewed logic, then, the n-word is political speech but BS is not.
So whose community standards is the FCC upholding? The FCC says all America is provoked to “violent resentment” over bullshit. Well, bullshit. Show me the man, woman, or, yes, child in a schoolyard who has not uttered the word. Search Google, and you will find 32 million bullshits. Bullshit is part of our language, culture, and politics. The FCC is not enforcing the nation’s community standards. It is enforcing the taboos of a few religious pressure groups.
Note well, then, the religious overtones of the FCC playing the profanity card for the first time in its history. Profanity is by definition “contempt or irreverence for what is sacred.” And so who is to say what is sacred? Politicians? Preachers? The Parents Television Council? Or parents?
Even I can point to the case that brings their "reasoning" down: Cohen v. California, 1971, about the guy who wore the "Fuck the draft" jacket. And then there's the common sense thing: Is there anybody in the world who hears "Oh, shit!" and is then provoked to violence?
What You Won't Be Reading In LA Times Magazine
aka West, is my piece on telemarketers; or rather, how, when a telemarketer calls, I find out the honcho of the company, track them down, call them at home, chew them out, and then invoice them for hijacking my time and my phone line...and get them to pay!
Bottom Line Personal publishing's Martin Edelston (a real mensch) not only sent me a check, he apologized for telemarketing and said they'd stop, thanks to my intervention.
The point of that piece, and others like it, is excerpted below:
Yes, I’m that rare person demanding accountability in a society that’s increasingly unaccountable. When people hear how I stand up to these time embezzlers, it suddenly occurs to them that they can say no as well -- and with more than a docile “no, thank you” and a clattering of the phone receiver into its cradle. Sure, simply hanging up is one way out of a telemarketing call, but guess what: Life is short. I don’t want to spend mine jumping up from dinner, knocking over my wine, and coming when I’m called by the recorded voice of some golden-parachuted freeloader.“What’s the big deal?” some people ask. “Why sweat the small stuff”? Well, because “the small stuff” is part and parcel of the big stuff. Corporate executives like Edelston, who’ve affirmed that it’s wrong to steal from consumers, even on the smallest scale, are unlikely to be behind the next Enron. When I shoot back with “My dinner isn’t just something I eat while I’m waiting for your telemarketers to call,” what I’m really doing is warning them, “Don’t even think of pulling a Ken Lay on us.”
My motto: If you can’t beat ‘em, annoy the crap out of ‘em, then bill ‘em for your time.
I pitched this -- as part of a series or as a single article on the disintegration of public manners, and how I try to prank the corporate and regular Joe rudesters into better behavior -- to Rick Wartzman, editor of West. He (very politely, and in a very timely manner, I must say) turned me down. Apparently, a story of one woman getting revenge on telemarketers is of zero interest to LA Times readers!
Nope, the only people in LA who'll publish my features pieces are those at Hustler. They're very nice to me, and were quite thrilled to have my piece piece on pranking telemarketers. It's in the issue that started selling on newsstands yesterday (Friday, September 15). Kate Coe blogs about it here, at MediaBistro's Fishbowl/LA. Here's the excerpt from her blog item (thanks for saying I look like a "Va-Voom girl" and write like a demon!):
The Advice Goddess, aka Amy Alkon, looks like a Va-Voom girl and writes like a demon. She exposes her inner consumer-affairs advocate in the current Hustler. (Not in the way you think, perv.) She takes on telemarketers, and basically, grinds their bones to make her bread. When disturbed at home by a pre-recorded message from some giganto food warehouse drone, she tracks the perp down--at his home. Here's the exchange:"Hello, Mrs. Snee?" I guessed. "This is Amy Alkon. I'm looking for Tim Snee -- the Tim Snee who's a V.P. at Smart & Final." She said he was her husband.
"Well, your husband called me at home, and I don't like that." I said.
Silence.
"I got this recorded message from your husband..." I continued.
Now, the lady got it. Sounding peeved, she explained that he was just letting people know they were working to correct the shelf-restocking problem.
Yeah, so I'd heard. "Guess what?" I snapped. "I don't work for Smart & Final or Tim Snee, and I resent getting calls from him at home. How do you like being bothered at home by some irritating stranger?"
Now what LA Times reader could possibly be interested in reading such a thing?
P.S. And no, they won't be picking up that piece of crap column of mine either. I'm at the features editors' conference in Ft. Worth, and Sherry Stern, the LAT editor who picks syndicated content, couldn't have made that more clear. (She's the one who sent me a letter a while ago telling me to never send them anything again because they're "not seeking new writers. We're content with the writers we have.")
I think they're still just mad (as the wonderful editor of my LA Times Mag stolen Rambler piece, Bob Sipchen, told me) about the line I wrote about my titties:
My search fruitless, I decided to head home, after dropping in at the Hollywood police station.BEING A GIRL, I find in-person visits in such situations to be quite helpful. ("Hi, I have big breasts, will you find my car?")
After my Rambler piece was published, he told me that women at the paper had said something along the lines of "It'll be a long time before her breasts are in the paper again!"
Yeah, who cares whether readers want to see her column (they occasionally e-mail me the requests they sent to LA Times' head features honcho John Montorio and the "not interested" replies he sends back), if she's the kind of girl who dares to make cracks about her own boobs! Here's one of the letters to Montorio:
Dear John:I was in Marin county recently visiting my family and read another of Amy Alkon’s wonderful columns in the local weekly the Pacific Sun.
Sir, is there a reason why Advice Amy is not in the LA Times? Not only is she highly entertaining (more so than most columnists in any paper, the LA Times included), but really she is an extremely creative humorist and artist of the 1st degree. There is no one like her. There is no one capable of putting the lost, confused or simply clueless in their place with as much wild, unpredictable, thoroughly original, whipsmart vim and vigor. As I read her and laugh I am also amazed by the prowess of her consistently fertile imagination. It’s a wonder.
Her satisfying responses would be an asset to the Times and would, I am sure, be treasured by thousands of its readers. And no, I am not her agent.
Thank you
M.G. (I'm not putting his full name in since I didn't have time to ask permission to use his e-mail)
He's A Jew And He Drives A Ford
Meet Little Jewford, Kinky Freedman's very amusing advance man -- or something -- who's here at a newspaper conference I'm attending in Ft. Worth, Texas. As Kinky said about Little Jewford in his talk, "He's wearing Elvis' shower curtain."
Meanwhile, Kinky, ostensibly the wacky candidate, has a sensible approach to "the war on drugs" (ie, the war against intelligent drug policy):
Kinky Friedman says he favors legalizing marijuana to keep nonviolent users out of prison. If Texas elects him governor, he says, he'll try to get locked-up pot users released to make room for more violent criminals."I think that's long overdue," Friedman told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "I think everybody knows what (U.S. Sen.) John McCain said is right: We've pretty well lost the war on drugs doing it the way we're doing it. Drugs are more available and cheaper than ever before. What we're doing is not working."
Friedman, the often irreverent singer, entertainer and mystery writer, is running as an independent in a bid to unseat Republican Gov. Rick Perry, and he's getting some serious attention.
...As for Friedman, he said he doesn't like being called a politician.
"I don't mind being called a flip-flopper," he said, a description Perry's campaign has placed on him. "I think we actually could use a flip-flopper as governor because a flip-flopper is a human being open to change, and God knows change is what we need now."
Friedman talked about how Jesse Ventura advocated legalizing prostitution during his campaign, an approach which seemed likely to make him lose favor with voters. It seemed voters in Minnesota actually appreciated a candidate who actually gave an honest opinion on something -- instead of the usual approach of holding up a wet finger to see which way the wind's blowing.
How The War On Drugs Hurts The War On Terror
Jacob Sullum writes in Reason about the effect of the crackdown on opium poppy growth in Afghanistan:
The Taliban-opium connection goes back at least a decade. After they took control of Afghanistan in 1996, they encouraged opium poppy cultivation and took a cut from the trade, using the money to buy weapons and put up their buddies in Al Qaeda. In 1999, per the UNODC, Afghanistan had a record opium harvest of 4,565 tons.The following year, the Taliban suddenly announced that growing poppies was contrary to Islam. The UNODC says the ban, enforced by the threat of summary execution, nearly eliminated cultivation, resulting in a 2001 opium harvest of less than 200 tons.
But the Taliban's reading of Islamic law conveniently did not require the destruction of opium stockpiles, much of which they controlled. The opium ban therefore looked like an attempt to profit from price increases while getting credit from the West for a firm anti-drug stance.
In any case, since losing power after the U.S. invasion in 2001, the Taliban seem to have forgotten their religious objections to opium, production of which hit an all-time high of more than 6,000 tons this year, up about 50 percent from 2005.
...It's no mystery why barely subsisting Afghanis choose to grow opium poppies instead of legal crops, contrary to the wishes of foreign governments. According to the UNODC, a hectare of poppies earned farmers some $5,400 last year, about 10 times what they could get by growing wheat.
Western governments, the U.S. foremost among them, created this incentive by banning opium to begin with, thereby enabling criminals (including terrorists) to earn a risk premium. Having artificially boosted the price of opium, the U.S. now asks desperately poor Afghan peasants to resist this financial attraction for the sake of Westerners who fail to resist the pharmacological attraction of heroin.
Even if drug warriors were successful in curbing Afghan opium production, an effort Costa says could take 20 years, there are plenty of other places to grow poppies. As with coca, the most that has been achieved by attempts to eradicate opium has been to move production from one country to another, with no lasting effect on drug use.
Meanwhile, a NATO-backed crackdown on opium would drive farmers further into the Taliban's arms and jeopardize Afghanistan's future. "Counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts must reinforce each other," says Costa, "so as to stop the vicious circle of drugs funding terrorists and terrorists protecting drug traffickers." Prohibition started this vicious circle, and more vigorous enforcement will only strengthen it.
The Great And Powerful Oz Of 43rd Street
First we have the original all-knowing, all-seeing Oz, from the 1939 musical:
Oz: The Great and Powerful Oz knows why you have come. Step forward, Tin Man.Tin Man: Uahh.
Oz: You dare to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!
Tin Man: Oooohhh. Uh, yes, yes sir. Yyyes, your Honor. You see, awhile back we were walking down the yellow brick road and --
Oz: QUIET!!!
And here we have the remake, starring Frank Rich, who joins a phographer, Thomas Hoepker, in what Slate's David Plotz deems a Herculean leap to conclusions. In Plotz' words:
In his Sept. 10 column, Frank Rich of the New York Times describes a "taboo 9/11 photo," one so "shocking" that photographer Thomas Hoepker didn't publish it for four years.
In the Hoepker photo, five people are talking on the Brooklyn waterfront as the smoke from the World Trade Center billows across the river. Like the photographer, Rich decided these people were just having a good ole time, and saw deep into their brains, as follows:
...Traumatic as the attack on America was, 9/11 would recede quickly for many. This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American. In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust themselves off and keep going explains both what's gone right and what's gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state the nation finds itself in today.
Oh, please. What is this, third grade, where the art teacher puts up a picture and the children make up a story about it? Plotz is having none of it:
But wait! Look at the photograph. Do you agree with Rich's account of it? Do these look like five New Yorkers who are "enjoying the radiant late-summer sun and chatting away"? Who have "move[d] on"? Who—in Rich's malicious, backhanded swipe—"aren't necessarily callous"? They don't to me. I wasn't there, and Hoepker was, so it may well be that they were just swapping stories about the Yankees. But I doubt it. The subjects are obviously engaged with each other, and they're almost certainly discussing the horrific event unfolding behind them. They have looked away from the towers for a moment not because they're bored with 9/11, but because they're citizens participating in the most important act in a democracy—civic debate.Ask yourself: What are these five people doing out on the waterfront, anyway? Do you really think, as Rich suggests, that they are out for "a lunch or bike-riding break"? Of course not. They came to this spot to watch their country's history unfold and to be with each other at a time of national emergency. Short of rushing to Ground Zero and digging for bodies, how much more patriotic and concerned could they have been?
So they turned their backs on Manhattan for a second. A nice metaphor for Rich to exploit, but a cheap shot. I was in Washington on 9/11. I spent much of the day glued to my TV set, but I also spent it racing home to be with my infant daughter, calling my parents and New York relatives, and talking, talking, talking with colleagues and friends. Those discussions were exactly the kind of communal engagement I see in this photo. There is nothing "shocking" in this picture. These New Yorkers have not turned away from Manhattan because they have turned away from 9/11. They have turned away from Manhattan because they have turned toward each other for solace and for debate.
Rich and Hoepker and I have all characterized what these five people were doing and how they were feeling, but none of us really know. Wouldn't you like to hear from the five themselves?
Here's the account from one who was there, a Brooklyn artist named Walter Sipser:
A snapshot can make mourners attending a funeral look like they're having a party.Thomas Hoepker took a photograph of my girlfriend and me sitting and talking with strangers against the backdrop of the smoking ruin of the World Trade Center on September 11th. Earlier, she and I had watched the buildings collapse from my rooftop in Brooklyn and had made our way down to the waterfront. The Williamsburg Bridge was filled with hundreds of people, covered in dust, helping one another make their way onto the street. It was clear that people who ordinarily would not have spoken two words to each another were suddenly bound together, which I suppose must be a fairly common occurrence in the aftermath of a catastrophe.
We were in a profound state of shock and disbelief, like everyone else we encountered that day. Thomas Hoepker did not ask permission to photograph us nor did he make any attempt to ascertain our state of mind before concluding five years later that, "It's possible they lost people and cared, but they were not stirred by it." Had Hoepker walked fifty feet over to introduce himself he would have discovered a bunch of New Yorkers in the middle of an animated discussion about what had just happened. He instead chose to publish the photograph that allowed him to draw the conclusions he wished to draw, conclusions that also led Frank Rich to write, "The young people in Mr. Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American." A more honest conclusion might start by acknowledging just how easily a photograph can be manipulated, especially in the advancement of one's own biases or in the service of one's own career.
Sunglasses Indoors
It's not just the province of fashion, although the piece that inspired the confession below is a Slate "investigation" of why fashionistas wear shades where the sun don't shine.
Living in Los Angeles, I do my best to avoid the Hollyweasels, but it's sometimes impossible. At a dinner party at my friend Neville's last year, it was pretty dimly lit, yet some Mr. Important down at the end of the table was still wearing sunglasses indoors. Not being the wiltingest of wilting violets, I made some cheeky crack (can't remember exactly what), connecting his sunglasses indoors-wearing with Hollywood asshole-hood.
"Actually," he said, "I'm blind."
Actually, I'd like to evaporate.
In-Fright Announcement
Via Consumerist, a Chinese blogger typed up the hilarious piece from the print version of The Economist about what a truthful on-airline announcement might sound like. Here's an excerpt:
GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.The flight attendants are now pointing out the emergency exits. This is the part of the announcement that you might want to pay attention to. So stop your sudoku for a minute and listen: knowing in advance where the exits are makes a dramatic difference to your chances of survival if we have to evacuate the aircraft. Also, please keep your seat belt fastened when seated, even if the seat-belt light is not illuminated. This is to protect you from the risk of clear-air turbulence, a rare but extremely nasty form of disturbance that can cause severe injury. Imagine the heavy food trolleys jumping into the air and bashing into the overhead lockers, and you will have some idea of how nasty it can be. We don't want to scare you. Still, keep that seat belt fastened all the same.
Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.
Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft's navigation systems. At least, that's what you've always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn't sound quite so good. On most flights a few mobile phones are left on by mistake, so if they were really dangerous we would not allow them on board at all, if you think about it. We will have to come clean about this next year, when we introduce in-flight calling across the Veritas fleet. At that point the prospect of taking a cut of the sky-high calling charges will miraculously cause our safety concerns about mobile phones to evaporate.
Yes, but if you are talking on your cell in-flight, there's always that danger of me killing you with my bare hands.
All They Have Left Is Fear
The Republican party used to bill itself as the party of ideas, writes Harold Meyerson in The Washington Post. Now it's just the party of ideas about being afraid -- afraid of the Democrats (which I see as the party of few coherent ideas; or, at least, few coherently expressed ideas). In Meyerson's words:
It was all so much simpler in the days when the Democrats' reservations about the war in Iraq could be depicted as revealing their irresolution in the fight against terror. Today, alas, most Americans see Iraq as the horrific sectarian conflict it has in fact become, and in a recent poll for Time magazine, 54 percent said our involvement there was actually hurting our efforts to combat terrorism. The president, though, persists in depicting the war as the front line in the war on jihadists; to admit otherwise would be to admit that those who propose redeploying some of our forces, as Democratic congressional leaders have advocated, aren't necessarily soft on bin Laden.But the public isn't falling for the third iteration of the scare campaign -- not yet, anyway -- so the Republicans have fallen back on slime. According to a report in Sunday's Post by Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza, the National Republican Congressional Committee "plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads" that attack Democratic candidates on their business dealings, legal battles and legislative votes that can be taken out of context.
What's a party to do when its high road leads nowhere but down? The Republicans tried privatizing Social Security, but their numbers never added up. They tried spreading democracy with unilateral, preventive war but instead unleashed a sectarian bloodbath. So the party of big ideas, of Milton Friedman and the neoconservatives, is now just one big Swift Boat flotilla, its ideas sunk of their own dead weight, kept afloat solely by its opposition research. For their part, the Democrats still champion common security; they call for a government that can build dikes and reduce the costs of college and medication and that knows that remaking the world becomes more plausible when some of the world is actually willing to go along with us. Those are, in the campaign of 2006, just about the only ideas in play.
At the moment, Rocky Anderson has my vote.
What Is Faith?
It's so reminiscent of junior high popularity contests, I just love what Martin Amis calls it:
“The desire for approval of supernatural beings.”
In the first of a two-part series in The Observer.
"The People Who Want Us Dead? They Aint Swedes"
The other day, I posted "Do You Think Jewish Orthodontists Will Be Rioting In The Streets?" about Iran's lame finalists in the Holocaust cartoon contest, and some commenters said or intimated that my take on Islam is racist. For example:
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it seems like you're painting with a rather broad brush -- using words like "barbarism" and "uncivilized" without any qualification. I'm assuming you're not talking about Muslims or Arabs generally ...I'd agree that the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks were barbarians. They also happened to be Muslim. But obviously there are terrorists of every religious stripe.
I commented back:
No, there aren't terrorists of every religious stripe. There are a handful of Jewish, Christian, and other nutjobs (Eric Randolph, Tim McVeigh, etc.), but there are many, many Muslims who want anybody who's a non-Muslim dead. Read the newspaper and you might hear of a few. (Concept of Jihad mean anything to you?) And when you're in Manhattan, drop by the huge hole across from Century 21 where a vast mass murder took place -- in the name of Allah.As Lena pointed out, Muslim countries are, for the most part, backward, horrible places, especially if you're a woman or a homosexual, or both. Toss the quaint multi-culti fantasies and join the real world.
PS For the record, I'm about as unracist as it gets (in fact, I find it completely uncivilized and primitive that people care about skin color or, say, how somebody else gets sexual pleasure), but what I am, when it comes to mass murderers, is realistic.
The people who want us dead? They ain't Swedes.
Another commenter wrote:
"For the record, I'm about as unracist as it gets"???! Get real. Your take on Muslims is systematically dismissive, hateful and racist. Very Ann Coulter-ish, and disconcertig coming from someone as smart as you.
Sorry to be so direct, but I couldn't let this pass.
The truth is, Ann Coulter says horrible things for notoriety and money. Pretty stupid things, too. Does she truly believe them? The lady went to law school. Probably not.
I say what I believe. I don't think all Arabs are evil. This would be stupid and irrational. (Of course, all people who believe in god -- Jews, Christians, and Muslims -- are irrational, but they all aren't evil.) But, as far as my other beliefs on Islam go, I'm pretty much right there with the words of Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of the Al-Arabiya news channel, who wrote this article that appeared in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, and later in the UK Telegraph (excerpted below):
'Innocent religion is now a message of hate' (Filed: 05/09/2004)It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.
Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.
Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.
What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?
These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.
For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.
Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Sheikh - the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric - and hear him recite his "fatwa" about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq. Let us contemplate the incident of this religious Sheikh allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians.
This ailing Sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill innocent civilians.
How could this Sheikh face the mother of the youthful Nick Berg, who was slaughtered in Iraq because he wanted to build communication towers in that ravished country?
photo of Nick Berg taken near the Washington D.C. Beltway How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?
In a different era, we used to consider the extremists, with nationalist or Leftist leanings, a menace and a source of corruption because of their adoption of violence as a means of discourse and their involvement in murder as an easy shortcut to their objectives.
At that time, the mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life.
Then came the Neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry.
Does this make Rahman al-Rashed the Arab Ann Coulter?
450 Degrees Of Cathy Seipp
Last night, at the Figueroa Hotel, we roasted Cathy Seipp; a roast being a sort of tough-love humor session for somebody you care about. For those of you who weren't there, here's my little speech I gave at the roast.
Friends. Colleagues. Coke-snorting, baby-boiling, pet-fucking dumpster-lickers. Or, as Cathy would put it –- “West siders.”I’m Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist, friend, and fan of Cathy Seipp, or, according to a lesbo-porn rumor started by Luke Ford, Gayle King to Cathy Seipp’s Oprah.
I’m here to give you a bit of history on Cathy Seipp -- the geopolitical, psycho-sexual, socio-economic history; or rather, how Cathy Seipp came to be a gay-marriage-bashing east-side slumlord.
Cathy was born with a plastic spoon in her mouth. Even worse, she was Canadian. Worse yet, she was from Winnipeg, the Gary, Indiana, of Canada. Like the fellow Winnipegian she, as a blogger, resembles most -- Rowdy Roddy Piper -- she’s been overcompensating ever since.
Ideologically, although Cathy identifies as Republican, her politics are really as follows: She’s right, everyone else is wrong, and unless they agree with her, they’re also stupid. But, no, you’re thinking, surely it goes deeper than that. And, to be fair, well...not really.
Cathy’s what we call a “pocketbook Republican.” In the words of a longtime friend, “It all has something to do with the received wisdom of the George Christy Scandal. Cathy saw how a good capitalist reporter always had free sweaters, limo rides, and a full bag of swag, and she thought, 'Why am I running with the liberal skank herd when the swag from selling out is so good?!'”
And so it went. Our one-time fashion writer of indeterminate political leanings crossed on over from the purse and shoes club to the Republican Skull & Bones, the Wednesday Morning Club. And, boy, did she pick up fast on the laissez-faire capitalism thing. These days, she even charges her own father rent. And things are so bad in one of her ghetto slumholdings, one of her tenants recently moved in with her dad. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the events Emmanuelle and I throw with Cathy for LA Press Club. No, Cathy we cannot do a book party for Lyndon Larouche.
Cathy claims to hate the left, but I say, follow the money and the glory -- oh yeah, and the free food -- and that’s where you’ll find Cathy Seipp. Yes, like a welfare mother on free government cheese, Cathy feeds her daughter with handouts from the TV Critics Association, then complains there are only cold cuts. Just a thought, but does does that sound like your average quietly WASPy gracious Republican?
No…you really have to hand it to Cathy -- like Ann Coulter and Condi, the truth is, she’s simply too smart to be a Democrat. After all, the Democratic party is just filled with black PhDs and pretty actresses in tight dresses. The Republican party, on the other hand, is open road! To money, power, fame, and what, deep down, is all our little Canadian immigrant Cathy really wants: to move to the west side…next door to Arianna…but in a slightly bigger house!
Do You Think Jewish Orthodontists Will Be Rioting In The Streets?
The results of Iran's cartoon contest. Yawn. Plenty of Sharon as Hitler. Here's one, for example, by some entrant named Leo Garesia, from the USA:
Most hilariously, it seems the Israelis won this one, by retaliating with their own tongue-in-cheek "Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest":
Eyal Zusman (30), actor and playwrite, and Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, have followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally they came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so they announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves!“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”
Here's the piece that won first place:
I love that the Israelis are so much better at anti-Jewish cartoons than the Arabs. Perhaps if the Arab societies weren't so obsessed with oppression, and didn't, in turn, condemn freedom of speech, their people might be a little more practiced at it.
Better Late Than Never...I Guess
John Kerry makes use of his newfound snap-on balls on Huff Po. Here's an excerpt:
In order to change course, we must level with the American people about the magnitude of the challenge: we must face reality so we can change it.This starts by leveling with the American people about Iraq’s true position in the overall fight against jihadism. The President pretends Iraq is the central front on the war on terror. It is not now, and never has been. The truth is, his disastrous decisions have made Iraq a fuel depot for terror – fanning the flames of conflict around the world.
There is simply no way to overstate how Iraq has subverted our efforts to free the world from global terror. It has overstretched our military. It has served as an essential recruitment tool for terrorists. It has divided and pushed away our traditional allies. It has diverted critical billions of dollars from the real front lines against terrorism and from homeland security. It has unleashed dangerous, pent-up forces of radical religious extremism. It has weakened moderate leaders in the Middle East. It has strengthened and played into Iran’s hand. It has diminished our moral authority in the world.
The demagogic drumbeat about fighting terrorists over there instead of here -- even though they weren’t in Iraq until we went in, and it’s now a civil war we’re fighting -- has compromised America’s real interests and made us less safe than we ought to be five years after 9/11. The true measure of that is the stark fact that worldwide terrorist attacks are at an all-time high and there are now more terrorists in the world who want to kill Americans than there were at the time of 9/11.
After all the tough talk of “Wanted Dead or Alive,” after the Administration bragged and boasted – they meekly backed off in the mountains of Tora Bora. Osama bin Laden escaped because the administration held back the best military in the world – our’s – and outsourced the job to local militias. Since then Al Qaeda has spawned a vast and decentralized network operating in 65 countries. Only Dick Cheney could call this a success.
The situation in Afghanistan deteriorates steadily, squandering the sacrifices of our troops and allies in the military campaign of 2002. The Taliban now controls entire portions of southern Afghanistan, and just across the border Pakistan is just one coup away from becoming a radical jihadist state with a full compliment of nuclear weapons. Only Don Rumsfeld could proclaim this a victory.
The Middle East is more unstable than it has been in decades. Our stalwart ally Israel is surrounded by emboldened enemies who talk of wiping it off the face of the earth. Hezbollah flags fly from rooftops in Shiia slums of Sadr City and Iran is rebuilding Southern Lebanon. Only an Administration trapped in its own falsehoods could say we are making progress in creating a new Middle East.
North Korea has quadrupled its nuclear weapons capability, and is defiantly testing missiles that could reach our shores. Iran is moving steadily towards membership in the nuclear club; has expanded its terrorist clientele from Hezbollah to Hamas; maintains thousands of agents in Iraq; and is governed by a fanatic who almost daily calls for Israel’s destruction. Only George W Bush could declare this ‘mission accomplished.’
The Bush-Cheney policies have limited our power to act decisively and the regime in Tehran knows it. We have over 130,000 American troops in Iraq in the middle of a seething Shiite population that would explode if we moved against Iran. Our troops and our foreign policy are held hostage by the neocon catastrophe in Iraq. Only this White House could name this a plan for victory.
And be forewarned : don’t be surprised if they hype the Iranian nuclear crisis come October if all other appeals to fear are failing as the mid-term election approaches.
We have an Iraqi Prime Minister sustained in power by our forces, who will not speak against the Hezbollah terrorists, who will not say that Israel has a right to exist, and who will not condemn the Iranian nuclear program. No American soldier should be asked to stand up for an Iraqi government that won’t stand up for freedom and against fear
Here at home, too many things have not changed in the last five years. We learned on 9/11 painful lessons about the costs of a dysfunctional intelligence system marred by bureaucratic infighting, inadequate resources, and faulty analysis. Yet the 9/11 commission recently gave our own government a failing grade on implementing intelligence reforms. Today, our ability to intercept terrorist communications remains in a legal and constitutional limbo.
The Dubai port deal reminded us only a small percentage of cargoes entering U.S. ports are even inspected. Surely if we can inspect cargoes at the Baghdad airport, we can inspect cargoes at the airports in Los Angeles, New York, and right here in Boston.
This is the reality of the world today – a world more dangerous because of the Bush blunders and a challenge far more complicated than the gruff Cheney sound bites. America deserves – our safety depends—on a winning strategy to reverse this dangerous course and make our country more secure.
There are five principal priorities that demand immediate action: (1) redeploy from Iraq, (2) re-commit to Afghanistan, (3) reduce our dependence on foreign oil, (4) reinforce our homeland defense, and (5) restore America’s moral leadership in the world. These “5 R’s”—if you want to call them that-- are bold steps Democrats will take to strengthen our national security, and that the Republicans who have set the agenda today resist to our national peril.
We must refocus our military efforts from the failed occupation of Iraq to what we should have been doing all along: tracking down and killing members of al Qaeda and their clones wherever they are. We must redeploy troops from Iraq – maintain enough residual force to complete the training and deter foreign intervention, so we can free up resources to fight the global war on terror.
Republicans want to wrap this strategy in slogans because they’re afraid to debate what it really is: a redeploy-to-succeed strategy – to succeed in defeating world wide terror, and to succeed in making Iraqis themselves responsible for Iraq.
This is the opposite of the administration’s stand-still-and-lose strategy - -a clear alternative from a broken policy of “more of the same.” Every time President Bush tells the Iraqis we will “stay as long as it takes,” he is giving squabbling politicians there an excuse to take as long as they want. All of us want democracy in Iraq but Iraqis must want it for themselves as much as we want it for them. It’s long overdue for the president to realize that no American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi factions refuse to resolve their ethnic rivalries and their competing grasp for oil revenues.
At each step along the way, the Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines-a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government, a deadline to write a Constitution, a deadline to hold three elections. So we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet-- a clear deadline of July, 2007 to redeploy our combat troops. Make Iraqis stand up for Iraq – and bring our heroes home.
We also desperately need something else this administration disdains: diplomacy. Real diplomacy -- a Dayton-like summit of Iraq and the countries bordering it, the Arab League, NATO, and the Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council. Our own generals have said Iraq can not be solved militarily. Only through negotiation and diplomacy can you stem the growing civil war, and only by setting a deadline to get out can we force Iraq and its neighbors to take diplomacy seriously.
“Staying the course” isn’t far-sighted; it’s blind. Leaving our troops in the middle of a civil war isn’t resolute; it’s reckless. Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion.
Neither can the Administration pretend that the war in Afghanistan is over or that the peace has been secured. On Thursday the president said we’re on the offensive against terrorists in Afghanistan, even as the American NATO commander on the ground showed the opposite is true by making an urgent plea for more troops.
The truth is -- the Bush-Cheney Administration has engaged in a policy of cut and run in that country. This Administration has cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. The Administration has cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land. They cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan – yes, from Afghanistan. That’s right – the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.
To avoid repeating the terrible mistakes of the past, we need to send significant reinforcements to Afghanistan: Start with at least five thousand additional American troops –more elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces; and more experienced intelligence units. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists. And more reconstruction money so that the elected government in Kabul, helped by the United States, not the Taliban, helped by al Qaeda, rebuilds the new Afghanistan.
That’s how you win the hearts and minds of the local population, that’s how you win a war on terror, that’s how you show the world the true face of America.
America needs a national policy that understands we are threatened not just by gun barrels, but by oil barrels. The great treasury of jihadist terrorism is mideast oil. We fund both sides in the war on terror every time we fill up our gas tanks. We know how dependent we are on oil, but it’s not just us. We must liberate the Middle East itself from the tyranny of dependence on petroleum so that the region no longer feeds restive and rising populations of unemployed young people a diet of illusions and rationalizations paid for by our oil money.
Nothing will change if autocratic regimes keep pumping prosperity out of the ground to pay off a new generation with petrodollar welfare checks. We cannot change this if our oil money is sustaining the status quo. We must end the Empire of Oil.
We can’t allow Energy independence to be used as a mere slogan, it has to be a solution. We need a revolutionary set of new policies to promote alternative fuels on a crash basis. This is essential if we are to reverse the tide towards catastrophic global climate change; it is essential to making the United States a leader in vast new opportunities to develop and market clean energy technologies—but most importantly, energy independence is essential to defeating jihadist terrorism and liberating our country from our bondage to tyrannical, hostile, and unstable regimes.
How come Democrats never talk like men until after they're running for president?
Xebra Loose In Santa Monica
Three-wheeled, electric Xebra Zapcar on Hill & Main.
Who's On First -- In Wearable Explosives?
Alberto Gonzales plays verbal tag with the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal:
Gonzales said that the Justice Department was concerned with the problem of "radicalization" in American prisons, and a colleague of ours asked if he was referring to Islamic radicalization. Gonzales declined to characterize it in this way, noting that we are not at war with Islam. Our colleague persisted, and the attorney general allowed that "some" of the radicals are Muslim.We asked if he could give us percentages, and he demurred. Then another colleague asked, "The ones who aren't Muslims--what are they?" Again, he didn't have an answer.
Are there non-Muslim radical groups active in U.S. prisons whose ideology the attorney general cannot remember? We suppose anything's possible, but it seems more likely that he was evading the obvious.
There is, of course, a good reason for such evasion. We aren't at war with Islam, and declaring war on a religion whose adherents number about one-fifth of the world's population would be boneheaded in the extreme. (Ralph Peters eloquently answers anti-Muslim bigots in today's New York Post.)
At the same time, there is a reason that the illegal combatants at Guantanamo are provided with Korans and arrows pointing to Mecca rather than with Bibles or tzitzit. Islam is not our enemy, but our enemies are Muslim; and Islam as they understand it is the ideology that drives them to make war on us.
Indulge us in a little experiment: Try not to think of a giraffe. Didn't work, did it? Likewise, strained efforts to avoid characterizing the enemy as Muslim only reinforce the misconception that our war is against Islam.
Before the Gonzales meeting, we attended a Hudson Institute lunch for former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (the New York Sun was there as well), who put the matter very clearly. The enemy, he said, is "militant Islam," which is at war not only with Christians and Jews but with other Muslims whom the militants deem insufficiently pious.
Privacy Writes
Here are all the sites to mail, call, or e-mail to get your home address, phone number, and even your age taken off the data lists with an opt-out policy. Unfortunately, even the privacyrights.org people who publish the opt-outs say:
...Opting out may prove to be a fruitless venture since often online vendors will simply repopulate the data when they obtain their next download of information from the source. According to People Data, their information is refreshed every three to four months. Your only option would be to check back and go through the opt-out process again if you find your information has been reposted.
Don't Criticize How He Drives 'Cuz He's With The FBI!
Well, at least that's what the guy in the lipsticked moving van that is the Cadillac Escalade claimed when I yelled at him for throwing his vehicle into reverse and almost backing up into me as I was walking to my car. I then took his photo to commemorate the occasion.
Boo hoo, he didn't like that I shouted at him. Um, how else was I supposed to let him know he was about to flatten me?
He told me I had no right to take his picture for my blog. Unfortunately for him, I'm never far from my little Cato Institute copy of the Constitution, and I reminded him of the First Amendment. And I just laughed at his FBI claim. So, you're with the FBI, dude? And? Even if you actually had a badge, is it also a license to run people over?
Of course, from my experience with the FBI guys who used to go to my old gym in Manhattan (one of whom my dry cleaner fixed me up with), if he were an FBI guy he'd be exceptionally polite, serious about his driving, and rather chivalrous -- not an oblivious asshole in a shiny subsitute for a huge penis.
After nearly squashing me, the guy pulled in so close to my car I could barely back out of my space. He was about three inches from my car. These huge SUVs are simply too big for many normal parking spaces. Had there been an even average-sized car in the space next to him, not my tiny Honda Insight, he never could've pulled in.
To give you some sense of how huge his vehicle is, that's the top of my car antenna protruding in the photo.
I told him if he wasn't equipped to maneuver such a huge vehicle, he had no business driving one. Not surprisingly, his mammoth-mobile had some scrapes on the back right side. To be fair, it is possible these weren't made with him behind the wheel. To be realistic, this vehicle was so enormous, I can't see how anybody who isn't a professional truck driver could drive it without putting other people in serious danger.
Here's an idea: This thing should come with one of those beeeep-beeeep-beeeep! backup horns, and drivers who buy one should be required to take special lessons. Hmmm...we could call it Anti-Asshole School For Alleged FBI Agents Who Have Better Things To Do Than Worry They're Running You Over!
The Butt-Pinch: A Low-Cost Alternative To Accupuncture!
Bad news for disparagers of modern medicine. Accupuncture is useless, says Wallace Sampson, clinical professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University and editor in chief of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine. Reyhan Harmanci interviewed him for the SF Chron:
There are two major misconceptions about acupuncture, Sampson says, and both contribute to the misunderstanding of its worth as medical treatment. First, most people assume that it's an ancient Chinese cure that has existed, unchanging, for centuries. Not so, says Sampson, noting that "acupuncture was formalized in a complex way over the past 100 years, mostly in Europe and France and after the Communist takeover in China. Before that time there was no consistent formalization of acupuncture points or what each place was supposed to do. It was largely regional, and the thinking varied from city to city."The other mistake people make about acupuncture, Sampson says, is that it offers specific cures. "It is nonspecific," Sampson says. "If it has the effect of, say, releasing endorphins through the application of needles, well, many things release endorphins -- a walk in the woods, a 5-mile run, a pinch on the butt."
Clinically, it has been shown that acupuncture can have counter-irritative effects. The basis for this is simple: If you have a headache and someone applies pressure through needles to your arms and neck, you get distracted from your headache. "It has no effect on disease process," Sampson says, "but it can affect perception of symptoms through these nonspecific devices, such as attention diversion or the desire of the patient to please the treater and feel benefits."
...But there are more dangerous aspects to the world of alternative medicine, Sampson says, starting with the wildly popular practice of chiropractics. In general, he says, one of the biggest problems with the whole notion of "ancient Chinese medicine" is that it falsely pits itself against "Western medicine." Sampson says these distinctions are useless; a more apt comparison, he says, would be ancient Chinese medicine to ancient European medicine, which share many similarities in their fundamental notions about how the body works. Western medicine, on the other hand, has grown up as the world rejected those ancient notions.
Sampson points to the Western ideal of "first do no harm" as a major difference in the approaches. "Some find Western medicine to be cold because there's no laying of hands on the body unless it's absolutely necessary," says Sampson. "But we took an oath. Physicians should not lay on hands or do something that doesn't accomplish its goal. Cracking a neck or a back, for instance, can do much more harm than good. You have to draw the line somewhere."
Exactly how nuts do you have to be to let some guy in Birkenstocks who decorates in Buddhas, dreamcatchers, and Pier One eastern crap crack your neck?
Who's The Media Whore?
Fantastic letter to The Skinny Hate Whore (commonly known as Ann Coulter) from Kristen Breitweiser, one of the 9/11 widows:
You complained to many interviewers that they hadn't taken the time to read your book. But did you take the time to look at the Family Steering Committee Web site (www.911independentcommission.org)? You might discover that we shared some of the same disappointments, concerns, and grievances that you have expressed with regard to the 9/11 Commission. The difference is that we made those concerns known while the Commission was doing its work--that is, when it could have made a difference. Why didn't you?We could have used some more support back then, when we were fighting against individual commissioners' apparent and very possible conflicts of interest and the need for more hard-hitting hearings. We needed more help in fighting for an extended deadline, so as to remove the Commission's final report from the politics of the 2004 election, and a budgetary increase so the Commission could complete its unfinished work on questions about Able Danger. (You see, I did read your book.)
But frankly, I wonder how much you really know about the 9/11 Commission. You don't seem to understand that President Bush picked Tom Kean to be the chairman--not the "co-chairman." You don't seem to be aware that Philip Zelikow was the Commission's staff director or of why that position was so important. You also seem ignorant of the fact that Zelikow had served previously on the Bush National Security Council transition team and on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. (Do you even know who the current members of PFIAB are or what PFIAB does? Probably not.) I wonder whether you even know that Zelikow is currently serving as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's Special Counsel. Finally, and most important, are you aware that the White House exercised the "final edits" on the Commission's report? Tell me, Ann, how does that add up to a Democratic whitewash?
Because I was one of twelve family members who lobbied fiercely for an independent commission, I was invited to meetings in the White House and on Capitol Hill. I testified before Congress, as well. I wish you knew about the battle that occurred behind the scenes because then you might not make silly statements such as "nobody could ever debate the Jersey Girls." Ironically, it is because we kept most of those meetings confidential that you probably don't know how nastily certain elected officials behaved behind closed doors. Trust me, we were countered, rebutted, and challenged in almost every meeting we attended. Did we go on the record about those incidents? No. We could have, and I can assure you that some of your conservative Republican friends would not have come off well.When I kept my mouth shut about the way a certain Republican official spoke to me merely because it would have made people in your party look bad, was I being "political"? I'm sure there are some Democrats who would say yes. Did that mean I was being manipulated by your right-wing friends? No. It meant that I had a job to do and I found no reason to distract attention from our cause by dragging people through the mud. There was plenty that I could have spouted off about then, and there still is to this very day. But I don't--mostly because my mother and father taught me to rise above bullies rather than stoop to their level.
You branded the Jersey Girls media whores, a bunch of celebrity-seeking widows who enjoyed their husbands' deaths. Had your friends--including many elected officials in the Republican Party and conservatives in Washington--not put up a fight, and a very nasty fight, we wouldn't have needed to raise public awareness through the media. So if you want to blame anyone for our appearances on television, you should blame your own coterie, not us. We simply wanted to inform the nation about what needed to be done. And we still intend to do that.
Don't Marry This Woman!
In an article by Stephanie Rosenbloom in The New York Times about high-tech snooping, I caught this bit:
Amy Greenspan, a graphic designer in Manhattan, said she opens her fiancé’s mail, but not his e-mail — though she occasionally answers his cellphone and responds to instant messages for him (though she said she identifies herself).But one night, she said, she picked up his cellphone and began a game of scrolling through his address book and deleting other women’s phone numbers. “He had to make a case for everybody who stayed,” she said.
Frightening. The fact that she wasn't the first to go says everything about the guy. Can we all band together, take up a collection, and maybe rent him a nice little starter set of balls?
The best approach is to pick somebody ethical and let them be. Also, to not believe in the fiction that love necessarily lasts forever. As a smart out-of-print book, Advice To A Young Wife From An Old Mistress, by (Ms.) Michael Drury, points out you can't pledge to love somebody forever any more than you can promise to have any feeling forever. What you can do is pledge to act loving and to stick around -- even if the spark has turn to shit. Mmm, romantic!
A column I wrote a while back, Caught In A Bridal Wave, with the exact Michael Drury quote is here.
The Docudrama That's A Whole Lotta Drama
The Bush lovers can't defend their man who took us into Iraq anymore? Never mind that, let's attack the Clinton administration! There's an ABC "docudrama" airing Sunday and Monday that's not quite true to the facts, according to them Clinton administration officials it bashes, writes Howard Kurtz:
Among the scenes that the Clinton team said are fictional:* Berger is seen as refusing authorization for a proposed raid to capture bin Laden in spring 1998 to CIA operatives in Afghanistan who have the terrorist leader in their sights. A CIA operative sends a message: "We're ready to load the package. Repeat, do we have clearance to load the package?" Berger responds: "I don't have that authority."
Berger said that neither he nor Clinton ever rejected a CIA or military request to conduct an operation against bin Laden. The Sept. 11 commission said no CIA operatives were poised to attack; that Afghanistan's rebel Northern Alliance was not involved, as the film says; and that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet decided the plan would not work.
* Tenet is depicted as challenging Albright for having alerted Pakistan in advance of the August 1998 missile strike that unsuccessfully targeted bin Laden.
"Madame Secretary," Tenet is seen saying, "the Pakistani security service, the ISI, has close ties with the Taliban." Albright is seen shouting: "We had to inform the Pakistanis. There are regional factors involved." Tenet then complains that "we've enhanced bin Laden's stature."
Albright said she never warned Pakistan. The Sept. 11 commission found that a senior U.S. military official warned Pakistan that missiles crossing its airspace would not be from its archenemy, India.
* "The Path to 9/11" uses news footage to suggest that Clinton was distracted by the Republican drive to impeach him. Veteran White House counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke, who also disputes the film's accuracy, is portrayed as telling FBI agent John P. O'Neill: "Republicans went all out for impeachment. I just don't see the president in this climate willing to take chances."
O'Neill responds: "So it's okay if somebody kills bin Laden, so long as he didn't give the order. . . . It's pathetic." The Sept. 11 commission found no evidence that the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal played a role in the August 1998 missile strike, but added that the "intense partisanship of the period" was one factor that "likely had a cumulative effect on future decisions about the use of force against bin Laden."
Man Recovers Giant's Lost Dildo
Either that, or it's the ugliest piece of public art I've ever seen. Portland, Oregon, near Powell's Books.
I Know Who You Did Last Summer
About a month ago, I posted the blog item, How Big A Slut Are You, Girls?
Or rather, girls, how big a slut were you? And who here thinks it's a good idea for a woman to tell her boyfriend or husband how many men she's been with?
Well, I finally posted the question I answered for my column on the same topic, about a guy who's all fretsome about the number of his 21-year-old girlfriend's sex partners prior to meeting him -- 12 -- vis a vis his number of sex partners -- zippedydoodah! According to her, the guy has no reason to doubt she'll be faithful -- but that still isn't stopping him.
Of course, the problem isn't that she's had the sex partners, but that she was dumb enough to flap her big yap about it. Here's my reply from my Advice Goddess column I just posted:
Like you, he’s learned from your past. Unfortunately, what it taught him was “You Tarzan, him Jane.”Some men you date will beg for the story behind every notch on your belt. At the same time, they really don’t want to know you even own a belt. Men have an enormous capacity for sexual jealousy. Sure, there are those who can handle the whole truth. But, give the average guy an inch, and he’ll stay awake nights with a ruler agonizing that he can’t possibly measure up. When all his hate and resentment finally knock him out, it’s time for his regular nightmare: a line of men outside your bedroom door that looks like the Israelites waiting to cross the Red Sea. Of course, he’s just the bouncer standing there with one of those customer clickers.
So, how honest is too honest? Well, if you want your insecure, recently deflowered boy virgin to feel comfy about his place in your life, taking him on a sex tour of your teen years probably isn’t your best bet: “Yes, over here we have the infamous janitor’s closet, and if you look out the window, you can see the 50-yard line and the long-jump pit…and I’ll never forget that night we broke my sister’s tree house!”
Yes, let a guy know you used to be kinda wild. As for whether you were with 12 or 20, in the conservatory with Colonel Mustard or in the kitchen with Professor Plum and Mrs. Peacock, it’s really none of his business. What’s productive in a relationship isn’t total honesty, but judicious honesty -- telling somebody what they need to know to know you: what makes you happy, what scares you, and what you want from life, not a moment-by-moment replay of what went on in the back of some delinquent’s car.
Even if you were, at one point, vying to be the Charlie Sheen of teenage girls, that doesn’t give any guy the right to spend two years punishing you for having more sex than he did. After all this time, your boyfriend’s crystal clear on whether it was vanilla or Cirque du Soleil with this one or that one, but he doesn’t know you well enough to have a grasp on what matters: Will you sleep around, not did you? Clearly, it’s his insecurity, not your ethics, that’s the problem. Will that ever change? Probably only if you change boyfriends. Look for a guy who’s secure enough to see your past as part of what made you the person he loves in the present. A guy like this understands that the only must-tell sexual history is the important medical and psychological stuff: funny uncles, communicable diseases, and whether somebody’s actually lost their virginity or they’ve just been working really hard to ditch it at the mall.
My entire Q&A is here.
From Famine To Feast
A slideshow of Hollywood curves. An excerpt from the accompanying article, "Fat Is Back," by Holly Millea:
“The curve,” Mae West observed, “is more powerful than the sword.” Measuring 38-24-38, the five-foot-one sex goddess spoke from experience—lots of it. West’s bodacious successors—women like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Drew Barrymore, Rachel Weisz, and Kate Winslet, who hold fast to their cushioned curves even as their peers downsize more aggressively than General Motors—understand that maxim. Their faminista sisters do not. Now, the bigger-(relatively speaking)-is-better argument could easily be made with logic. But a growing faction of actresses who appear to have a healthy relationship with carbohydrates are making the point better than any polemicizing ever could. Line Hollywood’s wispy players up next to the lush likes of Scarlett Johansson, Lost siren Evangeline Lilly, Liv Tyler, Big Love star Ginnifer Goodwin, and an increasingly curvy Mandy Moore. Who would you rather slow-dance with? Seriously, would you prefer to get a Grey’s Anatomy lesson from an hourglassed Katherine Heigl or a reedy Ellen Pompeo? Nicole Richie or Nicole Richie at 50 percent off? Madonna “Like a Virgin” or Madonna “Hung Up” on Yogilates? Here’s a one-woman argument for roundness: Gretchen Mol. After going virtually unnoticed in some 20 films, the cherubic starlet put on a few pounds, took off her clothes, and gave a breakout performance as the world’s most famous pinup in The Notorious Bettie Page.“The pinups didn’t have ‘perfect’ bodies. They didn’t go to the gym. They did Jack LaLanne exercises, those lazy leg lifts,” says Mary Harron, the biopic’s cowriter and director. “It was a more forgiving era. I think constant dieting makes people crazy. It gives them this strained look.”
What the old pinups didn't have either is food with the fat sucked out of it, and loads of sugar added. I learned how to eat from going to France -- small portions of really high quality, high-nutrient food, no fat-removed food, not a lot of bread, and a scoop of rich chocolate ice cream daily. I only keep a scale so I can weigh my luggage before I go to the airport. But, I do have a thing for crime shows, and I have a rule: TV must be watched, at least in part, while peddling on my dual-action exercise bike. "Panting to Peterson," you could call it (William Peterson of CSI, that is -- The Thinking Woman's Bimbo).
And speaking of glamorous curves, here's my Swiss-Italian friend Claudia Laffranchi, hosting the Locarno film festival.
Breathe Easier, Breathe Easier
My car apparently feels ready to date. (Mine's the sexy little number on the right.)
Mental Malpractice
A surgeon in charge of uncovering unecessary surgery gets flack -- because he isn't uncovering any...because he's preventing it.
Several years ago, when I was chairman of the Surgical Quality Assurance Committee, the hospital medical director came to one of our meetings. We have a problem, he said. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals had, on its recent inspection, given our hospital a list of criticisms, one of which involved unnecessary surgery. That, of course, got my attention, even though I've often said unnecessary surgery gets a bad rap: it's easier than the needed kind (nothing like disease to complicate things), and healthy patients generally do better than sick ones. NOTE: kidding.The problem, it turns out, was not that they'd uncovered instances. It was that there was no requirement that surgeons include surgical indications (the reasons for doing a given operation) in the operative reports. We had six months to implement a solution: they'd be back to recheck at that time. OK, I said, we'll do it. Forget that it's stupid. Because if a surgeon is willfully going to do an operation he knows is unnecessary, he certainly'd have no compunction about lying into the record. Moreover, times had long since changed: if people see something fishy in the OR, they talk, they report, they get things changed. Nurses ain't stupid; and not only do they no longer stand up when the doctor walks into the room, they (rightfully) see themselves as advocates for patients. Not that doctors don't, of course.
So, no problem. There are published lists of indications for any given operation. Surgeons can dictate into the record why they're doing a thing, people in medical records can compare their reasons to those lists. Everybody's happy. (Being the passive aggressive type I'd often say things like: "operation: appendectomy; indication: appendicitis." Some operations pretty much go without saying. Or so one might believe.) We got the word to the surgeons, everyone complied. As stupid hospital rules go, this one was pretty benign, and even sensible, more or less.
Time: six months later. Place: SQAC (pronounced squawk) committee meeting. Speaker: the medical director, again. Saying, guys, they came back, and they don't like your system. It doesn't work. What do you mean, I ask. It's not working, he repeats. It's not finding unnecessary surgery. Long pause. VERY long pause. Dick, I say (it was his name, not a declaration). Does it occur to you that the reason we're not finding unnecessary surgery is that we're not DOING unnecessary surgery? C'mon, says Dick. The rest of the meeting is somewhat of a blur in my memory. The minutes of the meeting, assembled by the staff secretary, were tastefully discreet. Something like "discussion ensued." It's possible there was one less serviceable chair in the room at the end than there was at the beginning. There may have been suggestions made that, even for a surgeon, were anatomically impossible. Had they been, the minutes of the meeting, and the report of the inspectors would likely have required decontamination before handling again. I guess it boils down to this: regarding the suggestion that we come up with a better plan, I demurred.
Bansky Pranksy
British prankster Banksy steals into New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums and leaves a few calling cards -- including this one just above:
Banksy has staged similar stunts in the past, managing to smuggle some works into Britain's Tate Gallery and the Louvre in France.He told Reuters news agency he had been inspired to do so by his sister, who once threw away several of his pictures saying they would never hang in the world-renowned Paris museum.
His unusual pieces of art briefly on display in New York included a military officer holding a spray can with anti-war graffiti in the background - which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum.
A hi-tech beetle, equipped with missiles stuck to its wings, was hung in the Natural History Museum's "Hall of biodiversity".
Asked how he managed to dodge security checks, Banksy said he used a fake beard and was helped by accomplices who distracted museum personnel.
"Obviously, they've got their eye a lot more on things leaving than things going in, which works in my favour."
What's the all-time great prank you've heard of -- or pulled?
Like Lipstick On A Crack Whore
Paid Leave For Single People
Some people want to have babies. Other people want to go to Kuala Lumpur. Why should one set of people get paid leave from work and not the other?
There's an article in The New York Times by Lynette Clemetson about adoptive parents being given paid time off plus wads of cash when their baby comes. I'm totally opposed to healthcare tied to one's job (especially because the single person ends up paying for the health care costs of the dude with a wife and five kids). I'm equally opposed to turning the workplace into a game-show-type prize dispenser just because somebody has a kid -- adopted or otherwise.
Here's an excerpt from Clemetson's piece:
KATIE LEDBETTER, who is expecting a baby girl late this year, has delighted in the fawning of baby-obsessed colleagues, the cooing commentary on the joys of parenthood and the feigned laments over the loss of social life and sleep.But because she is adopting instead of giving birth, Ms. Ledbetter, who works for Standard Register, a document services company based in Ohio, was initially told she was not entitled to the six to eight weeks of paid leave offered to pregnant employees.
Then in January, an ebullient manager told Ms. Ledbetter to check her e-mail. Effective this year, a memo to the company’s 3,500 employees read, Standard Register would offer adoptive parents four weeks of paid leave and up to $4,000 in financial assistance. Ms. Ledbetter, her manager told her, would be the first recipient. “It was like a gift from God,” said Ms. Ledbetter, 45, a customer service specialist in the company’s Charlotte, N.C., office. “When you are in this adoption mode, you just come to expect obstacles. I was so very, very touched to know my company backed us.”
With more than 100,000 Americans adopting each year, adoption benefits are becoming a hot new perk in the panoply of workplace benefits. Whether paid time off, reimbursement for costs or both, the benefits help parents defray hefty adoption fees and afford bonding time with new children. Just as important, recipients say, the assistance sends the message that adoptive families are as valued and worthy of support as biological families are.
I waited to have a dog until I could afford any necessary vet bills (sigh...right off the bat, and no, I'm not joking, a $900 PET scan), and take two months to be home with her to train her. I trained her to go in a litter box, which she does when I go away and the neighbors take care of her. She's also so quiet I can smuggle her into restaurants and, in the days before secondary searches for Evian bottles, I could smuggle her on a plane. All I have to do is say, "Lie down! No noise!" and she'll sleep quietly in my lap under a shawl for 10 hours, if need be.
Nobody paid for that cost but me -- which is how it should be with kids, unless you're very, very poor, in which case, the rest of us will lend you a hand. Oh yeah, and that includes paying for your own kids to be schooled. We'll pay for the very, very poor (because we need an educated populace to have a democracy). You pump 'em out, you fund 'em. You can't fund three? Have two. Or one. Or none.
Republican Moron Needs A Vocabulary Lesson
Patrick points to James Evans, head of the Republican party in Utah, who also happens to be a black man, mistakenly getting his panties in a wad at Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson's use of the word "slavish":
"I have a basic right to be offended, when I'm referred to with a slave reference."
Um, but you weren't, nimnuts. The quote was that you show:
"...slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human rights violating president."
Which you most likely do.
As Patrick posted in my earlier link to Anderson's amazing speech:
Well, holy hypersensitivity, Batman! Or perhaps this is a lame tactic to distract from the real issue. Rocky Anderson, however, is not buying, calling it "absolutely outrageous and despicable of Mr. Evans to make that accusation."I couldn't agree more. He could have just as easily described a white man having slavish devotion to the president.
Yes, and a white man (or a person of whatever color) who's intellectually honest and/or intelligent enough to understand the meaning of the word wouldn't have complained.
What do you think? Is Evans 1. that dumb, or 2. that desperate?
The Kean Mutiny
New Jersey state senator Thomas Kean, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, is calling for Rumsfeld's head. David H. Chen writes for The New York Times:
...Mr. Kean said that he had become dissatisfied over the summer with what he said was Mr. Rumsfeld’s refusal to consider “competing points of view.”But what compelled him to advocate publicly for a “fresh face” leading the troops, Mr. Kean said, were Mr. Rumsfeld’s recent remarks chiding critics of the war for “moral and intellectual confusion,” and comparing them to those who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.
“By engaging in that kind of rhetoric, this secretary has stepped over the line,” Mr. Kean said.
Mr. Kean stopped short of criticizing President Bush, other than saying he had not been “well served” by Mr. Rumsfeld. He says he does not support a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, because he thinks that could lead to a humanitarian crisis and destabilize the region.
Still, Mr. Kean’s call for Mr. Rumsfeld to step down comes as more Republicans are distancing themselves, however gingerly, from Mr. Bush and an unpopular war.
Predictions? Will Rumsfeld resign? And will the voters finally pull their collective heads out of their ass and remember that dissent is an essential part of democracy, and that the quashing of it with the tactics of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, and others in the Bush administration is a quashing of democracy -- and using propaganda techniques reminiscent of actual fascism?
Frank Rich makes some good points, too:
Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t go to Baghdad in 1983 to tour the museum. Then a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug. Well before Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.
According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr. Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which can be viewed online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.)
...Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as “a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites”: All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.
“Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists,” said the congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president’s speech. “It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis.” And with Americans caught in the middle. If we owe anything to those who died on 9/11, it is that we not forget how the administration diverted our blood and treasure from the battle against bin Laden and other stateless Islamic terrorists, fascist or whatever, to this quagmire in a country that did not attack us on 9/11. The number of American dead in Iraq — now more than 2,600 — is inexorably approaching the death toll of that Tuesday morning five years ago.
Oh yeah...anybody remember "Mission Accomplished"?
Ritalin?
On one of my blog entries, I casually mentioned rummaging through my purse for my Ritalin, which I've been taking for, hmmm, maybe six or seven years for ADHD. Changed my life. Slows me down so I can focus and sit and write, and so I have the patience to read and understand complicated stuff; usually science stuff. Otherwise, I tend to have a mind like a superball -- all the attention of a sand flea unless something's very, very interesting to me...and even then, I can have a hard time focusing. I only wished somebody had diagnosed me when I was in high school instead of in my 30s.
Anyway, somebody named Jane noted that I mentioned Ritalin with a comment that went merely, "Ritalin"?
I commented back "Ritalin what?"
But I suspect I know what she's getting at. Something along the lines of "You! Take Ritalin?" As in, she's disappointed/surprised/aghast.
Question: If you have a splitting headache, do you take aspirin or ibuprofen, or do you just suffer? I never understand the prejudice against "better living through chemistry." For me, as a very healthy person, Ritalin has few side-effects and downsides. So...what's the problem?
Oh yeah...it's not "natural." Well, that kind of thinking, that because something's natural automatically means it's better is called "the naturalistic fallacy." Poison mushrooms are natural and so is killing and eating your young. So...if you believe natural is better, does that mean you're going to have a lunch of boiled baby aux champignons?
Wank Of America
"Maturbation is the thinking man's television."
--Christopher Hampton, The Philanthropist
Why Celebrities Should Keep Their Yaps Shut
We only suspect, but can't really know, how butt dumb they are until they speak when the publicists must be on holiday. Take Madonna, for example, who's just proposed using Kabbalah water to eliminate nuclear waste. An excerpt from the Times of London article by Abul Taher:
The couple, both followers of the Jewish spiritual movement, approached Downing Street, Whitehall and British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) promoting a “mystical” liquid tested in a Ukrainian lake.“It was like a crank call . . . the scientific mechanisms and principles were just bollocks, basically,” one official said.
But civil servants at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and scientists at BNFL were obliged to take the celebrity couple seriously.
It is understood that the couple, who live in London and Wiltshire, were promoting a water-based solution that had allegedly proved successful in neutralising dangerous nuclear waste in Ukraine.
The Kabbalah Centre, which is based in California, believes water is a uniquely important substance that can be given magic healing powers through “meditations and the consciousness of sharing”.
Madonna explains:
“I can write the greatest songs and make the most fabulous films and be a fashion icon and conquer the world, but if there isn’t a world to conquer, what’s the point?
Madonna, for future reference, a more productive alternative to "letting it all hang out" -- keeping it all bottled up inside.
He'll Sell You The Clothes Off His Back
You don't have to be a tortured artist to dress the part.
This guy is one of two very friendly housepainters I talk to at a café I go to. I told him he could probably make big bucks on e-Bay selling this shirt. He then told me he was in the pricey LA story H. Lorenz on a job when two customers there wanted to buy it off his back. Unfortunately, he had nothing else to wear and was off to work at that moment.
Actually, with all the letters I get from kids who want to be famous (for nothing in particular, just "famous"), I bet there's a big market for paint-spattered clothing from artists. Buyers will have to pay extra for cigarette burns and opium stains.
Why The Bushies Really Are To Blame For Katrina
Greg Palast on Democracy Now! about how the Bush administration contracted out citizen safety. What did they (or rather, we) get for it? Misery and death -- when there was a reasonable sensible plan waiting, willfully ignored, in the wings:
GREG PALAST: This is Steven Smith. Like 127,000 others in this town, he didn't have a car in which to escape, so he was left in the rising waters. Stranded in the heat on a bridge, he closed the eyes of a man who died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn't locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.
These are the offices of Innovative Emergency Management. They were the ones that were paid a half-million bucks to come up with an emergency evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. One problem is, I can't find the plan. So I’m coming here to ask them about it.
So when I showed up at their office, they would only talk to me from behind a glass wall. By phone.
Did you in fact come up with a plan, because it says it’s urgent to come up with a plan? Did you come up -- can you just tell me if you came up with a plan or not? I’m just happy to talk to you one-on-one. You're probably about 12 feet away from me. Or somewhere. I don't know, are you hiding in this office somewhere? I’m happy to speak to you face-to-face.
We can’t find your plan -- neither can FEMA -- that you were paid a half-million dollars for, that at least claimed to here. We can't find this plan. And it’s kind of a problem. I guess it's kind of hard to evacuate a city, if you can't find the plan itself.
IEM EMPLOYEE: Can we -- she's got a lot of experience in evacuation.
GREG PALAST: Is it more true that maybe it was helpful that she gave a lot of donations to the Republican Party? Maybe that's the experience?
IEM EMPLOYEE: Terry?
TERRY AT IEM: Yes.
GREG PALAST: So that's when they called in the guards.
IEM SECURITY GUARD: Security has been called. We ask that you please leave the building now.
GREG PALAST: So, quickly, before security gets here, I just want to tell you that this is Innovative Emergency Management, and it’s very innovative not to have a plan to manage an emergency.
I decided to look for someone with a little more experience in hurricane evacuation. LSU, Louisiana State University, they're just down the street from IEM. LSU has one hellacious football team. They also have the best team of hurricane experts in the nation. I met with Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the university’s elaborate Center for the Study of Hurricanes. I asked this renowned specialist about the reputation of IEM, prior to their getting the half-million-dollar evacuation exercise contract.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: I hadn’t heard of them prior to this exercise, no.
GREG PALAST: The LSU scientist already had an evacuation model, but IEM and FEMA refused to use it.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: We had the science. We had really studied this thing. We knew what was going to go wrong. We had an enormous amount of information, right down to mapping where the gas tanks were and pipelines. Science was basically ignored all the way through the process.
GREG PALAST: The LSU professors warned, for example, that the IEM plan simply made no provision for people -- the old, the sick -- who couldn't escape in a car. I asked him the consequences of this oversight.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: Well, you know, 1,500 of them drowned. That's the bottom line.
GREG PALAST: Then the professor surprised me by saying that giving us this information put his job at risk.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: I wasn't going to let them -- let those sort of threats shut me down or any of the other sorts of nonsense that went on, because it was so important that we get out what had gone wrong and why.
GREG PALAST: Apparently, the heat from the university originated with a state official, who now works for IEM.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: We got a phone call from somebody in the state government who actually now works for IEM. But, I don’t think that was his plan at the time. And he jumped all over me and said, by criticizing their work, I was putting the whole exercise in jeopardy, and if I did it again, I would be banned.
GREG PALAST: Back in New Orleans, former city councilman, Brod Bagert, a lawyer, standing in the gutted wreckage of his own home, did not think kindly of the concealment of van Heerden’s warnings.
BROD BAGERT: Ongoing protection that should have been occurring was done -- it was done negligently. Not only wrong, negligently. And not only negligently, but reckless negligence, the kind of negligence for which an individual would be indicted, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and spend their life in jail. Negligence that killed people, lots of people. Reckless negligence that killed human beings. Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose, over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.
Nair Miss
A short question from my Advice Goddess column:
Can you have true intimacy with your partner without showing all? My friend thinks her marriage is better than mine because she’s “able” to let her husband in the bathroom when she’s, say, waxing her upper lip or bikini line. I say her marriage is just uglier, not necessarily closer.
--Private SideYour husband isn’t going to love you more if he knows you have a mustache. I call this sort of thinking “Grossest Is Closest,” the mistaken idea that intimacy means leaving the bathroom door open so your partner can see you hunched over on the pot. People like your friend believe “real love” takes accepting how utterly ugly, smelly, hairy, and disgusting their partner is, and lusting after them anyway. Of course, they could just remove ugly, smelly, hairy, and disgusting from the equation, and lusting after them wouldn’t take so much work. If you love somebody, don’t you want to look and smell as nice as possible for them? There’s really no need to clue them in on how you get that way. If you’re 12 to a room in Kandahar, maybe you just can’t help it. If you’re two to a large split-level in suburbia, close the door.