Bonehenge
One man's pickup with camper shell is another man's pickup with camper shell-erati.
Here's a closer look. For Crid.
Okay, okay, before somebody asks or goes blind trying to figure it out, here's what I could make out of the verse:
Somewhere a fog crawls across the forgotten dead.
Somewhere a lone voice cries for help.
Somewhere there is fresh blood on someone's lips.
Somewhere there is a fallen angel with...(indeciperable)
Somewhere a name has been given to an...(indeciperable)
and that name is Voodoo(last word indeciperable, but kind of looks like Gucci)
Photographed Thursday afternoon, 3rd and Crescent Heights, Lost Angeles.
Oh, Boohoo, Somebody Was Sneaky
Ken Silverstein, the Washington editor of Harper's Magazine, wanted to see the extent of lobbyist scruples, so he did a little undercover work, which he wrote about for the LA Times:
EARLIER THIS YEAR, I put on a brand-new tailored suit, picked up a sleek leather briefcase and headed to downtown Washington for meetings with some of the city's most prominent lobbyists. I had contacted their firms several weeks earlier, pretending to be the representative of a London-based energy company with business interests in Turkmenistan. I told them I wanted to hire the services of a firm to burnish that country's image.I didn't mention that Turkmenistan is run by an ugly, neo-Stalinist regime. They surely knew that, and besides, they didn't care. As I explained in this month's issue of Harper's Magazine, the lobbyists I met at Cassidy & Associates and APCO were more than eager to help out. In exchange for fees of up to $1.5 million a year, they offered to send congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and write and plant opinion pieces in newspapers under the names of academics and think-tank experts they would recruit. They even offered to set up supposedly "independent" media events in Washington that would promote Turkmenistan (the agenda and speakers would actually be determined by the lobbyists).
All this, Cassidy and APCO promised, could be done quietly and unobtrusively, because the law that regulates foreign lobbyists is so flimsy that the firms would be required to reveal little information in their public disclosure forms.
Now, in a fabulous bit of irony, my article about the unethical behavior of lobbying firms has become, for some in the media, a story about my ethics in reporting the story. The lobbyists have attacked the story and me personally, saying that it was unethical of me to misrepresent myself when I went to speak to them.
...Yes, undercover reporting should be used sparingly, and there are legitimate arguments to be had about when it is fair or appropriate. But I'm confident my use of it in this case was legitimate. There was a significant public interest involved, particularly given Congress' as-yet-unfulfilled promise to crack down on lobbyists in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff scandal.
Could I have extracted the same information and insight with more conventional journalistic methods? Impossible.
Based on the number of interview requests I've had, and the steady stream of positive e-mails I've received, I'd wager that the general public is decidedly more supportive of undercover reporting than the Washington media establishment. One person who heard me talking about the story in a TV interview wrote to urge that I never apologize for "misrepresenting yourself to a pack of thugs … especially when misrepresentation is their own stock in trade!"
"No, Thanks...Just Finished My Raw Sewage Shake"
Probably the least appetizing display at The Farmer's Market at Third & Fairfax, Los Angeles. While it had some pretty tough competition, the loose poo-shaped elephants were probably what clinched it for our judges. Order yours today -- in stunning yellow snow and Kaopectate pink. Mmm-mmm good!
Luckily, we didn't see this thing until after we enjoyed an early dinner at the counter at Monsieur Marcel, my favorite place at The Farmer's Market, and very romantic in the late afternoon. Great wines and cheeses -- even a few unpasteurized ones (meaning they haven't had all the flavor cooked out, à l'Americain). Taste one and understand what you've been missing. And, for a real treat, order my personal favorite meal, the lamb chops (which I get rare) with goat cheese rounds melted on top. Oh. La. La.
As for all of my friends in New York who made fun of me for moving to Lost Angeles, where all the dumb people live, there was not a soul camping out outside the Apple store at The Grove...which is more than we can say for the quote whore, first in line (the guy with the sign), and the rest of the motley crew becoming the eyesore of upper Fifth Avenue.
Asshole Of The Day
Check out this e-mail that just flew over the transom:
In a message dated 6/29/07 7:25:27 AM, SpiderMBA@pacbell.net writes:Dear Amy,
You still shacking up with your boyfriend, who's obviously afraid of the "C" word?
The clock is ticking, girlfriend. Find yourself a real man, whydontcha.
John
My reply:
Do you run around making presumptions like this about everyone's life? You're the rudest person I've encountered in recent memory. I wouldn't live with my boyfriend -- and I don't recommend living under one roof for married people either. I think living with another person is uncivilized, and I know it tends to kill a relationship (and certainly, your sex life). When my boyfriend comes over, I look sexy, smell nice, and pay attention to him. I have never said a mean word to him, or spoken to him with contempt. How many people can say that about the person they live with?And there's no "clock" ticking. I live hard, and have a great life, and a man I love and can't imagine being without. That said, if our relationship gets boring, and we stop being good for each other, we'll break up. To stay together on those terms would be insulting and bad for both of us. If I need somebody to wipe my ass when I'm 90, I'll hire them.
D'ya Think It's The Jews?
Do you think some cell of outraged Jewish orthodontists could be behind the car bomb designed to cause mass death and maiming in busy Trafalgar Square? Or, maybe, possibly, could it be "The Religion Of Peace"? What's your guess? G'wan...take a wild one.
A British friend blamed "British politeness" for the idiocy in letting into the UK all these Islamist nutwads who preach the destruction of the UK and the West (often while lazing around on the dole), and incite violence from prominent mosques right in London. He said the Brits were, for years, just "too polite to keep them out." Well, I think it's time the Brits took a real rude look at the violent parasites within.
Every Witch Way But Rational
Just yesterday, at the café I go to in the morning, I had a guy who works as a psychotherapist tell me that there's a god. I asked him why he wasn't in a mental hospital, as he would be if he were convinced there was a tooth fairy. He knows there's a god, because, he said, "I have felt him." Well, there's an explanation for you! And here's Sam Harris to put the ridiculousness of god belief by modern people in the proper perspective:
Imagine being among the tiny percentage of people -- the 5 percent, or 10 percent at most -- who think that a belief in witchcraft is nothing more than a malignant fantasy. Imagine writing a book arguing that magic spells do no real work in the world, that the confessions of bad witches are delusional or coerced, that the claims of good witches are self-serving and unempirical. You argue further that a belief in magic offers false hope of benefits that are best sought elsewhere, like from scientific medicine, and lays the ground for false accusations of imaginary crimes, leading to the misery and death of innocent people. If your name is Sam Harris, you may produce two fatuous volumes entitled The End of Magic and Letter to a Wiccan Nation. Daniel Dennett would then grapple helplessly with the origins of sorcery in his aptly named, Breaking the Spell. Richard Dawkins -- whose bias against witches, warlocks, and even alchemists has long been known -- will follow these books with an arrogant screed entitled, The Witch Delusion. And finally Christopher Hitchens will deliver a poisonous eructation at book-length in The Devil is Not Great.What sort of criticism would these misguided authors likely encounter? In the following essay, I present excerpts from actual reviews of recent atheist bestsellers, replacing terms like "religion," "God," and "atheist" with terms like "witchcraft," "the Devil," and "skeptic." Observe how much intellectual progress we have made in the last five hundred years:
"[None of these authors] takes time to consider contemporary [witchcraft] in the light of some of its most sophisticated and heroic practitioners.... Moreover, none of them ever put their weak, confused, and unplumbed ideas about [the Devil] under scrutiny. Their natural habit of mind is anthropomorphic. They tend to think of [the Devil] as if He were a human being, bound to human limitations... [These] authors pride themselves on how science advances in understanding over time, and also on how moral thinking becomes in some ways deeper and more demanding. They do not give any attention to the ways in which [magical] understanding also grows, develops, and evolves... It hardly dawns upon them that [witches and warlocks] have been, from the very beginning, in constant--and mutually enriching--dialogue with [skeptics]... The path of modern science was made straight and smooth by deep convictions that every stray element in the world of human experience--from the number of hairs on one's head to the lonely lily in the meadow--is thoroughly known to [the Devil and his familiars] and, therefore, lies within a field of intelligibility, mutual connection, and multiple logics. All these odd and angular levels of reality, given arduous, disciplined, and cooperative effort, are in principle penetrable by the human mind... [Skepticism] cannot be true, because it is self-contradictory. Moreover, this self-contradiction is willful, and its latent purpose is pathetically transparent. [Skeptics] want all the comforts of the rationality that emanates from rational [sorcery], but without personal indebtedness to [the supernatural]. That is why they allow themselves to be rationalists only part of the way down. The alternative makes them very nervous." --Michael Novak, National Review"The danger is that the aggression and hostility to [magic] in all its forms... deters engagement with the really interesting questions that have emerged recently in the science/[necromancy] debate. The durability and near universality of [witchcraft] is one of the most enduring conundrums of evolutionary thinking... Does [spell-casting] still have an important role in human wellbeing? ... If [sorcery] declines, what gaps does it leave in the functioning of individuals and social groups?... I suspect the New [Skeptics] are in danger of a spectacular failure. With little understanding and even less sympathy of why people increasingly use [the evil eye] in political contexts, they've missed the proverbial elephant in the room. These increasingly hysterical books may boost the pension... but one suspects that they are going to do very little to challenge the appeal of a phenomenon they loathe too much to understand."
--Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian"If [magic], by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of [the Great Horned One] be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him. Proving the existence of [the Devil] would be possible only if [he]... were the kind of object that could be brought into view by a very large telescope or an incredibly powerful microscope. [The Devil], however--again if there is a [Devil]--is not in the world; the world is in him; and therefore there is no perspective, however technologically sophisticated, from which he could be spied. As that which encompasses everything, he cannot be discerned by anything or anyone because there is no possibility of achieving the requisite distance from his presence that discerning him would require. The criticism made by [skeptics] that the existence of [Satan] cannot be demonstrated is no criticism at all; for a [Devil] whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn't be a [Devil]; he would just be another object in the field of human vision. This does not mean that my arguments constitute a proof of the truth of [witchcraft]; for if I were to claim that I would be making the [skeptics'] mistake from the other direction. Nor are they arguments in which I have a personal investment. Their purpose and function is simply to show how the [skeptics'] arguments miss their mark and, indeed, could not possibly hit it."
--Stanley Fish, The New York Times
"Let My Potheads Go!"
And, hey, how about not imprisoning them in the first place?
I heard an NPR piece about Schwarzenegger's ideas for dealing with California's prison overflow. Here's a bit about it from an unsigned piece in the Balt Sun:
In California, the only state with a larger prison system than Texas, Schwarzenegger signed a plan this month that calls for the construction of 53,000 new beds, with rehabilitation services to accompany the expansion.Analysts say the plan has the potential to overhaul the state's prison system by providing inmates new opportunities for education, job training and counseling. But they note that funding for the initiative's rehabilitation services is far from guaranteed because the state has not yet approved its budget, and many in the corrections community are skeptical that lawmakers will follow through on their promises.
"It's purely prison expansion. It's just more business as usual," said Joe Baumann, a state corrections officer who has worked for 20 years at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. "The thing that everybody misses is the incarceration rate per 100,000 people."
Hey, guvvy, here's a hot tip for you: Don't jail potsmokers or people who aren't farming and selling haystacks of the stuff. (Which shouldn't be illegal at all, of course, but that's another battle.)
Now, I don't smoke pot, as its effect on me is comparable to being hit over the head with a frying pan and feeling like I haven't eaten for three days. But, I don't begrudge you what has to be your constitutional right to go anywhere in your head you damn well please -- as long as you aren't also behind the wheel at the time.
Legal beagle types keep telling me that drug use is illegal under the Interstate Commerce Clause...but I really have a hard time seeing how that doesn't conflict in a major way with "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness."
Here is the text, from a page at Cornell's Legal Information Institute, of the relevant passage of the idiotic Controlled Substances Act:
Congress set forth certain findings and declarations in the CSA, the most relevant of which are as follows:(2) The illegal importation, manufacture, distribution, and possession and improper use of controlled substances have a substantial and detrimental effect on the health and general welfare of the American people.
(4) Local distribution and possession of controlled substances contribute to swelling the interstate traffic in such substances.
(5) Controlled substances manufactured and distributed intrastate cannot be differentiated from controlled substances manufactured and distributed interstate. Thus, is it not feasible to distinguish, in terms of controls, between controlled substances manufactured and distributed interstate and controlled substances manufactured and distributed intrastate.
(6) Federal control of the intrastate incidents of the traffic in controlled substances is essential to the effective control of the interstate incidents of such traffic. 21 U.S.C. § 801.
I will be predisposed to vote for any politician courageous enough to champion intelligent drug policy -- the kind that leaves people alone if they aren't hurting others with whatever they're consuming. And doesn't put my tax dollars into jailing potheads when we need prisons for people who are a real danger to the rest of us.
State governors, more and more, are of the age where they had to have not only smoked, but inhaled, and maybe nearly drowned in bongwater.
Come on, who's going to stand up against ruining or impairing the lives of otherwise productive citizens who like to chill out with a toke after work instead of a Martini?
Update On "Sex Isn't Proof Of Rape"
I got an e-mail this morning from Tory Bowen, the woman who said she was raped by Pamir Safi. She says she was drugged -- but evidence wasn't allowed "because the vial of urine sent for ketamine, rohypinol, and all other date rape substances broke in the mail (it's court records)."
I've added her entire e-mail to the bottom of the original entry on the case.
I'd love to hear from any lawyers, cops, or others experienced with this sort of thing. Do they actually mail out a little glass vial of urine when rape is alleged? I mean, while I do think the post office does a very good job, that puts an awful lot of faith in them.
Wave Hello To Your Kids, Go To Jail
Jenny Johnston and Rachel Halliwell write in the Daily Mail/UK about a divorced dad in the UK who was not only prohibited by his wife and the courts from seeing his kids, but who was jailed merely for waving at them as they drove past, and again for driving past their house and trying to catch a glimpse of them.
Only when his kids, after a fight with their mother, packed up their things, went to a bus stop and called him to pick them up did the court consider his rights -- or what might be good for the children from an objective point of view (versus the mother's vindictiveness). His daughter Lisa, now 20, talks about the years she and her siblings lost with their dad:
'One minute we were normal children. The next we were in a rented house with Dad hammering on the door demanding to be allowed to see us,' she says. 'We were scared. None of it made sense. Sometimes we'd be allowed to see Dad regularly, then there were times with no contact at all.'When Dad disappeared out of our lives, we just thought he had stopped loving us. I was certain I'd done something wrong. 'The first time we saw him waving to us as we went to school, I was thrilled. I remember thinking: "He still cares."
'Every morning, Mum would tell us we shouldn't look at him - that he was a bad man - yet we couldn't help but grin when we saw him. It made our day.' It was impossible for Lisa's mother to go a different route.
WHEN her father went to prison, no one explained to Lisa why. 'Mum said: "You see - I told you he was bad." I was ten years old. As far as I knew, you had to do something pretty awful to go to prison.'
She turned against her father, telling social workers she didn't want to see him. Yet with hindsight she explains she was simply trying to gain control over the horrific situation.
'There was this endless pantomime with social workers wanting to know what I thought. All I wanted was to be allowed to love both my parents, but I knew that was never going to happen.
'Mum's hatred for Dad was so deep that to keep her happy, and to get them off my back, I said I wouldn't see him. Turning love to hate made that easier. I told myself that my dad had been wicked, so he deserved it.'
When the courts finally granted access, Lisa was so tortured that she often didn't turn up to see her father. She thought she was protecting her mother by siding with her.
However, when she fell out with her mother during a phase of teenage rebellion, it was to her father that she fled - and when she discovered he had never stopped loving her, she was left reeling.
'I'd never forgotten Dad's number. I know I was only ringing him then to get back at Mum, but when I heard his voice, I wanted to cry. I told him I loved him and that I wanted to see him. Everything just flooded out.'
The first meeting was as hard for her as it was for him. 'The last time I'd seen him I'd been ten and carrying a skipping rope. When I walked into my old bedroom - and saw it was as I had left it - I wanted to sob. I didn't dare do so, though, because I knew if I did I'd never stop.'
Four years on, Lisa and Mark are only just beginning to rebuild their relationship. Every day, more gaps are filled, and more trust regained.
Meanwhile, Lisa rarely sees her mother, and she is angry at her mother's behaviour. It is a desperately sorry story, with no real winners. But then, as Lisa points out, it was never supposed to be a contest.
'I wish to God that my parents had avoided the courts from day one, and simply shared us, the children they created together,' she says.
'Instead, complete strangers were allowed to get involved in our lives to such an extent that everyone lost sight of the needs of us children.
'I love both my parents; I always will. But I will never get my childhood back. It is gone for ever.'
via ifeminists
Tell Us About Your "Office Husband"
I just posted another Advice Goddess column, about a girl who "flirted past the point of friendship" with some guy at her office. Here's an excerpt:
Brian started out as your “office husband,” that one special person you share your life with, but just from 9 to 5. The term started catching on after a 1987 Atlantic Monthly essay by David Owen describing close platonic relationships in the workplace: near-marriages in which a man and woman spend lots of time together, can talk about their underwear bunching up, and feel free to ransack each other’s desks for change for the vending machine. The limitations of this “office marriage” are part of its advantage. Your office spouse knows you well, but not too well, like your spouse-spouse, who has not only seen you on the toilet but heard you on it, too. The bottom line is that you don’t have sex with this person (which, of course, for many unfortunate people, mirrors their situation at home).
The entire thing is here.
In Venice, The Signs Say "No Pets," Not "No Dogs"
You never know what they're going to walk in with. And, no, thanks, I do not want to pet your lizard. Or your other lizard.
Just down the block, either they were working on remaking Fame or a bunch of people really had to go to the bathroom.
Sex Isn't Proof Of Rape
Rape is a serious crime, and you'd better be damn sure somebody's committed it before you pack them off to prison for it. A reader of my column and blog writes:
I would be interested on your take on the case of Pamir Safi and Tory Bowen.In a nutshell: they had drinks together - she apparently quite a lot. She went home with him, had sex and spent the night. But she was apparently so intoxicated that she remembers nothing of it. She woke up the next morning with him having sex with her. She asked him to stop, and he did.
He is being charged with rape. After a mistrial, he is now being retried. Apparently he has a history of getting women drunk, so that they go home with him. Actually, that's a pretty common tactic in meat markets, no?
While I don't think anybody should be forced to have sex against their will, I think people should be held accountable for letting themselves get blotto and going home with somebody. Personally, I know my limits. I almost never have more than two glasses of wine. I decided to get seriously drunk once (I did it at 15, at a wedding I was attending with my parents so somebody would be there to take me home).
Now, it's one thing if somebody gets slipped a mickey, or has some medical problem rendering them unconscious. But, if you aren't being carried out of a bar over a guy's shoulder, it seems you should bear responsibility for getting sloshed...and the presumption of what happened when you were drunk should not be on the guy for proving himself innocent.
In short, anybody voting to convict somebody of rape had better be damn well sure there's solid evidence it's rape. In the absence of solid evidence, you've got to let the guy go.
Here's more from the story in the Lincoln Journal-Star, by Clarence Mabin, from the recent mistrial after a hung jury:
“Both sides had holes in their stories that were amazingly huge,” Foreman said.Morrison agreed, and he was blunt in his assessment of some of Bowen’s testimony. “I guess if you’re truly a victim, you don’t need to lie to make your point.”
He and the other jurors who wanted to acquit Safi were troubled in particular by three portions of Bowen’s testimony.
One was what she told the hospital nurse after the assault about when in the morning it occurred.
The nurse testified Bowen said Safi first had sex with her around 2 a.m. But how could Bowen know this, some of the jurors wondered, if, as she claimed, she had no memories from the time she left the bar until she awoke around 7:15 a.m.?
“The nurse testified Tory said it was 2 o’clock in the morning,” Foreman said. “She had her brain on enough that she knew the time.”
Safi testified he and Bowen had sex shortly after they arrived at his apartment and then fell asleep. When he awoke sometime after 7 a.m., he said, he began to have sex with her again, but she stopped him.
Also troublesome to jurors was Bowen’s claim that, fearing for her safety, she left the apartment five to 10 minutes after she awoke.
But evidence presented by Mock, including cell phone records, strongly supported the defense’s claim that Bowen and Safi laid awake together in bed for about an hour before he took her home.
Said Foreman: “That was something that stuck with me the whole time. As you added up the time, what she said (didn’t ring true).”
Finally, Bowen testified she told Safi to drop her off at 48th and A streets — several blocks from her home — because she didn’t want him to know where she lived.
On cross examination, she said Safi took her to her home. For Larson and the other jurors, the discrepancy damaged her credibility.
Quade-Anderson thought otherwise. “I didn’t have any problems with that,” she said.
Bowen, who lives in Washington, D.C., said in an interview that she told Safi to drive to 48th and A streets. From there, she said, she gave him specific directions. She denied having said she told him to drop her off blocks from her residence.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “My first instinct was getting home alive. I wanted to go home.”
Bowen also maintained she left Safi’s apartment as soon as she could.
In his closing statements, Mock wondered aloud why Bowen, who claimed to be afraid of Safi, got in his vehicle the following morning rather than seeking help by knocking on apartment doors in the building.
That's a very reasonable doubt.
The prosecution's excuse:
“He’s thinking like an assailant, not a victim,” Bowen said. “What if I knocked on a door and nobody was there? What if Pamir Safi saw me?”
Oh, please. If my life's in danger, I'm not going to ask the person who's supposedly endangering it for a cup 'o tea and a congenial ride home. Two words: Run. RUN!
UPDATE: Tory Bowen e-mailed me Thursday morning, July 28:
Amy-
I was forwarded your blog, and you are mistaken. I have never gone home with someone I had met at a bar... let alone church - and I wasn't a drunk slut as you seem to insinuate. I was drugged. But, you wouldn't know that - and the jurors aren't allowed to know that as well because the vial of urine sent for ketamine, rohypinol, and all other date rape substances broke in the mail (it's court records). They also found vomit in his car (tested - it was my DNA) - before I was raped which means he knew I was very sick and probably should have been taken to a hospital.
As for the nurse that testified '2 am' she asked me what time I thought the first rape would have occurred, 1 am is the time that the bars closed, so I said 'I don't know - 2 am?' You have your opinions, and advice. But regardless to if you think he raped me or not - I am fighting for all women (you included) to at least have the liberty to state under oath what they believed happened. At this point, it is a free speech issue. I gather by your remarks you'd be livid if the defendant was mandated by the courts to testify that it was rape - a victim should receive the same rights.
Incidentally, you write very well - I just wish it weren't about me.
a fellow red-head,
Tory Bowen
What's Worse Than Those Asshats Driving One-Handed While Yammering Into Their Cellphones?
Asshats text-messaging while driving. New Jersey looks like it's about to be the second state to ban texting while driving. I saw my first episode of this insanity the other day on Broadway in Santa Monica. A car was going reeaaaallly slowly. Almost at a crawl. I honked. Nothing. I honked again. Same speed. Finally, I got up to the light at Lincoln and looked over. Some girl was text-messaging! I honked again and gave her the finger. Unfortunately, the light changed before I could photographically immortalize her endangering ass. And no, I don't photograph the offenders unless I'm stopped.
I did love this, from a USA Today story by Laura Bruno:
Research showing whether texting while driving causes accidents won't be available for a few years, said Charlie Klauer, senior researcher at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
Hey, Charlie...next time I'll videotape the girl, and you take a look and see for yourself. The way I see it, it looks like the next best thing to drinking while extremely intoxicated. For the record: I don't want you driving while watching a movie, writing a novel, applying mascara, holding a phone in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, or getting a blow job. And especially, please, not while giving one.
Oh yeah, here's the chickie who nearly rear-ended me on Lincoln last week while driving with one hand on the wheel, the other on her cell, and her head planted way too far up her ass.
And here's a little trick my friend Russ Baker taught me after I got rear-ended by a Cherokee on the Santa Monica Freeway -- and saw it coming, to my horror. If you think somebody behind you looks like they aren't paying attention, and is coming too fast -- wake them up by honking your horn. That's what I did this time, and maybe it's what kept me from getting my cute little car (and maybe more) smashed up.
A Big Wet Kiss From Fatah And Hamas
...To the American taxpayer, who's been funding their weapons. Ulrike Putz interviews Hamas leader-thug Mahmoud Zahar in Der Spiegel:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The militant wings of Fatah and Hamas have been fully armed over the last few months. Are these weapons still in circulation?Zahar: There are naturally very many weapons around now. Two years ago, one bullet in Gaza cost around €3.50 -- now it would cost 35 cents. The American aid money has been translated into weapons. Thank you, America!
Is the Palestinian scumbag's gloat true? It's certainly possible.
New York Congressman Anthony D. Weiner complained to Condi about our cash dole-out in February:
Dear Secretary Rice:
In light of reports that American aid may be used to finance Hamas militants under the terms of the Mecca accords, I write to request that you immediately halt security funding intended for Mahmoud Abbas’s security force.
The new National Unity Government will incorporate Hamas’s 4,000-member paramilitary Executive Force into the American-funded security detail that protects Abu Mazen. That means that American funds may be used to fund the salaries of Hamas militants.
The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which President Bush signed December 21, 2006, suspended all direct United States aid to the Palestinian Authority, but permits the President to waive the prohibition if providing aid is in the interest of American national security. Under that wavier authority, President Bush issued a January 26, 2007 waiver to send $86 million to Abbas’s security force.
Providing funding to Hamas militants is not in the security interests of the United States. Therefore, I request that you immediately rescind all remaining funds intended for the security detail.
More on the cash surge to the Palestinians from The New York Times, from a story by Helene Cooper:
“This is as serious as it gets,” said Ziad Asali, head of the American Task Force on Palestine. “It is time to lift the siege off the Palestinian people. This is the time to open up the political and economic horizons, and wage a campaign for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people.
Walmart-ize weapons purchasing, and they'll just love us.
Der Spiegel link via Sugiero
U-Take Your Life In Your Hands
More great work from Alan C. Miller, who, with Myron Levin, is writing the LA Times investigative series on shoddy maintenance and its sometimes devastating consequences at U-Haul. (Miller won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the mechanical ills of the military's Harrier jets for the LA Times.) I read every inch of today's (part two in the series), at this link:
An older fleetAmong U-Haul's 100,000 trucks are many aging, high-mileage vehicles. Many have logged more than 100,000 miles. A recent court filing by U-Haul underscored the fleet's age: A company executive, referring only to the type of truck rented to Waldrip, said 4,595 of them were still on the road with 200,000 miles or more.
U-Haul has purchased about 38,000 new trucks over the last two years and has sold nearly as many older ones. But the company says it does not automatically retire vehicles at a fixed mileage or age.
Penske Truck Leasing, one of U-Haul's two major competitors, says that it replaces up to half its consumer rental fleet every year and that its oldest trucks are about 3 1/2 years old. Budget Truck Rental says the average age of its trucks is 2 to 2 1/2 years.
U-Haul relies on a far-flung network of independent dealers to supplement its 1,450 company-owned rental centers. This has added to maintenance problems.
Most of the 14,500 dealers have no auto service background. They include storage sites, mini-marts, postal supply shops, even liquor stores and laundromats.
Further complicating matters is U-Haul's practice of booking reservations without knowing if it will have trucks and trailers when and where renters want them. The policy leads to long lines of overwrought customers, creating pressure to get equipment back on the road quickly.
Twenty-four former U-Haul employees, including some who collectively oversaw hundreds of rental locations in California and other states, said in separate interviews that basic safety checks were often skipped because of thin staffing and the need to keep trucks and trailers rolling.
U-Haul mechanics on occasion have falsified repair records, listing work they did not perform — a practice known as "hanging paper," court records and interviews show. U-Haul says this is rare and never tolerated.
The company faces little regulatory scrutiny in the U.S., but Canadian officials have sharply criticized its maintenance practices.
From July 2005 through August 2006, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation inspected about 800 U-Haul trucks and removed 20% from service because of such problems as defective lights, steering and brakes.
The inspectors idled only about 4% of the trucks of other rental firms.
U-Haul said that some vehicles were sidelined for reasons unrelated to their condition, such as a driver lacking a proper license, and that its Canadian operation is safe. The company said it is improving its performance in Canada by adding new trucks, retraining employees and dropping errant dealers.
Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield said in an interview that U-Haul has a long way to go.
"The bottom line is, people are renting U-Hauls and they're not safe," she said.
I got a few e-mails this weekend from religious nutters for going by reason and science in my column rather than bible stories. Time and time again, I was accused of lacking "morals." What morals I do have, as a self-proclaimed godless harlot, tell me that you don't put profits ahead of people's lives.
Forget the argument that U-Haul is the only affordable way for some people to move, as if that makes their maintenance failings okay. People who use U-Haul are making arrangements to pay a certain price -- they aren't being told that that price comes with serious hidden safety risks.
Why Not Force Parents To Support Kids 'Til The Kids Turn 40?!
Now, I think, if you decide to spawn, you owe your kid or kids the best life you can possibly provide them, and I think it's right for parents to pay for their kids' education, including college. But, that should be the parent's or parents' choice, not some state mandate.
There's a bill, passed by the Missouri state legislature, and awaiting the governor's signature, which says parents can stop paying child support at 21 instead of 22. And while that's an improvement, the age should be lowered to 18. Parents who are together aren't forced to pay for their adult children...why should divorced parents be forced to?
A divorce lawyer named Cynthia M. Fox writes in her column in the St. Charles Journal that parents paying child support should instead be on the hook until the kid's 23:
For family law attorneys, this episode will cause us to sharpen our pencils when crafting the parenting plans that we recommend to the court. We must sway judges to approve plans that obligate parents to pay their child's college expenses until the earlier of when the child graduates from college, completes eight semesters, or reaches age 23.That's right, I said age 23. The current law, passed long before I began practicing law, didn't make a lot of sense given that so many kids reach age 22 part of the way through their last year in college.
Of course, not every lawyer will see it my way, particularly those representing a parent reluctant to pick up these costs. Such parents will insist their obligation not extend one day past the age mandated by law. And that, folks, will be the far-reaching impact of SB 25 if the governor doesn't it strike it down.
It will give many parents the permission to set age 21 as the cut-off date for paying for their child's college expenses. Does anyone know of a good three-year baccalaureate program out there?
Hey, Cynthia, why have parents quit paying for Junior when he's 23? Maybe you can mandate that parents have to give the kid a room over the garage and use of mom's car until he's 55? And a generous allowance, and regular deliveries of bottled Tibetan holy water for his bong?
via ifeminist
The Last Thing Any Palestinian Should Want Is A Palestinian State
They could live in peace and prosper -- if they were peaceful Israeli citizens. Arabs in Israel who don't want to kill Israelis as their life goal do quite well...just as Mexican-Americans do here in America. Muslim states, on the other hand, are not very nice places to live -- as those in the middle of the Hamas/Fatah conflict may finally be beginning to realize.
Hey, primitives! Lay down your control-top panti-bombs, do something productive, and join the Israeli economy...it's really all it'll take for you to have a better life. I mean, if you actually want a better life, instead of continuing to live in welfare squalor in a corrupt terrorist-birthing ghetto.
For comparison, Efraim Karsh writes in a 2002 Commentary piece of how it was for Arabs in Israel after the 1967 war:
...Astounding social and economic progress (was) made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.
During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.
No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.
But, writes P. David Hornik at FrontPageMagazine.com:
...it all started to unravel—fast—as Israel, under the euphoric glow of the Oslo “peace process,” withdrew from Gaza and the Jericho area of the West Bank in May 1994, turning them over to Yasser Arafat’s rule. Gaza was especially hard hit.
As a dramatic spike in terrorism led Israel to impose repeated closures, unemployment in Gaza rose as high as 50 percent and by 1996 economic output declined about one-third. From that year to 1999 the situation improved under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as terror reverted to pre-Oslo levels and the Israeli closures decreased.
But Netanyahu lost to Ehud Barak in the 1999 election, and the rest is well-known recent history: Barak’s rejected offer of statehood to Arafat in summer 2000, the outbreak that fall of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and Gaza’s (and the West Bank’s) conversion into a launching pad for an all-out terror war necessitating Israeli closures and other measures, Gaza’s severance from Israel under the 2005 disengagement plan, Hamas’s win in the 2006 election and takeover of Gaza in June 2007—leaving Gaza in a state of violent squalor comparable only to Mogadishu and with its residents apparently longing for the “occupation” once seen as the epitome of evil.
The Man Behind The Mask
I went to a book party for former New Yorker Washington correspondent Elizabeth Drew's book, Richard M. Nixon
. It's one of a series of books (The American Presidents Series); each a short, readable book on a president. The rest are done by historians. Gregg bought a copy for us, which he's reading first, because I'm still finishing Elmore Leonard's Unknown Man #89, which I highly recommend.
Drew was fascinating, and the bits of the book I skimmed look great -- stuff about Nixon's paranoia, and his giving all sorts of orders while drunk in the middle of the night, and how he was also drugged up on Dilantin, which he got from a friend without a prescription. And then, there are unbelievable tales of how utterly inept the Watergate burglars were (more about that in Drew's LAT piece linked below). I'm going to read Drew's book, and then move through some of the other presidents.
Here's what Drew wrote in the LA Times about "Why Watergate Matters":
Think of it: an American president considering political opponents and other domestic critics — hardly people armed with nuclear weapons — his "enemies." And then using the instruments of government, such as the Internal Revenue Service, against them. ("Crush them" was another oft-used Nixon phrase.) Nothing like this is known to have happened at any other time in U.S. history.The break-in at the DNC and other actions (such as the hiring of Donald Segretti to disrupt and create chaos at Democratic Party events) portray a president intent on undermining and even interfering with the opposition party's nominating process. In that sense, the Nixon operation was like a step on the road to fascism. The first thing a usurper does is undermine the opposition party.
Watergate was not, as some Nixon defenders still argue heatedly, a "mere" burglary and coverup. It was a constitutional crisis. The raid on Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office was a clear violation of the 4th Amendment's prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures. And Nixon was engaged in a systematic attempt to defy the courts and Congress — denying them information and seeking to make the executive branch unaccountable to the other branches of government.
At stake was whether our system of government would successfully withstand Nixon's abuse of power. It's become a settled part of history that "the system worked." But it almost didn't. Many members of Congress were loath to move against Nixon until they found a "smoking gun" — in a roomful of smoke.
But even before the smoking gun was found — a tape on which Nixon instructed his top aide, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, to tell the CIA to tell the FBI to drop the Watergate case, on the (nonexistent) ground of a threat to national security — the House Judiciary Committee had decided on bipartisan votes that Nixon had committed impeachable offenses.
The committee's deliberations were serious and careful. This was no partisan lynch mob out to "get" Nixon; his fate was sealed not by the "liberal media," as Nixon die-hards said and still say, but by a thoughtful group of members of Congress of both parties, as well as the office of the independent counsel, which Nixon had been forced to appoint. In the end, it was a small group of Republican congressional leaders who went to the White House and told Nixon that he had to resign.
All of this matters not only because it's an important part of American history but because it is a cautionary tale about overreaching for power, abuse of the office of the presidency, and about protecting the Constitution. Such things matter a lot.
Fill Your Tank, Teach A Terrorist
Janice Arnold writes in The Canadian Jewish News about James Woolsey's recent talk in Canada where he said reducing dependency on oil imported from Arab dictatorships may be the only effective means of stemming Islamic totalitarianism and radicalism:
Every time an American fills up his gas tank, he is helping to send an eight-year-old boy to an Islamic religious school in the West Bank or Pakistan where he will learn to grow up to be a suicide bomber, said former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey....He warned that the war on Islamic terrorism will be a very long one, probably lasting decades, because it is rooted in a centuries-old religion that is not going to be abandoned like the secular totalitarian movements of the 20th century, fascism and communism.
...He characterized the Saudi Arabia-based Wahabi movement, which is closely linked ideologically to Al Qaida, as “one of the most fanatical in world history. Its fatwas call for the genocide of Shiites, Jews, homosexuals and apostates.”
And its reach is staggering. “With just over one per cent of the Muslims in the world, Saudi Arabia dominates 90 per cent of the Muslim institutions in the world,” he said.
The United States is paying Saudi Arabia $170-$180 billion a year for oil, he noted.
The radicals are empowered by their massive oil wealth, he argued. Two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves are in the Middle East.
“The price of oil and the path to freedom move in opposite directions. With two or three exceptions, the countries with the largest oil reserves tend to be the most autocratic, while those that are consuming and importing the most oil are democratic,” he said.
Woolsey warned against “lapsing into moral relativism” by accepting fundamentalist Islamic practices that are contrary to Western values, especially those that degrade women.
“Sharia (Islamic religious law) is the camel’s nose under the tent that we need to oppose with every fibre in our being,” he said.
Woolsey said the West has to do more than simply defend itself against the terrorists.
He urged development as soon as possible of oil alternatives, such as electricity and other liquid fuels, for vehicles.
Women’s and human rights organizations also have to put the “absolutely horrible treatment of women in much of the Arab and Muslim world front and centre of their agendas,” he said.
“The West has been uncomfortable about confronting Muslims on this, or has dismissed it as quaint customs...We need to make the abominable treatment of women central in our public discourse.”
The totalitarian streak of Islam begins in the home with younger brothers supervising their older sisters and may escalate into honour killings, he said.
The inverse relationship between oil wealth and moderation is clear, he argued. “Which Arab country’s oil is running out most quickly? Bahrain’s. Which Arab country treats women the best and is making the most progress toward democracy? Bahrain.”
via JihadWatch
More Sleaze-a-dillo
I'm loving Matt Lait, the LA Times reporter who's all over the Delgadillos like magnets on a refrigerator. Rocky Delgadillo is our ethics-are-for-other people City Attorney in Los Angeles. Here, from Lait, is yet another one of the Delgadillo's law-skirting moves:
A consulting business run by the wife of Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo has failed to file state tax returns for several years and until Friday operated without a city business license — a type of offense her husband's office is responsible for prosecuting.
Let's get the guy out of there. And not by some expensive recall. Please, everybody, write the mayor (mayor@lacity.org), as Lena and I and a number of others have, and ask him to pressure Sleaze-a-dillo to resign.
If There Were A God
(And, of course, there's no evidence god exists)...
But, if there were a god, what makes you think god would want you farting up the planet with your hugemobile?
Who's Yer Daddy? No...Really.
Steve Olson writes in The Atlantic ($) about the unintended consequences of genetic screening for diseases:
Geneticists and physicians would like us all to have our DNA sequenced. That way we’ll know about our genetic flaws, and this knowledge could let us take steps to prevent future health problems. But genetic tests can also identify the individuals from whom we got our DNA. Widespread genetic testing could reveal many uncomfortable details about what went on in our parents’ and grandparents’ bedrooms.The problem would not loom so large if non-paternity were rare. But it isn’t. When geneticists do large-scale studies of populations, they sometimes can’t help but learn about the paternity of the research subjects. They rarely publish their findings, but the numbers are common knowledge within the genetics community. In graduate school, genetics students typically are taught that 5 to 15 percent of the men on birth certificates are not the biological fathers of their children. In other words, as many as one of every seven men who proudly carry their newborn children out of a hospital could be a cuckold.
Non-paternity rates appear to be substantially lower in some populations. The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which is based in Salt Lake City, now has a genetic and genealogical database covering almost 100,000 volunteers, with an overrepresentation of people interested in genealogy. The non-paternity rate for a representative sample of its father-son pairs is less than 2 percent. But other reputed non-paternity rates are higher than the canonical numbers. One unpublished study of blood groups in a town in southeastern England indicated that 30 percent of the town’s husbands could not have been the biological fathers of their children.
Even with a low non-paternity rate, the odds increase with each successive generation. Given an average non-paternity rate of 5 percent, the chance of such an event occurring over 10 generations exceeds 40 percent.
Ego and the ensuing disbelief that a woman could cheat on them stop a lot of men from seeking paternity testing. But, there are a lot of men who'd be surprised to find who actually fathered the children they think are theirs. I just spoke to Psychology Today about family -- about how family are people who act like family to each other; not necessarily blood relatives. That was for a story on when you cut off toxic parents or family members but it does relate to this piece as well. You can act like a father to somebody and by that action be their father. But, how many guys here, if you found out your child was not really your child by blood, would feel or act differently to that child?
Uncivilization And Its Discontents
Boohoo, terrorist thugs are terrorizing terrorist thugs! Victor David Hanson writes for Real Clear Politics:
For years Fatah and Palestinian authority-sanctioned terrorists themselves have undermined civil society by torturing, murdering, and bombing innocents. It was accepted by them that the laws of civilization--due process, exemption of civilians from attacks, and the rule of law--did not apply to Yasser Arafat's government that was as corrupt as it was savage. If you ever were in need of dialysis after you blew up the local clinic and shot the doctors, you could always cross the border to the nearby Zionist entity for treatment.But suddenly such Fatah terrorists are being out-terrorized by an even more barbaric Hamas, whose thugs have even looted the Nobel Peace Prize given Arafat. What barbarians! Where is the law?
So now the outgunned Fatah gangsters are suddenly crying about the uncivilized evils of looting, gangs, and random killings. Just as Thucydides warned about insurrectionists destroying civil society, so Fatah once erased civilization's protocols on the presumption that no one else would dare do to them what they routinely did to others. How bizarre that Arafat's followers of all people are reduced to appealing to international norms of decency and legality to avoid their utter destruction in Gaza by Hamas.
...Double standards depend on demanding from United States and Europe a sort of impossible perfection. When such utopianism is not--and never can be--met, cheap accusations of racism, colonialism, and imperialism follow. Such posturing is intended to con the West into feeling guilty, and, with such self-loathing, granting political concessions, relaxing immigration, or handing over more foreign aid. Left unsaid is that such critics of the West will always ignore their own hypocrisy, and, when convenient, destroy civilized norms while expecting someone else to restore them when needed.
What, then, to do? Stop feeling guilty, apologizing, and trying to rationalize barbarity. Instead insist on the same uniform standards of humane behavior from our critics that they now demand from us.
Finally, remember that there is a reason why millions flood into Europe from the Middle East and to America from Mexico--and not vice versa. There is a reason why Democrats and Republicans don't shoot each other in the streets of Washington, or why blue-state America does not mine red-state highways. And there is a reason why a Shiite mosque in Detroit is safer in the land of the Great Satan than it would be in Muslim Saudi Arabia. It's called civilization--a precious and fragile commodity that is missed even by its destroyers the minute they've done away with it.
God Might Get Insulted!
If your god is really all-powerful, yadda, yadda, yadda, can't he take a little criticism? Not according to (gak!) Lord Ahmed, Britain's first Muslim peer. (Whose bright idea was that, titling somebody who abhors the free speech that is a major western value?) While Lord Ahmed hasn't joined his brethren from "the religion of peace" in calling for Salman Rushdie's head on a pole, Mark Hookham writes in the UK Star:
A SOUTH Yorkshire peer has said he is "appalled" that Salman Rushdie has been awarded a knighthood, because the author has "blood on his hands". In an astonishing attack, Lord Ahmed of Rotherham said the decision "damaged British interests abroad and also community relations here in the UK".Lord Ahmed, Britain's first Muslim peer, branded the decision by Downing Street as "provocative", saying Sir Salman was "a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims, but also to Christians".
Harry Potter author JK Rowling or campaigning journalist Robert Fisk are more deserving of the honour, the Labour peer said.
The former Rotherham councillor said: "I was appalled to hear that Salman Rushdie had been given a knighthood.
"Two weeks ago the Prime Minister was calling for building relations between the Muslim world and Britain, then suddenly this knighthood is given to a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims, but also to Christians - because he used abusive language towards Jesus Christ - and also Margaret Thatcher."
He added: "The confidence that was being built within Britain with inter-faith work and community cohesion work...has once again been damaged because of this provocative decision made by someone in Downing street.
"This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world.
Yeah, but only among the violent. Hey, loser...here in the west, if we don't like a book, there's a simple response: we put it down.
How about you turn in your royal decoder ring or whatever they give you with your peerage, and you go back to the life you're more comfortable with, in one of those lands where free speech is an automatic suicide move? And if speaking freely doesn't get you...some pregnant lady in TNT control-top pantihose probably will.
For Bitter Or For Worse
I just posted another Advice Goddess column, with a letter from a reader who worries that her affinity for serial monogamy is going to get her into trouble. "Have I ruined my chances of ever being happy with just one man forever?" she asks.
My response:
“Being happy with just one man forever” sounds great in concept, but in practice, it often plays out like standing in the one line that doesn’t move at Customs.Yet, going from relationship to relationship -- having a ball instead of a ball and chain -- is frowned upon…even, a little bit, by you. Perhaps, deep down, you buy into the Puritan Work Ethic approach to relationships: the idea that a “real” adult relationship means spending a lifetime slaving away in the hot fields of couples counseling, and trying everything from tantric yoga to Kama Sutra Pilates to relocate that lost spark. This romantic hardship worship --- the assumption that you’re a better person if you tough it out -- should remind you of lectures you must’ve gotten as a girl: “You know, young lady, Grandpa crawled on his hands and knees over 10 miles of broken glass to get to school every day!” “Gee, thanks, Gramps, good to know, but there’s my bus.”
People don’t necessarily stay together because they’re happy, but maybe because they promised they would or the priest says they should. Or, maybe because breaking up would just kill Great Aunt Mavis, or because it’s too embarrassing to admit failure, or, more admirably, because they pumped out a bunch of kids. It’s humiliating enough being a teen just starting to date without pulling up in your driveway with some guy you’re madly in crush with, and -- yikes! -- there’s your mom making out in the parked car next to you.
But, what will become of you if you don’t lock in a man like an interest rate? Who will change the rubber sheet on your bed and put tennis balls on the bottom of your walker? This is an understandable concern, but maybe you could just put a few bucks aside for that, as it seems kind of insulting to get together with somebody now as a means of saving big on elder-care. Beyond the need for good nursing, maybe you fear being all alone in your twilight years (or, worse yet, dying alone and being turned into a Purina substitute by your 26 cats). The truth is, according to studies referenced in Bella DePaulo’s terrific book Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, women who’ve never been married have some of the strongest friendships and sense of community in their lives, and are the least likely to feel lonely when they’re old bags.
Assuming your friendships aren’t as fleeting as your relationships, and serial monogamy isn’t an excuse to avoid fixing something in your psychology that’s broken, what’s the problem? Your current approach actually seems pretty wise -- not planning in advance how long your relationships will last but being honest about how long they actually do. Until you start longing for something longterm, why not have the love that works for you instead of the love that’s supposed to work for you? Despite all the people who’ll ask how long you’ve been with somebody, not how happy you are, the real tragedy isn’t the relationship that ends after a few years, but the relationship that’s allowed to drag on like the ballet (forever) or a bad play (about 10 minutes longer than the ballet).
The entire Q&A is here...plus a pile of comments.
Thiefy Delgadillo
No, Rocky, an apology is not enough. L.A. city attorney and scumbag Rocky Delgadillo let his wife drive his city-owned GMC Yukon. After she got into an accident in 2004, he stuck us taxpayers with the expense -- as if he'd been the one driving. We would still be stuck but for an LA Times report that raised questions about the accident. Delgascumbag finally acknowledged Monday, reports Matt Lait in the LAT, that his wife was driving when the accident occurred -- and with a suspended license. Hey, Rocky, sneaky isn't a substitute for ethics. Neither are excuses: Lait writes:
At a City Hall news conference, Delgadillo said he should have come forward immediately last week when a Times report raised questions about the accident. But, he said, he stalled because he was trying to protect his family from the "public eye." He characterized his conduct as a breach of "the public trust.""I mishandled the situation, and I apologize," he said. "I take full responsibility."
But even after his news conference, Delgadillo's staff worked into the evening to correct misstatements that the city attorney had made.
Among the main clarifications:
• Despite initially denying that he drove without the automobile insurance required of all California drivers, Delgadillo actually was an uninsured motorist from June 2005 to July 2006.
• And, contrary to his assertion that his wife was insured when she left the scene of a separate accident in 2004 involving the couple's jointly registered personal car, she was, in fact, also uninsured.
"Due to the confusing nature of the facts in this situation, I misspoke today," Delgadillo said in a statement released after meeting with reporters.
The revelations about the Delgadillos' driving records and use of city property came more than a week after the city attorney had refused to discuss the accident involving his city-owned GMC Yukon.
At the news conference, Delgadillo said he had been attending the Democratic National Convention in Boston when his wife used his SUV to go see her doctor because their personal car had broken down. He said she damaged the rear end backing the SUV into a pole in the parking lot at her doctor's office. He would not say where the accident occurred but that it was not at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as one Times source had stated. When Delgadillo returned from his Boston trip, he said, he turned the vehicle in to the city garage.
Records show that the repair was estimated to cost $2,120. Delgadillo, however, provided a document that stated that the cost actually amounted to $1,222. He said he wrote a personal check Monday to reimburse the city for the expense.
"It's the right thing to do," he said.
Translation: "Oops, I'm fucked. Better pay up!"
Recall-a-dillo anyone? (That has such a nice ring to it.) Also, since this is pretty much attempted (and initially successful) theft, how about we give ole Rocky a nice room at the men's version of the Lynwood Hilton? As they say, get as good as you give, baby. Via TMZ:
The Los Angeles City Attorney has filed a motion asking the judge who sentenced Paris Hilton to have her returned to jail to serve out her full sentence.In the documents obtained by TMZ, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is also asking Judge Michael Sauer to hold a hearing, demanding that the Sheriff's Department show why it should not be held in contempt of court for violating Judge Sauer's May 4, 2007 order, which expressly stated "no electronic monitoring."
Hmmm, how about we hold you in contempt of the taxpayers keeping your wide load in gas-guzling niftywheels and probably some deluxe desk chair? We'd just be helping you live up to your stated mission as city attorney:
Office of the City Attorney Rocky DelgadilloMISSION OF THE OFFICE OF THE CITY ATTORNEY
To improve the quality of life and public safety in the City's neighborhoods through crime prevention and the prosecution of criminal misdemeanors; to save taxpayer dollars by effectively and efficiently representing the City, its departments, commissions and employees in civil litigation and transactions; and to provide the highest quality legal advice and guidance to the City, all City departments and commissions.
GOALS
* Safe Neighborhoods
Improving the quality of life and public safety in the City's neighborhoods through crime prevention and the prosecution of criminal misdemeanors* Saving Taxpayer Dollars
Saving Taxpayer dollars by effectively and efficiently representing the City, its departments, commissions, and employees in civil litigations and transactions* Better Policing
Providing the highest quality legal advice and guidance to the City, all City departments and commissions
Let's write to the mayor (mayor@lacity.org) and tell him we want to bounce Scum-a-dillo, and replace him with somebody who's ethical -- even when he or she thinks nobody's looking. I'm guessing Scum-a-dillo probably has to be recalled, which is expensive, but maybe he can be pressured to resign. Down with corrupt city officials!
Calling A Featherhead A Featherhead
Bloomberg's right on about the pillow stuffing-for-brains believers in creationism, but Taranto at the WSJ starts right in with the name-calling, referring to Bloomberg as a "bigot" and explains with "a (NYSun) quote that shows why such a run (for president) would be unlikely to succeed:
Mr. Bloomberg's freewheeling question-and-answer session was peppered with the kind of provocative, blunt talk that could appeal to some voters while alienating others. "It's probably because of our bad educational system, but the percentage of people who believe in creationalism is really scary for a country that's going to have to compete in a world where science and medicine require a better understanding," he said in one such foray.If by "creationalism" Bloomberg means the idea that the book of Genesis is an accurate description of the origin of life on Earth, then he is right, at least, that a lot of people adhere to it. A 2005 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 42% believe that "humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." Another 18% believe that "a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today." Only 26% endorse the view that "humans and other living things have evolved due to natural processes such as natural selection."
It's hard to see how one gets elected president by insulting the religious beliefs of at least 3 in 5 Americans.
Yes, it seems our citizenry is simply too dim to figure out that the earth wasn't created in five days, in the image of The Invisible Friend. Tragically pathetic.
As for how thinking people view such "insults," or should, a few words of advice from Daniel Dennett:
Give religion no more respect than you’d accord to animal husbandry.
When Pigs Fly In Raincoats
That's probably when certain silly, prissy-auntie American TV networks will run condom commercials that are anything but stern health warnings. Andrew Adam Newman writes in The New York Times:
IN a commercial for Trojan condoms that has its premiere tonight, women in a bar are surrounded by anthropomorphized, cellphone-toting pigs. One shuffles to the men’s room, where, after procuring a condom from a vending machine, he is transformed into a head-turner in his 20s. When he returns to the bar, a fetching blond who had been indifferent now smiles at him invitingly.Directed by Phil Joanou (“State of Grace”), with special effects by the Stan Winston Studio (“Jurassic Park”), the commercial is entertaining. But it also has a message, spelled out at the end: “Evolve. Use a condom every time.”
...But the pigs did not fly at two of the four networks where Trojan tried to place the ad.
Fox and CBS both rejected the commercial. Both had accepted Trojan’s previous campaign, which urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be H.I.V.-positive, perhaps unknowingly. A 2001 report about condom advertising by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that, “Some networks draw a strong line between messages about disease prevention — which may be allowed — and those about pregnancy prevention, which may be considered controversial for religious and moral reasons.”
Representatives for both Fox and CBS confirmed that they had refused the ads, but declined to comment further.
In a written response to Trojan, though, Fox said that it had rejected the spot because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
In its rejection, CBS wrote, “while we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative, we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions.”
“We always find it funny that you can use sex to sell jewelry and cars, but you can’t use sex to sell condoms,” said Carol Carrozza, vice president of marketing for Ansell Healthcare, which makes LifeStyles condoms. “When you’re marketing condoms, something even remotely suggestive gets an overly analytical eye when it’s going before networks’ review boards.”
Entertain me, and I might even pay attention. For example:
I know, I know, it isn't about condoms, exactly. But, this one is:
Not baaaaaa-aaad, huh?
Conspiracy Theory-Based Medicine
On Slate, Arthur Allen debunks the woo of the anti-vaccination nutwads who believe thimerosal causes autism:
...Four perfectly good studies comparing large populations of kids have showed that thimerosal did not cause the increased reporting of autism. The best evidence comes from Denmark, which stopped putting thimerosal in vaccines in 1992; the rate of autism in kids born afterward continued to increase. A U.S. study showed slightly higher rates of tics in children who got more thimerosal at earlier ages, but no autism. An as yet unpublished study of about 1,000 children exposed to different levels of thimerosal in the United States also showed more tics in the children heavily exposed to thimerosal, but in addition showed they had fewer than average language delays. Both findings were marginally significant in statistical terms—though in unscientific terms, they are probably meaningless.Parents who are convinced thimerosal damaged their babies attack the big epidemiological studies as a whitewash by vaccine makers. They're especially concerned about the U.S. study, which in its early drafts showed a link between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental problems—though not autism, despite Kennedy's claims to the contrary. He extols the studies by David and Mark Geier, a father-and-son team who work out of their basement in Silver Spring, Md. The Geiers have done a series of studies published in obscure journals that purport to show a link between autism and mercury, and they spend a lot of their time testifying on behalf of allegedly vaccine-injured kids. In the polite language of the Institute of Medicine report that dismissed the vaccine-autism link, the Geier studies are "uninterpretable." The main Geier approach is to mine data from a CDC reporting system that contains a mishmash of real and garbage vaccine-injury allegations, according to the vast majority of the scientists who work in this area. The Geiers have found a sixfold increase in autism in children who got thimerosal-containing vaccines. But nearly all the reports of autism they tallied came after allegations of the vaccine link had been publicized in the newspapers. In other words, the Geiers report the public's response to a scare as if it were meaningful data.
Probably the most damning epidemiological evidence against the vaccines-cause-autism theory, and another point that Kennedy gets wrong, is contained in the document that got critics started on their claim of a vaccine-provoked epidemic—a 1999 Department of Developmental Services report from California. Like reports from other states in the country, it shows a dramatic increase in autistic children seeking state services, from 2,778 autistics on the rolls in 1987 to 10,360 in 1998. An impressive diagram of this increase was projected on a screen at a Committee for Government Reform hearing chaired by Indiana Republican Dan Burton, who believes that vaccines gave his grandson autism. "Look at that graph," Burton said. "They are having an epidemic out there." But the graph actually vindicated vaccines. MMR vaccination began in children born in 1970, but there was no increase in autism reports in the state until 1980, which also happened to be the first year the psychiatric definition of autism spectrum disorders changed. A 2001 study showed that while MMR vaccination rates increased 14 percent from 1980 to 1994, autism intakes in California's state programs increased 373 percent. The increase also showed no apparent connection to the addition of thimerosal-containing vaccines to state pediatric immunization schedules.
A far more obvious explanation for the increase in autism rates in California was the one that mainstream autism experts expounded: diagnostic changes, new laws that expanded federal payments to care for autistics, and greater parental awareness of these resources. In 1990, Congress made autism one of the disabilities that qualified for federal funding. Thereafter, states were obliged to report all cases of autism. In a Minnesota study, to take one example, admissions of autistic children to developmental programs jumped starting in the 1991 school year and continued to do so for a decade. Often these increases occurred within the same grade. For example, 13 autism cases were reported per 10,000 Minnesota 6-year-olds in the 1995-96 school year—that is, among children born roughly in 1989. Five years later, the prevalence rate for this cohort was reported at 33 per 10,000. These were the same kids. Between the ages of 6 and 11, they'd suddenly "become" nearly three times as autistic—or rather, doctors, parents, and school counselors were enrolling them in programs more aggressively.
Most of the scientists who study autism trends are not ready to rule out entirely some real increase in the disease. But the causes may have nothing to do with industrial toxins like mercury. Interestingly, a 2003 California study found that mothers older than 35 were four times as likely to give birth to autistic children as mothers younger than 20. One of the only known environmental causes of autism is congenital rubella infection (or German measles); during a 1965-66 rubella epidemic in the United States, about 1,500 rubella babies were born with autism in addition to their other handicaps. Other perinatal developments, which increase with maternal age, can't be ruled out.
So much easier to blame chemicals instead of your way-past-the-sell-by-date eggs. Can we please base our policy on data instead of emotion?
How To Conserve Condoms
From Venice, California's Minnie T's, another fine frock to keep you from spawning:
Need shoes to go with? No indentured servant will be able to resist you in these babies!
Of course, if you're one of my good friends, you're probably in the "Can you un-top this?" game of fashion. That's when somebody (either officially or unofficially in the game) compliments you on some fab thing you're wearing and you brag about how little you paid for it. And, unlike the "fashion" pictured above (surely violently expensive), the item you're crowing about is generally one that might inspire somebody to want to have sex with you -- not Krazy Glue their fly shut.
By the way, diamonds are the biggest racket of all. You're really going to pay thousands of dollars (or, worse yet, ladies, make some poor guy put six months of his salary) into a sliver of earth-glass? Save the money, wear cubic zirconia...if you even think diamonds are nice. Personally, I find them vulgar. And then, if a guy has to buy you a diamond to prove how much he cares...how come you don't have to turn around and buy him a boat?
Is Public Urination Free Speech?
Judicial Watch's Corruption Chronicles reports that illegal aliens won a big settlement in Mamaroneck, New York -- $550,000! -- thanks to White Plains federal judge Colleen McMahon:
A New York town will pay six illegal day laborers $550,000 and forbid its police department from checking suspects’ immigration status to settle a discrimination lawsuit that claims the men were harassed because they are Hispanic.The case stems from a much-needed police crackdown on disruptive and violent loitering in a public park in Mamaroneck, a town of about 20,000 residents located some two dozen miles from New York City. Multiple complaints of hundreds of drunken men fighting, littering, urinating and defecating at the park’s makeshift day laborer hiring site led to police to shut it down.
A Latino rights group sued the town alleging that the illegal immigrants’ constitutional rights to assemble and exercise free speech were violated. The suit also accuses village officials of discriminating against the day laborers—all admitted illegal aliens who didn’t use their real name in court documents for fear of deportation---simply because they are Hispanic.
Mayor Philip Trifiletti, a defendant in the case, said he was simply taking a totally out of control situation and bringing it under control. “They were trashing our village and they were trashing our park,” the mayor said when the case went to court last year.
A White Plains federal judge named Colleen McMahon sided with the illegal immigrants ruling in November that police had deliberately harassed the day laborers because they were Hispanic. In her decision Judge McMahon actually wrote that “the fact that the day laborers were Latinos, and not whites, was, at least in part, a motivating factor in defendants' actions."
Hello? I don't see a lot of blond white guys who look like recent graduates of Princeton hustling gardening jobs in front of Home Depot...do you?
I don't know about you, but I want our laws on illegal immigration enforced, and I don't think people who broke the law should be rewarded with citizenship or anything but a big butt-kick out of our country if we find them. Furthermore, we have to stop rewarding people with citizenship simply by virtue of being born here -- which, yet again, not only rewards illegal immigration but encourages it.
Amy Takes A First (Well, Two, Actually)
In last night's LA Press Club Awards, I got a first place for my column in the high circ (100,000-plus circ) "signed commentary" category, beating the LA TImes' entrant. (If they're going to ban me from the Calendar section, the least I can do is eat their lunch). I won a first place for headlines, too, for "With this ka-ching! I thee wed," and an honorable mention for "Wokking Tall" in the under 100,000 circ (alt weeklies and small dailies category), and a second place for a collection of my columns in that category, too. Here's the column that won:
B5. SIGNED COMMENTARY*Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate, “Social Stigma Against Cross-Dressers”
*Bennett Ramberg, Los Angeles Times/freelance, “Pyongyang will not sacrifice its political isolation to give up the bomb”
Here's where I took second:
C6. COLUMNIST*Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist
*Tom Hennessy, Long Beach Press-Telegram
*Amy Klein, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angels
*Gene Maddaus, Pasadena Star-News
*Natalie Nichols, Los Angeles CityBeat
Here's my first and honorable mention:
C13. HEADLINE*Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess, “With This Ka-ching I Thee Wed”
*Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess, “Wokking Tall”
*Todd Cunningham, Los Angeles Business Journal, “Arched Rivals”
*Pasadena Star-News, “Origami conference folds art into science”
*San Gabriel Valley Tribune, “Cal Poly is breeding success”
Here I am with Emmanuelle Richard.
After she drank enough Yahoo-tini to recover from a glimpse at The Twins.
Here are Matt Welch and Emmanuelle Richard with the mayor.
And here's Maia Lazar, who was there for the terrific photo tribute (largely put together by Emmanuelle, I think) and spoken tribute by Sandra Tsing Loh for our friend and Maia's mom, Cathy Seipp.
Sandra quoted from Cathy on "cool," and remarked to me later about what was evident during her tribute: Cathy's writing for Buzz, from over a decade ago, is sharp as ever, and timeless. I'm hoping Cathy's work will become a book.
On a gossip-ier note, Sandra bought a Picasso at the silent auction, becoming, I suspect, the first Van Nuys resident to own one. The best one was going for $19,000 (but appraised at $35K). A bit out of my price range, but my agent will soon be taking my book out to publishers...so who knows!
They *Heart* Scooter Libby
Frank Rich writes in The New York Time$ of the all the people compelled to come out of the woodwork for Scooter Libby -- including a contributing writer to New York Times Magazine and "self-identified" liberals and Democrats like James Carville. Carville, Rich says, co-signed the letter from wife Mary Matalin; in Rich's words, "tediously detailing Libby's devotion to organizing trick-or-treat festivities for administration children spending a post-9/11 Halloween at an 'undisclosed location.'" Hmmm, would Mary close the bedroom for business if he didn't sign off on how great ole Scooter was for the kiddies -- as a reason for pardoning him?
One correspondent writes in astonishment that Libby once helped "a neighbor who is a staunch Democrat" dig his car out of the snow, and another is in awe that Libby would "personally buy his son a gift rather than passing the task on to his wife." Many praise Libby's novel, "The Apprentice," apparently on the principle that an overwritten slab of published fiction might legitimize the short stories he fabricated freelance for a grand jury.But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political the historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon." Has there ever been a government leader convicted of a crime - and I don't mean only Americans - who didn't see himself as saving the world from the enemy?
The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert CIA officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House's prewar lies about WMD intelligence.
...What is more striking about the Libby love letters is how nearly all of them ignore the reality that the crime of lying under oath is at the heart of the case. That issue simply isn't on these letter writers' radar screen; the criminal act of perjury isn't addressed (unless it's ascribed to memory loss because Libby was so darn busy saving the world).
Given that Libby expressed no contrition in court after being convicted, you'd think some of his defenders might step into that moral vacuum to speak for him. But there's been so much lying surrounding this war from the start that everyone is inured to it by now. In Washington, lying no longer registers as an offense against the rule of law.
Instead the letter writers repeat tirelessly that Libby is a victim, suffering "permanent damage" to his reputation, family and career in the typical judgment of Kenneth Adelman, the foreign-policy thinker who predicted a "cakewalk" for America in Iraq. There's a whole lot of projection going on, because to judge from these letters, those who drummed up this war think of themselves as victims too.
In his letter, the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz sees his friend's case as an excuse to deflect his own culpability for the fiasco. He writes that "during the spring and summer of 2003, when some others were envisioning a prolonged American occupation," Libby "was a strong advocate for a more rapid build-up of the Iraqi army and a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, points on which history will prove him to have been prescient."
History will prove no such thing; a "rapid" buildup of the Iraqi army was and is a mirage, and the neocons' chosen leader for an instant sovereign Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, had no political following. But Wolfowitz's real point is to pin his own catastrophic blundering on L. Paul Bremer, the neocons' chosen scapegoat for a policy that was doomed with or without Bremer's incompetent execution of the American occupation.
Of all the Libby worshipers, the one most mocked in the blogosphere and beyond is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American academic and war proponent who fantasized that a liberated Iraq would have a (positive) "contagion effect" on the region and that Americans would be greeted "in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes." (I guess it all depends on your definition of "boom boxes.") In an open letter to Bush for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page on June 8, he embroidered his initial letter to Walton, likening Libby to a "fallen soldier" in the Iraq war. In Ajami's view, Tim Russert (whose testimony contradicted Libby's) and the American system of justice are untrustworthy, and "the 'covertness' of Mrs. Wilson was never convincingly and fully established." (The CIA confirmed her covert status in court documents filed in May.)
The Scooter Libby Love Letters can be found here, on The Smoking Gun.
Amy Loves Beaver
I'm in the lobby of the Portland ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, enroute to the Friday night party on their roof for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual convention.
They had some conference room at the place!
I'm on my way back to Los Angeles now, where I'm a finalist for six awards from the LA Press Club, and where there will be a tribute to Cathy Seipp tonight. Here are the categories:
B5. SIGNED COMMENTARY*Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate, “Social Stigma Against Cross-Dressers”
*Bennett Ramberg, Los Angeles Times/freelance, “Pyongyang will not sacrifice its political isolation to give up the bomb”C5. SIGNED COMMENTARY
*Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate
*John Boston, The Signal.
*Thomas Elias, California Focus syndicated column.
*Andrew Gumbel, Los Angeles Citybeat
*Linda Renaud, Palisadian-PostC6. COLUMNIST
*Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist
*Tom Hennessy, Long Beach Press-Telegram
*Amy Klein, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angels
*Gene Maddaus, Pasadena Star-News
*Natalie Nichols, Los Angeles CityBeatC13. HEADLINE
*Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess, “With This Ka-ching I Thee Wed”
*Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess, “Wokking Tall”
*Todd Cunningham, Los Angeles Business Journal, “Arched Rivals”
*Pasadena Star-News, “Origami conference folds art into science”
*San Gabriel Valley Tribune, “Cal Poly is breeding success”G2. FEATURE/COMMENTARY
*Amy Alkon, Hustler, "Gail Dines, Enemy Of The State"
*Johnny Dodd, People magazine, "A Rockin' New Life"
*Michael Goldstein, LA Times West, "The Other Beating"
*Oliver Jones and Sandra Marquez, People magazine, "Out on the Range"
*Lorenzo Benet, People magazine, "Mary Kay Letourneau & Vili Fualaau: One year later"I6. WEBLOG, INDIVIDUAL
*Amy Alkon, Advice Goddess
*Monica Corcoran, Variety.com, The Stylephile
*Marc Cooper, LA Weekly, MarcCooper.com
*Patricia Saperstein, EatingLA.blogspot.com
*J. Craig Williams, Esq.
If Uncle Sam Were Your Doctor
See how well socialized medicine works in the U.K.! I got permission to post this incredible true story of an American going through the horror that is the British National Health Service. He's Don Miller, a 31-year-old American studying for a Ph.D. in ancient history at the University of Newcastle in the northeast of England. He'd sent the e-mail about his experience to friends. One of them forwarded it to me. Here it is:
"I had the dirtbike accident at 5:30 pm on a Saturday evening. Verity called the NHS (National Health Service - you knew that though) to ask for an ambulance. I knew I had broken something but at the time I thought that I had broken my ankle and foot were all wonky. The NHS said that they only sent out ambulances if it was life threatening. I was in the middle of a field so it took 45 minutes for Verity to figure out how to get a car to me. We drove to the nearest hospital (the shittiest one in the Newcastle area of course). I sat in the car while Verity went into the Emergency room to get a wheelchair. I waited 10 minutes before she got back. The hospital staff wouldn't help her find a wheelchair when she asked for one and told her that she'd have to look around for one. They also told her that wheelchairs were in short supply so she might have a hard time finding one. The wheelchair she brought out was a donated one and had rust stains on it. It didn't have leg or foot rests so I had to hold my foot up. The seat cushion had fluff and stuffing coming out of it. Verity wheeled me into the reception and the lady behind the desk took my info. Then she told me that I would have to wait to see a triage nurse. I waited for 45 minutes with no pain medicine or ice. While I was waiting there was this guy and his girlfriend waiting in the waiting room too. The guy had obviously had the shit beat out of him and his face was covered in blood. The nurse had given him some Kleenex to clean up the blood and a tray to put the Kleenex in. After about 20 minutes the guy got tired of waiting for the doctor and got up and left, leaving his bloody Kleenex behind on a chair in the waiting room. Those nasty bloody Kleenex were still sitting on that chair 5 hours later when I came back to the waiting room. Can you believe that? If he had HIV or something else anyone with an open cut could have caught it. Someone during this time also spilled a coke on the floor and the coke spill was still there 5 hours later too. No one had cleaned it or put up a sign to warn people about it.When I saw the triage nurse (who was about 19 and completely clueless) she looked at my foot, gave me some paracetemol (same thing as Tylenol), and told me that I would have to wait to see a doctor and that the wait was about 3 hours. She didn't give me any ice to put on my foot which was really swollen or any painkillers. I was so pissed off that I asked Verity where the nearest private hospital was. I had her push me outside so that I could call my mom for advice on what to do. While I was talking to my mom outside a car pulled up next to me and Verity. A 40ish year old woman and an early 20's guy got out. The guy was drunk or high. He came over to the hospital wall about 5 feet from us and started urinating on the wall. That's right. He peed on the wall directly in front of the hospital right next to me!
I decided to wait for the doctor because of the time it would take to drive to the nearest private hospital (an hour). I had to sit in the lobby and tried to keep my foot off the dirty nasty floor. I waited 3 hours to see the doctor. While I was waiting a police van pulled up outside and two cops brought in a drunk man who looked like he had been beaten up. While he was sitting in a chair nearby waiting to see a doctor he peed his pants and pee went all over the chair and on the floor. When he got up to go see the doctor another woman came over and sat in his chair not knowing that he had peed in it, so she sat in his pee. No sign was put up. No one came out to clean it up.
It was about 10:30 pm when I got to see the doctor. I have to give her credit. She was really nice. She apologized to me for having to wait and looked like she was really pissed off with the hospital (as if she knew it was gross and disgusting but she didn't have the power to change it). She said that the triage nurse should have immediately given me ice and painkillers and should have sent me to see a doctor right away instead of making me wait. She sent me off for x-rays and then I had to go wait in a room for an orthopaedic surgeon. I waited there until midnight. He said that I would have to spend the night because my foot was really swollen and they needed to get the swelling down before they could put it in a cast. I didn't get into a hospital bed until 1:30 am. The guy who came to take me to the hospital bed brought a wheelchair with him, a nice one. He looked at the rusted one in disgust and asked me if I had brought it from home myself.
I told him that I had gotten it from the hospital and he said "That's a right piece of shit, that is." I didn't get a private room or a double room. They put me in a ward with 5 other people. I had to ask the nurse to bring me ice because she "forgot" that she was supposed to put ice on my foot.
I stayed in the hospital until 5:30 pm the next day. They wanted me to spend another night there, but I told them I was going home. The crutches they gave me were wooden and looked like they were made out of matches. They were so crappily built that I had to go to a medical supply store the next day and buy some metal elbow crutches.
That was my hospital ordeal. I didn't make any of it up. I didn't exaggerate one bit. With socialized medicine they can only afford to give you the absolute minimum. Since the government has a monopoly on healthcare they can treat you however they want because you can't really go anywhere else. Private hospitals are rare and there aren't many. I told Monte about what I saw and what happened (because he's a nurse anesthetist) and asked him what would have happened if I had broken my foot and gone to a hospital in the US. He said that they would have put me on a morphine IV as soon as I came in and that I would have seen a doctor almost immediately. He said that if his hospital had been that dirty and treated me that way, they would be shut down.
No socialized medicine! It's bad. Socialized medicine sounds good in theory because people think they will still get the same excellent service and healthcare they do now (talking about the US here), but no socialized healthcare system can support itself giving that kind of treatment. Standards will go down and instead of quality, you'll get quantity, as in how many people can we treat for the least amount of money.
At first the whole hospital ordeal pissed me off, but after everything just kept getting worse I just had to laugh because it was funny that things were so bad. At least I kept my sense of humor!"
Don the Survivor
SUV Advertising For People Who Believe Everything They Hear In Advertising
The Alliance Of Automobile Manufacturers has put out an ad with two SUV-driving moms worried that they'll have a hard time buying their next rolling U.S.S. Nimitz.
"I'm all for better fuel economy, but for me, safety is my top concern," says one of the women.
The problem is, there's a difference between actual safety and the perception of safety. From a post on NewScientist:
...The rationale that large, heavy vehicles are intrinsically safer, doesn’t hold up. A report released last Thursday by the International Council on Clean Transportation found that "some of the safest vehicles have higher fuel economy, while some of the least safe vehicles driven today - heavy, large trucks and SUVs - have the lowest fuel economy."
Graph showing how well smaller, greener cars do versus the ginormous ones at the link.
Thanks, Norman!
Lip Service Our Troops!
Sure the administration cares about them. Once again, just not enough to fork over the equipment -- in this case, better-armored vehicles -- that could save limbs and lives. From a New York Times editorial:
Improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, can blast through the flat underbelly of the military’s standard Humvees, maiming and killing the soldiers within. These devices, a low-tech response to America’s overwhelming military power, are now causing 70 percent to 80 percent of the American combat deaths in Iraq.More than two years ago, according to newly disclosed documents, Marine commanders in Al Anbar Province, a center of the Sunni insurgency, submitted an urgent request for more than 1,100 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, or MRAPs, that have V-shaped bottoms able to deflect blasts from below. For reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained, military officials initially sat on the request and then ordered relatively few.
Some, second-guessing the judgment of the battlefield commanders, apparently felt that Humvees with upgraded armor could do the job. Others may have been reluctant to invest billions of dollars in vehicles that might have little use after Iraq. Turf battles were probably also a factor, as a large-scale purchase might threaten future weapons programs. But Iraq is the war that Americans are fighting and dying in today.
Only now are Pentagon leaders, prodded by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other critics on Capitol Hill, rushing to ramp up production. Congress has accelerated funding to buy more than 7,000 of the vehicles by early next year, and the military services are seeking some 21,000 in all, at a cost that could exceed $20 billion.
Well, as against this war as I am, the fact is, we owe the soldiers over there bigtime. Imagine how they feel, or their families feel, if they've been maimed or killed over there in underprotected Humvees because the government was all talk and no flash of cash and proper equipment. Support our troops! Support our troops! Blah blah blah! Blah blah blah! Pretty despicable, huh?
And a suggestion: Next time you're in an airport and you pass men and women in uniform, say "thanks" as you pass them. Whether you agree with the war or not. Let them know their sacrifice -- even just leaving their families to fight on behalf of the rest of us -- is appreciated. And pass the word on: "Have you thanked our troops today?"
Boyz In The Suburban Hood
Thomas Chatterton Williams, in the Sac Bee, deplores how hip-hop culture is becoming modern black culture:
Born in the projects of the South Bronx, tweaked to its gangsta form in the 'hoods of South Central Los Angeles and dumbed down unconscionably in the ghettos of the "Dirty South" (the original Confederate states, minus Missouri and Kentucky), there are no two ways about it -- hip-hop culture is not black culture, it's black street culture. Despite 40 years of progress since the civil rights movement, in the hip-hop era -- from the late 1970s onward -- black America, uniquely, began receiving its values, aesthetic sensibility and self-image almost entirely from the street up....The historian Paul Fussell notes that for most Americans, it is difficult to "class sink." Try to imagine the Chinese-American son of oncologists -- living in, say, a New York suburb such as Westchester, attending private school -- who feels subconsciously compelled to model his life, even if only superficially, on that of a Chinese mafioso dealing heroin on the Lower East Side. The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese-American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group.
But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention. Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with "keeping it real" are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior.
Sociologists have a term for this pathological facet of black life.
It's called "cool-pose culture." Whatever the nomenclature, "cool pose" or keeping it real or something else entirely, this peculiar aspect of the contemporary black experience -- the inverted-pyramid hierarchy of values stemming from the glorification of lower-class reality in the hip-hop era -- has quietly taken the place of white racism as the most formidable obstacle to success and equality in the black middle classes.
...A 2005 study by Roland G. Fryer of Harvard University crystallizes the point: While there is scarce dissimilarity in popularity levels among low-achieving students, black or white, Fryer finds that "when a student achieves a 2.5 GPA, clear differences start to emerge." At 3.5 and above, black students "tend to have fewer and fewer friends," even as their high-achieving white peers "are at the top of the popularity pyramid." With such pressure to be real, to not "act white," is it any wonder that the African-American high school graduation rate has stagnated at 70 percent for the past three decades? Until black culture as a whole is effectively disentangled from the python-grip of hip-hop, and by extension the street, we are not going to see any real progress.
I'm all for literary license, and there are groups like Outkast that talk about issues (not that that's a prerogative for any group, white or black), but this thug culture seems to go too far. I mean, you don't see Jewish men doing songs calling their women bitches and hos. Then again, you don't see a lot of Jewish men becoming rock or pop stars at all.
Betcha Can't Watch Just Once
He works at a mobile phone store in Cardiff, Wales, but he sings like he works at La Scala.
Please, somebody give this guy a recording contract immediately. And whatever you do, don't "handle him" or fix his teeth. There's something so moving about a snaggle-toothed ordinary guy singing the way he does.
Chasing Jamey
I just posted another Advice Goddess column. This one's from a woman who's wondering if her fiancé is gay. Hmmm, lemme ponder that for a millisecond. An excerpt from her question:
He seems addicted to Internet porn. Not just any porn, gay porn. He has five separate e-mail aliases, and belongs to 67 gay porn sites. He has used gay phone sex and gay personals. When I confronted him, he said he was “not gay in the least.” He is very underendowed, and this was the reason he gave for looking at naked men. He claims he pretends that he has what they have while “entertaining himself.” I don’t buy it, but I’m wondering if maybe it’s possible for a heterosexual man to not be gay and be addicted to this type of porn.
My reply:
This guy’s straight like I’m a vegetarian. Okay, so there’s a freshly slaughtered cow taking up my entire refrigerator/freezer. It’s just there for those times I can’t help but eat a dead animal (like when it’s too hard to spear on a fork while it’s still running around).But, maybe your fiancé’s just “bi-curious.” Very, very, very bi-curious. The problem is, he doesn’t seem the least bit hetero-curious. In that tidal wave of gay porn, you don’t mention spotting a single Busty Juggs or Wendy Whoppers. And, when I told my very gay best friend that this “straight” guy is a member of 67 gay porn sites, he noted that these sites each charge about $19.95 a month, and chortled, “He’s gayer than I am!”
The size comparison angle might be believable -- if he were 11 and sneaking furtive glances around the locker room, but when a man’s had the same willie attached to his body for half a century, he’s usually made peace with his piece. The exception, of course, is your “not gay in the least” fiancé who only goes on gay phone sex lines to ask that age-old question, “Does size matter?” My answer? Not if there’s a bigger question, like “How does a man pack all his gay porn into one little ole closet?”
It’s not surprising that this mess you’re in started as a “whirlwind romance,” or as I prefer to call it, the relationship version of anonymous sex. Don’t tell me: After he sent you flowers, said all the right things, and took you to a French restaurant three times, you and he just knew you were “meant to be!” -- the perfect excuse to avoid taking the time to figure out if you actually are. (Oh, that crazy little thing called sexual orientation!)
For a girl who doesn’t “buy it” that he’s straight, you’re working awfully hard to parse whether he’s mostly gay, sort of gay, or maybe just gay on weekends. And go ahead, keep parsing that -- ideally, while waiting at the clinic for your test results for everything from HIV to Hep C. According to a survey by public health researcher Preeti Pathela, men with a sexual identity at odds with their sexual behavior are more likely to engage in “riskier sexual behaviors” (sex without condoms, not just muffled sex chats when the girlfriend’s in the next room). As far as your future together goes, come on, admit it already: There may be a special place for you in his heart, but it’s unlikely to stop other parts of his body from pointing due West (Village).
The entire thing, plus a slew of comments, is here.
Ladies! Have You Breast-Fed Your Male Boss And Coworkers Today?
Islam is primitive-kinky! A fatwa was issued in Egypt, writes Michael Slackman in The New York Times, that...and no, this is not a joke...that Muslim men in Egypt can't be around women in the workplace -- unless those women breast-feed them:
CAIRO, June 11 — First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties. Then came the urine fatwa. It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing....The breast-feeding fatwa came in mid-May. A religious scholar, who headed a department that studies the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings at the Foundation of Religion College of Al Azhar University, wrote that there had been instances in the time of the prophet when adult women breast-fed adult men in order to avoid the need for women to wear a veil in front of them.
“Breast-feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage,” wrote the scholar, Izat Atiyah. “A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breast-fed.”
The ruling was mocked on satellite television shows around the region, and was quickly condemned at home. Mr. Atiyah was suspended from his job, mocked in newspapers and within days issued a retraction, saying it was a “bad interpretation of a particular case.”
Meet The Mad Russian
Artist Roman Genn, yet another one of the cool people I met through Cathy Seipp, gets interviewed by Kate Coe, yet another one of the cool people I met through Cathy Seipp. On FishbowlLA:
1. What newspapers do you read? None. I just pile them on by my front door to prevent ants from escaping.3. Which Web sites are on your favorites bookmark? Irancartoon.com. I like to keep myself updated on the latest Zionist bestialities, the search for the 12th imam concerns me as well; his family is quite worried, you know.
11. Character of fiction you most resemble? Idi Amin during his vegetarian period.
13. Do you floss? My nails. The damn cadmium's impossible to get out.
If you missed Roman's recent show at Bergamot, you can see some of his paintings here.
Primitive Dimwits For President!
Biologist Jerry Coyne comments on the level of intellect we have in the presidential aspirant bullpen:
Suppose we asked a group of Presidential candidates if they believed in the existence of atoms, and a third of them said "no"? That would be a truly appalling show of scientific illiteracy, would it not? And all the more shocking coming from those who aspire to run a technologically sophisticated nation.Yet something like this happened a week ago during the Republican presidential debate. When the moderator asked nine candidates to raise their hands if they "didn't believe in evolution," three hands went into the air—those of Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo. Although I am a biologist who has found himself battling creationism frequently throughout his professional life, I was still mortified. Because there is just as much evidence for the fact of evolution as there is for the existence of atoms, anyone raising his hand must have been grossly misinformed.
I don't know whether to attribute the show of hands to the candidates' ignorance of the mountain of evidence for evolution, or to a cynical desire to pander to a public that largely rejects evolution (more than half of Americans do). But I do know that it means that our country is in trouble. As science becomes more and more important in dealing with the world's problems, Americans are falling farther and farther behind in scientific literacy. Among citizens of industrialized nations, Americans rank near the bottom in their understanding of math and science. Over half of all Americans don't know that the Earth orbits the Sun once a year, and nearly half think that humans once lived, Flintstone-like, alongside dinosaurs.
Now maybe evolutionary biology isn't going to propel America into the forefront of world science, but creationism (and its gussied-up descendant "Intelligent Design") is not just a campaign against evolution—it's a campaign against science itself and the scientific method. By pretending that evolution is on shaky ground, and asserting that religion can contribute to our understanding of nature, creationists confuse people about the very form and character of scientific evidence. This confusion can only hurt our ability to make rational judgments about important social issues, like global warming, that involve science.
I don't know about you, but for me, rationality is a bare minimum in presidential candidates. If I can't get one who doesn't have an evidence-free belief in god, I'll go, at the very least, for one who has a post-Enlightenment view of the world.
Remember The Constitution?
A conservative Federal appeals court hasn't forgotten it. From an AP story on CNN.com:
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the government should charge Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident and the only suspected enemy combatant on American soil, or release him from military custody.The federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip al-Marri of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court, the judges found in Monday's 2-1 decision.
"Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them 'enemy combatants,"' the court said.
Such detention "would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country," Judge Diana G. Motz wrote in the majority opinion.
"This is a landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power," al-Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said in a statement. "It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all individuals -- citizens and immigrants -- in the United States."
Frankly, we look much better around the world if we give these people a fair trial. All of them. And if they're bad guys, and we can prove they did what we think they did, why should that be a problem?
Colin Powell feels similarly. From a Reuters story, he says Gitmo should be closed and its occupants moved to the USA:
"Guantanamo has become a major, major problem ... in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon ... and I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system," Powell told NBC's Meet the Press."Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don't need it and it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it," he added.
How To Pick Up Girls
By Luke Y. Thompson (LYT) from last night's wake at Rob Long's house for Cathy Seipp.
A Self-Help Manual For Murderous Muslims
Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet were interviewing some Islamic militants in Jordan when one of the militants said, "He's American? Let's kidnap and kill him." But, they didn't, because, as Moss and Mekhennet put it, "the rules of jihadi etiquette kicked in." Charming. Moss and Mekhennet have helpfully put the top six in writing here, in the IHT -- in the style of all those self-help books with numbered topics. Here are a few of them:
Rule No. 1: You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt.The Koran, as translated by the University of Southern California Muslim Student Association's Compendium of Muslim Texts, generally prohibits the slaying of innocents, as in Verse 33 in Chapter 17 (Isra', The Night Journey, Children of Israel): "Nor take life, which Allah has made sacred, except for just cause."
But the Koran also orders Muslims to resist oppression, as Verses 190 and 191 of Chapter 2 (The Cow) instruct: "Fight in the cause of Allah with those who fight with you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out, for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter."
In the typical car bombing, some Islamists say, God will identify those who deserved to die - for example, anyone helping the enemy - and send them to hell. The other victims will go to paradise.
Rule No. 2: You can kill children, too, without needing to feel distress.
Islamic texts say it is unlawful to kill children, women, the old and the infirm. In the Sahih Bukhari, a respected collection of sermons and sayings of the prophet Muhammad, Verse 4:52:257 refers to Ghazawat, a battle in which Muhammad took part. "Narrated Abdullah: During some of the Ghazawat of the Prophet a woman was found killed.
Allah's Apostle disapproved the killing of women and children."
But militant Islamists, including extremists in Jordan who embrace Al Qaeda's ideology, teach recruits that children receive special consideration in death. They are not held accountable for any sins until puberty, and if they are killed in a jihad operation, they will go straight to heaven. There, they will instantly age to their late 20s and enjoy the same access to virgins and other benefits that martyrs receive.
Islamic militants are hardly alone in seeking to rationalize innocent deaths, says John Voll, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University. "Whether you are talking about leftist radicals here in the 1960s, or the apologies for civilian collateral damage in Iraq that you get from the Pentagon, the argument is that if the action is just, the collateral damage is justifiable," he said.
...Rule No. 4: You cannot kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there.
Militants living in a country that respects the rights of Muslims have something like a peace contract with the country, says Omar Bakri, a radical sheik who moved from London to Lebanon two years ago under pressure from the British authorities.
Militants who go to Iraq get a pass as expeditionary warriors. And the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not violate this rule, since the hijackers came from outside the United States, Bakri says.
Bakri says he does not condone violence against innocent people anywhere. But some of the several hundred young men who studied Islam with him say they have no such qualms.
"We have a voting system here in Britain, so anyone who is voting for Tony Blair is not a civilian and therefore would be a legitimate target," said Khalid Kelly, an Irish-born Islamic convert who says he studied with Bakri in London.
Rule No. 5: You can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad.
Muslims are instructed by the Koran to be true to their religion.
"Therefore stand firm (in the straight Path) as thou art commanded, thou and those who with thee turn (unto Allah), and transgress not (from the Path), for He seeth well all that you do," says Verse 112 of Chapter 11 (Hud).
Lying is allowed only when it is deemed a necessity - for example, when being tortured, or when an innocuous deception serves a good purpose, scholars say.
But some militants appear to shirk this rule to blend in with non-Muslim surroundings or deflect suspicion, says Major General Achraf Rifi, the general director of Lebanon's internal security force.
Rifi recalled that the Sept. 11 hijacker who came from Lebanon frequented discos in Beirut.
Voll takes a different view of the playboy-turned-militant phenomenon. He says that the Sept. 11 hijackers might simply have been "guys who enjoyed a good drink" and that militant leaders may be seeking to do a "post facto scrubbing up of their image" by portraying sins as a ruse.
Having Your Head Up Your Ass Won't Keep Them From Chopping It Off
In response to Megan Stack's terrific piece for the LA Times on being a dog with two legs in Saudi Arabia (more commonly known as being a woman) there's this gem on the LA Times' letters page:
Stack is an example of the ugly American. What a waste of an opportunity to be an observer of a culture that she could have experienced for what it was worth, without judgmental prejudices, and maybe in that process develop an understanding of how we Americans became different from our global neighbors.JOAN LONON
Pasadena
Hey, Joan...it isn't America that's ugly. Check this one out: "Girl, 11, rescued from marriage." Or think about how freedom of religion works in Saudi Arabia:
Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz, wants to exercise a bit of reciprocity. Since there are now so many mosques all over Europe, he wants to celebrate Mass in Saudi Arabia. And why not? Because, of course, tolerance and respect for other religions is a one-way-street.
And finally, a question: How do you get your head that far up there? And do you take it out for sight-essential activities, such as chopping vegetables and driving?
"Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor..."
Unless they want to blow us the hell up. Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch has a good point:
...The U.S. also could, and should, institute restrictions on immigration from Muslim countries, as I called for in Onward Muslim Soldiers in 2003. This issue has been clouded by national traumas about "racism," but in fact it has nothing to do with racism, as jihadists with blonde hair and blue eyes are just as lethal, and should be just as unwelcome, as jihadists with dark skin, this is about taking prudent steps to protect ourselves and defend our nation. It is only a matter of common sense to recognize where the great majority of jihadists come from, and acting accordingly.Officials should proclaim a moratorium on all visa applications from Muslim countries, since there is no reliable way for American authorities to distinguish jihadists and potential jihadists from peaceful Muslims. Because this is not a racial issue, these restrictions should not apply to Christians and other non-Muslim citizens of those countries. Those who claim that such a measure is "Islamophobic" should be prepared to provide a workable way for immigration officials to distinguish jihadists from peaceful Muslims, or, if they cannot do so, should not impede basic steps the U.S. should take to protect itself. And Muslims entering from anywhere -- Britain, France -- should be questioned as to their adherence to Sharia and Islamic supremacism. This is not because anyone will expect honest answers, but so that answers proven false by the applicant's subsequent activity can become grounds for deportation.
Furthermore, on immigration in general, the quote in the title is from a poem by Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty. I think it was fine back when it was written, but our country is no longer the empty land it was. In fact, we're full up. If you want to come here, unless you're seeking asylum from some political horror, you'd better have an advanced skill set we need. Or rather, that's how it should be. And violators of our immigration policy should not be rewarded with amnnesty or citizenship. And that includes babies born of violations of our immigration policy.
Who's Your Nanny?
The LA Times is looking out for your delicate sensibilities! (Never mind the fact that your kids are probably talking about teabagging on the playground.) You won't be reading the word "butt" in the LA Times. The writers there are so well-trained in how dull and and girlishly prissy a daily newspaper must be, they pre-edit it out themselves!
I wrote to Augustin Gurza to see why he used the word "derriere" (which stood out like a big red ass) in his piece about "Ask A Mexican" columnist and author Gustavo Arellano. Gurza wrote:
His satirical comedy is a cross between Andrew Dice Clay and Don Rickles. (Ooops, did I just date myself?) The problem is, one man's joke is another man's insult. Besides, I was born in Mexico (unlike The Mexican, who's actually an Anaheim native) but I rarely recognize myself in his answers: I don't wear street clothes while swimming in the ocean, I'm not especially attracted to women with large derrieres and I'm not a big fan of Morrissey.
"Big butts" would have been the natural thing to write -- "I'm not attracted to women with big butts." I wrote to Gurza to ask him about his alternative choice of words:
From: AdviceAmy@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 11:11 AM
To: agustin.gurza@latimes.com
Subject: a question from your piece on Arellano
Dear Mr. Gurza,
Are you not allowed to use the word "butt" in the LA Times? Why use the word "derriere"? I look forward to your reply.Best,-Amy Alkon
Amy Alkon
The Advice Goddess
Syndicated Columnist
in over 100 newspapers
www.advicegoddess.com
now blogging daily
To Gurza's credit, he responded -- unlike Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King, who I asked via e-mail about why he used "one expert" without actually naming that expert, and who that "one expert" might be. Gurza wrote:
In a message dated 6/8/07 4:47:51 PM, Agustin.Gurza@latimes.com writes:Greetings:
Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you regarding your inquiry about word use. In this case, I just used the less offensive derriere to avoid a possible intervention from an editor who may take umbrage to a more vulgar or colloquial term, such as "butt." Probably either word would have worked, but in a family newspaper you learn to pick your battles and fight for stronger language when it's more crucial to the story.
Hope this helps.
Agustin Gurza
Los Angeles Times
202 W. First Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
And I wrote back to Gurza:
Thanks for writing back. If anything offends me, it's the use of "derriere." I'm reminded of when Dan Neil spoke to the features editors' conference, and said he was censored from using "Do me!" Dailies are cooking their own goose with this prissiness. The way I see it, the only battle you should have to fight is with yourself, to make your writing kick ass. (Uh, derriere?) Best,-Amy AlkonP.S. If you're up for a little fun, read the one piece I ever wrote for the LAT and see if you can guess what got me banned from the paper.
Socialized Medicine Kills
Here's how it works -- or, rather, doesn't -- in Scotland, from a Natalie Walker story in the Daily Record/UK:
POOR NHS treatment has led to almost half a million Scots dying in the last 30 years, a new study has revealed.Doctors at Glasgow University found that between 1974 and 2003, a total of 462,000 people died in Scotland as a result of health service failings
It means Scotland has one of the highest avoidable death rates in western Europe.
The study examined the number of deaths caused by a lack of "timely and effective health care".
The vast majority of people - around 250,000 - who died due to inadequate or delayed treatment were heart or stroke patients.
Another 7300 had cancer and slightly more than 2000 were pneumonia patients.
The study revealed that avoidable deaths among men in Scotland over the time period was 176 for every 100,000 people.
Us Versus Us
Who wants us dead? Well, the Islam-inspired terrorists of course. And then, the Arkansas head of the GOP...so people have more appreciation for the jerk in The White House with the approval rating in the porcelain bowl for lying us into Iraq. From a piece by Josh Catone on RawStory:
In his first interview as the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan told a reporter that America needs to be attacked by terrorists so that people will appreciate the work that President Bush has done to protect the country."At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001]," Milligan said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country."
Milligan, who was elected as the new chair of the Arkansas Republican Party just two weeks ago, also told the newspaper that he is "150 percent" behind Bush in the war in Iraq.
In his acceptance speech on May 19th, Milligan told his fellow Republicans that it was "time for a rediscovery of our values and our common sense."
Such as having our citizens mass-murdered to make a really bad decision look better? Of course, being in Iraq is fomenting terrorism, not preventing it.
Thanks, Patrick!
3,500 American Men And Women Killed In Iraq
And for what? In what way have our fortunes as a country and/or our safety been improved by this war? Kim Gamel writes for the AP about the dead, about how radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is using the Iraq attack to foment "cultural resistance" against the U.S. (let's all translate that together, shall we?), and about the American commander in Iraq who stresses that it's "too early" to see results because the buildup of 30,000 more U.S. troops won't be complete for nearly two more weeks:
"We do have some aggressive plans to ... go after al-Qaida and some of the sanctuaries they've been able to build and dispatch car bombs from for some time. That won't be without a fight, but it is something that we must do in the areas around Baghdad to provide better security for the people in Baghdad," he said.The day's deadliest attack was a simultaneous suicide bombing of a bus and a truck in the town of Rabia, near the Syrian border.
The truck exploded at a police station, killing at least five policemen and five civilians and wounding 22 other people, including 14 policemen, according to army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.
A guard shot the driver as he approached the building, but the truck still penetrated its blast walls and exploded, destroying the one-story structure, said Ahmed, an officer with the army's Third Division, which oversees the area.
Another bomber driving a minibus struck a building about 500 yards away at the same time, according to police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution. They said five Britons working in the building were wounded. British officials could not immediately be reached to confirm that report.
In Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, three policemen were killed and four others wounded when a suicide driver blew up his automobile at their checkpoint, police said.
The post was just 50 yards from the traffic police headquarters, said a police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity since he wasn't authorized to talk to the media.
In Baghdad, a bomb beneath a parked car exploded at lunchtime outside a falafel restaurant, killing at least seven people and wounding 14, police reported. The teeming slum, which is a Mahdi Army stronghold, has repeatedly been targeted by Sunni extremists seeking to terrorize the Shiite majority and inflame hostilities between the Muslim sects.
Friday morning, two parked cars exploded simultaneously at a bus terminal in the southern Iraqi town of Qurna, killing at least 15 and wounding 20 others, police reported. The casualty toll was expected to rise, said a Qurna police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to deal with the media.
Iraqi journalist Sahar al-Haidari, 45, was shot to death while she was waiting for a taxi Thursday in a predominantly Sunni area in the northern city of Mosul. Al-Haidari covered political and cultural news for the independent Voices of Iraq news agency and was the second employee of the organization to be killed in little more than a week.
Please. Is sending more of our men and women off to be cannon fodder really the answer here? Will it ever be the answer? Was it ever the answer? Too bad we have a president who spent much of his years leading up to The White House too drunk or high to give much thought to the war he dodged in Vietnam.
How To Do Jail Time With Class
Charlotte Allen, who wrote me a really sweet e-mail after Cathy Seipp died, has it on the money (the inheirited wealth, in Paris Hilton's case). From today's LA Times, how Martha Stewart went to jail:
Stewart seemed to have intuitively figured out something important: If you take your punishment with fortitude and grace, you may not only emerge a better person but be seen as a better person.At the federal women's prison camp where she was confined, Stewart threw herself into becoming a model prisoner, humbly performing required yard work, giving cooking lessons to other inmates and working hard to shed the unpleasant persona she had acquired as a corporate chief executive: mean Martha, the impossible-to-please boss with a frightening temper.
On her release in March 2005, Stewart performed the ultimate penance. She donned an oversized, gray-and-white poncho knitted for her by a fellow prisoner, a garment so hideous that the faux-broken-English fashion blogger Manolo described it as looking as though "she made this herself out of thread she collected from the prison-issue blankets and the mop heads, using the toothbrush handle that had been laboriously fashioned into the dual-purpose crochet-hook/shiv."
Stewart wore the poncho to her first post-prison corporate meeting, and a roomful of employees broke into applause. Her company's stock shot back up, and Stewart is now something of a folk heroine.
Amazingly, Hilton actually did start down Stewart's path. Just before she checked herself into the women's facility in Lynwood for violating her probation by driving with a revoked license, Hilton told reporters that she had agreed not to do her time in an upscale, "pay-to-stay" jail: "I wanted to go to county, to show that I can do it, and I'm going to be treated like everyone else."
Yeah, right. For P.R. to work, you actually have to stay in jail for more than 20 minutes. Jail an awful place? Well, boo frigging hoo. I'm sure all those women in there who don't have Hilton's funding aren't too psychologically up about being there either.
I hope Sheriff Lee Baca, or whomever did their part to confirm that there are two forms of justice in this country -- one for the rich and another for the poor -- sees a better kind of justice: the kind that comes with unemployment checks and COBRA.
UPDATE: Ha! I like what Kate Coe calls Hilton's "unspecified medical condition": heiressitis.
Never Even Seen A Vagina
Jim Dwyer writes in The New York Time$ about yet another case of paternity fraud, one of the easiest frauds to perpetuate, and at no cost to the mother for lying:
A baby had been born in December. The mother had named Mr. Shaieb as the father. The city wanted him to pay his share. And it, meaning the city, had his Social Security number.A few readings later, Mr. Shaieb realized that he was due in court in less than two weeks, and that if he didn’t show up, his absence would be regarded as deadbeat-ism, and he could be arrested. He also, the letter warned, might lose his licenses to drive, fish or hunt, or practice barbering, accounting or dental hygiene.
A musical composer who works in film, television and theater, Mr. Shaieb does none of those things, other than drive and brush his own personal teeth. But he often travels from his apartment in Greenwich Village for projects. Lucky for him, he had been home to get the mail.
...Mr. Shaieb’s lawyer said he had never met the woman in question. The magistrate said Ms. Robbins could discuss those particulars afterward with the city attorney.
Ms. Robbins leaned over.
“Do you mind if I tell them?” Ms. Robbins asked.
“Not at all,” Mr. Shaieb replied. “It’s fine.”
Ms. Robbins addressed the magistrate.
“Mr. Shaieb is gay,” she said. “He’s never had sex with a woman in his life.”
As Mr. Shaieb later put it, “In my entire 45 years of living, I have never seen a vagina in person.”
Perhaps, but seeing is not the cause of pregnancy. Moreover, being gay did not necessarily get him off the hook, even though Mr. Shaieb’s partner of nine years, Brent Lord, was waiting outside the courtroom.
That didn't really matter to the judge. But, Shaieb got a lucky break. Turned out the mother, who'd given Shaieb's name to city officials when she'd applied for welfare, said the father had been born in Jordan. Shaieb brought a birth certificate back to court showing he'd been born in Michigan. All in all, it cost him $3,000 to get out of it, plus, probably, a few gray hairs -- and he's one of the lucky ones. Had he not been home to get the subpoena, or had it been sent to the wrong address, he'd probably be in for 18 years of child support.
Here's another example, one of many. Here's my column on paternity fraud, and Matt Welch's excellent Reason magazine article, "Injustice by Default: How the effort to catch "deadbeat dads" ruins innocent men's lives." A woman can pick the name of a man -- like Matt and Emmanuelle's good friend Tony Pierce -- out of the phone book, and if he's not home to get the paperwork, like, because he's fighting on behalf of the rest of us in Iraq, or ignores it thinking it must be a mistake, he's screwed. He's in for 18 years of child support for a kid he didn't father, and never mind showing the DNA doesn't match...because, under the law, that doesn't matter. Just keep those checks comin', dude!
Sheila Kuehl, a California state senator who fights reforming this injustice against men, should be run out of office -- and, if life were fair, forced to pick up the cost of child support wrongly (and obscenely) stuck on men who didn't father the children in question, and often, have never even met the women they're said to have sex with. Kuehl's logic: Somebody has to pay. Sure. And why not you, Sheila?
UPDATE: Here's a column from the Balt Sun by Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks on the issue. McCormick and Sacks quote D.C. attorney, Ronald K. Henry, author of “The Innocent Third Party: Victims of Paternity Fraud,” a new article in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly:
“The paternity fraud victim is hustled through the formality, often in less than five minutes, and may not even realize what has happened until the first garnishment of his paycheck. The State’s direct financial incentive is to establish paternity regardless of actual paternity facts. In welfare cases, there is almost always only one attorney in the courtroom and that attorney is not representing the paternity target.”State child support collection efforts are heavily subsidized by federal dollars. Therefore, Henry asserts, the federal government could greatly reduce the problem of false paternity establishments by reimbursing states only for establishments which are confirmed by DNA tests. States could purchase bulk DNA tests at a cost per unit considerably less than even one month of child support.
States should also act to reduce default judgments by improving service of process and by making the procedure more understandable for litigants, few of whom have legal representation. In default judgment cases, DNA testing should be required as soon as the child support enforcement agency locates the putative father. And states should pass laws or institute policies which allow fallacious paternity judgments to be retroactively challenged.
Because of the indifference of both the states’ child support enforcement systems and their federal funders, no firm figures exist on how many men have been mistakenly defaulted into fatherhood. Henry estimates that the number could exceed one million.
Child support debtors receive little public sympathy, at times with reason. Yet the victims of false paternity judgments aren’t men trying to evade their legitimate responsibilities, nor are they Nicholas Barthas determined to ensure that their exes will never get a penny. They are instead victims of one of the most indefensible civil rights violations in America today--an injustice which cries out for redress.
The Rude To Recovery
I just posted another Advice Goddess column. Here's the question:
I love my girlfriend of eight years very much, but I’m at wits’ end over her (non-romantic) relationship with her ex-boyfriend, who lives in another state. To her, he’s a helpless 37-year-old boy who needs constant motherly supervision so he doesn’t get taken advantage of. They talk on the phone multiple times daily, and she sees every problem he calls about as a catastrophe that MUST be handled immediately (he needs a doctor or a house to rent or to vent about a driver who cut him off). I’m bothered to no end when she leaves the table during dinner to go talk to him or gets up when we’re watching a movie, leaving me to pause the DVD for 30 minutes until she returns. During eight years of this, I’ve asked her not to talk to him while I’m around since we have conflicting schedules and limited time together. She’ll agree, but nothing changes. I do my best not to upset her, but sometimes I let it be known I’m ticked off, and she flips out, and says she’ll leave me if I can’t handle her “talking to (her) friends.”--A Sap
And here's my answer:
Well, you got the sap part right. It’s only taken you eight years with this woman to begin to suspect that the actual saying is “I am my kid’s mom,” not “I am my ex-boyfriend’s mom.”There are times to interrupt a meal with your partner to take a friend’s call, or even an ex-partner’s call -- like when it’s coming from the emergency room, the bail bondsman, or the space shuttle: “Houston, we have a problem…” “This is Houston. Say again, please.” “Well, this big meanie just refused to pull up in the left turn lane, and I was stuck there for three whole lights!”
Don’t mistake this “Girlfriends Without Borders” act for some kind of selfless humanitarianism. She might care for him, but her real motivation is probably being too busy with safe, ego-boosting mommylove to risk real attachment in grownup love with you. Meanwhile, if she takes over for this guy much more, he’s likely to devolve into a giant amoeba with one big finger for telephone dialing.
But, let’s give credit where credit is due. You can’t have “Girlfriends Without Borders” without “Boyfriends Without Boundaries.” (That would be you, Mr. Poodle.) It sounds like she’s not the only one with abandonment issues. Why else would you sit there like a big ventriloquist’s dummy while she regularly dumps you in the middle of dinner or a movie to go off on a phone date with her ex? (And, what is it this time, cancer of the hangnail?)
If you insist on being treated like you matter, there is the danger that she’ll leave you for good. (That’s worse than being left daily?) Time to go rent a pair of snap-on testicles. For operating instructions, buy the book No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Dr. Robert A. Glover. Tell her what you need to be happy, and if she screams and yells and says she’s leaving, say very calmly, “That’s really a shame, I’ll miss you.” Let her know that the next time she gets up from the table to take his call, you’re not waiting around for her, you’re going out to the bar. And then do it. Grab your cell phone, take a stroll to the corner, and ring in on call waiting: “Your mashed potatoes are getting cold, and so is your boyfriend.”
The original post is here.
By the way, Glover's book is just terrific. If you know any wimpy guys who delude/compliment themselves by calling themselves "nice guys" give them this book.
P.S. A guy who read this column of mine in Stars & Stripes sent Glover a note about it, and Glover forwarded it on to me. Here it is:
Dear Dr Glover; I am currently sitting here in a wooden hut next to the Baghdad International Airport, Iraq; working for //EDITED OUT BY AMY// and needed to write to you.One Sunday last month in “Stars and Stripes” (our daily military newspaper); Amy Alkon was responding to an article a “Nice Guy” wrote to her, whining about this or that and mentioned your book and his need to probably purchase it; to help him with what he originally thought was his partners problem, not his.
The guy she was responding to sounded just like me.
I purchased it and read it in less then 2 days.
Where were you and this book when I was 16 years old and trying to figure out why Sally or Alice or whomever, still wanted to go out with the jerks, yet pined on about why their “jerks” couldn’t be more like me; yet I never got laid until I was 22? I am just kidding you figuratively of course about the “where were you comment,” not about the Sally/Alice comment; that actually happened to me a lot.
But I wanted to thank you for possibly saving my life. Up until now I was sitting here alone, in my hut whining about how my life “has gotten away from me.”
38 years old, 120 pounds overweight, wife is spending every dime she can get her hands on from my and her lucrative incomes, no sex life, etc etc etc.
After I read your book I went back to the gym which:
1. is free- provided by the military
2. less then 10 minutes awayBut, I never went because it was too far away, too early, no energy, and so forth. In less then 2 weeks I have already lost 10 pounds and can’t wait to get up at 4 AM to get to the gym and my date with the treadmill.
I set boundaries with my wife and OUR spending issues and felt more comfortable talking about our future when I come home; instead of making excuses on why I needed to stay out here any longer to make ends meet, pay our bills or whatever the original reason I came out here for.
I will be working on my sex life when I come home for the July 4th holiday. I was able to take a “no sex” moratorium activity easily here; since there are no females out here anyways.
But, in the essence of your book; I was able to see that I am comfortable being me, maybe making a mistake or two, setting boundaries and telling others dear to me exactly what I will or will not tolerate any longer.
And after just these two weeks; I also realized that my wife still loves me, we will not be in the poor house and that I can handle it.
Thank you again.
Warm regards,
Made my day. And Glover's, too, I'd bet.
Alternative To What?
I was shocked this past week, at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference when a British researcher who actually uses data in her work told me she uses homeopathy and some other crapthink medical treatment I can't remember. Here's a quote for her:
“There cannot be two kinds of medicine - conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works, and medicine that may or may not work.”--from a 1998 New England Journal of Medicine editorial by then-editor-in-chief Marcia Angell and former editor-in-chief Jerome P. Kassirer
And here's Steven Novella, from whose blog I pulled the above quote, debunking the crapthink that is homeopathy. (The letter he quotes from is by Peter Fisher, director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. Novella calls it "a droll patchwork of unsupported assertions, straw men, propaganda, and assorted other logical fallacies.")
Fisher writes:But we do not shy away from the scientific debate around homeopathy. Homeopathy is enigmatic: remarkably popular, widespread and persistent, despite the scepticism of. It is simply not true to say that it is unsupported by evidence. A review of 119 randomised, peer-reviewed clinical trials of homeopathy at the end of 2005 showed 49% positive results for homeopathy. Only 3% were negative. Economic studies consistently show that integrating homeopathy in medical practice results in better outcomes for the same cost.Fisher states that homeopathy is enigmatic, but what he really means is that popular support for homeopathy is the enigma because that popularity is in the face of extreme scientific implausibility and a lack of adequate evidence.
He then tries to characterize skepticism toward homeopathy as outdated and obsolete by making a personal attack against “retired professors of biomedical background.” Well how about the skepticism of the majority of the scientific community? How about the skepticism of this working academic clinician? How about the appropriate skepticism of anyone who knows the slightest thing about chemistry and physics?
Fisher’s characterization of the scientific evidence for homeopathy reveals his poor scholarship in this area. Yes, there are many studies in homeopathy, and yes many of them are positive. But he fails to address the actual criticism of this research leveled by homeopathy’s critics – that there is an inverse correlation between the quality of the study and the size of any effect, and the best studies (the only ones actually worth considering) are all negative. The fact that there are many poor quality and biased studies of homeopathy out there (combined with the file drawer effect as an added bias toward publishing positive studies) is meaningless. Proponents of homeopathy have failed to produce a single positive study that is adequately designed, controlled, and executed.
They have also failed (and Fisher fails to even discuss this) to provide an adequate explanation for why the claims of homeopathy are not impossible within the framework of modern science. Homeopathy is nothing more than pre-scientific witchcraft. Its “laws” are rituals based upon magical thinking. There is no mechanism how, even with the most creative theories possible within the framework of science, that water can retain the memory of complex molecules that have been diluted within it in the past (and only the ones desires – not all the other molecules that have been diluted in that water previously).
Given that we know, as much as we know anything in science, that homeopathic “remedies” are just water and cannot possibly have any therapeutic effect beyond a placebo effect (homeopathic pills are literally placebos) – what the body of homeopathic research actually teaches us is something quite different than what Fisher concluded. It is showing us what a body of clinical research will look like when the underlying phenomenon does not exist. It is showing us why we need carefully controlled trials that rule out fraud and bias. It is showing us the effects of self-deception, and the statistical effects of publication bias. It is showing us the weaknesses of meta-analysis, and the many ways in which statistics can be manipulated to create the appearance of an effect where none exists.
The Other Mr. Jefferson
I don't know how you do it -- how you get elected, and entrusted, to represent people from your state in Washington, D.C., and instead, it seems, if the accusations are true, you mainly represent your own wallet (and those of your children...if that's more than a ploy to score more cash). It's treason by way of the wallet. From a Washington Post editorial, the sordid allegations from the indictment of Louisiana Dem William Jefferson:
TO READ the indictment of Rep. William J. Jefferson is to wonder how, if the allegations are true, the Louisiana Democrat, so busy soliciting and dispensing bribes, had any time left over for his day job. The 16-count indictment handed up yesterday by a federal grand jury in Alexandria is staggering in the scope and audacity of the bribery schemes it portrays Mr. Jefferson as having peddled, from sugar plant and waste recycling projects in Nigeria to telecommunications deals in Ghana to oil concessions in Equatorial Guinea to satellite transmission contracts in Botswana to offshore oil rights in Sao Tome and Principe. All this might explain why it took nearly two years for prosecutors to secure the indictment after a search of Mr. Jefferson's home found $90,000 wrapped in tin foil in his freezer.The indictment describes how Mr. Jefferson, who has a law degree from Harvard and a masters in taxation from Georgetown, allegedly arranged for a lengthy menu of payoffs to shell companies he set up with family members: "monthly fees and retainers, consulting fees, percentage shares of revenue and profit, flat fees per item sold, and stock ownership in the companies seeking his official assistance." The lawmaker is accused of accepting some $500,000 in bribes. "I make a deal for my children," Mr. Jefferson allegedly told an associate as he was trying to bump up his ownership stake in one company from 7 percent to as much as 20 percent. "It wouldn't be for me."
Well, isn't that special. You know, I can be a pretty cynical girl, but sometimes I'm just downright naive. I just don't know how you do this sort of thing.
A View From Behind The Veil
Fantastic piece by Megan Stack in today's LA Times. She lived in Saudi Arabia for many years and writes about what it's like to be a third-class citizen there; in other words, a woman. Her story starts off with a trip to a Saudi Arabia Starbucks:
I wandered into the shop, filling my lungs with the rich wafts of coffee. The man behind the counter gave me a bemused look; his eyes flickered. I asked for a latte. He shrugged, the milk steamer whined, and he handed over the brimming paper cup. I turned my back on his uneasy face.Crossing the cafe, I felt the hard stares of Saudi men. A few of them stopped talking as I walked by and watched me pass. Them, too, I ignored. Finally, coffee in hand, I sank into the sumptuous lap of an overstuffed armchair.
"Excuse me," hissed the voice in my ear. "You can't sit here." The man from the counter had appeared at my elbow. He was glaring.
"Excuse me?" I blinked a few times.
"Emmm," he drew his discomfort into a long syllable, his brows knitted. "You cannot stay here."
"What? Uh … why?"
Then he said it: "Men only."
He didn't tell me what I would learn later: Starbucks had another, unmarked door around back that led to a smaller espresso bar, and a handful of tables smothered by curtains. That was the "family" section. As a woman, that's where I belonged. I had no right to mix with male customers or sit in plain view of passing shoppers. Like the segregated South of a bygone United States, today's Saudi Arabia shunts half the population into separate, inferior and usually invisible spaces.
At that moment, there was only one thing to do. I stood up. From the depths of armchairs, men in their white robes and red-checked kaffiyehs stared impassively over their mugs. I felt blood rushing to my face. I dropped my eyes, and immediately wished I hadn't. Snatching up the skirts of my robe to keep from stumbling, I walked out of the store and into the clatter of the shopping mall.
-- THAT was nearly four years ago, a lesson learned on one of my first trips to the kingdom. Until that day, I thought I knew what I was doing: I'd heard about Saudi Arabia, that the sexes are wholly segregated. From museums to university campuses to restaurants, the genders live corralled existences. One young, hip, U.S.-educated Saudi friend told me that he arranges to meet his female friends in other Arab cities. It's easier to fly to Damascus or Dubai, he shrugged, than to chill out coeducationally at home.
I was ready to cope, or so I thought. I arrived with a protective smirk in tow, planning to thicken the walls around myself. I'd report a few stories, and go home. I had no inkling that Saudi Arabia, the experience of being a woman there, would stick to me, follow me home on the plane and shadow me through my days, tainting the way I perceived men and women everywhere.
They Left Out Terrorism!
Hmmm...maybe that wasn't an accident? Via the WSJ's Best of The Web Today, an article from the UK's Daily Express about a ban on “un-Islamic” activities in British schools:
DEMANDS for a ban on “un-Islamic” activities in schools will be set out by the Muslim Council of Britain today.Targets include playground games, swimming lessons, school plays, parents’ evenings and even vaccinations.
And the calls for all children to be taught in Taliban-style conditions will be launched with the help of a senior Government education adviser.
Professor Tim Brighouse, chief adviser to London schools, was due to attend the event at the capital’s biggest mosque.
His presence there was seen as “deeply worrying," and a sign that the report was backed by the Government.
Tory MP Greg Hands said: “The MCB needs to realise it has to move closer to the rest of the community, not away from it."
“The presence of Tim Brighouse implies Government backing of this report. This is very worrying.”
Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society said the report was a “recipe for disaster."
He added: “Schools with even just a handful of Muslim kids will find they have to follow these guidelines because there aren’t the staff to have one set of classes for Muslims and another for the rest.
“The MCB shouldn’t try to force its religious agenda on children who may not want it. The Government needs to send the MCB packing. Schools should be about teaching, not preaching.”
The report, Towards Greater Understanding – Meeting The Needs of Muslim Pupils In State Schools, says all schools should bring in effective bans for all pupils on “un-Islamic activities” like dance classes.
It also wants to limit certain activities during Ramadan. They include science lessons dealing with sex, parents’ evenings, exams and immunisation programmes.
Here in America, Irshad Manji writes in the WSJ about the news from Pew:
For example, one in four respondents under the age of 30 accepts suicide bombing. As a reformed-minded Muslim, I say that honoring any religion of peace through violence is like preserving virginity through pre-marital sex. Think about it.
She does find some bright spots. Muslims in America are more integrated than Muslims in Europe. They have more non-Muslim friends. And in America, ambition and initiative pay off (well, except when you get caught before you can blow up JFK).
I don't share her optimism. It doesn't take a whole lot of Muslims to bring down our society. Depending on which estimate of the American Muslim population you go by, there could be approximately 300,000 who think suicide bombing infidels in the name of Islam is A-OK!
Imagine if that were some other population that thought that way. From IowaHawk:
Midwest Lutherans Largely Reject ViolenceChicago - By an almost two-to-one margin, Midwest Lutherans voiced solid opposition to decapitation, suicide bombing, and chemical warfare in a new comprehensive survey of their social attitudes.
The Pew Research survey, conducted May 13-19, queried nearly 2,500 randomly selected Lutherans at flea markets and convenience stores across the Midwest. Interviews were conducted in High Plains Twang, Great Lakes Nasal and Flat Ohio Valley Bland.
"If there is one headline here, it's how remarkably moderate the Lutheran community is," said Pew director Andrew Kohut of the survey, which was co-sponsored by the Council on American-Yooper Relations. "It really paints a picture of a dynamic culture in or somewhere near the American mainstream."
Kohut pointed to one of the study's key findings that only 29% of all respondents agreed that "bloody, random violence against infidels" was "always" or "frequently" justified, versus 56% who said such violence was "seldom" or "never" justified. The approval of violence rose slightly among younger Lutherans and when the hypothetical violence was targeted against Presbyterians, but still fell well short of a majority.
"The only demographic cohort we saw where murderous random violence had a majority support was among 18-35 year old male followers of the Wisconsin Synod," said Kohut. "And that was barely above the margin of error. Even then, fewer than half (41% to 46%) said they would personally volunteer to carry out the violence themselves."
Further bolstering the findings, Kohut noted that fewer than 6% of respondents physically attacked field interviewers during the survey.
Now, I'm no fan of any primitive religion (any that encourages raising children to believe in anything without thinking), but of all the religions I'm an unfan of, the death cult that is Islam is the out and out worst.
I. Heart. Community. Activism.
How one neighborhood deals with its traffic issues. Bet it works.
via Fishbowl LA
Oh, Hurl
Now, Hillary's blathering about her Imaginary Friend:
In response to a question about how she managed the infidelity in her marriage, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, said “I’m not sure I would have gotten through it without my faith.” The White House hopeful answered the question as part of Monday’s Faith and Politics forum at George Washington University moderated by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.“I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right,” Clinton said. “Regardless of what the world thought. And that’s all one can expect or hope for.”
The European world thinks it's weird that we have public officials who swear on the bible and make public speeches where they talk about god. I find it creepy that the leader of the free world believes, sans evidence, in Zeus. Or The Great Pumpkin. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or in whatever unproven primitive notion they call god.
I think it's likely, given George Bush's admission that he feels the imaginary guy called god got him off "likker," that he does believe. And I know Hillary grew up religious. But, she's a highly intelligent women. Does she really believe in god, or, as Daniel Dennett surmises about many people, does she simply believe in the belief in god? (And, of course, as a politician, in anything that'll get her elected?)
Those Poor, Beleaguered Muslims
In a New York Daily News piece by Tracy Connor, one of the terrorists gets whiny about how Muslims are seen versus the public image of the Jews -- then gets to bragging about the terrorism he's about to perpetrate:
That evidence, laid out in a 30-page criminal complaint detailed here, left no doubt that Defreitas, a graying 63-year-old from East New York, Brooklyn, was thirsty for the blood of Americans."Even the twin towers can't touch it," he is said to have boasted of his plan last month.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks appear to have been a benchmark for Defreitas from the start.
Last August, as the informant cozied up to him, Defreitas remarked during a chat about Lebanon that Muslims always incur the "wrath of the world" while Jews get a "pass."
Um...that's because Jews have been far too busy working to cure cancer and coming up with the Theory Of Relativity and stuff -- or just earning a living and giving a lot of it away to help people -- to blow a lot of other people up.
Muslim men, on the other hand, are ultra-focused on how they're not getting fucked -- because they're a polygamist society, my friend Satoshi Kanazawa pointed out at our dinner table Saturday night at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference. All they can do is think about those 72 virgins they've been promised. Sadly, it seems many are dumb enough to believe they'll actually get them if they off themselves while murdering non-Muslims. Of course, that's just as dumb as the primitive belief, sans evidence, that there's heaven or hell, but, unfortunately, it's a little more lethal to the rest of us.
Here are a few notes on this from a paper Satoshi wrote in 2005:
The one factor which unites all of our otherwise diverse enemies, from al Qaeda in the Middle East, to Jemaah Islamiyah in the South East Asia, to the Chechen rebels in Russia, is the Muslim religion, and Muslims, unlike members of other major religions in the world, are polygynous. From the evolutionary psychological perspective, it is no coincidence that the first major global civil war is declared, initiated and fought by a polygynous group. Many young resourceless Muslim men of low status are left mateless because young reproductive women are monopolized by wealthy polygynous men of high status. The prospect of an exclusive access to 72 virgins in heaven sounds quite appealing to such mateless men in comparison to the bleak reality on earth of being complete reproductive losers. The same prospect would not be so appealing if they had even one mate on earth, which monogamy guarantees.There is one ethnic group in the world which is significantly more polygynous than Muslims, however, and that is the tribal societies in the sub-Saharan Africa. Accordingly, sub-Saharan Africa has the world's highest levels of violence, measured by interpersonal crimes such as murder and rape (Kanazawa and Still 2000), and the region suffers from a long history of interminable civil wars. Currently, however, the region is still too poor to mount a global civil war against western nations. Very few young men in sub-Saharan Africa have access to the internet, email, and cell phones which allow bin Laden and his allies to be so effective. It is my prediction, derived from the evolutionary psychological perspective on wars, that the first non-Muslim bin Laden will emerge from sub-Saharan Africa, when communication technology in the region reaches the level currently available in the Middle East.
P.S. On a trivia note, Satoshi taught Monica Lewinsky in one of his classes (he's a prof at the London School of Economics). Here he is at dinner on Saturday night. That's Satoshi on the left, and my friends Nando Pelusi, a clinical psychologist and a disciple of Albert Ellis, and Kaja Perina, the young editor of Psychology Today who's turned the magazine around.
Daily News link via Jihad Watch
UPDATE: That's an unpublished paper of Satoshi's that I linked to as I was running out to write. He just sent me a link to a published paper he's really proud of: "The evolutionary psychological imagination: Why you can't get a date on a Saturday night, and why most suicide bombers are Muslim," from The Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology, 2007. It's a PDF, so I can't excerpt it, but the paper can be found here.
Erin Aubry Kaplan's White Fright
It's a living!
What in the world would the LA Times' Erin Aubry Kaplan write about if somebody made her change the subject from how oppressed black people are? This time, her column starts with her pretense of speaking for the ordinary poor person (because she can relate so well to that person's daily existence, simply by virtue of having black skin...as a noted journalist, a former regular columnist, and now a sometime-columnist for one of the country's major dailies):
PERFUME IS MY greatest refuge. To be blunt, it keeps the stink of the real world at bay in a way that a million other divertissements can't.Perfume is also forgiving. Unlike fashion, scent doesn't mock a would-be wearer for not being a size 4 or for having a short torso. It's the great social equalizer of luxury items. Most women can afford it ($50 or thereabouts for nice cologne) and, thanks to quirks of the chemical interaction between skin and scent, a poor woman can actually smell better in Chanel No. 5 than a well-off woman in the same scent. Best of all, perfume is invisible, impossible to flaunt in the way double-C logos or whipstitched pockets on $300 jeans are routinely flaunted on purses and posteriors.
Oh, please. Something tells me she isn't exactly standing in line in the parking lot at Goodwill waiting for them to put out a basket of castoffs. And what poor woman runs around in Chanel No. 5? If Aubry Kaplan's got her head that far up her ass (even if it is a black ass), poor women -- black, white, and other -- could use a new self-appointed spokeschickie.
Aubry Kaplan continues:
The latest perfume ad campaign by Banana Republic brings this crucial fantasy thudding to Earth by injecting race into it....The problem is that the Alabaster ad circumvents imagination by giving us photos of an overtly sexy, nude, pale, very blond woman who somehow leaves no doubt as to what Alabaster is: white skin and, more broadly, whiteness. This scent celebrates not stone, not sculpture, not sand, but more likely cloistered, fair-skinned maidens and even Southern belles.
And?
Not that this perfume actually "celebrates" whiteness, as far as I can see, but people celebrate being black all the time. I'm white as a sheet of typing paper. In the name of "diversity" -- which is what they call minority-only journalism programs instead of calling them what they really are (racist) -- people are allowed to celebrate blackness, Asian-ness, and every other race or color, but, what, whiteness is supposed to be shameful? P.S. Before you start thinking of me as some closet race-hater, sorry, I was actually on the other end of the hating (although I have yet to turn it into a living).
Yes, I may be whiter than a sheet of typing paper, but being as I was chased around and called "dirty Jew" and "Christ-killer" as a child, I'm not exactly a poster-child for the KKK. And, just FYI, here at the Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference at William and Mary, in Virginia, from where I'm writing this blog item, somebody informally gave me a little test that found me to be at the other end of the spectrum from racist. What I am, however, is honest, and not the least bit P.C.
All in all, I find Aubry Kaplan's constant flogging of black oppression a cynical career move -- along with, maybe, a lack of original ideas -- more than a reflection of reality. Yes, there's racism. Sure, black people sometimes, or even often, have an unfair shake. But, so do white poor people -- more so than some of the middle-class or upper-class black people who get fellowships, scholarships, or other opportunities because they've got the right skin color. From the words in this Reuters fellowship:
To be considered for the Reuters Fellowship, candidates must:* Complete a full application to the Maryland journalism master’s program.
* Submit a resume and sample journalistic work products.
* Write a letter stating your interest in the fellowship and business journalism.
* Be a member of a minority group.
Hey, wait! Weren't we supposed to be beyond that? How come racism, in reverse, has now become the answer for racism? And isn't lack of money, not a lot of skin pigment, what often separates good, hardworking people from opportunity? (Unless they, like Oprah, work their asses off to build an empire.)
The perfume Aubry Kaplan's all up in arms about, to her, smells like yet another reason for black girls to feel bad about themselves. Maybe, just maybe, what makes black girls feel bad about themselves is the notion, by all these corporations and schools, that they need special treatment to make it in the world.
And about that perfume Aubry Kaplan's railing against, to somebody who isn't part of the Victim Industrial Complex, "Alabaster" just a white stone, an apparent interest by the company in using some perfume name that hasn't been used before, and the reason behind some innocuous, boring ads. Hmmm, just wondering...but, what does Aubry Kaplan make of, say, Blackglama mink? Should I be whining that there's no Whiteglama fur coat for me?
Squirrel, Interrupted
In case you're interested in a bit of squirrel trivia, a UTexas grad student informed us at breakfast that squirrels have ENORMOUS testicles.
What Is "Vote Caging" And Why Does It Matter?
Dahlia Lithwick at Slate writes about a little-known term Monica Goodling used in her testimony about, as Lithwick calls him, "Arkansas' soon to be ex-interim, never-confirmed U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin":
Goodling told the judiciary committee that: 1) Griffin was possibly involved in caging; 2) he doesn't believe he did anything wrong (she is less certain, it seems); and 3) McNulty lied under oath when he downplayed his knowledge of these allegations to the committee.That would suggest that vote caging is a big deal. Is it?
Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following a consent decree in a 1986 case. Google the term and you'll quickly arrive at the Wizard of Oz of caging, Greg Palast, investigative reporter and author of the wickedly funny Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans—Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Palast started reporting allegations of Republican vote caging for the BBC's Newsnight in 2004. He's been almost alone on the story since then. Palast contends, both in Armed Madhouse and widely through the liberal blogosphere, that vote caging, an illegal voter-suppression scheme, happened in Florida in 2004 this way:
The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and—you got to love this—American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation—and the soldiers were overseas.
Palast supplies evidence linking Tim Griffin, then-research director for the RNC, to this caging plot; specifically, a series of confidential e-mails to Republican Party muckety-mucks with the suggestive heading "RE: caging." The e-mails were accidentally sent to a George Bush parody site. They also contained suggestively named spreadsheets, headed "caging" as well. The names on the lists are what Palast's researchers deemed to be homeless men and soldiers deployed in Iraq. Here are the e-mails.
As Palast points out—and Griffin himself has observed—the American media barely touched this story, and Griffin has yet to explain the e-mails or the lists. He did tell The New Yorker's Jane Mayer last March that "caging is not a derogatory term. ... [I]t's a direct-mail term. It derives from caging categories of mail in steel shelves and files." Still, that hardly explains why he was allegedly caging only transient African-American voters in those shelves or files, which would likely violate the Voting Rights Act.
Palast is surely not above overstatement. He is one of many who have repeated the claim that, "In an Aug. 24 e-mail, the Justice Department's Monica Goodling wrote to Sampson, that Griffin's nomination would face opposition in Congress because he was involved 'in massive Republican projects in Florida and elsewhere by which Republicans challenged tens of thousand of absentee votes. Coincidentally, many of those challenged votes were in black precincts.' " Goodling wrote no such thing. That quote is from an article circulated by Goodling on Aug. 24. It's an unfair smear of both Griffin and Goodling (both of whom have proven amply capable of smearing themselves).
Still, Palast's vote-caging claims are hardly unbelievable. Republicans have been systematically trying to suppress minority votes for decades, most recently calling it pushback for rampant liberal voter fraud. Our own former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was alleged to have mastered the art. And while bouncing voters from the rolls on the basis of their race violates federal law, it's not beyond imagining that eager young "loyal Bushies" aren't all that bothered by federal laws, especially if there's a way to bend rather than overtly break them.
All In A Day's Work
It's Williamsburg, Virginia, what do you expect? After the evening presentation at the Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference, Nando, Kaja and I found out the hard way that all the restaurants here stop serving at 10 p.m. We ran into this guy picking up a little dinner after work at the Wawa convenience store. Shades of Chuck Palahniuk!
Alterman Has An Intern?
The Nation, the magazine crying out for the poor and disenfranchised, apparently sees to it only the rich and enfranchised, who don't need a summer job making at least minimum wage, can get a leg up in journalism.
I saw this link on Romenesko to a piece in The Nation about what a hard time Eric Alterman had getting a New York Sun subscription. Yeah, whatever. Here's the bit that got me:
Between January 1 and Memorial Day, I not only hassled the circulation people myself; so did my intern, Mike, many times over five months.
Huh?
A guy this successful...
Termed "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today" in the National Catholic Reporter, and author of "the smartest and funniest political journal out there," in the San Francisco Chronicle, Eric Alterman is Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, the "Liberal Media" columnist for The Nation, senior fellow and "Altercation" weblogger for Media Matters for America, (formerly at MSNBC.com), a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, where he writes and edits the "Think Again" column, as well as the World Policy Institute at New School University in New York. He is also a history consultant to HBO Films. Alterman is the author of the national bestsellers, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003, 2004), and The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (with Mark Green, 2004). His newest book is When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences, (2004, 2005). Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001), won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award. Alterman is also the author of Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy (1998). A frequent lecturer and contributor to virtually every significant national publication in the US and many in Europe, in recent years, he has also been a columnist for: Worth, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and The Sunday Express (London). A former adjunct professor of journalism at NYU and Columbia, Alterman received his B.A. in History and Government from Cornell, his M.A. in International Relations from Yale, and his Ph.D. in US History from Stanford. He lives with his family in Manhattan, where he is at work on a history of postwar American liberalism.
As I was saying...a guy this successful has a kid working for him for free?
No...sorry...that's not quite right. I checked. If this kid is a Nation intern, he makes $150 a week...for working 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., five days a week...which comes to...a little over $3.75 an hour.
And, oh goody, scam of the century, he may be able pay to get college credit for making that $3.75 an hour, too! (Hope ya don't go to GW, kid!)
Here's a little Nation internships job description:
To gain editorial experience interns check facts, conduct research and evaluate manuscripts. On the publishing side interns assist advertising, circulation and promotion staff with day-to-day business, and help create and carry out developmental and research projects for the magazine and the Institute. Intern duties also include filing, photocopying, running errands and other routine office work.
Well, doesn't that sound rewarding!
And okay, sure, at The Nation there is this, too:
Educational seminars are another important part of the program in New York. Authors, politicians, journalists and activists regularly come by our offices to provide insight on their work and world affairs. Recent guests have included Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Patricia Williams, Nation Institute fellow Jonathan Schell, and United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications Shashi Tharoor. Nation and Nation Institute staff members also hold seminars on editorial and publishing skills.
I love Joan Didion as much as the next girl, but if I tell the cashier at Ralph's that I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem 46 times, I still don't think she'll let me out with a rib-eye, no charge.
But, okay, to be fair, let's see how my capitalist piggy pals compare in screwing the little workers:
Reason magazine is accepting applications for the 2007 Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship.The intern works 10 weeks during the summer in either our Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles offices, and receives a stipend of $2,000, plus up to $400 in travel expenses. Housing is provided by Reason.
The job includes reporting and writing for the print and online versions of Reason, helping with research, proofreading, and other tasks. Previous interns have gone on to work at such places as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, ABC News, and Reason itself.
Hmm, more money ($5/hr.), housing, travel bucks, and it sounds like you actually might learn a thing or two right on the job (besides how to replace the toner in the copier, and how Mr. Alterman likes his coffee) and get some good clips, to boot.
Once again, it becomes clear: Socialism just doesn't pay.
