July 2, 2009

Schiffren Chick Bungles France, Comes Back On Sanford

NRO's Lisa Schiffren is kind of an idiot on what to eat in France, and in her assumption that the French "don't much like children" (couldn't be farther from the truth). She posts with abandon -- apparently without making any effort to understand or investigate French culture -- and doesn't get that children are not catered to in France, but expected to act like little adults if they're in adult places like restaurants.

She complains that restaurants are only open at certain times. What times? Meal times! That's because the French tend to eat meals...they don't walk the streets shoving Cheetos in their snoots all day. Doesn't work for you? Easy answer: Stay in Cleveland!

Contrary to her complaint, you can get food at a café at all hours, at least in Paris, where her whining starts. About an hour and a half after Gregg and I arrived in Paris, on our very first trip together about six years ago, we popped by Les Deux (Magots) at around 3 p.m. to sit out and watch the world go by and have this snack.

If your kiddies can't survive in a small town without having their little faces fed every 20 minutes, buy some cheese and a Swiss army knife and carry it around in a baggie in your purse, or stay in the big cities until they become big childish adults.

Hmmm...could this be a Paris alternative to "McDo"?

And no, shockingly, the food around tourist sites usually isn't fantastic -- which is why savvy travelers don't eat at the tourist sites. Is there any city where the tourist site food is gourmet?

Many of her complaints would be moot if she'd been smart enough to rent an apartment and tailor her vacation to American children (if hers are typical, they push their parents around with great success: "I want macaroneeeeee! And I want it nowwwwww!") Three kids, perhaps used to being coddled at meals (and in between)...you can't take them to France and expect things to be perfect for their finicky little American stomachs. French children, on the other hand, get a choice at mealtimes, over plates of liver, brains, and other food that isn't exactly a hot dog on a Wonderbread bun: Eat or starve.

Yes, the French may be socialist nitwits, but there are a few areas they have their heads screwed on right compared to Americans, and one is in the parenting department. Their kids are not only expected to eat what everybody else is eating, they are also allowed to run, play, fall down, and lose at sports (none of that business where "everybody wins!" -- because this is not real life, and the French are pretty real and realistic, except when it comes to the socialism thing).

Schiffrin's also clueless about what's healthy to eat, buying into the idea that vegetables fried in duck fat will kill you -- yet never putting together that the French are not all dropping dead in the streets of coronaries. (P.S. the evidence-based science -- as opposed to the "science" most American's diets are guided by -- suggests it's carbohydrates, not fat, that make us fat and cause us numerous health problems.)

Something else is a little different, too, from the way it is in America (why don't people who complain about that sort of thing simply stay home?). Note the portion size.

This was my lunch -- a rather inexpensive and delicious plate of duck and potatoes -- from a neighborhood restaurant out in the 14th arrondissement called Bouquet d'Alesia. You want inexpensive and delicious meals? Don't expect to find them on a cart underneath the Eiffel Tower.

As misguided as Schiffren is on France, she manages a bit of wisdom on L'Affaire Sanford, from another post on NRO:

You know what we call men who have dumb affairs and keep their mouths shut? Husbands. Occasionally, presidents. Hard to see how a wife with any self-respect could tolerate hearing the guy she's trying to forgive and reconcile with refer to the other woman as his soulmate -- on the record, and in public. There are limits to what marriage therapy can do when someone doesn't want to be there. Ditto being politically sound. You can have great ideas and be such a head case -- in this case, such an egotist -- that voters can't pull the lever. We're there. And I bet that Sanford -- unlike Newt, Giuliani, Clinton, etc. - isn't unhappy with that resolution. Mark Sanford doesn't want to be president.

Hmmm...there, finally, she could almost be French. Or Spanish or Italian. The latins, they are much more pragmatic about marriage than we are. But, there is a line that gets crossed -- in any culture.

And back to Paris, come to think of it, the first time I went there, with my friends M. and E. and E's daughter, none of us were exactly flush with money. M. bought baguettes, sausage and cheese (and horsemeat, or he said so, because he's a kidder). We went to up to Sacré Coeur, and after touring around, sat out and ate overlooking Paris. I remember thinking the sausage and cheese were pretty amazing compared to the food in America. It was a wonderful time, and of all my Paris memories that have disappeared into some dusty file cabinet in my head, I still remember that one 20 years later.

photos, except for Sacré Coeur and the duck, by Gregg Sutter

George Carlin On Novel-Writing
Elmore says "Never open a book with the weather," and once told readers it was raining simply by having a character look up at the sky and yell "FUCK!"

Carlin continues on the theme. From his book Brain Droppings, which I was poking through yesterday afternoon:

Every book you read, if there's an outdoor scene, an open window, or even a door slightly ajar, the writer has to say, "As Bo and Velma walked along the shore, the clouds hung ponderously on the horizon like steel-gray, loosely formed gorilla turds." I'm not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the fucking. The only story I know of where clouds were important was Noah's Ark.

All Jackson All The Time
That should be the new name of CNN and other TV news venues. It's 3 a.m., and CNN could be telling me what's going on in the world -- if they weren't too busy reporting on the whereabouts and lifestyle of Jackson's chimp Bubbles. Somebody please e-mail me when it's safe to turn the news on again.

July 1, 2009

Highland Hound

Highland Avenue, Tuesday evening, on my way to Burbank.

The Trouble With Black Muslims
A black African, Rudolph Okonkwo, talks turkey to one of the black American converts to Islam, a guy carrying a newspaper put out by the Nation of Islam:

"Why are you a Muslim?" I asked him at one point.
"Because my people were Muslims before the blue-eyed white devils bought us and brought us to America as slaves and forced us to be Christians and to worship a blue-eyed Christ."
"O' yeah."
"Yes!"
"But I am from Africa and my grandfather was never a Muslim nor was he a Christian."

He was shocked when I said that.

"It is OK if you want to be a Muslim and follow Elijah Muhammed and changed your name to Muhammed, too. But don't tell me you are trying to be like your forefathers," I said.

And for four years, we continued our debate. Like some members of the Nation of Islam, he became a convert to Muslim while in prison on drug charges. He had accepted the myths of the Nation of Islam. He told with all the seriousness in his bones that the white man was made in a laboratory in Egypt by a black scientist named Yakub.

...First of all, I came from a country where there are Muslims. Those who have Arabic features assume superior position over those who are black. In many instances, the black Muslims are totally disregarded, treated as inconsequential.

I have asked black Muslims mad at how white people treated black slaves to ask themselves were the millions of slaves the Arab world took from Africa were? They disappeared. They were used and disposed of. If not, the Arab world would be booming with its own share of black men and women.

I have asked black Muslims mad at the "war" between the West and Islam to look at the genocide in Darfur and find out how Muslims treat their black brothers and sisters.

In Africa, the homeland of all black people, Islam came from the Middle East and Christianity came from Europe and they all exerted inordinate damage. But where Islam touched, there is no recognition of the ways of life of the people. Islam, being a way of life, swallowed all that was African in the people.

All black people must think before they jump from frying pan to fire. And before you pick up arms to fight for those Talibans dying in Afghanistan, spare a minute for two million children who die of malaria each year in Sub-Saharan Africa. Those are your people. For real!

Guess who takes in the black Muslim refugees from Darfur? That would be those evil Israelis, not Arab Muslims, who only care about other Muslims (Palestinians) if they're white and provide a really excellent excuse for hating Jews.

Why Internet Companies Shouldn't Have To Charge Sales Tax
reason's Nick Gillespie interviews Overstock.com's CEO, Patrick Byrne about the sales tax issue, what is "good regulation," and other issues:

From the reason link:

Raised in New Hampshire, Byrne describes himself as a former "Yankee Republican" who has never felt comfortable with anti-market Democrats and no longer recognizes the GOP as the party of small government and individual liberty.

In this 10-minute interview, Byrne explains why school choice is the key issue of our day, how bad regulations contributed to the current economic crisis, and why "the government should pave the roads, run the Post Office, and stay off my porch."

He feels libertarians should transcend left and right, and I'm with him. Now, if only the Libertarian party would present a candidate who isn't a fucking joke.

A whole bunch of you have been really great, buying stuff from Amy's Mall when you needed something from Amazon, helping me stay afloat during the downturn in newspapers. Well, if California has its way and starts charging sales tax for Amazon purchases, I'll be rather screwed, since Amazon's likely to make good on its threat to pull out of this state, as it's already done in North Carolina. Regarding California's prospects, here's a piece from San Jose Biz Journal:

Amazon.com Inc. reportedly sent a letter to California legislators Monday warning that it will cease doing business with marketing affiliates in the state if it is forced to collect sales taxes there.

The Wall Street Journal said the Seattle company called the move unconstitutional and quoted directly from the letter which said the proposed law "ultimately would require sellers with no physical presence in California to collect sales tax merely on the basis of contracts with California advertisers."

June 30, 2009

Red Sky At Night

Better late than never -- photos from the LA Press Club Awards a few weeks ago. I got a second place for my column and a first place for my headline "From Beer To Eternity."

Above we have my friends French journo Emmanuelle Richard, now writing mainly for Madame Figaro, and former Angeleno Nancy Rommelmann, who took first in both the LA Press Club Awards and the alt weekly awards for her JT Leroy/Laura Albert piece in the LA Weekly.

Nancy and I posed for our lesbian closeup here:

Nancy/Amy photo by Emmanuelle Richard

Equal Protection, Unless You're Black Or Latino, Then You Get More
The Supreme Court and the WSJ sneer at the Ricci decision by Sotomayor and company:

The Supreme Court closed an otherwise unremarkable term on a high note yesterday, rejecting the notion that one kind of racial bias can be remedied by another. On the last day of opinions before the Court is potentially joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Justices overturned one of her most closely scrutinized cases on workplace discrimination. The effect was to take an important step away from the practice of divvying up jobs by race.

Writing for a 5-4 majority in Ricci v. deStefano, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the city of New Haven violated civil-rights law when it threw out firefighter promotional exams because more whites than blacks or Hispanics had passed the tests. New Haven claimed it had to junk the tests because certifying the results would lead to an avalanche of lawsuits by black candidates who hadn't passed. In other words, the city claimed it had to intentionally discriminate against white candidates out of fear that the tests unintentionally had a "disparate impact" against minorities.

But the Court found no evidence that the tests were flawed or that better alternatives for promotion existed. On the contrary, employment tests are an important tool against the very kind of racial discrimination that civil-rights laws were designed to prevent. "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Kennedy wrote. The Supremes created this "disparate impact" reverse discrimination incentive with its 1971 Griggs decision, since codified into law, but at least five Justices are still able to object to this kind of blatant racial injustice.

In the opening of her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes that "the white firefighters who scored high on New Haven's promotional exams understandably attract this Court's sympathy." To which Justice Samuel Alito replied in a majority concurring opinion that "'Sympathy' is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law -- of Title VII's [of the 1964 Civil Rights Act] prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today's decision, has been denied them."

By a "wise Latina," who puts empathy before the law. Personally, I felt sorriest for Ricci, the white guy with dyslexia who spent a lot of money prepping for the test then had his good score yanked out from under him.

And, most absurdly, while she'll probably get on the Supreme Court, she probably couldn't get on a jury. Andy McCarthy writes at NRO:

Let's say she forthrightly explained to the court during the voir dire (the jury-selection phase of a case) that she believed a wise Latina makes better judgments than a white male; that she doubts it is actually possible to "transcend [one's] personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law"; and that there are "basic differences" in the way people "of color" exercise "logic and reasoning." If, upon hearing that, would it not be reasonable for a lawyer for one (or both) of the parties to ask the court to excuse her for cause? Would it not be incumbent on the court to grant that request?

The Vagina Gang
Christina Hoff Sommers isn't one of them -- the ladies who stand first for "feminist scholarship," and second for the truth. She writes on AEI:

Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K. D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

Her reply began:

"I appreciate and share your concern for veracity in all of our scholarship. However, I would expect a colleague who is genuinely concerned about such matters to contact me directly and give me a chance to respond before launching a public attack on me and my work, and then contacting me after the fact."

I confess: I had indeed publicly criticized Lemon's book, in campus lectures and in a post on FeministLawProfessors.com. I had always thought that that was the usual practice of intellectual argument. Disagreement is aired, error corrected, truth affirmed. Indeed, I was moved to write to her because of the deep consternation of law students who had attended my lectures: If authoritative textbooks contain errors, how are students to know whether they are being educated or indoctrinated? Lemon's book has been in law-school classrooms for years.

One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack.

That's just a start. She gives unbelievable examples. Read the whole thing -- and note this, especially:

The critical work of 21st-century feminism will be to help women in the developing world, especially in Muslim societies, in their struggle for basic rights. False depictions of the United States as an oppressive "patriarchy" are a ludicrous distraction. If American women are as oppressed as Ugandan women, then American feminists would be right to focus on their domestic travails and let the Ugandan women fend for themselves.

All books have mistakes, so why pick on the feminists? My complaint with feminist research is not so much that the authors make mistakes; it is that the mistakes are impervious to reasoned criticism. They do not get corrected. The authors are passionately committed to the proposition that American women are oppressed and under siege. The scholars seize and hold on for dear life to any piece of data that appears to corroborate their dire worldview. At the same time, any critic who attempts to correct the false assumptions is dismissed as a backlasher and an anti-feminist crank.

June 29, 2009

Saturday Night At The Train Station
Tucson, Arizona.

Must Not Appeal To The Patriarchal Oppressors!
I was looking for some stuff on feminist perceptions about women who try to look attractive for men, and came upon this silliness in the comments on Feministing:

[6+] Steven replied to Carmen:
What about privilege or classist arguments against fashion and style? Hair, make up, clothes are all displays of wealth and not everyone can afford their own unique style, or have the time for it.

[5+] alixana replied to Steven:
I think there is very little that gets talked about on this website that isn't full of classist implications. Even in activist circles and websites that get an A+ in intersectionality, just the ability to have the time and access to them is a class privilege.

Oh, please. You can get a thing of sparkly eyeshadow that lasts you a year or more at the 99 Cent Store. But, if you still can't afford to look good...everyone else should look all haggy to make up for it? Or...maybe you should get a job or a better job or create your own job and work until you, too, can afford a 99-cent pot of eyeshadow.

Frankly, undercapitalized men have it rougher. Ever try taking a girl for a date in Los Angeles on the bus? Unfortunately, they don't sell cars at the 99 Cent store -- except for the kind that come in packages of four or six.

Of course, there were the expected nitwits in Feministing's comments section complaining that men aren't expected to wear makeup like the poor, downtrodden wymyn are. Of course, if these poor oppressed women and their pet eunuchs didn't spend their time in college in the women's studies ghetto, they might've learned that men and women are biologically and psychologically different; that women are nowhere near as looks-driven as men, although across cultures, they prefer tallness and symmetry in men. Accordingly, while straight men aren't likely to be seen in makeup, my cool shoemaker, who's been in the business for 45 years, just told me a number of the male Hollywood stars he's made elevator shoes for. (No, I can't reveal them, since I don't think he thought I'd blog that information.)

Finally -- sure, more and more, there are some, uh, lipstick feminists out there, but the prevailing thinking -- the one that's trickled into our culture like toxic sewage -- is the notion that women degrade themselves by doing anything at all to their appearance to appeal to men.

What Islam Costs Us
A visit to the Statue of Liberty sure has changed since I was there in the summer of 1981. Shawn Macomber writes in reason about the post 9/11 security:

During my visit, a group of elderly World War II vets festooned with embroidered patches reading "POW" and "Combat Wounded Veteran" were struggling to get through a secondary screening in a tent outside the statue. "No exceptions to the secondary security screening," a burly officer growled as the EntryScan 3 puffed in the background. If these men want to visit the emblem of what they bled for on some godforsaken battlefield, the hats, belts, jackets, canes, and insignia pins all need to be removed and examined...again.

Two weary veterans demurred and were given a single stool to share between them while their comrades made the tour. Honoring veterans, U.S. Park Police style. It seemed ludicrously disrespectful, but perhaps Homeland Security had received a tip about a recently activated Al Qaeda sleeper cell recruited at Guadalcanal in '42.

June 28, 2009

How To Play It As The Scorned Wife In The Media Lights
In Newsweek, Kathleen Deveny calls Sanford's wife a "media genius" for the way she worked the media to her best advantage:

She said she still loves her man and that she remains willing to forgive him and welcome him back. She quoted Psalm 127, that "sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him."

When I first heard it, I felt a stab of disappointment--yet another political wife scorned, somehow willing to put on a pastel suit and sob quietly in the background as her husband explains all the very good reasons why he had boinked a dear (tan) old friend, had an affair with a man, or spent good money on a tacky hooker. All of those wives have my sympathy: Suzanne Craig, wife of former senator Larry (wide stance) Craig. Dina McGreevey, former wife of former New Jersey governor Jim ("I am a gay American") McGreevey. Silda Wall Spitzer, wife of former New York governor Eliot (Client 9) Spitzer.

But there are a few wronged political wives who get my respect, as well. And I'm beginning to think Jenny Sanford is one of them. On second read, her statement is kind of perfect. It's loving. It's forgiving. It is pious. And she really kicks some butt, if you're willing to read between the lines. She reclaimed the high ground: she "put forth every possible effort to be the best wife during almost 20 years of marriage" (i.e., she did nothing to deserve this). She believes in the sanctity of marriage (he's a cheating bastard). She is ready to forgive completely (because she's a better person than he'll ever be) "as long as he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance" (there will be hell to pay). She says she will continue to focus on raising her sons to be honorable young men (unlike their dirtbag father). She had kept the separation quiet, she said, to protect those four beautiful boys, and because of the separation, she really hadn't a clue about where her husband was.

It is completely possible that she didn't mean any of those things. But what wife (or former wife, in my case) can't imagine what she'd like to say if she found herself in Jenny Sanford's pumps? And I'm guessing she had an inkling that the luv guv wasn't hiking the Appalachian Trail. By letting him hang himself--and look really dopey while doing it--she somehow managed to come out of a god-awful mess with a little bit of dignity. She may even have become the latest member of an elite club no woman wants to join: Scorned political wives who turn victimhood to their own advantage.

The Zero Profit Motive
Shira Schoenberg writes for the Concord Monitor of a store that won't stock trash bags for some new state trash scheme:

Rebekah Allen of Concord came to Market Basket yesterday to do her shopping, and planned to look for the new trash bags required by the city's pay-as-you-throw system. The bags were not there.

Market Basket, alone among Concord's major supermarkets, has decided not to stock the trash bags. Their logic is simple: Why sell an item for which the store gets no profit?

Allen, when told of the decision, said she would still shop at Market Basket, and she did not mind going to another store for trash bags.

"I think it's a bad program anyway," Allen said of pay-as-you-throw. "I agree with (Market Basket)."

By refusing to sell the purple pay-as-you-throw bags, Market Basket has inserted itself into the controversy over a new trash system that will require Concord residents to pay for each bag of trash they throw out, beginning July 6.

Market Basket's decision was made on the corporate level, not at local stores. David McLean, operations manager for Market Basket, said the company is reviewing its policy in Concord and in multiple other communities where pay-as-you-throw has been instituted. Market Basket has 59 stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

"All of a sudden, all these towns are taking on these programs and wanting businesses to subsidize the towns and do it for nothing, and have their customers foot the expense of carrying those products," McLean said.

The way the program works is the city has a contract with a South Carolina company called Waste Zero. Waste Zero manufactures the bags and recruits stores to sell them. Waste Zero stores the bags in warehouses, and the individual stores contact Waste Zero to have bags shipped to them.

Consumers then pay $1 for a 15-gallon trash bag and $2 for a 30-gallon bag. The stores get none of that money. Instead, the stores must send all the money they collect from the bags to Waste Zero, which takes a cut and gives the rest of the money to the city. Mark Dancy, president of Waste Zero, said his company typically keeps 20 to 25 cents for each large bag.

via Insty

June 27, 2009

Working The Room
Here I am at the annual alt weeklies conference doing the hard sell.

Actually, I write about this in my book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society, on the collapse of manners and how to change things (Oct. 30, 2009, McGraw-Hill): The way some people are talented at soccer or ballroom dancing I am talented at sleeping. I can just put my head down and nap.

It's not a natural talent -- I learned to do it after taking one yoga class. Hate-hate-hated yoga, especially Santa Monica-style, and never went back, but now I can slow down my breathing and conk myself out.

photo by Clif Garboden

June 26, 2009

Night Light
The sky over Tucson, Arizona, where I'm attending the alt weeklies' annual conference.

Jesus Wasn't Such A Great Guy, Says Robert Wright
From a Salon interview of Wright by Steve Paulson:

So later Christians, Paul among others, really institutionalized Christianity. What about the historical Jesus? What do we know about him?

It's popular to say he said the good stuff and not the less good stuff. I think it's the opposite.

He's typically seen as the great prophet of peace and love.

Yeah. But the fact is, the Sermon on the Mount, which is a beautiful thing, does not appear in Mark, which was the first written gospel. And these views are not attributed to Jesus in the letters of Paul, which are the earliest post-crucifixion documents we have. You see Paul develop a doctrine of universal love, but he's not, by and large, attributing this stuff to Jesus. So, too, with "love your enemies." Paul says something like love your enemies, but he doesn't say Jesus said it. It's only in later gospels that this stuff gets attributed to Jesus. This will seem dispiriting to some people to hear that Jesus wasn't the great guy we thought he was. But to me, it's actually more inspiring to think that the doctrines of transnational, transethnic love were products of a multinational, imperial platform. Throughout human history, as social organization grows beyond ethnic bounds, it comes to encompass diverse ethnicities and nations. And if it develops doctrines that bring us closer to moral truth, like universal love, that is encouraging. I think you see it in all three religions.

If Jesus was not the prophet of love and tolerance that he's commonly thought to be, what kind of person was he?

I think he was your typical Jewish apocalyptic preacher. I'm not the first to say that. Bart Ehrman makes these kinds of arguments, and it goes back to Albert Schweitzer. Jesus was preaching that the kingdom of God was about to come. He didn't mean in heaven. He meant God's going to come down and straighten things out on Earth. And he had the biases that you'd expect a Jewish apocalyptic preacher to have. He doesn't seem to have been all that enthusiastic about non-Jews. There's one episode where a woman who's not from Israel wants him to use his healing powers on her daughter. He's pretty mean and basically says, no, we don't serve dogs here. He compares her to a dog. In the later gospels, that conversation unfolds so you can interpret it as a lesson in the value of faith. But in the earliest treatment, in Mark, it's an ugly story. It's only because she accepts her inferior status that Jesus says, OK, I will heal your daughter.
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But wasn't Jesus revolutionary because he made no distinctions between social classes? The poor were just as worthy as the rich.

It's certainly plausible that his following included poor people. But I don't think it extended beyond ethnic bounds. And I don't think it was that original. In the Hebrew Bible, you see a number of prophets who were crying out for justice on behalf of the poor. So it wasn't new that someone would have a constituency that includes the dispossessed. I'm sure in many ways Jesus was a laudable person. But I think more good things are attributed to him than really bear weight.

So you are distinguishing between Jesus and Christ -- Jesus the flesh and blood historical figure as opposed to how he was later represented as Christ, the son of God.

That's right. There's no evidence that Jesus thought he should be equated with God. He may have thought he was a messiah, but "messiah" in those days didn't mean what it's come to mean to Christians. It meant a powerful figure who leads his people to victory, perhaps a successful revolt against the Romans. But Christ as we think of Christ -- the son of God -- that's something that emerges in the later gospels and reaches its climax in John, which is the last of the four Gospels to be written. So the story of what Jesus represents in theology did not take shape during his lifetime.

Wright's new book is The Evolution of God.

June 25, 2009

AZ Voters May Ban Racism And Sexism In Hiring
Howard Fischer writes for the AZ Star of an amendment to prohibit special treatment for women and minorities, "politely" referred to as "affirmative action." Yes, that's actually racism and sexism -- same as special treatment for white guys. Californian Ward Connerly is behind the measure:

Connerly, who pushed through a similar measure in his home state in 1996, said it "sets the tone that government should not be discriminating against its citizens or granting anyone preferential treatment."

He also said this measure simply mirrors the intent of other civil-rights laws that already ban discrimination.

"We sometimes forget that these laws are not just there for women and minorities," he said.

"They're there to apply to everybody. Black people aren't the only ones to have civil rights," said Connerly, who is black.

Federal courts have outlawed numerical quotas that spell out that a certain percentage of school admissions, jobs or contracts must go to minorities or women.

But judges have upheld affirmative-action programs designed to help groups that have been underrepresented. And the courts also have allowed certain bid preferences if the government can show minorities or women are not getting a share of contracts.

Here's a blogger all angry that no vaginas were on this panel:

Media analysis: no women need apply?
When MediaBistro announced its upcoming panel discussion titled "Finding a Business Model for News and Online Media", it listed only white men as panelists, thus joining a list of other apparently well-meaning organizations whose leaders tend to see only men as media innovators. In MediaBistro's case, this is particularly ironic, since the pioneering Web-based all-things-media outlet and consulting company was founded by Laurel Touby, a woman.

The Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) community took issue with MediaBistro's treatment, issuing this letter:

Dear MediaBistro and Demand Studios,

We applaud your efforts to create an "an open discussion about the business models, innovation, and power of community that are changing journalism." But your selection of presenters on this subject has forced us to wonder to whom, exactly, this discussion is open.

We won't stand for another panel exclusively composed of white males when the future of our media is at stake. As members of Women, Action & the Media, we know all too well that white-male-dominated conversations produce white-male-dominated media models. We ask you to stand with us instead, to create a sustainable new journalism that includes and supports all of us, including women and people of color.

It's not hard to find qualified women to serve on your "Finding a Business Model for News and Online Media" panel. Here are just a few we've come up with today:

Tina Brown, The Daily Beast
Ada Calhoun, Babble
Gabrielle Darbyshire, Gawker Media
Nicki Gilmour, The Glass Hammer, founder and CEO of Evolved People Media LLC
Erica Gruen, Quantum Media
Kathleen Hall Jameson, director, Annenberg Public Policy Center
Carol Jenkins, president, Women's Media Center
Rita Henley Jensen, Women's eNews
Esther Kaplan, The Nation Institute
Dori Maynard, president, The Maynard Institute
Gina McCauley, Blogging While Brown
Laurel Touby, your founder at mediabistro.com
Sheryl Hilliard Tucker, executive editor, Time, Inc.
Joan Walsh, Salon
Tracy Van Slyke, The Media Consortium
Deanna Zandt, media technologist

Please let us know if you need help getting in touch with any of these exceptional women - we'd be very happy to help make those connections.

Signed,

Apparently, MediaBistro has been successfully bullied, Tweeting this:

We hear you & you're right. We'll add a panelist in the coming weeks. Stay tuned... http://bit.ly/272SxO.

The panelists MediaBistro currently has?
•Moderator: Jon Fine, media columnist, BusinessWeek.
•Jay Rosen, press critic, writer, and NYU journalism prof.
•Matt Romanoski of NJNewsroom, a "breaking news site" created by 40 journalists formerly of the Star-Ledger newspaper.

By the way, I'm on a journalism panel, too, in late August, with three other women. Gasp! Men, and specifically, white men, are unrepresented? Um, yeah. The person leading the panel tried to get a number of different men to be on the panel, and they were all going to be busy or out of town on the appointed day.

AZ link via ifeminists

A 90-Year-Old Guy Rang Up My Friend Lenore Skenazy
She's been called stuff like "the worst mom in the world" because she let her then-9-year-old son Izzy take a subway ride by himself. Well, he's not the only one. 90-year-old Irving somebody or other called her up the other day to tell her that he did the same at 10. Lenore writes on HuffPo:

Now here's a guy who has been married for 66 years. He has children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and even two great great grandchildren, which I wasn't sure was humanly possible. He fought in World War II. But one of the defining moments of his LIFE was that first time he did something "grown up" by himself.

In 1929.

So these past few weeks, when I've found myself on talk shows that attract callers who would like to personally tie me to the subway tracks (or tie my son, to teach me a lesson), Irving became my new touchstone.

My whole point - lost on these lovely callers -- is not to deny that there is danger in the world. It's just to put that danger back in perspective so we can give our children exactly what Irving has treasured for eight solid decades: The chance to say: "I did it myself!"

A chance we've started denying our kids.

She blames a number of things for getting parents to this point:

*A litigious society that has trained us to consider every situation in light of, "What if?" and dream up worst-case scenarios.

*A kiddie safety industry that keeps warning us about remote childhood dangers so we'll run and buy their products, from baby knee pads to toddler helmets. (Yes, for real: helmets your child is supposed to wear to protect his brain while learning to walk. As if evolution hadn't already come up with that whole "skull" thing.)

*A legion of parenting magazines and advice books eager to point out the hideous and lasting effects of giving our kids the wrong food, book, toy, feedback, praise, discipline, hug, class, or rattle, so we'll buy their words of wisdom (that worry us even more).

*I even blame Sesame Street. Because if you go get the collector's DVD, "Sesame Street: Old School," featuring highlights from 1969-1974, all you'll see are delightful scenes of kids playing follow-the-leader and tag and such without any grown-ups around. And even though this show was created to model the IDEAL safe, happy childhood as envisioned by a battery of psychologists and educators, this nostalgia-fest comes with the warning: "These early Sesame Street episodes are intended for grown-ups." Like a porno movie! The wimps at PBS refuse to sanction any notion that kids can play on their own anymore. So now it's modeling the NEW norm: Constant parental supervision.

...But in reality, most criminals do not hide in the bushes outside school. They know their victims. Often, they live with them. And rather than being fiendishly clever, a lot of them are just drunk (so said the Mayo Clinic, too). So the idea that kids are being snatched right and left by lurking pedophiles is wrong.

As is our perception of the crime rate. Since its peak in the early '90s, the crime level has plummeted by about 50%. Nationally, crimes against kids and adults are back to the levels of 1970. Here in New York, they're back to the levels of about 1963. So if you were growing up and playing outside in the '70s or '80s, your children are actually safer than you were.

June 24, 2009

Hitchens: No Reason To Believe There's A God
Why is it, he asks, that the religious are so determined to be slaves?

Two Funny Sanford Tweets From Walter Olson
Overlawyered's Walter Olson is one of those Tweeters I really like -- he never tells you he's boarding a plane or that he might've eaten some bad clams. Just stuff like this:

@walterolson Gov. Sanford: "marriage should only be between a man, a woman, and another woman from Argentina." (h/t Tunku V.)

@walterolson You know, "hiking the Appalachian Trail" may be the best euphemism ever (h/t: Stephanie V.)

Post your own (and others') Sanford quips below. Follow me on Twitter here.

UPDATE: Sanford e-mails here.

Diana West On How Islam Ruins Everything
In the wake of 9/11, every time (like today) that I have a package to mail that weighs more than 13 ounces, I am forced by Islam to go to the post office rather than dropping it in a mailbox. This sucks half an hour out of my day, uses gas, and pisses me the hell off. And then, of course, there are the hours I lose every time I go to the airport, and the rage I feel at it, and at being comprehensively searched when I have done nothing wrong. And then I lose with-Gregg hours, as he travels frequently and has to get to the airport to go through the search process far in advance of the time he would've otherwise. And finally, there's our military and those at the WTC, and people like Daniel Pearl who've lost their lives to give some gullible fucker those 72 virgins he was told he'd get, when there's no evidence that, when humans die, we become anything more than dinner for worms. Islam costs American business and Americans in so many ways.

Syndicated columnist Diana West reminds writes about how Islam has changed all of our lives:

Because Islam is a growing presence in the West, Western countries must now and presumably forever expend vast sums of money and manpower to manage - not defeat, just manage - the jihad that can break out in acts large and small at any time. Increasingly, this also means deferring to Sharia. Finally, my pre-conference frisk is over. Hallelujah, I am no threat to society and allowed to pass. I go on to meet for the first time the great author Wafa Sultan, and meet again the great Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the two most illustrious speakers on the conference roster.

Both Sultan and Wilders, of course, live under unrelenting, permanent and Islamic threat of death for their critiques of Islam, in a very real way suffering every day for defying Sharia's prohibition against criticizing Islam. But does the outrageousness of their plight resonate with their fellow citizens? I don't think so. I think we've all grown much too used to it, and dully complacent.

But imagine if I had written, circa 1970, that for his critique of communism, Ronald Reagan lived under unrelenting, permanent and communist threat of death in his beloved California, that he couldn't travel the streets of Los Angeles without a massive security retinue, that he could no longer even sleep in his own home. Wouldn't Americans have become rightly agitated over the communist enemy within?

I think the answer would have been yes, but the point is, no such mortal homeland danger existed at that time for those who spoke against the leading threat to Western-style liberty. Today, a mortal homeland danger does exist. I won't tell you what it was like to slip in and out of the Wilders security bubble during the course of his stay in Copenhagen, but suffice it to say, it is both a veritable shame and an outrage that his life depends on that bubble, and that for speaking his mind in defense of Western-style liberty he has lost his own freedom.

The same goes for Wafa Sultan, who, for attacking the repressiveness of Islamic law (under which she existed for 30 years in Syria), also lives privately a similarly wary, hunted life that necessitates protective security measures.

Remember, this is happening in the ``Free World.'' Whether in Denmark, Holland or the United States, the heavy hand of Islamic law is pressing in on its leading critics, squeezing the freedom out of their existence. It is time to say enough - literally enough, for example, and stop Sharia by stopping Islamic immigration - and throw off the rising chokehold of jihad-advanced Sharia.

June 23, 2009

Welcome To The Police State
America...suddenly the land of the frisked, strip-searched, and interrogated -- without probable cause.

Steve Bierfield, director of the Campaign for Liberty, an outgrowth of the Ron Paul presidential campaign, was pulled aside by the TSA for harassment (uh, questioning) simply because he carried a box of cash through airport security. It happened to be around $4,700 in cash -- the proceeds from the sale of political merch like T-shirts and books.

Whoopsy, he was carrying a pocket copy of the Constitution (the cute Cato Institute one I have, I'll bet) and an iPhone capable of recording audio -- and record audio he did, write CNN's Jeanne Meserve and Mike Ahlers:

There are no restrictions on carrying large sums of cash on flights within the United States, but the TSA allegedly took Bierfeldt to a windowless room and, along with other law enforcement agencies, questioned him for almost half an hour about the money.

An excerpt:

Officer: Why do you have this money? That's the question, that's the major question.

Bierfeldt: Yes, sir, and I'm asking whether I'm legally required to answer that question.

Officer: Answer that question first, why do you have this money.

Bierfeldt: Am I legally required to answer that question?

Officer: So you refuse to answer that question?

Bierfeldt: No, sir, I am not refusing.

Officer: Well, you're not answering.

Bierfeldt: I'm simply asking my rights under the law.

The officers can be heard saying they will involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and appear to threaten arrest, saying they are going to transport Bierfeldt to the local police station, in handcuffs if necessary.

Bierfeldt told CNN he believes their behavior was inappropriate.

"You're in a locked room with no windows. You've got TSA agent. You've got police officers with loaded guns. They're in your face. A few of them were swearing at me."

But the officers did not follow through on their threats. Near the end of the recording an additional officer enters the situation and realizes the origins of the money.

Officer: So these are campaign contributions for Ron Paul?

Bierfeldt: Yes, sir.

Officer: You're free to go.

... Bierfeldt contends he never refused to answer a question, he only sought to clarify his constitutional rights.
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"I asked them, 'Am I required by law to tell you what you're asking me? Am I required to tell you where I am working? Am I required to tell you how I got the cash? Nothing I've done is suspicious. I'm not breaking any laws. I just want to go to my flight. Please advise me as to my rights.' And they didn't."

In what way are any of us endangered by a man carrying a cashbox filled with money?

Maybe Innocent? Too Bad!
It seems it's too much trouble to give a man who may not be guilty a more modern DNA test to see where the truth lies. William G. Osborne is in an Alaska prison, convicted in 1994 of rape, based in part on a DNA test of semen from a condom found at the scene. From a New York Times editorial:

The state used an old method, known as DQ-alpha testing, that could not identify, with great specificity, the person to whom the DNA belonged. The high court sided with Alaska in its refusal to grant Mr. Osborne access to the physical evidence, the semen. His intent was to obtain a more advanced DNA test that was not available at the time of his trial and that prosecutors agreed could almost definitively prove his guilt or innocence.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted the "unparalleled ability" to prove guilt or innocence using DNA evidence. But he treated that breakthrough more as an irritant than an opportunity.

The availability of conclusive DNA testing, he wrote, "cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every criminal conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt."

The chief justice further worried that establishing a "freestanding and far-reaching constitutional right of access" to DNA evidence would short-circuit efforts underway by federal and state governments to develop rules to control access to such evidence. Yet Alaska is one of four states that does not have laws giving prisoners access to DNA evidence that could establish their innocence -- a dismal reality underscoring the need for Supreme Court intervention.

Of course, there is a value to finality of verdicts and not allowing prisoners to endlessly challenge their convictions. But the chief justice and his concurring colleagues have their priorities all wrong.

Much as the four dissenters -- Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter -- saw, Alaska was wrong to block testing when DNA technology is available that may prove someone is unjustly being kept behind bars. Overturning Alaska's denial of due process should have been an easy call.

There Is A Gad
I Tweeted this last night -- "The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology," or why Newsweek's Sharon Begley is an ass. http://ow.ly/15FUR6 -- but I was too tired to post it then. My HBES pal Gad Saad does a masterful job in a blog item over at Psych Today (a magazine rejuvenated by my friend Kaja Perina) taking apart the crappy article Begley wrote in Newsweek. An excerpt from Gad's piece:

(1) Ms. Begley's article title, Can We Blame Our Bad Behavior on Stone-Age Genes, seems to levy yet again the specter that evolutionary psychology is tantamount to genetic determinism. Evolutionary psychologists posit that the human mind does indeed consist of evolved computational systems that can be instantiated in one of several ways as a function of specific triggering inputs. Put simply, evolutionary psychologists are perfectly aware that humans are an inextricable mélange of their genes and idiosyncratic life experiences. This is known as the interactionist perspective. Epigenetic rules by definition recognize the importance of the environment in shaping the manner by which biological blueprints will be instantiated. Hence, EP does not imply that we are endowed with a perfectly rigid and inflexible human nature. Rather, we do possess an evolutionary-based human nature that subsequently interacts with environmental cues. That said this does not imply that human nature is infinitely malleable. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture in the annals of recorded history where parents were overwhelmingly more concerned about their son's chastity as compared to their daughter's. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where on average men have had a sustained preference for mating with post-menopausal women. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where individuals who possess asymmetric facial features are judged to be more attractive and desirable than their symmetric counterparts. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where on average women have had a sustained preference for lazy, submissive, apathetic men as prospective mates. As a side note, contrary to Ms. Begley's claim, as a woman's socioeconomic status increases, her preference for a high status man becomes even more pronounced.

And yes, from the beginning of Begley's shoddy piece, Thornhill and Palmer (who I know as well, and have great respect for), believe that rape was an evolutionary adaptation. This doesn't mean they think it's good or that it should happen. But, it does, and they do a hell of a job explaining why in their excellent book, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion.

I recommend Gad Saad's book as well: The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (Marketing and Consumer Psychology Series).

If you're looking for a good intro to evolutionary psychology that's also a really interesting read, I recommend David Buss' book, which is also a bit more budget-priced: The Evolution Of Desire - Revised Edition 4.

June 22, 2009

"Most American Grads Are Unemployable"
Those are the words of a top Indian CEO in the high-tech industry, Vineet Nayar, of HCL Technologies, from a story by Rob Preston in Information Week:

Many American grads looking to enter the tech field are preoccupied with getting rich, Vineet said. They're far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the "boring" details of tech process, methodology, and tools--ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like.

As a result, Vineet said, most Americans are just too expensive to train--despite the Indian IT industry's reputation for having the most exhaustive boot camps in the world. To some extent, he said, students from other highly developed countries fall into the same rut.

In an interview following his presentation, Vineet said HCL and other employers need to have a greater influence on the tech curricula of U.S. colleges and universities, to make them more real-world and rigorous. For the most part, he said, those institutions haven't been receptive to such industry partnerships.

thanks, Deirdre!

If Obamacare Is Like Medicare We're In Trouble
Why become a doctor if years and years of medical school, huge student loans, high malpractice insurance costs and years of grueling training don't make you much money? Dr. Abraham Verghese writes in the WSJ about Obama's speech to the AMA:

President Obama pointed to the problem of "a system of incentives where the more tests and services are provided, the more money we pay." As if to rub it in, he added, "And a lot of people in this room know what I'm talking about."

...Yes, Mr. President, a lot of people inside and outside that room know exactly what you are talking about. A skewed reimbursement scheme set up by Medicare, a system that pays generously when you do something to a patient, but is stingy when you do something for a patient, is largely to blame. Cut, poke, sew, burn, insert, inject, dilate, stent, remove and you get very well paid; if you learn how to do this efficiently, maybe set up your own outpatient center so you can do it to more people in a shorter time (which is what happened when this payment system was put in place in 1989) and you are paid even more. If, however, you are a primary care physician, and if, just like the young doctor who saw my parents yesterday, you spend time getting to know your patients, and are willing to play quarterback when your patient enters the hospital, so that you can herd the consultants and guide the family through a bewildering experience that gets surreal if you are in the intensive care unit, then you may have great personal satisfaction but you will make five to tenfold less than your colleagues in the doing-to disciplines.

He goes on to debunk Obama's fairytale that preventive care will save piles of money:

Prevention is a good thing to do, but why equate it with saving money when it won't? Think about this: discovering high cholesterol in a person who is feeling well, is really just discovering a risk factor and not a disease; it predicts that you have a greater chance of having a heart attack than someone with a normal cholesterol. Now you can reduce the probability of a heart attack by swallowing a statin, and it will make good sense for you personally, especially if you have other risk factors (male sex, smoking etc).. But if you are treating a population, keep in mind that you may have to treat several hundred people to prevent one heart attack. Using a statin costs about $150,000 for every year of life it saves in men, and even more in women (since their heart-attack risk is lower)--I don't see the savings there.

(At first, I thought he was talking about the annual cost of statins, but I don't think he is, as I looked it up, and found that the non-generic of Zocor cost $2.75 a pill -- just over $1,000 a year.)

Or take the coronary calcium scans or heart scan, which most authorities suggest is not a test to be done on people who have no symptoms, and which I think of as the equivalent of the miracle glow-in-the-dark minnow lure advertised on late night infommercials. It's a money maker, without any doubt, and some institutions actually advertise on billboards or in newspapers, luring you in for this 'cheap' and 'painless' way to get a look at your coronary arteries. If you take the test and find you have no calcium on your coronaries, you have learned that . . . you have no calcium on your coronaries. If they do find calcium on your coronaries, then my friend, you have just bought yourself some major worry. You will want to know, What does this mean? Are my coronary arteries narrowed to a trickle? Am I about to die? Is it nothing? Asking such questions almost inevitably leads to more tests: a stress test, an echocardiogram, a stress echo, a cardiac catheterization, stents and even cardiac bypass operations--all because you opted for a 'cheap' and 'painless' test--if only you'd never seen that billboard.

WSJ commenter Robert Mitchell has a wise take on the issue:

The fallacy today is that we don't have universal health care. We do have it. Anyone can get health care practically anywhere they want. The rub is that they have to pay for it.

Health care isn't free. Someone has to pay for technology and labor costs. I feel much more comfortable with people making their own cost decisions than politicians making those calls. The notion that government can be a more effective negotiator if it were a single payor is another fallacy. The problem is that the government is not negotiating for an individual's benefit. The government negotiates for its own benefit, which in our government equates to enhancing re-election probabilities for incumbents, and therefore the catering to of special interests. Those incentives are way out-of-whack to deliver effective medical treatment.

I have far greater faith in people's individual abilities to save and make their own medical choices. I would favor reforms in insurance to make catastrophic policies more readily available directly to individuals. However, inserting employers and governments in between physicians and patients only serves to skew incentives and increase costs of middle men. As the preventative medicine practitioners like to pronounce, people have to take responsibility for their own health. Those who don't will have higher bills to pay. Why is this a problem?

June 21, 2009

God Is Seriously Insecure
What's with this need to be worshipped all the time? The Atheist Missionary deconstructs Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life," wondering something I always have:

In the unlikely event that God exists (Rick assumes his readers are all under this delusion), why is He so insecure? Why does He feel the need to have humanity glorify and worship Him? I wonder if anybody has ever undertaken a psychoanalysis of God? Why does he have this infinite need for everyone to bow down at His altar? If He was better adjusted, you would think that he would be content to score celestial touchdown after touchdown without insisting that the crowd cheer Him on.

Chase Those Nasty Earners Away
In Oregon, lawmakers like to bleed 'em until they pack up and scurry out of state. From a WSJ op-ed:

The Labor Department reported yesterday that Oregon's unemployment rate soared to 12.4% in May, the nation's second highest after Michigan's 14.1%. What to do? If you're the geniuses in the state legislature in Salem, you naturally raise taxes.

...In Oregon, as in so many states this year, lawmakers had to choose between reducing the growth of spending and raising taxes. No contest. So government spending will climb by about $2 billion, or almost 4%, which is on top of a 21% increase in the 2007-08 biennium budget. The sliver of good news is that taxpayer groups like Americans for Prosperity of Oregon are promising to put these taxes before the voters in a referendum this year or next. Since Salem's politicians seem intent on following California's, maybe Oregon's voters will do the same and just say no.

Will voters put two minus two together? After observing voters in my own state, voting for a high-speed train from LA to SF as the state is about to declare bankruptcy, I think that may be a bit optimistic.

Of all the classes they should be teaching in high schools across America, it seems economics is one of the most necessary. Personal and public.

First They Came For The Pilots
Rand Simberg reprints an e-mail that's been making its way around. When I was growing up, I read books about Russia and Germany and other European countries during the Nazi era where policemen were always demanding that citizens present their "papers" to be identified -- without probable cause. I felt so grateful that I didn't live in a country like that. Well, now I do. An excerpt from Simberg's post:

Utilizing their seemingly unfettered authority to do anything that strikes their fancy without oversight by anyone, Homeland Security has instituted a requirement that private aircraft operators seek government permission each time we propose to take off if we are planning to depart for Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean. We must provide advance detailed information about where, when, and who, including the names, social security numbers, addresses, etc., of all persons who will be in the aircraft. The justification for this, they say, is that we, our spouses, family or friends might be on their mysterious and top secret "No Fly List." The most significant aspect of this is that Homeland Security has indicated that this is a preliminary step toward their ultimate objective of requiring this data submission prior to EVERY aircraft takeoff in America, regardless of destination. Keep this in mind as we continue.

It is important to understand that this requirement breaks entirely new ground. While ENTERING any country requires formalities, never, ever, has it been necessary to seek and receive government permission to LEAVE America, the "land of the free," much less to travel within its borders. And never, ever, has it been proposed that such permission is somehow necessary to preserve "national security." This is a requirement only previously seen in Iron Curtain dictatorships.

Another entirely new and very unsettling aspect of this program has just surfaced in the form of several incidents in which citizens who filed the required information and received official permission to depart the USA have been detained as they were preparing to take off and had their personal aircraft, luggage, wallets, purses, etc., searched by government agents. In one particularly frightening case (Long Beach, California) the airplane was blocked in by multiple vehicles with red lights and sirens and the occupants forced from their plane, hands on their heads, by "screaming" agents from several agencies pointing drawn weapons. In this and all the other incidents, after extensive searches the agents told the citizens it had been just a "routine ramp check" and departed, leaving the shaken travelers to repack their belongings. This activity, totally unrelated to traditional arrival customs checks, also breaks new ground. On the face of it, it seems to clearly violate the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, as it is not a match for any of the situations Courts have ruled would make this type of warrantless "random stop and search" activity permissible.

...What does this mean to the average citizen? Yes, you don't own an airplane and, OK, you really don't give a [bleep] about how airplane owners are treated. But consider this: Do you own an RV? A car or van? All the "justifications" being used to restrict, control and harass aviation people would apply equally to anyone who travels in RVs, cars, vans, busses, trains, bicycles or what-have-you. And if you think that if unchecked it will stop with airplane owners, well, I fear you are sadly mistaken.

via Insty