Murder Bugs Me
Last week, at a journalist event I went to, a squat, gray-haired older woman -- one of those sad-eyed multi-culti types -- overheard me talking rather opinionatedly, shall we say, about the dangers to Western society from Islam. More about her later.
I was talking to some PR agency woman who looked like a public service announcement for why not to have plastic surgery and her female friend/client whose book the PR lady mistakenly tried to push on me.
It turns out the author woman had married one of Arafat's chief advisors, and seemed to have a problem with that only because her husband tried to keep her children -- and keep them in the West Bank, to boot -- after they had marital problems. I was appalled at the woman's choice of partner, and appalled that she wasn't appalled, and made no bones about that. In fact, I got on my broom, and didn't get off for about 20 minutes.
My favorite was when the author said we need more "interfaith" sessions. "No we don't!" I said. "Christians and Jews aren't the problem!" Lecturing them on Islam doesn't change Islam, the real problem, an iota.
I pointed out that I am no fan of the evidence-free belief in god, and find plenty wrong with all religions. I find "The Chosen People" moniker immature and offensive and think religiously-based circumcision of boys is barbaric. I fight efforts by Christians to legislate their beliefs on me, and I don't know how anybody can continue in the Catholic church after the pedophilia scandals and the way they covered them up. I went on to express how disgusted I am by the way Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony is going to parishioners with his hand out, so the Church, said to be the wealthiest landowner in the world, won't have to part with any of their real estate wealth. Whatta scumbag.
That said, of all the religions in the world, Islam is by far the worst. As I pointed out to the woman, there are maybe five Christian nutbags running around blowing stuff up, but they're batshit crazy, or at least sociopathic, and you don't see rabbis or ministers standing up before their flock and telling them to go out and murder people who don't believe as they do.
You can predict what came next: "Not all Muslims..."
No, but far too many Muslims... Twelve percent of Canadian Muslims, for example, thought it was okay to murder the Prime Minister and blow up Parliament, for example. That's 84,000 people.
I told her that I'm an atheist, and if atheists were murdering other people in the name of their beliefs (or, rather, nonbelief), I'd be out marching the streets loudly proclaiming them to be barbarians. Where could I find her speaking out about those who murder in the name of Islam?
She argued that the problem is that people get Islam wrong (as in, it's really "a religion of peace"). Heh. Wrong girl to trot that one out for. I informed her that I'd been reading about Islam since 9/11, and the Koran actually commands Muslims to kill, convert, or tax and humiliate (through "dhimmitude") anyone who is not Muslim. And there's all manner of creepy stuff in there, probably written to justify Mohammed's immoralities, like how he married Aisha when she was six, and consummated the marriage when she was nine.
Islam threatens everything I value -- Western Enlightenment values -- and I think Muslims who remain silent while people are murdering in the name of their religion (and by "silent" I mean Muslims who do not go on the air and vocally protest this, or stage protest marches and the like, just for starters) are near-accomplices to the terror.
I do understand, I told the woman, why Muslims don't speak out. When former Muslims like Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali do, there are death threats against them. And that's probably why, as Christopher Hitchens told me, Sam Harris doesn't write or speak in his real name, and when he writes a letter to the editor of a magazine, his location is always printed as something like "via Internet," while others have "Stamford, Connecticut" and the like printed under their names.
I pointed out that I say all manner of offensive things about how ridiculous I think it is to believe, without evidence, in god, but when I do, Jews and Christians sometimes tell me or e-mail me that they think I'm "offensive" or will "burn in Hell" (Christians say that), but nobody ever e-mails me to tell me they're worried for my safety, as many people did after I wrote THE most mild column mentioning some of the problems for women in Islam.
I could tell that the author and her apparently surgically reconstructed friend/handler were appalled by what I said, and frankly, I was glad. I only wished that they were appalled by what comes out of Islam instead of the fact that I have a problem with it, which I have no problem being vocal about.
I turned to leave, and the squat, gray-haired older woman approached me. She, said, with solemn earnestness, she wanted to tell me about a "study" she'd heard about. "Yes?" I said, smiling a little, and laughing on the inside. (I knew this was going to be good.)
The woman was one of those sad-eyed "spread the love!" types who doesn't understand the difference between "tolerance" and tolerance for a religion in which large numbers of the leaders tell their worshippers to go out and kill the "infidel" (people like the woman and me, who I highly doubt was a Muslim).
The woman described a situation somebody'd set up -- one I'd actually read about in passing but wasn't terribly interested in -- where a man in a cafe refused to serve a girl in a hijab.
The point of the study, apparently, was whether others in the café would speak up against the guy behind the counter. The woman said she was moved to "tears" by how people behaved.
Oh, boo frigging hoo.
I wonder if she's moved to tears for all the people who've died in the 9,000-some attacks by Islamists since 9-11...like the Tibetan Buddhist teachers who were killed for being infidels. As I asked before..."D'ya think that one has something to do with Gaza?"
It seemed she thought the idea that she was moved to tears would be enough and I would be persuaded that Islam isn't a death cult. (Of course, she doesn't think in those terms.)
Whoopsie!
Furthermore, I'm largely libertarian, and rather fond of the act of thinking (as opposed to the act of blind acceptance), so I asked the woman a question: What if the person who came up to the counter was somebody who believed in Nazism, and in full Nazi regalia?
"That's different!" said the woman.
"No it's not," I told her. I told her I find Nazism reprehensible, and I was guessing she did, too, but if you dislike somebody's belief system, and it's your café, why shouldn't you have a right to decide not to serve them?
And yes, this, of course, goes for those café owners who don't want to serve atheists with red hair and skin the color of fresh Wite-Out (me, for example) -- Wite-Out-skinned atheists whose problem isn't that they don't understand Islam...but that they do.
50 Pounds Overweight? Your Husband "Should" Want You Anyway
Just posted another one of my Advice Goddess columns, my response to a silly letter in response to a previous column. The letter writer ends her screed with:
For a few extra pounds to prevent a man from seeing why he fell in love with his wife is barbaric. If you're really in love, you transcend the external. If this woman can find it within herself to love the stuff she's made of, she'll attract attention she never thought imaginable -- the sort only unconditional self-acceptance brings.
An excerpt from my response:
If a woman's sex appeal sprang from inner beauty, Eleanor Roosevelt, who looked like a scone in a housedress, would've been Playboy's hottest selling cover girl of all time.
And a note to those of you who'd like to read me in their local papers, which is how I earn my living. Please e-mail the features editor at your local daily and/or the editor and/or publisher of your local alt weekly. Tell them you'd like to read Amy Alkon's column in the paper, tell them why, and give them my e-mail address (adviceamy at aol dot com) and the address of my site, advicegoddess.com. Many thanks.
E-Mail 'N Run
I love people who write me and tell me I can't write back. Perhaps some of you care to respond in my place, since our little coward here says my e-mail address is blocked:
In a message dated 4/29/08 10:50:27 PM, bbsoldado@riseup.net writes:I think it would be a good idea to fully read something before making a comment about it. I am talking about your comment on the Special Order 40. The people being protected from this are the "victims" not the criminals. As I read the rest of the comments I realized there was many people like you who just want a little bit of attention and want to put their two cents. Stick to your childish blog and leave politics to other people.
PS. Don't bother writing back I already blocked you re e-mail. By the way did you know that the majority of crimes in the US are white on white? of course you didn't TV has you asleep.
The problem is, few cops understand Special Order 40, and don't ask or do anything about a criminal's illegal status, which is why I gave the following quote (in 40 words or less, per the LA Times' requirements for their piece on the topic):
If I want a job cleaning your company's toilets, I'll have to present proof of citizenship and swear under penalty of perjury I'm legal, but if I mug you, beat you, and leave you for dead, it's no questions asked?--Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist, advicegoddess.com
An excerpt from my blog item on this, "A Lot Of Especially Confused Police Officers":
I've talked to cops about this, including an FBI agent I met recently, and the way this plays out in real life is that police officers don't ask criminals about their immigration status.Immigration status should not just be gingerly inquired about but rigorously checked upon arrest. And, in fact, I'd like to see all our immigration laws rigorously enforced. Am I willing to pay more for a head of lettuce? Even dollars more? Sure I am. And more for a carwash, too. Especially now, with the danger from terrorism, it's especially stupid for us to have porous borders and barely enforced immigration laws.
My pal Heather MacDonald, a Manhattan Institute fellow, testified before the House on "sanctuary laws" like Special Order 40, which she calls "a serious impediment to stemming gang violence and other crime" and "a perfect symbol of this country's topsy-turvy stance towards illegal immigration."
Plus, we're paying to keep these people in jail instead of dumping them over the border where they belong.
Here's a link to the actual, printed Special Order 40. I actually linked it in the blog item I've excerpted above, but, apparently, magically, without reading it as I did it!
When Life Gives You Idiots...
You could've filled Tiger Stadium (aka Comerica Park) with the tidal wave of idiot-ade in this little drama.
Start with one University of Michigan archeology professor, a little more versed in ancient culture than consumer culture, who takes his 7-year-old kid to the ball game.
He spots a sign: Mike's Lemonade, $7. Being a nice dad, he buys his kid a lemonade. Yeah, the price is kind of inflated, but it's the ball park, and he's probably focused on having a nice time with his kid.
Whoops, seems that's not just Mike's Lemonade, but Mike's Hard Lemonade, with a whopping 5% alcohol in it. Brian Dickerson tells the tale for the Freep:
If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
...It wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.
"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.
"You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.
...An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.
Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the boy admitted he was feeling a little nauseated.
The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.
"Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home."
But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.
...And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk outside, wondering when they'd see their little boy again.
And yes, the CPS nitwits actually put the kid in foster care. Meanwhile, there are probably hundreds of kids in Detroit, in foster care and out, direly in need of assistance.
My big wish? That there were a TV show to replicate the role of the town stocks in the Middle Ages, where "public servants" shown to have their heads planted halfway up their small intestine will not simply be rewarded with pay raises, pensions, and vacation time, but with the kind of reception they actually deserve.
P.S. I vote for Professor Ratte to pitch the first rotten tomato of the season.
Oh yeah, and about childhood alcohol consumption, I agree with addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele who contends that the healthy approach is giving kids alcohol in moderation, and teaching them healthy habits. When alcohol's not forbidden, it's really not such a big deal. And I say that also from personal experience, as somebody who, as a kid, was offered "tastes" of whatever liqueur my dad was drinking, and wine on Jewish holidays.
Yep, Manishevitz, the Amarone of the suburban Detroit Jews. On that note, I do have to admit: It is possible that if my parents served better wine I'd now be a crack whore/blogger posting this piece via borrowed Wifi from my favorite gutter.
Meanwhile, let's just hope the statute of limitations has expired, as my dad's a little old to manage in DeHoCo (Detroit House of Corrections).
Sword Control
In other kid-related idiocy today, two students were expelled from Minnesota high schools for buying souvenir swords during a spring break trip to the UK. Bao Ong writes for the Pioneer Press:
A chaperone found the duct-taped boxes that held the swords after the students left the store. The swords were confiscated on the trip and never made it to Minnesota. The students flew home several days early, and the district disciplined the students when they returned."The severity of the punishment didn't fit the crime here," said Brad Briggs, 45, an Eagan resident and father of one of the expelled teens. "There was no intent of violence."
Briggs spoke at a Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School Board meeting after his son, a 16-year-old sophomore at Eagan High School, was kicked out of classes for the remainder of the school year after buying a $60 set of three samurai swords in York, England.
...The other student, a senior, was expelled from the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley for the remainder of the school year. At first, she was not going to be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies. However, after negotiations, school officials agreed to let her graduate with her class.
She had bought an 18-inch sword that was a "Lord of the Rings" replica for Father's Day, said her father, Dennis Fischbach.
..Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, went through a similar situation when he was superintendent in Northfield, Minn.
"Schools are in a real Catch-22," he said.
A popular student once brought a toy gun to the high school, and Kyte had to expel him.
"Had I let him off the hook, the signal would've gone to students that we didn't care about the policy," Kyte said.
A fourth-grader from an Asian immigrant family once brought a big knife, without his parents knowing, for a show-and-tell activity at school because the knife was important in the family, Kyte said.
The student was suspended, he said.
Whatever you do, don't think of school as a place that kids learn to think, because they're learning by example from the adults running the place, that there's no place for reason in their lives. Genius.
Oh yeah, on a related note, here's Cathy Seipp in a 2002 Reason piece, "When 'Zero Tolerance' Collides With Children's Health":
Just before the beginning of this school year, the Bristol Township School Board in Pennsylvania decided that students with asthma must keep their emergency inhalers in the school office, rather than on hand.On September 7, the board received a letter from Nancy Sander, executive director of the Allergy and Asthma Network/Mothers of Asthmatics (AANMA), a national asthma support and education group based in Fairfax, Virginia. Sander's letter neatly encapsulated the all-too-common frustration of parents when their doctor's advice about how to care for an asthmatic child encounters a school with an entrenched hall-monitor mentality. The letter read, in part:
"The decision to accommodate and facilitate a child's needs with asthma is far easier than pretending their needs do not exist or that restricting student access to medications is for the safety of all students. To do so places your students with asthma at greater risk of death or missed school days, their classmates at risk of witnessing their death, and your school board at risk of lawsuits....
"If a student placed a plastic bag over a teacher's head for a brief moment, the student would be charged with assault. But a school board voting to restrict a child's access to his life-saving asthma medication is no less guilty of a crime. Is Bristol Township School Board really ready to accept responsibility for violating a child's right to breathe? Are you prepared to breach the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act?"
The answer: School administrators will do almost anything to avoid the need to think, and will only reverse their asinine blanket policies when pushed by tireless advocates like Nancy Sander.
Richard Dawkins' Bitches
Poor dears, fired from their jobs in science or persecuted for supporting "Intelligent" Design -- as detailed in the silly movie "Expelled." Evolved Rationalist explains the real deal:
(Stein) interviews people who were supposedly expelled or persecuted for supporting ID. He touts the case of Michael Egnor as an example of this great 'Darwinist' persecution that rivals what Hitler did to the Jews. Now, get ready for this - all that happened to Egnor was that some people criticized him on the internet. Yes, let me repeat myself if this does not shock you enough: Egnor was criticized on the internet. This is one of the examples of 'Darwinist' persecution of ID that threatens the very idea of freedom and is comparable to the Holocaust. Egnor was the very same medical doctor (!) who remarked that one of the reasons evolution is false is because 'brain tumors don't evolve to make better brains'. Come on now, Egnor, how could you make such ignorant statements and then get all whiny about being 'persecuted' when you are called out on your fallacy? If you can't take the heat, get the fuck out of the scientific ring. If you can't handle criticism, shut the fuck up. Since some creationists have criticized me on the internet; according to Stein, I am the victim of creationist persecution. A sword cuts both ways, IDiots.Stein also lies about how Richard Sternberg's life was nearly destroyed after he was fired from the Smithsonian for supporting ID. However, the truth is a lot less sensational than what the IDiots claim. Sternberg was never employed by the Smithsonian. He was an unpaid research associate and he still has full access to research facilities at the museum. As I don't want to continue beating a dead horse, the real stories about the so-called 'academics' who were expelled for supporting ID can be found here.
The biggest surprise about the movie, reports Evolved Rationalist, is what an utter bore it was. What I did get a laugh out of was this little side note on Evolved Rationalist's site:
If you are a Bible-thumping, anti-science, theistarded fundie hoping to convince me that your book of horseshit lies is the true word of your zombie god because your imaginary sky daddy said so, don't bother. Prepare to use your brain if you want an actual response from me. Thanks!
For the funniest take I've read on "Expelled" (via Respectful Insolence), check out the piece in Real Detroit Weekly by Jay Davis (scroll down, second-to-last and last entry):
Mark Mathis, one of the producers of Expelled, wants the "theory" of Intelligent Design (ID) taught in science classrooms alongside evolution. Proponents of ID are fond of saying that it's not the same as creationism (read: creationism sans the talking snake and the magic rib). But if ID isn't creationism, then oral sex isn't sexual relations. Beyond semantic nuances, the underlying argument of creationism and ID is the same: If there is any phenomenon that science has yet to provide an explanation for, there clearly is no scientific explanation--God did it....If we do decide to teach Intelligent Design along with evolution, let's at least be consistent and give equal time to other supernatural theories. Here are a few suggestions:
•The theory of relativity will be taught alongside the theory of divinity, which maintains that E = whatever God good and well pleases.•Gravitational theory will be taught alongside the theory of Deliberate Motion, which proposes that celestial bodies do not move as a result of gravitational force, but as a result of an Intelligent Mover pushing them around.
•The germ theory of disease will be considered, but so will the Divine Retribution theory, which posits the existence of an intelligence who distributes diseases in order to punish sins. Of course, this will necessitate that medical schools give time to traditional pharmaceutical approaches to healthcare, as well as "faith-based" approaches, which will rely on prayer and the sacrifice of baby rams.
Mileys Of Bad Road
If you're 15, and a role model for millions of girls, and still look like a child, can you maybe wait a few years before you pose semi-naked (and looking ridiculous in red lipstick) for Annie Liebovitz?
Islam Goes Comedic
Hugh Grant ex Jemima Khan gets death threats from Islamists for supporting the Quilliam Foundation, a Muslim think tank set up by former extremist Maajid Nawaz to preach Islamic "tolerance." Dan Newling writes for The Daily Mail:
Meanwhile, comments on fundamentalist websites have condemned the 34-year-old's decision to get involved with the group....One site labels Mrs Khan a "fujiar" - an Arabic word meaning someone who unashamedly and publicly commits sin.
Posting pictures of Mrs Khan in a bikini and kissing a female friend at a nightclub, the site says: "This is the same 'socialite' Jemima who is regularly pictured in chick-mags in miniskirts and low-cut dresses hopping in and out of nightclubs - and she is going to be lecturing us on true Islam?!"
It continues: "Getting unmarried, public fujiar, clad in miniskirts and bikinis, to lecture us on true Islamic values, man what has the world come to?"
The site also criticises Mr Nawaz for engaging in "un-Islamic" behaviour, such as visiting nightclubs and being friendly with a former girlfriend.
Mrs Khan, who was married to Imran Khan, the former cricket captain of Pakistan, was accompanied by a bodyguard at the launch in London.
She said: "I can't claim to speak for Muslims. I am certainly very far from most people's image of what a good Muslim is and that makes me an easy target for those who don't want Quilliam to succeed.
"Someone has to stand up and tell the truth that there is no conflict between being British and being Muslim. Someone has to give moderate Muslims a voice and I believe that Quilliam is that organisation."
Nawaz, too, says he was threatened, by members of the extremist organization he was a former member of:
"It was in Copenhagen, in Demark. I was just walking down the street and suddenly three cars full of guys pulled up. They said they were from Hizb ut Tahrir."They accused me of supporting democracy, which is a crime for them. I felt threatened but luckily managed to get away."
On a recent blog item about the film, "What The West Needs To Know About Islam," I posted Robert Spencer's words:
"There may be peaceful and moderate Muslims but there is no peaceful and moderate Islam."
I got this comment on that blog item from "john" yesterday night:
Dear Amy. This is a documentary, and just like any other documentary, it is skewed to what the producer wants to tell people.I saw you at the Festival of Books and should have talked some sense into your white american brain.
My response:
Uh, right. You were going to tell me, what? That Islam is this sweet, gentle religion that preaches that non-Muslims should be allowed to live as they choose? And you were maybe were going to add that there aren't a great many Muslims who want to kill, convert, or dhimmi tax "the infidel" and take away our rights?As for my "white american brain" -- what's that about? I don't care what kind of silly religious bullshit people want to believe in as long as they aren't murdering a lot of other people in the name of their particular bullshit.
Feel free to enlighten all of us here with your great genius and the "truth" about Islam.
Is It Discrimination Or "All In A Day's Work"?
Who pays for your pregnancy? And for the ensuing days, weeks, and years of divided responsibility between work and home? Lena Semaan writes in The Guardian about a guy who who came under fire for alleged gender discrimination when he asked a woman on The Apprentice about her child care arrangements. She wonders if this is really gender discrimination, or whether this just reflects new economic realities:
Then there was Harriet Wood, a lawyer who, upon telling her superior she was pregnant was asked, "What will this mean for my deal?" Now while this wasn't exactly the congratulations she might have expected, you can see the partner's point. Despite Harriet's assertion that they "piled on the work" to make her leave you get the feeling that she was just having to do what people in City law firms all seem to do: work stupid hours. This was not so much discrimination as an employer making a rational assumption that if someone was in the kitchen then they could stand the heat. You read on and Harriet herself comes to the conclusion that maybe that wasn't what she wanted or needed.And therein lies the problem. Fundamentally, the workplace in 21st century Britain is economically driven: it exists to fulfil the requirements of commerce; to make goods and services, not to help individuals fulfil Maslow's hierarchy of needs and satisfy their quest for identity - and children.
Brilliant. Right on. Semaan continues:
Forty years ago this wasn't so much of a problem since it was accepted that men went out and earned the money and women, for the most part, stayed home. The fact that people generally subscribed to a common view of how the world should look made things easier.Over time this has given way to the era of the individual and to more fragmented lifestyles. Yet the professional workplace is even more of a hothouse and less a place that can confirm our status as people. Something doesn't fit, at least in British society, because there are a lot of unhappy people. Not just the women who feel discriminated against, but the women who don't; the ones who feel that this middle class disease of "having it all" has sold them down the river.
At the same time, the idea that men have had it all- as Cochrane implies- is a convenient myth. Men have never had the choice of a big career or a complete family life; they still really only have career. How many men do you know get to lead fulfilling lives with their kids outside their job? What's more, all the indicators are that it's not going to get any easier for anyone as economic realities impinge even further. One City friend tells me that in the next 10 years it's going to be very hard for European bankers to compete against Indian and Chinese candidates who will be better qualified. More discrimination. Or just reality?
A bit of the hard, cold reality from the comments under her piece (from "BedfordSam"):
Someone I know runs a Veterinary Clinic employing three other vets, all women (he's male). By coincidence, two of those women took maternity leave at the same time. By law, he had to keep their jobs open for them and he then had the task of finding two people qualified to work as vets but only willing to work during the maternity period. For highly skilled jobs like this, this is nearly impossible. The business nearly went under as his workforce was cut in half, while he didn't have the right for him to permanantly fill these positions. The next time he is employing someone, is it unreasonable for him to ask whether a female interviewee plans to have children in the near future? Otherwise, he might as well unofficially just employ men to avoid having his business crippled again. This is another example where 'equality legislation' actually works AGAINST women. Employers need to know where they stand, many women would be happy to tell them straight what their plans are. However, because they're not allowed to ask the question, it is easier for some employers 'not to risk it' specifically because of this legislation.
Personally, as a woman, if I were looking for a job, I'd sure be standing up in the interview confessing that I not only don't have children, and don't want children, I refer to myself as "BARREN!" In other words, I'm going to be one of those workhorse nuts. In other words, yeah, I'm a woman, but "Hire me!"
The reality is, an employer with half a brain is going to pass over women candidates for male ones...and can you really blame them? They're running a business, not a nursery school. As Semaan points out, this is not about your needs, or your spawn's needs, but about making a profit.
Some will see it as worth their while to make room for women who have other obligations. Some will not. And remember, there are fathers who are the primary caretaker of their kids, but the bottom line is not really which sex is working less because they've got kids (at the moment, it's still women), but "Who pays"? And women in their 20's and 30's are, in general, much more of a kid-based financial risk for any business.
So...the big question: Is it really fair to force business owners to work against their company's best interest just because it's in society's best interest? Why is society's best interest the personal financial responsibility of that guy running the small veterinary clinic?
And finally, remember...an integral part of that "equal pay for equal work" slogan is actually "equal work."
Somebody Needs To March Against Al Sharpton
The vile publicity whore Al Sharpton is promising to "close this city down," meaning New York, over the Sean Bell verdict -- aquitting three police detectives who killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends. Verena Dobnik writes for the AP:
"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."...The rally at Sharpton's office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem's main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out "Kill the police!"
Personally, as somebody who lives in an, uh, edgy neighborhood, I find thanking the police (and firemen) is more appropriate.
My pal, Heather MacDonald, an authority on policing, writes for City Journal:
The allegation that (this) shooting was racially motivated is preposterous. A group of undercover officers working in a gun- and drug-plagued strip joint in Queens had good reason to believe that a party leaving the club was armed and about to shoot an adversary. When one of the undercovers identified himself as an officer, the car holding the party twice tried to run him down. The officer started firing while yelling to the car's occupants: "Let me see your hands." His colleagues, believing they were under attack, fired as well, eventually shooting off 50 rounds and killing the driver, Sean Bell. No gun was found in the car, but witnesses and video footage confirm that a fourth man in the party fled the scene once the altercation began. Bell and the other men with him all had been arrested for illegal possession of guns in the past; one of Bell's companions that night, Joseph Guzman, had spent considerable time in prison, including for an armed robbery in which he shot at his victim.Nothing in these facts suggests that racial animus lay behind the incident. (Though this detail should be irrelevant, the undercover team was racially mixed, and the officer who fired the first shot was black.)
And here's a blog item I posted in the past, "Who Marches Against The Cop Killers?" linking to a great piece by Heather about the cops who put their lives on the line every day to protect people -- and lots of them, black people -- from violent crime.
It's Still Stealing If You're Stealing From A Business
There was a post up at Consumerist about a man who was pumping gas at a Maryland convenience store when he noticed that the gas, advertised for $3.54, was only $1.54. Ben Popkin at Consumerist writes:
He then did the right thing and told the store about it. "My friends are ridiculing me for informing the store clerk of the error," writes Tony, "but the way i figure it - I would be complaining if it had been ringing up at $4.54/gallon instead so how would it be any better if i tried to rip them off?"
Too many people think it's okay to rip off a business, while they would probably be loath to steal from an individual. I'm frequently amazed (but not surprised, unfortunately) at all the commenters on Consumerist who, for example, high-five those who manage to take advantage of an advertising mistake to screw a store. You have to wonder how they manage to get out of asking themselves how they'd feel, and how fair it would be, if it were the other way around -- the business taking advantage of them.
Frankly, if you complain when a business takes advantage of you, you have no business taking advantage of a business. Ethics are ethics.
To take this a step further, if you're vocal when a business or government arm does something wrong, it's only fair that you're vocal when they do something right, as I am when a business or somebody in a government office goes out of their way for me.
"Deadbeat Dads" Who Are Actually Moms
How about we forego the nifty alliteration, as Instapundit suggests, and call people who don't pay for the kids they've brought into the world what they are: "deadbeat parents." Oh yeah, or rather, "parents."
And sure, there are those who have suddenly been stricken ill with some grave disease and cannot work, but there are lots and lots and lots of those who either leave it to the other parent or to the rest of us to pick up their kids' tab. But, these parents aren't just dads. In fact, there are loads of deadbeat moms out there.
Here's a story on this by Liza Porteus on Fox about how the percentage of women who are deadbeat parents is actually much higher than the percentage of men who are:
Census figures show only 57 percent of moms required to pay child support -- 385,000 women out of a total of 674,000 -- give up some or all of the money they owe. That leaves some 289,000 "deadbeat" mothers out there, a fact that has barely been reported in the media.That compares with 68 percent of dads who pay up, according to the figures.
Men who are due child support are also getting tired of deadbeat moms' excuse that they can't pony up the money, and some courts have responded.
California lawyer Eudene Eunique in February was denied a passport because she was $30,000 behind in child-support. Instead of spending money on visiting her family in Mexico and on business contracts, the appeals court ruled Eunique's money should go to her kids.
Meanwhile, warrant officers in southwest Florida earlier this summer dubbed an effort to list the area's top deadbeat moms who owed up to $19,000 in support as "Operation Father's Day." Included on the list were Trudi Dana, 43, who owes $19,001 and 29-year-old Mary Mahadie Friar, who owes $16,493.
Of course, the problem of deadbeat dads remains a serious one. Many more men than women have to pay child support, making the overall number of deadbeat dads much greater.
The statistics show 4.3 million moms out of 6.3 million who are supposed to receive child support actually get it. That leaves the alarming figure of about 2 million deadbeat dads, putting them more in the media spotlight than deadbeat moms.
But men also still pay much more in child support. The Census Bureau last month also released numbers showing fathers paid an average of $3,000 to custodial moms in 1997. Women paid little over half that. Moms also get about 60 percent of what they are owed, whereas dads only get 48 percent.
Not only are the dads paying up more when they don't have custody, but when the court does hand the kids over to dads, they work more than moms who have custody.
I'm tired of all the demonization of men. It's not only unfair to men, it poisons relations between men and women, and allows women who behave badly to get a pass. Come on, when you hear "deadbeat" in relation to parenting, what's the next word that comes to mind?
How about we change that? Demonize deadbeat parents, and let's not get all specific about what's behind their zippers when it's what's in their bank account and who it is or isn't getting sent to that's the essential issue.
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Advice Goddess Lite
Sorry to have the pickins' a little slimmer than usual around here the past few days. (No, I'm not getting lazy!) I'm doing two events this weekend at LA Times Festival of Books (both -- woohoo! -- sold out).
First, I'm moderating a panel about happiness at noon on Saturday afternoon. Later in the day, I'm on with Dr. Laura. I was supposed to just introduce her, but she read my columns and blog, and liked what she saw, even plugged me as "ferociously funny" on the radio, and asked me to be up with her the whole time. I'll intro her, kick off the questioning with my own questions for her, and then moderate the audience questions. Writing her intro now! Back to the usual blog volume in the next few days!
This Week's Islam-Defending Nitwit
His defense is nitwit-ier because he's from Britain (says so on his personal photo blog), and Britain is pretty much a lost cause, and will surely be a Muslim country under Sharia law in decades, thanks to the proportion of the Muslim immigrant and convert population to those with Western values.
Not surprisingly, the guy -- "Tom White" -- has a link on his blog to the creep in America recently stinking up my comments section who posts photos of professional photographers and cartoonists including Gary Larson without offering payment or obtaining permission. Tom, who probably found me through that blog, apparently does the same on the blog he linked to in his comment.
Here is his comment on my entry, What Color Is Your Terrorist, about Muslim groups demanding that people (John McCain, for example) quit their habit of adding the word "Islamic" before the word "terrorist."
I wrote:
Of course, the single best way to stop people from thinking of Muslims when they think of terrorists is for Muslims to speak out against other Muslims murdering people in the name of their religion.When do you think that is likely to happen? Especially considering how the Koran, a veritable recipe book of death, commands killing the infidel right and left; for example, by cutting off their heads and fingertips.
Would you like flies with that?
Wise Tom White commented:
Seriously - have you not been paying attention?You say "Of course, the single best way to stop people from thinking of Muslims when they think of terrorists is for Muslims to speak out against other Muslims murdering people in the name of their religion."
I am constantly hearing from Muslims who condemn killing and are horrified that terrorist groups are abusing their religion. It's just that the right wing media never reports on it. Maybe you should get out into the community and do some investigative journalism instead of following some misguided notion that all Muslims advocate murder.
I respond:
"The right-wing media"? What, Fox News? National Review? The op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal? The Washington Times? Yes, that right-wing media is real vast.Sorry, I'm not a right winger (nor am I a left-winger), but an atheist who's largely libertarian (except not for open borders) and there's far more liberal lean in the media than anything else. Check out the "40 on 40" piece in the LA Times. Patterico and I are two of the few who aren't thrilled that the police don't ask (or, better yet, rigorously check to see) whether criminals in their "care" are deport-worthy.
If Muslims spoke up, they'd be on TV and doing P.R. The fact that you know three Muslims who are horrified by terrorism (and what civilized person isn't?) isn't the same as "speaking up."
"Maybe you should get out into the community and do some investigative journalism instead of following some misguided notion that all Muslims advocate murder."
The people speaking up, vocally, are few and far between -- Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and a handful of others. Why is this? Because any Muslim or former Muslim who speaks up against Islam to more than their friends has their life in danger.
Read much, Big Tom? I've been reading about Islam since 9-11. It not just condones violence against the infidel (that's us, sweetiepie) it commands it: to convert or kill, or at least tax and humiliate those who aren't Muslims.
You might know three nice Muslims who work at IBM, but in Canada, 12 percent of Muslims polled said it was groovy with them to blow up Parliament and murder the Prime Minister. 12 percent? That's not many, right? No, just 84,000 people.
I'm doing just what I should. Shouting out over the heads of nitwits like you in hopes of getting people to realize the danger to everything we value in our society from Islam.
A word on "misunderstanding" Islam from a commenter over at Jihadwatch:
From the 1.2 billion Muslims, less than 1% of all Muslims truly understand Islam. This means that less 120 million Muslims understand Islam and about 7.1 billion have no idea what Islam is about. Islam can only be understood by the few Muslims who study Islam and promote Jihad aka terrorists according to the Koran. So anyone who is not a Jihadi is a misunderstander of Islam....Before Muslims can cry that Islam is misunderstood they, themselves, need to understand Islam. And here comes the double whammy, if more Muslims were to understand Islam the terrorism would increase proportionally. The world is a better place when fewer people understand Islam. Islam essentially means to forcefully convert those who will and to kill those who resist conversion to Islam.
Here's Robert Spencer on, heh, "Islam Is Peace":
And here's Wafa Sultan:
Blowing Innocent People Up, And Proud
Haroon Siddique writes for The Guardian of the home video made by the ringleader of the July 7 London bombings, Mohammed Siddique Khan:
In the footage, the Edgware Road bomber sits on a bed at his wife's family home, cradling his daughter and softly telling her that what he was doing was "for the sake of Islam"....During the farewell message to his daughter, recorded on November 16 2004, Khan expresses regret that he will miss out on watching her grow up, but tells her: "I have to do this thing for our future and it will be for the best, inshallah, in the long run."
The video was among a variety of items given by Khan's wife, Hasina Patel, to a friend, Faiza Rehman, who handed it to police in the aftermath of the atrocity.
The jury was told there was further footage, not played to the court, in which Khan said: "Be strong, learn to fight - fighting is good. Be mummy's best friend. Take care of mummy - you can both do things together like fighting and stuff."
Aww, how touching. Can you imagine a parent -- Jewish, Christian, or atheist -- who would be proud to raise a child to be a murderer?
Go Ahead, Buy An Illegal Immigrant A New Liver
It's your choice. Instead of leaving your money to your children, leave your money to somebody else's child who's in the country illegally, and is in need of an organ transplant. Feel free to pay what the LA Times' Anna Gorman reports is the price:
The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, and anti-rejection medications can run more than $30,000 annually, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide.
People argue that we should give free replacement organs to illegals on humanitarian grounds. That sounds really wonderful. But, the thing is, the treatment isn't free -- well, except to the illegal immigrant, because we American taxpayers are picking up the tab. And we American taxpayers are also going to the back of the line to get transplants if we need them.
Here, from Gorman's story, is how it worked for an illegal Mexican immigrant:
Ana Puente was an infant with a liver disorder when her aunt brought her illegally to the U.S. to seek medical care. She underwent two liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state.But when Puente turned 21 last June, she aged out of her state-funded health insurance and was unable to continue treatment at UCLA.
This year, her liver began failing again and she was hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center. In her Medi-Cal application, a USC doctor wrote, "Her current clinical course is irreversible, progressive and will lead to death without another liver transplant." The application was denied.
The county gave her medication but does not have the resources to perform transplants.
Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full Medi-Cal coverage. Puente did so, her benefits were restored and she is now awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.
Puente's case highlights two controversial issues: Should illegal immigrants receive liver transplants in the U.S. and should taxpayers pick up the cost?
Again, beyond the cost factor, the problem is, there aren't a whole lot of spare livers and kidneys and things flying around. Here's how it works out for us legal, taxpaying types:
Immigration status does not play a role in allocating organs.But some say that it should and that illegal immigrants should return to their home countries for care rather than receive organs and costly transplants ahead of legal residents and U.S. citizens.
"All transplants are about rationing," said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. "I just don't think the public ought to be funding any kind of benefits for people who are breaking the law."
Larry Gonzalez, a U.S. citizen who has hepatitis C, has known for a decade that he needs a new liver but was just placed on the transplant waiting list last week.
"Why do we have to get in line behind immigrants, foreigners, when we have enough people here to fill the hospitals?" asked Gonzalez, 54, who lives in Ventura. "It just seems obvious to me that we shouldn't be taking a back seat."
I'm not saying we should deny these children organs. I'm just saying we shouldn't be forced to pay for them. Those who squeal that all health care should be "free" (hey, slow learners...where do you think the funding comes from?) are quite "free" to show their humanitarianism the free-market way. Ideally, across the border. (I don't know why we bother keeping immigration laws on the books, wasting all that ink and paper, if we're not going to enforce them.)
And hey, quick question: How many of you U.S. residents commenting here get free medical care? How about a free liver? Two free livers? Three free livers? Or how about FOUR free livers -- the number being given to the illegal immigrant girl leading Gorman's piece. And, oh yeah -- how many of you are illegal immigrants?
And, another question: How many people who read this LAT piece are nixing their decision to donate their organs, like these two commenters on the LAT site:
21. I am cancelling my donor permission on my drivers license. The ultimate insult to me as an American would be to have my organs used to prolong the life of someone who is in the United States illegally and has never contributed to the American economy, but has sucked the system dry. Submitted by: American 2:31 PM PDT, April 14, 200822. I don't care who you are...no one is deserving of 4 livers. After the first two, the doctors and hospitals should have come to the realization that the body is going to reject whatever they put inside it. There is no way an American citizen would be given the same level of treatment in Mexico, China or the Phillippines. I will no longer be an organ donor.
Submitted by: Sandra V.
2:29 PM PDT, April 14, 2008
A few more comments I found compelling:
31. Because she's here illegally from birth, we owe her her fourth liver? So far, we've 'contributed' at least $2 million for this illegal alien. And, the young man is 'mad' because we owe him for a liver just because he's here illegally? And, the idiots in our governments can't figure out why American taxpayers don't want to be dying because the health care they support is going to felons. Submitted by: ethel640 12:44 PM PDT, April 14, 200832. Stephanie wrote:"I'm sorry but we are not god we do not hsave the right to way who should ive or die." Stephanie, that's what the whole transplant decision process that these doctors go through is about--deciding who gets organs and who doesn't. If you're too old, in too bad a shape, a drug addict or alcoholic, whether you or someone can pay, it matters. Why shouldn't it matter whether or not you're in this country illegally?
Submitted by: Ali
12:27 PM PDT, April 14, 200851. I've been in the U.S. since I was a baby, too (I'm a U.S. citizen). No one takes care of me unless I pay the bills! The sense of entitlement expressed by this young woman is mind-boggling!!!!! I'm not sure if this article was meant to gather sympathy for illegals, but, if it was, it failed miserably. All I feel is anger...not just anger at this young woman and others like her, but anger at every politician in the entire country who refuses to obey U.S. laws and send these illegals back to their countries of origin.
Submitted by: davenjan
9:12 AM PDT, April 14, 2008
thanks, Jessica
Can Someone Please Explain To Me Why This Offensive?
I started writing this blog item a while ago, and forgot to post it. There was this letter posted on Romenesko's Poynter media news site:
From Karen Lincoln Michel, UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.: As you know, making sound editing choices is a cornerstone in producing good journalism. So when UNITY: Journalists of Color noticed a headline in your Romenesko column on Friday, March 1, it called into question the editing decision to repeat a culturally insensitive remark uttered by a union leader in reaction to layoffs announced at Newsday.The headline: "Newsday's 'getting rid of more Indians, keeping the chiefs'" referenced a quote made to Newsday by Dennis Grabhorn, president of a local union. Although UNITY considers Grabhorn's remarks thoughtless and insensitive, his major complaint in the news story was leveled against Newsday for a lack of commitment to growing circulation on Long Island.
But rather than reflecting the real story, the choice was made to sensationalize a comment that many Native Americans find offensive for its arrogance in reducing Native culture to a cliché - of which there are many in a society that continues to portray Native people as historical figures with no relevance to mainstream America today.
So...we're also offensive if we make "historical" references to people in other cultures? Say, like this literary/historical one on Romenesko today (and sorry, I guess my mind is permanently set to "filthy!" but I found it rather hilarious):
Brauchli's exit is like the boy taking his finger out of the dike
Don't hold your breath waiting for the Dutch (or the dykes, who probably found that as hilarious as I did) to gather for a protest march. Or, I'm guessing, for Lincoln Michel to stand up for the historicalization, or whatever P.C. name they probably give this sort of thing, of the Dutch.
Lincoln Michel's letter continues on Romenesko:
The larger issue for UNITY, and for all of us in the news business, is the tremendous change and loss of jobs our industry is experiencing. We greatly sense the severity of what's happening at news organizations nationwide, such as at Newsday and other Tribune Company properties. With that in mind, UNITY has repeatedly issued pleas to the news industry to keep diversity of its workforce foremost in the decision-making process when considering cutbacks.At the same time, cultural diversity must go deeper than the workforce itself. It must become embedded in the editorial decision-making process, even when choosing the headline for a blog entry.
I'm sorry, but the "diversity" pandering makes me ill, as it generally translates to "Avoid giving opportunities to white people," which I find not a mark of diversity but a mark of racism.
As I've said before, you don't fight discrimination by discriminating. Also, how insulting to be a "person of color" who's achieved something, and to be suspected of being given an unearned leg up.
On a related note, sometimes what people suspect is discrimination isn't. I met a friend of some Paris friends at the Huntley Hotel bar in Santa Monica on Sunday. Beautiful place, penthouse with views of the ocean and the city.
After we got our check, a large black man came over and asked to see it -- a rather strange request. It turned out he was interested in seeing what was printed at the top of the check. Our check -- the drink orders of two tall white women -- had "Brad" or some name like that printed at the top, with an underscore and number. The check of the two black guys seated in the booth said "Homie_2" on top.
It wasn't busy, and the guys behind the bar caught wind of what he was asking. "I'm 'Brad'," said one, with a smile. "And I'm Homie," said the other. Oh. Homie was a guy's name -- not some rude code that two "homeys" were seated in that particular server's booth.
Rough. Sometimes I sense that people don't like me -- usually not because I'm the color of fresh Wite-Out -- but because I'm telling them they're boring and should put a muzzle on it when they're in close public quarters, shouting into their cell phone.
I'd Vote For Sasquatch
...If he floated some economically reasonable, feasible ideas about health care and Social Security, and sound policy on immigration, terrorism, and other issues. I have yet to hear much more than rabid pandering from those candidates with some chance of appearing on the ballot.
Granted, there are those who won't vote for Hillary because she's a chick, and those who won't vote for Obama because he's half black -- same as there are those who won't vote for McCain because he's an old white guy, and they think it's about time there was a vagina in the big chair in The Oval Office (I mean, one that belongs to somebody who's running the country, not just blowing the guy who's got the job.)
I'd venture there are actually a lot of people that think as I do -- people who are sick of the Democratic dance and the Republican dance, and who just want a candidate who isn't a sleazy sellout with ideas that wouldn't get them a passing grade in a community college beginning econ class.
Yet, here's Nora Ephron, popping in at the Huffington Post to chatter about her problem with the primary. And I bet you can guess what that is:
Now that there are only two Democratic candidates, it's suddenly horribly absolutely crystal-clear that this is an election about gender and race....This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men.
... If Hillary pulls it out in Pennsylvania, and she could, and if she follows it up in Indiana, she can make a credible case that she deserves to be the candidate; these last primaries will show which of the two Democratic candidates is better at overcoming the bias of a vast chunk of the population that has never in its history had to vote for anyone but a candidate who could have been their father or their brother or their son, and who has never had to think of the president of the United States as anyone other than someone they might have been had circumstances been just slightly different.
Hillary's case is not an attractive one, because what she'll essentially be saying (and has been saying, although very carefully) is that she can attract more racist white male voters than Obama can. Nonetheless, and as I said, she has a case.
I'm thinking of the term "voting one's pocketbook," and I have to laugh. With big financial institutions going under and getting government welfare, and all these Crazy Eddie-style mortgages going into foreclosure, plus the threat of terrorism, and the U.S. comptroller warning that we've borrowed our country into such a deep hole, if we don't dig out fast we'll never get out...do people really have the luxury to vote along color or gender lines? From what I read and hear it seems that that many or most people are voting for the candidate they despise the least.
Now, it is possible I'm the naive one on this, or perhaps you'll agree with me that Nora Ephron should stick to promoting failed ideas that are more within her range of expertise, like Bewitched.
What Color Is Your Terrorist?
Apparently, terrorists come in a variety of different colors and flavors! In fact, it's possible that, right now, groups of militant Quakers and Tibetan nuns are packing up suitcase nukes in hopes of taking out Chicago. And come on, this is something more people should know!
Inspired, perhaps, by the job-changers' manual, What Color Is Your Parachute?
Rowan Scarborough writes for The Washington Times:
A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.
"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."
An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.
Of course, the single best way to stop people from thinking of Muslims when they think of terrorists is for Muslims to speak out against other Muslims murdering people in the name of their religion.
When do you think that is likely to happen? Especially considering how the Koran, a veritable recipe book of death, commands killing the infidel right and left; for example, by cutting off their heads and fingertips.
Would you like flies with that?
via jihadwatch
The Mind Of A Soon-To-Be Formerly Married Man
A long letter Tom Leykis read on the air.
The message, in brief: Put out or be put out.
The Latest In Proposed Thought Crimes
Stupid "hate crimes" laws are giving birth to stupid kin. Ever sat on a park bench and watched kids play on a playground? You could soon go to jail for it in Maine. Dave Choate, on the Maine newspaper site Seacostonline.com, writes that "those who peer at children in public could find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Maine soon:
A bill that passed the House last month aims to strengthen the crime of visual sexual aggression against children, according to state Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York....Her involvement started when Ogunquit Police Lt. David Alexander was called to a local beach to deal with a man who appeared to be observing children entering the community bathrooms. Because the state statute prevents arrests for visual sexual aggression of a child in a public place, Alexander said he and his fellow officer could only ask the man to move along.
"There was no violation of law that we could enforce. There was nothing we could charge him with," Alexander said.
...Under the bill, if someone is arrested for viewing children in a public place, it would be a Class D felony if the child is between 12 to 14 years old and a Class C felony if the child is under 12, according to Alexander.
Pedophilia is evil, but this is just plain idiotic. And dangerously wrong.
And sure, this law is meant to catch sex offenders, but it could be used against anybody, even you, as you sit, absentmindedly watching kids play while thinking on a park bench.
thanks, lujlip
UPDATE: Dr. Helen posts that "it looks like the story isn't true":
At least, that's what Travis Kennedy, Communications Director for Maine Rep. Dawn Hill just told me on the phone. Despite what the news story reported, Kennedy says that the bill never punished mere staring or leering -- the defendant has to be touching or exposing himself, or doing something like looking over a bathroom stall wall. And he said that the burden of proof remains on the state for all elements -- there's no crime just because someone is staring or looking at you.He says that the bill in question just made a minor change in the pre-existing law to make clear that this could be in a private or a public place. He also said that Rep. Hill has been getting a lot of complaints over this, and is upset that the story is false. So there you are -- things aren't quite as insane out there as we'd feared.
Here, from Dr. Helen's comments section, is the text from the bill:
"This amendment replaces the bill. The amendment removes the requirement that visual surveillance, aided or unaided by mechanical or electronic equipment, of the uncovered breasts, buttocks, genitals, anus or pubic area of another person occur in a private place to be a crime. Instead, the amendment specifies that a person who, for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire, intentionally engages in visual surveillance, aided or unaided by mechanical or electronic equipment, of the uncovered breasts, buttocks, genitals, anus or pubic area of another person is guilty of visual sexual aggression regardless of where the surveillance occurs. Surveillance may occur either in a public or private place."
I agree with one of her commenters, averagejoesgym. An excerpt from his comment:
Shannon Love said "It looks like the news reports are keying off the phrase "visual aggression" when this looks to be your standard peeping-tom type legislation updated to include public places."I think that is wrong. The standard of viewing in public places, even if it ony concerns exposed buttocks, breasts, genitals, etc... is ripe for corruption and abuse. What if a teenage girl is flashing or changing? What about mothers changing diapers? What about just flat out false accusations? This is a horrible, horrible law and that Communications Director is spinning like Eli Whitney.
Why Hating Hillary Isn't Misogyny
Camille Paglia is right on, in her piece in the UK Telegraph, "Why Women Shouldn't Vote For Hillary Clinton." An excerpt:
What feminist supporters have recently denounced as troglodytic misogyny in media portrayals of Hillary has in fact been a function of her own strange sexual accommodations and ambiguities. Yes, she may surround herself with luscious, multicultural babes (such as her minder, Huma Abedin, or her now sacked aide, Patty Solis Doyle), but Hillary, despite the rumours, is no lesbian. She's a crucifix-wearing, Methodist do-gooder who confidently thinks she's God's agent. There's no room for random eroticism in her calendar.Genuinely disturbing are the caricatures of Hillary (called "Hitlery" or "the Hildebeast" on the web) that rarely accrue to male candidates: she's portrayed as a hectoring nag, a witch on a broomstick, or a castrating bitch. But if such images were truly generated by simple fear of female power, we would expect to find them around other women politicians too, such as the current female Speaker of the House.
No, Hillary was demonised by the American electorate long before she sought elective office. It is Bill Clinton who is responsible for the tainted sexual aura around his wife.
Furthermore, Hillary's mythomania and her chameleon-like daily alterations of persona and voice are unsettling. (Even Hillary's eye colour is fake: she wears blue contact lenses.) No male candidate enjoys Hillary's options as a woman to tailor her costume to the audience.
Hillary's recent remarks about politics as a "boys' club" resistant to uppity women was sheer demagoguery. By progressing farther than any woman presidential candidate, she has become a role model for future aspirants. But by attaching herself so blatantly to anti-male rhetoric - particularly in view of her debt to her husband - she is espousing a retrograde brand of feminism no longer applicable to the US.
If Hillary loses, batten the hatches against a mass resurrection of paranoid, paleo-feminist martyrs, counting their wounds and wailing at the blood-red moon.
A Lot Of Especially Confused Police Officers
I'm one of 40 "prominent Angelenos and Southern Californians" who has a quote in the L.A. Times on the way the confusing police directive for dealing with illegal immigrants, "Special Order 40" (more here), plays out in real life:
If I want a job cleaning your company's toilets, I'll have to present proof of citizenship and swear under penalty of perjury I'm legal, but if I mug you, beat you, and leave you for dead, it's no questions asked?
--Amy Alkon, syndicated columnist, advicegoddess.com
Another reality-based opinion from the LAT piece:
The misunderstanding about how to apply Special Order 40 is so pervasive that to this day, some officers apparently believe that the order prevents them from cooperating with immigration officials.
--Robert Greene, L.A. Times editorial board member and Opinion L.A. blogger
Here's the LAT's Richard Winton on what Chief Bratton says about it:
Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton said Wednesday that the department's controversial policy on dealing with illegal immigrants was widely misunderstood by the public and some of his own officers, and he would clarify the rule in the next couple of weeks.Bratton strongly defended the basic intent of the policy -- known as Special Order 40 -- which prohibits officers from initiating contact with individuals for the sole purpose of determining whether they are illegal immigrants.
The 29-year-old policy was designed to encourage illegal immigrants to cooperate with police without fear of being deported. It has come under renewed debate in recent weeks after the high-profile killing of a teenager, allegedly by an illegal immigrant gang member.
The scrutiny has spilled over into the City Council, where one member has proposed making it easier for police to inquire about known gang members' immigration status.
Bratton said the recent criticism is based on a faulty understanding of the rule.
"There is a misrepresentation, misinterpretation, misunderstanding on the part of all the concerned parties here -- whether it is immigrant advocates, immigrant haters, the talk shows, drive-time radio talk-show hosts," Bratton said. "When it comes to our situation in L.A ., . . . the vast majority of them don't know what . . . they are talking about."
Bratton acknowledged some of his own officers were also confused about the policy.
Uh, not just some. And anybody who reads the thing is bound to find it confusing.
For example, he said, he has heard accounts of officers who believe they are prohibited from calling federal immigration officials to report known gang members who have committed crimes and reentered the country illegally.Officers privately say they often avoid the issue of a suspect's immigration status altogether -- largely out of fear it will anger superiors who see it as a lightning-rod issue.
"I don't understand that mind-set," Bratton said of such officers. "That is a cop-out."
Instituted in 1979 by then-Chief Daryl F. Gates, Special Order 40 states that "officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person." It is now incorporated into the LAPD manual.
I've talked to cops about this, including an FBI agent I met recently, and the way this plays out in real life is that police officers don't ask criminals about their immigration status.
Immigration status should not just be gingerly inquired about but rigorously checked upon arrest. And, in fact, I'd like to see all our immigration laws rigorously enforced. Am I willing to pay more for a head of lettuce? Even dollars more? Sure I am. And more for a carwash, too. Especially now, with the danger from terrorism, it's especially stupid for us to have porous borders and barely enforced immigration laws.
My pal Heather MacDonald, a Manhattan Institute fellow, testified before the House on "sanctuary laws" like Special Order 40, which she calls "a serious impediment to stemming gang violence and other crime" and "a perfect symbol of this country's topsy-turvy stance towards illegal immigration."
Plus, we're paying to keep these people in jail instead of dumping them over the border where they belong. From MacDonald's testimony:
-- The L.A. County Sheriff reported in 2000 that 23% of inmates in county jails were deportable, according to the New York Times.
As for the contention by Chief Bratton and others that Special Order 40 isn't what caused the murder of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw, as the Culver City Police picked his killer up first, blah blah blah...well, how about this one, from MacDonald's testimony in 2005? (Surely just one of numerous examples in Los Angeles):
Five months ago, Carlos Barrera, an illegal Mexican in Hollywood, Ca., mugged three people, burglarized two apartments, and tried to rape a five-year-old girl. Barrera had been deported four years ago after serving time for robbery, drugs, and burglary. Since his reentry following deportation, he had been stopped twice for traffic violations. But thanks to special order 40, the police had never mentioned him to the immigration authorities, reports the New York Times.
Yoohoo, Chief Bratton?
My Next Car
Not really, since I got a Honda Insight hybrid in 2004, and tend not to buy new things until old things go under, but the Aptera sure is kinda groovy. More about it here, in the FAQ's, but be sure to click on the other link first.
Cost: "The approximate price for the all electric version is $26,900 and the plug-in hybrid $29,900. These prices are subject to change any time before we begin production."
Thanks, Norm!
Arts And Amy Daily
You know, I don't get excited by holidays, and I don't even celebrate my birthday, but this, this is the coolest thing.
Arts & Letters Daily, one of my favorite sites, linked to my critique of Rebecca Soltnit's long LA Times op-ed snivel about how oppressed women supposedly are by men. (That's me below in red, "Well, almost every woman.")
Here's the live link to my Solnit critique, "Rebecca Solnit Is A Sniveling Idiot."
UPDATE: Check out the comments below my Solnit piece. Hilariously, Solnit sycophants are turning out to support her. Not doing very well at it, but they're trying!
The Truth About Violent Video Games
Two Harvard profs, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, have written a research-based book, Grand Theft Childhood, showing that while some kids can go over the edge from 15 or more hours of violent video game playing a week, kids who don't play video games are at risk for violent behavior in the real world.
Here are Kutner and Olson, bringing some data-based realism to the hysteria over violent video games:
In the video above, they highlight some of the problems with the often shoddy approach to research on college campuses, where psych students, not necessarily representative of the population they're supposedly representing, are tested in scenarios unlike anything they'd encounter in the real world.
They also point out what roommates of the VA Tech killer found weird about him: That he didn't play video games at all.
via techdirt
The Prince Of Tall Tales
The Prince Of Wales, as Prince Charles is called across the pond, is being assailed for publishing two guides promoting "alternative" medicine that make "misleading and inaccurate claims about its benefits," writes Times of London science editor Mark Henderson.
Regarding "alternative" medicine, I'm with former New England Journal Of Medicine editor-in-chief Marcia Angell, who, with Jerome Kassirer, wrote:
It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride... 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.
Even Edzard Ernst, a professor of "Complementary Medicine" calls on the Prince to withdraw his guides. Simon Singh, a science writer and broadcaster joins Ernst in writing about the guides (one of which was publicly funded). From the Times of London piece:
"They both contain numerous misleading and inaccurate claims concerning the supposed benefits of alternative medicine." ..."The nation cannot be served by promoting ineffective and sometimes dangerous alternative treatments."Professor Ernst and Dr Singh say the Prince accepted the importance of "rigorous scientific evidence" to alternative medicine, in an article he wrote for The Times in 2000, and point out that more than 4,000 research studies have since been published.
They analysed these studies and previous research for their new book, Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial, finding that only a few treatments, such as some herbal medicines and acupuncture for pain relief, are backed up by the evidence that the Prince demanded. "The majority of alternative therapies appear to be clinically ineffective and many are downright dangerous," the letter says, and it calls on the Prince to withdraw the publications Complementary Health Care: A Guide for Patients and the Smallwood report.
The first document is a pamphlet, part-funded by the taxpayer, that gives advice on finding practitioners of alternative therapies. It is misleading, Professor Ernst said, because it includes disorders for which alternative remedies have been shown to be ineffective. It states, for example, that chi-ropractic is used to treat asthma, digestive disorders and migraine, when it has been shown by rigorous trials only to be useful for back pain. The guide also promotes acupuncture for addiction, when studies suggest that it has no benefit, and homoeopathy, which a major review for The Lancet has indicated works only as a placebo.
Henderson publishes "claims and counters" below his piece. Here are a few of them:
A Guide for Patients Chiropractic: used in disorders of musculoskeletal system such as spine, neck, shoulder problems. It may also be used for asthmaProfessor Ernst: no good evidence for anything other than back pain
Acupuncture: increasingly used in trying to overcome addictions to alcohol, drugs and smoking.
The reliable evidence suggests it does not work for addictions
Cranial therapists: the conditions they treat range from acute to chronic health problems
No good evidence for any of this
Homoeopathy: most often used to treat chronic conditions such as asthma; eczema; fatigue disorders; migraine; menopausal problems; irritable bowel syndrome; Crohn's disease; allergies; repeated infections; depression.
Data do not show homoeopathic remedies to be more than placebos
Reflexologists: work with conditions including pain, chronic fatigue, sinusitis, arthritis, digestive problems, stress-related disorders and menopausal symptoms.
No good evidence for any of this
Reiki: used for physical, mental and emotional conditions
There is no good evidence that Reiki is effective for any condition
In fact, chiropractic can be dangerous, and homeopathy and Reiki are downright ridiculous.
A bit from cancer surgeon/blogger Orac on homeopathy here:
...Homeopathy is nothing more than the most magical of magical thinking writ so large that it's a wonder than anyone can believe it.Think about it. What are the two main principles of homeopathy? The first is "like cures like," which postulates on the basis of the prescientific observations of an 18th century German named Samuel Christian Hahnemann. In reality, this principle is nothing more than sympathetic magic at its root, resembling strongly Frazer's Law of Similarity, which is one of the implicit principles of magic. There's no scientific support for this principle. Even more ridiculous is the law of infinitesimals, which is in essence the claim that the serial dilution of homeopathic remedies with succussion (shaking) somehow makes the remedy more potent. This was a tenuous claim even more than 200 years ago, but when Avagadro's discovery made it abundantly clear that homeopathy is pseudoscience by permitting a simple calculation that demonstrated that typical homeopathic dilutions of 30C (thirty serial one hundred-fold dilutions) are highly unlikely to have a single molecule of the compound left in them. Of course, that hasn't stopped homeopaths from going through all sorts of contortions of logic and science to try to claim that homeopathy is anything more than water and that the benefits claimed for homeopathy are anything more than placebo.
Reiki is where somebody moves their hand over you as a form of "energy healing." I just love that idea. If you believe in that, I always say, how come you don't go in for "energy car mechanics"? Just pay somebody $100 to wave their hands over your busted starter, and see how that works for you; or rather, see how you enjoy being out $100 plus whatever it costs to start taking the bus to work.
Does Your Relationship Come With A Non-Disclosure Agreement?
It's really vile. People who feel wronged by their partner and then air their dirty laundry on a blog -- or YouTube, as in the case of a particularly pathetic apparent golddigger named Tricia Walsh Smith. Leslie Kaufman writes for The New York Times of the main problem, as I see it -- jerks who strip their partner or marriage bare on the 'net when they happen to have kids:
...This kind of brutal honesty is not a good idea for children, especially since most harbor feelings of guilt about their parents' divorce anyway, said Irene Goldenberg, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles."It is not good for children to get personal information in that way," Dr. Goldenberg said. "And people have to consider doing things in the heat of the moment. The way they feel now will not be how they feel in two years, and there is no way it can be retrieved."
More on the marriage of the woman who made the YouTube video from MSNBC's Mike Celizic:
Philip Smith is the president of the Shubert Organization, the largest owner of theaters on Broadway. The organization is responsible for bringing such hits as "Mamma Mia!," "Gypsy" and "A Chorus Line" to the New York stage. Both he and Walsh-Smith, who is 25 years younger than he, are in their second marriages; he has two daughters by his first marriage and she has a son.When they were married, Walsh-Smith, a native of Great Britain, signed a prenuptial agreement giving her the couple's home in Florida and $500,000 a year in the event of a divorce, with the bulk of his estate going to his daughters. Walsh-Smith wants to get the agreement she signed thrown out.
Walsh-Smith wants a divorce, but New York does not have a no-fault divorce law, and marriages can be ended only for cause. In her six-minute YouTube video, Walsh-Smith presents her case, complete with salacious news about the couple's lack of a sex life -- which is grounds for divorce in the Empire State.
Midway through the video, she calls her husband's office to discuss the issue with his personal assistant. Later, she shows the camera her wedding album, making snide comments about family members.
She is furious, self-pitying, catty and weepy in the piece, which was filmed in her New York apartment.
Here's the Tricia Walsh Smith video:
You can't know from one side -- or maybe even if you hear both sides -- who's right. The last thing you're likely to hear is what you should: anybody taking responsibility for the partner they picked.
Young Journalist Drinks And Swears!
If you're his editor, do you 1. Fire his ass? or 2. Yawn and go about your business?
Unfortunately, newspapers these days have more in common with nursery schools than any other business (you wouldn't believe the censorship you never hear about that goes on in the comics pages!).
In other words, WaPo reporter Michael Tunison is now out of a job -- thanks to this devastatingly dirty blog item...in which, no, there's no goat-fucking or anything along those lines...just the word "fucking," the revelation that he works for The Washington Post, and the suggestion that he's drunk off his ass in the photo.
Wooooo!
Okay, so maybe the WaPo doesn't want its reporters revealing such things, or using what's prissily known as "the 'F' word,'" but personally, I don't especially want to read the work of reporters who don't drink or swear...do you?
I'm not saying drinking and swearing is a must, no. It's just that I think a reporter should live a little to be good at his or her job.
More on the story here.
P.S. If what the guy is saying is true, I love that he can make more just blogging than he can from his former job at The Washington Post.
via Romenesko
"Scientology Is Destructive And A Rip-Off"
Former scientologist, actor Jason Beghe, on Scientology.
Thanks, Norm!
Bad Reason #202
...for driving with one hand holding your cell phone to your ear and one hand on the wheel (in this case, coming dangerously close to picking me off in the crosswalk by the Venice/Windward post office).
The dude's excuse for driving as if pedestrians don't matter?
"I was talking to my mother!"
That's his new white Saab in the background. (I guess he sells a lot of Gold's Gym memberships!)
Mom, who was waiting outside the Venice post office, chimes in with bad reason #203 for sonny boy driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on the cell:
"I just got in from Connecticut!"
Me: "Where you should have raised your son better!"
I don't care if Mummy just blew in from Tangiers. How come so few people worry that making it a little more convenient for themselves to talk on their cell phones might make somebody else a little hurt or a little dead?
Gregg, who is watching me post this blog item, said: "Because nobody out there knows you are there and waiting to take their photo."
The Unfair Housing Act
Let's say you're a single mother with a kid looking for a roommate who's also a single mother with a kid. Or you're somebody like me. I don't need a roommate these days, but I've lived with roommates in the past, and my preference is to live with a woman, although she can be straight or gay.
Well, these days, don't be expecting to advertise for what you want or don't want. You'll just have to waste lots of people's time if you want to stay legal, thanks to a recent federal appellate court decision, (the so-called) Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com. From Ayn Rand Institute:
That's because the federal Fair Housing Act and a similar California law ban discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, or marital status in housing transactions."This lawsuit attacks individual liberty in a particularly sensitive area," said Thomas Bowden, an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute. "Adults who contemplate sharing living space should have absolute contractual freedom to use a roommate-matching service that treats their own individual preferences as paramount.
"It's perfectly obvious that an incompatible roommate can make life miserable, as anyone who has occupied a freshman dorm room can testify. People should not have to get government permission to arrange their private affairs according to their own best judgment.
"The government's job is to protect you against physical force and fraud, not to overrule your preference for a roommate who shares your sexual orientation--or not; who is of the same sex--or not; or who has children--or not.
"The law should respect and protect the right of Roommates.com, or any other such matching service, to design a questionnaire that suits their customers' needs. Roommate seekers who object to a particular questionnaire are free to find another matching service, or to start their own.
"This case illustrates why the Fair Housing Act, which does nothing but infringe on freedom of contract in the housing market, should be repealed."
"Discrimination" isn't always bad. To be discriminating is to be choosy, and most people are choosy about who they want living under their roof. Shouldn't this be the roommate-seeker's prerogative? And in the realism department, if you're a single mother looking for same, are you ever going to room with the hairy gay guy in the chaps? Or vice versa?
Our Failed, Multi-Culti Approach To Islamic Totalitarianism
Very interesting article on "'Just War Theory' vs. American Self-Defense" by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein in The Objective Standard, on how America has failed to understand the nature of our enemy and respond accordingly, and appropriately -- which would be with crushing force, and against soldiers and civilians, as did William Tecumseh Sherman on his march on Atlanta during the American Civil War. Moreover, our problem is not just Al Qaeda, but the states behind the terrorism. (And no, Iraq should not have been our focus.) An excerpt:
Of course, America has done something militarily in response to 9/11; it has taken military action against two regimes: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But in addition to these not having been the two most important regimes to target, our military campaigns in each case have drastically departed from the successful wars of the past in their logic, aims, methods--and in their results. In Afghanistan, we gave the Taliban advance notice of military action, refused to bomb many top leaders out of their hideouts for fear of civilian casualties, and allowed many key leaders to escape in the Battle of Tora Borah. And in Iraq, we have done far worse. While we have taken Saddam Hussein out of power, we have neither eradicated the remnants of his Baathist regime, nor defeated the insurgency that has arisen, nor taken any serious precaution against the rise of a Shiite theocracy that would be a far more effective abettor of Islamic Totalitarianism than Saddam Hussein ever was.In terms of ending the (limited) threat posed to America by the respective countries, the "war" in Afghanistan was a partial failure, and the "war" in Iraq is a total failure. Our leadership, however, evaluates these endeavors not primarily in terms of whether they end threats and dissuade other hostile regimes from continuing aggression, but in terms of whether they bestow the "good life" on the Middle Eastern peoples by ridding them of unpopular dictators and allowing them to vote-in whatever government they choose (no matter how anti-American). This objective is presently consuming endless resources and thousands of American lives in Iraq, where we are sustaining a hostile Iraqi population until they can independently run their new nation--in which Islam is constitutionally the basic law of the land.
How is all of this supposed to fulfill our leaders' pledge to defend America? The democratically elected Iraqi government, we are told, will somehow lead to a renaissance of "freedom" in the Middle East, which will somehow stop terrorism in some distant future. In the meantime, we are told, we should show "resolve," take off our shoes at the airport, and pay attention to the color-coded terror alerts so we can know how likely we are to be slaughtered.
Empty talk of "complete victory" notwithstanding, our official foreign policy regarding America's security against Islamic terrorism is: accepted defeat. We have not been willing to take military action against the most important threats against us, and the type of military action we have been willing to take has not succeeded in making us safer. And most disturbing of all, despite our travesty of a foreign policy, the vast majority of once-enraged Americans has not demanded anything better. Most Americans acknowledge that Iraq is a debacle, that we will not be safe anytime soon, and that we have no plans to deal effectively with threats such as Iran's nuclear weapons program--yet there is widespread resignation that this is the best we can do. This--in response to a threat caused by pip-squeak nations, against the most powerful military in history.
Why? What explains the defeatism of the leaders and citizens of the most powerful nation on earth?
One crucial factor is the failure of our intellectual and political leadership to clearly identify the nature of our enemy, to recognize that terrorism stems from a religious ideological movement that seeks our destruction and that that movement is widely supported by Muslim peoples and states.
One intellectual motivation for this evasion is the doctrine of Multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are equal, and thus that it is immoral for Western Culture to declare itself superior to any other. Having swallowed this doctrine, most of our intellectuals and politicians are reluctant to identify a clearly evil, militant ideological movement as an aspect of Arab-Islamic culture or to acknowledge its widespread support in that culture.
There's much more of this at the link above. Long, but worth reading.
Near-Death By Roquefort
Sorry it's a little light, bloggingwise, this morning. I had a run-in with some roquefort cheese on my salad last night -- apparently, I have some allergy to this, and only this, and with some hellish symptoms...and I'm going to talk to the kids at Uni High again this morning (a session which I'd have to be dead or in a coma to miss).
So, in short...more blog items later, I hope.
Feel free to talk amongst yourselves below. Any topics.
Don't go all Rebecca Solnit-meek on me now!
Hillary Targets The Oval Office
Hillary the Huntress? Come on, all together now, one big "Oh. Please." From CNN.com:
Clinton recently touted her experience with guns as a young child."You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl," Clinton said in Valparaiso, Indiana, on Saturday.
"Some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It's part of culture. It's part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it's an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter."
Are people buying this stuff? I can just see it, Hillary tacking up the bullseye with the gunshots in the center on the front gate of the White House, kind of like it was suggested for Emmanuelle Richard and husband Matt Welch's place.
During Emmanuelle's detective training, she shot a pretty perfect score, and her instructor, knowing she lived in a borderline-dicey neighborhood, suggested she nail it on their door or garage door with the message, "Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."
Sects And The City
Just posted another Advice Goddess column -- from a guy whose wife (from a "conservative culture" -- a Muslim country) got her phreak on before marriage a wee bit more than she claimed. "So, do I divorce her," he asks me, "Or let this go? I'm concerned she may be hiding other things."
An excerpt from my response:
In our country, if people find out you've had premarital sex, they might hoot and slap you on the back once or twice. In Muslim countries, they bring in a guy with a bamboo cane to do it 100 times.
The entire thing, plus comments, is here.
Keep Your Religion Out Of My Medical Care
If you're against abortion, you're free to march up and down the streets with picket signs, push around "bloody" fetus dolls in baby carriages, and pay for ads in magazines in hopes of persuading the rest of us that you're right.
You are not, however, free to add cost and procedures to others' medical care in keeping with your religious beliefs. But, that's just what some anti-abortion activists are trying to do. From Tulsa World, Barbara Hoberock writes:
OKLAHOMA CITY -- A controversial abortion bill that includes a provision requiring a woman to undergo an ultrasound examination before she can terminate her pregnancy is on its way to Gov. Brad Henry's desk.Henry's spokesman Paul Sund said Henry would withhold judgment until he had reviewed the measure.
The Senate voted 38-10 on Wednesday for Senate Bill 1878, which was amended in the House to include several abortion measures. The bill's authors are Sen. Todd Lamb, R-Edmond, and Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa.
SB 1878 combines various pieces of abortion legislation proposed this session.
One provision would require women who seek an abortion to undergo an ultrasound within one hour of the procedure.
Dr. Dana Stone, an Oklahoma City physician who is the chairwoman of
the Oklahoma Section of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said the ultrasound legislation was of great concern to her because of its invasive nature early in pregnancy."The patient has no ability to opt out," she said.
Lamb noted that the legislation does not require a woman to view the ultrasound images.
It does require that the images be displayed so the woman may see them. It also re quires the examiner to give a medical description of the images, to include dimensions of the embryo or fetus and the presence of cardiac activity.
Also, if this is like another similar bill in Florida, the woman will have to pay for the ultrasound, which can run between $50 and $250 -- not because she wants or needs one but because the nutters want her to have one. Thomas R. Collins writes, in the Palm Beach Post:
"For some low-income women, that could mean the difference between whether they can get the care they choose or not," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation.
And whaddya wanna bet the fundies aren't paying for the babies that are born to poor women instead of aborted?
Here's a solution I suggested previously -- one that asks a little more of the anti-abortion crowd than just hot air and a little subsidizing of prenatal care:
You believe it's wrong to eat meat; I believe something different. If you truly believe this, why not buy up cows and other food animals and let them roam free until they die? Too costly to put your money where your mouth is? Same goes for people who are anti-choice for abortion. They're free to pay pregnant women to have their babies and then pay for the care, feeding, and education of those children, as well as placement in a loving home. Instead, they stand screeching outside abortion clinics.
via ifeminist
Rebecca Solnit Is A Sniveling Idiot
I couldn't believe the piece by Rebecca Solnit I read in the Sunday LA Times Opinion section; mainly because I found it too stupid to publish.
Solnit mewls on for 1,863 words about how women are patronized and silenced by men.
But, wait. Let me check. (Peering down into pants and then panties) Yup, there's a vagina in my pants, which suggests I'm either a woman or there's a matched, escaped set of labia taken up hiding in my underwear. Most mysteriously, I don't seem to suffer the myriad conversational injustices from men that Solnit and so many other women apparently do.
Solnit opens her piece by describing how she was conversationally pummeled by a guy about Eadweard Muybridge, when she'd actually written the very book the guy was holding forth on. "Men explain things to me," complains Solnit, "and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean."
We do? I think somebody forgot to send me the memo. Yet, Solnit claims this terrible injustice is something "nearly every woman faces every day," which "makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field," and "keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare." ("When they dare"? The woman writes like Mr. Darcy is going to pop up from behind the copier at any moment.) Solnit goes on and on about how this "syndrome" (yes, everything must be pathologized) "crushes young women into silence" and "trains" women "in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence."
First of all, I write a syndicated dating and relationship column, and I have to say, if there's one problem with men these days, it isn't "unsupported overconfidence." I likewise can't say I've ever felt "crushed into silence" or any of the maudlin rest. So...either my dad, who taught me to stand up for myself, and told me over and over that I could do anything boys could do, is unique among fathers in America, or there's a name for what Solnit's peddling, and it's "grassy-knoll feminism."
Meanwhile, Solnit herself, who, most annoyingly, Likes To Use Capital Letters For Emphasis All Over The Damn Place, says that even she, a woman who has "public standing as a writer of history," had a moment when she "was willing to believe Mr. Very Important and his overweening confidence over (her) more shaky certainty."
Sorry, but if you have "shaky certainty," do you blame men, or sign up for a little assertiveness training? So much of what women do blame men for -- women's lower starting salaries in the workplace, for example -- traces back to women passively accepting what's presented to them, whether it's some boorish jerk's assertion, or the first dollar offer they're made for a job. This is correctable, but not by writing long-winded screeds against men in the Los Angeles Times.
Although Solnit comes up continually short on guts in conversational situations, she's remarkably gutsy about aligning herself and other privileged Western women with a silenced sisterhood of women living under Islam, "where women's testimony has no legal standing; so that a woman can't testify that she was raped without a male witness to counter the male rapist."
Of course, the difference is that women in Muslim countries are not, by law, allowed to testify. Western women like Solnit simply refrain from speaking up. Some loudmouth cut her off? Wow. While Muslim women fear lashings and death if they speak their minds, Solnit's simply too limp-willed to say, as I've said numerous times, and to men and women, "Don't interrupt!" or "My turn to talk!"
When that doesn't work, as it didn't when I was on the TV show, "Faith Under Fire," with the booming blowhard Frank Pastore, I began removing my mike, and told the host I was going to walk off if Pastore kept shouting over me. (I may not have been born with balls, but I keep a little set in my makeup bag, and bring them out on an as-needed basis.)
Nuttiest Letter Of The Weekend
A woman writes:
I desperately want a child. I want, my husband wants, we want. However, my husband and I purposely will not conceive a child. The reason is, we feel that what we want is not the most important thing. The most important consideration is toward the person who is most directly affected. The most important consideration is toward the child. Making a life-altering decision without consulting the one most affected seems wrong. Also, there is a chance that once the child is grown, he may look back and feel "I would have preferred non-existence. There, I would have remained safe from all harm." Also, any harm that comes to the child would be my fault and my husband's fault. If we had not conceived the child the harm would not have occurred. Do many other people think this way?
My reply:
If people all stop having children this will be a big, blue, empty ball. You try to do the best you can for a child, same as you do for yourself when you get out of bed every day. Would you prefer "non-existence"? Do you know anyone who would? You exist, you go on, you try to live heathily and happily. Did you take a lot of French philosophy in college? Is this a joke? Where did you get these ideas?
She writes back:
not a joke, did not take philosophy, the only other people i know who feel this way are a few from the internet. these ideas just came to me and my husband. you should see us: we are happy, in love for years, friends says they envy our good life together. still, how we feel is how i described in my email to you. yes, i would have preferred nonexistance: i would not have known the difference. a big blue ball with no suffering and no one would know the difference: sounds good.
I respond:
Well, you can always adopt a child who already exists.
Look, there are all sorts of dangers in the world, from radical Islam to hormones in the milk, but I'd still rather be alive than never born. Those who wish they were never born are free to kill themselves, thus lessening the numbers of people we'll have to pay off with Social Security.
Dog Dance Afternoon
For his second act, he'll read backward from Proust.
Waiter, There's A Harem In My Soup!
Dating sites are mostly the same, with loads and loads of people looking for somebody for "long walks on the beach, blah, blah, blah."
Well, you see a different kind of request from Muslim women living in America on Muslima.com, a Muslim dating site (photos at the links, and check out the ladies posed with just their eyes showing through their headscarves).
A 38-year-old woman writes:
I hope I find a suitable person who is as a good muslim, honest, educated, good looking, and has responsible to the his prospective family. He should be one who would be interested in one wife only.
A 37-year-old woman writes:
I'm looking for a Muslim husband who will be respective and faithful only to me. I don't believe in a man having up to 4 wives...
Shockingly, there were a number of women -- redheaded American women, for example -- who said they'd converted to Islam; perhaps because they're attracted to the way Islamic law says women should be treated -- like these examples from ex-Muslim Abul Kasem:
The husband's permission is required for a wife to work (Doi, p.117).The guardian of a woman must be a male. A woman cannot be married by herself. A widow can marry by herself (Doi, p.141).
A Muslim man is allowed to have four wives at one time (Hedaya, p.31; Doi, p.147).
A law against polygamy is against the Qur'an. Not a single Hadith is against polygamy; modernists reject Qur'an and Sunnah. Satisfy more wives (Doi, p.152).
Husbands are not obliged to provide doctor's fees, medicines and cosmetics to wives; they must provide only food, cloths and housing; rebellious wife doesn't get anything (Hedaya, p.140; m11.4, p.544).
A Muslim man is allowed to beat his wife or wives (the Qur'an, 4:34 ; m10.12, p.541; o17.4, p.619).
Awww! How romantic!
I'm guessing these converts have a somewhat dewier and less-informed view of their adopted religion.
Whoopsy!
Luckily, it seems there's a small price to pay for polygamy -- since it's often Western taxpayers picking up the tab.
Acting Next-Presidential
George Bush gets to leave the mess for the next Oval Office-er. From a NYT editorial:
President Bush said last week that he told his Iraq war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, that "he'll have all the time he needs." We know what that means. It means that the general, like the Iraqi government, should feel no pressure to figure a way out of this disastrous war. It means that even after 20,000 troops come home there will be nearly 140,000 American troops still fighting there -- with no plan for further withdrawals and no plan for leading them to victory.It means, as we've always suspected, that Mr. Bush's only real strategy for Iraq has been to hand the mess off to his successor. Mr. Bush gave himself all the time he needs to walk away from one of the biggest strategic failures in American history.
...Whoever wins the presidency will not have the same luxury. He or she will have to start quickly planning for an orderly withdrawal. Even Senator John McCain will have to realize that America's forces cannot sustain this pace for much longer. Earlier this month, The Times reported that repeated battlefield tours have so debilitated American troops that Army leaders fear for their mental health. Last week, Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, warned Congress that the demand for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan "exceeds the sustainable supply."
Mr. Bush cut Army combat tours in Iraq from 15 months to 12, but the Pentagon said that will not relieve the strains on troops and their families or allow the United States to send the reinforcements it desperately needs to Afghanistan.
The faltering American economy also cannot afford this never-ending war. Mr. Bush's description of his latest emergency spending request as a "reasonable $108 billion" proves just how out of touch he is with fiscal reality. His attempt to justify the overall $600 billion cost so far by comparing his war to the cold war and the need to stop "Soviet expansion" shows that he is even more out of touch with strategic reality.
We believe that the fight against Al Qaeda is the central battle for this generation, but Mr. Bush's claim that Iraq is the main front is wrong. That is Afghanistan, and the United States is in real danger of losing because Mr. Bush's failed adventure in Iraq is eating up the Pentagon's resources and attention.
Oh yeah, and while you're at it, how about making the Iraqis pick up some of the check for this? This is welfare, but welfare for an entire state, and we've seen how well that works out on a small scale for self-determination.
Hillary Is Such A Sleazebag
From Jim Kuhnhenn and Charles Babington at the AP, Obama now tries to sweep up the mess by saying that he "deeply regrets" his words:
At issue are comments he made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The comments, posted Friday on The Huffington Post Web site, set off a blast of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials, and drew attention to a potential Obama weakness -- the image some have that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant and aloof.
His campaign scrambled to defuse possible damage.
...There has been a small "political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter," Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. "They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through.
"So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country."
After acknowledging his previous remarks in California could have been better phrased, he added:
"The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That's what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they are being listened to."
Clinton attacked Obama's remarks much more harshly Saturday than she had the night before, calling them "demeaning." Her aides feel Obama has given them a big opening, pulling the spotlight away from troublesome stories such as former President Clinton's recent revisiting of his wife's misstatements about an airport landing in Bosnia 10 years ago.
...Clinton hit all those themes in lengthy comments to manufacturing workers in Indianapolis.
"The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich," she said.
People cling to faith because they're irrational, and want magical solutions, and because their parents and grandparents and so on clung to faith, and it never occurred to them that they could question it, and because people feel comfortable belonging to groups.
It especially disgusts me that Clinton and Obama will be having a faith-off tonight on TV, as if superstitious belief, belief without evidence, is what we need from a leader of what's still the most powerful nation in the world. ("If you believe in peanutbutter, clap your hands...!")
I don't want the most gullible candidate, I want the one best equipped for critical thinking. Lack of logic leads to things that don't make the slightest bit of fiscal sense, like Hillary's health care plan.
Terror-Plotting Orthodox Jews Endanger Britain!
Well, actually, the Orthodox Jews all seem to be going about their business without planning to hurt or kill people. But, I bet you can guess which religion all these Britain-endangering terrorists come from!
Anybody hear any squeaks of protest from those "moderate Muslims"?
Or are they all too apathetic or too terrified of being slaughtered by those who follow the dictates of the Koran to convert, kill, or tax into dhimmitude anybody who doesn't bow to Islam?
Here's To Hostility!
Just yesterday, somebody here criticized Crid for being hostile:
"No need to be hostile," the person wrote.
Crid's response:
Hostility is often usefully propulsive. Stupidity is just corrosive. And annoying.
I seconded the bit on hostility:
I'll often admit to being hostile.In fact, I did when the idiots at the looping company down the block took out a restraining order on me after I called their office manager, Katherine Morgan, a cunt (for taking our residentially-zoned parking and leaving their numerous gated spaces unparked lest Tom Arnold showed up with an entourage).
The office manager complained to the judge, who wasn't finding me terribly fright-provoking, that I was "hostile and unpredictable."
I almost said, "Why thank you!"
Instead, I think I said something like, "Well, yes, I am both of those things, but I am not violent.
I was reminded of the exchange by a piece on anger -- a piece celebrating anger, really, and criticizing the way it's been turned into some namby-pamby psychological disorder -- written by Brendan O'Neill on Spiked. An excerpt:
The wholesale management of anger is an attempt to enforce conformity, spearheaded by politicians, police, officials, judges and health practitioners who seem to prefer a populace that resigns, fatalistically, to the problems it faces, rather than one that asks awkward questions and kicks up a furious fuss.Anger was once seen as an understandable reaction to unpleasant experiences or less-than-civilised living and working conditions; it was a rational, sometimes even dignified 'strong feeling of displeasure' (7). Now, in the Anti-Angry Decade, it has been psychologised: anger is looked upon as a condition, a disease, a moral failing on the part of individuals which must be treated and corrected.
It is striking that the MHF and numerous commentators use the disease-linked word 'epidemic' to describe the alleged spread of anger, and continually conflate anger with rage. Traditionally, a distinction was made between 'rage', which referred to an individual losing control and lashing out explosively, and 'anger', which was considered a passionate, even high-minded expression of displeasure with the state of things. As Thomas Aquinas put it: 'Anger is the name of a passion. A passion of the sensitive appetite is good in so far as it is regulated by reason, whereas it is evil if it set the order of reason aside.' (8) Today's blurring of the boundary between the reasoned passion of anger and the unreasonable expression of rage, so that everything from having arguments to committing a crime to getting agitated in the workplace can be labelled part of an 'epidemic of rage', shows the extent to which anger has been reworked as a psychological disorder.
Some now talk about 'anger syndrome', and in the US - the birthplace of psychobabble - serious anger has been relabelled Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Fittingly sharing an acronym with Improvised Explosive Device (IED), Intermittent Explosive Disorder is 'a behavioural disorder characterised by extreme expressions of anger, often to the point of uncontrollable rage'. Apparently, 16million Americans suffer from IED (9). These days we don't have 'angry young men' - we have Intermittent Explosive Disorder Sufferers.
...The psychologisation of anger has two consequences: first it separates our anger from the experience or the condition that gave rise to it, so that our 'expressions of rage' are always judged to be disproportionate, irresponsible and illegitimate. This can be seen in the relentless rise of rages, from 'air rage' to 'golf rage' to 'work rage'. People who suffer from these rages, from the alleged psychological condition of losing the plot in airports, on golf courses or around the water cooler at work, are seen as irrational individuals with moral and mental flaws rather than rational actors expressing loud'n'rowdy displeasure with having been treated badly.
So apparently it isn't the long queues at airports, the ceaseless security checks and the patronising treatment by airline staff that make some people angry at airports; it's because they have a diagnosable condition: 'air rage'. Even worse, it is not low wages, poor working conditions or smarmy bosses that make people angry at work - it's because they suffer from 'work rage'. A recent study claimed that 79 per cent of British workers suffer from this medical condition (11). In the past, anger at work was considered by many, not only to be understandable, but to be a powerful sentiment that might be motivated to force employers to improve pay and working conditions. Today, it is seen as shrill and divisive, something that must be treated by an army of anger managers. Indeed, even trade unions 'are far more likely to organise anger management courses for their members than to incite them to feelings of resentment and class hate' (12).
This leads to the second consequence of psychologising anger. In robbing anger of its social element, and transforming it into a personal problem that requires one-on-one corrective therapy, the anger-management movement nurtures a society that is obsessed with policing individuals' inner lives rather than focusing on transforming the world around us. From the anti-angry worldview, society should devote its resources to correcting rage-afflicted individuals rather than fixing the things that made us angry in the first place.
In the words of the anchor from Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
You?
And Now It's The Goose Getting Goosed
Now, I understand paying to support children you decided to have with your partner, but it's my feeling you shouldn't get to up your financial circumstances in life by marrying somebody, and then taking an ongoing chunk of their wealth with you after the marriage falls apart.
In fact, I've always "kept myself honest" in the relationship sense by being against marriage and/or moving with a man -- especially one in better financial circumstances.
On a sideline about the living together thing; over time, I'm quite annoying, as are most humans who aren't in a coma or dead. I think it's much nicer to keep time you spend with somebody you care about short (and thus, sweet). If, as opposed to living with somebody, you're perpetually dating somebody, you're less likely to the point where you're screaming at the person to do something or other al-fucking-ready!! (I always swore I'd never be like that to a man.)
Also, as long as I live within my own means, and live in my own place that I pay, I have no ulterior motives for staying with a man (as in, staying with a guy because you hate to move out of the mansion in Beverly Hills -- back to that one-room apartment with the bare lightbulb swinging overhead in Van Nuys). Then, the only factors that remain for deciding whether to be together or not is whether you light each other up, and you're better together and have more fun together than alone.
Back to the alimony question; for years, men have been paying it to women, and not just to those who are bringing up their children, but women with zero children who are already on to the next boyfriend. But, suddenly, there's a bit of change in the wind. Now, women are forking over big chunks of alimony, and they're not liking it a bit. Anita Raghavan writes for the WSJ:
As a Hollywood actor, John David Castellanos is protective of his image. He stays in phenomenal shape and looks much younger than his 50 years.But he admits to a fact that might be considered unflattering: He receives alimony from his former wife. To be exact, $9,000 a month.
"The law provides" for it, says Mr. Castellanos, who for years starred in the soap opera "The Young and the Restless."
In the nearly 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against gender discrimination in alimony, few male beneficiaries have stepped forward to talk about it. Those who did typically went by pseudonyms or the golden rule of 12-step recovery: first names only.
Little wonder, considering the attention that has come to some former husbands of alimony-paying celebrities. "Why the courts don't tell a husband, who has been living off his wife, to go out and get a job is beyond my comprehension," Joan Lunden, the television personality, said in 1992 when a court ordered her to pay her ex-husband $18,000 a month.
But today's men are shaking off the stigma of being supported by their ex-wives. Several agreed to talk on the record for this article, in part because they say the popular image of the male alimony recipient is unfair: He's not always a slacker.
Mr. Castellanos says he has acted in or produced five movies since the breakup of his marriage, including a couple of projects that he says are nearing completion. If any of these projects strike gold, he says he would gladly forgo alimony.
...Some feminists say cases such as Mr. Garnick's show progress of a sort. "We can't assert rights for women and say that men aren't entitled to the same rights," says the famous feminist lawyer, Gloria Allred.
But the women who have to pay it are sounding a different chord. "I feel financially raped," says Rhonda Friedman, the former wife of Mr. Castellanos. So distasteful are the monthly payments she makes to him that after filling out the check she used to spit on it. Especially galling, she says, is that she was required to pay a substantial portion of the legal fees he racked up while securing a lucrative divorce agreement.
To be sure, some men don't want alimony, viewing it as an embarrassment. Others are just as high-powered as their wives. Yahoo President Susan Decker and her soon-to-be ex-husband have taken alimony off the table, according to court records. Meanwhile, Sara Lee Chief Executive Brenda Barnes is paying no alimony to her ex-husband, a former PepsiCo Inc. executive who now manages his own money. Until their youngest child recently turned 18, Ms. Barnes, who earned a total of $8.7 million in fiscal 2007, was receiving child-support payments from her former husband, according to court records.
...To Ms. Friedman, that financial history fails to support the argument that she should send thousands a month to her ex-husband, with whom she had no children. "I don't understand why someone becomes your financial responsibility just because you married them," says Ms. Friedman, who earns about $500,000 a year as the supervising producer of the soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful."
Mr. Castellanos also argues that as an artist, he provided his wife with invaluable advice and insight that helped Ms. Friedman rise from production coordinator to producer.
Ms. Friedman hotly denies that he had anything to do with her success.
I agree with the guy who wrote a letter to the editor about the Raghavan story:
Alimony, regardless if it's for men or women, is an out-of-date concept. Just because one wins the lottery of marrying rich, I don't understand why one would be entitled to marital welfare the rest of one's life, if the person is able-bodied and can work. Alimony should be high in the first five years after a divorce and then decline once the former spouse is able to get back on his/her own two feet and begin to work again for a living.Dr. Peter G. Hill
Weston, Mass.
Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to earn a living. The old-fashioned way.
Today's Dumb Quote
I should call this "Today's Dumb Boob." I'm reading a bit from a book by Marilyn Yalom called A History of the Breast
Today, it is the tragic reality of breast cancer that is bringing women into full possession of their breasts. They are learning, with the shock of life-threatening illness, that their breasts really are their own.
Sorry, but unless I get breast cancer, I'm supposed to believe my boobs belong to the neighbors?
What is it about feminists that they always talk about women "owning" their experiences or parts of their own bodies? Did somebody back at the factory accidentally leave the victim module out of me?
"Tax And Donate" Democrats
I just love California Republican congressman John Campbell. First I've heard of him, actually. But yesterday, in the House, he introduced his "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Act," to amend the tax code to allow individuals to make donations to the federal government beyond their normal tax liability.
From the WSJ's op-ed page:
We recently suggested that if Bill and Hillary Clinton are eager to pay more taxes, they should write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury to compensate for the lower tax rates they so frequently decry....Mr. Campbell says he has heard the "cries" of those wealthy Americans - Mrs. Clinton, Warren Buffett, Barbra Streisand - who reject the lower tax rates passed in 2001 and 2003 and complain that they and their fellow rich don't pay enough. "It's a great injustice that citizens wishing to fulfill their dream of paying more taxes cannot simply check a box on their 1040 form to make a donation," he says. His bill would give liberals a chance to salve their consciences without having to raise taxes on millions of Americans who already feel overtaxed as it is.
Little Mr. Hothead
Meet the man who might be president, the exploding John McCain.
Nick Juliano, at the raw story, quotes from a copy of the upcoming Cliff Schecter book on McCain, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
Yes, unnamed sources, but I'm guessing it doesn't get refuted by the tiny hothead McCain. More on McCain's temper in this Paul Kane WaPo piece:
Sensing the increasing likelihood that he will be the nominee, GOP senators who have publicly fought with him are emphasizing his war-hero background and playing down past confrontations."I forgive him for whatever disagreements he has had with me. We can disagree on things, but I have great admiration for him," said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee who has often argued with McCain over government spending.
But others have outright rejected the idea of a McCain nomination and presidency, warning that his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office.
"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
A former colleague says McCain's abrasive nature would, at minimum, make his relations with Republicans on Capitol Hill uneasy if he were to become president. McCain could find himself the victim of Republicans who will not go the extra mile for him on legislative issues because of past grievances.
"John was very rough in the sandbox," said former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who is outspoken in his opposition to McCain's candidacy. "Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. . . .He hasn't built up a lot of goodwill."
And this, from the Kane piece, speaks to how lame the choices are:
"You'll have more Democrats running away from Hillary Clinton than you'll have Republicans running away from our nominee," he said.
Continued: Boys On Boob Jobs
Talk to me, boys. Doing a little research for the ole column -- the kind that I can't get out of some wonky journal.
The question: What do you think of a girl with surgically installed pontoons?
1. At first, from afar, when you just see that they're bigguns? (In other words, you just notice that they're big, and aren't close enough to see whether they're factory installed or aftermarket.)2. When you're talking to a woman in a bar and you're sure or pretty sure they're fake'uns?
3. When you're fooling around with a woman: How do they feel?
Girls can feel free to respond, too. Even better if you're a girl who's into girls. Or even a retired lesbohemian.
McCain's Juan Hernandez Problem
McCain and his "Hispanic Outreach Director":
A quote from Mr. Open Borders, Juan Hernandez:
"We must not only have a free flow of goods and services, but also start working for a free flow of people."
Again, I'm not a fan of Hillary or Obama, but I'm a bit worried about the conservatives and "conservatives" finding religion in McCain all of a sudden.
The election isn't tomorrow. It's a long shot, but there's still time for another candidate to run. Gingrich, for example. The guy must have one King Kong-sized skeleton in his closet.
Muslim Apologists Are Dim
Paul Berman writes for The New York Times about illusions...no, not just dashed...shall we say...firebombed? His, that is.
And then there are the illusions maintained by the "tolerance" types. I have to laugh at the use of that word. Would you be "tolerant" if some guy stormed into your neighbor's house and slit his daughter's throat because she refused to go around with a black tablecloth with two eye slits cut in it over her head?
Sorry, there are some things that nobody who's human and civilized ever has any business tolerating -- and certainly not for willful lack of information. Yet, in Berman's words:
Western intellectuals without any sort of Middle Eastern background would naturally have manifested an ardent solidarity with their Middle Eastern and Muslim counterparts who stand in the liberal vein -- the Muslim free spirits of our own time, who argue in favor of human rights, rational thought (as opposed to dogma), tolerance and an open society.But that was then. In today's Middle East, the various radical Islamists, basking in their success, paint their liberal rivals and opponents as traitors to Muslim civilization, stooges of crusader or Zionist aggression. And, weirdly enough, all too many intellectuals in the Western countries have lately assented to those preposterous accusations, in a sanitized version suitable for Western consumption.
Even in the Western countries, quite a few Muslim liberals, the outspoken ones, live today under a threat of assassination, not to mention a reality of character assassination. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch legislator and writer, is merely an exceptionally valiant example. But instead of enjoying the unstinting support of their non-Muslim colleagues, the Muslim liberals find themselves routinely berated in the highbrow magazines and the universities as deracinated nonentities, alienated from the Muslim world. Or they find themselves pilloried as stooges of the neoconservative conspiracy -- quite as if any writer from a Muslim background who fails to adhere to at least a few anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist tenets of the Islamist doctrine must be incapable of thinking his or her own thoughts.
A dismaying development. One more sign of the power of the extremist ideologies -- one more surprising turn of events, on top of all the other dreadful and gut-wrenching surprises.
Berman's book -- Power and the Idealists: Or, the Passion of Joschka Fischer and Its Aftermath
Cruel And Crullers
Just posted another Advice Goddess column. This one's a question from a lady who's put on some pounds. Again. A problem for her husband. She writes:
In high school and college I was really overweight. I started losing weight and found a great guy online. During the year we talked, I went from size 18 to size 12, losing 80 pounds. When we met, I was a little overweight, but in my best shape ever, and we were really attracted to each other. We're now married, but stressed, as I'm the only one working until he completes the immigration process (he's South African). In seven months, I've gained 50 pounds. My problem is that he's insanely direct. If something's on his mind, he'll say it. He's now having a hard time being attracted to me. I do understand, and have committed to losing weight, and plan to have surgery next year to remove the extra skin. I'm excited because I know he'll be all over me, but I'm also scared I'll be resentful.--Shrinking
An excerpt from my response:
For a man, it's the size of a woman's heart that counts -- until her thighs approach the size of small Volkswagens.Now, some men do go for a woman with extra padding -- not just "junk in the trunk," but junk bungee'd to the roof and hood, and crammed from floormats to ceiling in the front and back seats. Actually, there are about five men who go for this. On the bright side, the average guy isn't into haute couture thin: those slivers in stilettos who look like they subsist on cigarettes and the occasional French fry when they need enough energy to make it down the catwalk without fainting into Anna Wintour's lap.
Still, feminists see a cruel plot against women who eat. According to Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, there's a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women dieting so they'll be too weak and hungry to compete with men. Right. Here in the real world, it isn't some brainwashed dim bulb who doesn't let herself bulk out, but a wise woman, assuming she's on the prowl for heterosexual men who aren't, say, Tanzanian hunter-gatherers. Male sexuality is hard-wired to be looks-driven, and research suggests that the body size men look for in a woman corresponds with the availability of food. Where eats are scarce, like in the Sahara, Lane Bryant ladies are in. Where there's food-a-plenty, men go for slimmer women. And yes, that describes our culture, where, if you're foraging for dinner, you're probably not scraping for grubs with a stick, just reaching deep into the cooler at 7-Eleven. ...continued...
The rest of my response is here. With a bunch of comments.
What's College Worth, Anyway?
When I spoke to the kids at University High last week, I told them that I'd nearly quit school when I was in college. I'd always read piles of books, so it wouldn't be like I'd stop learning if I did quit, and I was impatient to get into the work world and to start doing something.
Still, I realized that not having a college degree might hold me back in other people's eyes -- employers' eyes, that is -- so I completed my last year, and graduated.
It turns out that there's a stat, promoted by the College Board, that the average college grad earns $1 million more. Via Reason, from an article on InsideHigherEd, Charles Miller, former head of Ed. Sec. Margaret Spelling's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, contends that the stat is wrong:
Miller's letter proceeds to point out all the ways in which the usual ways of assessing the value of a college degree are flawed: the calculations typically report the lifetime earnings in the "present value" of the dollar totals, rather than adjusting for inflation over time; include those with advanced degrees rather than those who have only a baccalaureate diploma; and assume that students finish college in four years in calculating a student's costs of and benefits from going to college, when relatively few on average do.Substituting some of his own assumptions for those used by the board -- including six years of tuition costs (and hence two fewer years of work), private college tuition instead of in-state public tuition, etc. -- Miller calculates his own college premium. "[P]roperly using the present value of the lifetime earnings, adjusted for the cost of going to college and the difference in the number of working years, and excluding those graduates with advanced degrees, calculated at the three percent discount rate used in the report," he wrote, "produces a lifetime earnings differential of only $279,893 for a bachelor's degree versus a high school degree!"
He writes: "With clearly questionable assumptions in the analysis traditionally used to prove that 'education pays,' with the reality of continually increasing costs of college above average inflation, with weak income growth in general, and with the reality of a very narrow economic benefit to the individual with a college education, it is reasonable to conclude that a college degree is not as valuable as has been claimed."
Quite frankly, the idea that graduating with a liberal arts degree is the ticket to piles of cash, is something I find hilarious.
If you're driven, and you choose your career well, and you've got an entrepreneurial spirit or some smarts in investing, sure, you can make out. But, a philosophy degree from the University of Michigan, where I went to school for three years before graduating from NYU's ridiculous undergraduate film school, probably prepares you to earn less money than people who started working right out of high school and started their own businesses.
And again, nobody is going to stop you from learning, whether you go to school or not. These days, I go to psychology and evolutionary psychology conferences, and read the same journals as researchers in the field. I do it to make my work better, but I also do it because I'm interested.
I'm reminded of a guy I see at these conferences, a guy who does something in administration at Rutgers. He doesn't have a career in ev. psych. He just goes to learn. The public library, if you can't afford a trip to Kyoto, where this year's ev. psych conference is taking place, is yet another valuable resource for that.
In LA, it's the most amazing thing. The LA Public Library lets you put a hold on a library book -- for free! -- and have it sent across town to the library that's blocks from your house...for free! Of course, you have to be interested in learning something. And if you're just a grade grubber, you'll care less about that than the auto mechanic down the street.
It Was Al Sadr Not El Surge?
Yochi Dreazen writes for the WSJ about Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, a history prof who served two tours in Iraq, and who thinks General Petraeus' counterinsurgency tactics are getting too much credit for improving the situation in Iraq:
"We've come up with this false narrative, this incorrect explanation of what is going on in Iraq," he says. "We've come to see counterinsurgency as the solution to every problem and we're losing the ability to wage any other kind of war."Col. Gentile is giving voice to an idea that previously few in the military dared mention: Perhaps the Petraeus doctrine isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's a big controversy within a military that has embraced counterinsurgency tactics as a path to victory in Iraq. The debate, sparked by a short essay written by Col. Gentile titled "Misreading the Surge," has been raging in military circles for months. One close aide to Gen. Petraeus recently took up a spirited defense of his boss.
It's hard to quantify how many people stand in Col. Gentile's corner; his view is certainly a minority one. But increasingly, the Pentagon's top brass are talking in similar terms. Two of the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have warned recently that the military's ability to fight another kind of conflict -- say a war with North Korea -- has eroded.
At a February hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said troops have been unable to train for any other type of conflict because of the short time between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gen. James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that month that the focus on counterinsurgency means the Marines will "have to take extraordinary steps to retain the ability to serve as the nation's shock troops in major combat operations."
Other testimony from military brass as recently as last week has echoed these complaints. Some of the griping is likely geared toward protecting big expenditures on new equipment.
The gist of Col. Gentile's argument is that recent security gains in Iraq were caused by the ceasefire declared last year by Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr as well as the U.S. decision to enlist former Sunni militants in the fight against Islamist extremists. Col. Gentile notes that violence spiked after Mr. Sadr's militia briefly resumed fighting last month.
More fundamentally, Col. Gentile, 50 years old, worries that the military's embrace of counterinsurgency -- limiting the use of heavy firepower and having soldiers focus on local governance -- means it isn't prepared to fight a traditional war against potential foes such as Iran or China. He says the more time soldiers spend learning counterinsurgency, the less time they spend practicing combat techniques like fighting alongside tanks and other armored vehicles.
I Am Victim, See My T-Shirt
Rape is a horrible thing, and if you're raped, I don't think you should be ashamed. That said, I think the "I was raped" t-shirts created by Jennifer Baumgardner will function mainly as publicity for Jennifer Baumgardner.
By the way, the cartooned message (photo at the link) is on a card in a safe, but I thought it was a microwave at first glance -- which seemed an odd choice. ("I was raped while reheating dinner?")
In the New York Times blog item by Susan Dominus, there's a passage at the end about what Baumgardner was going for:
A shirt that would let rape victims "own the experience," she says, and would help chip away the cone of silence that surrounds a crime with humiliation at its core.A shirt that would start conversations.
Yeah, with the guy standing next to a woman at the hardware store.
Guy: "Nice weather we're having."
Woman: "I was raped."
Right.
You're not going to say that any more than you're going to say "I was mugged" or "I have amoebic dysentery." This isn't necessarily because you're ashamed of being raped, but because we don't have those conversations with total strangers.
As for the idea of "owning the experience" -- that's very victim-feminist-speak. But, what does it mean, really? Is rape not an experience that's yours? Is mugging not an experience that's yours? I don't get it. Do people talk about "owning" an armed holdup?
Again, rape is a terrible thing that happens to a person (and not just to a female person). Is it any better because a woman puts on a pink shirt that essentially turns being a victim of a crime into her identity?
Drug Companies Lie, You Die, No Recourse
That is, in short, what's likely to happen, if the Bush-administration-advocated doctrine of "pre-emption" goes through.
And look, I'm a capitalist, not some Birkenstock-toed bleeding lefty, but to lie about a drug's efficacy or risks for sales purposes isn't capitalism, it's theft.
A knowledgeable friend in medicine e-mailed me:
Read this one very carefully. What is happening will make "medical care" particularly deadly in the U.S.: Once pre-emption is in place, most of what will be reported by the companies for approval will be fraudulent in the fashion described in the article (or more cleverly so).
Here's an excerpt from the New York Times story on this, "Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield," by Gardiner Harris and Alex Berenson:
For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product -- even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.
This legal argument is called pre-emption. After decades of being dismissed by courts, the tactic now appears to be on the verge of success, lawyers for plaintiffs and drug companies say.
The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted.
More than 3,000 women and their families have sued Johnson & Johnson, asserting that users of the Ortho Evra patch suffered heart attacks, strokes and, in 40 cases, death. From 2002 to 2006, the food and drug agency received reports of at least 50 deaths associated with the drug.
Documents and e-mail messages from Johnson & Johnson, made public as part of the lawsuits against the company, show that even before the drug agency approved the product in 2001, the company's own researchers found that the patch delivered far more estrogen each day than low-dose pills. When it reported the results publicly, the company reduced the numbers by 40 percent.
The F.D.A. did not warn the public of the potential risks until November 2005 -- six years after the company's own study showed the high estrogen releases. At that point, the product's label was changed, and prescriptions fell 80 percent, to 187,000 by last February from 900,000 in March 2004.
Gloria Vanderham, a Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman, said the company acted responsibly.
How Gloria sleeps nights, I don't know.
The article continues:
"We have regularly disclosed data to the F.D.A., the medical community and the public in a timely manner," Ms. Vanderham said.
Uh, yeah -- except the data they held back, which would have made their product a lot less salesworthy. See above: Their "old label innacurately described the amount of estrogen" the patch released.
And a big part of the problem, per the article -- the agency doesn't seem to have the organization, science, or money to adequately regulate the drug companies.
More from the Ortho case from Harris and Berenson's piece:
In 1996, the company told the agency it planned to develop the Ortho Evra patch in part because it would be likely to expose women to less estrogen than pills. The company suggested that the body would not break down hormones delivered via the patch as readily as the pill, so lower doses could be used to achieve contraception. And unlike the pill, which must be taken daily, the patch is changed weekly.High doses of estrogen are known to raise the risk for blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes.
But a crucial trial completed in 1999 showed that the patch delivered 30 to 38 micrograms of estrogen into the bloodstream each day, according to company documents.
Because up to half of the estrogen in pills is lost in the digestive tract before it reaches the blood, the study suggested that the patch delivered an amount of estrogen that could be as high as a pill containing 76 micrograms of estrogen. In 1988, the F.D.A. banned birth control pills with more than 50 micrograms of estrogen.
But the study's author, Dr. Larry Abrams, who has since retired from Johnson & Johnson, decided to apply a "correction factor" to the results of the 1999 trial, according to documents. He claimed that the patch actually delivered about 40 percent less estrogen than the trial results showed -- about 20 micrograms a day.
Dr. Abrams made the change, according to his deposition, to adjust for the different ways the body metabolizes hormones from pills and patches. This adjustment was never part of the study protocol, a plan filed with the F.D.A..
...The company mentioned its decision to use the "correction factor" only once in a 435-page report filed with the F.D.A., and then only in a complex mathematical formula. When the study was published in 2002, there was no reference to the alteration.
No big deal, huh? Well, not unless you're one of the women who suffered a blood clot or a stroke, or died.
UPDATE: An earlier entry on drug company obfuscation, to put it way too politely.
Did God Drop By For A Beer?
There's no evidence god exists, yet the pope blathers on about what god does and doesn't go for like some starry-eyed 14-year-old swearing she's got the dirt on Wilmer Valderrama. From AFP:
Divorce and abortion are offences in the sight of God, Pope Benedict XVI charged Saturday, while calling on the Catholic Church to be merciful to those who had experienced such events."The ethical judgement of the Church on divorce and abortion is clear and well-known," he told participants in a Catholic congress on marriage and the family.
"They are serious offences... which violate human dignity, inflict deep injustice on human and social relations and offend God himself, guarantor of conjugal peace and origin of life," he said.
As guarantors go, with all the conjugal strife going on, perhaps god should be looking for a new job?
Oh, and yoohoo, Mr. Pope...since you seem to have the red phone to god, what does the guy say about a Church that shuffles around pedophile priests to molest again and again? Does god think it's all good -- in the name of full collection plates and keeping up positive P.R.?
via Breitbart
Pregnant Pause
How would you like it if you hired somebody and found, six weeks into her tenure on the job, that she was 12 weeks pregnant? That's what happened over in the UK. Minette Marin writes for the Times of London:
Brass neck is the phrase that comes to mind on contemplating the newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky. She is the woman who accepted £1m a year for a new job as "the face of Five News" and who, only six weeks into her contract, announced that she was 12 weeks pregnant. If I were running Five I would be beside myself with rage.Undisclosed sources say her bosses are indeed dismayed that she will be out of action so soon after starting on this hugely paid and hugely publicised role. Apparently she is taking maternity leave in September, for "a few months", although of course she will have the option of extending her leave and may never return.
Meanwhile, instead of the ferociously sexy on-the-ball babe that Five hired, Kaplinsky will be becoming larger and mumsier, she may have a nauseous or difficult pregnancy requiring lots of time off, and at some point her brain will be affected by the amnesia of pregnancy. This is a phenomenon that is now widely admitted, even by feminists (although it is equally often denied when inconvenient); there is even a nasty new fashionable word for a woman in this state - preghead. Luckily there is, of course, Autocue at Five News. And an expensive stand-in will have to be found.
The proper word for all this is exploitation. It is women such as Kaplinsky, appearing so flamboyantly unreliable and unapologetic, who make working life much harder for the rest of us - working mothers, childless women and, of course, all employers. To add insult to injury, employers are not even allowed to say so. On the contrary, a top man at Five has said that he is "genuinely delighted" and indeed he could have said nothing else. It would probably have been illegal - discrimination against women - even to hint at any other response.
I have not tried to count the weeks and figure out the moment of Kaplinsky's conception; somehow it seems rather rude. It may be that when she signed her contract she wasn't - quite - pregnant. However, she must have been when she started work and she may well have known it. In any case she must surely have been aware of her own hopes and intentions about having a baby, presumably sooner rather than later, unless this infant was a "mistake". This strikes me as unfair to her employers, unless they knew and accepted this risk in advance.
...It is depressing, from a woman's point of view, that the pendulum has swung so quickly from one unfair extreme to another.
...Many women seem to expect extraordinary rights and allowances so that they can keep their jobs whatever the cost and inconvenience to their employer and to be equally paid when they are not always of equal value. Government and public opinion support them.
Yet I have several professional women friends, committed feminists, who dread hiring women for all the obvious reasons. The most pressing are their long periods of maternity leave and the extreme difficulty of replacing them temporarily in demanding service industries such as publishing and law with equally good people, who will then have to be dropped.
Are You Smarter Than A 12th Grader?
A U.S. News & World Report test on money smarts. I got all six right. This is not, however, a brag, because they're easy questions if you're 12 x 3 + 8, which I am. The real question is, how many 12th graders can get the answer to 12 x 3 + 8 right?
via Consumerist
Young Rapist Brought To Justice! (Very, Very Young)
As evidenced previously by the two middle school boys Susan Goldsmith wrote about in the Oregonian -- boys brought up on sex abuse charges after they were seen "running down the halls slapping girls on the bottom" -- "justice" in the schools is really overboard. The latest? Via ifeminist, a first grader was suspended for "sexual harassment." From the AP:
BROCKTON, Mass. -- A first grader was suspended for three days after school officials said he sexually harassed a girl in his class by allegedly putting two fingers inside the girl's waistband while she sat on the floor in front of him.The boy's mother, Berthena Dorinvil, said she "screamed" about last week's suspension from Downey Elementary School, and added her son doesn't know what sexual harassment is.
"He doesn't know those things," she told The Enterprise of Brockton. "He's only 6 years old."
...The principal told Dorinvil the girl complained to the teacher after her son touched the girl's waistband, hitting her skin, in a room full of children.
Dorinvil said her son told her he touched the girl's shirt, not her skin, after the girl touched him.
"He was playing with her," Dorinvil said.
The boys in the first case did also admit to poking or grabbing at girls' breasts -- a confession they made after being brought into the principal's office. Okay, so that's a bit much, but this is all basically just the play or horsing around kids naturally do. The reasonable answer, in that case, would have been to tell them that's inappropriate -- as they did back when I was in junior high. And tell them why. And then, if they persist, maybe suspend them. Instead, hey, wheel out that portable guillotine!
These officials may end up sending all these accused kids down a bad path in life simply by turning them into criminals or near criminals for ordinary kid play.
Just Say No!
...To "unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps," as Jacob Sullum drily puts it at the end of his Reason piece on a schoolgirl suspected of drug posession. The drug in question? Ibuprofen, with a street value of, what, a bite of a bologna sandwich? Sullum writes of how eighth grader Savana Redding was strip-searched to make sure she wasn't, get this, hiding ibuprofen in her crotch or cleavage:
Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.
The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.
"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."
The ACLU quote on this from Sullum's piece was just perfect:
"There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
Eight Orthodox Jews Planned To Blow Up Planes Over The Atlantic
Ha! Fooled ya. Or did I?
No, these men aren't Orthodox Jews.
Shockingly, the men are actually Muslim.
I know, who woulda thunk it? After all, Jews do this sort of thing all the time, right? Right? Right?
And, just like some Muslim religious leaders, rabbis are standing up every weekend telling their congregations to kill anybody who isn't a Jew. Right? Right? Right?
Sean O'Neill writes for the Times of London:
A British terrorist cell planned to detonate suicide bombs on seven transatlantic flights over North America, causing catastrophic loss of life, a court was told yesterday.The flights chosen by the alleged terrorists - based in Walthamstow, East London - were scheduled to leave Heathrow Terminal 3 one afternoon carrying almost 2,000 passengers and crew.
Peter Wright, QC, opening the prosecution case against eight men accused of the plot, said that the attacks would have had "a truly global impact".
The seven aircraft were destined for six American and Canadian cities: New York, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal.
Mr Wright said that the eight defendants shared a common interest in "inflicting heavy casualties upon an innocent civilian population, all in the name of Islam".
He told Woolwich Crown Court that the key component of the bombs was a liquid hydrogen peroxide explosive carried in 500ml bottles of soft drinks.
The devices would have been carried in hand luggage, along with detonators made from batteries and disposable cameras.
No date had been finalised for the series of attacks but the alleged conspirators had conducted detailed research on flights leaving London between August and October 2006. The date range included the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Ah, but Muslims have huge grievances against, let's see, anybody who doesn't want women to be given all the rights of a pet.
And they're really pissed off about Israel. Which surely is why Muslim terrorists are going after Buddhist teachers. Yes, it's all about the Jews and American support for Israel.
The truth is, Israel's existence is good for many Muslims, as it diverts the attention from those who would otherwise be devoting most of their energy to murdering each other.
Who Here Thinks People Are Against Hillary Because She's A Chick?
A woman named Jean Hannah Edelstein (who voted for...Obama!...in the primaries) "smells" sexism in those urging Hillary Clinton to stand down. Uh, it's called politics, dear. Edelstein writes in The Guardian:
Despite the fact that I voted for Obama in February, though, I was galled by the implications by Dean and Leahy and other major party players this weekend that Clinton should step aside as soon as possible to prevent McCain's victory - and that the superdelegates should force her hand if necessary. What might be good for the Democrats at this point - having one candidate to stump for against the increasingly smug and confident McCain - would be seriously undermining to feminism.
Shockingly, not all of us girls are feminists. I'm for fair treatment for all, not special treatment for some under the guise of equal treatment.
Also, as I've said before, I vote for a president based on whether they're the most qualified (or to be more realistic, the least odious) candidate, not on whether or not they have labia.
Edelstein continues, all women-as-victims'y:
And this new anti-Clinton attitude is thus nearly enough to sway me (and, I would imagine, many other women) back into her camp.While the Democrats did attempt to dilute the nasty flavour of sexism in this latest move by drafting in Speaker Nancy Pelosi to damn Clinton as well, the collective American affection for simple symbolism means that it is impossible to avoid the fact that if Clinton quits, it will end up in our national narrative as another example of why women aren't up to the toughest job in America. It simply smacks of a powerful group of men saying, once again, something to the effect of, "Step aside, little lady. This is men's work. Go bake some cookies."
Gotta love how she uses the female Speaker of the House to show how women are kept out of national politics.
More from Edelstein:
Detractors of Senator Clinton often claim that she wouldn't have got as far as she has without her marriage, and they're likely correct - but they overlook the fact that marriage has historically been a key tool to aid women in breaking through seemingly impenetrable gender barriers.
Hmmm...now I'm wondering...do you think Condoleezza Rice just shot her way in?
The truth is, it's much easier to become, say, a senator, if you're from a wealthy and connected family. Do you see people who grew up poor complaining that they can't be president? Bill Clinton, for example?
Still more from Edelstein:
As long as Clinton has a chance of winning the nomination - and yes, she still does - for the sake of her symbolic value as a female leader, and for the sake of the legitimacy of future female candidates, she absolutely must take the battle with Obama to finish line....And if the Democrats fail to achieve the White House in November, they mustn't blame Clinton. Rather, we should take a lesson from this dispiriting experience that even in the enlightened noughties, America remains a country where the layer of glass above women's heads is enduringly thick.
I know there are those who will not vote for Hillary because she's a woman, just as there are those who will not vote for Obama because he's black -- and those who will not vote for McCain because he's a white male. We've all got our boohoos, don't we?
And I could be wrong, but I think people mainly dislike Hillary Clinton because she's sleazy, a liar (more on that here), and thinks socialism makes economic sense.
Who's Your Daddy? The Answer: $29.95
JoNel Aleccia writes on MSNBC of do-it-yourself DNA tests, $29.95 in the drug store. The kits are sold under the name "Identigene," and are produced by Sorenson Genetics of Salt Lake City, and require a swab of cheek cells from the father and the child -- which can, I'm guessing, be taken off a pacifier without anyone in the family being the wiser:
For users like Reid, the tests provide easier answers to one of life's crucial questions -- Who's your daddy? -- said Douglas Fogg, chief operating officer of Identigene."Everyone is purchasing the tests because they're curious," said Fogg, who expects to sell at least 52,000 tests this year. "They're looking to establish questions about their own child or their own paternity."
But for genetics experts, drugstore marketing of DNA testing raises questions of accuracy and ethics.
"From our perspective, direct-to-consumer genetic tests raise all the same issues for lax government oversight, potentially misleading or false advertising and the potential for making profound medical decisions on the basis of poorly interpreted or understood results," said Rick Borchelt, a spokesman for the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.
At the very least, the kits have the potential to complicate the lives of the people who use them, legal experts cautioned.
"We all need to take a step back and realize that this is different than many tests that you take," said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "This is a life-changing moment."
Well, duh. And it is within the realm of possibility that a test could be inconclusive or wrong, and I'm guessing there's something in the packaging saying so. And surely, there's the possibility somebody may do something horrible if they get an answer they're not expecting. But to deny the rest of the population an inexpensive answer to whether a man really should be paying child support -- well, that's like banning wine sales because some people will drive drunk.
Thanks, Flynne!
"Falsely Equating Islam With Violence...Is...Like Falsely Equating Walt Disney With Mickey Mouse"
Pat Condell states (what should be) the obvious:
Europe Supervises Its Own Destruction
Thomas Landen writes on Brussels Journal:
The Austrian authorities have indicted politician Susanne Winter on charges of incitement and degradation of religious symbols and religious agitation. This offence carries a maximum sentence of two years. Last January, Ms Winter said that the prophet Muhammad was "a child molester" because he had married a six-year-old girl. She also said he was "a warlord" who had written the Koran during "epileptic fits."The politician, a member of the Austrian Freedom Party FPÖ, an anti-immigration party which is in opposition, added that Islam is "a totalitarian system of domination that should be cast back to its birthplace on the other side of the Mediterranean." She also warned for "a Muslim immigration tsunami," saying that "in 20 or 30 years, half the population of Austria will be Muslim" if the present immigration policies continue.
Following her remarks, Muslim extremists threatened to kill Susanne Winter and she was placed under police protection. Today, the Justice Department in Vienna announced that Ms Winter will be charged with "incitement and degradation of religious symbols" (Verhetzung und Herabwürdigung religiöser Symbole). If convicted she may have to serve up to two years in jail for her opinions.
However, Alfred Hrdlicka, the Austrian "artist" who depicted Jesus and his apostles engaging in homosexual acts of sodomy during the Last Supper, has not been indicted. Nor will he be. Depicting Jesus sodomizing his apostles is not considered to be a "degradation of religious symbols" in Austria, but referring to the historic fact that Muhammad married a six-year old girl is "incitement to racial hatred."
Neither has Mr Hrdlicka been threatened by Christian assassins for his "opinions." The difference between Christian and Muslim extremists is that the former do not aim to kill those who offend them, but the latter do - which is perhaps also why the European authorities fear the radical Muslims and persecute their opponents while they subsidize those who insult Christians.
Details on Mohammed, the child fucker, here. Hitchens told me of the epileptic fits speculation at the Einaudi dinner in Mantua. I'm guessing it's in his book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Yes, religion poisons everything, but the religion most likely to end your life and Western life as we know it, well, it ain't the Christians, and it ain't the Jews.
UPDATE: Hitchens talks about the epilepsy notion here, in an excerpt from his book on RichardDawkins.net:
It was noticed even by some of his wives that the Prophet was capable of having a "revelation" that happened to suit his short-term needs, and he was sometimes teased about it. We are further told--on no authority that need be believed--that when he experienced revelation in public he would sometimes be gripped by pain and experience loud ringing in his ears. Beads of sweat would burst out on him, even on the chilliest of days. Some heartless Christian critics have suggested that he was an epileptic (though they fail to notice the same symptoms in the seizure experienced by Paul on the road to Damascus), but there is no need for us to speculate in this way. It is enough to rephrase David Hume's unavoidable question. Which is more likely--that a man should be used as a transmitter by god to deliver some already existing revelations, or that he should utter some already existing revelations and believe himself to be, or claim to be, ordered by god to do so? As for the pains and the noises in the head, or the sweat, one can only regret the seeming fact that direct communication with god is not an experience of calm, beauty, and lucidity.
The Sad Life Of The Hollyweasel
From the Los Angeles craiglist, i'm a producer dammit, why won't women have sex with me?!:
Date: 2008-03-05, 4:22PM PSTfor the life of me, i can't seem to figure out what's going on here. i did all the things that i thought i was supposed to do to put myself in position to score ungodly amounts of hollywood poon. i got an undergrad degree in business from nyu. then i move to LA and complete the Peter Stark producing program at USC. while there i take full advantage of the networking and resume building connections that such an educational stint provides. i graduate and get a job with a major studio. i have a business card with my name on it. under my name is my job title.
"producer."
so where are the legions of young starlets aching for me to tongue-fuck their puckered brown-eyes?
i mean, look, when i was 15 i read robert evans' autobiography, "the kid stays in the picture." there i was, short, mildly chubby, pimple-faced, cursed with a hideous jewfro, unable to get even a nut massage from the homeliest looking humans at horace mann in possession of vaginas, but i figured that if portly, profusely perspirating gasbags like don simpson can have bitches cat-fighting over who gets to blow the next rail off of his diseased cock, certainly i can get laid modestly well if i became a producer.
now i go out to parties and clubs and tell women that i'm a producer and they look at me as if i told them that i have fucking SARS! every night ends with me cruising pornotube at 3am in search of just the right clip to sufficiently inspire me to rub one out into a goldtoe nylon sock.
WTF?!
via New Shelton
Brit Sex Scandals Are More Fun
Marcus Baram writes on ABC.com:
Racing fans around the world were stunned this morning to read about the bizarre sex video reportedly featuring Max Mosley, the head of the Formula One's governing body.Mosley, whose father, Sir Oswald Mosley, was the founder of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler, was apparently caught on video with five women in an underground torture chamber engaging in Nazi-inspired sadomasochistic sex, according to British news reports.
In a video obtained by the News of the World, the 67-year-old debonair lawyer is reported to have paid about $5,000 to play both guard and inmate in a concentration camp scene.
When he enters, the man reported to be Mosley is greeted by a busty blond woman dressed as a prison guard who inspects his head for lice, strips off his clothes, bends him over and whips his bottom, while saying, "He's serving a life sentence now for crimes he committed before."
The man then dresses and speaks German with a woman in a Nazi uniform, helping her beat women dressed as prisoners. Later, he has sex with several of the women.
Of course, this being Britain, he shares a cup of tea with the women after the sex.
Meet Mr. Contradiction
Reason editor Matt Welch on the "Straight Talk Express" guy who's anything but a straight talker, Candidate McCain:
So in summation: McCain says he hates the wars he'll inevitably launch. He says the U.S. cannot act alone with all the unipolar power he'll continue to amass and flex. He advocates a League of Democracies that will never happen, and an environmental treaty that probably won't work.As David Brooks noted, "Anybody who thinks McCain is merely continuing the Bush agenda is not paying attention." He's right--McCain will close Gitmo, make a couple of cheap rhetorical promises to play nice with the world, then increase this administration's interventionism in a way befitting a candidate who ran as the neo-conservative favorite against the too-humble foreign policy approach of governor George W. Bush.
The only question is whether his deep reserves of credibility in the Bank of Media is enough to maintain the fiction that he's less an interventionist than his predecessor. Judging by the Washington Post's news pages, he's well on his way:
McCain is often portrayed in the news media as a global John Wayne who would tread on the world stage with a Navy veteran's swagger and talk tough toward unfriendly governments in Iran and North Korea.But his record on foreign policy during two decades in the Senate is more nuanced.
Matt's terrific and very readable book on McCain -- McCain: The Myth of a Maverick
What a motley bunch of lying losers we have running for president.
What's Worse Than Being Obsessed With Sex?
Being obsessed with not having sex. Randall Patterson writes for New York Times Magazine about Janey Fredell, a Harvard girl with her legs crossed so tight, it's a wonder she doesn't pop veins:
"It's an odd thing to see one's lifestyle essentially attacked in The Crimson," Fredell said. She began to feel a need to stand up for her beliefs, and what she believed in more than anything at Harvard was the value of not having premarital sex. In an essay she wrote for The Crimson, she asserted that "virginity is extremely alluring," though its "mysterious allure . . . is not rooted in an image of innocence and purity, but rather in the notion of strength." As she told me later, "It takes a strong woman to be abstinent, and that's the sort of woman I want to be."After the essay appeared a year ago, Fredell was immediately aware of a loss of privacy, of having entered "whatever it is, the public sphere." As students began responding on The Crimson Web site, she understood that she had defined herself at Harvard. "Everything became very clear to me," she recalled when we met. She would join True Love Revolution. "I realized it was bigger than me, more important."
Everybody needs a hobby. Maybe she sucks at field hockey.
True Love Revolution was denounced, however, after its first big outreach effort, on Valentine's Day 2007. Members had sent out cards to the women of the freshmen class that read: "Why wait? Because you're worth it." Some interpreted the card to mean that those who didn't wait until marriage to have sex would somehow be worth less. One writer for The Crimson concluded that "by targeting women with their cards and didactic message, they perpetuate an age-old values system in which the worth of a young woman is measured by her virginity."...The True Love Revolution Web site warns that bonding hormones are released during any "sexual activity that culminates in an orgasm." Fredell's own relationships include a "physical component," but she said it's difficult to give "a set list of what's O.K. and what's not because there isn't any." She once told another reporter that oral sex, while "disgusting and disrespectful," is not sex, but she now expresses clear approval only of kissing and hugging.
Luckily for her, marriage is typically a cure for blow jobs.
Her girlfriends are surprised that she can maintain a relationship without having sex, she said, but her boyfriend, at Georgetown, "knew from the get-go what he was getting into." Fredell does not make sexual demands of him nor does he make demands of her. "So I'm free!" she said. "I'm free to experience the emotional and intellectual and spiritual intimacy of another person." By closing herself off to sex, she claims to have found the humanity in her boyfriend and to have opened herself to an experience of love. "I'll share this with you," Fredell confided. "He said conversations with me were more enjoyable than sex would be with anyone else." Every woman, she said, should have this "incredibly moving experience" of being appreciated for who she really is.There's a chance that Fredell and her boyfriend will marry, but of course, she says, "it's not for certain." If they don't, and she never finds true love, she says she believes she could spend her life alone. Fredell saw too many women compromise themselves in order to have a relationship. And she also saw those women when their men walked away. The Web site warned what happens then to the sexually active; that oxytocin, in such cases, can cause "a palpable sense of loss, betrayed trust and unwelcome memories. This is information that you will rarely hear from sexual-health groups," because, the Web site says, "there is no condom for the heart."
Oh, hurl. Personally, I find surviving heartbreak (the love kind and beyond), rather than living in fear, makes you stronger. This girl, in addition to seeming desperate for an identity, seems desperate to have that guaranteed fairy-tale life complete with happily ever after that somebody read her about as a little girl. Unfortunately, out here in the real world, keeping your legs crossed is no guarantee of lifelong bliss. But, it probably makes a lot of people feel better to believe they only need do something concrete -- deny themselves sex in this case, and everything will work out just magically.
Finally, from all my years giving advice, I'll tell you something this article doesn't: People who shout the loudest and proudest about the virtues of abstinence are sometimes covering for their lack of desire or disgust for sex. Is it really wise to pledge to spend the rest of your life with somebody without finding out first whether you're sexually compatible?
Anger At Their Own Gullibility?
And also, maybe it's anger that fairy-tale notions about relationships didn't work out per Grimm's. (Reality denial seems to be something of a theme today in AdviceGoddessblog-land.) From Livewire, via CNN.com, a story by Anna Jane Grossman on revenge on partners who cheat:
Teri Garr is known for her acting roles in "Tootsie" and "Friends," but one man in Hollywood will probably remember her best for the way she wields a hammer."My phone rings at 4:30 in the morning," says Garr, "and this woman says 'Is this Teri Garr? Because I've been sleeping with your boyfriend since August.''"
The caller had decided to spill the beans after catching the guy in bed with yet another woman.
"I went into the closet to get some of his stuff because he'd practically been living with me," says Garr. "I threw it all in a box -- I even had his baby pictures. And then for some reason I saw a hammer and I threw that in the box, too."
Enraged, Garr says she drove to her boyfriend's house in 1990 and did what many a scorned woman has only dreamed of: She smashed all his windows.
Disgustingly, here's how it ended for Garr -- perhaps because she's famous, but probably because she's a woman:
The law came into play when Terri Garr was in the middle of her rampage inside the house: Her terrified ex dialed the cops."But the policeman arrives and says, 'Oh! Ms. Garr! Are you OK?' the actress said, 'Now I am.' And I left," she says, adding that no charges were pressed. The police officer "thought I was the victim," says Garr. "And really, I was."
Now maybe there are some geniuses of deception out there -- or is it that the people who were cheated on didn't want to look too closely at who and what they were buying into? (The person and that person's ability or interest in longterm monogamy.)
Richard Dawkins And Big Pimpin' Daddy Dennett
The most hilarious rap song I've ever seen.
via Respectful Insolence
