The Mob Didn't Have It This Good
They call this Muslim Belgian woman a "warrior" in The New York Times headline. Yeah, she's a regular Julius Caesar -- 48-year-old Moroccan-born Malika El Aroud, who, in 2008, only goes out with a big black tablecloth covering her head and another covering her body. But, it isn't her outings that are the problem. This neo-primitive is fomenting violence in Europe via the Internet -- funded by the Belgian taxpayers, who are giving her $1100 a month in unemployment!
Islam...plus modern (western, of course) tools and inventions...plus the benefits of western society...equals a red carpet for these barbarians to drag us all back to the Middle Ages.
Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet write for The New York Times:
In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair. The only adornment is a pair of powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY.But it is on the Internet where Ms. El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name "Oum Obeyda," she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe.
She calls herself a female holy warrior for Al Qaeda. She insists that she does not disseminate instructions on bomb-making and has no intention of taking up arms herself. Rather, she bullies Muslim men to go and fight and rallies women to join the cause.
"It's not my role to set off bombs -- that's ridiculous," she said in a rare interview. "I have a weapon. It's to write. It's to speak out. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."
Ms. El Aroud has not only made a name for herself among devotees of radical forums where she broadcasts her message of hatred toward the West. She also is well known to intelligence officials throughout Europe as simply "Malika" -- an Islamist who is at the forefront of the movement by women to take a larger role in the male-dominated global jihad.
She's now suspected in a plot to carry out violent attacks in Belgium.
Now, even as Ms. El Aroud remains under constant surveillance, she is back home rallying militants on her main Internet forum and collecting more than $1,100 a month in government unemployment benefits."Her jihad is not to lead an operation but to inspire other people to wage jihad," said Glenn Audenaert, the director of Belgium's federal police force, in an interview. "She enjoys the protection that Belgium offers. At the same time, she is a potential threat."
Excuse me, but what idiot left the door to western Europe in and let in the people who will be the death of it?
And is there any chance of saving it now, and how?
And if, as I suspect, Europe is lost, when Europe goes under, what happens to North America -- including Canada, which is rapidly becoming a rather scary place for those with Enlightenment values? Here, for example, from The Washington Times:
In Canada, meanwhile, Mark Steyn awaits trial before the Canadian and British Columbian Human Rights Commissions for the crime of committing hate speech by writing a book and a magazine article that warned against the dangers of Islam overwhelming Europe. The charges were precipitated by demands for Mr. Steyn's prosecution by Khurrum Awan, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, and a band of fellow students who publicly marched to announce their demands. They claimed that as Muslims they had the right to influence what Mr. Steyn writes: "When you are talking about the issues that relate directly to us. When people feel insulted they should have recourse." Amazingly, the culturally feeble, intimidated Canadian officials promptly filed criminal charges.
Here's the video.
Societal suicide, anyone?
"If I Had A Hammer..."
Hilarious Mike Luckovich cartoon.
via Nancy Rommelmann
Boo Hoo, Pregnancy Is A Pre-Existing Condition
I love Consumerist, but there are too many entitled types like this girl who have their stories posted there. Katlyn just got out of college and got herself knocked up for graduation. Her letter to Consumerist follows:
First and foremost, I am 15 weeks pregnant, unmarried, and I just graduated from college. This should be an exciting time for me, as I'm starting two new chapters in my life; unfortunately, enrolling for health insurance has become a burden.Pregnancy is considered to be a "pre-existing condition" much like diabetes, cancer, or any other kind of health malfunction that would label me as less than perfect. I am a non-smoker, was a varsity athlete in college, and am of average height and weight. I have no other pre-existing medical conditions at all: I have no allergies, no asthma, and I've never had any major surgery. When I called Blue Cross Blue Shield, they denied me coverage due to my "condition". When I asked if this would be a common concern for other health insurance companies, they said, "Yes, you will find this with all health insurance companies."
So I called other companies. Aetna and Assurant both denied me as well. Every company told me I was more than welcome to enroll AFTER I had my baby. Being 15 weeks pregnant, it would be tough to me to find a job since I am beginning to show, so any hopes of long-term employment with health benefits would be a long shot.
However! There is a glimmer of hope! I can stay on my father's health insurance for $400 a month through COBRA. Had I not been pregnant, I would have qualified for a health insurance plan for about $175 with BCBS. My boyfriend has health insurance through his company, but since we're not married, I don't qualify. I also looked into state health plans, but with my current jobs (all part-time, do not offer insurance) I make too much money to qualify. Fantastic.
Who says health care in the US doesn't need to be fixed?
--
Thank you,
Katlyn
Let me get this straight: For a few hundred dollars a month, she thinks a health insurance company should shell out the thousands upon thousands of dollars a pregnancy and the pre- and post-natal care can cost?
And it's terribly, terribly unfair and a sign our health care system is broken if they don't?
In other words, she thinks the cost of her irresponsibility should be passed on to a lot of other people.
My advice: If you can't afford to pay for a pregnancy, get health insurance before you get knocked up, or have the boyfriend wear a condom.
Mama Or Mamacita?
Rough week, thanks to those geniuses over at Bank of America. In case you haven't been following the ongoing debacle, BofA tellers handed over thousands of dollars of my money like it was lettuce -- at least one time, to a lady with missing teeth and a fake driver's license in my name (with the wrong expiration date). But, seven times in total. (More at the above link.)
Meanwhile, as for the point of this particular blog item, I'm a little behind, thanks to all the, uh, excitement -- making new friends at the DMV fraud unit and the credit bureaus, and making lots of frenemies at BofA, where they've been stonewalling me for days on giving me the document I need to file a police report (a declaration of fraud, which is supposedly coming tomorrow morning from some investigator in Dallas).
Hope y'all don't mind helping me with my homework again. A question I got via e-mail:
Dear Advice Goddess,I have a Colombian boyfriend, and we are very happy together. Recently, however, I have become quite uncomfortable regarding a certain rapport he has with his mother. The two of them are very close, and were living together until he recently moved in with me.
In the past, whenever I would visit their apartment, I noticed with a fair degree of shock that they would liberally smack each other's butts as a regular joke. The second time I visited, his mother went in the bathroom while my boyfriend was taking a shower and began joking to me in Spanish about the size of her son's penis. She also apparently walks around naked in front of him all the time. I was able to dismiss these things as a good example of cultural differences until recently.
Last week we were at her place with his extended family for a mother's day barbecue, and right in the middle of dinner she got up from her seat and literally stuck her son's face into her breasts (which are huge and had been stuffed into a very sexy, low-cut halter deal), shaking them vigorously for an extended moment, laughing all the while and looking at me tauntingly. I was shocked, embarrased, and not quite sure how to read her behavior. My family is not totally uptight, but such a sexualized rapport between parents and kids is not something I have ever seen, and I'm not exactly under-traveled.
I mentioned it to my boyfriend who said that she's always done that kind of thing, and that it's just a joke, and not meant at all as a threat or territorial message of any kind to me. Is this kind of episode something I should try to get comfortable with for the hopefully long future ahead between us, or is it just inappropriate whatever continent you are on?
-- Girl With a Mama's Boy
So...whaddya make of this boys and girls?
Heidi's Back!
With more whack-jobby fun! (She left this choice morsel as a comment on this previous entry.)
So thats the response i get for my own personal opinion!!!! ....I live in a trailer park,i recently got child support checks, and I'm a whack job!!! Good ones losers! You have such a fantasy about cutting others down for having different beliefs! Its the same dam thing if i voted for Hillary and u voted for Obama......its our seperate opinions! You say "Exposed" and I say " Cover it up" BIG FRICKN DEAL!!!!! I woulda found something bigger than an ashtray to throw at his head! Maybe then, when we made love, it would get them nasty strippers out of his head!! How would u like it knowing your lover was thinking about somebody else while doing you?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Thats a fantasy not REALITY!!!! If your lover has to look at other people to get satisfied for u, then its NOT love its PERVERSION! The ones who left me negative feedback.......are the ones with shit for lives, are the ones who cant hold a relationship, are the ones who will or have been married more than once, and are the ones out there sexually abusing the innocent!! SEE YOU ON JUDGEMENT DAY!!! I'LL BE LAUGHING AT YOUR STUPIDITY!!!
Did we mention that Heidi is 26 and has been married for...nine years?
UPDATE: Heidi now says she's been WITH her husband for nine, and married to him for seven. So, she wasn't so much a child bride as a childish one (marrying at 19 instead of 17).
The Missing Links
It seems some of the pages in my archives are showing up as comments only, sans entry. Gregg is a bit engaged today, but we'll get on this. To see the actual entry of a post from previous months, just type the title or or a word or two from the title in the blog search engine to your left, and hit "search," and it'll come up. (Be sure you click on the headline above the entry to get to it, once the search engine finds it for you.) Please let me know if anybody has problems with this method. And sorrrry!
Hmmm, one wonders if the woman with the missing teeth and fake Amy Alkon driver's license who stole money out of my bank accounts also steals blog posts.
Sometimes I Get A Little Stumped
This is one of those times. This woman has yet to answer all my questions -- I often ask for more background than I'm given -- but perhaps those of you who comment here can help me answer this.
Here's the first e-mail from the woman:
Dear Amy:About two years ago I adopted a little boy as a single woman. He is now 3 years old and at the age where he notices other kids (usually boys) with their fathers. Recently, he has started asking me about his "daddy". I am not sure how to answer this question. I was told that it is unhealthy to tell him that he does not have a father. I tried to explain to him that he is very special because I chose him so he knows that he is wanted but this has not stopped the question about his "daddy". Sometimes when we pass a house he likes he asks if his daddy lives there. If he sees a child on television with his father, he asks about the whereabouts of his daddy. If he sees a father and son at the park he wants to know if his daddy is coming to the park. I am at a loss as to what to say to him that will satisfy his need for a father. I already have male family members who spend time with him. He started calling one of them daddy and we corrected him. After several times, he started say, "he is not my daddy" and started asking for his daddy again. I think it hurts him not to have a daddy of his own.
What can I do to help my little boy who is missing not having a "daddy"?
- LOVING BUT WORRIED SINGLE MOM
My first thought? "Great...yet another selfish single woman raising a kid without a daddy." But, from years of giving advice, and good old intuition, I know better than to spill my hand. (Typically, I let 'em have it -- if they deserve that -- after I get all the information I need.)
I write back:
I find your question heartbreaking, and I don't have a quick answer for it. I have to think about this, and need more information.A question: Is there somebody in your life that you would trust (with your life, pretty much) to make a commitment to being this kid's dad (in terms of being there consistently)?
I disagree with the notion of lying to a kid, including telling him he doesn't have a father.
But again, I need to know more: What was the circumstance of his adoption? (What do you know of his origins/parents?)
I'm not suggesting you look up the guy, even if that's possible. I'm just looking for the story of his background, best you know it. Please copy this entire e-mail into your reply. And if you don't hear from me by Wednesday, please forward everything, all in one e-mail, by then. But, I anticipate gettting to it sometime this weekend, before I go into my really crazy deadline days. Best,-Amy
She writes back:
Dear Amy:I recently moved to where I now live to be near family so I do not know anyone outside my family. If I tell him he does not have a father, I would be legally correct but not biologically so. However, I would never tell him that because it could be damaging. I know the names of both of his biological parents but they are not interested in being there for him which is why I adopted him. My lawyer has advised me not to have any contact with them since the biological mother has decided she wants him back. She does not want him back because she loves him but because she sees him as her possession. I asked because I wanted to know if I should let her continue to be a part of his life. In addition, I am the only mother he knows. He has no memory of her because she was never around and neither was his biological father. They neglected him so badly it is surprising he survived, according to his doctor. It was a private adoption and they have my name but that is all they have since the adoption became final. Before, I was trying to give them a chance to be a part of his life so they had my name, address, and cell/home numbers. They never used them.
I tried calling them a few times and they told me they did not care about what was going on with him and did not want to hear about it. When he had to go to the emergency room because a very bad fever caused him to have a seizure, I called to tell them but they did not care. They are in their early 20s and very selfish. The reason he was so neglected was because they wanted to go on with their lives as if he was never born. This included drugs, alcohol and hanging out all night, leaving him at home alone, and sleeping all day, leaving him to find his own food. Someone told them about me and the fact that I wanted a child and they gave him to me no questions asked. I was told that they said that it was better to let me have him than them getting embarrassed and made to look bad by having the state take him. He is doing well now but he has to use an inhaler at times and take a pill for asthma everyday. The doctor said he believes it is because his immune system was compromised during and after the pregnancy. The person who told the parents about me said that they did drugs and alcohol during the pregnancy. I am told that they also abused him and the father abused the mother. There are areas on his body that looks like he was burnt with a cigarettes.
I hope that is enough history. I am getting teary. I get really upset every time I think of how badly my baby was treated and the horrible condition he was in when I got him. -
- LOVING BUT WORRIED SINGLE MOM
I respond:
Wow. What a story. Just heart-wrenching.But, I need you to answer this question I asked you previously:
A question: Is there somebody in your life -- ideally an extremely close friend or somebody in your family -- that you would trust (with your life, pretty much) to make a commitment to being this kid's dad (in terms of being there consistently)?
It's likely too much to ask of anyone, and you'd really have to trust them. Just wondering.
Also, what are your family circumstances and what is their involvement with the child? Does he have a big world, familywise, with your family, or not? Please respond right away. -Amy
Will update this entry when I get more info from her.
UPDATE: Here's more from an e-mail I just got from her --
I have a big family. I moved here 7 months ago so he could be around my family. One of brothers often takes him places with him and he is usually around my other brother when they go to those places. I was hoping my brothers would be all the male influence he would need or want for now because I totally trust them and they will always be there for me and him. However, he is understanding that they are not "daddy" and is asking for HIS daddy. He has started telling me that they are just his uncles, not his daddy.We were in the park the other day and there was a guy sitting on the ground. He walked right up and sat down by that man and asked him if he was his daddy. I got there just in time to hear him ask and realized something needed to be done. He can't be going up to strangers because something could happen to him. Normally I keep him close to me but I was sitting on the bench and letting him play on the slides. It is weird because usually he hides behind my legs when a stranger tries to talk to him.
Men do not even have to be of the same race for him to ask if they are his daddy so he is not identifying with men who look like him. He is just identifying with men. This does not bother me as I have a very mixed family and have always felt as long as they are from the human race that is all that counts. I was asked that question once so I wanted to get that out of the way.
This is a daily routine for us and it is heartbreaking and it is starting to be a little scary. I can't keep avoiding his questions and giving him quick fix answers about "daddy" forever.
The Dalai Lama: Cartoon Good Guy
Another interesting one from Brendan O'Neill at Spiked -- probably the first Westerner on record to take a sharp look at the Dalai Lama. From O'Neill's piece in The Guardian:
The Dalai Lama says he wants Tibetan autonomy and political independence. Yet he allows himself to be used as a tool by western powers keen to humiliate China. Between the late 1950s and 1974, he is alleged to have received around $15,000 a month, or $180,000 a year, from the CIA. He has also been, according to the same reporter, "remarkably nepotistic", promoting his brothers and their wives to positions of extraordinary power in his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India.He poses as the quirky, giggly, modern monk who once auctioned his Land Rover on eBay for $80,000 and has even done an advert for Apple (quite what skinny white computers have got to do with Buddhism is anybody's guess). Yet in truth he is a product of the crushing feudalism of archaic, pre-modern Tibet, where an elite of Buddhist monks treated the masses as serfs and ruthlessly punished them if they stepped out of line.
The Dalai Lama demands religious freedom. Yet he persecutes a Buddhist sect that worships a deity called Dorje Shugden. He outlawed praying to Dorje Shugden in 1996, and those who defied his writ were thrown out of their jobs, mocked in the streets and even had their homes smashed up by heavy-handed officials from his government-in-exile. When worshippers complained about their treatment, they were told by representatives of the Dalai Lama that "concepts like democracy and freedom of religion are empty when it comes to the wellbeing of the Dalai Lama".
As the Dalai Lama tours Britain, lots of people are asking: why won't Brown receive him at Downing Street? I have a different question: why should Brown, who for all his troubles is still the head of an elected political party, meet with an authoritarian, fame-chasing, Apple-loving monk?
The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, where backward anti-modern sentiments are widespread amongst self-loathing sections of the educated and the elite, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness. Despite the fact that he advertises Apple, guest-edits Vogue and drives a Land Rover, he is held up as evidence that living the simple eastern life is preferable to, in the words of Philip Rawson, westerners' "gradually more pointless pursuit of material satisfactions". Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.
Heidi, You're A Whack-Job
Hilarious comment just blew in, on the blog entry, We Get Hate Mail, about a column I wrote, Burying The Hatchet, condemning a woman for throwing an ashtray at her husband, and condemning the double standard that has people shrugging off domestic violence against men.
The woman who wrote me was mad at her pussy-whipped pre-husband for going to a strip club when he got drunk at some pre-wedding party. Some other woman wrote an irate letter about strip clubs, which became the blog item where Heidi, a commenter, just posted this hilarity:
Im shocked at all u perverts!!!! Yes i said PERVERTS!!! If you enjoy any nude event at all you are VERY MUCH SO a PERVERT!!!! Who cares about visual variety! Get a life! Face reality......REALITY is one person loves the other for who they are, not for who somebody else is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And if u didnt understand that, it means, u have to think about your man going to the strip club, he comes home to u and wants sex, ok now you're doing it, do u think he's actually thinking of u during this intimacy? HELL NO!!!!!!.....he's thinking about that hot blonde stripper with implants!!!! Get with the program people!!!!!!!!!!!! Your man should be able to perform out of LOVE not because another woman turned him on so he could finally get off on his wife!!!! How the hell were u raised? Im soooooooooo thankful my family took the time to let me realize sex/nudity isnt Gods gift, but for your ONE TRUE LOVE!!!! I feel sorry for all yor children.......that you will keep them updated on sex/nudity to be OK!!!!! It's not! When you come to the end of your life and meet Jesus, you'll soon realize the life you lived wasnt the one God chose for u, U chose it for yourself, and now u must pay the consequences!!!!!! Have fun burning in hell!!! Yes, just for your visual variety u will burn in eternal hell!!!!!!!!! And by the way.....there's no strippers in hell to please your inner perversion!!! And another thing, if people would just keep their dam clothes on, we wouldnt have so many perverts and pedifiles in this world we live in with our children!!!!! So next time u go outta town and your man decides to hit up the strip club, wheres he gonna get his fix? Perhaps an innocent child or disabled person? Your outta town so he has to get off on something! Did u know that a man will fulfilll his fantasies no matter what or on who?? Thats a FACT!!!! Im so sick of the phrase "Sex Sells" ....Well people, it ONLY sells if you BUY it!!!!!!!!!!! I aint buying it!!! I'd rather spend my money to put clothes on a homeless child, or to feed the hungry!!! There's so many more things in this world that need our money and sex aint one of them!!!!!!!! Take $50 for a prostitue for example.....thats 50 double cheeseburgers you couldve bought for our starving children!!!!!!! Is sex more important than feeding somebody who has no food? HELL NO IT ISN'T!!!!!!!!!!!! $20 for a porn movie....couldve bought a pair a shoes for a toddler thats running around barefoot!!!!!!!!!!!!! $10 Playboy Magazine.............couldve bought a blanket for somebody who is cold and homeless!!!!!!! $30 tips for a stripper..........couldve put gas in a car for a single mom with 5 kids!!! You think God will be happy with your money management?????? Dont encourage sexual acts!!! The more you encourage it, the more violence and sexual abuse we'll see to our children and disabled peers!!!! Men have to get off no matter what, so lets protect our innocent from the perverts!!!!
Me? I responded with the title of this post:
Heidi, you're a whack-job.
Of course, I should probably add a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for good measure.
I'm Really A Fat Black Woman With Missing Teeth
Somebody made up a fake California driver's license in my name and has been siphoning my checking and savings accounts this month.
It was a fat black woman in her mid 40s with missing teeth, I was told -- in the final hours of my deadline, when the Bank of America bank manager from Dixon City, California thought to call me to ask if I'd "noticed fraud on (my) account."
I just got my statement in the mail, and would've looked at it tomorrow, post-deadline, along with paying my bills -- or attempting to -- with money now in the possession of Latasha or whomoever. Instead, this bank manager, AFTER dispensing $1,500 of my money to the thief on Friday, decided, Tuesday, to do a little (long over-)due diligence, and call me.
Did the bank take a look at this woman with only a fake driver's license, not any other identification in my name -- a woman with a big open space where her front teeth are supposed to be, and surely other like details -- and think to check whether she might be a crack whore, and not me?! Nope! Not until she'd siphoned out a good bit of my book advance, with the help of the bank. As in, THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS.
Their response, until today: "Thank you for doing business with us, Madame Crack Whore!"
I'll get the money back -- it's all from this month's statement's checking and savings -- but I find it incredible that I can't get my own money out without giving them my dead grandma's blood type, plus the name of her elementary school...yet some lady with only a fake driver's license, and a serious need for dental attention, can stroll into some bank in Dixon City, California, and another one in Auburn, California, and another in Garland, Texas, and another in a nearby Texas city before that, and withdraw piles of money from my account with a phony license with the wrong birthdate on it! (So the Dixon City bank manager told me.)
The teller looked at the discrepancy, I guess, and thought, "Mmm, interesting!" Or something equally thoughtful. (The DMV says nobody's applied for a new license in my number, but couldn't tell me much else. I have to call their fraud people tomorrow -- I was too busy scurrying over after my deadline to the bank.)
I'm going to get my money back, but I'm furious at the level of stupidity at the bank, which allowed me to be victimized like this. Besides the license dates not matching, the bank manager in Dixon City also told me they couldn't access signature or other information on file at my bank. Well, gee whiz, by no means waste 12 cents on a long distance phone call. Just hand over thousands of dollars!
As for whether you look at a woman going around with teeth missing and wonder, "Gee, I wonder if that's her thousands of dollars she's trying to take out with ONLY a driver's license with an unmatching date," the bank manager said something along the lines of "We don't like to judge people." Well, why the hell not?! I judge people every day. If I see a wiry guy with crazy eyes strutting down my street with a needle hanging out of his arm, I'm going to cross the street. Aren't you? No...surely you wait and see whether he holds you up with a piece of broken bottle, because, hey, you don't want to judge people.
How did somebody get my license, when I'm super-super stingy with the number? I don't rent cars, and upon reflection, only the bank, my car insurance company, and the DMV have that number, as far as I can recall. Hmmm...the DMV? From The New York Times in August 3, 1997, "Fake Licenses Tied to Bribes In California":
Investigators say the quest for a counterfeit-proof driver's license has spurred a black market in which state workers issue fraudulent licenses in return for bribes of $200 to $1,000 each.The California Department of Motor Vehicles fears that at least 25,000 fraudulently issued licenses are on the street. Seventy-nine employees have been dismissed in the last 19 months, and investigators estimate that 250 of the department's 8,000 employees may be involved in the scam.
The California driver's license, held by 20.2 million motorists, is a basic identification document and gives people access to other forms of identification. Licenses are used as proof of identity for everything from welfare applications to bank accounts.
The California card incorporates numerous anti-counterfeit safeguards, including holographic images, coding and layering, to make it all but impossible to duplicate.
But the increased difficulty of counterfeiting licenses means that people unable to obtain them legitimately, including undocumented immigrants and people with revoked licenses, try to buy them by bribing clerks.
''Ironically, as our documents become more tamper-proof, it's become more of a problem,'' said the Director of the Department of Motor Vehicles, Sally Reed.
Ironically? Ironically? You get your bank account turned into an ATM without a password and bask in the irony, Sal.
I also vaguely recall something about my license number -- maybe giving it out to the bank in their paperwork -- when I put money into my IRA in April, but I can't be sure. But, basically, I'm one of THE most careful people about my personal information (don't give out my phone number in public, cover the ATM pad while punching in my numbers, pay for almost everything with one credit card, never using a debit card, etc). How this person got my account number is a mystery to me.
Now, there is this I found on the Internet:
With that fake drivers license, that fraudster becomes YOU. All he need do is write a bad check drawn on another bank's bogus name account set up for that purpose, with the victim (you) as payee. He then walks into (in my case) a Wells Fargo branch and, impersonating the victim, cashes the check. When the check bounces, Wells Fargo (probably others, too) simply debits the victims account.
In my case, the woman at the bank checked and found no bounced checks like this.
Oh, by the way, the woman who helped me file my claim in the bank branch told me she deals with a person with a claim like mine every day. One a day, on average...and the bank is still behaving like they're running a neighborhood lemonade stand?!
This is eating my life. My time, my peace of mind, and while I have a credit freeze, I'm still nervous about other ways this toothless bitch may have used this driver's license.
The bank won't release the video footage of this criminal to me: get this -- "privacy issues." Yes, the woman financially ass-rapes me, and we're worried about her "privacy." But, it's possible I can hire a detective and get it, and Emmanuelle Richard, who's just getting or has just gotten her P.I. license in D.C. is going to be one of my first calls tomorrow.
P.S. I checked out the population of Dixon City, California. 311 "African-Americans." How hard, if this criminal is a resident, do you think it'll be to find one fat, 40-something black lady with missing teeth? I mean, how hard for me, not for the police and bank investigators, who surely don't really care about such cases...or they'd be doing something to prevent them!
The Joke That There Is Such A Thing As "Moderate Islam"
People keep telling me to cut Ani Zonneveld some slack. She's the chick who put out the lie in an LA Times letter to the editor that men and women are equal in Islam:
...According to my faith of Islam, all human beings are equal
First of all, there's no such thing as "my faith of Islam." There's only Islam, a violence- and murder-inciting totalitarian movement masquerading as a religion.
Back to Zonneveld, she's a singer, and I speculate that her public "moderate Muslim" stance is largely, or all, about promoting her singing career, since she has shown herself entirely unwilling to engage with me on points in the Quran I e-mailed her, and instead tells me, vaguely, and without links, to read stuff at her website.
...read the stuff I write on the website...
For a supposed promoter of a point of view, she sure takes the lazy way out!
Which website? What stuff? Press releases about how her Muslim flacking is helping your singing career? How she got an award for it from the organization she used to be executive director of?
Anyway, the problem is, there's no such thing as "moderate Islam." Here, from a Geert Wilders piece:
I have been proclaiming this for years: A moderate Islam does not exist. For those who don't want to believe me: read the speech which the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci who alas, died last year held in New York on November 28th 2007 when she received a prize for her heroic resistance to Islamo facism and her struggle for freedom:"A moderate Islam does not exist. It does not exist because there is no difference between Good Islam and Bad Islam. There is Islam and that it the end of it. Islam is the Koran, and nothing other than the Koran. And the Koran is the Mein Kampf of a religion that desires to eliminate others- non -Muslims-who are called infidel dogs, and inferior creatures. Read the Koran, that Mein Kampf, yet again. In whatever version and you will see that the evil which the sons of Allah against us and themselves has perpetrated comes from that book". (Oriana Fallaci"The Force of Reason" post-script page 305 February 2006)
Ehsan Jami is one such infidel dog who had the courage to call the Prophet Mohammed a criminal and for referring to some of the strictures of the Koran as backwards and who got it into his head to stand up for other apostate dogs and even organized a committee for them. Allah finds that the death penalty is warranted for apostasy. Last Saturday that was almost a reality: the infidel Jami was beaten bloody by two Morrocans and one Somalian.
(Translators note: Ehsan Jami is a young Dutch munipal council member and is now living under guard in an undisclosed location after receiving scores of death threats after making critical remarks about Islam and Mohammed in a television interview. http://www.euro-islam.info/spip/article.php3?id_article=425 http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=42621)
Enough is enough. Let's stop with the politically correct spin and hype. It is good that Jami now has protection and it is too bad it did not happen sooner, but that does not solve the core of the problem. The core of the problem is fascistic Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed as it is set out in the Islamic Mein Kampf: the Koran. The texts in the Koran leave little to the imagination.
In various Sura's Muslims are called upon to oppress, persecute, or kill Jews, Christians and others, believers and non -believers and to beat women and to rape and to use violence to implement a worldwide Islamist state. Numerous other Sura's are used by Muslims to incite to death and destruction.
Ban that wretched book like Mein Kampf is banned!
In doing so send a signal to Jami's attackers and other Islamist that the Koran never ever can be allowed to be used as an inspiration for violence. I am ashamed of the Dutch politicians. Their naïve and pathological striving for a utopian moderate Islam which will only bring our country hell and damnation. I am ashamed of the people inside and outside the Lower House who refuse to stop the Islamic invasion of Holland. I am ashamed for Dutch politicians who day in and day out accept the over representation of foreigners in illegality and criminality and have no answer for it.
Miss Muslim Ducks My Questions Again
Ani Zonneveld, the woman who said in the LA Times letters to the editor that, in Islam, men and women are, hah hah hah, equal, continues to duck my questions to her about the actual reality of the violent totalitarian movement masquerading as a religion that Islam is. Here are my two entries on my previous communications with her.
Here's my e-mail to her from the other day:
I think you don't know the Quran very well, and certainly not as well as I do. That's why you can't answer my question, you can only try to deflect it with telling me to read the propaganda books on your site.I'm not interested in the books you have to tell people what a wonderful, peaceful, equality-loving religion Islam is. I go straight to the Quran. You?
Do you actually know what the Quran says, or do you just use this idea of Islam as a religion of peace and equality as a vehicle for promoting your music?
I mean, a singer promoting the reality of Islam -- as "submission" and violence or death (or at least dhimmitude) to all who are not Muslims -- would not go over real big over here in the West, huh? Answer my question. ANSWER MY QUESTION.
At the very least, start reading and stop selling a religion that promotes the violent death of all us kuffirs as some kind of kumbayah vehicle. It's anything but. And by promoting it as such, you lay the groundwork (turning Westerners into "tolerant" sheep to the slaughter) for the jihadists.
I'm from Detroit. My dad has sent me the Muslim hate rags from there from time to time. You read any of them? Or are you too busy just talking nonsense that has nothing to do with what's written in the Quran. Being uneducated about Islam or wanting others to believe it's all turn-the-other-cheek Jesus'y doesn't change the reality of it -- as totalitarianism masquerading as a religion.
Zonneveld writes back, devoid of substance. Again:
In a message dated 5/27/08 9:09:01 AM, twobz@hotmail.com writes:I'm not interested in having a conversation with you because you are very hateful. You and your ilks take Quranic text just like Osama Bin Laden does, out of context and twist it to suit your belief and hate system.
I'm not interested in reading hateful materials, not from you, not from "Muslim hate rags" whatever that is.
If you read the stuff I write on the website, or the writings of others that I post, or the social issues that I'm pissed of about, or read the hateful mails I get from Muslims as well as non-Muslims you will understand me, my perspective, my critique and my understanding of Islam. But instead you accuse me of promoting violence to all who are not Muslims!! Your heart is so closed. You're only interested in disrespecting me and to demonize me. Go ahead live your life full of hate. Enjoy it, but just leave me out of it.
Hilariously, while she professes to want to educate me, she sends nary a link, just vaguely tells me to go look at her website. I suspect I'm right about her -- that this "progressive Muslim" stance is simply a way she gets her name out there to further her singing career, and actual requests for information about the subject are seen as annoyances to be ducked. Here's my last e-mail to her:
I sent you links FROM the Quran. Specific links -- just a few lines. If you won't tell me where these links are wrong, I'm guessing it's because they're not. I found a website were another Muslim suggested you were uninformed about Islam. I'm guessing he's right. I'm also guessing that your vocal "moderate Muslim" is how you get noticed in your singing career. Or "career."I do research for my column every week, and print the truth. Since you won't tell me the truth, and won't tell me how these quotes from the Quran are supposedly untrue, it seems that my suppositions are right about you.
I'm not interested in what you'd like Islam to be, but what it actually is, based on Quranic teachings. If you won't even take a few of those lines and show me how they're somehow wrong, well, I'm guessing it's because they're not wrong.
Did you even look at the links or are you too lazy?
Oh, and how do you feel about a guy who marries a girl at six and has sex with her at nine? Surely you don't contest that?
Here, I'll help you: Islam means "submission":
http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-kills-not-peaceful.htm
Islam only means peace to Muslims who blindly submit. To Christians Islam means war, persecution and death. The Qur'an says: "Fight and slay the pagans [Christians] wherever ye find them and seize them, confine them, and lie in wait for them in every place of ambush" (Surah 9:5)Aww, makes me want to sing Kumbayah, right here and now. You?
The way you do your part is by standing up and telling the truth about Islam -- the actual truth. I know, it's no way to promote a singer, but it's the right thing to do. -Amy Alkon
As for how "hateful" I am, I'm actually enraged and incited to action. I mean, what is the proper stance against people who want to convert or kill everyone in the world who isn't a Muslim, and who are directed to in no uncertain terms by their Quran?
But for that, I'd be as incited toward Muslims as I am toward astrology buffs? Moon in Cancer means you'll meet somebody new, huh? Nitwitty, but no skin off my back (and no head chopped off my shoulders, either).
The Religion Of...Hah, Hah, Hah...Peace
More on Ani Zonneveld, the chick from my post from yesterday, whose LA Times letter to the editor included a rather huge untruth about Islam:
"...According to my faith of Islam, all human beings are equal."
I sent her an e-mail detailing all the ways this is utter steaming bullshit; or, as I more politely put it, "Some examples from the Quran...contradict your statement." (Scroll down at the link for references on rape, etc.)
Zonneveld wrote back, and wrote back, and still has yet to respond about the Quran links I included in the e-mail -- like about how, in Islam, two men can testify, or a man and two women, because a woman has half the worth of a man.
"Equal," huh? That's some funny new math they teach the children -- I mean, when they aren't busy teaching them what apes and pigs the Jews and Christians are.
I kept at it with Zonneveld:
Thanks. So...are those links below inaccurate descriptions of what's in the Quran? And if not, are you uninformed...or...a propagandist promoting untruths as truths in hopes of shining up the image of Islam amongst Americans? -Amy
Zonneveld kept ducking my questions, writing back:
Why don't you educate yourself by reading the books we recommend on our website.
Hmmm, is it possible that she failed to reply with even the slightest bit of substance because she's actually rather uninformed about what Islam actually is all about? Well, that's what this laddie suggests about her.
Finally, while she accuses those she disagrees with as being arrogant and self-righteous, she herself manifests those traits. And as she forthrightly puts it, "I don't claim to be a Muslim scholar. I just challenge them (ulama') to go learn, go study! Don't assume you know your faith." -- She too, should look in the mirror and take that advice for herself that isn't it just possible that she needs to go learn and study her self-professed faith!Yusri Mohamad
Chairman of PEMBELA Meeting
and President
Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM)
Here, she's billed as a "faux moderate promoting Islamisation":
*Ani Zonneveld's website proclaims that she is "singing for the soul of Islam". On her website she announces an award by a pseudo moderate group which se co founded called "Muslims for Progressive Values" "The Malcolm X Award for Excellence in Islamic Sermons". The absurdity of her "progressive claim" while extolling a Black Muslim leader who urged his followers to kill white people and referred to them as "blue eyed devils" is followed by an even more ludicrous claim i.e. that the award is intended to counter "imams...who have been preaching vitriolic intolerance". It appears that in "Ani's" parallel Islamist universe an Imam who urges the killing of non Muslims and apostates is to be condemned while a Black Muslim who calls for the killing of whites is an "iconic leader". According to Zonneveld "Malcolm X is one of the best known and best loved of American Muslims"..."We hope that this competition the first of it's kind to honor this iconic leader will encourage other American Muslims to follow in his footsteps".
Meanwhile, on my first posting about Zonneveld, Luke Y. Thompson took me to task for, well, here's his comment:
I'm a little confused here.For a long time, Amy, you've been posting stuff to the effect of "You-hoo! Where are all these so-called moderate Muslims?"
One finally shows up, and you tell her essentially that she's a liar and should disown her religion because she obviously interprets it wrong.
Isn't that the equivalent of someone telling you that you can't possibly be an atheist because being an atheist means denying the notion of objective morality, and you don't?
The best religious people I know recognize their holy books as products of people from a bygone era trying to make sense of the universe, and build upon that rather than taking it literally. I grant that this woman MAY be dishonest, but I don't think it's necessarily an either/or choice between murderer or apostate.
My response:
She's a propagandist, and from what I've read on some Muslim sites, one with less knowledge of the Quran than I have. She's not crowing for Muslims to ignore the Quran's dictates to kill all the rest of us, she's trying to get the rest of us to believe a nicey-nicey version of Islam that simply isn't true. And believing that will ultimately be the death of us, and of everything we value in this society. She's a cult of death enabler.And I have to wonder why -- what it's really about. Maybe what she really cares about is a convenient political platform to promote her singing career. She sure doesn't seem most interested in getting the truth out.
UPDATE -- It's Tuesday morning, and Zonneveld still has yet to reply to my question, so I sent her another e-mail:
subject: Okay, here's what I thinkI think you don't know the Quran very well, and certainly not as well as I do. That's why you can't answer my question, you can only try to deflect it with telling me to read the propaganda books on your site.
I'm not interested in the books you have to tell people what a wonderful, peaceful, equality-loving religion Islam is. I go straight to the Quran. You?
Do you actually know what the Quran says, or do you just use this idea of Islam as a religion of peace and equality as a vehicle for promoting your music?
I mean, a singer promoting the reality of Islam -- as "submission" and violence or death (or at least dhimmitude) to all who are not Muslims -- would not go over real big over here in the West, huh? Answer my question. ANSWER MY QUESTION.
At the very least, start reading and stop selling a religion that promotes the violent death of all us kuffirs as some kind of kumbayah vehicle. It's anything but. And by promoting it as such, you lay the groundwork (turning Westerners into "tolerant" sheep to the slaughter) for the jihadists.
I'm from Detroit. My dad has sent me the Muslim hate rags from there from time to time. You read any of them? Or are you too busy just talking nonsense that has nothing to do with what's written in the Quran. Being uneducated about Islam or wanting others to believe it's all turn-the-other-cheek Jesus'y doesn't change the reality of it -- as totalitarianism masquerading as a religion.
Islamic Terrorism Isn't The Problem?
No, it seems it's referring to terrorists as "Islamic terrorists" or "Muslim terrorists" -- of course, because so many people strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing lots of "infidels" up are Quakers or astrology buffs.
Another excellent one from JihadWatch's Robert Spencer:
Helen Joyce On Adam Smith
Great article for anyone who's wondered about Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand," game theory, or prisoner's dilemma -- terms mentioned in mainstream media more and more these days with economists blogging and writing books for the mass market.
Thank You
To all the soldiers, now and before, serving this country on behalf of the rest of us.
More photos from our trip there here. We were on a quest, and visiting the cemetery was just part of it:
Gregg's uncle was killed at 21 in World War II, near Martinville (which is less a town than a rural street), in the invasion on Normandy by Allied forces. We rented a car and went to Normandy with our friends Mark and Chantal to see the American Cemetery and find the ridge where he died.
And "Jihad" Means "Hugs All Around!"?
Is this a sneaky move to wedge propaganda into the paper or is this woman just completely clueless about her own religion? From the LA Times letters to the editor on Saturday:
Re "Marriage ruling is a religious quandary," Opinion, May 20Much has been said about the religious institutions opposing same-sex marriage, but progressive-minded interfaith coalitions have been arguing in favor of it. Gay men and women are human beings, and according to my faith of Islam, all human beings are equal. It is time we set aside prejudices and invite them in to pray along with us and treat them as equals. Let us try.
Ani Zonneveld
Los Angeles
I found an Ani Zonneveld online:
Zuriani "Ani" Zonneveld is a writer, a producer, a singer, a speaker, an activist and a Muslim. She is a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union (www.pmuna.org), an ICUJP (www.icujp.org) sponsor, and advocate for human rights in Islam....Zonneveld has strived to blend the worlds of music and social activism into one. She speaks and sings about social justice, her angst against violations of human rights, and peace, from a Muslim's perspective. "Ummah Wake Up" is an Islamic pop album focusing on the need for Muslims to seek out the real Qur'anic teachings, the Middle Path. "One" is an interfaith album, born as a result of her love for the many faiths and the realization that we are truly one humanity. Through her activism, Zonneveld hopes these projects will show there is an alternative face to Islam.
She was also executive director of the Progressive Muslim Union, "a grassroots organization that aims to provide a forum, voice, and organizing mechanism to North American Muslims who wish to pursue a progressive intellectual, social and political agenda," and wrote in 2006:
We all agree that women are used, abused, discriminated against despite what the Quran dictates.
"We" do? Not those of us who've read the first thing about the Quran.
Here's an e-mail I sent her on Saturday about her letter in the LA Times:
Since "Ani Zonneveld" isn't exactly a common name, I'm guessing you are the one who wrote the letter saying "according to my faith of Islam, all human beings are equal."I can understand that you'd like people to believe that all human beings are equal according to Islam -- and perhaps you practice a creative version of the religion, which doesn't use the Quran.
Please advise -- based on what's actually written in the Quran (as opposed to what you'd like people who are uninformed about it to think about it).
Some examples from from the Quran that contradict your statement:
Rape in Islam:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/002-rape_adultery.htm
A woman's worth in Islam:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/010-women-worth-less.htm
Can a man beat his wife?
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/003-wife-beating.htm
More here -- for those who contest the wife-beating stuff:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Articles/WifeBeating.htm
Again, I can understand why you want people to think Islam is a fountain of tolerance and human rights. But, the Quran, apparently, commands differently:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Quran-Hate.htmA quote from the above link:
"Islam incorporates the ultimate devaluation of non-Muslims by teaching that while a Muslim may be punished with death for murdering a fellow Muslim (Bukhari 83:17), no Muslim can be put to death for killing a non-Muslim (Bukhari 83:50). The Qur'an's "Law of Equality," which assigns human value and rights based on gender, religion and status, is the polar opposite of equality in the Western liberal tradition, which ideally respects no such distinction.One can always find apologists willing to dismiss the harsh rhetoric of the Qur'an with creative interpretation, tortuous explanation or outright denial, but their words and deeds almost always belie a concern for Islam's image that does not extend to Islam's victims - at least not with the same sense of urgency - thus proving the point.
Of course, there are also exceptional Muslims who do not agree with Islamic supremacy and sincerely champion secularism and respect for all people. Some even find verses or fragments of such to support their independent beliefs. But, for these people, the Qur'an as a whole will always be a constant challenge, since it explicitly teaches the distinct and inferior status of non-Muslims." --from thereligionofpeace.com
My letter to her continues:
And finally, did you reveal to editors at the LA Times that you were the former executive director at an organization that essentially does public relations for Islam, not just an ordinary citizen giving her opinion?I'm no fan of the evidence-free belief in god in general, but of all the religions out there, it isn't Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism that endanger my life and the western way of life, and the links I pasted in above make it clear that the directive to do so comes right out of the Quran.
Perhaps you should be be putting every drop of your time into speaking out to Muslims, suggesting they get out of the religion of violence, instead of trying to snow the rest of us into believing that Islam fosters anything resembling Enlightenment values. -Amy Alkon
It's Monday, 1:04 a.m., and I have yet to receive a reply from Zonneveld to my Saturday e-mail.
It is possible she's on vacation. In fact, maybe she's off at some "interfaith" weekend, preaching tolerance and understanding -- the kind that requires having no knowledge whatsoever of what Islam's actually about, and the kind that's totally unnecessary, since it isn't Christians or Jews who are beheading people who don't believe as they do.
Are You A Racist?
A state assemblyman spends thousands of dollars of his campaign funds for luxury travel to Europe and Argentina -- $5,149 for "a meeting" in the cellar of a Bordeaux wine shop and $2500-plus for "gifts" at Louis Vuitton, to name a few.
Assuming you, like me, object to this, is it because:
A. He was living high on the hog on tax-deductible donations meant to further democracy.
B. He's Latino.
Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times of a couple of those whining about so-called racism recently -- including former California Assembly speaker Fabian "Fabio" Nunez, the above spendthrift:
Now that he's no longer speaker, Nuñez addressed the subject head-on this week. "Everyone's done it like this," he told his interviewer. "The difference is there are some in politics who want to judge me in a certain manner. Because of the fact I am Mexican, they think I have to sleep under a cactus and eat from taco stands.
No, because of the fact you're on the public payroll, sleazebag, we expect you to use campaign donations for political purposes, not to go on a bender at Louis Vuitton.
P.S. And yes, I've read that "Hispanic" or "Latino" is not a race, but I'm using "racist" the way Rutten did in his piece, and the way most people do, to signify hating people because of the group they were born into.
Awww, How Sweet!
Los Angeles parishes are digging deep to help pay for all the pedophile priests, writes Rebecca Trounson in the LA Times. I found the subhead of the article particularly heart-warming: "With gifts large and small, they're heeding Mahony's appeal for help in paying victims."
Trounson reports that they're stopping just short of holding bake sales:
Blessed with a nest egg of nearly $1.5 million, a Woodland Hills parish donated almost all of it, leaving just $1,000 in its savings account. An Encino church offered a $100,000 interest-free loan. And a Boyle Heights parish decided it could spare $500 after ruling out the idea of raising money with tamale sales.With gifts large and small, parishes across the sprawling Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles are answering an appeal from Cardinal Roger M. Mahony to help the archdiocese dig out of the financial hole resulting from its multimillion-dollar legal settlements with victims of clergy sexual abuse.
"It's important that we the church take care of this," said Father Scott Santarosa of Dolores Mission Catholic Church in Boyle Heights, which gave the $500 from its limited unrestricted funds. "It's like a family trying to take care of itself. Every family has parts that break down or need help. That's part of the church too, and we can't turn our backs."
What I want to know is how you anyone with any humanity and values can continue to be part of an organization that aided and abetted such evil, and in the hopes of maintaining positive publicity and fuller coffers.
You've got to love that scumbag Mahoney, who attributed his role in the Church's vast cover-up to "mistakes and miscalculations." In other words, "Crap! We got caught!"
Come on, somebody tell me I can't possibly have morals because I'm an atheist.
The Rats Win
When I talk to people who say they've bought property in places like Central America, I always wonder to myself how much danger they're in of the government "nationalizing" their land. Well, it turns out, in the U.S.A., owning land isn't always much protection from the government seizing it from you, either -- really, or de facto, as detailed in a rather unbelievable op-ed piece in the Sacramento Bee.
M. David Stirling writes of unbelievably ridiculous protections for endangered animals that are endangering the lives and livelihoods -- and ruining the lives -- of humans. After Hurricane Ivan, for example, Florida residents Paul and Gail Fisher and other residents of Perdido Key, a barrier island near Pensacola tried to rebuild, but were barred from doing it by the U.S. government:
Instead of supporting the human victims, the government went to bat for the Perdido Key beach mouse.In 1985 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had listed the mouse as an endangered species, designating 60 percent of the island that was public land as its critical habitat. Three months after Ivan struck, and as these homeless property owners were trying to get their lives back together, the agency said it was extending the mouse's critical habitat to the lots where their homes once stood.
The agency threatened to sue the local government if it granted any permits to rebuild.
The federal government's actions to prevent the property owners from rebuilding stood in stark contrast to its effort for the mice. Before the storm, it rushed in workers to trap beach mice to ensure the rodents would survive the storm.
Today, these former residents of Perdido Key are still paying their mortgages and taxes on property their government bars them from occupying.
The government is proving more devastating than Hurricane Ivan.
Others, like the Domenigonis in Riverside County, were prohibited by Fish and Wildlife from "disking" firebreaks on their own land, per the county fire chief's warnings, because the agency, without the Domenigonis' knowledge or consent, placed more than 1,600 acres of their ranch in a kangaroo rat Habitat Conservation area, costing them more than $400,000 in lost income, legal fees, surveys, and related expenses. And, in previous years, because their farm apparently lies in fire territory, the county fire chief:
If they even disked the land, they could face a year in prison, a $50,000 fine for each "take" of a k-rat, and impoundment of their farm equipment....Because of this order, the Domenigonis and other residents suffered further losses when fire hit in October. Twenty-nine homes in the area were destroyed.
...One of the victims was Anna Klimko, who obeyed Fish and Wildlife's order not to create a firebreak because of the k-rat. Pictured on national television, with tears streaming down her face, Klimko kneeled in the ashes of what had been her home, digging for keepsakes. She posed this question: "For what? A rat."
Wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and other disasters are common in America. The normal response is to help victims quickly, including putting a roof over their heads and getting their lives back to normal.
But in Perdido Key, a federal agency prohibited people from rebuilding homes destroyed by forces beyond their control.
In California, a federal agency prohibited people from protecting their property and their lives from fire.
Such treatment is not only at odds with what Americans expect of their government, but a long way from our philanthropic tradition and even normal human behavior.
What kind of ethos could motivate the federal government to elevate mice and rats over humans?
It's time for common sense and balance when crafting and enforcing the laws that govern the relationship between the human species and the plant and wildlife species.
This is supposed to be a democracy, not a dictatorship, and certainly not a dictatorship of petty bureaucrats essentially taking people's land away, and without a dime in compensation -- much worse eminent domain behavior than in Kelo v. City of New London.
thanks, André-Tascha
The End Of An Era
Florent is closing June 29. (Their landlord, in what used to be New York City's meat-packing district, raised the rent to $30,000/month). It was the place you could go at any hour, and it would always be madcap and interesting, with a trannie or two and somebody with purple hair (all over their body). I once went there with one of my Advice Lady partners at 6 a.m., in our pajamas. I still have one of their Tibor Kalman-designed matchbooks, with the little fork on it, I think.
Ignore The Terrorists And Maybe They'll Go Away
Those granola-chomping lefties at work again, huh? Well, no, the bangers and mash-chewing British (West Midlands) police. They came down on UK's Channel 4 for supposed distortions in their documentary in which reporters went under cover to expose the hate and violence-fomenting of well-funded Saudi-backed clerics in Britain.
Nick Cohen writes in The Guardian that the police reported Channel 4 to a British TV oversight board for supposed distortions:
The many who were foolish enough to believe the police's accusations must have accepted that, for instance, Ijaz Mian, who preaches in Derby, was a good democrat. Only trick camerawork and sly editing had turned him into the man who appeared in the film raving: 'King, Queen, House of Commons. If you accept it then you are a part of it. You don't accept it but you have to dismantle it. So you being a Muslim you have to fix a target, there will be no House of Commons.'Similarly, when Abu Usamah of the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham bellowed on air: 'Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain', his apparently murderous homophobia was not a genuine expression of his prejudice, but a Truman Show illusion.
Ofcom found there was no evidence that Channel 4 had misled the audience. The station offered the police and CPS the chance to apologise. They refused. So Channel 4 sued for libel and after wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money, the authorities last week finally retracted and grovelled.
Normally they say why they are going after journalists. In the case of Channel 4, however, the CPS and West Midlands police have never condescended to explain their behaviour to the public. The National Secular Society wants an inquiry to force them into the open. Until we get one, the best explanation lies in Patani's title: assistant chief constable (security and cohesion).
Since 9/11, not only police officers, but New Labour ministers, the Home Office, Foreign Office and pseudo-left journalists and councils have sought to promote 'cohesion' by appeasing Islamist groups which aren't quite as extreme as al-Qaeda. They have turned them into the sole authentic representatives of British Islam, although as Haras Rafiq and Abdal-Hakim Murad show, they are nothing of the sort, and branded serious investigation into obscurantist politics as religious prejudice.
Elements within the government thought that if they could co-opt the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-i-Islami and ignore their foul beliefs, they would isolate the terrorists to their right. Even Labour now admits that the policy has been a practical failure and moral shambles. Elsewhere, however, a mushy multicultural feeling persists that it is somehow 'insensitive' to apply universal values.
For anybody who's still a deluded multi-culti type, a few words on what Islam is all about -- by Ron Marlar, on familysecuritymatters:
Islam is much more than a religion; it is a doctrine of law that governs all areas of life, and there exists within Islam no Western concept of the separation of church and state. Islam believes in the integration of mosque and state while the West believes in the separation of church and state. Therefore, the form of government under which many Muslims live is a theocracy...far from a democracy, which is the form of government under which we thrive in the West.This vast disparity in how we organize our societies would not be a problem for us if it were not for the fact that Islam seeks to dominate. Simply put, the aims of Islam, according to Islamic doctrine, are:
1. To take over the world for Allah by establishing a worldwide caliphate
2. To rule the land by Shar'ia law (Islamic law)
3. To subjugate or kill infidels who are defined as:
a) those not born Muslim,
b) those who have not submitted to Islamic faith belief or
c) those who have left Islamic faith belief, and4. To take - exile - any survivors to a safe place.
Mohammed put forth these aims early in his founding of Islam. They are repeated often in the history of the several resurgences of Islam, and most recently, loudly and clearly by most prominent Islamic voices. No true, adherent Muslim denies these aims. Rather they live by them, perhaps closeted, even living quietly among us here in the U.S.
Marlar's call to action:
It is way past time to wake up people, to stop aiding, abetting, apologizing for and supporting Islam. The burden is on Muslims - the believers in and practitioners of Islamic faith belief and its aims - to explain themselves to the rest of the world.Let's listen carefully for Islamic leaders and followers to condemn Islamic terrorism, not to lead, participate in or sit by in silent celebrations of it. Let's see if we can hear an Islamic leader or even our Muslim personal friends utterly condemn the events of 9/11/2001 as the barbaric acts they truly were, and also condemn 9/11's perpetrators as the mass murderers they clearly were, at least as we view it in the West.
Since an adherent Muslim sees 9/11 not as a brutal attack of mass murder but rather as a way to advance Islam's aims, we may well be listening for quite some time.
Your job? Not just to listen but to ask: If you know Muslims and when you encounter Muslims, ask them what they're doing to speak out against terrorism, and whether they're doing something to combat terrorism, and if not, why not?
Remember the old AIDS sign seen around New York and other cities, "silence = death"? Well, here, too.
Just The Two Or Three Of Us
There's a Philip Weiss piece in New York Magazine, "What Makes Married Men Want To Have Affairs," that legitimately questions the idea of lifelong fidelity (when "lifelong" lasts longer than ever). The piece gave rise to a couple hundred comments, many of them from people, especially women, who were utterly irate at his thinking and the questions he asked -- questions we're not really "supposed" to ask. I found this bit interesting:
Susan Squire, the author of a forthcoming history of marriage called I Don't, told me that marriage wasn't made to handle all the sexual pressure we're putting on it. For one thing, the average life span is far greater than it was 100 years ago; what is marriage to do with all that time? And in days gone by, marriage was a more formal institution whose purposes were breeding and family. Squire says that cultural standards of morality have changed dramatically. In ancient aristocracies, rich men had courtesans for pleasure and concubines for quick sex. In the Victorian age, prostitution was far more open than it is today. America is a special case. By the early-twentieth century, she says, the combined impact of egalitarian ideals and the movies had burdened American marriage with a new responsibility: providing romantic love forever. Squire says that the first couples therapy began cropping up in the thirties, when people found their marriages weren't measuring up to cultural expectations."Marriage isn't the problem; it's the best answer anyone's come up with," Squire says. "Men and women are equally oppressed by expectations. Expectations are ridiculously high now. Nobody expected you to find personal fulfillment and happiness in marriage. Marriage can be very satisfying, but it's not going to be this heady romance for 40 years." Marriage involves routine, and routine kills passion. "What does Bataille say?" Squire continues. "There is nothing erotic that is not transgressive. Marriage has many benefits and values, but eroticism is not one of them."
A long and supportive marriage may be more valuable than a sexually faithful one, Squire says. "Why does society consider it more moral for you to break up a marriage, go through a divorce, disrupt your children's lives maybe forever, just to be able to fuck someone with whom the fucking is going to get just as boring as it was with the first person before long?"
Sitting in Schiller's, I explained Squire's history to my friend and suggested that we could change sexual norms to, say, encourage New York waitresses to look on being mistresses as a cool option. "That's fringe," my friend said dismissively. Wives weren't going to allow it, and we men grant them a lot of power; they're all as dominant as Yoko Ono. "Look, we're the weaker animal," he said. "They commandeer the situation." He and I love our wives and depend on them. In each of our cases, they make our homes, manage our social calendar, bind up our wounds and finish our thoughts, and are stitched into our extended families more intimately than we are. They seem emotionally better equipped than we are. If my marriage broke up, my wife could easily move in with a sister. I'd be as lost as plankton.
Later, I related my friend's Yoko analogy to my wife. She pointed out that Ono and Lennon had a marriage based on what they both cared most passionately about, art--not money or sex, to judge from the fact that Lennon went off for a year with a mistress and the marriage survived. But how many of us can afford that? Tuten says that even the New York art world is short on mistresses. "Victor Hugo had a mistress even when he was in exile in Jersey. He lived in a house with his family and the mistress lived down the road, and he went to and fro.
In France, they have the cinq à sept, the five to seven, where people go off to their lovers, supposedly from 5 o'clock to 7 o'clock, and then go home to their families. If you've got kids, is it better to take a "Do whatcha need to do, and keep the family together" attitude?
"Where's My Free Advice Already, Dammit?!"
As I've said before, most of the advice requests I get will never make my column, including a long, dull question I got from a college student who has a problem with an older co-worker on a summer job she's working.
Anyway, this jerk with the co-worker issue writes me on May 19, some long-winded tale -- long-winded but lacking in essential information -- and I write back, telling her I need more detail to be able to help her, and I asked her a number of questions. I'll omit the boring details, but the upshot, from the end of my response to her, also on May 19:
Please fill in the blanks and resend, with this entire e-mail copied into your reply, and I'll try to get back to you. Best,-A
In a message dated 5/23/08 8:33:52 AM, THE JERK writes:
Thanks for all your advice....to bad my story wasn't unrealistic and "flashy" enough for a real response.
My response:
I answer all my mail, or try to, but I have multiple deadlines right now because my assistant is going away and I have a book due in August. Your question will not make my column, but I will answer it -- as I do with all my mail (although I sometimes miss a piece). I would've answered your question when I got it but it lacked detail, so now, it's in the pile. Of course, instead of answering it, I'm responding to your rather rude complaint. Yeah, that free advice, it'd better come chop-chop, lickety-split!
Is there some special on entitled assholes this week that somebody forgot to tell me about?
Rich People Shouldn't Get Welfare Either
President Bush got behind that, at least for rich farmers, vetoing a bill for welfare payouts to them. But those sellouts who "represent" us in Congress immediately voted to override his veto. And the senaturds are expected to follow suit. From an editorial in the WSJ:
Since the last farm bill in 2002, the price of cotton is up 105%, soybeans 164%, corn 169% and wheat 256%. Yet when Mr. Bush proposed the genuine change of limiting farm welfare to those earning less than $200,000 a year, he was laughed out of town. The bill purports to limit subsidies to those earning a mere $750,000, but loopholes and spousal qualifications make it closer to $2.5 million. As Barack Obama likes to say, it's time Washington worked for "the middle class," which apparently includes millionaire corn and sugar farmers.Another purported change is the arrival of "fiscal discipline," in Nancy Pelosi's favorite phrase from the 2006 campaign. Yet it turns out this farm extravaganza may bust federal budget targets even more than we thought a week ago. That's because the new price supports - the guaranteed floor payments farmers receive for their crops - have been raised to match this year's record prices.
The USDA reports that if crop prices fall from these highs to their norm over the next five years, farm payments will surge. For example, if corn prices return to $3.25 a bushel from today's $6, farmers would get $10 billion a year in support payments. If bean prices fall to their norm, they'd get $4 billion. Thus, if farm prices stay high, consumers face higher grocery bills and farmers get rich. If farm prices fall, taxpayers kick in the difference and farmers still get rich.
Sugar producers also make out like Beltway bandits, receiving the difference between the world price of sugar, which is now $12 per pound, and the guaranteed price of about $21 per pound. That's a roughly 75% subsidy for already wealthy cane growers and a nice payoff for the $3 million they contribute to House candidates each year.
All of this is a status quo that both political parties can believe in. More than a few liberal Democrats are privately embarrassed by this corporate welfare spectacle. But they've been mollified by Speaker Pelosi, who spent the last week assuring her left that the bill also includes another $10.4 billion for food stamps and nutrition programs. This entitlement expansion comes only days after the Congressional Budget Office reported that paying the bills for existing entitlements could require tax rates to climb to 80% in the future. Yes we can!
House Republicans are equally as complicit, despite their claims of having found fiscal religion after 2006. About half of them voted to override a Republican President. GOP leaders refused to whip against the bill, and two of them - Roy Blunt of Missouri and Adam Putnam of Florida - even voted for it. These are the same House Republicans who last week unveiled their new slogan, "The Change You Deserve."
Yeah, all of it small, and not really change at all.
And P.S. Obama says he's for the bill and McCain says he's against it. Of course, Matt Welch has shown that McCain is anything but "The Straight Talk Express," so you can speculate on what his word on this is worth.
Mommy Of The Week
I try to answer all my mail, although I get to some of it a bit later than I'd like due to my failure, as of yet, to have myself cloned. Only a tiny number of the questions I get actually make my column. Here's one of the questions that won't -- one that got weirder and weirder as the woman, "Karen," replied to my responses to her:
Dear Amy:My son recently celebrated his 10th birthday with family and friends. There were about 20 people present to celebrate with him. He received approximately $250 in cash as gifts. When his grandparents learned of the amount of cash he received, they immediately began instructing him to put half of the money in the bank to save. However, it is my position that when children receive money for a birthday gift that they may use all or part of the money for whatever item/items they choose. I treat it the same as if he had received a noncash gift--no one would ever tell the child he must save part of his gifts and cannot enjoy them. My parents were very miffed when I explained my position on this to them. They could not believe that I would let him spend all of the money on whatever he wished.
What do you think?
Thanks!
My reply:
See all the people out there going bankrupt because they don't understand economics? I think it's very important to teach kids about saving money, and to overcome the human irrationality for short term gain over longterm prudence, so I'm with your parents.Furthermore, I'd not only teach a kid to save, I'd teach him how good it feels to help others (build his character, in other words), and do as a woman I met recently does, and ask him to go to Staples and buy a backpack and school supplies for a poor kid and see if it's something he'd like to do again. When she said she was going to make her girls do this to teach them, I told her I thought forcing them to do it wasn't the best idea.
Helping others actually feels good, and I felt it was wiser to tell the girls they were going to do this with their allowance once, and then let them see whether it was something they'd want to continue. Forcing people to behave well isn't the same as inspiring them to do it.
In short, I think kids are too coddled and too indulged, and this money he got is for no accomplishment he made or work he did...it simply comes from being a child who has friends with well-too-do parents and who has well-to-do relatives. And I really think it shouldn't be seen as a windfall but as a way to teach him about money and instill values. Best,-Amy
She writes back:
You are correct in saying that the money he received was for no accomplishment or work he did. The money was "gifts." My understanding of a gift of anything is that the recipient may do as they wish with it.....no strings attached; and, therefore, that is why I took the position I did. Also, $100 of the money came from his absent father (who sent no Christmas gift or card or birthday gift or card last year), and each child present gave about $10.00 so the assumption that everyone is well-to-do is incorrect. I still believe that if the child would have been given noncash presents, no one would have expected him to donate part of them to charity or save them. THEY ARE BIRTHDAY GIFTS to a 10 year old boy. And as far as going to Staples and buying a poor kid a backpack and school supplies, it might surprise you to know that we live at the poverty level as our total monthly income is about $650 per month so my son is a "poor kid." Birthdays and Christmas are the only times this boy is materially indulged so, whereas, I appreciate your opinion, I stand by my original position.
My response:
Yes, technically, that is what a gift is -- "something that the recpient may do as they wish with" -- but he's receiving this gift as a kid. If somebody gave him crack, would you just say, "It was a gift," or would you tell him that crack is dangerous and dispose of it?The income level of the people who give the gifts is immaterial. A kid who, at 10, is getting $250 on his birthday, needs a lesson about money. And if you are, in fact, living at the poverty line, I'd suggest that your kid, more than others, needs lessons about saving money.
But, wait: Your total MONTHLY income is $650? Let's say this is actually the truth, not an exaggeration so you can cling to the idea tha you are correct about letting your son piss away the $250 as he pleases. Excuse me, but how do you even buy food on that? Perhaps that $250 your son got for his birthday should go into a fund for doctor visits. Or to buy him an extra can of beans.
I know, like many people, you weren't really writing to me for advice; you thought I'd glad-hand you for what you're doing and tell you those mean parents of yours are wrong, wrong, wrong! On the contrary, anybody with a kid who's living on $650 a month and it isn't because they're terminally ill, is doing their child a serious disservice. -Amy Alkon
This woman gets more and more ridiculous:
It is really quite easy to prepare nutritious meals. I cook. I spend approximate $225 a month for food and we eat well. My rent is $27, my phone is $8, my lights $35.00. We eat meals of steak, salmon, chicken, soups and stews, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, etc. I think it is sad that you would actually judge a person's parenting ability on their current financial circumstances. Actually, I was writing to you for advice........I just don't happen to agree with the advice you gave. Sorry.
My reply:
Your rent is $27? What do you rent, a doghouse? How is this possible? Your phone is $8? How do you have an Internet connection? You're writing me from az.net, not the public library on a Yahoo account. $225 a month for steaks and salmon and all the rest? Right. Something's very fishy here.And yes, I judge a person's parenting ability on their ability to provide for their children. Why don't you? If you aren't terminally ill or otherwise disabled, how can you justify having a kid live on this sum of money? Unless that's a lie, so you could justify your behavior. Which is it?
What about your son's medical care? What if he needs to go to the doctor?
Also, you're apparently divorced from your kid's father, or separated, and he's "absent." Pretty bleak existence for a kid. Yet, you had a child with a man who apparently is okay with disappearing from his kid's life.
And clearly, you never wanted advice -- you wanted ammunition that your parents are wrong. But, they're not.
Again, unless you've time-traveled back to the 1800s to rent an apartment, just for starters, it seems unlikely you're telling the truth.
The best thing you could do is listen to your parents, who seem to have values they never managed to impart to you -- at least about money. Maybe about more.
-Amy Alkon
What About The Bunnies?
Animal testing explained.
My take on animal eating (and animal testing, too), from my column, "Splendor In The Wheatgrass":
According to your boyfriend, people and cows are born equal. Then what happens? Notice how cows have yet to build an International Space Station, or even open one of those little key-making huts outside the mall. But, does this mean we have a right to eat them? I think so -- providing we give them a nice patch of grass, and kill them humanely.
They Like Me, They Really Like Me
Or my writing, anyway. Enough to make me a finalist in seven categories in the LA Press Club Awards -- including "Journalist Of The Year."
Awards I'm up for are directly below. I'll find out if I actually get any of them at the awards dinner in late June.
A. JOURNALISTS OF THE YEARA1. PRINT (Over 100,000 circulation)
REPORTER, COLUMNIST OR EDITOR
* Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate
* Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
* Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times
* Tim Rutten, Los Angeles TimesA2. PRINT (Under 100,000 circulation)
REPORTER, COLUMNIST OR EDITOR* Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate
* Michael Collins, Los Angeles CityBeat
* Sandra Hernandez, Los Angeles Daily Journal,
* Scott Moxley, OC Weekly
* Anat Rubin, Los Angeles Daily JournalB5. SIGNED COMMENTARY
* Amy Alkon, Creator's Syndicate Syndicated columnist, "Look Before You Sleep."
* Marc Cooper, LA Weekly, "East Versus West."
* Bennett Ramberg, freelance writer, "A Lesson on Staying the Course."
* Jervey Tervalon, LA Weekly, "The Slow Death of a Chocolate City."B13. HEADLINES
*Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate, "The Incredible Sulk"
*Dave Bowman, Los Angeles Times, "A Pair of Stars/an L.A. Sky/a happy Galaxy"
*Steve Devol, Los Angeles Times, Cast as a leader, but what's his motivation
*Tim Lynch, Los Angeles Times, "A Town Right on the Default Line"
*Libby Molyneaux, LA Weekly, "A Scary Home Companion"C6. COLUMNIST
* Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate, "The Advice Goddess"
* Gustavo Arellano, OC Weekly, "Ask a Mexican,"
* Melissa Heckscher, Daily Breeze,
* Amy Klein, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
* Gina Nahai, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los AngelesC13. HEADLINE
* Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate, "Splendor in the Wheatgrass"
* Amy Alkon, Creators Syndicate, "Opportunity Knockers"
* Todd Cunningham, Los Angeles Business Journal, "Broke-o-Matic"
* Jay Firestone, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, "One Camp, Two Camp, Red camp, Jew Camp"I7a. WEBLOG, INDIVIDUAL
* Amy Alkon, AdviceGoddess.com - Syndicated, "Tea & Crumpets With Osama"/"Know Your Death Squad"
* Brad Greenberg, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, "God Blog"
* Jill Leovy, Los Angeles Times, "The Homicide Report"
* Pat Saperstein, EatingLA.com, "Eating LA"
* Eric Spillman, KTLA, "The News Blog"
The Real Sexists
They're the Clinton supporters with their cries of sexism because she's being asked to pack up and quit. Jonathan Chait chronicles the prejudices of the Vote Your Vagina crowd in the LA Times:
The main grievance against Obama is that political pundits are saying the race is over and Clinton should quit. (I plead guilty.) Clinton's supporters are defining this as a form of sexism. Ellen Malcolm, founder of the liberal feminist group Emily's List, recently noted with bitter sarcasm, "The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right." And Clinton's race for the White House is in large part a campaign against sexism, so of course she must resist these calls. ("She's shown us over and over that winners never quit and that quitters never win," Malcolm writes.) Thus, the circular rationale for Clinton's candidacy is: Because people are calling for her to leave the race, she must stay in....The 32-year-old liberal writer Michelle Goldberg expressed her mystification that older feminists "seem to identify with Clinton so profoundly that they interpret rejection of her as a personal rebuke."
I'm 36. My female classmates attended college looking for careers, not husbands to support them. My mother forged a career in business. People of my generation tend to have a less personal view of Clinton. She's not us, she's not our ex-wife, she's just a politician.
Typical politicians only stay in a campaign if they have a realistic prospect of winning. A majority of pledged delegates are now in Obama's camp, and with his total delegate lead nearly as large as the number of still-undecided superdelegates, Clinton's chances are essentially nil. But like the Japanese military in World War II, Clinton die-hards have a culture of perseverance. They see surrender as worse than defeat and fighting as a worthy end that need not have any real prospect of victory. In Tuesday's New York Times, a full-page ad from a group called WomenCount PAC announced, "Hillary's voice is OUR voice, and she's speaking for all of us."
Count me out. I have different reasons for disliking each of the candidates, and I find it disgusting and insulting whenever some nitwit gets all excited about voting for a woman president instead the best president for the job (or to be more realistic -- the one who sells out the least and is the least idiotic about economics and other issues).
A confession from a commenter, rain39, on the Huffington Post:
Hillary's main female constituency are women of a certain age. We seldom had organized sports available for our generations and so many of us didn't learn good sportsmanship rules and walking away from a loss with heads up and pride. I'm not sure we know how to "loose" gracefully. Many of us are more used to pushing our feelings underground and being passive-aggressive rather than doing the sportsmanship thing. I think we need some practice because I am beginning to be embarrassed at how this is winding down. Her surrogates are starting to tick me off.
Shooting the Quran
The soldier is now saying he didn't know the book was a Quran, and disgustingly, at an apology ceremony, a member of Major General Jeffery Hammond's staff gave a Quran a kiss brefore he handed it to Iraqi leaders. Robert Spencer has the analysis on FrontPage, with the caveat "assuming the soldier really did know that the book he was shooting at was the Qur'an, this story illustrates many things":
1. While the President and the military brass are anxious to deny that the War On Terror has anything to do with Islam, many rank-and-file soldiers can't help but notice that the fiercest enemies they encounter are also the most devout in their Islam, and that the jihad terrorists quote the Qur'an copiously to justify their acts of violence.2. That noticing things like this may have led one soldier to use a Qur'an as target practice is unfortunate. If he knew what the book was, the soldier was stupid, because even if it is true that the Qur'an contains mandates for violence against unbelievers, and it is true, doing something like this will only turn into enemies some people who might otherwise not be your enemies. This is not the same thing as the Dinesh D'Souza argument that we must not speak about the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and supremacism, because doing so will turn "moderates" into "extremists" - D'Souza in that is asking us to ignore and deny the truth, which is never an effective strategy in wartime or peacetime. But that is not the same thing as avoiding unnecessary provocation that will require you to fight battles that you otherwise would not have to fight.
3. The reactions of Major General Hammond and his staff were understandable, but excessive. They don't want to alienate people they believe they have won over, or whom they hope to win over, in Baghdad. They had to disavow this soldier's action. However, kissing the Qur'an and begging for forgiveness - and holding an apology "ceremony" in the first place - are gestures that spring from a misunderstanding of how they are likely to be perceived by the "tribal leaders and others at the apology ceremony."
Major General Hammond is anxious to show that the U.S. is not at war with Islam. Fine. But to kiss the Qur'an and to beg for forgiveness are signs that one accepts its authority and the authority of those before whom one is begging. Coming from non-Muslims, it is likely that they will be interpreted as gestures of submission, and the submission of non-Muslims to Muslims is a significant concept in Islamic law - although I am sure Major General Hammond and his staff are unaware of this. Given that, is it wise to be giving such impressions? Are such impressions not likely to create even more tension in the future?
He finally points out how it might've gone if some soldier had shot up a bible:
Christians who knew about the incident might have regarded him as something of an idiot, but that would have been the end of the story. No apology ceremony, no military brass kissing the book, nothing.
Of course, we are not engaged in a war in a country where the majority of people revere the Bible, but that doesn't completely account for the difference. The possibility that Muslims worldwide might be incited to murderous rage because of an incident like this can never be discounted. Major General Hammond and his staff are trying to head that off. That's fine, but it also just plays into the mentality that to riot and kill because of something like this is a perfectly natural and rational reaction to it. At a certain point, someone is going to have to have the guts to stand up and say, "Wait a minute. The incident that set you off may indeed have been offensive, but your reaction is insane. If someone insults you, that is no justification to kill him or anyone else, or to destroy anything."But we are a long, long way at this point from that kind of common sense.
Hilariously, the AP called it an "act of violence" when Orthodox Jews in Israel burned copies of the New Testament passed out by missionaries in Israel. I had to look twice to make sure they weren't actually burning missionaries. Nope. Just cardboard and paper!
Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.
The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.
Still waiting on the Jews to blow up German restaurants!
Endless Summers
Who's keeping all the women out of science and engineering? It might be the women themselves. Elaine McArdle writes in The Boston Globe that the speculation that cost former Harvard prez Lawrence Summers his job -- the notion that men might have innate abilities or interest in hard science and engineering positions -- is backed up by some new studies:
An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.One study of information-technology workers found that women's own preferences are the single most important factor in that field's dramatic gender imbalance. Another study followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other "hard" sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences.
It's important to note that these findings involve averages and do not apply to all women or men; indeed, there is wide variety within each gender. The researchers are not suggesting that sexism and cultural pressures on women don't play a role, and they don't yet know why women choose the way they do. One forthcoming paper in the Harvard Business Review, for instance, found that women often leave technical jobs because of rampant sexism in the workplace.
But if these researchers are right, then a certain amount of gender gap might be a natural artifact of a free society, where men and women finally can forge their own vocational paths. And understanding how individual choices shape the gender balance of some of the most important, financially rewarding careers will be critical in fashioning effective solutions for a problem that has vexed people for more than a generation.
As Steven Pinker asked when he spoke a few years ago at the Human Behavior And Evolution Society conference in Austin, why should women be shoved into careers that don't suit them -- any more than we'd seek to have men shoved into talking professions like psychotherapy, if they're not interested, or pressure them to teach kindergarden?
A few words from McArdle's article on preferences:
Math-precocious men were much more likely to go into engineering or physical sciences than women. Math-precocious women, by contrast, were more likely to go into careers in medicine, biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Both sexes scored high on the math SAT, and the data showed the women weren't discouraged from certain career paths.The survey data showed a notable disparity on one point: That men, relative to women, prefer to work with inorganic materials; women, in general, prefer to work with organic or living things. This gender disparity was apparent very early in life, and it continued to hold steady over the course of the participants' careers.
Benbow and Lubinski also found something else intriguing: Women who are mathematically gifted are more likely than men to have strong verbal abilities as well; men who excel in math, by contrast, don't do nearly as well in verbal skills. As a result, the career choices for math-precocious women are wider than for their male counterparts. They can become scientists, but can succeed just as well as lawyers or teachers. With this range of choice, their data show, highly qualified women may opt out of certain technical or scientific jobs simply because they can.
These studies looked at different slices of the working world, but agree that in a world in which men and women both have freedom of choice, they tend to choose differently.
How Stupid Does Dianne Feinstein Think We Are?
Temporary legal status for illegal immigrants? 1.35 million workers who will likely be joined by about 1.62 million of their relatives (a prediction by a critic of the measure, Senator Jeff Sessions)? Yep, if this provision sticks, we'll put out the welcome mat for all of 'em.
Mickey Kaus sums it up well:
Note that this isn't what I've called a "semi-amnesty." It's not that "semi". What illegal ag workers have to do to get the 5-year legalization appears to be minimal--no learning English, or paying back taxes, etc. Just a $250 "fine."
The perps here are Democratic battleaxe Diane Feinstein and Republican wide-stancer Larry Craig, and they're tacking on this illegal alien farmworker legalization measure to an Iraq war funding bill, the sleazebags. Mary Orndorff writes for the Bham News:
"There were no hearings on it and nobody had any idea that this was about to happen," Sessions said from his Capitol Hill office.His staff had a late night analyzing the 101-page provision that would allow certain agricultural workers to stay in the country legally, and when Sessions came to work the next day, he was back in fiery form as lead critic of any new program that doesn't cut down on the number of border crossers.
"I was a bit surprised, I gotta tell you, because my impression was they didn't want to talk about immigration in an election year," he said. He already was fielding calls from national conservative commentators who wanted him to appear on their programs, and he was more than willing.
At issue was an amendment giving temporary legal status to those who can prove they've been working on U.S. farms in the past two years, pay a fine, and continue to work at least 100 days a year over the next five years.
"This amendment provides a consistent, stable workforce for an industry that depends almost exclusively on undocumented labor - agriculture," said sponsor Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. She and fellow sponsor, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, called it an emergency measure to keep planters, pickers, pruners and packers on the job. The number receiving the special status would be capped at 1.35 million, according to Craig's office.
Although similar to a plan that was in the failed immigration reform legislation last year, it had one key difference - a five-year expiration date. In response, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed by a 17-12 vote to add it to the war funding bill.
..."What do you think will happen at the end of five years? Is anybody going to ask them to go back home?" Sessions asked.
Why have immigration laws at all if we're going to treat them like an annoyance?
Just Another Weekend In Paradise
Survival Of The Fittest
Are all lives worth the same, or is that one of those lies we tell ourselves? We usually have the luxury to treat all people like their lives are equally valuable -- but what if we don't? From an AP story:
Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia.
The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals "so that everybody will be thinking in the same way'' when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources -- including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses -- are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.
..."If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing,'' the report states.
The Constitution says "all men are created equal," but does this mean we tell ourselves that an old man in a nursing home who can no longer take care of himself should, in a heads-or-tails toss, be given a vaccine before the 26-year-old nursing student?
And, then, what about when there's no pandemic?
How about the way some fight to "save" the brain-dead, to keep them on life-support for years or decades? If your family has the cash to keep you alive as a turnip on a bed, and there's reason to believe you've always wanted to be a big, bed-ridden turnip, have at it. But, most likely, your care is going to come out of the health care dollars of the rest of us.
So...when is it "too expensive" to keep a vegetable "alive"? Should paying to keep the Terry Schiavos of the world "alive" be voluntary...as in, through the charitable contributions of those who believe in that sort of thing?
Finally, these days, developing fetuses that parents know (from testing) will never be autonomous human beings, and may be in for terrible suffering, are still brought into the world and kept alive with great effort from their parents, and often, at great expense (often or usually by the rest of us).
But, as for those who don't die terribly in childhood, but live on as parental dependents needing constant care and supervision throughout their lives...what happens when their parents grow old and can no provide that care and supervision (the subject of a story I read recently that I can no longer find)?
When, if ever, should pandemic logic apply?
Thanks, Flynne!
Radical Hollywood
People complain that there social activism isn't what it used to be -- and it seems that's true even amongst the limousine liberals. Loved this anecdote in a piece on Donald Sutherland in New Statesman. Stephen Armstrong writes:
Donald Sutherland is a veteran Hollywood activist who in the 1970s made anti-Vietnam films with Jane Fonda. Those heady days pale in comparison to today's political battles.
Many Hollywood actors like to sound off about politics. But few have been at the sharp end of it quite like Donald Sutherland. "I was in Yugoslavia when I found out," he says, with a fond smile. He is telling me about the day in 1969 when he found out his then wife, the actress Shirley Douglas, had been arrested for procuring arms for the Black Panthers. "Clint Eastwood came walking out of the sun like it was a spaghetti western and said, 'I have some bad news for you. Your wife's been arrested. For buying hand grenades. From an undercover agent of the FBI. With a personal cheque.' And when he got to the personal cheque he started laughing so hard he fell to the ground. I had to help him back up."
via theweek
Amy Interviews Dr. Laura At LA Times Festival Of Books
The Book tv/C-SPAN2 show of our session at the LA Times Festival Of Books is airing today at 7:30 p.m. EST. It's the second Dr. Laura program listed that day, so be sure you pick the 7:30 p.m. one, not the earlier one (that's a call-in show she did). You can watch it live here.
Her book is called Stop Whining, Start Living
Whyyyyyyyy meeeeeeeee!Actually that's a really good question.
Why am I introducing Dr. Laura?
Here I am, an atheist whose job description on her business card is "godless harlot." I'm a woman who's never been married, and who has no desire to ever have children or GET married - which means I'm ONLY having premarital sex. And I'll only EVER have premarital sex.
So...you could say I'm not exactly Dr. Laura's core constituency, But ... like Dr. Laura, in my column, I try to tell the truth that nobody else will tell you. Dr. Laura's especially great at that, and here's an example: A woman called in to Dr. Laura's show and complained that her best friend had stopped being "there" for her when she talked about her divorce. "How long ago was your divorce?" Dr. Laura asks. "Two years," the woman said. And Dr. Laura answered: "She's not listening anymore because you've become boring."
Watch the show and drop your preconceived notions of the lady. As I told Crid in the comments below:
When people tell me they hate her, I ask whether they've actually listened to her. I mean, how do you argue with 1. be nice to your husband, 2. have sex with him, and 3. take responsibility for your children?
And read Tammy Bruce's book, The New Thought Police, to see how she was lied about and used as a fundraising tool for GLAD. And I say that as somebody who's totally pro gay rights. If you disagree with somebody, the answer isn't to lie about what they said, but to debate them on the actual points, which GLAD never did.
A few photos from our session:
The problem with this country, left and right, is the automatic rejection of somebody you disagree with in any way. I don't operate that way, and neither, apparently, does Dr. Laura. Dr. Laura read my blog, and probably finds a few things here she totally disagrees with, but basically likes what I have to say about things. And vice versa. And I was just supposed to intro her but she asked me to be up there with her the whole time and interview her. Maybe the tent really is bigger over there on the right.
photos by Gregg Sutter
Raping A Woman In Saudi Arabia: Really No Big Deal
Which has more rights under Islam in Saudi Arabia, a woman or a goat? Hard to say.
Michael Slackman blogs in The New York Times of a visit to the desert with a friend, a female Egyptian journalist, and a bunch of Saudi men -- six of them, ages 19 to 26, all of whom worked for the Saudi military.
One of the men told Slackman and his two companions that they were reckless for driving into the desert with Saudi men they didn't know well:
The Egyptian woman asked how he would treat us if we had not been introduced by our friend."What would you do if we were with someone else?'' she asked.
"I would get rid of him and try something with you,'' he replied. "Not rape, I would try to do something, to get you to do something."
"And if I said no?" she asked.
"Then I would rape you."
That was it. None of the other young men seemed surprised, or sounded an objection. Would he really do it? Probably not. And neither would the other young men there, the ones who quietly nodded. But no one said "just kidding." What they said was that this was a serious possibility we needed to be aware of. They acknowledged that rape was against their religion, but as a sin, they put it in the same category as a woman working with a man in the desert trying to understand young Saudi men.
'Ninety percent of Saudis would think it is not right,'' Fahd said. "An Egyptian girl with an American man, or a girl alone, what is she doing here?"
Sick fucks. Rape is nothing to them, no big deal, what an independent woman deserves. And a woman who's a victim of rape had bettter not be going around whining to the authorities about it afterward:
Prophet Mohammed's divine injunctions of Allah clearly outline through the Quran that a woman's word on rape is not taken into account. Proving her innocence is a dauntingly unreachable task. Almost all the rape victims are in fact charged with an adulterous and loose moral character. This is because the Quran clearly says that the testimony of one man is considered as equal to that of two women. This blatant discrimination is amply explained in Quranic Sura 24:1-4. Regarding this issue, the famous Islamic scholar Anwar Shaikh comments:"As a result of this law, a raped woman has to produce four eye-witnesses to the act, which is more or less an impossibility. Its devastating effect can be clearly seen in Pakistan where several thousand good, honest Muslim women are imprisoned for suffering rape. When they report their cases to the police, they are required to produce four eye-witnesses. As they cannot do so, they are held as false accusers, and put behind bars."
... If by chance a woman's rape comes to light she is accused of adultery by Islamic law. Most often the punishment for adultery is severe lashing or stoning to death.
Somebody please get the message to our president. I read today in the LA Times that he said:
"Actually, what I say is you're not a religious person if you're a murderer," he replied. "But you're right. I've got to do a better job of making it clear when I talk about Islam [that] I talk about a peaceful religion."
Yeah, those were giant olive branches that felled the twin towers.
Word has it, Islam's actually really sweet, reports Islam-Watch. A bit of history for President Bush:
Unlike Hitler who had a very deep hatred of Jews, Muhammad spent the early part of his prophetic mission (13 years) trying to convince the Jews and Christians that he was the final prophet of Allah and that his Allah was the one and same God that the Jews and Christians worshipped. The Jews and Christians thought he was a false prophet and rejected his prophetic claim.Having been largely unsuccessful in his mission to preach his new creed in his birth-city of Mecca, Muhammad relocated to Medina. It was there that Muhammad reinvented a new violent Allah--a god of mass-murder, extermination, terror, torture, looting. In the new reformed Islam, deceit, torture, murder, assassination, massacre, genocide, pillage, robbery, enslavement and rape became halal (legal) acts, deserving of paradise, as long as they were perpetrated on infidels. To already permitted polygamy, the new Allah added temporary marriages (muta), pedophilia, marriage with adopted son's wives, wife beating, and sex with slave girls.
In Medina, the teachings of the Koran exploded into hatred and rage against the Polytheists, Jews, Christians and all other infidels. The hatred of Muhammad and his Allah was directed specifically against the peoples of the book, namely the Jews and Christians, who had dared to reject the prophethood of Muhammad. With the Polytheist of Medina soon joined his creed, the Jews and Christians remained the only challenge to the authority of Muhammad and the legitimacy of Islam. Due to the danger posed by the peoples of the book, the Jews and Christians, their destruction became an imperative.
Speaking of which, if Obama actually did leave Islam, or is perceived to have left Islam, he could be in some serious trouble, thanks to Mohammed's edict about Muslim apostasy, "Whoever changes his religion, kill him." Robert Spencer writes at Jihadwatch:
A genuine Islamic reformer today would acknowledge that the death penalty for apostasy is mainstream Islamic teaching, affirmed by all the madhahib, or schools of jurisprudence, and then explain why this should be set aside. But that is not the same thing as claiming that Islam doesn't teach this in the first place.So is Obama under a death sentence? Probably not. As far as I know Obama has never explained when he left Islam and became a Christian. This is a crucial point, for according to Islamic law an apostate male is not to be put to death if he has not reached puberty (cf. 'Umdat al-Salik o8.2; Hidayah vol. II p. 246). Some, however, hold that he should be imprisoned until he is of age and then "invited" to accept Islam, but officially the death penalty for youthful apostates is ruled out.
Charming, just charming. Again, please pass the word on to the current nitwit occupying The Oval Office. Religion of Peace, my ass.
Who's The Wanker?
Is it the guy jerking off in a hotel room to pay-for-porn or the fundamentalist jerkoff who wants to ban porn from the viewing possibilities at hotels? Mark Barna writes for the Colorado Springs Gazette:
Focus on the Family and four other conservative Christian organizations are meeting today with Marriott International executives in Washington, D.C., to persuade them to remove in-room adult movies from their hotels.Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy at Focus, said it is time for family groups to make a collective stand against hotel pornography.
"Pornography feeds prostitution and sexual abuse," Minnery said. "And it's especially dangerous in hotels because it can become addictive and create a sexualized climate that puts men, women and children at risk."
What, the weary businessman who's jerking off to porn is going to go on some rampage, banging on doors and shooting his way in with the Uzi he smuggled through the TSA workers, and then kidnapping, raping, and killing all the children staying in the hotel on the average business Wednesday?
Not surprisingly, these nutters never bother to show evidence that porn "feeds prostitution and sexual abuse." In the era of lazy media, they just claim it does, and that's that.
And hilariously, these nitwits think they can coerce Marriott into removing the porn from their TV offerings, and that will be that. When I was at the evolutionary psych conference in New Hampshire, my friend Nando found a DVD of 80s hardcore porn on top of his and Kaja's hotel room TV. What are these nutters going to do next, try to ban laptops and DVD players and do a full search upon check-in to make sure people aren't bringing them in -- packed to the electronic gills?
Write to the Marriott to tell them you don't want them to bow to the nutters: internet.customer.care@marriott.com
Oh yeah, and as an Obscure Store commenter noted, if you really want to get the sex and violence out of hotel rooms, you'd better remove the bibles.
via obscurestore
Heather Has Two (Married) Mommies
A friend of mine once explained why she was against gay marriage: "It's weird. It makes me uncomfortable."
Come on, for how many of you arguing here is that the real reason you're against it? And sorry, "It makes me uncomfortable" isn't a good reason to deny people rights.
As for the argument that gay parenting is somehow inferior to straight parenting, Saletan has a great piece on Slate, "Lesbians of Mass Destruction: The empty case against Mary Cheney," referencing studies, some of which I've read in the past, that "suggest that qualities of family relationships are more tightly linked with child outcomes than is parental sexual orientation."
Saletan rips into the irrational arguments of the gay marriage/gay parenting critics:
If you believe, as Focus on the Family does, that we should stop creating families in which one parent is biologically unrelated to the child, then gays are the least of your worries. By professional estimates, 40,000 babies are born each year from donated eggs or sperm. You want to stop nonbiological parenthood? Go chain yourself to a sperm bank.For that matter, if you want every child to have the benefit of two parents, you're picking on the wrong Cheney. Mary's sister, Liz, just had her fifth kid. All things being equal, Liz's baby will get one-fifth as much parental attention as Mary's will get. But nobody complains about that.
And let's not forget that the case against nonbiological parenthood is based on averages. Averages make bad law. The best critique of gay parenting studies is that because many homosexuals are closeted, those who are found by researchers and who agree to participate are disproportionately white, well-educated, and female. But that's exactly what Mary Cheney is. She's a vice president of AOL. Her partner's current occupation is renovating their home. Should they abstain from motherhood because they're above average?
The same goes for gender averages. James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, says Cheney's pregnancy is a bad idea because a father "makes unique contributions to the task of parenting that a mother cannot emulate," such as "a sense of right and wrong and its consequences." You must be kidding. Cheney's partner is a former park ranger. They met while playing collegiate hockey. If they want a night out to catch an NHL game, Grandpa Dick can drop by to read bedtime stories about detainee interrogation.
And come on, how many of you have actually met any children of gay parents? I have; for example, the husband of a relative of mine has a lesbian sister -- a very well-to-do Republican in Beverly Hills with two older teenage boys, amazing kids who appear happy, well-adjusted, and grateful to be raised with all they have, and who do all the things boys do (play video games, play sports, chase girls, etc.). These kids would be better off with some heterosexual couple? Why?
What Gay Couples Want
Gene Robinson, an Anglican bishop from New Hampshire who caused some controversy with his statement, "I always wanted to be a June bride," explains in the Times of London:
Mark and I have been together for 20 years. In much the same way that women have done for countless generations, Mark left a great career with the Peace Corps to make a life with me and my daughters in New Hampshire. I'd made it clear right from the beginning that I'd never leave them. For all that time, we've shared our lives in every aspect. Although a fiercely private person, Mark wholeheartedly supported me in responding to God's call to the episcopate, and when my election took place, and ever since, he's stood by my side - in the uncomfortable limelight - as my partner and spouse.We've dealt with all the ramifications of being a gay couple in our culture. All the protections that exist for heterosexual couples were not automatically available to us. At considerable cost, we legally contracted some of these: durable power of attorney for financial and medical decisions, inheritance (of course, an inheritance tax would be imposed on him as if he and I were complete strangers), a trust for him and our children. But literally hundreds of rights and protections afforded heterosexual couples at the utterance of "I do" are not available to us. The kind of protections that became instantly available to Britney Spears - who, on a lark, decided one night in Las Vegas to get married - are not available to Mark and me despite 20 years of love and fidelity.
Oh, and don't kid yourself. If the Church got rid of gay clergy it would collapse, he tells Times of London religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill:
The Bishop of New Hampshire in the US, the Right Rev Gene Robinson, who is divorced and lives openly in partnership with a gay man, said that he found it mystifying that the mother Church of the Anglican Communion was unable to be honest about the number of gay clergy in its ranks.He said that many of the English Church's clergy lived openly in their rectories with gay partners, with the full knowledge of their bishops. But he criticised the stance of bishops who threaten the clergy with enmity should their relationships become public. Speaking in an interview in London, Bishop Roninson said: "I have met so many gay-partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive but has also said, 'If this ever becomes public then I'm your worst enemy.'
"It's a terrible way to live your life and I think it's a terrible way to be a Church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy-person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can't even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own Church? So I would feel better about the Church of England's stance, its reluctance to support the Episcopal Church in what it has done, if it would at least admit that this not just an American challenge. If all the gay people stayed away from church on a given Sunday the Church of England would be close to shut down, between its organists, its clergy, its wardens . . . it just seems less than humble not to admit that."
Robinson's new book: In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God
Oh yeah, and with Emmanuelle Richard, I offer congrats to film critic David Ehrenstein, who told us last night at Matt Welch's talk at Zocalo, that he asked his partner of 38 years to marry him. (He said yes.)
Look On The Bright Side -- If You Still Can
Humans have a tendency to focus on the positive and ignore the negative. This can mean they incur substantial costs.
Granted, I have numerous friends, like Nancy Rommelmann, who've been thrilled with the results of their Lasik surgery. But, not every one sees it that way. From the AP:
Patients harmed by Lasik eye surgery alternated between fury and despair Friday as they told U.S government health officials of suffering years of eye pain, blurred or double vision -- even of people driven to suicide."Too many Americans have been harmed by this procedure and it's about time this message was heard," said David Shell, who had Lasik in 1998 and says he has "not experienced a moment of crisp, good quality vision since."
Colin Dorrian was a college student when he was told he was not a good Lasik candidate, but went ahead anyway -- and his father, Gerald, described six years of eye pain and blurred vision before reading his son's suicide note to a Food and Drug Administration panel: "I can't and won't continue facing this horror."
Matt Kotsovolos actually worked for the Duke Eye Center when he had a more sophisticated Lasik procedure in 2006, and said doctors classified him as a success because he now has 20-20 vision -- something Kotsovolos charged is a deceptive industry practice.
"For the last two years I have suffered debilitating and unremitting eye pain," Kotsovolos said. "Patients do not want to continue to exist as helpless victims with no voice."
A decade after Lasik hit the market, the Food and Drug Administration is taking a new look at whether warnings about its risks are appropriate -- and pairing with eye surgeons for major study to better understand who has bad outcomes and why.
Most Lasik recipients do walk away with crisper vision, and the American Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery reviewed studies showing about 95 percent of patients say they're satisfied with their outcome.
But not everyone's a good candidate, and an unlucky fraction do suffer life-changing side effects: poor vision even with glasses, painful dry eyes, glare or inability to see or drive at night.
How big are the risks? The FDA agrees that about 5 percent of patients are dissatisfied with Lasik. How many struggle daily with side effects? How many are less harmed but unhappy that they couldn't completely ditch their glasses? The range of effects on patients' quality of life is a big unknown -- and the reason the FDA help a public hearing Friday as part of its new move.
"and the reason the FDA help a public hearing Friday as part of its new move." (Apparently, the AP lost a copy editor or two, but you get the idea.)
Fail Math? Daddy Goes To Jail
An Ohio father was jailed -- and for six months! -- because his adult daughter failed to get her GED.
Now, expecting somebody to get her GED is not exactly a high standard. And these two parents didn't exactly raise the next Einstein, or raise her with enough discipline to see that she showed up in school -- or didn't get pregnant as a teenager. (I'm suspecting the divorce didn't help matters.) And, who knows, maybe she got a scoop of really dumb girl genetics.
Whatever's going on here, one adult should not be held responsible for the behavior of another. And as Glenn Sacks points out, to jail parents because any kid fails a class is just outrageous. But, here, from WCPO.com, that's exactly what happened:
Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus ordered Gegner to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor by not following a court order which required Gegner to be sure his daughter got her GED.This comes after ongoing problems of Brittany skipping classes at Fairfield High School and then, Butler Tech.
While Brian Gegner had custody of her, Brittany says it was while she lived with her mother that she was truant.
"I'm about to be 19 and my Dad's being punished for something I did when I was 16," she said.
"It's like I should, if anybody should be punished for this," said Brittany. "I would way rather me go to jail than my Dad."
"They probably should have punished me if they were going to punish anybody," said Brittany's mother Shana Roach. "Because she did live with me at the time, but because he had the custody, that's why he's being punished."
"But I don't understand the punishment all together because she's going to school, she's been going for four months," said Roach. "The only thing that's holding her back is she can't pass her math test."
Brittany has a daughter who's about 18 months old.
She says she's determined to pass the GED for her daughter - and her father.
The judge says if she passes the test, her father could get out of jail before his six-months sentence is up.
Brittany's step-mother worries the time in jail will ruin their family.
She says he could lose the job he's worked for 15-years.
"I never dreamed they would put him in jail for this - for six months - it's crazy," said Stephanie Gegner, Brittany's step-mother.
"He has no control over what his adult daughter does," she said. "He just doesn't."
Glenn Sacks writes:
The jailed father goes before Judge David J. Niehaus on Friday--I urge all of you to call Niehaus and also the Governor of Ohio to demand Brian Gegner's release. The contact information is:BUTLER COUNTY
Juvenile Justice Center
Judge David J. Niehaus 513-887-3318
fax: 513-887-5592
Contact Ohio Governor Strickland here:
http://www.governor.ohio.gov:80/Default.aspx?tabid=448
Phone: (614) 466-3555
Fax: (614) 466-9354Michael Robinson of the California Alliance for Families and Children ... has been checking into the case and speaking with Ohio officials. Robinson reveals several important facts about the case:
1) Both Robinson and Ohio WCPO TV reporter Deb Silverman have been digging into the Gegner family's history, and Robinson says "both parents are clean, they simply were unable to get their daughter to stay in school."
2) This sad chain of events was set off because the parents did the right thing--they were concerned about their daughter's truancy, acknowledged that they were not able to control her, and called the police for help. I would also add that this is an example of two divorced parents working together to try to help their child, something this country needs a lot more of.
3) Perhaps most significant of all, Judge David J. Niehaus and two colleagues were specifically accused of judicial abuse by Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox in his 2003 report "A Culture of Secrecy, Fear and Judicial Abuse."
Other relevant details:
1) According to CBS, the judge is "standing firm" and says Gegner will "only be released if his daughter passes the GED." So a parent can be held in jail until his or her child passes a test?! If my son fails Geometry, should my wife and I be jailed until he passes Geometry in summer school?
2) In "A Culture of Secrecy, Fear and Judicial Abuse," Fox writes:
"The Domestic Relations and Juvenile Courts of Butler County foster a culture of secrecy, fear and judicial abuse that violates the most fundamental and sacred rights guaranteed by our nation's Constitution -- the rights of due process of the laws. Those who are most directly affected by decisions of these courts -- parties to the actions -- are routinely excluded from court proceedings and deliberations, told to wait outside the hearing room in a hallway while their lives, personal property, children and homes are divided up by strangers." To read the full report, click here.
...4) To watch a video of the daughter discussing her father's jailing, click here.
A counterpoint posted by Jay R., a commenter on Glenn's site, regarding his telephone conversation with Rob Clevenger, Director of the Juvenile Justice Center in Butler County.:
As I recall, he said that, to his understanding, it was not true that the parents had initiated contact with the "system." He also said that it was not true that the daughter had lived with the mom during the entire three years of "chronic truancy" which is the premise of the original criminal complaint, which was automatically brought against the parent with legal custody. He could not explain why mom wasn't also/instead charged, but did say that he is aware of cases where (mostly single) moms have also been prosecuted. He did not say that any women have gone to jail.He really was a nice, reasonable person, who acknowledged the huge problems associated with fatherless homes. He had nothing to say, though, when I noted the lack of any governmental or societal efforts to keep fathers in place in families.
Clearly, all these problems are caused by gays and lesbians "ruining" the institution of marriage by asking to be allowed in -- especially all those gays and lesbians who want to provide stable homes for their children with all the rights and privileges straight people get for their partners, family, and children.
Do you think gay parents' children are more likely to pass math? I mean, these people are not having kids by accident, so maybe their kids are less likely to be truant and all the rest -- not that any parent should be jailed for their children's behavior, unless there's a clear case of willful child neglect.
UPDATE: The judge backed down. Glenn Sacks reports that the jerk "judge" (there seems to be little judgement in the guy) will let Brian Gegner out of jail if his daughter takes a GED test prep class, which she must schedule before the next court date.
Better circumstances for the guy, but still wrong -- to have one adult's freedom depend on whether another adult does something. This "judge" should be busing tables at Denny's. If that.
Sudden Equal Rights
The California Supreme Court just struck down the California ban on gay marriage. Howard Mintz writes for the Mercury News:
A sharply divided California Supreme Court today legalized same-sex marriage, an historic ruling that will allow gay and lesbian couples across the state to wed as soon as next month and inflame the social, political and moral debate over gay unions.In a 4-3 ruling written by Chief Justice Ronald George, the Supreme Court struck down California laws that restrict marriage to heterosexual couples, finding that it is unconstitutional to deprive gays and lesbians of the equal right to walk down the aisle with a marriage license in hand.
The California and Massachussetts Supreme Courts are now the only top courts in the country to uphold the right of gay couples to marry.
The ruling marks a watershed moment in the conflict over gay marriage, with the most influential state Supreme Court in the nation, dominated by Republican appointees, ruling in favor of gay rights advocates in the state with the largest gay population. California was considered a crucial battleground for civil rights groups, which have lost a number of major legal challenges in recent years in other states such as New York, Washington and New Jersey.
The decision is sure to spark a furor that could spill into the ballot box in November, when there is a strong chance voters will be weighing a ballot initiative to change the state Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger previously announced his opposition to the ballot initiative, but that was before
today's ruling.The three dissenters in today's ruling argued that it should be up to the voters or Legislature to sanction gay marriage, not the courts. A divided state appeals court reached that conclusion in 2006 when it upheld the ban on gay marriage, but that ruling was overturned by today's Supreme Court decision.
We don't leave whether blacks and whites can marry up to the voters. This shouldn't be left up to the voters either.
I sat next to this incredible woman on the plane back from the evolutionary psych conference in Manchester. We talked for a couple hours about a lot of things, including her family and family life. She seemed to be not only a great person, but a great mother, and it sounded like she had a great relationship with her husband. It was about two hours in that she used her partner's name, and I realized she was with a woman.
Sorry for all those people who think being gay means running around West Hollywood in leather pants with the butt circles cut out, but gay parents are just as boring as straight parents, and have pretty much the same problems (save for dealing with discrimination against homosexuals).
Why shouldn't this woman and her partner get every privilege and protection under the law that straight parents and their children do? How does giving them those rights hurt anyone, or hurt "the institution of marriage" itself?
Sorry, but if anyone's screwing up marriage, it isn't the homos who want to marry, but the straight people who keep breaking their marriages up and strewing children in their wake.
Bratless Dining
Glory be! A Silverton, Oregon restaurant just put up a sign banning children 6 and under. From KPTV in Portland:
The manager at the Red Thai restaurant on Oak Street said children under the age of 6 aren't welcome in the eatery.The Red Thai manager, Craig Gereau, said children disrupt people who are trying to enjoy a quiet dinner.
He said most of his customers like the new rule, but he's had to turn some people away.
"We've had to turn a few young parents away. They're a little bit appalled, a little bit annoyed, but we have to do what we have to do. We can't stay in business to please everybody," Gereau said.
As the guy subsequently pointed out, there are plenty of restaurants that cater to young children. And I do my best to avoid them.
Sure, some kids are well-behaved. And these well-behaved kids seem rarer and rarer every day. Besides being raised as self-centered brats, many kids these days don't seem to be taught the first thing about how to behave in public.
Last week, at Manchester Airport, some lady was playing football with her two boy brats with a bag of trash from McDonald's in the center of the walkway lining the gates. I told them to stop as I went by, as I didn't want to end up wearing McDonald's.
Just today, I had a lunch meeting at the Rose Café, and I couldn't get past this little girl brat because she was sticking out her foot and apparently doing ballet exercises in the middle of the restaurant, and I didn't want to wear her foot dirt on my black skirt.
Her "parents" finally noticed that I was standing there waiting to get past and told her to pull her foot in and sit down. She ignored them, and lifted her little brat leg again.
Newsflash to people who have extruded children: You can't be in the habit of acting like "parents" and then expect acting like parents to have much of an effect beyond causing noise pollution for the rest of us.
Got kids? If they don't behave like little adults, there's a place for them, and it's home with the babysitter (or home cooking up meth for the babysitter, as the reality may be), not out in some restaurant where a lot of adults are trying to have a civilized dining experience.
Yes, that's right: I'm saying I want an adult dining experience whenever I do dine out. There's a reason I don't go to Chuckie Cheese's, and it isn't because they don't serve Amarone (fab Italian red wine).
Amy's Bookshelf
Excellent books I've read recently, or am reading:
Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), by Tavris and Aronson
The Stuff Of Thought, by Steven Pinker
Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely
The How Of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky
Rendezvous In Black, by Cornell Woolrich
"Is Maman Mean Or Magnifique?"
Janine di Giovanni asks the question in the Telegraph about French mothers' stricter style of parenting. I wrote about American parenting here, in my Advice Goddess column, "Look Before You Sleep":
The parental "no" has officially joined the ranks of chronically missing items like The Holy Grail, Atlantis, and Britney Spears' underpants.You're supposed to be your kids' mom, not their full-time birthday clown. This means meeting their needs, as opposed to falling prey to their ransom demands; i.e., "Send in the chopper and the cupcakes or I'll scream my lungs out until spring!" If you're keeling over from reading "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" 40 times, it's because you didn't say no 39 times. "No" is also the correct response when besieged with requests for a chunky peanut butter sandwich with all the chunkies removed. But, children can be such finicky eaters! Correction: American children can be such finicky eaters, because their parents tend to confuse parenting with working room service at a five-star hotel. In France, on the other hand, the kids' meal is whatever the parents are eating; brains, livers, kidneys and all. And while the kids can pick out bits they don't like, their choice is clear: eat or starve.
Saying no to your kids will not turn them into meth-smoking, liquor store-robbing carjackers. Actually, throwing up a few boundaries might even serve to prevent this -- and less dire but extremely annoying outcomes (just what society needs, another 35-year-old snot who was denied nothing during childhood).
Here's how it works in France. di Giovanni writes:
An American friend, Susan, who grew up in Paris and is the mother of three boys, explained: "It's always shocking for Anglo-Saxons to hear the shrill 'ça suffit' that is the refrain of all French mothers. They speak with sharpness that is alarming to the uninitiated."However, Susan does not see their behaviour as mean. "They think they are doing their children a favour, which is to civilise them. Teaching your children proper behaviour from the earliest age is of almost moral importance."
She recalls taking her five-year-old son to the park and telling him repeatedly not to do something. An elderly woman was eavesdropping and suddenly reached over and pinched the boy's ear until he squealed. "Listen to your mother," she said sternly in French.
Susan was not offended. "I know she, and every other French grandmother, would think that is for the good of the child. Anglo-Saxons tend to see children as charmingly thick savages who can be taught manners in a superficial way. The French grasp the deeper meaning of civilised behaviour as soon as they can speak, and drill it into them."
My son's godmother, who is French, also believes in discipline (though she is a highly loving and supportive mother and godmother). She says, "there is something called l'heure de l'adulte". That is when they go away and leave us alone." Children, she says, have to learn boundaries. "The big difference is that the French believe strongly in creating those divisions. And it works. Look how well behaved French children are, compared to American children."
I have to say, she has a point. When I see my six little French nieces and nephew, lined up neatly with plaits, scrubbed freckled faces and pinafores, parroting "Bonjour, tante Janine," and "Merci, tante Janine," and going off to their violin and piano lessons, I know she has a valid point.
But the hippy, earth mother part of me still wonders about originality, creativity and free thinking. (There is no such thing as an earth mother here, it is simply not chic). I worry that all this repression and enforced manners will kill any creative drive.
But then I think about Seth, the kid from the Upper West Side who invaded my living room and destroyed my dinner party. On that note, I am very happy to live in France and follow the French model. Slightly.
(White) Girl Power
Meet the art in manhater Amanda Marcotte's new book: the white man being rescued from the black savage by the white woman.
Black feminists were underthrilled. From BlackAmazon:
I think the point where I went fuck it , is when a law student, a couple writers, and a professor basically endorsed a book and MISSED in reading something they were ATTACHING their names to .Racist comics, about MY PEOPLE. Yeah MY PEOPLE, being KILLED and destroyed to save a white man and give a white woman the "courage" she so desperately desires .
And people fell over themselves to excuse them . Cause they're learning
You know what , fuck off.
Here's a review from Amazon by Lotte Claire "lottelita":
Please do not buy this book -- at least, not yet., April 25, 2008Amanda Marcotte is a witty writer, but she doesn't understand that feminism must embrace anti-racism as well. Her book features "retro" comic book imagery where a white woman saves a white man from dark-skinned savages, which has understandably upset a great number of feminists of color. She and her publisher claim that the inclusion of these images was a regrettable oversight, but they've also been dismissive of the concerns that were raised. This isn't the first time Marcotte has been down this road, either. Please don't support her work or her publisher until they get the message that feminism isn't just for white women.
Little light comments here:
Well, Vox, she learned that people will find fault with anything she does 'cause they're haters, right? So why settle for racist undertones with a white woman fighting a big black ape, when she can actually be beating down a spear-chucking, ooga-booga-mask-wearing, bulging-codpieced caricature of an actual black person? To save a clean-shaven whitebread man? With dancing, hooting savages and their animal companions representing all the threats to the erstwhile blonde feminist adventurer?Or, oh wait, isn't the new claim that she had no input on the illustrations of her book, and was given galleys that didn't include those pages, but even if she had seen them, they're ironic, and anyway, the only people calling out racism are haters trying to find fault because of personal vendettas?
Seal Press "apologizes" here -- the way I do, when I don't really want to apologize, with "I'm sorry I offended you," which doesn't mean I'm sorry for what I wrote, just that you got pissed off by it. An excerpt (and do go to the link and do read the bit at the bottom where they go all weasely and try to excuse themselves by saying Amanda Marcotte, whose blog has had some image issues in the past, "who did not select these images for her book":
A Public Apology To Our Readers, Our Friends, Our Critics,We are taking action immediately to remove the offensive images from It's A Jungle Out There. We are currently reprinting, and we will make these changes now. We apologize for any pain or concern these images have caused.
We do not believe it is appropriate for a book about feminism, albeit a book of humor, to have any images or illustrations that are offensive to anyone.
Some have asked the valid question, "What were you thinking?"
Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author's humor. That is all. We were not thinking.
As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.
In the meantime, please know that all involved in the publishing of It's A Jungle Out There, from editorial to production were not trying to send a message to anyone about our feelings regarding race. If taken seriously as a representation of our intentions, these images are also not very feminist. By putting the big blonde in the skimpy bathing suit with the big breasts, the tiny waist, and the weapon on our cover, we are also not asserting that she is any kind of standard that anyone should aspire to. This 1950s Marvel comic is not an accurate reflection of our beauty standards, our beliefs regarding one's right to bear arms, nor our perspectives on race relations, foreign policy, or environmental policy.
Hilariously, about the standard they don't think "anyone should aspire to," I can load you down with piles of research that show men go for big breasts and tiny waists. So...if you're a woman who wants a man...it would behoove you to wear a push-up bra and a dress that reveals a waist! Is this horrible to say? Or...simply prudent?
As I wrote long ago in my column: "If you want to trap a bear, don't trot off into the woods carrying a Tupperware container of salad.
Here's One Way To Get Amazon Reviews
This e-mail flew in on Tuesday afternoon:
In a message dated 5/13/08 1:58:02 PM, wilsongeek@gmail.com writes:Hi,
As you may or may not know, I finished my first book in 2004.Healing The Unhappy Caveman: Why The Human Mind Was Not Designed For Happiness And What YOU Can Do About It
I spent two years blogging about the concept and trying to get a book deal, but the publishing industry and I never saw eye to eye on much of anything. Fortunately, one of the readers of my blog started his own publishing company, and he asked me to be one of his first authors. So...after what has seemed like an eternity, my book is finally out.
It is available on Amazon -
(deleted)You can also buy it on my website -
(deleted)...Now for the money - as you probably know, the key to kicking ass on Amazon is reviews. My book has only recently been added to their list, so I have no reviews. I need them, and I'm willing to pay to get them. I am NOT saying I am willing to pay for puff pieces. I'm talking real reviews - good or bad. One complication is that unless you've been a frequent reviewer at Amazon, they won't let you review a book you didn't buy from them. So, if you want to participate in this, you'll probably need to buy the book from Amazon. However, if you do, and you submit a review that gets posted - and it is clear that you actually read the book - I'll send you $50. I have $500 set aside to do this, so once it's gone, the deal is over. My preference is to pay through PayPal, but I'll send you a check via snail mail if that's what it takes. Just be sure to let me know you're submitting a review before it goes up.
I hope this note finds you well.
Warm regards,
Chris Wilson
Probably to be safe, he says, "I am NOT saying I am willing to pay for puff pieces. I'm talking real reviews - good or bad."
Yeah, I'm sure he sent that out to all the people who really despise his work. I believe I'm on his list because I once sent him a complimentary note about his blog.
Einstein's Belief In God
"Sorry, theistards. Einstein was on our side," writes Evolved and Rational, posting a quote from a letter by Einstein that's about to be sold in London. Einstein wrote:
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.""For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions."
"The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."
"As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
I, too, find the "chosen people" brag offensive and rather immature ("We're the coolest, and you SUCK!"). And then, as a post-Jewish girl who's against the evidence-free belief in god (and, among others, the evidence-free belief that my frozen yogurt will fly), I agree with Al on all the rest.
Of course, of all the religions out there, Islam is the worst. The Jews might believe some dumb stuff, but they're not going to blow you up in the grocery store because of it.
Things That Go Chump In The Night
Just posted another Advice Goddess column here. Poor guy's in Iraq while all this is going on. Here's an excerpt:
The firm surface you need to meet up with is the business end of the clue stick. This saga started two years ago, when you and your wife agreed to separate. Two weeks later, after you left for the war, she moved her boyfriend into the family home. Two weeks later? Yes, before the exhaust trail from your plane to Iraq disappeared from the sky, she'd already managed a little troop surge of her own: Operation Screw Daddy Over. Yep, Daddy goes off to war and she eases the kids' minds that he'll be coming back in one piece by immediately bringing in his replacement.
Stare Death In The Face, But No Peeking At Naked Boobies!
Man enough to fight a war, but if a piece of legislation goes through, Uncle Sam's going to be your nanny. Seth Robson writes for Stars & Stripes:
Legislation that would restrict the sale of certain men's magazines on U.S. military bases around the world would be bad for morale, according to soldiers at Grafenwöhr.U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., has introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material "sexually explicit."
A Department of Defense committee that reviews materials sold on bases ruled last year that magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are not pornographic. But Broun's Military Honor and Decency Act includes language that could make those magazines eligible for the ban.
What's "decent" is that Broun gets to decide what magazines he and his children read, but leaves the decision of what the adult men and women serving in the military read to those adult men and women.
Broun, a Marine veteran, told Newsweek recently that the magazines sold in military exchanges are partly responsible for a rise in sexual assaults in the military and other problems.
Yeah? On what evidence?
"Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad," Broun says on his Web site.
Rape can be violent, but it is not a crime motivated by violence but a crime motivated by a desire for sex. There's plenty of evidence for that -- but none offered by Broun (at least, not in this article) for his claims of all the ills supposedly being caused on military bases by glimpses at Miss November.
More from Robson's piece:
The legislation would require the DOD to annually review material that is not currently deemed sexually explicit to determine if it should be prohibited, according to the Web site.Some soldiers say magazines that could be banned are particularly important downrange.
Brown deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 and is preparing to go to Iraq with the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade this summer. When he was in Afghanistan he was one of the first to pick up a new copy of Maxim or FHM when it came out, he said.
"It would suck if they ban it," he said. "It's bad enough we are down there to begin with. Taking that away would be like a knife in the chest. I'm not saying I'm depending on Maxim to keep me alive over there, but it helps."
Publications such as Maxim and FHM are not named by Broun, but lowering the threshold of the sexually explicit definition might mean such magazines would be targeted for a ban.
Sorry, but if you're laying your life on the line on behalf of the rest of us, the only boobs in your life shouldn't be puritanical jerks like Broun.
UPDATE: Vlad, in the comments below, had a great idea:
Amy if this jack ass gets his way we need to start a playboy and penthouse air lift. How's "Boobs for our troops" sound.
Jennifer had another:
I think we should start a porn drive right now for Paul Broun. Let's call it "Ass for Brass" and start mailing skin magazines by the hundreds to his congressional office, in protest.
Looking for my current copy of Hustler now!
That address:
Senator Paul Broun
2104 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
via ifeminists
"Sexist And Degrading!"
That's what some French feminists are calling a new guide to the pretty women of Paris, which makes me want to pick a copy up right away. Unfortunately, you'll have to look real hard to find the French hotties in this BBC video.
AFP's Rory Mulholland quotes the author of the guidebook, Pierre-Louis Colin, the speech writer of a French foreign minister:
"Just as every region has its gastronomy, every quartier has its feminine speciality," ... "You do not find in Menilmontant the sublime legs you see at the Madeleine. But you do find perfectly shameless cleavages, radiant breasts often uncluttered by a bra," he said in his own book, which was published last month.Paris is the most visited capital in the world and people come here to see city's magnificent women as much as they come to admire the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower, Colin told AFP.
He could find no guidebooks to the human wonders of Paris so he decided to produce his own. The result is the 190-page "Guide des jolies femmes de Paris," which is more of a literary essay than a fact-packed guidebook.
Area by area, Colin notes the best observation posts -- bars, supermarkets, parks, museums, metro trains -- and the best times of day for the connoisseur to contemplate various Parisienne archetypes.
"Trendy youth," characterised by the "generalisation of the G-string and the near disappearance of the bra" is to be seen on rue Montorgueil, a pedestrian strip of cafés and upmarket food shops which the author hails as the "epicentre of the city's erotic radiations."
Rue Montorgueil, huh? Judge the legs for yourself. Personally, I think you'll have more luck on parade days in the Marais (complete with Crid's two femmes favorites, as they say in France).
Tupperware Parties, Second Amendment-Style
Rajesh Mirchandani writes for the BBC of ladies' taser parties:
In a downtown loft apartment in Denver, Colorado, a group of 30-something women is having a party. They joke easily with each other about men, cats and botox.It's more Sex and the City than Psycho, but party organiser Dana Shafman would have them believe they could easily be victims of violent crime.
She runs a company that sells Tasers, the electric stun guns used by security forces around the world.
In Colorado and other US states, it's legal for ordinary people to own them. Dana's marketing them to women as the ideal personal protection device.
"I've been to everyone's Avon-type tupperware-style parties, purse parties, clothing parties, boutique parties and I felt like why not have a self-defence party? Why not have a Taser party, because without self-defence you won't have any of the other stuff?"
Grilled Bald Eagle, Anyone?
To save endangered plants and animals from extinction, conservation scientist Gary Paul Nabhan points the way from the free market to the supermarket. From nowpublic.com:
According to conservation scientist Gary Paul Nabhan, the best way to save more than 1,000 plants and animals on the edge of extinction is by creating a market demand for them. In other words, slice them up and slap them on the grill.In his book released last month, Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods
, Nabhan speculates that by creating a culinary need for many of the endangered species of North America, actions would be taken by private and public organizations to increase the population and establish safe havens for them. He reminds us that many of these foods are "delightful" and nutritious as well.
...Without a need beyond saving the animals from extinction, regulation can only be a band-aid for the problem. It takes financial incentive for corporations and demand by the public to go beyond the initial boost in population. There has to be a reason to keep them alive and help them grow.
via metafilter
Nissan: We Are Bullies?
Cyber-squatters are despicable, but this guy, the defendant in Nissan v. Nissan, doesn't seem to be one of them. He writes:
My name is Uzi Nissan. I was born in Jerusalem - Israel. My father's last name was Nissan, his father's last name was Nissan, and so on. Nissan is a biblical term identifying the seventh month in the Hebrew calendar. The term Nissan also is Arabic for the month of April.I came to the US in 1976, and have used my surname for years to identify a number of business enterprises. The first was "Nissan Foreign Car" in 1980. When I operated this business, I serviced different makes and models of foreign cars, including cars manufactured by Nissan Motor, back then known as "DATSUN". Contrary to the allegations by Nissan Motor, I did not choose to use my last name "Nissan" for my business in 1980 because of their name. At that time, they and their automobiles were known as "DATSUN" and were not known as "Nissan".
On May 14, 1991, "Nissan Computer Corp" was incorporated in the state of North Carolina. I was then, and still am, the company President. I have used Nissan as part of my trade name in connection with the sale of computer hardware, computer maintenance, networking, computer training and other consulting services related to computers. On June 4, 1994, I registered the domain name "nissan.com" and created a web site to promote computer related products and services on the Internet.
In July of 1995, I obtained a service mark registration for Nissan and my logo from the State of North Carolina.
On March 17, 1996, I registered the domain name "nissan.net" , and began offering Internet services, including dial-up connections and direct data connections to business.
DECEMBER - 1999, Initial Filing.
More then five years after I registered nissan.com, legal action was instituted by Nissan Motor seeking $10,000,000 in damages, and to restrain me from the use of MY family name for business purposes on the Internet.
The court cases and the appeals go on and on. But, why? Did Nissan, the big car company, ever just try to buy nissan.com and nissan.net from the guy? And if not, why not?
To give all a fair hearing on this issue, I e-mailed a corporate communications guy at Nissan, Fred Standish, and gave him the URL of this entry:
Dear Fred, Regarding the court case from Uzi Nissan, I'm just wondering, did your company ever just try to buy the sites (nissan.com and nissan.net) from him? I blogged about his case, and I want to give you a chance to present your side. Best,-Amy Alkon
Awaiting word or comment.
via metafilter
The Real Reason Proportionally More Blacks Are In Jail?
Proportionally more blacks commit crimes.
Quick, somebody tell Al Sharpton to march against that one -- or, better yet, do something to help change it.
And next there's the claim that judges overcharge and oversentence blacks. Heather MacDonald writes on City Journal:
Obama describes this alleged postarrest treatment as "Scooter Libby justice for some and Jena justice for others." Jena, Louisiana, of course, was where a D.A. initially lodged attempted second-degree murder charges against black students who, in December 2006, slammed a white student's head against a concrete beam, knocking him unconscious, and then stomped and kicked him in the head while he was down. As Charlotte Allen has brilliantly chronicled in The Weekly Standard, a local civil rights activist crafted a narrative linking the attack to an unrelated incident months earlier, in which three white students hung two nooses from a schoolyard tree--a display that may or may not have been intended as a racial provocation. This entrepreneur then embellished the tale with other alleged instances of redneck racism--above all, the initial attempted-murder charges. An enthusiastic national press responded to the bait exactly as intended, transforming the "Jena Six" into victims rather than perpetrators. In the seven months of ensuing headlines and protests, Jena became a symbol of systemic racial unfairness in America's court system. If blacks were disproportionately in prison, the refrain went, it was because they faced biased prosecutors--like the one in Jena--as well as biased juries and judges.Backing up this bias claim has been the holy grail of criminology for decades--and the prize remains as elusive as ever. In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They concluded that "large racial differences in criminal offending," not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. A 1987 analysis of Georgia felony convictions, for example, found that blacks frequently received disproportionately lenient punishment. A 1990 study of 11,000 California cases found that slight racial disparities in sentence length resulted from blacks' prior records and other legally relevant variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country's 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however--an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offenses as well as their criminal records.
Another criminologist--easily as liberal as Sampson--reached the same conclusion in 1995: "Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned," Michael Tonry wrote in Malign Neglect. (Tonry did go on to impute malign racial motives to drug enforcement, however.) The media's favorite criminologist, Alfred Blumstein, found in 1993 that blacks were significantly underrepresented in prison for homicide compared with their presence in arrest.
This consensus hasn't made the slightest dent in the ongoing search for systemic racism. An entire industry in the law schools now dedicates itself to flushing out prosecutorial and judicial bias, using ever more complicated statistical artillery. The net result? A few new studies show tiny, unexplained racial disparities in sentencing, while other analyses continue to find none. Any differences that do show up are trivially small compared with the exponentially greater rates of criminal offending among blacks.
Next, MacDonald clears up the racist crack penalties myth. All and all, this is another great piece of debunking by MacDonald.
What does this piece tell us? Well, that the mainstream media are indeed unfair to blacks -- but in the wrong direction, pandering to the notion that the justice system is racist, and howling, "Why are so many blacks in arrested or in jail?" instead of asking the black community, "Why are so many blacks doing things that get them arrested or thrown in jail?"
Easier for the Al Sharptons of the world to march on whitey than to start looking for answers and coming up with solutions, then put them into action, in the black community.
Heather MacDonald, like Bill Cosby, asks the right questions:
How many convicts were living in a stable relationship with the mother (or one of the mothers) of their children before being sent upstate? (Forget even asking about their marriage rate.) What kind of positive guidance do men who are committing enough crimes to end up in prison, rather than on probation (an exceedingly high threshold), provide to young people? Further, if Fagan is right that keeping criminals out of prison and on the streets preserves a community's social capital, inner cities should have thrived during the 1960s and early 1970s, when prison resources contracted sharply. In fact, New York's poorest neighborhoods--the subject of Fagan's analysis--turned around only in the 1990s, when the prison population reached its zenith....This popular "social ecological" analysis of incarceration, as Fagan and other criminologists call it, treats prison like an outbreak of infectious disease that takes over certain communities, felling people on a seemingly random basis. "As the risks of going to jail or prison grow over time for persons living in those areas, their prospects for marriage or earning a living and family-sustaining wage diminish as the incarceration rates around them rise," Fagan says. This analysis elides the role of individual will. Fagan and others assume that once one lives in a high-incarceration--that is, high-crime--area, one can do little to avoid prison. But even in the most frayed urban communities, plenty of people choose to avoid the "Life." Far from facing diminished marriage prospects, an upstanding, reliable young man in the inner city would be regarded as a valuable catch.
via aldaily
Hooters
Great tits cope well with warming.
Tolerance Is A One-Way Street
A British Muslim converted to Christianity, yet somehow missed out on his turn experiencing that fabulous "tolerance" the Muslims demand from the rest of their countrymen -- as they dot the country with mosque after mosque and preach the conversion, death, or dhimmitude of Christians, Jews, and atheists.
In fact, the "locals," as Times of London religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill calls them (and let's take a wild guess and assume they aren't a bunch of Protestants or Orthodox Jews), responded to news of the British Muslim's conversion to Christianity by threatening to burn his house down:
Nissar Hussein, 43, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was born and raised in Britain, converted from Islam to Christianity with his wife, Qubra, in 1996. The report says that he was subjected to a number of attacks and, after being told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, reported the threat to the police. It says he was told that such threats were rarely carried out and the police officer told him to "stop being a crusader and move to another place". A few days later the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.
Of course, it probably isn't fair to single out Islam for its treatment of apostates.
I mean, consider what Jews do to other Jews who convert to Christianity, or what Christians do to Christians who convert to Judaism or Islam:
Yes, that's right. Absolutely nothing.
Okay, come on, somebody tell me how unfair I am to Muslims.
(Just see to it that your smoke detector has new batteries before you do.)
The Kids With Nothing And Nobody
I got an e-mail from LA Weekly writer Daniel Hempel the other day, and figured I should print it here:
Hello Friends,As you may know I have been covering Foster Care for some time now. Among the many problems I have found, one is at the crux of the problem for these kids. After their parents die or the court takes them from their homes because of abuse and neglect these children very rarely interact with people who are not paid.
Foster parents get paid monthly. The social workers who are the liaison between these kids and the nebulous foster care administration are on salary. The psychologists who are charged with helping the trauma and depression of separation that these kids endure are paid by the state. Their handlers at group homes are paid.
While many around them are there because they are truly concerned for these children, they are ultimately there for the money. And these kids know that very well, leaving them with a feeling of being unwanted that cannot be staunched by a hundred psychologists or the thousand score social workers employed by the system.
In my research I have come across one foundation in particular that provides that missing element to these kids. Children Uniting Nations (CUN) links foster youth up with mentors. In my case, the mentoring I do is informal. I met the foster youth who I have been engaged with before I ever knew of CUN or even starting writing about the subject. But I did go to a CUN training session to help me understand what this young man I know is going through.
What I found was a packed room on Pico Blvd. where a bunch of volunteers were preparing to make a difference in a child's life. While stumbling through the stark statistics and the anecdotal nightmare of any given child's experience, this group of people was happy to give up their Saturday and plan how they were going to change the world for one kiddo.
I can give you the facts. By age 24, about one-quarter of LA's Foster Youth who leave the system at 18 will experience homelessness, one in five will land in jail, and more than half will be unemployed. (Read my story on the subject for more information).
But all those facts are pretty useless if there is no action taken to remedy them.
I am not one to solicit my friends or my family. I feel that soliciting help like this is like pulling from a non-renewable resource. But in this case I am asking for help on behalf of CUN.
Please visit their website at: www.childrenunitingnations.org and sign up as a mentor. If the time requirement is too much or you do not live in the Los Angeles Area either find a way to mentor or please donate a minimum of $25.00, or an old computer or a backpack filled with school supplies.
If you feel inclined, please pass this message to your friends and family.
Thanks,
Daniel Heimpel
www.dheimpel.com
P.S. D. Heimpel (as he's known by byline) and I started corresponding from time to time after he wrote about the foster care scandal, in which "Los Angeles County foster-care employees decided to take a share of the crumbs taxpayers provide to foster children as they struggle in an often frightening and lonely life." I blogged his story here.
Echoing D. Heimpel's thoughts above on the backpacks: I sat next to this amazing woman on the plane home from the evolutionary psych conference in Manchester. I actually want to hang with her and her family in Los Angeles. She and her kids go to Staples and buy backpacks and office supplies for homeless kids, and her workplace has a program where they tutor "at risk" kids, and give them scholarships to college.
My own program is going well -- mainly because I'm not doing it as part of the system. I go speak to kids at an inner city school (Brentwood's University High, where kids are bused in from other neighborhoods) to demystify "making it."
As I just wrote to a friend: I've just been getting a teacher I pretty much stalked to get me into various classes. I thought it would be nice if she didn't have to do all the scheduling, so I talked to the official career day lady, and told her I'd bring in the likes of Rob Long, who, of course, said yes when I asked him, Denise Hamilton, Kerry Madden-Lunsford, a Harlem-born, self-made real-estate dude, and self-made black female fashion designer who's a friend of mine.
The woman whose job it is to coordinate this stuff told me it'd take her six months to propose the "program" and six months to see if it would get appproved. I thought, "Hey, fuck you lady...I'll call the teacher and get them in in a matter of weeks." Sadly, I'm not the least bit surprised by this shit.
G'wan! Have Lots Of Children You Can't Afford!
It's how the Catholic church produces parishioners. All the more in their collection plates after the kids grow up to have litters of children they can't afford.
The Pope, clearly one of the world's foremost authorities on fucking, maintains that it's wrong for Catholics to use artificial means of birth control. Yeah, but wrong for whom?
Benedict expressed concern that human life risks losing its value in today's culture, and worried that sex could "transform itself into a drug" that one partner had to have even against the will of the other.
Tell that to all the people whose partners won't have sex with them anymore. How many people you know who aren't getting it at home are also raping their partner at gunpoint?
Make the Pope a happy man, and keep on procreatin' and fill up those collection plates, kiddies! After all, the Church has got all those pedophilia fines to pay for protecting and moving around all the kiddie-diddling priests. Hmmm, perhaps the Pope should be more worried about the fuckers within?
Operation Stupid-Ass Way To Spend Tax Dollars
You'll never believe this but...frat boys smoke pot! And even take other drugs. And if you ask a frat boy at San Diego State to sell you a little weed, he just might do that!
Luckily, as Tony Perry writes in the LA Times, there was "Operation Sudden Fall," a six-month investigation where taxpayer dollars went into a bunch of cops playing dress-up, passing themselves off as frat boys, and entrapping a bunch of kids who are getting high and helping other kids get high:
SAN DIEGO -- The undercover officers started to appear at San Diego State fraternity parties about six months ago.They dressed like students, complained about their parents and professors, and talked freely and knowingly of things of great interest on campus: music, sex and drugs.
Soon they were accepted, with no questions asked. They were spotted at student hangouts on and off campus. They swapped cellphone numbers with other partygoers. They text-messaged their newfound friends.
The real students appeared to accept the pretend ones -- most but not all of whom were men. On a campus of 34,000 students, blending into the crowd was not difficult. Neither was collecting evidence of drug dealing and drug use.
On Tuesday, authorities announced that 96 young men -- including 75 students -- had been arrested on a variety of drug charges as a result of Operation Sudden Fall, which infiltrated seven fraternities on Fraternity Row and Fraternity Circle. Officials said the name of the operation referred to the prospect of sudden death from drug usage.
The investigation involved marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and Ecstasy.
One of the alleged drug dealers is 19 and recently had been praised as a model student in a university publication. Another was just a month away from earning a master's degree in homeland security and had worked with the campus police as a security officer. One allegedly was selling cocaine to high school students.
A criminal justice major was arrested on suspicion of possession of cocaine. As he was being arrested, he asked officers if this would hurt his chances for a law enforcement career, officials said.
Now, best of all, taxpayer dollars will be spent to prosecute and imprison these kids.
Yet, as my pal Stanton Peele points out, all drug use is not abuse. How many of you know highly productive members of society whose version of the after-work martini comes in cannabis sativa?
My late friend Roy Walford, a UCLA gerontology professor, used to take coke to write his papers. He wasn't "destroyed" by drugs (and most users aren't). He used them to be more productive.
How about we end the drug war and start fighting the war against stupidity? Legalize drugs, the price will go down to the point where pot costs what you pay for organic salad, and the feds can make their coin by sticking a tax on it, like for cigarettes, instead of getting our dollars for prosecuting and/or keeping a bunch of not-exactly-dangerous-felons in prison.
Alice Walker's Motherless Daughter
Alice Walker was a little too busy being a feminist/civil rights icon to be a parent to her daughter Rebecca, writes Margerette Driscoll in the Times of London:
Walker's success as a campaigner was to her detriment as a mother. Like Dickens's Mrs Jellyby, who neglects her home and her children as she directs her energy towards the poor of Africa, so America's icon often went to feminist meetings and rallies and left Rebecca to fend for herself. Her daughter experimented with drugs and became pregnant at 14."My mother did a lot of leaving to go to her writing retreat, which was over 100 miles away -- so she'd go there and leave me a little bit of money, leave me in the care of a neighbour," recalls Rebecca, now 38.
"When I was pregnant at 14, I think it was because I was so lonely that I was reaching out through my sexuality. My mother's a crusader for daughters around the world, but couldn't see that her own daughter was having a difficult time. It was me having to psycho-emotionally tiptoe around her, rather than her taking care of me."
Walker is furious with Rebecca for making such sentiments public, and mother and daughter are estranged with little hope of reconciliation. Rebecca has a three-year-old son, Tenzin, whom her mother has never seen. Their last meaningful exchange, during Rebecca's pregnancy, ended in Walker sending a terse e-mail in which she resigned from "the job" of being her mother, and told her that in any case their relationship had been "inconsequential" for years.
The depth of her anger was such that she refused to budge even when Rebecca had a difficult birth and Tenzin's life hung in the balance in a special-care baby unit. "My father called her to tell her what was happening. He couldn't imagine that she wouldn't run right over . . . In some ways, I wanted her to -- but in other ways, I didn't. I knew she wouldn't be able to be there for me in the way I wanted. It would be problematic."
I love that she outed her mother. It's disgusting that this woman is so respected as a savior of the many instead of being vilified as a neglector of the one person who should have been her single greatest responsibility.
I don't have kids, both because I don't have the kid lust other women do, but also because I'm impatient, self-involved and make my career priority number one. If you're a person who feels similarly...please don't reproduce.
Parenting As Lockdown
My old New York Daily News colleague, Lenore Skenazy, now a columnist at the New York Sun, recently became internationally known for, get this, letting her 9-year-old out in New York without a team of nannies and armed guards.
Nancy McDermott writes for Spiked that Skenazy is considered by many to be guilty of child abuse because she gave her son, Izzy, 9, a $20 and a subway map, and trusted him to figure out that, from Bloomingdales, he should take the Lexington Avenue subway downtown and the 34th Street crosstown bus to get home.
"If he couldn't do that," Skenazy wrote in her column, "I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, 'Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead.' Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence."
McDermott reports:
Many people have reacted positively to Skenazy's column. 'It's like it's opened the floodgates. Lots of people are saying: "Thank God there's a name for this and I'm not the only one. She's doing what I do with my own kids."'The name Skenazy has coined is 'Free Range' and the blog she has set up in response to the article - Free Range Kids - is filled with stories from parents who have let their children have the freedom to do things on their own and many more who would like to, but don't. Skenazy talks cautiously about a new movement. 'Some people are already doing these things on the website and some are just waking up to the idea that a little freedom is not the same thing as parental neglect.'
I asked her why she thinks parents are hesitant to give their kids more leeway. 'I think there are a lot of people who don't really see these things (like riding the subway or walking to school) as risks but they aren't letting their kids have more freedom because they get flak from their neighbours.
'It can be the simplest, stupidest thing. One lady wrote to me about how she had to go to work early so she let her 11-year-old daughter walk across the street alone to wait at the bus stop. The other mothers waiting with their kids were outraged and this mom ended up feeling horribly guilty. But when she came across the website she thought: "This is crazy. I've been torturing myself because I let my daughter walk across the street on her own!" Another woman told me how a stranger walked by and admonished her because she wasn't paying enough attention to her children playing in the yard in front of her. She was just reading her book.'
Why are strangers so quick to give parents a hard time? Skenazy thinks part of the reason is the proliferation of stories about the terrible things that happen to children. There are 'no other stories in the public [realm]', she says. 'If there's a story about how a child was left alone it's about him or her ending up dead. You never get a news story like "Kid Rides Subway Alone, Has Fun, Is Fine". It's always the other kind.'
Parents for their part, she says, 'are afraid of the media exposure if something did go wrong'. She describes how another woman wrote about the time one of her brothers cracked his head open on an amusement park ride when they were kids. 'Everyone was kind and sympathetic, but imagine if that happened to your child today? There'd be no sympathy. You'd be on TV in bad make-up stammering about how you were close by.'
Part of being a parent is being willing to let your kids grow up, and part of growing up is making mistakes and testing your independence.
One of the differences I see between France and the USA is the willingness to let kids get hurt, to fall down and cry. It seems to be seen as a normal part of childhood. Yet, here in the States, there are no more monkey bars anymore. Kids might fall and need stitches! Well, yes, they might. And that's how they find out they should be a little more careful. The way they're more likely to hurt themselves is if they're coddled the whole time they're growing up, and then don't know how to make a move without moment-by-moment micro-management from mommy and daddy.
And newsflash: If you aren't hanging out outside your drug dealer's tenement at 3 a.m., flashing a wad of $20's, New York City is pretty damn safe.
Sorry, Mr. Muslim, Women In America Haven't Had Their Rights Revoked Just Yet
Most conveniently, if you're a Muslim man living in a Muslim country, and you want to ditch your wife, you say "talaq" ("I divorce thee") three times.
To a Muslim man's dismay, judges ruled that that sort of thing isn't going to fly in Maryland. Nick Madigan writes for the Balt Sun:
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man's argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband's say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.
I Know What You Did Last Weekend
Psychologist/photographer/mischief-maker Nando Pelusi caught me, uh, meditating on the after-dinner speaker at NEEPS, the evolutionary psychology conference I attended in Manchester, New Hampshire this weekend.
Here are a few of the great columns Nando writes for Psychology Today, called "Neanderthink," combining his Albert Ellis-trained background in clinical psychology with evolutionary psychology.
"W" Is For Welfare
These days, savvy liars have gotten in the habit of calling whatever they're shilling "scientific" or "data-based." Jeffrey Tucker at Mises Economics Blog outs the latest cadre of welfare recipients sucking off the taxpayer hog -- echoing my notion that George Bush is the biggest Big Democrat we've had in office in years:
President Bush and the Republicans are no better than the naive Great Society liberals of yesteryear in thinking that a new law and new government spending can accomplish glorious things here and abroad, and one of those programs was called Reading First and it generated billions in spending. Billions.I swear that the propaganda for this program reads like stuff from the Soviet Union in the 1960s or something: "This program focuses on putting proven methods of early reading instruction in classrooms. Through Reading First, states and districts receive support to apply scientifically based reading research--and the proven instructional and assessment tools consistent with this research--to ensure that all children learn to read well by the end of third grade. ... Only programs that are founded on scientifically based reading research are eligible for funding through Reading First."
Well, two things. First, it turns out that it didn't work. The Department of Education--more more specifically, named in the tradition of Elena Ceausescu, the "Institute of Education Sciences"--released a report yesterday (I don't see it online but the NYT reports on it here) that says, well, the program didn't do a darn thing.
But, second, that doesn't mean there weren't winners. It turns out that the program was really a subsidy to certain GOP-connected publishers, and that is what scientific really means.
Come up with a party of responsible, actually data-based (small) government, and I'll gladly vote for your candidates. As for the parties in power now, how disgustingly arrogant of those in them to think they get to spend our money on all this crap that doesn't work...all the while running this country's economy like a bottomless cash advance on a credit card. Scumbags.
Angry Dumbshit Of The Week
Get your entry in now, don't let SpiderMBA win this week's crown! (Although, I do have to say, the guy is quite the contender.) He e-mailed me this on Tuesday (the chin hairs line is a reference to a joke in my column):
In a message dated 5/6/08 6:50:36 AM, spidermba@cox.net writes:Hey "Advice Goddess," are you still single and shacking up with some loser who can't stand the thought of the "M" word?
You may be whacking off your own chin hairs before you ever walk down that aisle.
My response:
I would never live with anyone, and I don't believe in marriage. To describe my boyfriend as a "loser" without knowing anything about him other than the fact that he isn't married to me says a lot about you. You should be so lucky to have even passing contact with him.Hmmm, of course, if he did live with me, he wouldn't have such a long journey to bring me chicken soup in the middle of the night when I'm sick. He typically picks it up at Cantor's all the way across town, and hurries over to bring it to me here at the beach.
And then there's that Paris trip in February that he sent me on for our anniversary. Paris is too frou-frou for him to take more than once a year, but he knows it makes me happy, and that made him happy, even with the euro cresting at $1.50.
And then there's the way he brings me a bag of groceries when he worries that I haven't made my way to the store I call "The Ghetto Ralph's," and will be subsisting on a can of Wolfgang Puck clam chowder, or "The Chantal Special" (named for the French friend of mine who eats it in a pinch): a tin of sardines on a buttered English muffin.
And then there's the other night, a little while ago, when I accidentally ate something I was violently allergic to. I called him at 3 a.m. because I knew he'd be mad if I didn't, and then he just hung on the phone and listened to me throwing up so I wouldn't be alone.
Yeah, you're right. I should probably trade up.
Tell me about the person in your life so I can know what I should aspire to.
P.S. Apparently, this is an annual affair for SpiderMBA, e-mailing me to ask why Gregg and I aren't married yet.
All Drunk Sex Is Rape?
Don't drink and, uh, dive...among other things, in Australia. There, when the jury hears he says/she says cases (where he says sex was consensual, and she says it was rape), a jury may be forced to convict the man, and on nothing more than the woman's word. Janet Albrechtsen writes for The Australian:
Let us be clear. Rape is wrong. It is a crime that calls for imprisonment. It can destroy a victim's life. But let us be clear about something else. Wrongful claims of rape are made. And they can destroy a man's life. ... But under the old laws of rape, the defendant's actual state of mind was critical. If the accused had an honest belief that sex was consensual, the rape charge failed. And when the evidence became a simple contest between "he said, she said", a reasonable doubt would lead to an acquittal. Criminal law says that is as it should be; we are talking about a serious crime and imprisonment.The new laws say that if a woman is "substantially affected" by alcohol, she may lack the capacity to consent to sex even if she says "yes" to sex. More disturbing, even if a man honestly believes consent was given, his state of mind is now irrelevant. Now, the man is effectively deemed to have knowledge of lack of consent if there are no reasonable grounds for believing consent was given. And it gets worse. When asked to determine whether the man had no reasonable grounds for believing the woman gave consent, the jury must ignore the fact that the man was drunk.
In other words, the fact that the woman who says "yes" to sex is drunk is highly relevant: it may vitiate her consent. But the man's intoxication must be ignored when working out whether he had "reasonable grounds" for believing consent was given. It is a curious law that says alcohol only affects the cognitive abilities of women.
Hello? Australia is pretty much the land of the free and the land of the free to drink their asses off, and then sing or pound each other silly, and they're saying alcohol doesn't affect the male brain?
And what about this thing: "If a woman is 'substantially affected' by alcohol"? Unless somebody drops something in her drink, isn't seeing to it she isn't "'substantially affected' by alcohol"...her responsibility?
As for a man's responsibility to himself, if he's Australian, I bet it won't be long before he can buy a discount legal document to have his dates sign to say it's consensual. Oh yeah -- followed by the in-home breathalizer test. Mmmm, sexy!
thanks, Jeff
How To Talk Like You're Nobody's Feminist
During my strugglingest year, I once worked as a mover (for an all-girls moving company in Manhattan), so it's not like I'm incapable of lifting anything heavier than a feather pen.
But, Gregg was bringing me home from the airport, and knowing me, realized I would have maybe one dented can of soup in my house (well, along with five cases of Pellegrino, five bottles of white wine, and six pounds of coffee), and pulled into Bristol Farms.
We ended up with three bags of groceries. I was closest to the bagger, who went to hand two of them to me.
I shook my head: "Oh, no...I'm just for decoration."
Yeah, that's right. The one with the man paws carries anything weightier than a potato chip. Try it sometime...it's really fun, letting the boy play the boy parts and the girl play the girl parts.
Putting The Civil Back In Civilization
Or what passes for it in Detroit. A kid named Keira Bell tells a city councilwoman how the manners thing works. Wipes the floor with her, as a matter of fact. But, with civility -- a rare quantity, apparently, in Detroit city council meetings:
via Instapundit
Do You Agree With Peggy Noonan?
Noonan doesn't see what all the fuss is about, and thinks Obama's friendship with and mentorship by Wright shouldn't be the deciding factor in the election.
Noonan writes in the WSJ that she disagrees with what Wright said (in her words, "The U.S. government did not spread AIDS among the black community, 9/11 was not the chickens coming home to roost, etc.") and she disapproves of his remarks, too, but...
I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks, in part because I don't think his views carry deep implications for our country. I have been watching America up close for many years - if you count a bright childhood, for half a century. I have seen, heard and respected the pain of a people who were forced to come here when they did not want to and made to live in a way that no one would want to. Who could deny them their grief or anger? I have seen radicalism and extremism, too. I have seen Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the Black National Anthem, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan. I came to see their radicalism as, putting the morality of policy based on rage aside, essentially unhelpful and impractical. It wouldn't work as an American movement, not long-term. Hatred plays itself out, has power in the short-term but is nonsustaining in the long. America, and this is one of its glories, has a conscience to which an appeal can be made. It may take a long time, it may take centuries, but in the end we try hard to do the right thing, and everyone knows it. Hatred is a form of energy that does not fuel this machine and cannot make it run.And all the time I was watching the old days of rage, blacks in America were rising, joining the professions, becoming middle class, assuming authority, becoming professors and doctors. No one is surprised anymore to meet a powerful man or woman who devises systems by which others should live - that would be a politician - who is black.
I came to think all the talk of radicalism and extremism amounted to little, and was in the end rejected by the very people it was meant to rouse. They didn't buy it.
This week I talked to a young man, an Irish-American to whom I said, "Am I wrong not to feel anger about Wright?" He more or less saw it as I do, but for a different reason, or from different experience.
He said he figures Mr. Wright's followers delight in him the same way he delights in the Wolfe Tones, the Irish folk group named for the 18th-century leader condemned to death by the British occupying forces, as they say on their Web site. They sing songs about the Brits and how they subjugated the Irish and we'll rise up and trounce the bastards.
...Is this terrible? I don't think so. It's human and messy and warm-blooded, as a human would be.
The thing is to not let your affiliation with bitterness govern you, so that you leave the Wolfe Tones concert and punch an Englishman in the nose. In this connection it can be noted there is no apparent record of people leaving a Wright sermon and punching anyone in the nose. Maybe they're in search of solidarity too. Maybe they're showing loyalty too.
"We Can Fact-Check Your Ass!"
I love the above Ken Layne-ism about bloggers going after the lazies in the mainstream media. I only wish I knew how to say "fact-check" in French.
Susan Spano, the LA Times travel reporter with all the curiosity of a comatose hedgehog, must have the safest job in the world.
I didn't want to do it, but last week, when I read her LA Times piece on how to do Paris on a budget, devoid of much practical information (and with hot tips like buy a Paris Museum Pass to save money!), I just had to respond.
I wrote an exceedingly restrained (i.e. devoid of biting humor in order to give it a shot at being published) letter to the editor, and they ran just a bit of it.
Not surprisingly, they left out the advice that, when in need of really good tips on Paris, one should turn to PollyVousFrançais or TheParisBlog.com.
Here's my entire letter:
27 April 2007Susan Spano mentioned only a single bus (the Roissybus) from Charles De Gaulle airport to a single location in Paris. Going from the Roissybus drop-off point at rue Scribe to the other side of Paris can be one pricey taxi ride.
The Air France bus goes to more locations - Gare Montparnasse, Porte Maillot, Étoile (beside the Arc de Triomphe), Gare de Lyon, and between Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports. It's plush, air-conditioned, extremely comfortable, and open to all travelers, not just those who fly Air France. It costs between 14 or 15 euros one way, and 22 or 24 euros round trip. See cars-airfrance.com, and use the pull-down menu to get information in English.
Travelers taking the RER B train from the airport to Paris should have luggage no wider than about 20 inches across, or they won't be able to fit it onto the escalators. It can be pretty much any height, but ideally, should be on wheels. Also, it's important to take precautions against pickpockets on the train, and consider keeping one's passport and money inside clothing. I've never had a problem, but it's easy to underestimate what jet lag can do to a person's street smarts.
There are numerous free exhibits in Paris every week. Some are really terrific, like the "Paris en Couleurs" photo exhibit at the Paris town hall (Hotel de Ville) that I saw in February -- 300 photos of Paris, from the Lumiere brothers' days to contemporary times. To find free exhibits, buy a copy of the weekly guide Pariscope at a newsstand for 40 cents. Travelers who don't speak French can navigate Pariscope if they know these few essential words: "Gratuit" is free. "Sauf" (probably abbreviated as "sf") basically means "except," as in, the museum is open all days except the day listed. So, "Sauf lundi" or "sf lundi" means a venue is open every day except "lundi," which is Monday. "Mardi" is Tuesday. "Mercredi" is Wednesday. "Jeudi" is Thursday. "Vendredi" is Friday. "Samedi" is Saturday. And "Dimanche" is Sunday.
TheParisBlog.com, a blog featuring the top Paris bloggers (mostly expats, like one of my favorites, pollyvousfrancais.blogspot.com), is another great source, both of cheap or free events and reviews of which events and venues are worth paying for. It also features some fun and often fascinating commentary on life in Paris and in France.
--Amy Alkon, Santa Monica
P.S. I'm guessing she only recommended the Roissybus because it was the bus she took, and felt no need to find out whether there were any other similar services. "Comme toujours!" as they say.
Hook-Up-ily Ever After
The piece by the winner of The New York Times' Modern Love college essay contest reflects something I heard from David Sloan Wilson grad student Justin R. Garcia during Saturday's lunch (at NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference).
Garcia's research shows that a good many college students who "hook up" are doing so out of a desire to get into a longterm relationship. I'm not surprised, although, per the wisdom of the 50s (which really was wise in many ways), a woman is unlikely to get much more than an embarrassed 5 a.m. goodbye from a guy she hooks up with.
Garcia also points out that there's a substantial gap of time between when people are physically able to have kids and the desired age of actual kid production, and speculates that "hook-up behavior may result from this time gap."
Marguerite Fields, a junior at Marlboro College in Vermont, writes about her experiences with hooking up writes in her winning Modern Love essay:
...Despite the fleeting nature of most of my encounters, and despite my own role in their short duration, I think what I have been seeking in some form from all of these men is permanence.Sometimes I don't like them, or am scared of them, and a lot of times I'm just bored by them. But my fear or dislike or boredom never seems to diminish my underlying desire for a guy to stay, or at least to say he is going to stay, for a very long time.
And even when I don't want him to stay -- even when he and I find each other as strangers and remain strangers until we stop doing whatever it is we are doing -- I still want to believe that two people can meet and like each other well enough to stay together exclusively, without the introduction of some 1960s rhetoric about free love or other noncommittal slogans.
While so many are so busy tsk-tsking about college students hooking up, I think, for many, the twenties, especially the early twenties, are -- and should be -- "the fuck years," a time when you play around sexually while you're getting yourself and your life together...lest you get into a serious relationship with somebody before you've really developed into who you're going to be...and lest you stunt your growth in becoming that person.
The early twenties certainly were "the fuck years" for me, and I sabotaged every brief relationship I got into (sometimes simply by getting into a relationship with exactly the wrong person). The problem was my trying to meet the standards I was "supposed" to have by telling myself I wanted a boyfriend -- because you were supposed to want a boyfriend -- when all I was really ready for was to have a lot of wet, naked fun.
Yes, for many or most people, the hooking up stage is probably just a stage, and there's nothing wrong with it, providing you're having sex because you want to have sex (okay, because you're raging hormones with legs), and if you aren't somebody who'll be emotionally devastated by the person not sticking around the next morning, and if you take precautions not to end up diseased or pregnant.
But, maybe, with a little experimentation, you'll find, as Fields did, that it doesn't feel "casual, careless, lighthearted and fun." Fields writes:
I tried to remember that no one is my property and neither am I theirs, and so I should just enjoy the time we spend together, because in the end it's our collected experiences that add up to a rich and fulfilling life. I tried to tell myself that I'm young, that this is the time to be casual, careless, lighthearted and fun; don't ruin it.
A person in her position has two choices: either accept the reality of hookups or modify their strategy. In short, if it feels bad, don't do it. And yes, it really is that simple.
And either way, eventually, if you're like a lot of people, you'll probably start feeling ready to settle down with somebody when you're in your late twenties/early thirties, and you're likely to find more prospective partners are ready to settle down with you.
See..there's really no need for tsk-tsking. Unless, of course, you've got something stuck between your teeth and you find making that sound is an effective strategy for removing it.
Of course, the real reason for a lot of people's disapproval isn't really those twenty-somethings who aren't getting what they wanted out of their hookups but those twenty-something who are.
I'm reminded of my favorite Mencken quote somebody left here in the comments the other day. "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
I'll throw in "Neo-Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be getting a really great blow job."
Amy Alkon, Child Slaver
I'm in New Hampshire, at NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference, and I was waiting for Kaja, Nando, and Satoshi to come down to go to dinner, so I went into the computer room to hop on the 'net. I typed in a-d-v-i-c-e-g-o-d-d-e-s-s-dot-com, and you'll never guess what came up.
I wrote in the little protest space that I'm a newspaper columnist, and of course I had this word on my site -- in a blog item criticizing the Catholic church for the practice. I'm loath to say it again, lest it reawaken their nanny-ware.
Hmmm...just wait until I post (Harvard linguistics prof) Steven Pinker's talk -- which involved a considerable section on swearing. There's the ghost in the machine and the idiot in the machine, and I've met the latter.
Live Free Or Die Getting There
There was a pretty view or two along the way.
But, otherwise, it was a pretty hellish two-part trip from L.A., through O'Fat and Hare'y, to Manchester, New Hampshire.
That's where I am now, to attend NEEPS, the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference. Pinker is keynoting here tomorrow. Should be interesting.
As I was waiting for my plane at LAX, I ran into Christopher Hitchens, who said he was in town to debate Dinesh D'Souza in Long Beach. He said D'Souza is the best of them he goes up against, so it should be well-worth a listen -- as is just about any forum Hitchens participates in. If anyone finds video of it, please e-mail me the link and I'll post it.
Meanwhile, here's an old one of Hitchens and D'Souza.
Unfortunately, whoever taped it cut it off before Hitchens really responded to D'Souza's silliness about "atheist regimes." There really is no such thing as an "atheist regime." Atheism is, simply, requiring evidence before believing in something. Since, to borrow from Sam Harris, there's no evidence that frozen yogurt can fly, nor is there evidence god exists, I don't believe my frozen yogurt will levitate, and I don't believe in god.
Clearly, Vervet Monkeys Have Been Watching Too Much Television
When I finally got to my hotel last night, I saw Satoshi Kanazawa, author, with the late Alan S. Miller, of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire-- Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do
I'd forgotten that Satoshi had been blogging over at Psychology Today, the magazine my other friend, Kaja Perina, has really turned around. (Here's Satoshi with Kaja and my friend and her husband Nando Pelusi, whom she actually picked up [or rather, I think it was the other way around] at one of these ev psych conferences.)
Anyway, he had an interesting post, "Why do boys and girls prefer different toys?" -- detailing, surely to the great dismay of feminists, that it's not only human boys and girls who prefer different toys:
In 2002, Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&M University and Melissa Hines of City University in London stunned the scientific world by showing that vervet monkeys showed the same sex-typical toy preferences as humans. In an incredibly ingenious study, published in Evolution and Human Behavior, Alexander and Hines gave two stereotypically masculine toys (a ball and a police car), two stereotypically feminine toys (a soft doll and a cooking pot), and two neutral toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog) to 44 male and 44 female vervet monkeys. They then assessed the monkeys' preference for each toy by measuring how much time they spent with each. Their data demonstrated that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the masculine toys, and the female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys. The two sexes did not differ in their preference for the neutral toys.Alexander and Hines's article contains a wonderful picture (reproduced here in full living color, courtesy of Gerianne M. Alexander) of a female vervet monkey conducting an anogenital inspection (examining the genital area of the doll in an attempt to determine whether it is male or female), as a girl might, and a male vervet monkey pushing the police car back and forth, as a boy might. If children's toy preferences were largely formed by gender socialization, as traditional sociologists claim, in which their parents give "gender-appropriate" toys to boys and girls, how can these male and female vervet monkeys have the same preferences as boys and girls? They were never socialized by humans, and they had never seen these toys before in their lives. Yet, not only did male and female vervet monkeys show the identical sex preference for toys, but how they played with these toys was also identical to how boys and girls might.
Satoshi reports that there's now another similar study out, with rhesus monkeys, with similar results in the boy monkeys' preferences. And I see this sort of division along toy lines in my neighbors' kids, a girl, 4, and a boy, 7.
Now, these kids are being raised by architect parents who don't allow them to watch television, and who didn't direct them in particular to any sort of toy, but the little boy gravitates (no, is pretty much mad for) transportation toys like planes and trucks, and dinosaurs, and building Lego forts, and the little girl plays mainly with dolls and a toy kitchen, and actually walks around their backyard carrying a purse! And not just *a* purse. She changes them. She carries a different tiny purse each day...around the backyard!
Sandy Banks Gets Paranoid BEFORE Smoking Pot
I don't smoke pot, so I didn't know the law on pot. I learned about it today while reading the LA Times letters section: a letter from Robert Constant in Cebu City, Philippines. But, if I were writing a column on my experience with medical marijuana, I sure as hell would familiarize myself with federal drug laws before I came off looking like an ass in print, like Sandy Banks ended up doing in her LA Times column on buying doctor-prescribed pot to relieve the pain of her seriously arthritic hands. Banks writes:
This new doctor told me marijuana could help. He recommended I not smoke it. Bad for the lungs. Better to use it with a vaporizer. Or ingest it, infused in tea or baked in brownies....I left with a red vial of sweet-smelling Yumbolt, at $55 for an eighth of an ounce. I carried it home in the trunk of my car, convinced that every cop I passed could tell I was transporting marijuana.
At home, I couldn't get the bottle open. My fingers weren't strong enough to pop the top. Which is just as well.
I'm not going to smoke it. The feds don't recognize California's medical marijuana law. The DEA has been raiding dispensaries here; I don't want federal agents knocking on my door.
So, on Friday, I brought the bottle into my office and my editor watched me flush it down the toilet.
The experience left me with so much to think about, it's best I'm clear-headed while I work through it.
Robert Constant, in a letter to the editor, writes:
(Banks) concern is misplaced. There is no federal law that prohibits using marijuana. The law prohibits possession. Therefore, Banks already violated the federal law and admits it in writing.She would have been better off smoking her dope. It likely would have given her just enough paranoia to stop her from exposing herself to the very knock on the door she is so worried about.
I don't get it. How do you write a column for a major daily about a law on the books without actually taking a look at that law...and keep your job? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Here -- for those who are interested -- our ridiculous drug laws.
Here's more on the vaporizer, which a pot using friend of mine swears by, by Reason's Jacob Sullum, a guy whose newspaper and magazine writing generally involves actual reporting.
When people talk about why newspapers are failing, and why people don't trust the media, part of the reason, I believe, is these fat cat older "reporters" who are used to just spewing whatever they please without ever picking up the phone, tapping into a search engine, or displaying the slightest bit of curiosity.
The Religion Of Pieces
Yes, Islam, the religion of body parts -- all the people who, in the 21st Century, have been blown to bits or hacked apart after having their throats slit or who had their heads sawed off by Muslims in the name of Allah.
On WorldNet.Daily, there's a piece about CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) attacking a new book, Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out, by those who've not only have the humanity to walk away from Islam, but the courage to speak out against the violence the Koran and far too many followers of Islam advocate.
And note, as I pointed out yet again yesterday, when I speak out against the evidence-free belief in god in Judaism and Christianity, nobody talks about me having "courage." They wouldn't, because it would be silly, because 21st Century Christians and Jews don't go around murdering people who "insult" their religion. As Wafa Sultan pointed out on TV in the Middle East, you don't see Jews going around blowing up German restaurants.
An excerpt from the WND piece:
"Why We Left Islam" is filled with first-person stories of former radicals who began to question the Quran and ultimately changed their lives.Khaled Waleed, for instance, said he was indoctrinated with the same type of teaching as fellow Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden.
"Our teacher and other Islamic scholars told us that as Muslims, we are the best people in the world," he writes. "I listened to my imams and was disturbed when they used abusive language to describe non-Muslims as the grandsons of monkeys and pigs ... [they] told me that it was my duty to revile and ridicule non-Muslims."
Waleed says the attack on the World Trade Center changed him: "On Sept. 11, 2001, I saw the real face of Islam. I saw the happiness on the faces of our people because so many infidels were slaughtered so easily. I saw many people who started thanking Allah for this massacre."
More on CAIR's real missions here, at The Investigative Project on Terrorism. And here's an interesting piece by Jacob Laksin and Jamie Glazov on FrontPage.com, about CAIR's war against Jihadwatch's Robert Spencer:
Spencer, who heads the site JihadWatch.org and is the author of a recent biography of the prophet Muhammed, The Truth About Muhammad, is a reputable scholar who draws on Islamic sources to substantiate his work. Contrary to CAIR's objections, Spencer does not engage in theological polemics. He simply reveals what Islamic sources say.
Which calls forth the question: Why would a group that, by its own account, has no truck with Islamic militants, take such heated issue with an authority on Islam who is guilty of nothing more than highlighting those features of that religion that inspire and sanction Islamic terror? If CAIR was genuinely opposed to Islamic terror and wanted to bring Islam into the modern and democratic world, why wouldn't it embrace individuals such as Spencer? After all, Spencer's work equips Muslim moderates and reformers with the knowledge they need to confront the Islamic extremists in their midst. Armed with that knowledge, Islamic reformers who undertake the monumental challenge of liberalizing Islam stand a much better chance. As Spencer himself says: "You can't reform what you won't admit needs reforming."
In the end, it is clear that what CAIR calls "bigotry" and "Islamophobia" is in fact a perfectly defensible historical argument, advanced by Spencer and others, that the roots of modern jihad terrorism can be found in classic Islamic theology. This is a matter of fact, not prejudice: if it is true, policymakers should take it into account, no matter how inconvenient it may be. Unless one thinks, as CAIR evidently does, that any critical analysis of Islam is a form of actionable hatred, the notion that Spencer is a bigot who must be drummed out of polite society looks like what it really is: the intellectually empty bullying of an extremist fringe.
