Do We Need To See Where Our Food Comes From?
A German chef plays scare the children:
Just in time for Easter, German celebrity chef Sarah Wiener's new television series confronted young viewers with the bloody reality of where their meat comes from by butchering a rabbit before their eyes, daily Hamburger Morgenpost reported on Monday....Not surprisingly, the kids found this disturbing, the paper reported.
One witness, 14-year-old Simon said: "It was quite disgusting - the rabbit's belly was still warm, not to mention seeing its beautiful, cuddly fur pulled off. Guts out, and everything in the trash. But the worst part was how it was hung up like socks."
Sydney, 15, told the paper: "What affected me the most, I think, was when its throat was cut and quite a lot of blood came out."
Wiener made no apologies for confronting the children with the realities of butchering livestock for dinner, despite the fact that several of the children cried during the filming.
"I believe that people should know what they eat," she said. "It's exactly from not seeing what goes on in our slaughterhouses that a transfiguration, an aestheticization and an underestimation of food products occurs."
She also added that the youngsters had not been forced to observe the slaughter.
"If one or other of them are so shocked by this that they become vegetarians, I can only say that it wouldn't do the climate any harm," she said, referring to the sizeable amount of energy it takes to raise livestock.
It seems no lasting harm was done, at least for the children: the next day they ate delicious roast rabbit prepared from the butchered bunny.
I like a little roast lapin myself, although I find it a bit like eating quail -- a lot of bones and not a lot of meat for my trouble.
And as for seeing the process of food being made, there are probably rats and mice running around some of those tofu products factories, all making sure they take big poops in the product. All sorts of unmentionables are probably in all food manufacturing, from what I understand (albeit just from a manufacturing dude I sat next to on a plane). If I'm wrong, please straighten my meat-loving ass out.
As for scaring the children, I don't think the children of farmers in the past became vegans, do you?
Tell Obama To Stop The Barbarians
The Religion of Peace is the religion of death to homosexuals. Iraq, reportedly, is on the verge of executing 128 prisoners -- many of who are guilty of the "crime" of homosexuality. The Iraqi gay/lesbian website has this post:
Urgent action is needed to halt the execution of 128 prisoners on death row in Iraq. Many of those awaiting execution were convicted for the 'crime' of homosexuality, according to IRAQI-LGBT, a UK based organisation of Iraqis supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Iraq.According to Ali Hili of IRAQI-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week.
IRAQI-LGBT urgently requests that the UK Government, Human Rights Groups and the United Nations Human Rights Commission intervene with due speed to prevent this tragic miscarriage of justice from going ahead.
...IRAQI LGBT is concerned that the Iraqi authorities have not disclosed the identities of those facing imminent execution, stoking fears that many of them may have been sentenced to death after trials that failed to satisfy international standards for fair trial.
Most are likely to have been sentenced to death by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI), whose proceedings consistently fall short of international standards for fair trial. Some are likely to have. Allegations of torture are not being investigated adequately or at all by the CCCI. Torture of detainees held by Iraqi security forces remains rife.
Oh, sorry -- are we supposed to be "tolerant" of people's religious practices?
The way I see it, there's some stuff we just can't tolerate. And the president should say so by speaking out.
Track The Stat
Obama said in his speech, "one in four women still experiences domestic violence in their lifetimes."
I'm on deadline today, so I can't do a lot of digging on that, but I'm wondering if anyone knows or cares to look up where he got that stat. I'd love to know the methodology on that -- especially since I've found ridiculously bad "research" by Diana E.H. Russell that "found" that one in 2.6 girls are sexually abused by the age of 18.
Of course, by her definition -- from one of her questions: "Did anyone ever try or succeed in touching your breasts or genitals against your wishes before you turned 14?" -- I was (sniff, sniff) a victim of sexual abuse because, at 13, I was playing spin the bottle and the boy who was only supposed to kiss me did a quick boob grab, too. Someone please remind me that I'm supposed to be traumatized for life.
Also, I wonder how many men "still experiences domestic violence in their lifetimes." And how come the president isn't talking about that? Are men expendable?
People like to throw around definitive-sounding stats about this or that, but the truth is, domestic violence, especially, is an area where they're highly suspect. For example, men are often or usually embarrassed by being victims of domestic abuse (more so than women)...and sometimes don't even understand that they're being abused because men are "supposed" to laugh such things off -- like when a woman who wrote me for advice tossed an ashtray at the head of her husband-to-be. Never mind that it could have left him dead or brain-damaged. As I wrote in that column:
If your husband tossed an ashtray at your head, do you think he'd be describing himself as "Still So Angry Inside" or "Still In Court Trying To Get The Charges Reduced"?
And again, what is the researchers' definition and what was their methodology? For example, when a woman "experiences domestic violence," is it sometimes because she tried to slap the guy and he caught her arm? Or are they talking about a woman just sitting there at breakfast, and the eggs aren't cooked right, and her partner (who, by the way, could be a lesbian) out of nowhere socks her one? Or, vice versa...is it a man experiencing out-of-nowhere domestic violence from his male or female partner?
The Truth About The Pay Gap
Cathy Young has it in reason, in a piece about Obama's discrimination against men as his way to right perceived discrimination against women -- through the creation of his Council on Women and Girls (and never mind the serious issues affecting only men, like paternity fraud):
In his remarks at the signing, Barack Obama noted that women have made great strides since the days when his grandmother encountered a glass ceiling after reaching the level of bank vice president. Yet, despite the broken barriers, he argued that "inequalities stubbornly persist": "women still earn just 78 cents for every dollar men make"; "one in four women still experiences domestic violence in their lifetimes"; and, despite being close to half the workforce, women make up only 17 percent of members of Congress and 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.But are these inequalities rooted in discrimination and fixable by the government? Numerous studies show that when differences in training, work hours, and continuity of employment are taken into account, the pay gap all but disappears. Most economists, including liberal feminists such as Harvard's Claudia Goldin, agree that while sex discrimination exists, male-female disparities in earnings and achievement are due primarily to personal choices and priorities. Women are far more likely than men to avoid jobs with 60-hour workweeks and to scale down their careers while raising children. They are also more likely to choose less lucrative but more fulfilling jobs.
There is an ongoing debate on whether these differences are biological or cultural. Many scientists argue that men in general are innately more competitive and aggressive, while women are more risk-averse, more interested in interpersonal connections, and more intensely bonded to small children. (There are, of course, numerous exceptions to these tendencies.) Others stress the role of socialization, pointing out that people's choices and preferences are influenced by gender stereotypes and cultural expectations from early childhood.
The jury is still out on the nature-vs.-nurture debate; most likely, differences between the sexes are shaped by a mix of biology and culture. Certainly, cultural pressures and double standards persist. A woman is far more likely to encounter societal disapproval if she works long hours and leaves her children in someone else's care--even if that someone else is the children's father. A man is far more likely to encounter disapproval if he is not the family breadwinner.
I write seven days a week, and I didn't see my friends much for a good part of last year when I was finishing my book. I couldn't do this if I had children. It's a choice on my part not to have them. But, if I did have them, and worked for a company, and took time off for maternity leave and staying home with kids, I sure wouldn't expect to be compensated the same as a BARREN! girl like the actual me. Would you?
And, there are stay-at-home dads, too -- not many, but some. Whether you're caring for a child or children or for a parent or elderly friend, I don't think anybody who's giving their divided self to a job should make as much or expect as much as somebody who's giving their job their all. Do you?
Islam And "Science"
I got this weird e-mail the other day -- from a "biologist" seeking an advice columnist's expert opinion on medical matters:
In a message dated 3/28/09 1:03:59 AM, keyvan_1878@yahoo.com writes:in the name of GOD
Hello
my valuable author,Amy Alkon
Thank you very much for your useful blog.
please help me.I am a biologist(24 years old).
imagine,I have not seen a real female genitalia.therefore,please answer me comforta(without hide fact)and tell me all of things that I should know.I am a researcher about hoodectomy.
I need to your valuable opinion about this questions:
I am going to write a book about this surgery for people.
imagine,we do not have legal problems for this surgery.
there are my questions:1.What is your opinion about circumcision of clitoral hood for newborn?
2.can a doctor circumcise clitoral hood of newborn after childbirth?why?
3.Do you think clitoral hood circumcision of newborn is difficult for a doctor?why?
4.as a female plastic surgeon,can you tell me about procedure of beginning?
Do a doctor need to a spcial medical equipment for opening labias of newborn when he(she) practice this surgery?
5.Do you think this surgery decrease smegma(carcinogen) and infection in newborn?
6.Do you think decrease a cancer of cervix in a woman that circumcised clitoral hood?why?
Best Regards,S.khalegh
My reply:
Clitoral circumcision is backward and barbaric.If you're a "biologist," you're sorely in need of education. Furthermore, there's no evidence there's a god, and belief in god is backward and primitive, and not in tune with being a person of science, which is evidence-based.
Also, when you send out form letters hoping to get others to do your research for you, you might customize the letters so advice columnists don't get "as a female plastic surgeon" in the e-mail.
Are you a Muslim? How could you even consider such primitive, anti-woman crap?
Ah, wait, I looked you up and found this:
"My name is Amin Khaleghparast.I am an Iranian student of Genetic(master of Science) From Islamic Azad University(science and research Unit)."
No wonder. Islam is anti-science. Science, in Islam, is supposed to obey the Quran. Ridiculous. Here's some of the contradictory crap in the Quran:
http://www.geocities.com/realitywithbite/contradictions.htm
If you want to read the work of a real scientist, check out this blog -- I mean, if you won't be beheaded for it or anything by the religious police:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/
Here's my advice for you: Begin living an evidence-based life, and speak out against the 80 percent illiteracy rate amongst Muslims. Also, actually read the Quran and see how ridiculous it is, and how Islam is not really a religion but a barbaric, totalitarian system bent on converting or killing anybody who doesn't believe in what Muslims do. Next, read about Western culture, and actual science and The Enlightenment. Then, spread the word about what it's like to live a rational life in a land like America where homosexuals aren't murdered by the state and where women are considered full people. I mean, do that until the Iranian state hangs you or stones you to death.
-Amy Alkon
All The Fruits And Nuts Are At Their Keyboards
Got this e-mail from Scarlett Johansson's "close friend Serge G." Uh, make that "original Scarlett's" "close friend Serge G.":
In a message dated 3/29/09 3:14:07 AM, galabs2000@gmail.com writes:IT IS NOT A SPAM, but if you received that message second and plus time JUST CLICK ?DELETE? button and have a nice day. Don't feel bad, please understand original Scarlett's family very desperate to shut down that humiliating antichristian "actress" clones line career development.
Hello dear Ladies and Gentlemen! I would like inform you that Scarlett Johansson ?actress? actually is a clone from original person Scarlett Galabekian last name, who has nothing with acting career, surname Galabekian, because of adoption happened in 1992. Clones was created illegally by using stolen biological material. Original person is very nice (not d**n sexy),most important - CHRISTIAN young lady!
I'll tell you more,those clones (it's not only one) made in GERMANY - world leader manufacturer of humans clones, it is in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Mr. Helmut Kohl home town. You can not even imaging the scale of the cloning activity.
But warning! Helmut Kohl clone staff strictly controlling all their clones (at least they trying) spreading around the world, they are very accurate with that, some of them are still NAZI type disciplined and mind controlled clones, so be careful get close with clones you will be controlled as well.
Original person is not happy with those movies, images, video, rumors and etc. spreading on media in that way it would be really nice if we all will try slow down that ''actress'' career development, original Scarlett will really appreciated that.
Please remember that original Scarlett's family did not authorize any activity with stolen biological materials, no matter what form it was created in it was stolen and it is stolen. It all need to be delivered to authorize personals control in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Original Scarlett never was engaged, by the way! Her close friend Serge G.
P.S. CONTROLLING ACTIVITY OF ANY CLONES IS US MILITARY OPERATION.
H.R. 534, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003, was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives on February 5, 2003. After discussion, it was passed on February 27 by a vote of 241-155. It now moves on to the Senate for consideration.
This bill makes it unlawful for any person or entity to perform or participate in human cloning, or to ship or receive embryos produced by human cloning. The penalties are imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of $1 million or more.
These now join other nations as diverse as Norway, Australia, and many other countries, which had already added cloning for any purpose to their criminal code. And in Germany where it carries a penalty of five years imprisonment they know a thing or two about unethical science.
Serge, honey, just say the word and we'll send over the nice men from the...uh...spa.
Nothing Like A Cop Killer To Bring The Community Together
The photo I saw in the LA Times was a shot of a sad black woman holding a photo of a black man. The caption: "Oakland gunman remembered" -- about a rally for Lovelle Mixon, shot and killed by Oakland police after he murdered FOUR officers on Saturday.
A rally for the cop killer? I had to look that up.
Sure enough, the community there managed to turn a cop murderer into a case of a black man rising up against white oppression. Here's a report from Indybay.org (from somebody who apparently skipped some school, vis a vis "total estrangers" and creative punctuation):
Family friends and total estrangers gather today's at the place where Lovell Mixon Ceased to exist in this physical form this past Saturday in Oakland CA. People were there to show solidarity and support and to tell the media and the whole police department that they can go to hell because "we don't believe in the demonization of this modern day Malcolm X". A Native American Man said " the only raper i can really think of is the ones who came and rape my mother land"
Here's the obscene Obama-ization of Mixon's face posted on feministing, but created by Kevin Weston in collaboration with art director Arturo Tejeda to accompany this piece of tripe, also by Weston.
Here's a YouTube video from the rally:
Hey, all you people at that rally -- not every cop is a saint, but when somebody's breaking into your house or doing a drive-by and you call 911, if I were a cop there, I sure wouldn't be too fast risk my ass for ingrates like you. And I say that as somebody who has a close friend who's a cop (a beautiful blonde cop) who worked the inner city as a rookie -- her first day was during the L.A. riots -- and who was beloved by some of the people on her beat, including the owners of a soul food restaurant (in other words, very non-white).
And regarding the "raper" reference above, here's more on their beloved Lovelle Mixon from an SF Chron story by Jaxon Van Derbeken:
The day before the shootings, police learned that a sample of Mixon's DNA taken after he was sent to prison in 2002 for assault with a deadly weapon matched the evidence recovered after the rape of the 12-year-old girl, police said.Lt. Kevin Wiley, who oversees the sexual assault unit, said Tuesday that the girl had been walking in the 2600 block of 74th when she was grabbed and dragged off the street at gunpoint to a secluded area between homes and sexually assaulted. The attacker then let her go, and she told her parents what happened, police said.
Given the nature of the attack on a 12-year-old, police asked the state Justice Department laboratory in Richmond to rush tests of a DNA sample from the rape to compare it with a database of the state's inmates.
Not enough time
The match to Mixon came back Friday afternoon, but police still would have needed to take a comparison sample from Mixon for him to be charged, investigators said.
Police would not go into detail about the other rapes. But they said that at least one happened this month and that another woman was dragged off the street and raped in the neighborhood in January.
The victim in that rape told police that the attacker "came up behind her. She was savagely raped and sodomized," said Sgt. Jill Encinas of the police special victims unit.
DNA tests in that case are pending, Encinas said.
Police said several victims of the early morning attacks were prostitutes or people the attacker may have believed were prostitutes. The East Oakland area, however, is not known for prostitution, Wiley said.
Most victims did not get a look at the attacker, but the 12-year-old girl did, Encinas said.
'Dead-on' sketchShe helped police come up with a sketch of the rapist that strongly resembles Mixon, Encinas said. "It's pretty dead-on," she said.
Oh, and by the way, Mixon "executed one of the officers by standing over and shooting him in the head," a KRON/Kimberlee Sakamoto story said:
Officials also confirm to KRON 4 that Mixon had tattoos glorifying gun violence. One is of him holding an assault rifle and the other glorifies shooting people in the head.
Here's video of officers from around the country and Canada showing up to mourn the murdered officers (note that a number of them are black):
Here, from an SF Chron story by Demian Bulwa and Jaxon Van Derbeken, is more on the other cops who were murdered by Mixon:
According to authorities, Lovelle Mixon used a semiautomatic pistol to shoot and kill Hege and Sgt. Mark Dunakin, 40, two motorcycle officers who pulled him over during a routine traffic stop. Two hours later, Mixon, who was holed up in his sister's nearby apartment, opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle, killing SWAT team sergeants Ervin Romans, 43, and Daniel Sakai, 35.Another SWAT team officer, Sgt. Pat Gonzales, also was shot: A bullet ripped through his left shoulder, and another ricocheted off his helmet. He was treated for his injuries and released.
The chaotic shootout occurred in a darkened apartment filled with smoke from officers' nonlethal shock grenades and dust from bullets ripping through drywall. It ended when SWAT team officers returned fired and killed Mixon, authorities said.
...Law enforcement authorities revealed Sunday that Mixon had been investigated last year in another homicide case in Alameda County. Details of that slaying were not immediately released, but prosecutors found there was not enough evidence to charge him.
...Oakland investigators said they were not aware of Mixon's possible connection to the earlier slaying. They said they were perplexed about what triggered Mixon's sudden outburst of violence against their officers.
"This is a strange one," said Oakland police Capt. Steve Tull, who is overseeing the investigation. "We don't know what his motivation is." If authorities found he had violated the conditions of his parole, Mixon would have faced at most six months in prison, Tull said.
Mixon "weighed six months" against his own life and the lives of the officers, Tull said.
He was an animal who belonged in a cage.
Condolences to the families of the murdered police officers.
I Went To Hungary Last Night
I know, I know -- this is not a picture of Hungary. It's actually the facade of Bass Hall in Ft. Worth. It was so beautiful, I had to take a picture, although my photo doesn't do it justice.
Only Thursday night, after I saw a book at a friend's house, did I learn that an Irvine, California-based Hungarian artist, Márton Váro, had created it. He's known for his work in marble, especially figures with draped fabric like this one.
But, let's backtrack a little. This evening actually started a few months ago, at the LA Art Show. Gregg and I had left the apartment we rented in Paris in really nice condition (as always!) and the woman we'd rented it from thanked us by mailing us tickets to the art show's opening night.
There, I was looking at some really beautiful paintings when the art dealer struck up a conversation about them, handing me his card at some point. But, he wasn't the art dealer. His card said "Balázs Bokor," and his job description was "Consul General of Hungary" (ambassador from Hungary to the Western states of the USA). I asked him if he was moonlighting selling paintings. No -- just promoting Hungary, as always.
He's very interesting, and lots of fun, and we've become friendly. I even had him give diplomatic advice one week in the short question in my column (scroll down to the second question).
Thursday night, he invited me to a Hungarian cultural program -- "Living traditions and bagpipes in the Carpathian basin" -- and I took my friend Sergeant Heather...one of those absolutely unsnobby class acts you can take absolutely anywhere, and more important, somebody who wouldn't ask me "Are you HIGH?!" upon being invited to hear a program of bagpipe and native flute music (basically the sounds of randy Hungarian shepherds).
Sure enough, she had a great time, and so did I, and she even bought the bagpiper's CD. Afterward, a bunch of us went to Balazs' house and had drinks and sushi and talked about Europe and the U.S. and how we're nationalizing banks here, and how amazing that is to Eastern Europeans. At some point, he broke out a book of Váro's work and I finally learned who created that amazing building in Ft. Worth.
Oh, by the way, the evening's bagpiper, Ferenc Tobak, is also a photographer. See some of his photographs of Romanian musicians here. See his photos of the gypsies of the eastern Carpathians here.
Who says there's no culture in Los Angeles? You just have to be friendly and leave a Paris rental apartment like it's your grandma's place.
Big Cost, Little Benefit
Nursing home psychologist Ira Rosofsky writes in the LA Times that billions of dollars are being spent on medications that offer only marginal benefits for Alzheimer's sufferers:
Examine the documents supporting the Food and Drug Administration's approval of Aricept, and you will see upon what a slim reed this drug's empire was built. Those taking the drug scored, on average, three points better on a 70-item cognitive assessment scale. That's about a 4% difference, mostly reflecting a slower decline rather than positive improvement. And the differences disappear when the drug is discontinued -- indicating that the drugs "do not represent a change in the underlying disease." At best, these effects may be only marginally more effective against dementia than garlic was against the Black Death in the 14th century....Even on Aricept's website, the claims are sketchy on the drug's effectiveness when it comes to cognition: "People who took Aricept did better on thinking tests than those who took a sugar pill."
How much better? The company doesn't say.
Many studies of the effects of drugs for dementia also speak about statistical significance, but statistical significance can be highly overrated if the differences aren't meaningful. Take my extremely nearsighted wife, for example. Suppose a drug enabled her to read the giant E at the top of an eye chart without her glasses, but none of the smaller letters. Her eyesight would show statistically significant enhancement, but -- despite her being a much better driver than me -- I'd still refuse to ride in a car she was driving if she wasn't wearing her glasses.
There are similar effects at play with anti-dementia drugs.
In 2004, Richard Gray of the University of Birmingham in Britain compared hundreds of patients with mild to moderate dementia who were taking Aricept or a placebo. The drug did improve mental functioning, but at disappointingly small levels -- about one point on a 60-point scale. More important, there was no delay in the dementia's progression or the rate of patients' institutionalization. And there were no significant differences in mood, behavior or cost of care.
...Could the thousands of dollars spent annually per patient and the billions overall be better directed?
Yes, says Gray: "Doctors and healthcare funders need to question whether it would be better to invest in more doctors and nurses and better social support rather than spending huge sums of money prescribing these expensive drugs."
A survey released in 2002 by the Kaiser Foundation found that the staffs in a typical nursing home spend a total of about two hours and 20 minutes a day with each resident. For the remaining 21 hours and 40 minutes, residents are left to their own -- mostly medicated -- devices.
...But why not admit the failure of medication and instead spend some of those billions of dollars on more staff to hold the hands of both patients and their families? Beyond nurturance, much of the savings from giving up on cost-ineffective medications could be diverted to basic research that might yield not only statistically significant but meaningful and large improvements -- even a cure.
There is some comfort in believing, as our medieval ancestors did, that a tangible nostrum -- like a pearl-hued donepezil tablet -- will do some good, but it may be more comforting simply to comfort.
Instead of drugs, I'd bet many patients are wishing someone would just say the words of another ancient rock anthem: I want to hold your hand.
Ira's new book: Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare
British Muslim Wants Beer Drinkers Publicly Flogged
Pat Condell is at his best on Britain's latest homegrown Muslim nutbag, Anjem Choudary, the cleric who wants to see the country ruled by Sharia law:
Here's the barbarian Choudary saying all gays should be stoned to death. Here's Choudary before he found his way to "the religion of peace," "swilling beer, smoking dope and leering at porn," per a Daily Mail story.
Hello Titty
In yet another case of the police using kiddie porn laws with extreme idiocy, NBC New York reports that a 14-year-old girl has been arrested and charge with child pornography for posting nude pictures on MySpace -- pictures of herself:
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tipped off police that someone was posting naked pictures of a teen on a MySpace profile.As it turns out, the culprit was the teen herself.
Authorities investigated the case for a month before zeroing in on the suspect, who said she posted the pictures for her boyfriend's pleasure. Anyone who was online "friends" with the girl through the site or knew her name could see the pictures.
The teen was charged with one count each of possession and distribution of child pornography. Police remanded her into her mother's custody.
Maybe God Had Just Gotten A New Wii
If god is such a petty little supreme ruler that he won't save you from a fiery death unless you say, "God, you're really, really cool, please, pretty please save my pathetic ass," well, why would you worship such a being to begin with?
I appreciate that you've been told there's a god, and the guy who told you was probably wearing some kind of silly but official looking robe-ery, and maybe an even sillier hat, but come on, there's no evidence there's a god or a tooth fairy...although I do have to cop to the existence of Santa, since I'm always seeing the guy at the mall come Christmas time.
The topic came up because the Cridster sent me a link to a piece Tim Blair posted on his blog about a nitwit pilot who caused the death of 16 people when he decided to pray to god to save him instead of landing the fucking plane.
Here, from the BBC:
An Italian court has jailed a Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before ditching his plane, killing 16 people.A fuel gauge fault was partly to blame for the crash off Sicily in 2005 but judges convicted Chafik Garbi of manslaughter, jailing him for 10 years.
Six others, including the co-pilot and head of the airline Tuninter, were jailed for between eight and 10 years.
Yes, they prayed their little tails off, but apparently, god was busy. Oops...you lose! You and anybody else who flew Air Irrationality.
And for those of you who are huffing and puffing that of course there's a god, here's one of my favorite links, whydoesgodhateamputees.com:
Get millions of people praying in unison for a single miracle for this one deserving amputee. Then stand back and watch.What is going to happen? Jesus clearly says that if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. He does not say it once -- he says it many times in many ways in the Bible.
And yet, even with millions of people praying, nothing will happen.
No matter how many people pray. No matter how sincere those people are. No matter how much they believe. No matter how devout and deserving the recipient. Nothing will happen. The legs will not regenerate. Prayer does not restore the severed limbs of amputees. You can electronically search through all the medical journals ever written -- there is no documented case of an amputated leg being restored spontaneously. And we know that God ignores the prayers of amputees through our own observations of the world around us. If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day.
Guess Who Woke Me Up Last Night
Long day's journey into night on Tuesday, and I fell asleep on the couch while reading and woke up to the phone ringing at around 11:30 p.m. It was my old New York painter friend Max Ferguson, calling from Jerusalem, where he now lives with his Israeli wife and his two and a half children (one on the way, he explained). I thought you might like to see his paintings -- "of a vanishing New York," which are here.
Listen To The French Guy
In the WSJ, "Who's French Now? A lesson in fiscal restraint":
The voice of fiscal restraint does not normally have a Gallic accent. But in our newly upside-down world, it's the French who are warning Americans about runaway spending and false Keynesian stimulus hopes.The latest Frenchman to deconstruct Obamanomics -- after President Nicolas Sarkozy came out last week against raising taxes -- is Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank.
...Americans worry about the economy in part because of the infusion of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, not in spite of it. Or as Mr. Trichet put it: "If your people have the sentiment that they will be not better off in an endless spiraling of deficits, they will not spend any money that you give them today."
I dropped some stuff off to sell at the designer resale store the other day. Or rather, I tried. They took the Michael Stars shine shirts (expensive shirts I paid not-so-expensive prices for on eBay), but they didn't take a Rifat Ozbek skirt or a pair of Joseph pants (also eBay bargains), because the place was just full up with stuff.
Nobody is spending. And businesses are starting to go out of business. Right and left.
Not Exactly Mr. Chips
Gleefully -- yes, gleefully -- a Kuwaiti professor contemplates the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans:
Kuwaiti Professor Abdallah Nafisi calls terrorists "the most honorable people in the world." His Muslim audience applauds. He adds the Quran says the hostility between Jews and Muslims is eternal. And, then he adds that the Quran can't be contradicted. And, he goes on to spew much more sick stuff.
As one commenter wrote on YouTube:
But don't worry, only about 10% of Muslims agree with him. That's only 100 million people, so rest easy...
What Flavor Is Your Justice?
It comes in "male" or "female," according to a piece by Constantino Diaz-Duranon on The Daily Beast:
Alan Jepsen was playing videogames at his home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, when the cops came knocking on his door. He was handcuffed in front of his sister and thrown in jail. In the words of his attorney, Jeffrey Purnell, "This child, this 17-year-old high-school kid, had to spend a week in jail--they locked him up and they put him in jail with grown-ups."His crime: Having sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend. And, perhaps, being a boy.
"These are kids," said Purnell. "It's ridiculous. Lawmakers criminalize common behavior among children, and it's frustrating, really."
The day after Alan's arrest, Sheboygan authorities arrested Norma Guthrie, also 17, for having sex with her 14-year-old boyfriend. Norma, however, did not have to spend a single day in jail. She was released immediately, on signature bond, while Alan was held on a $1,000 cash bond, which his family could not afford. Sheboygan County Assistant District Attorney Jim Haasch is handling both cases.
The disparity in the punishment of these 17-year-olds, both accused of having sex with the 14-year-olds they were dating, goes much deeper. Haasch charged Alan with a Class C felony, which, according to court records obtained by The Daily Beast, carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years. Norma, on the other hand, was charged only with a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum sentence of nine months in jail.
The cases caught the attention of the local press, generating a heated debate over whether Alan is being given harsher treatment simply because he is a boy. "After all," said Purnell, "this isn't one district attorney in Tennessee and one in New York deciding how to charge these cases. This wasn't even one district attorney in one county in Wisconsin and another county in Wisconsin. No, this was the same guy who charged these two cases."
The district attorney's office refused to comment, but experts say it would not be far-fetched to assume that Alan has been the victim of bias.
Ya think?
Furthermore, teenagers having consensual sex with other teenagers should not be prosecuted. In a lot of states, even Romeo would be a "sex offender" today (since he was thought to be 16 and Juliet 13 when they started seeing each other).
How To Die In Sweden
Walter Williams writes in the WT of waiting lists just to get on waiting lists for medical care in Britain, a national health care system that isn't much different in Canada, and how it works in a country whose national health care we don't often hear about -- Sweden:
Canadians have an option Britainers don't: proximity of American hospitals. In fact, the Canadian government spends more than $1 billion each year for Canadians to receive medical treatment in our country. I wonder how much money the U.S. government spends for Americans to be treated in Canada."OK, Williams," you say, "Sweden is the world's socialist wonder." Sven R. Larson tells about some of Sweden's problems in "Lesson from Sweden's Universal Health System: Tales from the Health-care Crypt," published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (spring 2008). Mr. D., a Gothenburg multiple sclerosis patient, was prescribed a new drug. His doctor's request was denied because the drug was 33 percent more expensive than the older medicine. Mr. D. offered to pay for the medicine himself but was prevented from doing so. The bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.
Malmo, with its 280,000 residents, is Sweden's third-largest city. To see a physician, a patient must go to one of two local clinics before they can see a specialist. The clinics have security guards to keep patients from getting unruly as they wait hours to see a doctor. The guards also prevent new patients from entering the clinic when the waiting room is considered full. Uppsala, a city of 200,000 people, has only one mammography specialist. Sweden's National Cancer Foundation reports that in a few years most Swedish women will have no access to mammography.
Dr. Olle Stendahl, a professor of medicine at Linkoping University, pointed out a side effect of government-run medicine: its impact on innovation. He said, "In our budget-government health care there is no room for curious, young physicians and other professionals to challenge established views. New knowledge is not attractive but typically considered a problem [that brings] increased costs and disturbances in today's slimmed-down health care."
These are just a few of the problems of Sweden's single-payer government-run health care system. I wonder how many Americans would like a system that would, as in the case of Mr. D. of Gothenburg, prohibit private purchase of your own medicine if the government refused paying.
We have problems in our health care system but most of them are a result of too much government. More than 50 percent of health care expenditures in our country are made by government. Government health care advocates might say they will avoid the horrors of other government-run systems. Don't believe them.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, who published Sven Larson's paper, is a group of liberty-oriented doctors and health care practitioners who haven't sold their members down the socialist river as have other medical associations. They deserve our thanks for being a major player in the '90s defeat of "Hillary care."
People will say, "That won't happen here in America," because we've had a capitalism-ish system. But, the Obama administration makes no bones about their desire for wealth redistribution in the name of fairness (not that the Republicans were ever the "small government" types they claim to be). So, we really can't say how far this will go. Also, innovation is surely going to be a problem if government is running the show, just for starters, because innovators are likely to shy away from becoming part of a vast medi-bureaucracy.
And regarding who we do take care of -- who I think we should take care of -- the mentally ill, the homeless, and others who truly can't help themselves. But, I think we need to encourage people to behave responsibly. Can't afford health care for two children? Have one -- or none.
More on Sweden's health care here, by David Hogberg, Ph.D., a senior policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research:
While Sweden is a first world country, its health care system - at least in regards to access - is closer to the third world. Because the health care system is heavily-funded and operated by the government, the system is plagued with waiting lists for surgery. Those waiting lists increase patients' anxiety, pain and risk of death.Sweden's health care system offers two lessons for the policymakers of the United States. The first is that a single-payer system is not the answer to the problems faced as Americans. Sweden's system does not hold down costs and results in rationing of care. The second lesson is that market-oriented reforms must permit the market to work. Specifically, government should not protect health care providers that fail to provide patients with a quality service from going out of business.
When the United States chooses to reform its health care system, reform should lead to improvement. Reforming along the lines of Sweden would only make our system worse.
The Man Who Loved A Woman And Ended Up With A Mommy
It's a story I hear almost weekly: She said she didn't want children, but it turns out she lied. Simon Jones writes in the Times of London about how he fell for a high-powered sexual woman who pretty much disappeared after the baby came:
Anna was a delightful baby and I fell in love with her. Frances, however, was totally consumed by motherhood. I longed for my glamorous career girl to reappear. I took takeaways home for dinner, and made sure our cleaner upped her hours. But Frances just sat around in her dressing gown reading baby-care magazines and books, or comparing notes with other new mothers.I realise that complex factors kick in after a birth, such as tiredness and self-image issues, and that high levels of the hormone prolactin while breastfeeding reduces a mother's libido. But shouldn't women want to overcome this?
Six months after having Anna, Frances told me she wanted to take a five-year break from work and have another child. I was adamant that I wanted no more children. I couldn't help feeling short-changed. By now she was overweight and unfit and didn't care about the way she looked. Her entire life was centred on organic baby food and playgroups. Our home was always full of strange women talking endlessly about nappies, baby food and the right sort of stimulation.
Don't get me wrong, I love Anna, but I also get on with the rest of my life -- work, relationships and other interests. I'm the same person I've always been. But for all the talk of multitasking, it's the mothers who become completely one-dimensional. It's ironic, when being sexy and attractive is what got them pregnant in the first place. And it's not only Frances who's become a boring frump -- it's depressingly common to see clever, attractive women become parenting bores. You can spot them at parties, in baggy clothes and making no effort to be interesting to men. Surely the ultimate mummy could still be a sex cat, if no longer a sex kitten?
I ended up getting the stimulation I needed from someone else. Maria had joined the hospital where I worked. She was a few years younger than me, beautiful, clever and sexy. It took only one illicit coffee for our affair to start. We took appalling risks, having sex in store cupboards and empty conference rooms.
It wasn't only about sex, however, mind-blowing and addictive though that was. Maria was challenging, intelligent, great fun and a poignant reminder of the beginning of my relationship with Frances. Because, despite everything, I still loved Frances. I tried to engage her interest in work. I took home champagne and flowers, bought her jewellery and perfume. But she no longer wanted to connect with me on a sexual or romantic level. Then Maria told me that an affair was no longer enough for her -- that if I didn't leave Frances, it was over. I told Frances, who was surprisingly upset and actually punched me, the first physical contact we'd had in months -- and we ended up having amazingly passionate sex.
The next morning, I moved in with Maria. But it wasn't long before she also suggested marriage. I couldn't believe it. I had a strong sense of déjà vu. She'd often decried the way Frances had become so maternal and domestic, claiming that wasn't for her -- now she was heading the same way. We got married. Then she said she wanted a baby. I repeated all the protests I'd made to Frances. The arguments raged until Maria eventually said she would leave me and have a child with someone else, and I gave in.
Ten years after leaving Frances for Maria, I wonder why I bothered. Frances is still frosty with me and I have a horrible feeling that my daughter Anna doesn't actually like me very much. And Maria? Nine months ago, after giving birth to my second daughter, Sarah, she has turned into another version of Frances, obsessed with motherhood in just the same way.
Has all the aspiration and ambition they applied to their careers been transferred to parenting -- or did they only pretend to be career-orientated? Both of them have made themselves martyrs to motherhood, sacrificing everything from keeping fit -- what's wrong with walking a brisk four miles with a buggy, if you can't bear to leave the baby in a creche? -- to the occasional night out.
Frances lied to me about wanting a child. Maria might have done so as well. I can't believe how naive I've been. I don't know how long Maria and I will last, but I know one thing: from now on, I'm putting myself first. I'll never trust a woman again, no matter what they promise.
A word to those who might follow in Simon's footsteps: Don't want children? Married to a child-demanding screamer -- formerly a woman who claimed she didn't want kids? Get a divorce -- before you get her pregnant.
How To Know You're An Asshole
Get a note like this one? Chances are...even if you don't have the license plate you should -- I M RECTUM -- you are a big sphincter on wheels.
According to the neighbor-guy who wrote this note (in conjunction with a 30-second investigation by me), the woman who got the note was probably a psychologist going to a "psychologist meet and greet" at an "environmental gallery" in my neighborhood (sorry -- I know that sentence was filled with two powerful emetics).
Apparently, the woman had decided, while behind the wheel of a large Lexus, that she would use her Lexus to take the parking space the note-writer's girlfriend was standing in to save for him. (He said "wife" in the note. I guess he felt assault would seem more odious if the person assaulted was in possession of a marriage certificate.)
Now, it wasn't like the neighbor guy was driving back from Tucson and she was saving the space for him by sitting in it a lawn chair for days. I think he was just moving his SUV from around the block. Our street is zoned residential, and that was probably fine for the hundred years my house has been on it.
However, the asshats who run Los Angeles have allowed overbuilding to the nth power on the boulevard a block away (my neighborhood's favorite example is the 70-seat restaurant that has only "16 spaces 'on paper'" grandfathered in...meaning they have no spaces, unless you know of somebody that can make a car temporarily disappear by leaving it on an imaginary sheet of typing paper), so our parking is regularly eaten up by all sorts of jerks...like this woman.
Unfortunately, the guy didn't actually report her to the police. I encouraged him report her -- and I don't know why people avoid that. A motor vehicle is a big, deadly weapon, and people who use it to intimidate girls into jumping out of the way should not be allowed the privilege of driving.
Had this happened to me, I would've gotten the woman's big ugly picture (just guessing there) and put her face up on the web -- and reported her to the state shrinky board. I also would've followed her to the gallery, called the cops, and waited until the police came to haul her ass away. Or, at least question it. (The cops can't arrest you for a crime somebody just says happened -- they have to see it or have evidence you did it; more than just your word.)
Vandalize Your Own Mosque, Then Blame Others
Australian Islamic fun from imam Sheik Hilaly:
Shooting Beautiful HD Video With A Pack Of Cards
First of all, thanks -- you guys have been great in helping me make ends meet in the wake of the downturn in papers by buying stuff on Amazon through links on Amy's Mall. For the uninitiated, even if you buy nothing I offer, or buy a 30-cent used book, if you go through one of my Amazon links to buy something, anything, I get a kickback (around 6 percent), and these days, every little bit helps.
But, enough about that. Here's an absolutely fantastic pocket HD video camera, the 60-minute Flip Video Camcorder
It's small -- fits in the palm of your hand, totally simple to use, and that little USB connector you see pops up to connect the camera right to your computer to transfer video in about 30 seconds flat, give or take a few seconds (for the five-minute quantities we shot). And it shoots really beautiful HD video.
We pulled selects from the three five minute pieces we shot, and edited it in iMovie 08 on my neighbor's slim, beautiful MacBook Air in a couple of hours. Completely simple. Word to the wise: Tech maestro Gregg says iMovie 08 sucks. I think iMovie 09 is supposed to be better.
FYI, for non Mac-users, the camera comes with software, too, but we used the more sophisticated Mac stuff, so I can't tell you about theirs. Still, I totally recommend this camera. I want to get one (when the economy improves) and carry it around everywhere in my purse so I can shoot footage of society's asshats and post it here.
Napolitano: Close Your Eyes And Nobody Will Hurt You
Maybe if we don't call the mass-murderers of 3,000 people in downtown Manhattan "terrorists," their widdle feelings won't be so hurt and they'll find it within themselves to play nice, instead of playing it according to the dictates of their religion that translates into the word "submission," and commands them to convert or kill the infidel. (That would be those of us who don't follow the religion "based on the words and deeds of a 7th century Arab who told woman to 'breastfeed' men, sick people to drink camel urine, and people to cover their mouths when they yawn lest the devil go down their throat.")
In this week's really dumb crap from an Obama administration official, our Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano showed Cordula Meyer, a reporter from Der Spiegel, how far she could shove her own head up her ass while representing the United States of America by deciding to call acts of terrorism by a kinder, gentler name -- "man-caused disasters":
'Away From the Politics of Fear'Janet Napolitano, 51, is President Obama's new Homeland Security Secretary. She spoke with SPIEGEL about immigration, the continued threat of terrorism and the changing tone in Washington.
SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word "terrorism." Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?
Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused" disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.
Hey, Janet...you can try to escape the "politics of fear" all you want, but that isn't going to help you much when the actual spreaders of fear -- and death -- bomb the airplane you're on in the name of the great and powerful Oz...uh, sorry...Allah.
And come on..."man-caused disasters"?! I mean, this is what we call it when I try to cook something after not having cooked anything other than a bunch of oiled asparagus on a cookie sheet for about 12 years.
Can we lose the cute on terrorism, please?
Bend Over, America!
(Again.) Guess who owes us back taxes? Matt Jaffe writes on ABC News that at least 13 companies who've sucked up some of the $300 billion in TARP funds owe hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes:
Two of the companies owe more than $100 million in taxes, said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight.Altogether, the 13 companies owed the government more than $220 million in unpaid taxes, he said.
...He didn't identify the companies or indicate how much TARP money they have received. But some of the corporations that have received the largest chunks of TARP cash include AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors and Chrysler.
So far, Treasury has allocated $300 billion of the TARP money that was authorized by the Bush administration. It is preparing to allocate a second $300 billion by the Obama administration.
The Georgia lawmaker said the subcommittee learned of the unpaid taxes from IRS records. He said these firms were required to sign contracts that they did not have any unpaid taxes, but the Treasury Department never requested the tax records.
"This entire program is based on trust -- trust in the giver and trust in the taker," Lewis said.
There's a term for that sort of thing: "being gullible."
There Was No "Affordable Housing" Crisis
Okay, I admit, there was a "No Affordable Housing At The Beach" crisis, and another like it in Beverly Hills. Worse in Bel-Air. And don't forget the "No Affordable Housing Anywhere In Manhattan" crisis.
But, as for the cost of housing in flyover territory, Thomas Sowell writes that it stayed pretty much the same, taking "no larger share of the average American's income than in the decade before the affordable-housing crusade got under way."
The mess we're in, Sowell writes, stems from politicians meddling, inventing a national problem where there was only a local problem -- and one with a simple local solution: Santa Monica too pricey for you? Move to Downey -- or Detroit, where houses are now going for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars -- but were quite affordable before that for anyone earning a modest living.
An excerpt from Sowell's piece:
Why then a national crusade by Washington politicians over local problems? Probably as good an answer as any is that "It seemed like a good idea at the time." How are we to be kept aware of how compassionate and how important our elected officials are unless they are busy solving some problem for us?...How would they solve it? By pressuring banks and other lenders to lower their requirements for making mortgage loans, so that more people could buy houses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae quotas for how many mortgages it should buy that were made out for people with low to moderate incomes.
Like most political "solutions," the solution to the affordable-housing "problem" took little or no account of the wider repercussions this would entail.
Various economists and others warned repeatedly that lowered lending standards meant more risky mortgages. Given the complex relationships among banks and other financial institutions -- including many big Wall Street firms -- if mortgages started defaulting, all the financial dominoes could start falling.
These warnings were brushed aside. Politicians were too busy solving a national problem that didn't exist. In the process, they created very real problems. Now they are now offering even more solutions that will undoubtedly lead to even bigger problems.
Yes, It's A MOBILE Phone
Meaning your argument is mobile, too. Meaning there's no reason to be shouting into your phone on the sidewalk in front of my house -- as some asshat was yesterday.
Where I live, houses and apartments are set back just a few feet from the curb. It's not like the guy would have missed the fact that this is a residential area behind huge thickets of foliage or something.
This is the stuff in my book. The underlying message to the rudesters always starts out pretty much the same: "There are people other than you in the world..."
In this case, I had to go out and tell the guy, "Um, excuse me, but I'm a writer and I can't write because all I hear inside my house is your argument..."
He did sort of nod -- and then moved down the street to continue his shouting in front of my neighbors' place. Nice.
I would never do this, but I have to say, I'm always tempted to stand behind my fence and "accidentally" turn the hose on one of these clowns.
Cuddle Porn
Welcome to the cuddle party -- people hugging strangers to "get their touch needs met." Eeeuw. As I just wrote in a column (in which I mentioned these events), I'd rather hug a toilet -- while throwing up into it.
Libby Copeland writes in the WaPo about cuddle parties with "puppy piles."
At the end of the cuddle party, Mihalko and Baczynski initiate a "puppy pile." Everyone lies on the floor on top of one another, arms and legs intertwined. Someone's head is on someone else's buttocks, and someone else's head is about in someone else's armpit.The music cycles around to John Lennon's "Imagine." For the moment we're all dreamers, and the world is living as one.
In a word: Eeeuw.
We have puppy piles here, too, but we encourage people to pick them up and put them in the trash can.
Here's another link about this from BoingBoing. (Not Safe For...people who won't throw up seeing some gross guy in pajamas sucking some girl's toes.) I'm guessing these parties are wide-open territory for toe fetishists and all sorts of creepazoids to get their rocks off on unsuspecting strangers.
Oh, and take note of what the price to get in says about these parties:
Women $20 per person, Men $40 per person if paying at door.
Again: Eeeuw.
The Children Who Really Get Screwed In The Divorce
They're the ones whose mommy and daddy are still married -- but whose daddy used to be married to somebody else. A woman e-mailed me from Canada:
I am really tired of media attention focused on "deadbeat" dads. Sure, some moms have it hard when dads pay nothing. But, absent fathers are few and far between and most of them don't pay because they can't.
What the public needs to become aware of are the problems faced by the PAYING PARENTS, and their SUBSEQUENT FAMILIES, as a direct result of PAYING AMOUNTS OF CHILD SUPPORT THAT FAR EXCEED WHAT THEY WOULD SPEND ON THEIR KIDS IN AN INTACT RELATIONSHIP.
The majority of fathers pay child support faithfully, and they are also obligated (through courts) to pay for "extra-ordinary" expenses. In many cases these extra costs are equal to or more than the base child support amount.
When assigning the amounts to be paid to the ex-wife, there is no accounting for any additional children a support payor may have in his care, whom he has a moral and legal duty to support also.
The common argument is "Well, he shouldn't have had more children if he couldn't afford them." To this I counter, "We do not have glass balls in which to predict the future." When we decided to have children, my husband paid child support, his ex wife worked and paid her share of "extras." After our twins were born, his ex chose to quit her job and move across the country. Our payments now include 100% of "extras", 100% of flights and higher child support. THIS AMOUNTS TO ALMOST 50% OF HIS NET INCOME.
There seems to be no understanding of the harm child support orders do to "second" families. The "second" family pays tax on CS, yet gets no tax benefits or credits. The "first" kids are entitled to help with university and continued CS payments, up to age 26, which financially devastates "second" families who can ONLY start saving once payments end. First kids are allowed a "stay-at-home" mom until school age. Second wives are instructed to go back to work to support themselves and their subsequent children while their children are still babies. Any government benefits for the "second" kids are based on the parents income, but the amount of CS sent is not deducted, often pushing them over the critical income edge needed to qualify for assistance programs.
The list goes on and on. The unintended consequense of child support is that it impoverishes children who had the unfortunate event of being born into a "second" family. It is a human rights violation that these children are discriminated against based on "birth order." A paying parent should be able to support ALL his children equally, and a "second" family should not be penalized for choices the custodial parent makes (such as quitting a job and moving accross the country). Our children should not suffer because the guidelines do not hold BOTH parents financially accountable for their children after divorce.
The woman who emailed me sent these supporting links: Illinois Times, State of Massachusetts, the Boston Herald, Canadian child support guidelines, and Glenn Sacks.
"Idiots Who Want National Healthcare in US, Read This"
The Digg headline says it all. It links to a piece in the UK Telegraph about life under national health care:
The scale of the failure at Staffordshire General Hospital almost defies belief. Dehydrated patients forced to drink water from flower vases, accident victims left untended for hours, clinical judgements being made by receptionists. To call this Third World treatment is an insult to the Third World.This appalling, incompetent management has exacted a terrible price. Anything from 400 to 1200 patients may have died unnecessarily as a result of the neglect. Not since Harold Shipman was still in general practice have NHS patients been so dreadfully betrayed.
The independent Healthcare Commission was alerted to the scandal by the high mortality rates in what it calls an "early warning system". That was in March last year, three years after the hospital had descended into chaos and a month after it won foundation status. Some early warning system.
...This scandal was allowed to run unchecked for three years before the NHS's watchdog lumbered into action.
And the fact that the hospital was able to gain foundation status despite such primitive levels of care indicates that the Department of Health is simply not doing its job. Heads should roll, and not only in the trust - but of course, they won't.
Stupid Politician Tricks
One man's trash is another man's...night in the slammer.
The geniuses on the Sacramento City Council have joined Los Angeles and other cities in making it a crime to scavenge in recycling bins in front of people's homes. Gregory Rodriguez writes in the LA Times:
A staff report for the Sacramento City Council argued that such scavenging "can result in identity theft, injuries to the scavengers, waste being strewn about the surrounding areas, containers being left open to emit foul odors [and] attract animals and pests, and theft of recyclable material."Despite public comments from half a dozen people who said the new ordinance would harm the growing ranks of homeless people, many of whom make money from trading in recyclables, the council approved the law by a margin of 6 to 3.
The three dissenters had their objections, but I don't think they got to the heart of the problem with the law. Councilman Rob Fong said he thought it wasn't humane. Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell figured that if the homeless could sell the stuff, the city should "let them have it."
What's really wrong with the anti-scavenging picture? It's that as times get tougher, the middle-class mores that inform such ordinances don't fit the reality of the growing number of people in our towns and cities who will be obliged to find innovative and, shall we say, quasi-respectable ways to survive.
Not long ago, British historian Simon Schama wrote that "American resourcefulness is one well that won't run dry," and for the most part I think he's right. But these days we're more likely to define resourcefulness as high-end technological innovation rather than low-level scrappiness. We tend to celebrate the successful entrepreneurial maverick who cuts corners or goes against the grain, while denigrating the hard-nosed survivor on the other end of the social spectrum.
Several years ago, various Southern California cities tried to make it illegal for a person to seek day-labor work on the street. I understand that some neighbors had valid complaints against day laborers trampling their lawns, but the notion that anyone would be punished for seeking a job in an aesthetically unpleasing way strikes me as absurd. The courts have since upheld the rights of day laborers as a 1st Amendment issue.
Wait -- we don't want to fork over welfare payments, yet we won't let people look for jobs. Bright!
And speaking of bright, if your only protection from identity theft is the government making it illegal for people to go through your garbage -- it's unlikely you've attained enough of a position in life to make your identity that worthwhile to steal...let alone support yourself or use the potty without assistance.
It's so beyond absurd that this is now a crime in Los Angeles. What, the police were short on gang shootouts? Yes -- dial 911! There's a homeless lady digging in the garbage in our alley!
I do like to prevent that sort of thing -- the need for the poor and homeless to dig in the garbage. Did I campaign to pass a law against it? No -- I just started putting all my recyclables out next to the trash bins in a paper bag. Today I even chased after a homeless guy with a big bag of empty Pellegrino bottles.
Uh -- wait...d'you think that's a felony?
Booby Is Better?
Maybe not. Hanna Rosin writes in the Atlantic that the actual health benefits of breast-feeding are "surprisingly thin, far thinner than most popular literature indicates."
From the moment a new mother enters the obstetrician's waiting room, she is subjected to the upper-class parents' jingle: "Breast Is Best." Parenting magazines offer "23 Great Nursing Tips," warnings on "Nursing Roadblocks," and advice on how to find your local lactation consultant (note to the childless: yes, this is an actual profession, and it's thriving). Many of the stories are accompanied by suggestions from the ubiquitous parenting guru Dr. William Sears, whose Web site hosts a comprehensive list of the benefits of mother's milk. "Brighter Brains" sits at the top: "I.Q. scores averaging seven to ten points higher!" (Sears knows his audience well.) The list then moves on to the dangers averted, from infancy on up: fewer ear infections, allergies, stomach illnesses; lower rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease. Then it adds, for good measure, stool with a "buttermilk-like odor" and "nicer skin"--benefits, in short, "more far-reaching than researchers have even dared to imagine."...One day, while nursing my baby in my pediatrician's office, I noticed a 2001 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association open to an article about breast-feeding: "Conclusions: There are inconsistent associations among breastfeeding, its duration, and the risk of being overweight in young children." Inconsistent? There I was, sitting half-naked in public for the tenth time that day, the hundredth time that month, the millionth time in my life--and the associations were inconsistent? The seed was planted. That night, I did what any sleep-deprived, slightly paranoid mother of a newborn would do. I called my doctor friend for her password to an online medical library, and then sat up and read dozens of studies examining breast-feeding's association with allergies, obesity, leukemia, mother-infant bonding, intelligence, and all the Dr. Sears highlights.
After a couple of hours, the basic pattern became obvious: the medical literature looks nothing like the popular literature. It shows that breast-feeding is probably, maybe, a little better; but it is far from the stampede of evidence that Sears describes. More like tiny, unsure baby steps: two forward, two back, with much meandering and bumping into walls. A couple of studies will show fewer allergies, and then the next one will turn up no difference. Same with mother-infant bonding, IQ, leukemia, cholesterol, diabetes. Even where consensus is mounting, the meta studies--reviews of existing studies--consistently complain about biases, missing evidence, and other major flaws in study design. "The studies do not demonstrate a universal phenomenon, in which one method is superior to another in all instances," concluded one of the first, and still one of the broadest, meta studies, in a 1984 issue of Pediatrics, "and they do not support making a mother feel that she is doing psychological harm to her child if she is unable or unwilling to breastfeed." Twenty-five years later, the picture hasn't changed all that much. So how is it that every mother I know has become a breast-feeding fascist?
...What does all the evidence add up to? We have clear indications that breast-feeding helps prevent an extra incident of gastrointestinal illness in some kids--an unpleasant few days of diarrhea or vomiting, but rarely life-threatening in developed countries. We have murky correlations with a whole bunch of long-term conditions. The evidence on IQs is intriguing but not all that compelling, and at best suggests a small advantage, perhaps five points; an individual kid's IQ score can vary that much from test to test or day to day. If a child is disadvantaged in other ways, this bump might make a difference. But for the kids in my playground set, the ones whose mothers obsess about breast-feeding, it gets lost in a wash of Baby Einstein videos, piano lessons, and the rest. And in any case, if a breast-feeding mother is miserable, or stressed out, or alienated by nursing, as many women are, if her marriage is under stress and breast-feeding is making things worse, surely that can have a greater effect on a kid's future success than a few IQ points.
So overall, yes, breast is probably best. But not so much better that formula deserves the label of "public health menace," alongside smoking. Given what we know so far, it seems reasonable to put breast-feeding's health benefits on the plus side of the ledger and other things--modesty, independence, career, sanity--on the minus side, and then tally them up and make a decision. But in this risk-averse age of parenting, that's not how it's done.
Divorce As A Career Choice
Terrific column by Charlotte Ross in the Evening Standard, about women who bone rich men in the divorce, into the millions and millions -- as if the men somehow owe them a fancy lifestyle (and yes, it's sometimes men boning rich women, but pretty rarely):
Of course ordinary women need the law's protection in divorce fights, and far too many men scarper the family home without handing over adequate funds for their children. Parents should be made to provide for their offspring, through the courts if necessary.But with divorcees like Ingrid Myerson and Slavica Ecclestone - just granted a decree nisi from super-rich F1 boss Bernie - we're not talking simple survival funds. The sums involved in these splits amount to ludicrous awards to women who didn't actually earn the money. I'll buy the argument they contribute through wifely duties and home-making skills (if hiring a housekeeper counts). But only up to a point. They don't deserve an equal portion of their ex-husbands' massive wealth.
Perhaps I'd feel differently if I was married but I doubt it. Though I live with my long-term boyfriend I'm wholly responsible for my own finances, always have been. We don't have a joint account and we divvie up expenses as we go. Even if we were hitched, I can't envisage a situation where either of us expected the other to hand over money as compensation for our relationship failing. It makes perfect sense to me that you pay your own way in life. That's what I call equality.
Expecting the better-off partner in a couple to cough up to fund the other's lifestyle is a retrogressive notion that feminists - like me - should reject. Women have come a long way since I was a girl. We're highly educated and extremely capable. Even in a recession most of us can earn our own living.
Word to the wise: Guys, sometimes, paying for sex is a hell of a lot cheaper.
A counterpoint, from the comments over there:
My husband and I are nowhere near as wealthy as the Myersons or Ecclestones, but I have a lot of sympathy for these women. If the marriage was long term and the couple started with very little, I can assure you that in order for one partner to have amassed a huge pile of money over a long career, the other will have had to make a lot of personal and emotional sacrifices. Fortunes are not made from working 9-5, and the strain this puts on a relationship often means that it's just not possible for both partners to have equally high-flying careers, especially if there are children. The wife (for often it is she) has made these sacrifices in good faith for the couple's mutual benefit; why should she not share equally if the marriage breaks up?My husband is a high earner, with all the benefits and drawbacks that entails for both of us. I have always worked and now I run my own small business, but there is a huge disparity in our incomes which has grown with time, and it's very probable that had we not married my personal earnings would have been higher. In the unlikely event we divorced, I would be incensed to be awarded only a tiny share of what we have amassed together.
- Izzy, London, UK
Hiding Our Dead Soldiers Doesn't Make Them Any Less Dead
Canada openly honors its war dead instead of whisking their coffins off so nobody can see them. Don Martin writes in the Canadian National Post:
From the first glimpse of flashing police escorts to the last black vehicle flashing under the Highway 401 overpass, the funeral procession takes only half a silence-filled minute to pass.Yet they start gathering an hour in advance for a unique tradition Canadians have embraced to salute their fallen soldiers -- and there's growing international pressure for other military powers to follow suit.
...The London Evening Standard last year ran contrasting photos of Canadian versus British treatment of the fallen, heaping shame on how the hearses bearing U.K. soldiers are only escorted by the undertaker's vehicle and usually get stuck in traffic.
The Highway of Heroes story has been covered by CNN and Newsweek magazine last month noted that "Canada may have an answer" with its overpass salutes as an option for Americans trying to respect family privacy while allowing the public to observe the human cost of combat.
Under media pressure, President Barack Obama has ordered a review of the country's hidden and heartless U.S. casualty repatriation policy. Dead American soldiers now return home to a camera ban at the air base and are hustled off without ceremony to the mortuary and onward to burial. Photos of U.S. flag-draped coffins are almost always unauthorized.
Perhaps foreign military and political leaders who fear public displays of honour and respect for the fallen will become a public relations headache should stand in the blustery winter winds of a 401 overpass just once after a fallen soldier goes home.
They would quickly come to the conclusion that, when it comes to honouring its military dead, the world needs more Canada.
Thanks, Martin!
Just Another Ordinary Saturday Lunch In Paris
Le dessert, photographed by Emily Tarr on her cameraphone.
Help Yourself. Nobody Else Cares.
If there's one lesson I've learned from having my car stolen, being the victim of a hit-and-run, and identity theft, it's that you shouldn't expect the police to get you justice, and certainly not in any sort of short order -- even if you present them with a pile of evidence, gift-wrapped, with a big bow on top.
I'm not saying police officers are necessarily negligent (any more than people in other professions), but there's a whole lot of crime out there, and your particular little crime, while important to you, is just a tiny drop in an ocean of murders, muggings, and countless other small crimes.
The other lesson I've learned is that institutions created to protect you will probably not protect you...for example, the Comptroller of the Currency (the administrator of national banks).
I reported my findings from my investigation of Bank of America to the Comptroller in September 2008. It's now March, 2009. After complaining numerous times to the department where you're supposed to complain (one of the guys I talked to actually retired since I'd last talked to him, in the fall), a few weeks ago, I called the Comptroller himself, John C. Dugan. His secretary bounced me in short order to Kevin Mukri, the press guy.
I told Mukri that, unlike probably most people who call them, I wasn't looking for some personal redress. I'd gotten my money back. I was worried about all the other people who I believe are being endangered by B of A's "security" measures. Mukri blew me off -- told me to write a letter to Dugan himself...as opposed to getting off his big, Comptroller-employed ass and walking down the hall and saying something.
What's going on here? I have my suspicions, and they aren't sunny, happy, consumer-friendly, justice-be-done-oriented things.
But, at least I've had an education; in short: You want a watch dog? Strap on a flea collar, get down on your hands and knees and start barking at trespassers.
Expecting otherwise could leave you in all kinds of jeopardy -- including jeopardy from robbers who don't do the deed with knives or guns, just a big, cheshire smile. Accordingly, Joe Nocera writes in The New York Times that Madoff had accomplices -- his victims:
...Just about anybody who actually took the time to kick the tires of Mr. Madoff's operation tended to run in the other direction. James R. Hedges IV, who runs an advisory firm called LJH Global Investments, says that in 1997 he spent two hours asking Mr. Madoff basic questions about his operation. "The explanation of his strategy, the consistency of his returns, the way he withheld information -- it was a very clear set of warning signs," said Mr. Hedges. When you look at the list of Madoff victims, it contains a lot of high-profile names -- but almost no serious institutional investors or endowments. They insist on knowing the kind of information Mr. Madoff refused to supply.I suppose you could argue that most of Mr. Madoff's direct investors lacked the ability or the financial sophistication of someone like Mr. Hedges. But it shouldn't have mattered. Isn't the first lesson of personal finance that you should never put all your money with one person or one fund? Even if you think your money manager is "God"? Diversification has many virtues; one of them is that you won't lose everything if one of your money managers turns out to be a crook.
"These were people with a fair amount of money, and most of them sought no professional advice," said Bruce C. Greenwald, who teaches value investing at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. "It's like trying to do your own dentistry." Mr. Hedges said, "It is a real lesson that people cannot abdicate personal responsibility when it comes to their personal finances."
And that's the point. People did abdicate responsibility -- and now, rather than face that fact, many of them are blaming the government for not, in effect, saving them from themselves. Indeed, what you discover when you talk to victims is that they harbor an anger toward the S.E.C. that is as deep or deeper than the anger they feel toward Mr. Madoff. There is a powerful sense that because the agency was asleep at the switch, they have been doubly victimized. And they want the government to do something about it.
...Even Mr. Wiesel (as in Elie, who lost $15 million from his foundation and his personal fortune) thought the government should help the victims -- or at least the charitable institutions among them. "The government should come and say, 'We bailed out so many others, we can bail you out, and when you will do better, you can give us back the money,' " he said at the Portfolio event.
But why? What happened to the victims of Bernard Madoff is terrible. But every day in this country, people lose money due to financial fraud or negligence. Innocent investors who bought stock in Enron lost millions when that company turned out to be a fraud; nobody made them whole. Half a dozen Ponzi schemes have been discovered since Mr. Madoff was arrested in December. People lose it all because they start a company that turns out to be misguided, or because they do something that is risky, hoping to hit the jackpot. Taxpayers don't bail them out, and they shouldn't start now. Did the S.E.C. foul up? You bet. But that doesn't mean the investors themselves are off the hook. Investors blaming the S.E.C. for their decision to give every last penny to Bernie Madoff is like a child blaming his mother for letting him start a fight while she wasn't looking.
Sand Off Your Face
Men, just skip through to the photo at the bottom. Ladies and any metrosexuals who have dropped in, read on:
I'm not one to use expensive face products, save for my Anthelios #50 sunblock -- expensive here, but which I buy by the dozen in France for about $15 a bottle, once you translate the euro to our sad American dollar. Other than that, I use $3 St. Ives scrub in the shower, and cheapo Cetaphil at night. But, last Sunday, Gregg was shooting a photo of me for my book cover, so I tried something new, Philosophy The Microdelivery Peel
Stuff is amazing. As I wrote about it in my link to it on "Amy's Mall":
I bought this in a silent auction at a newspaper conference, thinking it was probably expensive and I'd sell it on eBay. Well. I used it last night, thinking I was a little dumb to do so, since we're shooting in just a day and a half and I have sensitive redhead skin. It did make my skin red at first -- for about 20 minutes. But, the results are absolutely amazing. And I'm a skin care skeptic. I think most of the stuff out there is just well-marketed bullshit for the gullible. This stuff seemed to rub off a layer of skin, leaving my skin extremely smooth, soft and just better looking. It tightened up my skin, too, it seems. I highly recommend this stuff!
Results here:
Not bad for an old broad.
And thanks, all of you, who have been buying stuff from my mall to help me through the downturn in newspapers. One guy e-mailed me that he spent $1,000 on Amazon through my links. And I do get the kickbacks, even if you buy stuff that isn't something I've linked to, as long as you go through my Amy's Mall links.
A lot of people buy used books -- which is great -- every little bit counts. But, every now and then I get this sort of thing in my daily Amazon report:
Thule 954 Ridgeline 4-Bike Hitch Mount Rack (1.25 and 2-Inch Receiver)
Amazon.com price: $323.95
kickback rate (goes up w/# of purchases thru my links): 6.50%
Amy's kickback: $21.06
This is especially great because I just got word that the Orange County Register is cutting me along with five other columnists because they had so many pages cut from their features section. They're my biggest, best-paying daily, and I know my column is popular there. Apparently, if people read me on their online site on Tuesday, they might keep me online at least. I'll post a link on Tuesday.
photo by Gregg Sutter
I Woz On Dancing With The Stars
One of my heroes, the adorable inventor and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, shows his lust for life:
I just want to hug the guy. For, this, and for so many reasons.
By the way, this message was typed on the wireless keyboard of my 20-inch iMac. I can't remember how many Apple computers I've had, but I got my first on the student discount at the University of Michigan in 1985. Never had an instruction book, never needed one.
Oh yeah -- I even found my boyfriend Gregg at the Apple store, at the iPod display, a little over six years ago.
Should We Call Them "Terrorism Facilitators"?
How about "Not Very Nice Men Who Want All Us Infidels Dead"? Or, as a commenter over at the WSJ suggested, "Guys Who Didn't Get Enough Hugs From Their Mom When They Were Growing Up"? Or, more to the point, "Mass Murderers For Allah?"
The Obama administration will no longer use the term "enemy combatant" to describe all the sweet, misunderstood men being held at Guantanamo, says an AP story I saw in the WSJ:
The Obama administration's position came in response to a deadline by U.S. District Judge John Bates, who is overseeing lawsuits of detainees challenging their detention. Judge Bates asked the administration to give its definition of whom the U.S. may hold as an "enemy combatant."The filing back's Mr. Bush's stance on the authority to hold detainees, even if they weren't captured on the battlefield in the course of hostilities. In their lawsuits, detainees have argued that only those who directly participated in hostilities should be held.
"The argument should be rejected," the Justice Department said in its filing. "Law-of-war principles do not limit the United States' detention authority to this limited category of individuals. A contrary conclusion would improperly reward an enemy that violates the laws of war by operating as a loose network and camouflaging its forces as civilians."
In a word...DUH!
In another WSJ piece, Evan Perez tried to make all this murky stuff above a little clearer:
Lawyers representing detainees have pushed for military detention to be limited to those who engage in combat. Some civil libertarians said they couldn't tell how the Obama administration's definition of who may be subject to military detention differed from old policy.Jonathan Hafetz, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, represents Ali al-Marri, a Qatar-born U.S. resident who was recently transferred from military to civilian custody after being held for years in the U.S. as an enemy combatant. Mr. Hafetz said the Obama administration's court filing "contains similarly vague and open-ended language that appears to license dragnet detention power. Civilians suspected of terrorism should not be subject to military justice."
What, we're supposed to take terrorists down to LA Criminal Court where a judge can parole them with the rest of the felons we have no room for in the California prison system?
I am not for detaining people without a standard for evidence, but if there is evidence somebody is engaging in terrorist activity, pick 'em up, lock 'em up, and bring the full force of the justice system down on them.
As for whether military justice should be applied, I'm just amazed when people argue that terrorists should be protected under the Geneva Convention. Just for starters, as mass murderers of civilians, they certainly don't adhere to the rules of it. If we need to have some special category of justice for enemy combatants/mass murdering barbarians who are not representing a state, but a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion, well, let's come up with one.
Meanwhile, I do have an idea for the Obama administration to make a wee bit of money to help with the tanking economy: Since these guys locked up at Guantanamo are apparently such fine fellows, how about a Men Of Guantanamo calendar? Maybe Said Ali al-Shihri can be Mr. April. Who is Said Ali al-Shihri? Just one of those nice fellows released from Guantanamo -- so he could go on to become deputy leader of Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen. (How lovely that we're helping them out with their terror staffing issues.)
Retarded Monkeys Need Jobs, Too!
How hard is it for the geniuses at the post-9/11 U.S. Passport office to catch people in big fat screaming lies on their passport applications? Not hard at all -- providing the people applying for passports write in big, red letters, "This is a big fat screaming lie" and "This is not really me!" on the falsified information they provide.
A U.S. investigator tried four times to get a passport with phony documents -- and succeeded four times, says an AP story by Eileen Sullivan:
The report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, details the ruses:-One investigator used the Social Security number of a man who died in 1965, a fake New York birth certificate and a fake Florida driver's license. He received a passport four days later.
-A second attempt had the investigator using a 5-year-old boy's information but identifying himself as 53 years old on the passport application. He received that passport seven days later.
-In another test, an investigator used fake documents to get a genuine Washington, D.C., identification card, which he then used to apply for a passport. He received it the same day.
-A fourth investigator used a fake New York birth certificate and a fake West Virginia driver's license and got the passport eight days later.
Criminals and terrorists place a high value on illegally obtained travel documents, U.S. intelligence officials have said. Currently, poorly faked passports are sold on the black market for $300, while top-notch fakes go for around $5,000, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations.
The State Department has known about this vulnerability for years. On February 26, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary of passport services issued a memo to Passport Services directors across the country stating that the agency is reviewing its processes for issuing passports because of "recent events regarding several passport applications that were approved and issued in error."
Sorry, but "Whoopsy!" is not an acceptable response for allowing potential terrorists to get their very own real travel documents in fake identities. Let's hope no terrorists could imagine we'd be this asinine about our security.
Try not to think about this while some TSA guy is pointing her flashlight up your ass crack at the airport -- it's better for your blood pressure.
Wanna Have Some Ugly Children?
I'm writing a script for the producers of the web TV show I'm in development on, and trying to describe what makes my column different from others, and this Dear Prudence column got me right to the point (though not the exact words I need yet). Something like, "I say stuff you 'shouldn't' say, but that's true." Here's the column that helped me there:
Dear Prudence, My boyfriend and I are in a healthy and loving relationship, and we are beginning to talk about marriage. We both want the same number of kids at the same point in our lives. It is presumed that these will be our biological children. The issue is, I'm not sure that I would want to bear my boyfriend's children. While he is incredibly intelligent and has a great personality, he is markedly less physically attractive than I am. We get occasional lighthearted comments from friends and family about the discrepancy. Having biological children has never been important to me, and I think adoption is great. I believe that he will be an amazing father and that our children, biological or adopted, would be bright and well-behaved as a result of good parenting. Should I bring these thoughts up with him? I think he would be open to the idea of adoption but would also be hurt by my rationale. At what point should we discuss this more seriously, and how should I tell him how I feel?--Skinny Bitch
Dear Skinny,
You're wise to avoid the potential tragedy of reproducing with your boyfriend: Your children could get his looks and your personality. Perhaps your boyfriend's already got an inkling of how you feel because of the Leonardo DiCaprio mask you ask him to wear when you make love. And although Brad and Angelina are both fecund and support adoption, I'm not sure they're going to agree to place any of their future progeny with you just to help you avoid the embarrassment of having a child who looks like your boyfriend. I'm trying to imagine how you initiate this discussion with him. Something like: "I look forward to spending the rest of my life with you. But when it comes to having kids, I'm sure that if we adopt we'll have a better shot of having decent-looking ones than if I let you impregnate me with your hideous sperm." That should go over well! What's supposed to happen when you are in love with someone (who also happens to be intelligent and have a great personality) is that you discover, despite objective measures, that person is beautiful to you. Your boyfriend sounds like a catch, so maybe you should toss him back so that he has a chance to find someone who's not permanently stuck in the shallow end.
The fact is, attractive people do better in this world. While she could have attractive kids with this guy (I know two ugly people with a gorgeous daughter), it sounds like there's a good chance she might not. And she sounds like she loves him, but realistically. She gets that he's not the male model of boyfriends, but that doesn't seem to matter to her. And that makes sense, because women don't seem to care anywhere near as much as men do about looks.
I would tell her NEVER to tell the guy the truth, and to instead say she can't bear to have children when there are so many children in need of adoption in this world. Period. And never, ever digress from this storyline.
Bottom line: It isn't wrong to try to have attractive children -- any more than it's wrong to try to have smart children, or, say, physically very healthy children by adopting instead of having your own children if it seems possible or likely you and your partner will produce a child with a disease.
This woman isn't saying she'd reject an ugly child -- I know mothers who have kids who aren't so cute and they don't leave them on the street corner for the foster agency to pick up. So, while she might end up with a less-than-cute one via the adoption route, she isn't shallow or horrible for wanting to have an attractive kid.
Obama Speaks French Economist
Two of them, Piketty and Saez, are "rock stars of the intellectual left," writes WSJ editor Daniel Henninger:
Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."Messrs. Piketty and Saez have produced the most politically potent squiggle along an axis since Arthur Laffer drew his famous curve on a napkin in the mid-1970s. Laffer's was an economic argument for lowering tax rates for everyone. Piketty-Saez is a moral argument for raising taxes on the rich.
As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income. This trend, Fig. 9 notes, began during the Reagan presidency, skyrocketed through the Clinton years, dipped after George Bush beat Al Gore, then marched upward. Widening its own definition of money-grubbers, the budget says the top 10% of households "held" 70% of total wealth.
...Turn to page five of Mr. Obama's federal budget, and one may read these commentaries on the top 1% datum:
"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."
"Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected."
"There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."
This is the least "tilted" country in the world. Anybody can become somebody, and not just somebody, but somebody really big, and wealthy and famous. Just look at Oprah and all the other people who came from nothing.
It's not like that where Monsieur Picketty and Monsieur Saez hail from.
Gregg and I, through a friend of ours, know this amazing retired master woodworker in France. I don't even know if he finished high school -- he grew up during World War II, and lived in a flat with no bathroom on rue Princesse. There was a toilet in the building, and pay showers down the street.
And he became a master woodworker because that's the level of society he was born to. And that's how it goes in France. You don't really get to cross the lines. It's just not done.
Yet, here's this guy, a brilliant student of human nature -- nothing gets past him -- who can probably tell you more about world history and even American history than most Americans. I don't know what else besides woodworking he might've done, had he be offered the opportunity, but he wasn't and wouldn't have been, and not just because of the war. You're born to the "peasant" class and you stay there, and so do your children, and their children, and their children, barring an accident or a miracle (not that I believe in such things).
Getting back to this country, I'm not for an abolishment of government but for as little government as possible. And I find it immoral to punish people financially -- really, to steal from them -- for either being lucky enough to inherit wealth or for making something of themselves in a really big way.
Finally, the thing I can't understand is that from a party that professes to be about equality, how they can be so blatant about treating people unequally at every turn. Oh, sorry -- only men, especially white men, and rich people.
Accordingly, here's one of the comments I liked on the Journal's site:
Using the President's definition of fairness, shouldn't all the "A" students be forced to give some of their A's back to help some of the poor C and D students? Isn't that "fair" even though the A students probably worked a lot harder than the C & D students.Andy Schultz
Tampa
Um, What About The Men And Boys?
Obama has just signed an executive order creating a White House Council on Women and Girls. From AFP:
"The purpose of this Council is to ensure that American women and girls are treated fairly in all matters of public policy," Obama said.The council will meet regularly, he said, and will include Clinton, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder among other members, Obama said.
"I sign this order not just as a president, but as a son, a grandson, a husband and a father," Obama said.
He cited the example of his mother, Ann Dunham, who educated herself even while she worried about paying the bills and cared for Obama and his sister as a single parent.
Obama also recalled the example of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who worked hard in the corporate world, but then hit a glass ceiling and saw less qualified men get jobs ahead of her.
"I've seen Michelle, the rock of the Obama family, juggling work and parenting with more skill and grace than anybody that I know," he said.
I've heard horrific stories of men being denied access to their children after a divorce, of boys getting harsh punishments that are not applied by schools or the legal system to girls, and I've seen scholarship and fellowship programs for women and minorities where guys, especially white guys, can't get in.
We don't fight discrimination with discrimination -- and while I am not for "councils" of this kind to begin with, I'm disgusted that the president thinks it's a good thing to come out with a council for women and girls when there are vast problems men and boys are dealing with.
And come to think of it, life is tough. For all of us in various ways. Isn't the president himself supposed to be a council for ALL Americans? Now that we've got a black guy in The White House, can't we stop with the coddling groups and special rights and privileges for some?
Then again, if you really want to change things, to really improve life for a great number of people (especially children), how about coming up with a Council Against Single Motherhood, including rich, largely white women, who are selfish, me-first/children's needs second "single mothers by choice"?
So, You THINK The FDIC Has Your Deposit Insured
Whoopsy! Turns out those bozos in Congress let banks get away without paying into the insurance fund. You'll love this Boston Globe story by Michael Kranish, "Now-needy FDIC collected little in premiums - With fund going strong, banks didn't pay for decade." In short, if a big bank like Citibank goes under...well, don't count on them having money to bail out all the depositors:
WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no insurance premiums from most banks from 1996 to 2006.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits up to $250,000, tried for years to get congressional authority to collect the premiums in case of a looming crisis. But Congress believed that the fund was so well-capitalized - and that bank failures were so infrequent - that there was no need to collect the premiums for a decade, according to banking officials and analysts.
Now with 25 banks having failed last year, 17 so far this year, and many more expected in the coming months, the FDIC has proposed large new premiums for banks at the very time when many can least afford to pay. The agency collected $3 billion in the fees last year and has proposed collecting up to $27 billion this year, prompting an outcry from some banks that say it will force them to raise consumer fees and curtail lending.
To possibly reduce the fee increase, the FDIC has asked Congress for the temporary authority to borrow as much as $500 billion from the US Treasury - up from the current $30 billion limit - in case the number of bank failures increases even more dramatically. If Congress approves the measure, to borrow more than $100 billion, the FDIC would still need permission from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the White House.
As of Dec. 31, the FDIC had $18.9 billion in its insurance fund - down from $52.4 billion a year earlier - in addition to $22 billion that it has set aside for pending bank failures. The agency has projected it will need $65 billion to take over failed banks through 2013.
But if the FDIC suddenly had to take over a giant bank such as Citigroup or Bank of America, the fund would be drained "in a flash," said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Boston University law school's Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law.
via Consumerist
Always Edit The Personality Out
I don't get it. Why publish my opinion if it's not really my opinion; if it's only my watered-down opinion? The LA Times ran my letter about the ridiculous Sandy Banks column that took up much of the reverse of the front page -- and left out a few bits. It seems to me that this isn't editing for clarity or word count. If you're not going to publish my real letter -- why publish my letter at all?
Here's what appeared in the paper.
Reflect on thisRe "Reflecting on new self-image," Column, March 7
The Times just killed the stand-alone California section, and smooshed local news in with national news. It would seem that journalistic real estate is at a premium. Yet, just on the other side of Saturday's front page -- some seriously prime real estate -- is an article by Sandy Banks on ... the new drawing to accompany her column.
Amy Alkon
Santa Monica
What is it with daily newspapers that they think they'll gain readers by sucking personality from everything? Here's the my original letter, with the bit 'o personality and end line they cut out in bold:
Re: Sandy Banks Redrawn
Your publisher killed the stand-alone California section, and smushed local news in with national news. It would seem journalistic real estate is at a premium. Yet, on Saturday, just on the other side of the front page, some seriously prime real estate, is a piece by Sandy Banks on...drumroll...the new drawing to accompany her column. Have they fired all the editors over there?
Well, apparently not the hatchet-wielding ones.
The Mite House
Paglia, in Salon, tells Obama he'd better shape up fast -- and that goes for Doogie Hou$er and the rest of the goofyboys on his staff:
Free Barack!Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.
Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection. (Michelle, please use those fabulous toned arms to butt some heads!)
First it was that chaotic pig rut of a stimulus package, which let House Democrats throw a thousand crazy kitchen sinks into what should have been a focused blueprint for economic recovery. Then it was the stunt of unnerving Wall Street by sending out a shrill duo of slick geeks (Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag) as the administration's weirdly adolescent spokesmen on economics. Who could ever have confidence in that sorry pair?
And then there was the fiasco of the ham-handed White House reception for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which was evidently lacking the most basic elements of ceremony and protocol. Don't they read the "Iliad" anymore in the Ivy League? Check that out for the all-important ritual of gift giving, which has cemented alliances around the world for 5,000 years.
President Obama -- in whom I still have great hope and confidence -- has been ill-served by his advisors and staff. Yes, they have all been blindsided and overwhelmed by the crushing demands of the presidency. But I continue to believe in citizen presidents, who must learn by doing, even in a perilous age of terrorism. Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.
Case in point: The orchestrated attack on radio host Rush Limbaugh, which has made the White House look like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys. I returned from carnival in Brazil (more on that shortly) to find the Limbaugh affair in full flower. Has the administration gone mad? This entire fracas was set off by the president himself, who lowered his office by targeting a private citizen by name. Limbaugh had every right to counterattack, which he did with gusto. Why have so many Democrats abandoned the hallowed principle of free speech? Limbaugh, like our own liberal culture hero Lenny Bruce, is a professional commentator who can be as rude and crude as he wants.
And while we're on Rush, I'm with her on all of this:
And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey. Rush Limbaugh is an embodiment of the American dream: He slowly rose from obscurity to fame on the basis of his own talent and grit. Every penny Rush has earned was the result of his rapport with a vast audience who felt shut out and silenced by the liberal monopoly of major media. As a Democrat and Obama supporter, I certainly do not agree with everything Rush says or does. I was deeply upset, for example, by the sneering tone both Rush and Sean Hannity took on Inauguration Day, when partisan politics should have been set aside for a unifying celebration of American government and history. Nevertheless, I respect Rush for his independence of thought and his always provocative news analysis. He doesn't run with the elite -- he goes his own way.
I'm for free speech, and against any attempts to revive the so-called "Fairness" Doctrine. Maybe that made some sense when there were three TV stations -- requiring stations to provide the opposing point of view. Now anybody with Skype can open their own radio station on the Internet. In fact, thanks to the Internet (along with cable TV), we've gone from merely having free speech to having wildly free speech. And I'm all for it. And then some.
Somebody please inform Nancy Pelosi that Rush has a position on the radio dial because, like what he says or not, he's a brilliant broadcaster. I listen to him when I'm in the car -- just as I flip to NPR, Dr. Laura, Bill Handel, McIntyre in the Morning, Air America, John and Ken, and a variety of other stations and talk shows -- save for Tom Leykis and Adam Carolla's, since the geniuses at CBS just bumped them both off Los Angeles' KROCK in favor of really inane teenytechno music.
A broadcaster from the left should try to unseat Rush in the ratings -- but, the old-fashioned American way, by out-talking and out-thinking him.
Give 'Em Enough Hope...
It seems the Obama-moon might be coming to an end -- at least for "what's left of the American establishment," writes Howard Fineman in Newsweek:
If the establishment still has power, it is a three-sided force, churning from inside the Beltway, from Manhattan-based media and from what remains of corporate America. Much of what they are saying is contradictory, but all of it is focused on the president:* The $787 billion stimulus, gargantuan as it was, was in fact too small and not aimed clearly enough at only immediate job-creation.
* The $275 billion home-mortgage-refinancing plan, assembled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is too complex and indirect.
* The president gave up the moral high ground on spending not so much with the "stim" but with the $400 billion supplemental spending bill, larded as it was with 9,000 earmarks.
* The administration is throwing good money after bad in at least two cases--the sinkhole that is Citigroup (there are many healthy banks) and General Motors (they deserve what they get).
* The failure to call for genuine sacrifice on the part of all Americans, despite the rhetorical claim that everyone would have to "give up" something.
* A willingness to give too much leeway to Congress to handle crucial details, from the stim to the vague promise to "reform" medical care without stating what costs could be cut.
* A 2010 budget that tries to do far too much, with way too rosy predictions on future revenues and growth of the economy. This led those who fear we are about to go over Niagara Falls to deride Obama as a paddler who'd rather redesign the canoe.
* A treasury secretary who has been ridiculed on "Saturday Night Live" and compared to Doogie Howser, Barney Fife and Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone"--and those are the nice ones.
* A seeming paralysis in the face of the banking crisis: unwilling to nationalize banks, yet unable to figure out how to handle toxic assets in another way--by, say, setting up a "bad bank" catch basin.
* A seeming reluctance to seek punishing prosecutions of the malefactors of the last 15 years--and even considering a plea bargain for Bernie Madoff, the poster thief who stole from charities and Nobel laureates and all the grandparents of Boca. Yes, prosecutors are in charge, but the president is entitled--some would say required--to demand harsh justice.
* The president, known for his eloquence and attention to detail, seemingly unwilling or unable to patiently, carefully explain how the world works--or more important, how it failed. Using FDR's fireside chats as a model, Obama needs to explain the banking system in laymen's terms. An ongoing seminar would be great.
* Obama is no socialist, but critics argue that now is not the time for costly, upfront spending on social engineering in health care, energy or education.
Other than all that, in the eyes of the big shots, he is doing fine. The American people remain on his side, but he has to be careful that the gathering judgment of the Bigs doesn't trickle down to the rest of us.
In writing about establishment types changing their tune, Fineman, it seems, is tacitly castigating himself. Here's a bit of the gush he was spewing in November, via Newsbusters' Brent Baker:
Catching up with Newsweek's Howard Fineman on Wednesday's Countdown, he came across as a parody of an in-the-tank for Barack Obama journalist as he gauzily proclaimed: "Obama's changing everything as he moves. His victory speech last night in Grant Park...was so memorable on so many levels." Asked by host Keith Olbermann to predict "an overarching theme" for Obama's appointments, such as "competency, bipartisanship, diversity, newness"...
Newsweek link via Insty
Welcome To Detroit 2009
Toby Barlow writes in the IHT about the $100 home:
I myself had moved to Detroit, from Brooklyn. For $100,000, I bought a town house that sits downtown in the largest and arguably the most beautiful Mies van der Rohe development ever built, an island of perfect modernism forgotten by the world.Two other guests that night, a couple in from Chicago, had also just invested in some Detroit real estate. That weekend Jon and Sara Brumit bought a house for $100.
Ah, the mythical $100 home. We hear about these low-priced "opportunities" in down-on-their-luck cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland, but we never meet anyone who has taken the plunge.
Understandable really, for if they were actually worth anything then they would cost real money, right? Who would do such a preposterous thing?
A local couple, Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, started the ball rolling. An artist and an architect, they recently became the proud owners of a one-bedroom house in East Detroit for just $1,900. Buying it wasn't the craziest idea. The neighborhood is sort of half-decent. Yes, the occasional crack addict still commutes in from the suburbs but a large, stable Bangladeshi community has also been moving in.
So what did $1,900 buy? The run-down bungalow had already been stripped of its appliances and wiring by the city's voracious scrappers. But for Mitch that only added to its appeal, because he now had the opportunity to renovate it with solar heating, solar electricity and low-cost, high-efficiency appliances.
Buying that first house had a snowball effect. Almost immediately, Mitch and Gina bought two adjacent lots for even less and, with the help of friends and local youngsters, dug in a garden. Then they bought the house next door for $500, reselling it to a pair of local artists for a $50 profit. When they heard about the $100 place down the street, they called their friends Jon and Sarah.
...Now, three homes and a garden may not sound like much, but others have been quick to see the potential. A group of architects and city planners in Amsterdam started a project called the "Detroit Unreal Estate Agency" and, with Mitch's help, found a property around the corner. The director of a Dutch museum, Van Abbemuseum, has called it "a new way of shaping the urban environment." He's particularly intrigued by the luxury of artists having little to no housing costs.
By "the city's voracious scrappers," he's referring, at least in part, to the copper thieves attacking houses around Detroit. The mother of a friend had her home copper-robbed when she was out of town, and the thieves even made off with some piping connecting the washer or dryer to a gas line -- without turning off the gas. Luckily, the residents aren't in the habit of walking around with lit cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.
Who's Really Watching All That Porn For Women?
All 12 of the videos, that is. Okay, there are a few more now, but I'm wondering if women are porn viewers like they're strip club patrons. As I wrote in this column:
Women, for the most part, don't go to strip clubs to see men in thongs, they go to strip clubs to laugh at men in thongs. Flipping the bird at convention is part of it, but sociologist Beth Montemurro, who watched women watching men strip, said women's motivation is mostly about "having a shared experience" with their friends; you know, like yesterday's Tupperware party -- except the headliner isn't a lady in an apron but a ripped gay guy in a gladiator skirt.
This makes sense, female sexuality is vastly less visually driven than male sexuality.
Which brings me back to my question: How many women are really watching the porn created for women?
How many of you girls are? I mean, just for you, not as a couples thing.
If you are a woman who watches porn...do you think you are anywhere nearly as driven to watch it as men are?
Like, do you have hundreds of downloads on your computer, and subscription to a porn site? Or dozens?
And one more question: How many straight women out there are more turned on by lesbo-porn than hetero porn -- but aren't bi or longing to have sex with the girl next door?
Porn Again Christians
(And Mormons.) Holy blow job, it seems the red states are the porniest.
In The New York Times, hookup bemoaner Charles M. Blow blogs about a study by Benjamin Edelman, an assistant prof at Harvard B School, that found that subscriptions to online porn are "more prevalent" in states where surveys find "conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality." (On that last one, I'm presuming he means abstinence only, not the missionary position. Heh, heh.)
Not surprisingly, Utah topped the list. Of course, since they regulate liquor sales up the wazoo, I'm guessing porn shops are not to be found on every street corner -- if at all. So, that might partially explain an increased number the Internet porn purchases. Your guess?
Details on some of the report's findings:
1. In regions where more people report regularly attending religious services, overall subscription rates are not statistically significantly different from subscriptions elsewhere.2. Subscriptions are slightly more prevalent in states that have enacted conservative legislation on sexuality (regression results on file with the author). In the 27 states where "defense of marriage" amendments have been adopted (making same-sex marriage, and/or civil unions unconstitutional), subscriptions to this adult entertainment service are weakly more prevalent than in other states ( p 0.096). In such states, there were 0.2 more subscribers to this adult web site per thousand broadband households, 11 percent more than in other states.
3. In states where more people agree that "Even today miracles are performed by the power of God" and "I never doubt the existence of God," there are more subscriptions to this service.
4. Subscriptions are also more prevalent in states where more people agree that "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage" and "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior."
5. Tancer (2008), finds that adult escort sites are more popular in "blue" states that voted for Gore in 2004, while visitors from the "red" states that voted for Bush in 2004 are more likely to visit wife-swapping sites, adult webcams, and sites about voyeurism.
Here in bluest California, we're all doing it with goats on, uh, Satan sheets.
Thanks, Chang!
How Islam Will Take Over The UK
UK jihadist Anjem Choudary lays it all out for you:
Coming soon, to take over a country near you -- to convert or kill the "infidel" (this would be non-Muslims like us) -- unless we wake the hell up to the dangers from Islam.
As I've written here over and over, Islam is not a religion. It is a totalitarian system masquerading as a religion, bent on taking over the world, violently, if necessary, and turning it Muslim.
via JihadWatch
Islam: A Religion Of Anything But Peace
Tawfik Hamid, a former member of an Egyptian Muslim terrorist group, and a current "Islamic reformer" and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, writes in the WSJ that Islam should prove it's a "religion of peace," and that Muslims can start with better Quranic scholarship:
Many Muslims seem to believe that it is acceptable to teach hatred and violence in the name of their religion -- while at the same time expecting the world to respect Islam as a religion of peace, love and harmony.Scholars in the most prestigious Islamic institutes and universities continue to teach things like Jews are "pigs and monkeys," that women and men must be stoned to death for adultery, or that Muslims must fight the world to spread their religion. Isn't, then, Mr. Wilders's criticism appropriate? Instead of blaming him, we must blame the leading Islamic scholars for having failed to produce an authoritative book on Islamic jurisprudence that is accepted in the Islamic world and unambiguously rejects these violent teachings.
While many religious texts preach violence, the interpretation, modern usage and implementation of these teachings make all the difference. For example, the stoning of women exists in both the Old Testament and in the Islamic tradition, or "Sunna" -- the recorded deeds and manners of the prophet Muhammad. The difference, though, is that leading Jewish scholars agreed to discontinue these practices centuries ago, while Muslim scholars have yet to do so. Hence we do not see the stoning of women practiced or promoted in Israel, the "Jewish" state, but we see it practiced and promoted in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the "Islamic" states.
When the British government banned Geert Wilders from entering the country to present his film in the House of Lords, it made two egregious errors. The first was to suppress free speech, a canon of the civilized Western world. The second mistake was to blame the messenger -- punishing, so to speak, the witness who exposed the crime instead of punishing the criminal. Mr. Wilders did not produce the content of the violent Islamic message he showed in his film -- the Islamic world did that.
There's one problem with all this. Islamic scripture must be taken literally. Amil Imani writes on Islam Watch, in "Islamism is Like Sadism," "Islam is about terror, punishment, control and domination":
It is not about God or love, it is about control and domination--just as Sadism is not about human intercourse or love; it is about control, torture, punishment and domination.Why else name a so-called religion "submission?" Islam seeks nothing less than a total global domination. The word Islam literally means "Taslim," or (submission) or just "surrender", the kind that comes by force and fraud. Its scripture must be taken literally; its provisions are intended to dominate every waking moment in the life of a believer. There is no room for being a half-hearted Muslim and no toleration of watering down its invocations.
In other words, there is no moderate Islam. There is only Islam, practiced or not-so-practiced by its followers. In America, beheading the neighbors or forcing their conversion to Islam because they put up a Christmas tree, really doesn't go over. Not just yet, anyway. But, with Muslim populations on the rise in Europe, and with Europeans bending over backward to accommodate those who seek to install Sharia law and covert or kill them...well, I wouldn't buy property in Europe if I were you!
Movie Stars, Stay Home
CNN reports, in a video piece, that Annette Bening finds a lot to like in Iran. I guess that's because she wasn't jailed for buying a bottle of wine like an American journalist working in Iraq -- an offense that doesn't normally bring imprisonment, various news sources say.
Note Bening wearing a headcover to avoid being attacked by Muslims, which I'm guessing she'd call "having respect" for their values.
I just loved the comment that Bening and the group, on their little Iran tour, "see reality, not propaganda." I mean, could it get more laughable? Bening, if you're that gullible, and that ignorant about what's actually going on in the world, please avoid talking to the press about anything other than Warren and your makeup artist on a movie.
More on the jailed North Dakota-born journalist here in the LA Times, from a story by Borzou Daragahi, reporting from Paris, a city that has yet to be totally overtaken by Muslim fanatics, about Roxana Saberi, who has already spent a month in Iran's Evin prison:
Poised and articulate, Roxana Saberi took to the airwaves like a natural, delivering a pitch-perfect television report about developments in Iran for the British Broadcasting Corp. in the summer of 2006.The folks in London were impressed. "She could film, edit, upload video," recalls her boss, Frances Harrison, who was then the BBC's Tehran bureau chief and now lives in London. "She could do radio. She could do television. She could do online."
Those skills made Saberi a rarity: an American journalist based in Iran, covering the country where her father was born and that she loved to explore.
But three years ago, with the Iranian American journalist's star rising, Iranian authorities revoked her press credentials. And when she continued to work and live in Iran, they arrested her in late January, locking her up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
The case has perplexed friends and colleagues in Tehran. No charges have been filed, though officials have described her reporting as illegal. On Friday, an Iranian prosecutor said she would be freed within days.
But the detention of the ambitious 31-year-old has stunned and unsettled the journalists who knew Saberi in Tehran. They describe her as a cautious and serious journalist who tried to forge a normal life in the Islamic Republic.
...Saberi's father and her mother, Akiko, began to grow worried early last month when their daughter's daily e-mails and phone calls suddenly stopped. When a phone call finally came, Saberi's voice was strained. She'd been arrested, she told her father, after purchasing a bottle of wine.
She'd be let go in a few days, his daughter said. "Her voice was not normal," he said. "It was tense. She spoke hurriedly and hastily."
Alcohol is illegal in the Islamic Republic, but its possession usually incurs no harsher penalty than a fine. After weeks went by without news from Roxana, Reza Saberi decided to go public last weekend.
Sunday's Whack Job E-mail
And you've got to go to the Isaiah666.com URL and hear the hilarious fire-and-brimstone voice. Here's the guy's e-mail, subject lined: "Got a problem Amy?"
In a message dated 3/8/09 8:06:04 AM, elijahsfire_08@yahoo.com writes:"I know Amy does not like liars, thieves and adulterers.
But you have told numerous lies during your lifetime.
I bet you have stolen items that did not belong to you.
I bet you have looked with lustful eyes. Adultery (Matthew 5:28)
I bet the creator of the evolution theory is a proven liar" - Satan
Strike 1
"The Old Testament is a false history of the world" - Charles Darwin
The man Jesus quoted on Hell is 12 for 12 - http://www.isaiah666.com
Strike 2
"The Gospels cannot be proven to have been written simultaneously
with the events" - Charles Darwin
Census of Augustus Caesar Proven
http://www.formerthings.com/augustus.htm
Strike 3
"If no transitional forms are found in the fossil record then my theory
is false" - Charles Darwin
Amber fossils "Millions of Years Old" but show no evolution
http://www.hellandjustice.com/amber_fossils.htm
"Satan Your Accuser" - Revelation 12
The Law About Cats And Dogs (And Wandering Cows)
After idiot Californians passed a bill that California chickens must get chicken condominiums (okay, room to move around) -- but stupidly, didn't bother to mandate that all chickens and eggs sold in California must have this lifestyle -- it meant a hardship for California chicken farmers and a boon for out-of-state chicken farmers who could sell their eggs cheaper. (And we wonder why our state is going bankrupt.)
FYI, while I buy free-range chicken eggs, I'm against mandating it for everyone...and especially in this economy!
Well, buoyed by the success of this really dumb bill, Democrat Mike Eng is proposing a bill slapping California motorists with a fine and possible jail time if they flee after hitting a jaywalking dog or any other pet or farm animal. The bill, requires that drivers try to provide aid to the animal (hi, am I a veterinarian?) and notify the owner or animal control authorities.
Other Democrats want to make it illegal to let a cat older than six months run free unless it's spayed or neutered. And, sorry, whose fault is it if a cat running around gets hit by a car? And what if that opossum somebody I know hit while driving was somebody's pet? How would he have known that, and would he have gone to jail? Oh yeah, and he hit it while going about 70 on the 10 Freeway. Was he supposed to screech to a halt and go see what he could do for the (surely dead) thing?
Not all of the animal-related proposals are so stupid. A Republican senator, Dave Cox, is concerned with bird flocks posing a hazard to big commercial jets, and has introduced a bill giving airports the go-ahead to kill birds that post a hazard. Eric Bailey and Patrick McGreevy write for the LA Times:
Animal rights groups are taking aim at his proposal. Audubon California wants it to exempt endangered species and explicitly make the use of lethal force a last resort. And some activists don't want killing allowed at all."More people die per year from being struck by lightning than by birds interfering with planes," said Pamelyn Ferdin, co-president of the Animal Defense League. "Why don't we outlaw airplanes that kill geese? Weren't the geese here first?"
Eng's bill to add animal hit-and-run penalties to California's vehicle code also faces questions.
The assemblyman said he wrote the bill out of respect for the central role pets can play in family life, noting that he got the idea from a constituent who lost a beloved family dog.
He said he hopes to "start a dialogue" and set a precedent, alerting drivers that they bear responsibility for aiding an animal they've hit.
New York has a similar law, as do Germany and Singapore.
Eng finds it troubling that California makes it a misdemeanor to flee an accident involving property loss - a dented fender, a crushed mailbox, a crumpled planter box - but there is no law against a hit-and-run involving a pet.
"You can wantonly hit an animal and leave and face no consequences," Eng said. "An inanimate object has more rights."
Jennifer Fearing, a lobbyist in Sacramento for the Humane Society of the United States, said the measure has the potential to address what seems a gap in the law - and public awareness.
"We all know to call 911 if a human is in distress," she noted. "But many of us don't know what to do if we hit an animal."
How about the animal rights groups spend money to tell us what to do? As for the idea that we should "provide aid" to an injured creature -- personally, I'd be heartbroken at hitting an animal, but I have a tiny dog, and that doesn't make me an animal expert, nor give me medical experience. More from the article:
"In theory, it makes a lot of sense to let people know they have an obligation when they hit an animal," said Jon Cicirelli of the California Animal Control Directors Assn."But in practice it can be pretty problematic." There is potential danger, Cicirelli said, noting that injured animals can turn on people who try to help, reacting in the only way they know how - by biting or clawing.
And, he said, should a motorist be held accountable for hit-and-run on a feral cat that wanders into the road? What about a cow that is hit after escaping onto a remote highway through a tattered fence its owner should have patched?
Eng said he's open to a conversation on such issues. He just wants to see fewer pets suffer on the roadside and fewer families experience loss.
"It's as simple as calling animal control on a cellphone and saying, 'I hit this dog.' "
Um, again, maybe these animal rights nutters should spend their donation money advertising this. But, wait, what about providing aid? He didn't tell us how to do that. And frankly, even after reading this article, I still haven't a clue.
Mickey Kaus Asks The Right Questions
On Slate, Mickey wonders about Obama's wild spending binge:
1) What parts of government are expanded--the effective parts or the BS parts?
If you read the MSM or commentators like Jon Chait, you get the impression that long-suppressed Dem "priorities" are satisfied by mindlessly in a Congress-pleasing manner expanding all agencies of government by, say, 15%. That certainly seems to be the animating philosophy of the just-passed stimulus and about-to-pass "omnibus" spending bills. There was, for example, this chilling sentence in a recent WaPo piece on the stimulus:
Processing the rush of money is complicated by requirements unique to the stimulus act. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is getting $1.5 billion for "homelessness prevention," a task in which it has never explicitly engaged.Do you have any confidence that HUD, an agency that has done more to destroy American cities than crack cocaine, will spend this $1.5 billion, without toxic side effects, in a way that significanty reduces homelessness--as opposed to sustains myriad HUD grantees, and community organizations, and (of course) bureaucrats? True, all spending is stimulative--and those grantees will in turn be spending the $1.5 billion somewhere. But if you were actually prioritizing government programs, as opposed to giving every agency its due, is this $1.5 billion you'd budget? I doubt it. It's not "waste," exactly. It's just inefficient and ineffective (at best). Mulitiply this problem across the Veteran's Administration and the Agriculture Department and the Labor Department and you get the picture.
Journalistic Real Estate Is At A Premium
The LA Times just killed their stand-alone California section for local news, and smushed it into the A section. Yet, on Saturday, just on the other side the front page, some really prime real estate, is an article by Sandy Banks on...drumroll...the new drawing to accompany her column:
Yes, that's the new me you're looking at. And no, I didn't get a nose job or a new hairstyle. My transformation was cheaper and far less painful. I was treated to a redraw.It wasn't my idea to add illustrated mugs to our columns last fall. A newspaper redesign led the bosses to order up new photos to be converted into line drawings.
I knew the photo we relied on wasn't my best. I'd skipped the salon and left home without makeup. The photographer said "smile" and I complied, unaware that a broad grin can make a nose look wide.
When I saw the drawing in the newspaper later, I cringed. My middle-aged vanity made me want to hide. It didn't take long for my personal crisis to become some readers' obsession.
"You look 20 years older, and you need a comb," e-mailed my neighbor. My daughters' former school principal was more tactful: "That drawing doesn't capture how attractive you are."
I braced myself at every public event for some version of "You don't look like your picture" from the audience. And my co-workers were, of course, brutally blunt. "What's with the schnoz?" asked Duke. "It's huge."
I can defend my writing, but my looks? There's no editor with an airbrush for facial flaws.
Fortunately, my bosses heard the snickers and asked artist Randy Glass for a do-over.
Have they fired all the editors over there?
Barack Obama Could Bankrupt The World's Largest Economy
Tim Reid, in the Times of London, gets into some of the arrogance of it, in "Barack Obama bets the farm in $4 trillion poker game":
Only a man who frequently compares himself to America's greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, would declare that when he was elected, "the rise of the oceans will begin to slow". Only someone who believes that America is on the crest of a dangerous historic wave - and that he "can help guide it" - would have undertaken a glitzy world tour midway through the campaign....In his first month in office he has pushed through an unprecedented $787 billion economic stimulus package, announced plans to save the car industry, stabilise the stricken banking sector and stem the flood of home repossessions.
Then came his near-$4-trillion budget last week. It is a manifesto to usher in a new age of government activism that involves levels of borrowing and spending never before seen in the US and is a document of such staggering ambition and risk that even some of Mr Obama's Democratic supporters are suddenly beginning to feel a little queasy.
A keen poker player, Mr Obama is gambling not only his own presidency, but the future wellbeing of the country. If he pulls it off, they might find room for him on Mount Rushmore. If he fails, he could bankrupt the world's largest economy.
...What he unveiled last week was one of the most audacious agendas announced by a new president. He declared his intention not just to pump trillions of dollars into a short-term rescue for the economy, but also to press ahead with enormously costly plans to trigger a green industrial revolution, transform education and provide health coverage to all Americans. These are issues that have bedevilled Congress and other presidents for decades. Achieving just one would be an extraordinary achievement. Mr Obama wants all three - and fast.
What was most striking about the budget - including that it will explode the federal deficit to $1.75trillion this year, its highest since the Second World War - was that it was a ruthless declaration of how Mr Obama intends fundamentally to change the American social contract, from Right to Left.
Its goal is not just to rescue the economy. It is to crush conservatism, end the age of anti-tax, anti-regulation policies that have been the guiding philosophies of US governance for a generation, and usher in a fresh "epoch", as his aides call it, of New Deal-Great Society wealth redistribution and central intervention that were repudiated by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago. Much of his agenda will be paid for by a ten-year, $1 trillion tax increase on families earning more than $250,000 a year, beginning in 2011, a move that critics say risks stunting the economic recovery.
...The markets are so unnerved about Mr Obama's ability to rescue the financial sector, and by the numerous bailouts that have had little effect, that wealth is being destroyed on Wall Street at a rate not seen since the 1930s. The President said on Tuesday that he does not worry about "the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market", but investors have made it clear that his economic prescriptions have so far failed to reassure them.
"I Hope Rush Limbaugh Fails"
That's Patterico's headline, on an entry on the Rush Limbaugh brouhaha. A friend of mine tonight mentioned that she found it unpresidential of Obama to carry on this little grudge match; or, as she put it: "It's the presidency, not a talk show."
And I was interested in Patterico's entry, because he gets into something I felt in passing when I heard the "I hope Obama fails" crack from Rush. I did hope Obama failed to pass some of these programs that I think are not a solution and will be damaging to our country and our economy. And do.
Patterico feels similarly -- and, as an idealist of sorts (or a guy who I perceive tries very hard to be one):
I know: when he says he hopes Obama fails, he doesn't mean he wants to see Americans suffer. He just doesn't want liberal policies enacted because he thinks they're bad for the country. I get it. I agree with that.
But, to fail as president? That has dire consequences for us all.
Yeah, just words. But, not helpful -- to anybody but Rush and his advertisers.
And I do agree with Patterico here:
I hope Rush Limbaugh fails in his attempt to set himself up as the de facto head of the Republican Party.
After getting some comments, Patterico later amended that to "conservative movement." All I know is that both the Republicans, with their pandering to the religious nuttery, their phony fiscal conservatism and pretense toward small government, and then, the Democrats and their Keynesian nitwittery, their collectivist ideals, and the silly notion that government will save us -- aren't parties that represent me.
They Don't Hate You...
They just think you put out asinine lawn toys. Or they're just ill-raised boys with nothing to do on a Saturday night.
That's what I'm guessing is what's behind the vandalism that the Westchester D.A. is speculating is a hate crime. This is just a ridiculous attempt to sock more charges at boy vandals -- after they attacked a woman's lawn decor blow-up dolls twice: first the blow-up giant snowman, and then the blow-up giant pink Easter bunny. Brian J. Howard writes for the Journal News:
If her sister and brother-in-law hadn't just flown in from Ecuador, Isabel Gonzalez might have slept through yet another act of vandalism to her Jerome Drive home.But as it was, Gonzalez, 57, and her husband were wide awake early Sunday and sitting around the kitchen table with family when vandals punctured the 5-foot tall inflatable pink Easter bunny that adorned her lawn.
This was the latest in a series of attacks that has Gonzalez feeling targeted and wondering whether her ethnicity or her religion is the reason.
A similarly sized inflatable snowman in her yard was slashed from top to bottom at Christmas time, she said. And last summer, decorative reflective glass ornaments were stolen from the garden outside her front door.
Besides hers being one of the only Hispanic families living in the neighborhood off Route 6, Gonzalez said conversations with other neighbors who put out inflatable ornaments indicates hers are the only ones that have been vandalized.
She said she feared the attacks might escalate and her home might be broken into if she couldn't put a stop to the incidents.
Vandalism isn't fun to deal with, but come on: What's next, they're going to break in and draw a mustache on your Garfield cookie jar?
And, as I've written before about hate crimes, you really can't know what's in somebody's head. People generally don't murder other people because they're really fond of them. And to add some level of charges to a crime beyond that of murder is ridiculous, and (yoohoo, lawyers)...perhaps unconstitutional?
Furthermore, I'm always a little amused when Christians in America claim to be persecuted. You're the majority, and everybody in this country, even some of the Jews, celebrates Christmas and Easter. It's not like it's some exotic religion nobody's used to. In fact, three guesses what religion the vandals celebrate. Here, I'll help you speculate: 1. Christian, 2. Christian, and 3. Christian.
Truth be told, the real crime here is how taxpayers paid for the education of a kid -- one of the perps, apparently -- and this is what we got for our money (from a comment on the story):
EVERYONE LISTEN UP, i was ne of the people in this bunny incodent, i already was arrested n set to court n wutnot, but im hear to clear everything up, first off phil did not know wut me n the other person with me were doing, we saw it n i told him to stop the car n jumped out with my friend, second i dont kno where the news is comin up with these crazy theories that it was a hate crime n we perpously picked this family out, we were just bored n felt like havin some fun, third and finaly we did not intentionaly pop the bunny, we thought it would be funny to move it down a couple lawns n in the process i ripped it, so everyone can stop with all these thoughts of it being a hate crime n that we intentionaly destroyed there lawn ordament, we were just messin around thats all, and to the people who owned this bunny, im sorry for the trouble, if u want to talk about it i got court on the 13th
American Newspapers: Protecting You From Information
In a blog item, We Should Have Registered Partner Agreements, I posted the letter to the editor published in The New York Times. An excerpt:
In my years of work as a psychologist in nursing homes, I learned there are many other types of enduring relationships that embody commitment without a hint of romance. There are brothers and sisters, parents and children, and platonic roommates who have lived together for decades, not once thinking marriage. Yet when the time comes to make a crucial medical decision for a patient in a coma or with severe dementia, nonfamily household members may never be consulted.A blood relative fares only marginally better. A sister who has lived with her brother for decades -- a very common household -- will likely be called upon to make medical decisions if her sibling becomes incompetent. But if he had worked and she had managed the home, she's out of luck for Social Security survivor benefits.
There is precedent for Social Security survivor benefits to unmarried members of the same household. Both children and dependent parents have been eligible for survivor benefits since 1939. Why not extend these and the other benefits of marriage to any household with committed relationships?
Ira Rosofsky
New Haven, Feb. 23, 2009
Ira Rosofsky, who, apparently, Googles himself, wrote to thank me for publishing it:
Dear Amy,
Thanks for publishing my letter to the Times, In addition to being a psychologist in nursing homes, I am the author of the forthcoming, Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare
It is an account of my work and my caregiving to my own frail, elderly parents.
Ira
Blog at Psychology Today: Adventures in Old Age
I wrote to Ira:
I'll link to your book below the piece. Newspapers are so stupid these days. The fact that you authored this tells me something about you, and information is always good. If your letter is good enough to publish, why can't we have information about you?
Con Juan
Bernie Madoff was indiscriminate in his betrayals. In Vanity Fair, Mark Seal talks to some of his close friends, including one of the original supermodels, Carmen Dell'Orefice, who lost everything...and who provided cozy pictures of Madoff to accompany the piece...which I couldn't stop reading.
How Hard Is It, Really, Being A Stay-At-Home Mom?
For much of human existence, being a stay-at-home mom (or a stay-in-cave mom, depending on the time period) was a really rough job.
But now, in the modern American home, even in the homes of the poor, there's little that you can't get a machine to do for you. More than at any other time in history, people, especially Americans, live lives of ease.
Take the act of putting something warm on your kid's feet. You used to have to catch the sheep, shear the sheep, make the wool, dye the wool, spin the wool, and knit the socks. Phew! I get tired just typing all that out.
These days, however, a stay-at-home mom picks up her credit card, pops on over to Target to pick up some socks, and lets her husband pay the bill at the end of the month.
I know moms also make meals and take their kids to the doctor and the cat to the vet. And I know there's other stuff I'm missing, so please feel free to bitchslap me with all the stuff I'm leaving out.
I don't want to be unfair about this, so I'm asking all of you to clue me in: How hard is it, really, being a stay-at-home mom?
Here We Are, Arguing About Gay Marriage
(I'm for it.) Of course, in Muslim countries, the only question up for debate about homosexuality, says this imam, is how gays should be put to death.
More Islamic fun here, at MEMRI:
Interviewer: "[In your book,] you write: 'When I went on trips, I used to go secretly with several young friends to the Al-Marja neighborhood in Damascus. We would go to a hotel in order to have sex with prostitutes for 500 Syrian liras per half hour.' To justify this, you write: 'None of us would make physical contact with the girl he chose before signing a formal pleasure-marriage contract with her.' Isn't marriage meant to be out of pure intentions? Weren't you conning God this way?"Rami 'Aleiq: "You're right. Pleasure-marriage means conning God, as well as ourselves. I am against this way of relating to sex and to women.
[...]
"This is something that still goes on. It is wrong."
Interviewer: "Back then you were an observant Shiite Muslim from Hizbullah, weren't you?"
Rami 'Aleiq nods.
[...]
Interviewer: "How did you ever dare to sign a pleasure-marriage contract with a nine-year-old girl?"
Rami 'Aleiq: "In our culture, in order to be able to touch a girl or a woman, there must be a contract of pleasure-marriage."
[...]
Interviewer: "We are talking about a nine-year-old girl..."
Rami 'Aleiq: "Sure. In Islam, and this is what we were taught, a girl is mature from the age of nine. This is true with regard to Sunnis as well as Shiites. You are focusing on Shia Islam, because I am a Shiite, but according to religious jurisprudence, a girl is mature at the age of nine. This is where we got this idea. I was a child, and so was she, so I was not allowed to touch her, if I didn't form with her the kind of relation that permitted this."
Like Nobody Saw That One Coming
General Motors, proud maker of decades and decades of crappy cars (and I know, because my Detroiter parents bought them and were always driving them off to be serviced) has already gotten $13.4 billion of our money. And now -- big surprise! -- they're asking for $16.6 billion more. Says CNN:
In addition, it is seeking $7.7 billion in loans to convert production from light trucks to more fuel efficient cars under an Energy Department loan program.
I'm having this wistful feeling now. Remember when we, in this country, acted kind of like we had free market capitalism?
Let the asshats go bankrupt.
And I know it's just a fantasy on my part, but I'm picturing us taxpayers marching into those mansions in Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, throwing out the jerks who ran these companies into the ground, putting the houses on the market, and having a garage sale of these mismanagment types' cars and worldly goods.
Let their wives worriedly clip coupons and call the gas company to beg for "just a little more time," and let their kids get taken out of preschool like my neighbor's daughter was after her husband lost his job.
We Should Have Registered Partner Agreements
In France, they have the PACS for people like me, straight or gay, who are in longterm committed relationships, but do not wish to be pledge to be with somebody forever. It confers rights on both partners but is dissolvable simply by one partner declaring at a city government office that they wish to end it.
But, I think each person should be able to deem one other person their point person -- one who may or may not be their romantic partner.
I came up with a name for that person a while back -- their "constant." I thought of this out of the sense that it sounds dumb for somebody over 16 who's in a committed relationship with somebody to call their partner their boyfriend or their girlfriend. And their "lover"? Ick -- too much information.
Here's similar thinking from a letter in The New York Times:
To the Editor:David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch propose a compromise that would ensure an array of rights, including Social Security survivor benefits, tax-free inheritance and protections against mutual incrimination.
But what about households with committed relationships that in no way resemble marriage? Where are their rights?
In my years of work as a psychologist in nursing homes, I learned there are many other types of enduring relationships that embody commitment without a hint of romance. There are brothers and sisters, parents and children, and platonic roommates who have lived together for decades, not once thinking marriage. Yet when the time comes to make a crucial medical decision for a patient in a coma or with severe dementia, nonfamily household members may never be consulted.
A blood relative fares only marginally better. A sister who has lived with her brother for decades -- a very common household -- will likely be called upon to make medical decisions if her sibling becomes incompetent. But if he had worked and she had managed the home, she's out of luck for Social Security survivor benefits.
There is precedent for Social Security survivor benefits to unmarried members of the same household. Both children and dependent parents have been eligible for survivor benefits since 1939. Why not extend these and the other benefits of marriage to any household with committed relationships?
Ira Rosofsky
New Haven, Feb. 23, 2009
Now I am actually not for Social Security at all or for other marriage privileging. But, if we're going to have Social Security, why should benefits be predicated on romantic success?
And especially when a whole group of partners who'd like to be married to the person they love cannot, based on the fact that we don't really have a separation between church and state, and the Bibleheads have issues with homosexuality.
UPDATE: NYT letter writer Ira's upcoming book, Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare
Funny Uncles In Funny Hats
Hasidic Jews are pedophiles, too, according to two men who were abused as boys -- one allegedly by the rabbi, reports NRP religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty. And the fundanutter Jews seem to cover it up to rival the Catholics:
Engelman parks his car across from the United Talmudical Academy, a hulking building on a desolate street. This was the yeshiva, or Jewish boys' school, that Engelman attended. Engelman says he was 8 years old, sitting in Hebrew class one day, when he was called to the principal's office. When he arrived, he says, Rabbi Avrohom Reichman told him to close the door."He motioned for me to get on his lap, and as soon as I got on the chair, he would swivel the chair from right to left, continuously," Engelman says. "Then he would start touching me while talking to me. He would start at my shoulders and work his way down to my genitals."
Engelman says this occurred twice a week for two months. He told no one for more than a decade. Reichman was, after all, a revered rabbi. Four years ago, he told his parents. And a year ago, when he heard that Reichman had allegedly abused several other boys, they confronted Reichman. When the school heard about it, they gave the rabbi a polygraph.
"He failed miserably," Engelman says. "So they told me, 'This guy is gone. This guy has to go.' "
But a few weeks later, a religious leader from the school approached Engelman's mother, Pearl. He posed an astonishing question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was the molestation?
She was speechless. Then she says, the man continued, " 'We found out there was no skin-to-skin contact, that it was through clothing.' So he's telling me, 'On a scale of 1 to 10, this was maybe a 2 or a 3, so what's the big fuss?' "
The school hired Reichman back. That was in July 2008 -- one week after Joel Engelmen turned 23 and could no longer bring a criminal or civil case against the rabbi.
An Open Secret
...The Reichman case is not isolated. Four ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Brooklyn have been sued or arrested for abusing boys in the past three years. That's a tiny fraction of the actual abuse, says Hella Winston, author of Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. She says that in researching her book, she encountered dozens of alleged victims who told her sexual abuse is an open secret in the Hasidic community. But the community is so insulated and the rabbis are so powerful that few dare to come forward.
"If I become known as an informer, then people also won't want to have anything to do with my family," she explains. "They won't want to marry my children, won't want to give me a job. This is the fear."
But more and more accusations against rabbis have begun to circulate. Last August, politician and radio talk show host Dov Hikind devoted an hourlong program to sexual abuse. He interviewed Pearl Engelman, who spoke under an alias, about her son's case.
The calls flooded in. Hikind, who is an Orthodox Jew himself, represents this area in the New York Assembly. He says after the show, people started showing up at his office with their stories.
"Fifty, 60, 70 people," he says, "but you got to remember for each person who comes forward, God only knows how many people are not coming forward."
Watch The Birdy! No -- The Other Birdy!
With all the economic mess jeopardizing all of us in this country, Obama White House has busied itself painting a big target on Rush Limbaugh's rather ample ass. The Libertarians have the White House's number:
"Instead of solving our economic problems by reducing spending during a recession and granting tax relief to job creators, Obama has instead chosen to kick mud at a radio entertainer," said (L.P. spoker Donnie) Ferguson. "That's not change or hope. It's a tired old political trick pulled out when you're making problems worse.""Libertarians may not always agree with Limbaugh, but you don't have to agree with him to see the White House is latching onto his celebrity hoping Americans will pay attention to that and not the economic damage Obama is causing," said Ferguson.
"While the White House is busying whining about an entertainer and Republicans are busy inserting their wasteful earmarks into the budget, Libertarians are busy cutting spending and creating jobs in their private businesses. It's clear the Libertarian Party is the only party with an agenda for renewal, not waste or petty spats," said Ferguson.
Meanwhile, the Libertarians might focus on putting out candidates who aren't big honking turkeys. But, the reality is, they're a political party like any other, pandering in their own ways -- just like the "party of small government," the Republicans, the party which brings us six of the top porkers in the Senate.
Twittering Mad As Hell
McCain's thumbs are leaving skid marks on his BlackBerry (or, perhaps, they're the thumbs of somebody on his staff). In The New York Times, MoDo chronicles McCain's Twitterings about the Porkulus:
Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. "quick peel me a grape," McCain twittered.
• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.
• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.
• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. "Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?" McCain tweeted.
• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.
• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.
• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn't want to "sustain" Vegas.)
• $2 million "for the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, "because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy."
• $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. "Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit," McCain tweeted sarcastically.
• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. "During these tough economic times with Americans out of work," McCain twittered.
• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. "REALLY?" McCain twittered.
• $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.
"When do we turn off the spigots?" Senator McCain said in his cri de coeur on the Senate floor. "Haven't we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future."
Book Covers I Like
I'm an advice columnist, not a designer, but at 21, I shot photostats at The Stat Store for Seymour Chwast, Tibor Kalman, and Roger and Pinky Black, and I developed a love for type and great design.
Book covers are a topic I've been thinking about lately, and I thought I'd post a few of the ones I found clever and/or striking while doing a little book cover browsing on Monday afternoon. (Click on the book to find out more about it.)
One thing most of these below have in common is beautifully clean design. They all know better than to scream "PLEASE! BUY ME!" with a lot of type, a lot of type styles, and other shows of desperation. They also don't use trendy type styles -- or mix a lot of type styles for no reason at all, as too many books do.
That gorgeous Frey cover is by the amazing Chip Kidd. More of his work here (turn the pages at the bottom). Veronique Vienne's book about Kidd's work is Chip Kidd (Monographics)
The one that is not clean, the last one, is clever. I don't know what it says on the cover of that book, but I'd make a beeline across the book store to find out. "Clutter" like this works -- it has to have a purpose. It has to make you pick up the book and want to examine it.
And that's what all of these do for me. 
One of the problems with book covers so many publishers put out is that they look like book covers are "supposed" to look -- which means they look like all the other books in the book store. Seth Godin has a wise take on how to create a breakthrough book cover, from his book, Unleashing the Ideavirus
The prevailing wisdom is to create a cover that's attractive but not offensive. Something that will attract attention from everyone and offend no one.This is nonsense, of course. It can't possibly attract everyone and offend no one. The very best cover images are like a cold glass of water thrown in your face. They break one or more rules of graphic design or industry rules of thumb. They play off existing images but change them in a vital and important way. They're loud. They attract the eye, but they also hold it. And most of all, they intrigue us enough that we need to understand what's inside: we set ourselves up to be exposed to the virus.
Of course, the point isn't to simply be offensive, but to push the envelope in just the right way -- in keeping with what's in the book, and in a way that breaks through the clutter in the book store.
It Isn't The Atheists Marching Against Gay Marriage
Journalism student Jason Miller wrote a good piece in the Kansas State paper on why bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional -- although he reaches a bit on "Christian-based morals," while being right about the particular belief against gay marriage:
First of all, I would like to make clear that my viewpoint is a legal one; too often this topic is obscured by religious and moral overtones, thus causing the true issue to become lost. The separation of church and state in America is clearly stated in our government, but rarely followed. The senate and house are predominately made up of men and women of Christian-based religions and therefore Christian-based morals are brought with them to Washington. If church and state were truly separated, then this issue would have been resolved decades ago when it first came to be an issue of national attention.If the state performs courthouse marriages, there should be no reason any couple of two consenting adults cannot be wed. Presidential candidates repeatedly acknowledge the issue when in company of those affected, but always differ that the issue is one to be resolved state by state. Currently, gay marriage is legal only in Massachusetts and Connecticut, while 30 states have gay marriage bans in their constitutions.
The states do not seem to be so "united" with the contrasting views allowed on an inalienable right. The idea that I, as a heterosexual, may vote on the ability of homosexuals' right to marry is dizzying. Personal beliefs on what constitute a marriage have absolutely no relevance to whether the government has the obligation to offer marriage to consenting adults.
While many would believe that gay couples are on a crusade to demean the term marriage, they are actually just looking for equal rights like their heterosexual counterparts. The term man and woman has been applied to marriage mostly with ties to procreation, but marriage is about much more than producing offspring. Married couples are bestowed with automatic inheritance rights. They enjoy the right to sue for loss of consortium if a third party injures their spouse; denying them services and companionship. Marriage rights afford spouses the right to not be denied hospital visitation or the right to make medical decisions for each other. Employers often offer medical coverage and benefits to spouses of employees. All of these rights are withheld from same sex couples because the government refuses to view their relationship as legally legitimate.
At this point you may be thinking that these issues are addressed in a civil union, but actually there are no federal protections included with a civil union. If a couple leaves the state their union was issued in and something happens in a state that does not recognize same sex unions, then the two might as well be strangers. The medical hospital and government will offer them absolutely no rights. St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City asked a state court to block John Langan from suing for a 2002 wrongful death and medical malpractice Tuesday, claiming that because he and Neal Conrad Spicehandler were a gay couple, their relationship could not be legally recognized. Langan and Spicehandler had been together for 15 years and were joined in a civil union in Vermont and had several legal documents reflecting this relationship.
According to Lambda Legal Defense, there are more than 1,400 legal rights conferred upon heterosexual married couples in the United States, ranging from financial, health and personal advantages. Leaving these legitimate couples out in the cold because of religious overtones in our government is unacceptable.
Beyond the legality of the term marriage lies the true heart of this argument; human rights. The right to wed is an inalienable right and the ability for adults of any sex to marry will not infringe on any rights currently in place. The argument against same sex marriage cannot be acknowledged as a legitimate stance from a legal perspective. Personal opinion and religious beliefs are consistently brought forward to fill in where truth and constitutional rights prove the point in favor. As the youth of America it is our responsibility to demand equal rights for all of our fellow citizens so that unequal treatment along any lines will be recognized as improper and rectified.
The Connecticut Supreme Court laid it out pretty well, too, becoming the second state that now grants gays and lesbians the right to marry. Here's the majority's decision (link to document here):
Supreme Court 1We conclude that, in light of the history of pernicious discrimination faced by gay men and lesbians, and because the institution of marriage carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil union does not embody, the segregation of heterosexual and homosexual couples into separate institutions constitutes a cognizable harm.
Supreme Court 2
We also conclude that our state scheme discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.. for the same reasons that classifications predicated on gender are considered quasi-suspect for purposes of the equal protection provisions of the United States Constitution, sexual orientation constitutes a quasi-suspect classification for purposes of the equal protection provisions of the state constitution, and therefore, our statutes discrimination against gay persons are subject to heightened or intermediate judicial scrutiny, and the state has failed to provide sufficient justification for excluding same-sex couples from the institution of marriage.
Supreme Court 3
A cognizable constitutional claim arises whenever the government singles out a group for differential treatment. The legislature has subjected gay persons to exactly that kind of differential treatment by creating a separate legal classification for same-sex couples who, like opposite-sex couples, with to have their relationship recognized under the law. Put differently, the civil union law entitles same-sex couples to all of the same rights as married couples except one.. that is, the freedom to marry, a right that "has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men and women" and "fundamental to our very existence and survival." Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. a, 12, 87 S, Ct. 1817, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010 (1967)
Supreme Court 4
We do not doubt that the civil union law was designed to benefit same-sex couples by providing them with legal rights that they previously did not have. If however, the intended effect of a law is to treat politically unpopular or historically disfavored minorities differently from persons in the majority or favored class, that law cannot evade constitutional review under the separate but equal doctrine. See Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. (1954)
Supreme Court 5
In such circumstances, the very existence of the classification gives credence to the perception that separate treatment is warranted for the same illegitimate reasons that gave rise to the past discrimination in the first place. Despite the truly laudable effort of the legislature in equalizing the legal rights afforded same-sex and opposite-sex couples, there is no doubt that civil unions enjoy a lesser status in our society than marriage. We therefore conclude that the plaintiffs have a constitutionally cognizable injury.. that is, the denial of the right to marry a same-sex partner.
Supreme Court 6
Like these once prevalent views, our conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection. Interpreting our state and national constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same-sex partner of their choice.
To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons, and another for all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these constitutional requirements, same-sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.
Harry Potter, Tool Of Zion
When you forget that the Muslim whack jobs have a Quran-based mandate to kill or convert the infidel (and that the Quran is to be taken literally), they can be pretty hilarious. On his Times of London blog, Daniel Finkelstein pulls quotes from a documentary shown December 15th on the Iranian News Channel, IRINN:
Its theme is how the Jews, battling for world supremacy, are using Harry Potter as a tool.Sample quote:
The Harry Potter film series reached the cinema following the success of the Zionist propaganda machine which made this little known author and her book famous......It can be viewed as a compilation of secrets and of theories used by the Zionist media.....And then there is this observation:
The Zionists support Harry Potter because he is the promised Messiah.
And I was starting to think it was one of The Jonas Brothers.
via Kate Coe
Be A Little Grateful, Huh?
Comedian Louis CK, on Conan, on The Spoiled Generation. Incidentally, my friend Sonja Lyubomirsky notes in her book, The How Of Happiness, that feeling grateful is one way people can feel markedly happier.
Great Technology, No Plug
Support Amy in the wake of the downturn in newspapers by buying some of the really great stuff on sale at Amy's Mall, like this butter bell, in the "Amy's Gadgets" section. I discovered this thing in France, bought it off Amazon here in Yankeeland (where it comes in various colors):
It's a fantastic innovation. You keep butter in it, in the smaller cup part, and then, fill the larger cup part with water, and it makes a water seal over the butter. This means that the butter keeps...without being refrigerated, and not just for a day but for weeks and even months. Try it -- you'll never have to use a cudgel on your butter again to get it to spread on your toast in the morning.
Mussel Beach
photo by Tamara Smith
Tamara's leg model is Philip Kulkulski, who I know from the ev psych world. He insists he was "not just goofing around":
I was working, looking for freshwater mussels on the bottom of French Creek (named by George Washington while he was on a mission for the British.) I have on a 7 mm wetsuit. It would take 30 pounds of lead to almost sink me. With turbid water and in deeper sections, I had to stick my legs out of the water to sink myself enough to see the bottom.
Here's some hot mussel porn from Farmer Todd, who Philip calls "a fish friend of mine." Synopsis from Philip:
The male mussel releases sperm into the current. The female filters the sperm out as she is feeding. (Aside: this tops the list for the worst sex life for any male creature.)
Aside from Amy:
It can really suck for male praying mantis.
Philip continues:
Later, the female mussel displays a lure, a fish tries to eat it, and the female mussel injects parasitic baby mussels into the fish's gills. The fish swims away (this is how mussels move upstream.) A week later, the mussels fall off and life goes on.
This Is Your Government On Drugs
We're like the sap who gives a junkie money to buy another bag -- which likely means we'll soon be paying big for his emergency room care when he gets hit by a truck while wandering around in a heroin stupor.
Bailout junkie GM's got its hand out -- again -- and cash crackwhore AIG is again back for more. A WSJ story has us taxpayers extending their welfare payment another $30 billion.
The Fed and Treasury said ... that the cost of not helping the company was judged to be too high."Given the systemic risk AIG continues to pose and the fragility of markets today, the potential cost to the economy and the taxpayer of government inaction would be extremely high," the joint statement said.
Here's how nuts the GM request is, from a Time magazine piece by Douglas A. McIntyre about how we may have to keep the big loser on life support indefinitely:
The part of the GM request for money that is very clear is that, in exchange for $16.6 billion, the company will fire 47,000 people. It may be the only example in U.S. history where the government will pay to put tens of thousands of its own citizens out on the street. Most of these people have probably been paying taxes to the IRS for years.The perversion of the government stepping in to run an industry to save the broader economy is that it must live with the consequences of its own actions, which in this case involves investing capital into a restructuring that increases the burden on social services, causes great suffering, and is a lesson to private enterprise that failure can, in some cases, be rewarded.
Great message: Make cars nobody wants to buy, and the U.S. taxpayer will pay you billions! Forcibly, that is.
Come on...bankruptcy is for the little guy -- all of us small-time, taxpaying, work-a-day schmos, that is, who are bailing out the big business failures.
The Next Financial Catastrophe
Jon Entine, in reason, predicts that the pension funds -- funds worth trillions of dollars -- will be the next to implode...and as soon as 2009, thanks to a sinking stock market and investment strategies influenced by political considerations:
Traditionally, public investments and union-based corporate pension funds were managed according to strict fiduciary principles designed to protect workers and taxpayers. For the most part they invested in safe government securities, such as bonds or U.S. Treasury bills. Professional managers oversaw the funds with little political interference.But during the last 30 years, state pension funds began playing the market, putting their money into riskier and riskier securities--first stocks, corporate bonds, and foreign investments, then real estate, private equity firms, and hedge funds. Concurrently, baby boomers whose politics were forged in the 1960s and '70s began using those pension funds to advance their social visions. Investments designed for the long-term welfare of retirees began to evolve into a political hammer. Some good occasionally came from the effort, as when companies were pushed to become more accountable in their practices. But advocacy groups often used their clout to direct money into pet social projects with dubious fiduciary prospects. Sometimes the money went to the very companies and financial instruments that, in the wake of the market meltdown, are now widely derided.
Many union funds and larger state pension plans screen stocks and investment opportunities based on what are known as "socially responsible investing," or SRI, principles. Instead of focusing solely on maximizing value, fund managers have used the economic clout of concentrated stock holdings to make a statement by divesting from companies that don't make it through certain "sin screens." These included companies involved with weapons, nuclear energy, tobacco, alcohol, natural resources, and genetic modifications on agriculture, many of which did well over the past decade. Stocks of public companies deemed to have poor records on labor, environmental issues, women's rights, and gay rights are also frequently screened out, as are corporations that do business with regimes that activists consider unsavory. In some cases, investments have been withheld altogether from some of the markets expected to best weather the current financial storm, including China and India, because of perceived transgressions.
Socially responsible investing now claims a market of more than $2 trillion, according to the Social Investment Forum, the trade group for social investors. There are dozens of mutual funds and investment advisory companies that incorporate ideological screens. Most of them are liberal, although there are now a few conservative funds and some based on religious principles, such as Islamic law. Activist treasurers and pension fund managers in numerous states and municipalities, most notably in California, New York, and Connecticut, have incorporated social screens into their investment strategies.
Many of these funds prospered in the 1990s, when the basic material stocks that they frowned upon swooned, while the favored sectors--mostly technology and financial stocks, which were considered "clean investments"--did great. But the technology and communications bust of 2000-02 knocked out one of SRI's pillars, and now the crash in financial stocks has destroyed the other. Despite much hype to the contrary, socially responsible stocks, as measured by major broad-based SRI stock funds, have significantly underperformed the market this decade, and some of the most aggressive pension funds that use "responsible" screens--such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System--have taken some of the largest hits.
The Latest Phone Scam
My friend Jim McCarthy, CEO of Goldstar.com (great discount tickets company he started with a bunch of his college buddies, which is now in an increasing number of cities) has a story to tell:
About a week ago, I started getting calls to my office phone from people I didn't know in area codes I'd never heard of.
It was about ten a day at first, but then it picked up. Finally, somebody left me a message saying that he had gotten a phone call playing a recorded message saying that his credit card had been de-activated and to re-activate it, he had to enter his banking info into the phone. This guy, like the others, called the number that appeared in caller ID and then realized it was just a person (me).
Being bright, he put two and two together and realized that I had been unknowingly entered as the caller ID on a bunch of bank card scam calls. We talked it over and pieced the whole thing together. Here's how it goes:
Somebody, probably offshore, probably in Russia, sets up an automatic phone bank and dials tons of random numbers in a certain area code. They create a custom message for each area code that includes the name of a local bank so as to add authenticity and increase the chance that the people getting the message bank there.
Most people, I suspect, either disregard the message, don't get it, figure it out or whatever and don't respond at all.
Some people, either unsure about the validity of the call or because they're just seeing missed calls on their phone, dial back the supposed caller ID number.
Other people, sadly, probably put their banking info into the system the scammers have set up.
What people might not realize is that anyone who has a PBX system can make the caller ID of a given phone be anything they want. These guys randomly chose my number (and I'm sure I'm not the only one), and as a result, I've gotten probably 3000 phone calls in the last week at my office phone.
Nobody with authority over this issue cares, including Jerry Brown's office, who literally told me that I was free to report it, but that they weren't going to do anything about it. Fair enough. I'm sure it happens a lot. It might be smart to be a little more artful about saying it though.
So of course, right after I discussed it with my pal in Boston who helped figure the whole thing out, I changed my message to include an explanation of what was happening and an exhortation not to give people any information.
So I'm not getting as many angry cursing messages anymore (actually, I'm mostly getting messages thanking me for clearing it up for them), but I'm still getting hundreds of calls a day, rendering my number pretty much useless if somebody really wants to call me.
Amazing, eh?
Pat on Consumerist was able to redirect fax spam back to the receptionist at the spammer's company:
For weeks now I have been receiving fax calls on my house line, a number I've had for over twenty years and now ported to VOIP; somehow, at some point, it got included on a telemarketing fax CD.I get them 3-4 times a day, each repeated 3 times, starting at 6 AM. Being awaken by the cheerful chirping of a fax when answering the phone isn't my cup of tea: Nobody calls me at six, so when it rings I always think there is some kind of emergency!
I finally decided to do something about this problem, and using the caller ID number as starting point, Google kindly provides me with the main number and name of the offending company.
The receptionist was not so receptive to my request: Seems they have many employees, and no interest in tracking down who is sending what, because they are very, very busy. Goodbye.
OK. Fine by me. One great advantage of my VOIP provider (Primus, for anyone who cares) is that their base package includes many interesting features, including the possibility to redirect any number to another. Thirty seconds later, I had the fax number redirected to the receptionist's number.
Since the redirection happens at the exchange, it will of course be a bit more difficult for them to track down the origin of these new, annoying calls than if they had been willing to listen to my complaint. They had their chance, and blew it.
I call this forcing corporate responsibility.
André Tascha-Lammé from killthecalls.com, suggests getting a fax.com number to track down the assholes who make those car warranty or credit card rate record-a-calls:
You most definitely DO NOT want to give out real information about who you are, such as your name, social security number, etc. Instead get yourself setup with an online fax account (see links on the right of each page of this site).Tell the telemarketer that you are REALLY interested in whatever overpriced garbage they are trying to sell you, but tell them that you must receive something in writing (use any excuse under the son - say you have a hearing impairment - whatever it takes). If they will send you something in writing (via facsimile or email), than you will have more information to track down the responsible parties or to file a complaint.
In the case of those awful car warranty calls, ask them for a copy of the warranty to be faxed or emailed to you. Unless they are a 100% scam-based outfit that is just taking money but not actually selling anything, the warranty paperwork will have the name and addres of the company underwriting the warranty. Bingo! There is the party you take to court or file a complaint against.
Don't be too optomistic about the results of any complaint. André did an FOIA request and found that the government pursues only the tiny-tiniest fraction of them. Which is why we all still get abused by these car warranty and credit card rate record-a-calls.
Gregg has turned them into a form of amusement. He gets somebody on the line and keeps them there with ridiculous questions as long as possible. He even figured out that VISA cards start with four numbers, starting with a 4. (He makes up a VISA number to give to the person on the phone.) It's possible that he's annoyed them into not calling him anymore, which seems to be the only thing that works, short of tracking them down and taking them to court.
Hey, Los Angeles, Walter Moore For Mayor On Tuesday
A vote for Walter Moore makes sense for a whole lot of reasons -- check them out here.
Because not so many people turn out for this election (March 3), Moore, who wrote Jamiel's Law, actually has some chance of getting elected, or at least getting into a run-off with our four-time Bar-failing, junketing, self-promoting, press-one-for English loser of a mayor.
Please do vote, and please do vote for Walter Moore.
And if you need a little bitty thing that's near and dear to my heart to get your ass to the polls, I ended up sitting next to Moore and his wife at a dinner (long after I was already a supporter), and they said they'd decided not to use annoyance calling (those record-a-calls) as a campaign strategy.
What was kind of amusing and somewhat surprising was that I'd talked with Moore and his wife for probably half an hour before I thought to ask, "What do you do?" That's when he said, "Oh, I'm running for mayor."
And I said, "Oh, wait...you're...I'm voting for you!..." And he was that Walter Moore.
His platform is not only sensible, it's amusing in parts. For example:
6. Your Mayor Should Never Squander Your Money Villaraigosa and the City Council squander your money on ridiculous boondoggles, as detailed on my "Spreadsheet of Shame" page (e.g., classes for employees on sphincter-control and lactation). I won't waste your money. I know how hard you work for every dollar. I know you want a Mayor who spends your tax money as if you were there, looking over his shoulder.
In Moore's words, "You will not believe how City Hall squanders your money. It works out to at least $4,949 per voter." Here are a few choice boondoggles from his Spreadsheet of Shame:
Sphincter-control classes for civil servants Cost: $18,000 Cost per voter: $0.04Villaraigosa's airfare and hotels per year
Cost: $200,000
Cost per voter: $0.45Rental monkeys - 10 years' rent, 3 monkeys
Cost: $1,000,0000
Cost per voter: $2.24Rental monkeys - feng shui consultant
Cost: $4,500
Cost per voter: $0.01Rental monkeys - monkey pen
Cost: $7,400,000
Cost per voter: $16.60
Other important votes -- AGAINST Prop B. Per former Daily News editor and current activist and stand-up guy, Ron Kaye, it's "a fraud" -- "nothing but a payoff to the IBEW and not a plan for solar energy." More on it here at his site.
To Kaye's credit, he's been working his ass off for months and months straight (I'm pretty sure for zero pay), because he's one of those guys who can't bear scumbags and injustice and power grabs dressed up as beneficial programs. And you know what? Me, neither. I put a big black dot in the no spot (#243) on my absentee ballot for measure B.
The rest of my votes:
For Trutanich for City Attorney.
For Nick Patsaouras for Controller.
For Harry "Craig" Wilson for City Council Member.
For Mike Stryer for LAUSD Board of Ed Member.
For Measure A.
AGAINST Measure B.
For Measure C and D.
AGAINST measure E.
Since I agreed with the LA Times' assessment of the Measures, here's their piece explaining their reasoning...and pretty much, mine.
Unfortunately, the LAT seems to have fired too many people to publish recommendations for the City Council seats. David Bell, president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, and Robert Blue, past chair of the Hollywood Studio District Neighborhood Council, take them to task for it here (for no pay from the cheapwads at the LAT for a "Blowback" piece, in case you're wondering).
Oh, and if I never, ever again have to hear Villaraigosa talking in Spanish when I call 311 (to get a pothole fixed), and telling me to "press one" for English...! Well, here it is in plain English: Whatever you were planning doing on Tuesday, please, please get your butt to the polls and vote for Walter Moore.
It's Herpes, Not Lung Cancer
Debra Cassens Weiss writes in the ABA Journal that a jury awarded a 56-year-old California woman $6.75 million -- from the 77-year-old man accused of giving her the herpes virus:
Lawyer Shaun Murphy disclosed the verdict, but identified his winning client only as Patricia, the Associated Press reports. Murphy said the man, whom he identified as Thomas, knew he had herpes for more than 25 years, but he didn't tell the woman or wear a condom during sex.Patricia was awarded $4 million in compensatory damages, $2.75 million in punitive damages and a BMW car that the defendant had given her as a gift, the story says.
The guy denies giving her the virus, by the way. And the lawyer said she was denied health insurance after contracting it.
Now, I wouldn't want herpes, and if he did give it to her, she's seems entitled to something or other, but $6.75 million, and the BMW, too?
via Overlawyered
Too Much Faith
Susan Jacoby writes in The New York Times about the problem with government funding of faith-based programs -- a bad idea started by Bill Clinton and continued by George Bush and Obama -- and the "widespread reluctance to question the basic assumption that government can spend money on religiously based enterprises without violating the First Amendment":
The fact is that many people served by these projects -- including children with absent fathers, addicts and prisoners -- form a captive audience. It cannot be easy to say no to a proselytizer if saying yes means a warm bed in a homeless shelter, extra help for a child or more privileges while serving jail time. Embrace Jesus as your savior and, who knows, you may get early parole.Furthermore, as Mr. Mohler points out, there is also a peril to religious independence from government in these programs. What government gives, government can take away. What happens if hard-pressed African-American churches serving poor communities -- where enthusiasm for faith-based initiatives has always been high and has only intensified during the current economic crisis -- come to rely on government money and the rug is pulled out from under them by a future administration?
Those who argue in favor of more religious involvement in government, and vice versa, always claim that the First Amendment does not mandate separation of church and state but simply prohibits state preference for any church. But even by that religion-infused standard, faith-based aid cannot help but favor some religions over others. For instance, nearly all non-Orthodox Jewish groups and liberal ecumenical religious organizations are opposed to government subsidy. How can it not violate the First Amendment to set up a program that even by default favors those groups eager to jump on the federal gravy train?
The other canker at the heart of faith-based initiatives is the assumption that religiously based programs work better than secular and government efforts. For the faithful, though, the efficacy of these programs is an article of faith, not a conclusion supported by objective evidence.
Back in 2003, there was a flurry of excitement surrounding a study that at first glance seemed to suggest that participants in Mr. Colson's prison programs in Texas had been rearrested at much lower rates than other released prisoners. There was just one problem: the study excluded everyone who quit the program in prison -- two-thirds of the starting group. It is as if the Department of Education were to measure the success of public schools by not counting dropouts. This ought to give pause to Mr. Obama, who has spoken so often about restoring evidence and science to public policy-making.
President Obama might also take a moment to reread the religious freedom act passed by the Virginia General Assembly in 1786, with strong support from both Baptists and freethinkers. That law, which prohibited tax support for religious teaching in public schools, became the template for the establishment clause of the First Amendment and also helped establish our American tradition of government freedom from religious interference and religious freedom from government interference.
Tolerance, Muslim-Style
In the IHT, the AP says the president of Chechnya, upon coming out of afternoon prayers at a mosque, explained "with chilling composure" why seven young women who'd been shot in the head deserved to die:
Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings."If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic.
The 32-year-old former militia leader is carrying out a campaign to impose Islamic values and strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya...
...Some in Russia say Kadyrov's attempt to create an Islamic society violates the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and a separation of church and state. But the Kremlin has given him its staunch backing, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check, and that has allowed him to impose his will.
...Kadyrov describes women as the property of their husbands and says their main role is to bear children. He encourages men to take more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Russia. Women and girls are now required to wear headscarves in all schools, universities and government offices.
I'll tolerate you believing in astrology, numerology, feng shui, or that there's a big man in the sky, and that he actually gives a shit about whether you gave somebody the finger in traffic today. However, the moment you seek to murder me because I don't care whether the moon is in Capricorn and I don't believe leaving the front and back doors open will cause more than a draft (feng shui nutters believe your luck will fly out the back door, or something like that)...that's when you should be locked up for quite some time, and probably put on an incapacitating dose of meds. And you probably will be -- unless you play the Muslim card.
To borrow from they used to say (silence = death) during the worst of the AIDs years in New York: Tolerance = death.
Gelty Conscience?
It's about the money, not the principle. What else can it be about when a doctor hides evidence that a drug seems harmful? Duff Wilson writes in The New York Times that AstraZeneca "buried" unfavorable studies of their psychiatric drug Seroquel:
In one of the documents, a 1997 e-mail message, Richard Lawrence, an AstraZeneca official, praised Lisa Arventis, the company's Seroquel project physician at the time, for minimizing adverse findings in a "cursed" study. He wrote: "Lisa has done a great 'smoke-and-mirrors job!' "Lawyers suing AstraZeneca, a British drug maker whose United States headquarters are in Delaware, said the documents show it tried to hide the diabetes link for nearly a decade.
"AstraZeneca knew about the risk of weight gain and diabetes in 2000 and not only failed to warn physicians and patients but marketed in a way that represented there was no risk," Edward F. Blizzard, a Houston-based lead lawyer on the cases, said in a conference call with reporters.
