We Also Don't Poo In Public, Lady With "Period Pride"
I forgot to blog this when I saw it -- the story about a woman thinking that pride involves letting your excretions just flow out in public, and never mind who sees them. Char Adams writes at People:
Kiran Gandhi, who has played drums for singer M.I.A. and Thievery Corporation, decided to run the London Marathon without a tampon. Gandhi let her blood flow freely to raise awareness about women who have no access to feminine products and to encourage women to not be embarrassed about their periods...."I ran with blood dripping down my legs for sisters who don't have access to tampons and sisters who, despite cramping and pain, hide it away and pretend like it doesn't exist."
Does she also go without a roof over her head -- sleep out on the curb -- because some "sisters" go without housing? How about food? Does she eat out of Dumpsters because some "sisters" go without refrigerators full of food?
After the race, she took photos with her family and friends, wearing her period-stained running pants proudly.Gandhi tells PEOPLE that she decided to run without a tampon to highlight the sentiment of period-shaming and the language surrounding women's menstrual cycles. She wrote on her site that "on the marathon course, sexism can be beaten."
It isn't "sexism" that makes us not want to see your period running down your legs; it's our evolved sense of disgust at any bodily excretion, an adaptation that causes our ancestors to live while those who lacked this adaptation and played around in yicky stuff, likely died of awful diseases.
There's a terrific paper on disgust,"Microbes, Mating, and Morality: Individual Differences in Three Functional Domains of Disgust," by Josh Tybur, Debra Lieberman, and Vladas Griskevicius that I reference in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." That's the link to the abstract above, but one of the researchers has made a full copy available on his research website. It's the first link that comes up on Google.
Just Say No To State-Licensed Relationships -- All Of Them
There's a piece by Max Borders on privatizing marriage at the Foundation for Economic Education:
When we say "marriage," we might be referring to:A. a commitment a couple enters into as a rite or acknowledgment within a religious institution or community group (private); or
B. a legal relationship that two people enter into, which the state currently licenses (public).
Now, the questions that follow are: Does the government need to be involved in A? The near-universal answer in the United States is no. But does the government need to be as involved as it is in B? Here's where the debate gets going.
I think the government can and should get out of B, and everyone will be better for it. This is what I mean by marriage privatization.
Some argue that marriage is "irreducibly public." For Jennifer Roback Morse, it has to do with the fate of children and families. For Shikha Dalmia, it has to do with the specter of increased government involvement, a reinflamed culture war, and a curious concern about religious institutions creating their own marriage laws.
...What about Dalmia's concern that in the absence of state marriage, "every aspect of a couple's relationship would have to be contractually worked out from scratch in advance"? Never mind that some people would see being able to work out the details of a contract governing their lives as a good thing (for one, it might prevent ugly divorce proceedings). There is no reason to think that all the functions normal, unmarried couples with children and property have in terms of recourse to "default" law would not still be available. Not only would simple legal templates for private marriage emerge, but states could establish default civil unions in the absence of couples pursuing private alternatives.
...Indeed, if people did not like some default option -- as they might not now -- there would be better incentives for couples to anticipate the eventualities of marital life. People would have to settle questions involving cohabitation, property, and children just as they do for retirement and for death. Millions of gay couples had to do this prior to the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality. Millions of unmarried couples do it today. The difference is that there would be a set of private marriage choices in a layer atop the default, just as people may opt for private arbitration in lieu of government courts.
...I like full privatization because "marriage" is currently a crazy quilt of special privileges and goodies that everybody wants access to -- unmarried people be damned. But marriage should confer neither special favors nor goodies from the state. We can quibble about who is to be at the bedside of a dying loved one. Beyond that, marriage (under definition B) is mostly about equal access to government-granted privileges.
Slippy
Well-oiled links.
Total Abdication Of Responsibility By Cops
A young, mentally ill man -- jailed in Virginia since April without bail over a $5 theft of food and drink -- was found dead in his jail cell.
He was accused of stealing a Mountain Dew, Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake from a 7-Eleven.
Jon Swaine writes for The Guardian
Jamycheal Mitchell, who had mental health problems, was discovered lying on the floor of his cell by guards early last Wednesday, according to authorities. While his body is still awaiting an autopsy, senior prison officials said his death was not being treated as suspicious.
His family believes he starved to death.
"His body failed," said Roxanne Adams, Mitchell's aunt. "It is extraordinary. The person I saw deceased was not even the same person." Adams, who is a registered nurse, said Mitchell had practically no muscle mass left by the time of his death....Officials said that after his arrest, Mitchell was taken to Portsmouth city jail, where he stayed for almost three weeks before being transferred across the city to the regional jail on 11 May.
Ten days after that, the court clerk said, Judge Morton Whitlow ruled Mitchell was not competent to stand trial and ordered that he be transferred to Eastern State hospital, a state-run mental health facility in Williamsburg, for treatment.
The clerk said that typically in such cases "we do an order to restore the defendant to competence, send it to the hospital, and when the hospital has a bed, we do a transportation order, and he's taken to the hospital." Whitlow reiterated the order on 31 July and was due to review the case again on 4 September, according to the clerk.
But the hospital said it had no vacancy and the 24-year-old was therefore detained in jail until his death on 19 August, according to Adams, Mitchell's aunt, who said she had tried to assist the hospitalisation process herself but was left frustrated.
"He was just deteriorating so fast," she said. "I kept calling the jail, but they said they couldn't transfer him because there were no available beds. So I called Eastern State, too, and people there said they didn't know anything about the request or not having bed availability."
When asked which state agency was ultimately responsible for ensuring Mitchell was transferred to the hospital, the court clerk said: "It's hard to tell who's responsible for it."
Officials from the court, the police department and the jail could not explain why Mitchell was not given the opportunity to be released on bail.
A mentally ill man is in a cell under your care -- and yes, you actually have to care for him. This may take more than just shoving a plate of food through the bars.
Of course, it is terrible and inhumane that we lock a mentally ill person up in a cage and just leave them there without help. If this had been a relative of somebody on the force, you'd better believe a bed would have been found for him.
This man should have been a patient, not an inmate.
And I have to say, while I am not for government as a big teat for all citizens, I sure am for caring for the disabled, the elderly, and the mentally ill. That's what makes for a humane society.
Taubes: In Weight Loss Advice, The Ridiculous Assumption That Hunger Is Not An Issue
I spend my whole day eating fat -- bacon fat, kale cooked in bacon fat, an omelet with cheese and pate, coffee made with half 'n' half; and steak, sausage, cheese, and green beans swimming in butter. Oh, also, a tablespoon of coconut oil warmed in half 'n' half a few times a day, whenever my brain feels like it's on fire from intense activity.
I have never felt better.
And I'm never hungry the way I would get when I ate low-fat/high-carb -- a hunger that made me feel like I could stop and devour a road sign (and anyone unlucky enough to be standing next to it at the time).
On the subject of hunger's effect on diet maintenance, Gary Taubes has an op-ed in The New York Times that describes a study, taking place toward the end of World War Ii, that placed men on a starvation diet:
For 24 weeks, these men were semi-starved, fed not quite 1,600 calories a day of foods chosen to represent the fare of European famine areas: "whole-wheat bread, potatoes, cereals and considerable amounts of turnips and cabbage" with "token amounts" of meat and dairy.As diets go, it was what nutritionists today would consider a low-calorie, and very low-fat diet, with only 17 percent of calories coming from fat.
There were horrible physical effects -- and psychological ones. Two men had breakdowns. And then, when they were allowed to eat normally, they consumed "prodigious" amounts of food...eating themselves into "post-starvation obesity," in the researchers' words.
That humans or any other organism will lose weight if starved sufficiently has never been news. The trick, if such a thing exists, is finding a way to do it without hunger so weight loss can be sustained indefinitely. A selling point for carbohydrate-restricted diets has always been that you can eat to satiety; counting calories is unnecessary, so long as carbohydrates are mostly avoided.But this advice raises a pair of obvious questions, or at least it should: If people on low-carb diets eat less (the conventional explanation for any loss of fat that ensues), why aren't they hungry? Where's the semi-starvation neurosis? And if they don't eat less, why do they lose weight? It implies a mechanism of weight loss other than caloric deprivation and suggests that the carbohydrates and fats consumed make a difference.
Questions like these about the relationship between calories, macronutrients and hunger have haunted nutrition and obesity research since the late 1940s. But rarely are they asked. We believe so implicitly in the rationale of eat less, move more, that we (at least those of us who are lean) will implicitly fault the obese for their failures to sustain a calorie-restricted regimen, without ever apparently asking ourselves whether we could sustain it either. I have a colleague who spent his research career studying hunger. Asking people to eat less, he says, is like asking them to breathe less. It sounds reasonable, so long as you don't expect them to keep it up for long.
Much of the obesity research for the past century has focused on elucidating behavioral techniques that could induce the obese to eat less, tolerate hunger better, and so, by this logic, lose weight. The obesity epidemic suggests that it has failed.
For those who believe that hunger is somehow all in the mind, rather than a powerful biological response to caloric deprivation, it is tempting to wish on them the fate that the goddess Ceres bestowed on King Erysichthon of Thessaly in Greek mythology. She "devised a punishment to rouse men's pity... to torment him with baleful Hunger." Erysichthon then eats himself out of castle and kingdom and ultimately dies by feeding, "little by little, on his own body."
Amazon link to books by Gary Taubes.
By the way, I suspect there are a number of people who are suffering from mood issues who could shift that by not going hungry all the time on what the government told us was a healthy diet.
The Tim Hunt Witch Hunt
Absolutely terrific long (and worthy) read in Commentary by Jonathan Foreman about the disgusting condemnation of Sir Tim Hunt for things he did not actually say, do, or mean:
The coup de grâce came in July with Mensch's release of a short recording from the luncheon. One can clearly hear applause and laughter in the room as Hunt ends his speech. Apparently out of a hundred guests from around the world, most of them women, the only people who were offended by Hunt's remarks were a handful of British and American science writers, all of whom happen to be diversity obsessives.The most generous interpretation of Connie St. Louis's bizarre behavior is that she was too intellectually limited to recognize irony that was somehow obvious to an audience composed mostly of people who spoke English as a second language. A leak of the unedited version of her "Stop Defending Tim Hunt" piece for the Guardian is so garbled and incoherent that this actually seems plausible, though it also makes you wonder how and why she came to be teaching journalism even at a third-rate institution like London's City University.
That's a question that began to be asked quite widely a few weeks after St. Louis sent her tweets and became a celebrity on the back of her denunciations of Hunt. The Daily Mail discovered that St. Louis had lied on the curriculum vitae she had supplied for the City University website. The CV claims that she is "an award-winning freelance broadcaster, journalist, writer, and scientist" who "writes for numerous outlets, including the Independent, Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Sunday Times..." But when the Mail's Guy Adams went through 20 years of digital archives for the Independent, the Sunday Times, and the Mail he could find no articles carrying her byline. Before the current scandal, her work for the Guardian had been limited to a single piece in 2013. Oddly, the BBC and the Guardian have yet to report not only this evidence pertaining to her credibility, but also all the contradictory evidence concerning her claims about Hunt's speech in Seoul.
...For all his naiveté, and despite the support he was beginning to receive, Hunt knew that his professional life was over. "I'm finished," he said in the interview. "I had hoped to do a lot more to help promote science...but I cannot see how than can happen. I have become toxic." Unfortunately, this is indeed the case. Since his comments came to light, Hunt has been disinvited from major scientific and medical conferences. As Dame Athene Donald wrote: "His ability to go and inspire the young has been unnecessarily destroyed."
At the time of this writing, Hunt has not been reinstated as an honorary professor at University College, London. Nor is he likely to be. Provost Michael Arthur, as if keen to demonstrate the cowardice and lack of intellectual integrity he and so many others confuse with political virtue and good public relations, recently told the press that to reinstate Hunt would send out "entirely the wrong signal."
Right -- like that truth and justice matter?
There is still no truth or justice in the case of Bora Zivkovic.
Oh, and via @LouiseMensch, here's another time Deborah Blum's veracity was in question -- a comment from astronomy and cosmology writer Timothy Ferris on an interview with her. The interview was later edited to exclude her remark about him, which seems to have all the truth her claims about Tim Hunt did.
via @DanTGilbert
Lumpy
Unmashed links.
What Are Your Rituals?
Ritual isn't the superstitious crap it's often made out to be. The same goes for ceremony and ceremonies.
I've been reading research on ritual -- on how ritual can, for example, decrease negative feelings a person has about themself and increase feelings of control.
So ritual -- per the findings I've been reading -- is actually effective and smart.
It would help me to know what rituals you perform, when, and why. Or if you know of interesting rituals other people perform -- famous people or ordinary Joes.
The Pointer Sisters (And Brothers)
I find that a lot of people who write me for advice have as their main problem a habit of picking partners with the "I'll just close my eyes and hope it turns out okay" method. When they get treated badly, they then blame the person they were with -- same as they did the last person and the person before that.
Taking responsibility ultimately tends to have better outcomes than placing blame.
This quote is also on Pinterest with a bunch of other quotes, mostly from "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
"Compassionate Egalitarianism" Has Made Hugo Chavez's Daughter A Billionaire
Love that term, which I got from Glenn Reynolds on a post about printing money going "haywire" in Venezuela.
Socialism works! That is, if you're one of the people in charge. Hugo Chavez's ambassador daughter is Venezuela's richest woman, reports the Daily Mail:
During his lifetime, Hugo Chavez denounced wealthy individuals, once railing against the rich for being 'lazy.''The rich don't work, they're lazy,' he railed in a speech in 2010. 'Every day they go drinking whiskey - almost every day - and drugs, cocaine, they travel.'
After her father's death in 2013 and until her appointment to the United Nations as alternate ambassador, Chavez continued to live in the presidential mansion, forcing the current president Nicolas Maduro to remain at the vice presidential home.
El Comercio reported in 2014 that opposition congressman Carlos Berrisbeitía claimed the daughters of Chavez and Maduro were costing the Venezuelan state $3.6 million a day.
Victim Chic
Victimhood has become quite stylish these days. Jamie Bartlett writes at Little Atoms:
In a 1999 article for the New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma argued that there is strange contentment that comes with feeling like you're oppressed (rather than actually being oppressed which really is not nice). Victims, he said, "cannot escape a momentary feeling of vicarious virtue." He claims to have felt it himself - much to his own shame - as a Jew visiting Auschwitz, each time a German walked past. Buruma even thought he detected a shade of envy in privileged groups that they too can't be victims of similarly sufficient magnitude. This, he stressed, was not to deny, belittle or take pleasure in the historical suffering of many groups, much less the present suffering. What he spotted was a bigger trend at play, where 'communal identity is based on sentimental solidarity of remembered victimhood'. People were increasingly desirous to wear the scars of others, almost as a badge of honour.Buruma thought people liked to feel like society's victims, even where they were personally doing rather well, because modern life hollows out our identities. Hyper-capitalism is reducing meaningful beliefs and identity to fast food restaurants, sterile movies and empty gestures. But people want and perhaps need the authentic, the real, and the genuine in life. And so in an external world in which everything seems so empty, we turn inward in a search for authenticity. The only thing that can deliver authenticity is our feelings. And what more powerful feeling than victimhood and struggle?
Nothing more than feelings
It's quite true that feelings have become something of a modern obsession (Will Davies in his excellent new book about happiness calls feelings 'the new religion'). They are being elevated to the highest measure of what it means to be human: what matters is how we feel about something. And a growing number of writers - most recently Mick Hume in his new book 'Trigger Warning' - think that people's feelings are fast becoming the only test of whether something should be allowed. Prioritising feelings invariably means that if those precious feelings are hurt, upset, or offended, then these things should be banned or stopped.
The science of sex differences suggests that this victimism is feminism-driven. Researcher Joyce Benenson writes in her book Warriors and Worriers
Linkiest
Sticky substances.
TSA Worker Arrested: When Sexual Assault As Usual Becomes Criminal
My TSA News Blog colleague in civil liberties, Lisa Simeone, is just so right on in how she explained the arrest of a TSA thug for the molestation of a 22-year-old woman at La Guardia airport:
A TSA agent at LaGuardia Airport in New York has been arrested for sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman. The only reason he was arrested was because he molested her in a bathroom. If he had followed standard operating procedure, he would've molested her at the checkpoint, where it's usually done.
The WABC report. Much more from the NYPost's Philip Messing:
A college student was sexually molested at LaGuardia Airport by a uniformed TSA agent who demanded she go into a bathroom with him after she got off a flight so she could be searched for a weapon, sources told The Post.The 22-year-old victim, who is Korean, had gotten off a Southwest Airlines flight from Salt Lake City around 8 p.m.Tuesday when the agent, identified as Maxie Oquendo, 40, approached her near the B4 gate of Terminal B.
Ogendo then asked her to follow him so she could be searched to see if she was carrying a knife or a weapon.
The woman followed him up an escalator to third-floor, near a lounge and a bank of elevators, where he "lured" her inside a bathroom under the pretext of conducting a legitimate search, sources said.
Once inside the bathroom, he allegedly began to molest her.
First, the victim told authorities, he asked her to lift her shirt and began touching her.
Then, he instructed her to unzip her pants and touched her again, the source said.He then led her outside and she reported the incident.
Here's Julie Borowski on her molestation by a TSA thug back in 2012:
Here's a woman sobbing during her TSA molestation:
Here's my op-ed about mine.
The Everyday Phrases Deemed Racist By Murderer Vester Lee Flanagan
In news reports about this horrible murder of the two on the news crew, there were bits about Flanagan's claim that the newscaster he gunned down, Alison Parker, made "racist" statements. Here's what they were, from David Gardner at the Evening Standard:
He even launched an official complaint against Parker when she was working at the station as an intern in 2013.The internal memo branding Parker a racist was thrown out by TV executives and it was Flanagan who was eventually axed for his inappropriate behaviour.
But the imagined slight festered with Flanagan, who vowed to take revenge.
And hours after he gunned down Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward during a live broadcast on Wednesday, Flanagan made it clear through his Twitter account that he still held a grudge.
"Alison made racist comments," Flanagan tweeted as he was on the run from the police before turning his gun on himself. "They hired her after that??" he added.
His twisted post was referring to the run-in he had with Parker two-and-a-half years ago over her comments in the newsroom.
"One was something about 'swinging' by some place; the other was out in the 'field,'" said a report on the dispute by assistant news director Greg Baldwin, who looked into the allegations in response to Flanagan's unsuccessful discrimination lawsuit against the station.
Stunned colleagues of Parker insisted yesterday that she couldn't have been less like a racist.
That's field, as in "cotton field," and then there was an "incident" where a boss brought in a watermelon for the news team, which he also decided was some racist call-out of him.
And via @instapundit, ABC has still not released a 23-page manifesto Flanagan sent them.
These Rate Hikes, A Few Years Back, Would Have Been Seen As Reason Obamacare Was Needed
But -- oops -- they're the result of Obamacare.
From an IBD editorial:
When insurers requested huge rate hikes for their 2016 ObamaCare plans, we were told not to worry because state regulators would force them down. But that's not happening. Death spiral, anyone?In Alaska, the state regulator approved a 39.6% rate increase for Moda Health, and Premera Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alaska got a 38.7% hike.
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee asked for and got a 36.3% boost in premiums. Oregon's insurance commissioner approved a 25.6% increase for Moda, the biggest insurer on its ObamaCare exchange. In Kansas, ObamaCare enrollees will face increases of up to 25.4%.
In the pre-ObamaCare days, rate hikes of this magnitude, no matter how rare, would have been cited as proof positive of the need for ObamaCare-type changes. But these eye-popping jumps are showing up across the country, and ObamaCare itself is to blame.The law's mixture of heavy-handed market regulations, mandated benefits, taxes and fees have sharply increased the cost of insurance, with no end in sight.
Undaunted, ObamaCare backers say that in many states, regulators succeeded in cutting back on some requests, and that premiums in some states didn't go up all that much. But calling a 14% increase a victory because it wasn't 21% isn't a victory for those still faced with a substantially more expensive product.
I still have health care; I just can no longer afford much more than doctor's visits, because, post-Obamacare, I have a high deductible. I hear this from a lot of people.
So, I paid into the system -- my HMO -- for decades, with the idea that I'd get in and pay in when I was at my youngest and healthiest. It seemed like the prudent and responsible thing to do. Little did I know that the government would wreck -- sorry, are we supposed to say "improve"? -- my health care by passing a gigantic change to our medical care in this country without even bothering to read it.
Linkin Town Car
Suicide do re me.
"If You See Something, Say Something" -- Uh...Except If You See A Cop
The ACLU is representing Roxbury (Boston) resident Mary Holmes in her case against two Boston transit cops for police brutality and violation of her constitutional right to free speech. From the ACLU's website:
Ms. Holmes was pepper-sprayed, beaten, and arrested by the officers because she spoke out to prevent MBTA police from abusing a person in her community.In March 2014, Ms. Holmes was at the Dudley Square MBTA station in Roxbury when she saw Officer Jennifer Garvey scream at and shove an older Black woman. The situation worried Ms. Holmes so she tried to calm the woman and asked Officer Garvey to stop being so aggressive. When these efforts failed, she called 9-1-1 for help. In response, Officer Garvey and her partner, Officer Alfred Trinh, pepper-sprayed Ms. Holmes in the face, beat her with a metal baton, and arrested her, handcuffing her hands behind her back while forcing her to the ground.
"The MBTA has signs everywhere telling people 'if you see something, say something.' This is exactly what Ms. Holmes did. She saw something wrong, and she spoke out. We need more people to follow Ms. Holmes' lead and do the same," said Jessie Rossman, staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts. "Unfortunately, the officers' reactions are part of a broader, troubling trend, in which police officers mistreat individuals exercising their constitutional rights. It has to stop."
There's video at both the ACLU link and this Boston.com link. Adam Vaccaro writes:
The incident was captured on video at the MBTA station (included at the end of this article). The footage shows Holmes being pepper sprayed as she speaks on the phone, hit with a baton, and thrown to the ground.Holmes was held overnight because she could not make bail, according to the suit. The next day, the suit says, Holmes was charged with assault and battery on a public employee, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped months later when prosecutors saw video of the incident, according to the complaint.
Looking at the video, it looks like what the cop got pissed off at was Holmes getting on her phone to 911 to complain about them.
The Pussies Across The Pond (And What Happens When You Give Little Boys Toy Guns)
Well, I guess we should feel a little better that we aren't the only nation of fragile little flowers -- England has joined us in the idiocy.
There, a little girl got a letter sent to her parents over the "violent" design content of her lunchbox.
Neo-nazi storm troopers kicking a dog, perhaps?
Nope. A classic image of Wonder Woman.
Siam Goorwich writes for Metro.co.uk:
According to Redditor twines18, who posted a copy of the letter and offending lunchbox on Imgur, the lunchbox contravened the schools dress code which states children aren't allowed to bring 'violent images' into the building.The letter states: 'We have defined "violent characters" as those who solve problems using violence. Super heroes certainly fall into that category.'
Here's the offending lunchbox (which, by the way, I think is fabulous and want to have so I can carry it as a purse).
You know who else "solves problems using violence"? Big American young men who save train cars full of strangers from being gunned down like livestock by a murderer.
Mona Charen writes at NRO that manliness is an unsung trait of the train heroes. She makes some good points about boy-type play:
They also seem to have been rambunctious boys -- a trait that tends to be pathologized in modern America. The Sacramento Bee recounts:Friends from age 7, they played with their siblings and neighbors up and down Woodknoll Way, favoring games such as Airsoft, in which participants shoot each other with realistic-looking replica guns that fire plastic pellets, said Peter Skarlatos, Alek's older brother . . .'We'd basically turn this neighborhood into a war zone,' the brother said, sitting on the shady front porch of his family's ranch house Sunday afternoon. 'Spencer and Alek were all action-oriented kinds of guys.'
When I was raising three boys, I received a few looks askance for permitting them to use play guns and to imagine themselves as soldiers. Some of the more sensitive parents in our area disapproved of the Power Rangers, a cartoonish show featuring teenaged superheroes battling goofy villains. These parents sincerely believed that we must suppress all violent tendencies in our children, especially our sons, to make a gentler world. Our boys relished the Power Rangers, with our blessing.
Researcher Joyce Benenson made the point in her book on evolved sex differences (per her interviews of nursery school teachers and aides), that if you don't let little boys have toy guns, they will invariably end up shooting "bullets" out of a doll's head.
Boys wanting to engage in play combat is part of what it means to be male -- physiologically (with higher testosterone, for example) and psychologically. To take the toy guns away suggests that guns are the problem. Well, guns don't shoot people; sick fuckers shoot people. And if you take away their guns, they'll find some other way to kill.
Slinky
Links in a very tight dress.
"Millions Of Narcissistic Little Jerks..." (Welcome To College Freshman Orientation)
James Richardson writes at Medium, "My Generation is Just Awful, and Colleges are Making it Worse."
He's talking about speech codes and the parental culture that helped give rise to them:
Millions of narcissistic little jerks, reared by an uncommonly hysterical generation who instilled in their children the adamantine conviction that they are exceptional and necessarily worthy of respect, enrolled this week as freshman in universities across the United States.There was a moment when this exercise might have tested these students, made better and new through confrontation with the uncomfortable and occasionally outrageous thought.
Now, instead, they will pass the next four years of pseudo-scholarship as they have the eighteen that preceded them: swaddled in institutionalized political correctness and protected always from the unconventional or provocative.
For example:
These speech codes stretch from the ludicrous, like Jacksonville State University's policy that students not offend anyone, to the plainly unlawful.
This doesn't just affect those on college campuses:
The result isn't simply an emotionally delicate dolt, but a broader culture at jeopardy of losing the most foundational of human rights. Today's over-sensitivity to offense means these students may be entirely desensitized to the loss of speech tomorrow, even in the face of gross government encroachment.
A Barton Hinkle writes at Reason:
A regime that protects everyone's free-speech rights can allow both the gay-rights advocate and the Christian fundamentalist to speak her mind. But a regime concerned with protecting people's feelings inevitably will hurt either the fundamentalist's feelings (by allowing only the gay-rights advocate to speak) or the advocate's feelings (by allowing only the fundamentalist to speak). Unless, of course, it hurts both of their feelings by letting neither of them speak. No matter what, though, it allows the censors to dismiss some people's claims for consideration as less worthy. (You sometimes get the sense that's exactly what the campus censors want.)What's more, any regime that "privileges" feelings over rights inevitably will ignore the very real emotional pain experienced by another important group: those who cherish individual liberty and abhor censorship of any kind. There are still a few of them left - even on the modern American campus.
Keying Someone's Car Is More Effective If You Consult A Dictionary First
A woman keyed her ex-boyfriend and friend's cars, believing that they'd gotten involved, writing "WORE."
Oopsy.
From John Nickerson in the Stamford Advocate:
Lt. Diedrich Hohn said that early on the morning of Aug. 7, the cars of Csapilla's ex-boyfriend and one of her girlfriend's had been keyed and their tires punctured in the city. Scratched into the paint on the woman's car was the word "wore." Figuring there should have been a "h" in the word, police believed they had arrived at a motive for the crime, Hohn said.Hohn said Csapilla started sending harassing texts to her ex-boyfriend, alluding to the fact that she keyed the cars, and during at least one conversation admitted to him that she did it, Hohn said.
...When she left police headquarters, she took a picture of the building and put it up on the Snapchat social media site with the comment "Stamford police have nothing on me." As is the case with Snapchat, the picture and text were taken down only seconds later, but police were told by at least one recipient of the message that she posted the picture and comment.
"Unbeknownst to her, we did have enough and we obtained two arrest warrants from a judge and took her into custody at her home," Hohn said.
As I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" about my hate mail:
A common error in e-mailed hate-rants, "your an idiot," tends to convey that you are an idiot, or at least not all that literate, turning what was supposed to be a withering attack into a source of amusement for the target.
The Government Does Not Belong In The Wallets Or Underpants Of Consenting Adults
Scott Shackford writes at Reason about the shutdown by the Department of Homeland "Security" of gay escort site Rentboy.com. (Official complaint here.)
And he's right:
The forced shutdown of Rentboy.com is not small potatoes, not that it should matter when it comes to deciding when to fight for individual liberty.
A few important points from his piece:
•There is absolutely no pretense of pretending there are any "victims" here. Nobody is charged with "trafficking." There is absolutely nothing in the complaint that even hints at the idea that there is anything nonconsensual happening, that so much as a single human being is harmed, even tangentially, by letting men pay for sex with other men.•As usual, follow the money. Want to know the real reason why DHS is involved? Want to know why it took the government decades to go after a site titled "Rentboy.com"? It's on page three of the complaint against Rentboy. Between 2010 and 2015 the site had more than $10 million in gross proceeds. The feds are looking to seize $1.4 million from six bank accounts related to the raid. This money, thanks to federal asset forfeiture rules, would likely be split among the agencies involved, including the New York Police Department, who offered up their assistance in the raid even though there was probably no need for both agencies.
•The world is not New York City. ... Say you're a pudgy, lonely 55-year-old man in southern Illinois with a fetish for something very kinky. You're a minority within a minority. What do you do if you can't find somebody around you who shares your interest? DHS, Brooklyn's U.S. attorney's office, and a bunch of cops in New York City think you should just do without.
•Remember the names Susan Ruiz, Kelly Currie, Tyler Smith, and Melanie Hendry. Ruiz is the DHS special agent who thoroughly investigated the site and filed the complaint that led to these arrests. Currie, Smith, and Hendry are all attorneys with the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Eastern District of New York (the same office that brought us our current Attorney General Loretta Lynch). They are the attorneys going after the seven people arrested for prostitution charges. They will be responsible for destroying these lives and taking their property for facilitating sex work. One of the defendants is an immigrant who applied for a work visa, so all sorts of bad things could happen to him. If I accomplish nothing else, I want this bust to show up on Google searches of their names to show how callous and reprehensible the four of them are. Congratulations, folks. You've helped stop a lonely old man in Bolivia from getting a handjob from a hot twink! That's your contribution to American justice. Be sure to put it on your resumes!
It is absolutely disgusting and ridiculous that prostitution is illegal. As I've posted here before; it's your body; you should be able to rent it out if you want to -- without any interference from the government.
UPDATE: Much more insight and speculation on the RentBoy takedown from EmptyWheel.
Dlinkquent
I see you out back, smoking pot behind the Dumpster. (Just don't set anything on fire.)
Hey, Dumb University Leaders: Free Speech Is Not The Same Thing As Sexual Assault
First of all, let me be totally clear that I find a couple of these messages, spray-painted on sheets and hung from an off-campus house, very funny -- "Freshmen daughter drop off" and "Go ahead and drop off mom too":
WRIC.com has the story -- about Old Dominion University and signs hanging "from a private residence."
Yet, here's a school spokestalinist, Ellen Nuefeldt, Vice President of Student Engagement and Enrollment Services:
"Messages like the ones displayed [Friday] by a few students on the balcony of their private residence are not and will not tolerated. The moment University staff became aware of these banners, they worked to have them removed. At ODU, we foster a community of respect and dignity and these messages sickened us. They are not representative of our 3,000 faculty and staff, 25,000 students and our 130,000 alumni..."
Well, why the hell should they be expected to be? You, Ellen, didn't put them out as part of your job. Others put them out as part of their right to free speech.
Also -- thank you -- they amused me.
The President of ODU, John R. Broderick, sent WAVY.com this (dull) statement Saturday night -- one which was sent to all faculty, staff and students. I'll just pull an excerpt:
A young lady I talked to earlier today courageously described the true meaning of the hurt this caused. She thought seriously about going back home.
Women were not allowed in certain colleges -- or certain graduate programs -- for quite some time. And all it takes for this girlie to contemplate packing it in is a couple of signs on sheets hanging from a building?
This fragile flower doesn't seem ready for college -- let alone adult society.
via @CHSommers (who, because she's a little classier than I am, called the signs "a bit loutish")
The War On...Salad? Drug Warriors Stage A Pot Raid -- Oops -- On An Okra Farm
Matt Agorist writes for The Free Thought Project:
Arlington, TX -- In an effort to protect the citizens of Texas, a massive military-style raid was conducted on the Garden of Eden organic farm and commune.On August 2, 2013, nearly two dozen heavily armed SWAT officers stormed this peaceful farm in search of a plant. They found lots of plants, but much to their dismay, they did not find the plant they were looking for.
Countless tax dollars and months of half-cocked planning went down the drain that day after it was discovered that police incompetence had led these troops into a battle to which there can be no victor.
...After their 20 soldiers had stormed the garden, the Arlington police found not one single gram of marijuana.
What they did find, however, was a myriad of fruits and vegetables; and they seized them. After seemingly disgusted in themselves for such an ignorant and ill-conceived plan, the officers heroically proceeded to confiscate, "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers."
Since they couldn't arrest anyone for growing pot, these public servants decided that they didn't want to go home empty-handed, so they began writing citations for code violations, like untrimmed bushes and tires laying around. Then they arrested a member of the commune, Quinn Eaker, for an outstanding traffic ticket.
Now, just over two years later, the Garden of Eden farm is seeking damages, and rightfully so. This peaceful group was held at gunpoint and terrorized for hours because of the incompetence of the Arlington PD and the immoral nature of the war on drugs.
The video:
And she's right -- this can happen to anyone. And we are all in this together. Or we should be.
Gumby
Rubberylinks.
Feminism In A Bottle: The Self-Cloistered Adult Babies On American Campuses
American feminists are too busy with campaigns to "Free The Nipple" and demanding "trigger warnings" for classic literature to care about women whose rights are being violated in places like Iran, Yemen, Egypt, and Cambodia. (The exception seems to be women in Gaza, etc., because, well, that's sanctioned hate against the Jooos.)
Christina Hoff Sommers writes at The Daily Telegraph about American women's overblown idea of the horrible injustices they are suffering. But first, here's how it works for women in places like Iran:
In August 2014, 12 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard charged into 28-year-old artist Atena Farghadani's house, blindfolded her, and took her to prison.She had posted a satirical cartoon on Facebook to protest proposed legislation to restrict birth control and women's rights. Farghadani has since been found guilty of "spreading propaganda" and "insulting members of parliament through paintings." She has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
As for American feminists:
It's not that they don't feel bad for women in places like Iran or Yemen. They do. But they believe they share a similar fate.And they can cite a litany of victim statistics from their gender studies class that shows their plight. Someone needs to tell them that most of those statistics are specious and that, although the threat of harm is a human constant, they are among the most liberated and privileged -- and safest -- people on earth.
She makes it clear:
It is not my view that because women in countries like Iran or Afghanistan have it so much worse, Western women should tolerate less serious injustices at home. Emphatically they should not.But too often, today's gender activists are not fighting injustice, but fighting phantom epidemics and nursing petty grievances. Two leading feminist hashtags of 2015 are #FreeTheNipples and #LovetheLines. The former is a campaign to desexualise women's breasts; the latter promotes stretch-mark acceptance. If the imprisoned women of Iran and Afghanistan were free to tweet, what would they say about these struggles?
Several years ago the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum created a small furore when she noted with disapproval that "feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States." Her academic colleagues pounced: Gayatri Spivak, professor of comparative literature at Columbia, accused Nussbaum of "flag waving" and of being on a "civilising mission."
I'm reminded of how the women truly in danger of rape are poor inner-city women and especially, homeless women. Where's the activism for rape crisis centers for them? No, never mind -- we've got the largely unused rape crisis centers on campus. That's all that matters.
How To Have Your Personhood Removed By The Police -- Even Though You're No Danger To The Rest Of Us
Jeffrey Tucker has a compelling long read at Liberty.me about his capture, handcuffing, and jailing -- how he was caged like an animal over a bit of government paperwork from (as an officer contended) the wrong government department:
There's a new traffic law in most states called the "move over" rule. When the police are stopped on the right hand side of the road, you are to move over to the left lane. This makes the police feel safer. For my part, I had never heard of this law or never had it really tested in my driving behavior. The police had set up a trap, stopping there on the side just to test compliance. I moved over a bit but not enough.The lights flashed behind me, and I pulled over. I gave the officer my license. Another police car arrived. He returned and told me to step out of the car, and asked me why my license was suspended. I was shocked. Then I remembered I was one day late in paying a parking ticket. The lady at the counter told me there might be an issue with my license, so she gave me an official paper labelled "Official Notice of Reinstatement of Driver's License," and put the official seal on it.
Remembering this, I told the police that they could find this document in my car. They looked because at this point I was not allowed to move. They brought the paper back and stared at it. One policeman said it was clearly legitimate. The other said, no this was issued by the municipal court, not the Department of Motor Vehicles, so he couldn't accept it. I protested but he had made his decision.
He stared at me and said: put your hands behind your back. I was cuffed and led to the car. I protested that my computer, my phone, all my stuff was in the car. None of this mattered. They searched my car for drugs, guns, liquor, or whatever. They found an unlabelled bottle of pills (a blood thinner) and interrogated me about it, strongly implying that having an unmarked bottle of pills is illegal (is it? I don't know).
One policeman seemed to take a slight liking to me at some point, so he let me keep the pills. Then he said he would do me a favor. He undid the cuffs -- they were very tight and hurting my wrists -- and put my hands in front, re-cuffed me, and loosened them. This did make a huge difference.
My car would be towed to a wrecker lot, he explained. If I get out on bail, I could pay to get it back. Would the lot still be open by then? I asked. The policeman had no answer, no concern. And this is generally what you come to realize. Once arrested, you are a captured animal. Nothing else matters. You are no longer a consumer, a citizen, a person with a job, a normal human being. You are now just fodder, a thing they can use as they see fit.
The notion that you have any rights at all once you are arrested is a joke. What happens to you is entirely the decision of your captors.
They searched him thoroughly. He wondered why.
They want to find any excuse, any small reason to intensifying charges, spread more misery and wreckage. One of the guards seemed less excited than the others, and I asked him how he can stand to watch this kind of thing happen all day, every day. He told me that you just get used to it.
How did we get here?
Generally, the right says the problem is the left, and the left says it is the right. And the masses of people follow these claims and push their agendas, which are always about building the law code, higher, thicker, tougher, more and more horrible.And yet, every law ends in the right of a tiny elite to capture you, pillage you, and, ultimately, kill you. Every addition to the law code intensifies the violence.
After I was freed -- but of course not really freed -- and reclaimed my car, I ended up at McDonalds, where I was greeted like a visiting dignitary, even though they knew not my name and had never seen me before. I was immediately offered free fries and drink and invited to order the hamburger of my dreams.
There it was in living color, the astonishing contrast between the jail and the fast food restaurant. The former is a hell, created by law. The latter, a product of the emergent social order and civilized by exchange and commerce, is the closest thing to heaven that this world offers.
Laws are dangerous. They can be used to turn each of us into criminals even though we aren't dangerous to anyone.
Don't be smug about how innocent you are. Again, you can be thrown into a cage (and possibly be murdered by some actual criminal) because the lady who stamped your "reinstatement of license" form was from the wrong government department.
Oh, and you're probably guilty of at least three felonies as you move throughout your day, dropping the kids off at school, going to work, and picking up your dry cleaning.
We've really gone off the rails in this country -- a country started on the premise of civil liberties, yet now denies them left and right.
Sai Gets FOIA Docs On The TSA
Lisa Simeone posts at TSA News Blog on some of what's been revealed through the docs released in the request by Sai, "an intrepid, indefatigable young man." As Simeone writes, "He has been forced to tangle with the TSA more than once, when the agency's workers have bullied, harassed, and illegally detained him."
From his FOIA request:
Here's the TSA's old version defining an administrative search:"Administrative Search: A search conducted as part of a regulatory plan in furtherance of a specified non-law enforcement government purpose, such as to determine compliance with TSA regulations or to prevent the carriage of threat items or entry of an unauthorized person into the sterile area or on board an aircraft."And here's the new version:
"Administrative Search: A search conducted without a warrant as part of a regulatory plan in furtherance of a specified non-law enforcement government purpose, such as to determine compliance with TSA regulations or to prevent the carriage of threat items or entry of an unauthorized person into the sterile area or to screen passengers entering any public conveyance."The words "without a warrant" and "any public conveyance" have been added. Our readers already know that the TSA has always claimed the power to search "any public conveyance" (see VIPR), but most people still don't know it. Now you can see it in black and white. ("Without a warrant" has always been the case since the weasely term "administrative search" was dreamed up by lawyers, because, meh, Fourth Amendment, Schmourth Amendment.)
The TSA is also now claiming the right to search your reading materials. Yep, books, pamphlets, personal documents -- no matter how personal those documents are -- you name it, the TSA now claims the right to conduct a warrantless search on your personal, private information. This claim is new. Up to this point, though many TSA agents have gone through people's personal documents, it's been illegal for them to do so (see Steven Bierfeldt). Now, it would appear, by magic, it's suddenly okay.
Inquisition, anyone?
Check out this pointless thuggery from last year -- an attempt by the pretend cops known as the TSA to screen a man after he gets off the plane. Here's the YouTube description. The TSA thug pictured is Alex Grossman:
They tried to get me to do additional screening of my Body after I was already off the plane and headed out of the airport. I ended up leaving the airport without incident from the Denver police.
More on this from City Pages. Kahler Nygard discusses it here.
Hot Buttered Links
Greasy goodness.
How To Know Whether You're A Celebrity
Tweet of news blurb in the NY Post.
A Twitter Thing: Weird False Accusations By Creeps Who Pretend To Know Me
I guess this is a new thing on Twitter -- find a total stranger, act like you know them, and accuse them of something that couldn't possibly be true but that sounds ugly.
In this case, I've been accused of using "the n word" while "in our French class." Um, this is some yahoo from Somalia. Some Muslim guy who wants "a woman who is halal in the streets but haram in the sheets." Lovely. 
He looks to be about 20. I'm 51 and from suburban Detroit. Do you think @Ramadan_Abdul98 has a time machine?
Here -- just below -- is the first conversation, from Saturday morning. I saw in my Twitter notifications that they'd tagged me -- for some reason. Clearly a mistake -- so I thought. (See my request to "unsubscribe" at the bottom of this first conversation.)
It sure isn't me they're talking about. I don't say "the n word" -- ever. I got called a "kike" and more growing up. It was painful. I wouldn't use hateful language like that on anyone.
I also can barely open a Pellegrino bottle. The idea that I'd break any nose that isn't made out of cake and frosting -- well, it's not physically likely. Also, I'm not violent -- just hostile!...to the deserving.)
Second convo: 
And here we have creep #2: 
So...what's your guess on whether Creep #2 and I were in "French class" together in the Detroit suburb I grew up in -- the one that basically got populated by "white flight" from downtown Detroit?
Donald Trump Is A Property-Thieving Thug (Trying To Use The Cover Of Law, Of Course)
David Boaz of Cato Institute writes in The Guardian of Trump's disgusting attempts to use eminent domain to separate lawful owners from their property:
For more than 30 years Vera Coking lived in a three-story house just off the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Donald Trump built his 22-story Trump Plaza next door. In the mid-1990s Trump wanted to build a limousine parking lot for the hotel, so he bought several nearby properties. But three owners, including the by then elderly and widowed Ms Coking, refused to sell.As his daughter Ivanka said in introducing him at his campaign announcement, Donald Trump doesn't take no for an answer.
Trump turned to a government agency - the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) - to take Coking's property....
Peter Banin and his brother owned another building on the block. A few months after they paid $500,000 to purchase the building for a pawn shop, CRDA offered them $174,000 and told them to leave the property. A Russian immigrant, Banin said: "I knew they could do this in Russia, but not here. I would understand if they needed it for an airport runway, but for a casino?"
Luckily, Trump was thwarted in his attempt. He and the vile CRDA ended up losing in court. And it wasn't his only time trying to use eminent domain to slime people out of their lawfully-owned land. He tried to do it to five business owners in Bridgeport, CT, in 1994.
Ilya Somin writes at Volokh/WaPo:
On this issue, unlike most others, Trump has been consistent over time. When the Supreme Court narrowly upheld "economic development" takings that transfer property to private parties in the 2005 Kelo case, the ruling was widely denounced on both left and right. But Trump defended it stating that "I happen to agree with it 100%. if you have a person living in an area that's not even necessarily a good area, and ... government wants to build a tremendous economic development, where a lot of people are going to be put to work and ... create thousands upon thousands of jobs and beautification and lots of other things, I think it happens to be good." The feral cats who currently occupy the condemned land probably agree. Trump did not merely claim that the decision was legally correct; he argued that it was "good" to give government the power to forcibly displace homeowners and small businesses and transfer their property to influential developers on the theory that doing so might promote "economic development."Both the Kelo case and Trump's efforts to benefit from eminent domain exemplify a longstanding pattern under which that power is used to take land away from the political weak and transfer it to influential private interests. In the long run, as cities like Detroit have learned, such assaults on property rights undermine development far more than they promote it.
A thug in an expensive suit is still a thug.
Columbus
That place or person's name has absolutely nothing linky to do with anything. Just thought I'd come clean on that.
Government Is Your Mommy: Birth Control Version
Elizabeth Nolan Brown asks at Reason, "When Does a Rubber Cup Require a Prescription? When It May Help Prevent Pregnancy."
There are two kinds of cups you stick up in your vagina (if you happen to have a vagina) -- one is a cup to catch your period (the DivaCup) and the other is to prevent pregnancy (the diaphragm). Only one of these requires a prescription.
Keep in mind the diaphragm contains no hormones or medication of any kind. It is literally just a fucking cup, albeit one designed to be inserted in the vagina to prevent pregnancy. In the old days, requiring a prescription for diaphragms made some sense, as they came in different sizes and women needed to be fitted by a doctor. But the new diaphragm, sold under the brand name Caya, is a one-size-fits-all affair."This is basically a DivaCup for sperm refraction," wrote another commenter, referring to the silicone menstrual cups sold--prescription free--as an alternative to tampons. "I don't get why I can buy a DivaCup at Whole Foods, but I can't pick up one of these babies."
"Come. The. Fuck. On," commented yet another. "Why is this by prescription only?" It's not like we haven't been shoving tampons into our hoo-has forever. I'm pretty sure we could figure this out."
Of course, what it's really about is money and religion:
Gynecologists, women's health centers, and Caya's manufacturers can all make more money if the device requires a prescription. Democrats don't mind it being prescription only, because then they can crow about how they've helped women get "free" diaphragms through Obamacare. And social conservatives tend to balk at any form of birth-control being made more easily accessible.
And note that "and religion."
No, the Republicans are not the party of smaller government. But that sounds good, huh?
(This is why, politically, I describe myself as "a Neither.")
It's Crony Capitalism, Not Capitalism, That's The Problem
Ana Swanson writes in the WaPo that not all inequality is created equal:
A new study that has been accepted by the Journal of Comparative Economics helps resolve this debate. Using an inventive new way to measure billionaire wealth, Sutirtha Bagchi of Villanova University and Jan Svejnar of Columbia University find that it's not the level of inequality that matters for growth so much as the reason that inequality happened in the first place.Specifically, when billionaires get their wealth because of political connections, that wealth inequality tends to drag on the broader economy, the study finds. But when billionaires get their wealth through the market -- through business activities that are not related to the government -- it does not.
Obama's Mess
He's presided over a Democratic party disaster, writes Jeff Greenfield at Politico, leaving his party in the worst shape it's been in since The Great Depression:
As historians begin to assess Barack Obama's record as president, there's at least one legacy he'll leave that will indeed be historic--but not in the way he would have hoped. Even as Democrats look favorably ahead to the presidential landscape of 2016, the strength in the Electoral College belies huge losses across much of the country. In fact, no president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics...When Barack Obama leaves office in January 2017 the Democratic Party will have ceded vast sections of the country to Republicans, and will be left with a weak bench of high-level elected officials. It is, in fact, so bleak a record that even if the Democrats hold the White House and retake the Senate in 2016, the party's wounds will remain deep and enduring, threatening the enactment of anything like a "progressive" agenda across much of the nation and eliminating nearly a decade's worth of rising stars who might help strengthen the party in elections ahead.
Many of the top dogs in the Dem wing are old fuckers:
When Obama came into the White House, it seemed like the Democrats had turned a corner generationally; at just 47, he was one of the youngest men to be elected as president. But the party has struggled to build a new generation of leaders around him. Eight years later, when he leaves office in 2017 at 55, he'll actually be one of the party's only leaders not eligible for Social Security. Even as the party has recently captured more young voters at the ballot box in presidential elections, its leaders are increasingly of an entirely different generation; most of the party's leaders will fade from the national scene in the years ahead. Its two leading presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are 67 and 73. The sitting vice president, Joe Biden, is 72. The Democratic House leader, Nancy Pelosi, is 75; House Whip Steny Hoyer is 76 and caucus Chair James Clyburn is 75, as is Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, who will retire next year. It's a party that will be turning to a new generation of leaders in the coming years--and yet, there are precious few looking around the nation's state houses, U.S. House or Senate seats.
And there's more:
Barack Obama took office in 2009 with 60 Democrats in the Senate--counting two independents who caucused with the party--and 257 House members. Today, there are 46 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, the worst showing since the first year after the Reagan landslide. Across the Capitol, there are 188 Democrats in the House, giving Republicans their best showing since Herbert Hoover took the White House in 1929.This is, however, the tip of the iceberg. When you look at the states, the collapse of the party's fortunes are worse. Republicans now hold 31 governorships, nine more than they held when Obama was inaugurated.
Now turn to state legislatures--although if you're a loyal Democrat, you may want to avert your eyes. In 2009, Democrats were in full control of 27 state legislatures; Republicans held full power in 14. Now? The GOP is in full control of 30 state legislatures; Democrats hold full power in just 11. In 24 states, Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the legislature--giving them total control over the political process. That increased power at the state level has already led to serious consequences for Democrats, for their political future and for their goals.
"It's almost a crime," Democratic Party Vice Chair Donna Brazile says. "We have been absolutely decimated at the state and local level."
Any of you here Obama voters? What do you think of how he's done?
Nippy
Linky with cold toes in July. Oh, it is August? Don't be so picky.
There Are In Men In Bigger Trouble Than The Marital Kind Over The Ashley Madison Leak
On Alternet, Adam Johnson writes:
The Ashley Madison leaks, as many observers began noting yesterday afternoon, will have real world, devastating consequences on thousands of users worldwide. When the dust clears, it will be most vulnerable among us -- LGBT and women in repressive countries -- that will ultimately pay the price. And unlike Josh Duggar, their price will not be paid in snarky internet comments but rather loss of employment, family, and, in some cases, possibly their lives.
As one anonymous gay man in Saudi Arabia noted on reddit after the leak was exposed last month:
I May Get Stoned to Death for Gay Sex (Gay Man from Saudi Arabia Who Used Ashley Madison for Hookups)I am from a country where homosexuality carries the death penalty. I studied in America the last several years and used Ashley Madison during that time. (For those of you who haven't been following the story, Ashley Madison has been hacked and its users' names and addresses are on the verge of being exposed.) I was single, but used it because I am gay; gay sex is punishable by death in my home country so I wanted to keep my hookups extremely discreet. I only used AM to hook up with single guys.
Most of you are Westerners in countries that are relatively liberal on LGBT issues. For those of you who are older--try to think back to a time 10 or 20 years again when homosexuality was intensely stigmatized. Multiply that horrible feeling of stigma by a million, and add the threat of beheading/stoning. That's why I used AM to have discreet encounters.
I BEG you all to spread this message. Perhaps the hackers will take notice of it, and then, I can tell them to (at the very least) exercise discretion in their information dump (i.e. leave the single gay arab guy out of it). As of now, I plan on leaving the Kingdom and never returning once I have the $ for a plane ticket. Though I have no place to go, no real friends, and no job.
UPDATE: I have gotten enough money to get car to Riyadh and a plane ticket to the US. I got a PM from a redditor who is in the Kingdom and a paralegal at a a major US law firm with an office in Riyadh (I will be traveling there this weekend). The firm's has a big pro bono practice that specializes in refugees! And it is very pro LGBT; tor he redditis going to arrange for me to meet with an associate to explain my association. It appears I'm in good hands. I will let you all know more soon! It looks like I'll be out of here in a few days with a concrete plan of action.
UPDATE: A bunch of people are accusing me of lying because 'AM is only for married people.' AM is actually about "discreet hookups," and hence its main appeal is to married people, since premarital sex isn't stigmatized in the West. But it also appeals to gays from regressive cultures, and their website has an option specifically for gays, as you can figure out if you do 5 minutes of research.
The idiots who claim I'm lying are projecting from personal experience, and forgetting that, for many gay people around the world, being outed is a life-threatening experience. The risks for us are greater than the risks for married Westerners cheating on their spouses. That's why AM's promise of discretion appeals to us. (Seriously, you think that there are no gay Muslims on there out of 37 million users?) In any case, that people would accuse me of being a liar on the basis of no evidence--at a time when I stand a serious chance of being tortured, murdered, or exiled--makes me pessimistic about humanity.
Also, a warning on Internet "privacy," which is -- as it's always been -- tenuous. As I write in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," "You're only anonymous on the Internet because nobody's tried very hard to figure out who you are."
Advice Goddess Free Swim
It's Thursday night, and I'm a little tired, so you pick the topics. I'll post more on Friday.
P.S. One link per comment or my spam filter will eat your post.
Why Is Acceptable To Find Rape Funny When It Happens To Men?
Check out @FilmDrunk's right-on tweet, slapping the NY Post for their cover.
The crime that you're going to prison for is immaterial. We don't sentence people to be sexually assaulted in prison, and it isn't funny when it happens.
And truth be told, I've tossed out these sorts of jokes in the past, but then I put a couple of brain cells on this and realized I was being horrible.
And sure, this is what the Post does, but maybe if more of us change our thinking on this, they'll think twice before "Ha ha ha"-ing men being sexually assaulted -- in prison or elsewhere.
The "Acceptable" Ruin Of Men
Since due process for accusations of sexual assault has been removed from California campuses, men's lives can be ruined by a mere accusation.
In an Ashe Schow piece at WashEx -- "California continues descent into campus sexual assault madness" -- she reports that community colleges are about to join in:
Now the state wants to allow community colleges to expel students for sexual misconduct even if the accuser isn't a student and the alleged incident occurred off-campus.This would bring community colleges -- which generally have fewer resources -- in line with traditional four-year universities in California, which already abide by this law. Currently, community colleges must expel or suspend a student only if the behavior was directly related to college activities.
The California legislature on Monday sent the bill to Gov. Jerry Brown, a leading proponent of putting more responsibility on universities for handling sexual assault accusations.
Yes-means-yes policies already define sexual consent in a way that will lead to more students being accused of sexual misconduct for non-criminal activities.
What this means for men who are accused -- and note that this doesn't mean that they're necessarily guilty -- is that they're being shut out of any sort of future...on the strength of mere accusation alone:
As one male student told Buzzfeed: "At first I thought they didn't want me to participate in campus activities. Then I thought they didn't want me to graduate. Now they don't want me to have a job or be part of society. Do they want me to commit suicide? Is that what they want me to do? What is the endgame?"
No one who is truly for equal rights and fairness can be in favor of what's happening on college campuses right now, with the removal of due process from men.
How To Care For Kids Isn't Like How To Build A Hadron Collider
There was this tweet a few weeks ago:
@Garybham
Church-exempt (no licensing or inspection) day care centers: in #Alabama 'Anyone can open one'
Ridiculous worry. Ask anthropologist Sarah Hrdy -- mothers and others (like grandmothers, brothers, sisters, neighbors) have been caring for others' children for, like...forever! Throughout human history. Somehow, the human race has survived.
That's probably because we have innate knowledge of how to care for rather than kill small humans.
Yet, the government is all over childcare with regulations on top of regulations, which Mercatus researcher Diana Thomas writes in USNews is driving up the cost of child care for those who can least afford it:
For most lower- and middle-class families, non-parental child care in a daycare center is a luxury that is beyond reach. In Mississippi, the cost of sending a child to daycare equals roughly 25 percent of the income of a family living at the poverty level. In Massachusetts, the same service costs on average 86 percent of the income of a family at the poverty level. The high cost of formal child care at a daycare center leaves most families looking for other options - and those options often include unlicensed, black-market providers.There's a two-class system of child care in this country: high-cost, regulated care for high-income families and lower-cost, unregulated care for lower-income families.
In a new working paper published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Devon Gorry and I investigate what causes the high cost of child care in this country. We find that the regulatory burden daycare centers must meet is one of the primary causes of the high cost of care. We argue that the most effective way for policymakers to end the existing two-class system of early childhood caregiving is to eliminate ineffective rules that don't improve quality but significantly increase the cost of child care.
via @reasonpolicy
Gloopy
Wonkalinks.
The Enviro-Delusions Of LA Mayor Garcetti
Our LA Mayor, Eric Garcetti, wants to put LA on a "road diet," removing car lanes and using the space from them for bus-only lanes, wider sidewalks or dedicated bicycle lanes.
Garcetti has this delusional fantasy of making LA like Stockholm, where it's apparently reasonable to get around by bike. In Los Angeles, it is not.
Bruce Feldman, a Santa Monica luxury gift business owner in Santa Monica -- where, as his bio blurb says, "roads already are on a diet and congestion has never been worse," has a right-on op-ed in the LA Times.
"Mr. Mayor, LA is not Stockholm," writes Feldman. "Cyclists make up just 2% of all road traffic, and Los Angeles County covers 4,800 square miles":
Why do you and your advisors think that what works in Stockholm, with its entirely different character, would work here? Could you explain this to me and the millions of other Southern Californians who every day need to get to their business appointments, doctors, schools?We need different solutions to our traffic problems than the ones on the table now. As it happens, I have some suggestions:
You could start by making our major east-west corridors, particularly Pico and Olympic boulevards, one way, thus eliminating the need for a center turn lane.
You also could prohibit parking on all major streets, one-way or otherwise, and build pocket lots every block or so in business areas. There's a 50-car metered lot at Pico Boulevard and Midvale Avenue near the Westside Pavilion and another, larger one farther east on Pico near La Peer Drive. These provide more parking than is possible on the street. Why don't you build metered lots along all major corridors, reserving our streets for cars and, yes, buses and bicycles?
Here's another simple idea: run buses far more frequently on all routes from early in the morning until late at night. Studies have shown that people will take buses if they run at intervals of three to no more than seven minutes.
Love this:
I would be happy to discuss my views with you in person, but I live and work in Santa Monica and don't have 90 minutes to drive each way to City Hall. Apologies!
I rode my bike and rollerskated all over New York City when I lived there. That's because New York is compact enough for that to work. This is not the case here. We also have subways here now -- that idiotically stop in the middle of the city. I live in Venice, but I would have to drive in traffic to Culver City to take the subway to downtown. Again, a problem of scale here -- one the mayor of the city appears to have failed to notice.
Immigration: There Were Entrance Requirements For Our Grandparents, Etc.
Thomas Sowell on illegal immigration:
The endlessly repeated argument that most Americans are the descendants of immigrants ignores the fact that most Americans are NOT the descendants of ILLEGAL immigrants. Millions of immigrants from Europe had to stop at Ellis Island, and had to meet medical and other criteria before being allowed to go any further.
And consider how immigration is working in Europe:
Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.
Milton Friedman (in an email) about immigration and the welfare state:
Immigration is a particularly difficult subject. There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state it is a different story: the supply of immigrants will become infinite. Your proposal that someone only be able to come for employment is a good one but it would not solve the problem completely. The real hitch is in denying social benefits to the immigrants who are here. That is very hard to do, much harder than you would think as we have found out in California.
You can't let everybody in if everybody who comes in can get free money. Benefits for illegals is breaking California now (although it's just one of many things that is) and it will do the same to any state that becomes a living and working place for illegals.
Iran Comes To Colorado With The Government Taking Away A Family's Land
Melissa Quinn writes at The Daily Signal that Glendale, Colorado sent Nasrin Kholghy a letter informing her of an eminent domain hearing on taking her family's property to turn it into a retail, entertainment, and dining complex:
The news brought Kholghy back to Iran, the country she emigrated from alone in the 1970s."When I got the letter of them being able to use eminent domain, I really, really felt--we lost a lot of land in Iran when the revolution happened," Kholghy said. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, it's happening again. We're losing it again.'"
Eminent domain is a power given to the government to take private property for a public use. In Kholghy's case, the city had its eyes on six acres of property her family owned.
The property contains the family's 30-year-old rug business, Authentic Persian and Oriental Rugs.
Last month, the city offered to buy the Kholghys' property for $11 million. But the family rejected the offer, saying instead they wanted to remain in the community they've called home since Kholghy came to the United States 40 years ago.
Read the amazing story of how the family became rug dealers. Back when Kholghy had first arrived in America with her siblings, the Iran hostage crisis was going on:
52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, and it became impossible for Kholghy's parents to send their children money.But Kholghy's dad found a way to help his kids.
"My father called and said, 'The only thing that Iran is letting out is rugs, so I'm going to send you guys some rugs, and then sell them and eat and go to school and pay tuition. Just use it,'" Kholghy recalled.
The city deemed the property "blighted." This look "blighted" to you?
For a city to take over a property, it should pose a very substantial danger to others. And no, not just a danger to others' livelihoods if the government does not enable its yanking from the rightful owners.
Oh, and note that the family wanted to develop their property but were stopped repeatedly by the city. (Hmm, I wonder why.)
Crony capitalism, anyone?
Goofy
Linkyclownshoes.
Which Is Best For Pain: Tylenol, Advil, Or Aspirin? (And What About Krill Oil?)
Helpful (and very good) explainer piece at Vox by Julia Belluz, based on a research by Oxford's Andrew Moore:
Moore has done a number of systematic reviews on over-the-counter pain medications, looking at all the available evidence to figure out which ones work best for various problems. I asked him to describe the overall success rates for the most common three: acetaminophen (like Tylenol), ibuprofen (like Advil), and aspirin.Like all good evidence-based medicine thinkers, he was able to provide a very practical answer: "If you're talking about aspirin in doses of 500 to 1,000 mg or two tablets, 30 percent of people get relief from acute pain. For acetaminophen at doses of 500 to 1,000 mg, about 40 percent have a success. For ibuprofen, in its normal formulation at something around 400 mg or two tablets, about 50 percent have success."
Now, Moore was referring here to acute pain that strikes after a specific event, like a surgery, a cut, or a burn, but his message was simple: Ibuprofen seems to work best, followed by acetaminophen, and then aspirin.
Also, per a BMJ meta-analysis (study of the studies out there):
Acetaminophen didn't seem to help most sufferers of chronic low back pain, and that it barely alleviates pain in people with osteoarthritis. As the researchers wrote, "We found that [acetaminophen] is ineffective on both pain and disability outcomes for low back pain in the immediate and short term and is not clinically superior to placebo on both pain and disability outcomes for osteoarthritis."They also noted that patients on acetaminophen "are nearly four times more likely to have abnormal results on liver function tests compared with those taking oral placebo."
Personally -- and I have no idea why this is -- I have found that the NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory) Naproxen (500 mg) is the only thing I've tried that can push back an impending migraine and allow me to function. I only occasionally have migraines, and I'm careful not to take it too often. (It also works well for me on hangovers, which I get if I drink two glasses of wine and don't drink enough water -- yay, hearty drinker me.)
PS A Cochrane Collaboration review (here in abstract) did not find Naproxen very effective for others. Here's the full review.
Another option: Krill oil. Dr. Michael Eades finds it effective for pain relief.
A number of studies have shown that krill oil is tremendously effective in reducing LDL-cholesterol, raising HDL-cholesterol, and lowering blood sugar. It has been shown to be effective in treating the pain and inflammation from rheumatoid arthritis and aches and pains in general. One large study showed that krill oil has tremendous benefits in terms of symptom reduction in PMS and dysmenorrhea. And it has been shown to be effective in the treatment of adult ADHD. In all these studies krill oil was tested against fish oil and not simply a placebo....Are there any downsides to this miracle substance? Only one. It is a little more pricey than fish oil, but, as with all things, you get what you pay for. Virtually all krill oil is produced by Neptune Technologies and shipped to the various supplement manufacturers, so any krill oil you get will have come from the same place and be the same dosage. The only unknown is how long it has been sitting around in a warehouse somewhere, which is, of course, the same unkown with fish oil. At least with krill oil, thanks to the high anti-oxidant content, the shelf life is much longer.
However, Dr. Eades writes:
I neglected to mention in my previous post that popping a couple of fish oil and krill oil caps don't give the same immediate relief as popping a NSAID. It takes a while-a couple of weeks in my case-for the fish oil/krill oil to provide the same degree of pain relief as the NSAID. So, the take home message is: don't take your first dose and compare it to the relief you got with a dose of NSAID. If you do, you will not believe the program works and will probably think me an idiot. It takes a while, so give it time. In the study I mentioned in the last post, the subjects took the fish oil for two weeks along with their NSAIDs, then tapered off the drugs and treated their pain with the fish oil alone.
Here's the krill oil Gregg and I take -- 1,000 mg, once daily. I also take 5,000 mg of vitamin D -- in this brand recommended by Dr. Eades. Just $15.25 for 250 rice grain-sized capsules.
via @medskep
Fun With Social Justice Warriors!
Forget the "anarchist" label at the top at the link. You'll recognize the thinking here all too well. From Reddit, posted at InfoShop:
5) "Calling people out for using the wrong language, for example saying 'biological female' instead of 'person assigned female at birth', is harmful and makes no sense because not everyone has access to the same information, they'll never learn if they're excluded, and the 'correct' languages changes every couple of years anyway. People don't want to be associated with us because they see how punishing we are to each other and it turns them off."6) "People use 'unsafe' when they mean 'uncomfortable' way too often and it diminishes the meaning of the word 'unsafe' to the point where it's not very meaningful anymore."
7) "People's obsession with identity politics means the only people who can say stuff like this out loud have to be able to identify themselves as multiply marginalized, and then everyone immediately agrees about how problematic it all is."
...10) "We've completely failed to build frameworks for accountability and transformative justice, and instead rely on callouts and social exclusion that replicate the prison system without the benefit of having trials."
Just call me SJW-phobic.
Yelpholes Are -- Obviously -- Volunteers, Not Employees
The most recent assholes with their class action hands out were a bunch of Yelp reviewers who "claimed their contributions to the website constituted a employer-employee relationship," reports Katherine Porter at CourthouseNews.
U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg dismissed their class action suit.
Seeborg found the plaintiffs "use the term 'hired' to refer to a process by which any member of the public can sign up for an account on the Yelp website and submit reviews, and the term 'fired' to refer to having their accounts involuntarily closed, presumably for conduct that Yelp contends breached its terms of service agreement."But the reviewers' contributions to the site "at most would constitute acts of volunteerism," he wrote.
Based on the plaintiffs' "mere conclusory allegations" and their "rambling and invective-filled papers," Seeborg dismissed the suit.
He also denied their request for sanctions against Yelp.
Adrianos Facchetti, Yelp's attorney, said in an email that the action was a "frivolous lawsuit that should never have been filed."
Yoohoo, losing asshole -- uh, "loser pays" -- lawsuits, anyone?
via @overlawyered
Stinks
Stenchylinks.
Steelers Linebacker Says No To "You Showed Up!" Trophies For His Kids
Right on. I write about this in my previous book, I SEE RUDE PEOPLE: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society -- that the road to entitled brathood is, in part, paved with unearned trophies. Trophies just for showing up, that is. (As I put it in the book, "Little League has become Little Coddled League.")
Javier E. David writes at CNBC that Steelers linebacker James Harrison is having none of that:
Mean disciplinarian, or candidate for father of the year?Depending on the eye of the beholder, Steelers linebacker James Harrison could be considered either or both. On Saturday, the hard hitting veteran defender vowed to send back awards given to his six and eight year old sons for their mere "participation" in school athletics.
Harrison--known for his aggressive and fearsome style on the field that has drawn fines and a suspension--wasn't displeased with his two young sons, but appeared upset that they did not win the awards based on competition or distinction. Their father stated as much in a sternly worded Instagram post that quickly went viral on Sunday.
"I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies!" the linebacker wrote. While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them til [sic] the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy," Harrison exclaimed.
Photo of the trophies here.
What's Wrong With The Free Market? "Insufficient Opportunities For Graft"
That "insufficient opportunities" bit is a perceptive line from Glenn Reynolds' USA Today column about how free markets automatically create and transmit negative information, while socialism hides it:
Nassim Nicholas Taleb recently tweeted: "The free-market system lets you notice the flaws and hides its benefits. All other systems hide the flaws and show the benefits."This drew a response: "The most valuable property of the price mechanism is as a reliable mechanism for delivering bad news." These two statements explain a lot about why socialist systems fail pretty much everywhere but get pretty good press, while capitalism has delivered a truly astounding results but is constantly besieged by detractors.
It is simple really: When the "Great Leader" builds a new stadium, everyone sees the construction. Nobody sees the more worthwhile projects that didn't get done instead because the capital was diverted, through taxation, from less visible but possibly more worthwhile ventures -- a thousand tailor shops, bakeries or physician offices.
...Why is there so much support for government controls? What's wrong with markets? In short: insufficient opportunities for graft.
In a command economy, the bureaucrats who set production quotas and allocate supplies have a lot of power. So do their political bosses. When supplies get short, people wheedle (i.e., bribe) them to get more. The market can't be wheedled.
...Markets make people better off, but they don't provide sufficient opportunities for politicians to extract bribes and intellectuals to feel better about themselves. This explains why they're unpopular with politicians and intellectuals. The real question is why anyone else listens to the self-interested claims of politicians and intellectuals. Maybe because the subject of what works and what doesn't in economics is mostly written by journalists?
Linker Cabinet
The peach schnapps is to your left, should you need to burn any polyps from your tonsils.
Big Manly Men Who Are Powerless In The Face Of Small Animals
I love this about Gregg. He is a guy-guy from Detroit, but he is basically my Chinese Crested Aida's manslave. (And, in general, he's dog putty.)
Hannah Louise Poston writes in "Modern Love" in The New York Times about her depressed boyfriend, who wasn't exactly hot on the idea of her bringing home a kitten -- until said kitty came home with her. Love her description:
When the kitten tried to vogue, swoon and crab-leap sideways all at once, consequently tripping over her paws, I think Joe's eyeballs may have rolled back into his head to reveal two glittery pink hearts pasted onto his sockets in lieu of pupils.
The reality is, needing to care for a critter gives you a purpose beyond yourself. Having Aida makes me a better person -- a little more compassionate and a little more patient. With a dog, especially when the dog's a puppy, there are daily lessons in these areas.
I Don't Think That's What Transparency Means, Mrs. Clinton
Hillary: "I will do my part to provide transparency to Americans."
Like you're doing now? Because we can see through the empty air where all your emails used to be?
The "72 Virgins" Support Group For Wives Of Isis Jihadists
Rather hilariously, there's a support group for wives of ISIS fighters who are worried about the passages in the Quran and Hadith that say that, upon death, jihadists get those 72 virgins ("houris").
Joanna Paraszczuk writes at RFERL:
Like other violent "jihadi" groups, IS entices men to join its ranks by promising them they will be granted 72 eternally young and beautiful virgins when they die in battle and go to heaven.This is a powerful piece of recruitment propaganda for male militants.
But it is hardly attractive for IS brides, who are told that after death they will be reunited with their dead husbands in paradise -- after he has settled down with his houris.
'I Am Jealous Of The Houris'
A support group for IS wives and widows on the Russian social network VKontakte openly addresses the problematic issue of houris through a poem.
The poem's author, named as Karima Umm Saad, addresses her husband and admits her jealousy of the heavenly houris who, she believes, will make him forget about his earthly life as soon as he dies.
Conveniently:
In a post on July 20 that has been shared among other female IS militants, a woman called Ubeida Shishan attempts to assuage women's fears that their dead husbands will prefer their ever-beautiful houris to them by relating a hadith, a saying of the Prophet Muhammad.IS brides need not worry, Ubeida says, because they are actually more attractive and interesting than the houris. "The houris have never passed through the difficulties and trials that accrue to sisters in this world. They never even fought on the path of Allah," she writes.
"They were never slandered because they wore a hijab! They have never encountered the difficulties being obedient to their husbands!"
Luckily, Islam encourages men to beat those disobedient wives to get them in line.
Lalink
French link me.
There's No Such Thing As "Rape-ish": No, You Don't Get To Blur Your Sexual Regret Into Something The Man Is To Blame For
Veronica Ruckh asks at TotalSororityMove:
Is it Possible That There Is Something In Between Consensual Sex And Rape...And That It Happens To Almost Every Girl Out There?
She writes about what she calls a "rape-ish" situation -- which is her way of blaming doing something she regretted on the man she did it with rather than taking responsibility for not saying no this time and maybe being better about saying no the next time:
This was exciting. This was fun. But this was also really, really weird, and ultimately, not a road I wanted to go down. I couldn't decide if the excitement and lust in the air would win over the pit in my stomach. It wasn't until he grabbed a condom that I really knew how I felt. I was not okay with this. I did not want to have sex with him.But I did.
He slid inside me and I didn't say a word. At the time, I didn't know why. Maybe I didn't want to feel like I'd led him on. Maybe I didn't want to disappoint him. Maybe I just didn't want to deal with the "let's do it, but no, we shouldn't" verbal tug-of-war that so often happens before sleeping with someone. It was easier to just do it. Besides, we were already in bed, and this is what people in bed do. I felt an obligation, a duty to go through with it. I felt guilty for not wanting to. I wasn't a virgin. I'd done this before. It shouldn't have been a big deal-it's just sex-so I didn't want to make it one.
I stared at the ceiling the whole time, occasionally flashing him the fake smile reserved for people you accidentally make eye contact with in the grocery store. I don't think I moved the entire time, and I didn't care if he noticed. I just wanted it to end, and I knew it wouldn't be long. I just had to suck it up for a few minutes, let him do his thing, and it would be over. When it finally was, he smiled at me, kissed my forehead, and asked how it was. As we cuddled, I realized that what we had done was no different to him than the sex he'd had with anyone else. Overnight, I convinced myself it was no different to me, either.
I woke up with an "oh shit" feeling that quickly turned into an "oh well." I didn't really feel I'd been violated, though part of me knew I had. I wasn't mad. I wasn't hurt. I didn't want vengeance. I didn't even feel weird around him soon after. I didn't feel much of anything. I certainly didn't feel like I'd been raped. But what had happened the night prior was not consensual sex, and I didn't like it. I wanted the flirting. I wanted the kissing. I wanted the sleepover. But I didn't want to go all the way. And that's very hard to explain to a man who is just as drunk as you are.
There is not a word for my experience. The fact that there's not a word for it makes us feel like it doesn't exist. Or maybe there's not a word for it because we're pretending it doesn't exist. But this weird place in between consensual sex and rape? It's there. It does exist. And it's happening all the time. As it turns out, almost every woman I spoke to had been there at some point or another:
"To be honest, it would have been awkward to say no, so I just did it."
"I don't feel like it was a huge deal. Sometimes you have to have lunch with girls you don't want to have lunch with, and sometimes you have to have sex with boys you don't want to have sex with. Maybe you're pissy about it right after, but it doesn't affect you long-term, you know?"
"He was really drunk. He had no way of knowing I didn't want it."
It happens to us with consistent hookups, first dates, boyfriends, and one-night stands alike. We have sex with guys, because sometimes it's just easier to do it than to have the argument about not doing it. But no one talks about it. Talking about it makes it a big deal. It makes us feel like we're whining. It makes us feel like we're being dramatic. And we don't want it to be dramatic. We don't feel entirely violated. It doesn't affect us forever. We just feel like we got the short end of the stick, and that sometimes, we have to do something we don't want to do, out of politeness or social obligation. So why bring it up? Why risk wrongfully tagging a guy with a serious, heavy label he doesn't deserve? And more importantly, why risk being wrongfully tagged as "the girl who cried rape," when we're not trying to say it was rape at all? We're saying we don't know what it was. We just didn't like it. But by refusing to acknowledge the existence of these rape-ish situations, we're continuing to subject ourselves to them indefinitely.
Let's look again at this:
Maybe I didn't want to feel like I'd led him on. Maybe I didn't want to disappoint him. Maybe I just didn't want to deal with the "let's do it, but no, we shouldn't" verbal tug-of-war that so often happens before sleeping with someone. It was easier to just do it.
There's all sorts of stuff going on here that's about her wanting to be liked and approved of and not wanting the hassle of saying no. Whose fault is that?
No (of course!), it isn't rape, or -- appallingly "rape-ish" -- when you have sex with a man you would ultimately rather not have had sex with. It's called "poor boundaries." And yes, it can be hard to have good boundaries in the heat of the moment -- which is reason to plan what they'll be (and how to stay out of trouble) before you get into the heat of the moment.
In the piece, the author refers to her "state of extreme intoxication" after 13 hours of drinking, prior to having sex with the guy.
It's typically referred to as "blaming the victim" to suggest that it's unwise to get drunk to the point where you can't have a handle on your behavior. I call recognizing that "being a grownup." Until you are one, you shouldn't be away from your mommy and daddy without adult supervision.
Cop Prevents Search By Security Guard: "There Is A Constitution That I Swore An Oath To..."
The video:
From CounterCurrentNews:
Two security guards had detained and were about to search people just for watching fireworks. But that's when a police officer showed up on the scene and said "there is a constitution that I swear an oath to, so don't freaking mess with it with these citizens. Do you understand me?""I know you aren't subjected to the Constitution when it comes to your job, but don't mess with it," the officer says.
"They have a right to their property. They have a right not to be searched by anybody. They have a right not to be accosted," he adds.
"I swore an oath to the constitution, don't mess with it."
Now I just want to hear cops talking this way to other cops.
via Joe Wahler
Linkey
Monkeylinks.
Due Process Beats "Yes Means Yes" In Court
The expulsion of UTenn student and star wrestler Corey Mock was overturned in court after a judge ruled against the disgusting absurdity that is the "Yes Means Yes" thinking and procedure (not adopted by UTenn, but inferred by an administrator there). Robby Soave writes at reason:
The decision is a significant blow to the concept of affirmative consent. According to Judge Carol McCoy, UT's consent standard wrongfully shifted the burden of proof and violated Mock's due process rights....The campus judicial process initially cleared Mock, but UT Chancellor Steven Angle took an interest in the case after meeting with Morris. Angle asked the campus adjudicators to re-hear the case. This time, Mock was found guilty.
The rationale was atrocious. As KC Johnson of Minding the Campus explains:
Angle, for his part, argued that Mock had failed to prove that he had obtained affirmative consent--that is, that Mock, not UTC, had the burden of proof in the initial hearing. UTC hadn't adopted a "yes means yes" policy, but Angle inferred it through various provisions in the school's code, and in other writings.UT's decision was a powerful confirmation of due process advocates' worst fears about affirmative consent policies. I have long-argued that the "Yes Means Yes," when judged by university officials, in tandem with a preponderance of the evidence standard, creates a de facto assumption that an accused student is guilty unless he can prove otherwise--turning innocent until proven guilty on its head.
From Judge Carol McCoy's ruling:
The UTC Chancellor improperly shifted the burden of proof and imposed an untenable standard upon Mr. Mock to disprove the accusation that he forcibly assaulted Ms. Morris.
There's also this:
He made no finding that Ms. Morris did not consent, intertwined the definition in SOC 7 of sexual assault and sexual misconduct, and made no distinction as to which acts had occurred.
We have a standard in this country, "innocent until proven guilty," and yes, there must be sufficient proof of a person's guilt to cage them and otherwise punish them.
This standard -- very importantly and correctly -- allows a potentially guilty person to go free in favor of not sweeping up and convicting innocent people.
Related: Ashe Schow in the WashEx on how "Yes Means Yes" policies are starting to fall apart and the terrible unfairness of these policies:
To be fair, there is nothing in yes-means-yes -- sometimes known as affirmative consent -- policies that require schools to shift the burden of proof onto accused students. But in practice, that's what happens, just as it did at UTC. As McCoy pointed out, accused students "must overcome the presumption inherent in the charge that the violation has been established." Simply denying the allegation is seen as "insufficient." The accused then becomes responsible for proving "the converse of what is taken as true and credible, i.e., the complainant's statement that no consent was given."And he -- it is almost always a he -- must do so without witnesses or video of the event. That's a high bar for an accused student, who is often blindsided by the accusation weeks, months or even years after the encounter happened.
Yes-means-yes policies require both parties to obtain consent from each other in order to engage in sexual activity. But in practice, the accusing student is absolved from obtaining consent once the accusation is made, which retroactively puts the onus on the accused to have obtained consent. Sometimes these policies require the initiator of the sexual activity to be the one who must obtain consent. But again, the accuser is absolved of such responsibility once an accusation is made.
Colleges adopting "Yes Means Yes" policies have no business doing so. We have a justice system to handle sexual assault cases. These are crimes -- or, rather, crimes someone has been accused of. A student's fate -- and almost always a male student's, by the way -- does not belong in the hands of an "inferring" administrator.
There's a way to stop these policies and it is for students whose lives have been ruined by them to sue in civil court and show colleges that injustice...is expensive.
Why, Politically, I'm A "Neither": Neither A Democrat Nor A Republican
John Whitehead, of the civil liberties-defending Rutherford Institute, says it so well in a piece at the HuffPo:
As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the people dealing the cards--the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.--have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the citizenry, while milking us of our money and possessions.It really doesn't matter what you call them--Republicans, Democrats, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex--so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor.
Incredibly, no matter how many times we see this played out, Americans continue to naively buy into the idea that politics matter, as if there really were a difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there's not).
As if Barack Obama proved to be any different from George W. Bush (he has not). As if Hillary Clinton's values are any different from Donald Trump's (with both of them, money talks). As if when we elect a president, we're getting someone who truly represents "we the people" rather than the corporate state (in fact, in the oligarchy that is the American police state, an elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots).
Politics is a game, a joke, a hustle, a con, a distraction, a spectacle, a sport, and for many devout Americans, a religion.
In other words, it's a sophisticated ruse aimed at keeping us divided and fighting over two parties whose priorities are exactly the same. It's no secret that both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry's basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.
Most of all, both parties enjoy an intimate, incestuous history with each other and with the moneyed elite that rule this country. Don't be fooled by the smear campaigns and name-calling. They're just useful tactics of the psychology of hate that has been proven to engage voters and increase voter turnout while keeping us at each other's throats.
And he's right in this, too:
Our failure to remain informed about what is taking place in our government, to know and exercise our rights, to vocally protest, to demand accountability on the part of our government representatives, and at a minimum to care about the plight of our fellow Americans has been our downfall.Now we find ourselves once again caught up in the spectacle of another presidential election, and once again the majority of Americans are acting as if this election will make a difference and bring about change--as if the new boss will be any different from the old boss.
Linkulus
A type of cloud with links in it.
I'm A "Speech Nut"
And if you are, I turned it into a t-shirt you can buy at Cafe Press. Proceeds go to my bacon fund.
The story on this is that a New Yorker writer has deemed "Speech Nuts" like "Gun Nuts." (Personally, I have no problem with people who defend the Second Amendment or any other part of the Constitution, and I actually am grateful to them for it.)
Anthony L. Fisher writes at Reason that Kelefa Sanneh thinks the American devotion to free speech is overrated because there's less of it in Europe:
Ironically, over more than 4,000 words, Sanneh is never able to present a coherent thesis of his own, though two sub-headlines hint at what he might be getting at:The new battles over free speech are fierce but who is censoring whom?Free speech really can be harmful, and its defenders should be willing to say so.
After noting that defending free speech was once the vanguard of the left, when it meant defending the rights of civil rights protesters to agitate and fighting back on obscenity charges leveled at comedians like Lenny Bruce or rappers like 2 Live Crew, Sanneh writes:
But as the nineteen-nineties progressed, fights over obscenity subsided and fights over so-called political correctness intensified; "free speech" became a different kind of rallying cry, especially on college campuses. Often, "free speech" meant not the right to protest a war but the right to push back against campus restrictions designed to shield marginalized groups from, say, "racial and ethnic harassment"--that was the term used by Central Michigan University, in its speech code, which banned "demeaning" expressions.Note the use of quotation marks around the words free and speech, implying that the use of the phrase is inappropriate when used to defend the right to express unpopular ideas that lack the social merit of the writer's preference.
And this bit from Fisher is key:
While painting Americans as unsophisticated "nuts," clinging to their guns and free expression, Sanneh describes "diversity of thought and belief" as a paradoxical formulation. But such diversity is the very essence of pluralism, the idea that one's deeply held principles can and should coexist with others, and the free exchange of ideas can allow the worst ideas to be debated and defeated in public.Writing in The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch made "The Case for Hate Speech," using prominent homophobes as an example of how "bad speech" ultimately helped to advance the cause of gay rights. If expressing such speech were outlawed, the ideas themselves wouldn't go away, and the fight over the value of such ideas would never be had. In the name of sparing feelings, the unacceptable status quo is maintained, and no is forced to choose a side.
Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE), says Sanneh's article attempts to "paint proponents of free speech as unsophisticated, which is deeply ironic because he fails to do basic research into the complexity of First Amendment law, how much we still rely on the First Amendment in a very real legal sense, how poorly hate speech restrictions work in other countries, and how common campus speech codes are."
Here's Lukianoff at FIRE with "10 Things The New Yorker Gets Wrong About Free Speech." Here's a bit from one of them:
2. "But then the current free-speech debate is rather paradoxical, too--it can be hard to tell the speakers from the censors."A quick pass through FIRE's vast database of campus censorship cases--or even a quick Internet search--proves this assertion flatly wrong: Censors are easy to identify. They're not simply decrying speech they dislike, but are actively and openly punishing students for it. They're also making headlines in the process. Two high-profile FIRE cases that made national news in the past month demonstrate the conspicuousness of the campus censor:
In 2007, Valdosta State University (VSU) student Hayden Barnes posted a collage on his personal Facebook page protesting the planned construction of campus parking garages. Angered by Barnes' activism against his pet project, VSU's then-president Ronald Zaccari claimed the picture constituted a threat on his life and had Barnes expelled without a hearing. With help from FIRE, Barnes sued and, after an 8-year legal battle, received a $900,000 settlement late last month. Details of the case opened FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff's 2014 book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, and news of last month's settlement was covered in numerous publications, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Are You A "Survivor" -- Of Whistling?
I, ahem, borrowed the header for this post from @AdamKissel, whose tweet about this was irresistible.
Greg Piper explains at The College Fix about the latest in the craziness at a college -- UCSB, in this case -- related to possible sexual assault:
The school's list of activities that constitute the sexual-assault continuum (literally UCSB's term) says it was last updated three years ago, but it was highlighted today by Adam Kissel, formerly of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
The whole thing is pretty crazy, but the most amazing thing is the bit Kissel highlighted. Now on the sexual assault continuum (and boy does it ever continue and continue) is "Cat Calls."
"Yoohooo...pussy?!"
Sorry -- couldn't resist.
But yes, for realz, at UCSB, the activities now on the list of things that constitute sexual assault include, in the "Cat Calls" category:
...verbal advances that include whistling, shouting, and/or saying sexually explicit or implicit phrases or propositions that are unwanted by the survivor.
Yes, whistling. Really.
What's so stupid and crazy about this is that there are laws on the books against sexual assault. Colleges are not criminal adjudication centers, and it shows in the truly weird and ridiculous list they've created.
Some of it is almost quaint. Like this one:
Pornography: Pornography, different from erotica, can involve using women and children for commercial gain. Soft pornography depicts people wearing little if any clothing while hard pornography involves harsh and violent depictions of women of a sexual nature. Snuff pornography (LINK) is a highly graphic and sadistic pornographic depiction of an actor or actress who is sexually coerced and eventually murdered in the culminating sequence of the film.
Pornography can involve using ponies, forks, and field mice for financial gain. Have these people not seen porn since 1952? And is the entire Internet now illegal at UCSB? And snuff films? This was a popular TV show plot for a while -- back when MacGyver was on TV, I believe.
This one was amusing, too:
Ritual Abuse: Ritual abuse occurs when survivors are emotionally, mentally, physically, sexually, and spiritually abused repeatedly over time ceremoniously by an organized group.
This happens so often in colleges in those Satanic fraternities.
I like to think that this one was not written by a person who was sober at the time.
Consent: Consent is the uncorked, conscious, active, and sober act of giving someone permission to do something.
Uncorked? Uncorked?!
Another:
Stranger Sexual Assault: Stranger sexual assault is any unwanted visual, verbal, or physical sexual contact committed by someone the survivor does not know.
"Visual sexual contact." Yes, as I've told you before, I can operate small appliances with my hair. What I failed to reveal to you is that I can also give you a reacharound with my eyes, and if you act up, well, my boobs are actually dual tasers.
Plinko
The Link Is Right.
Queen Hillary On Her Private Email Server: The Rules And Laws Are For The Little People
Chris Cillizza in the WaPo on the arrogance that is SOP for candidate Clinton:
No matter what spin emerges from Hillary Clinton's campaign about the decision to turn over the private e-mail server she used as Secretary of State to the Justice Department, it's impossible to see this as anything but a bad thing for her presidential prospects.Here's why. Remember that back in March, following the revelation that Clinton had exclusively used a private e-mail address during her time at State -- going against Obama Administration protocol in the process -- she insisted that the server would not -- and need not -- be turned over to a third party. "I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private," she told a reporter during a press conference at the United Nations. And, her lawyer, David Kendall, said in a letter to a congressional committee seeking the server that there was "no basis" to support a third-party examination of it.
Clinton will portray her decision to turn over the server as entirely voluntary -- she just wants all the facts out and for this to be resolved. But, she quite clearly was resistant to doing just that as recently as March, insisting, in essence, that there was nothing to see here.
Use common sense. If you had your own private e-mail server, would you rather keep it private or allow a third party -- ANY third party -- to inspect it? I mean, come on. Also, if you HAD voluntarily turned it over, would your spokesman not comment on whether you were told to give it over or whether you did it on your own? The answer is no.
Oh, and about that claim -- effectively, "Nothin' on here but some good ole Arkansas bread recipes":
Then there is the news reported by McClatchy News Service that two of the four classified e-mails discovered on her private server were "top secret" -- the highest possible security classification. Clinton has previously said that she never sent or received any classified material via her e-mail account; "I am confident that I never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received," she said last month.
via @_cingraham
Male And Female Circumcision Are Equally Wrong
Oxford ethicist Brian David Earp writes at Aeon magazine:
I study childhood genital surgeries. Female, male and intersex genital surgeries, specifically, and I make similar arguments about each one. As a general rule, I think that healthy children - whatever their sex or gender - should be free from having parts of their most intimate sexual organs removed before they can understand what's at stake in such a procedure. There are a number of reasons I've come to hold this view, but in some ways it's pretty simple. 'Private parts' are private. They're personal. Barring some serious disease to treat or physical malfunction to address (for which surgery is the most conservative option), they should probably be left alone.People claim that male and female circumcision are different. Earp explains that there are different forms and degrees of FGM [Female Genital Mutilation], and they are likely to result in different degrees of harm:
With different effects on sexual function and satisfaction, different chances of developing an infection, and so on. And yet all forms of non-therapeutic female genital alteration - no matter how sterilised or minor - are deemed to be mutilations in 'Western' countries. All are prohibited by law. The reason for this, when you get right down to it, is that cutting into a girl's genitals without a medical diagnosis, and without her consent, is equivalent to criminal assault on a minor under the legal codes of most of these societies. And, morally, I think the law is correct here. I don't think that a sharp object should be taken to any child's vulva unless it is to save her life or health, or unless she has given her fully informed permission to undergo such an operation, and wants to take on the relevant risks and consequences.
...Just like FGM, however, circumcision is not a monolith: it isn't just one kind of thing. The original Jewish form of circumcision (until about AD150) was comparatively minor. It involved cutting off the overhanging tip of the foreskin - whatever stretched over the end of the glans - thereby preserving (most of) the foreskin's protective and sexual functions, as well as reducing the amount of erogenous tissue removed. The 'modern' form is much more invasive: it removes between one-third and one-half of the movable skin system of the penis (about 50 square centimeters of richly innervated tissue in the adult organ), eliminates the gliding motion of the foreskin, and exposes the head of the penis to environmental irritation, as it rubs against clothing.
...But even 'hospitalised' or 'minor' circumcisions are not without their risks and complications, and the harm is not confined to Africa. In 2011, for example, nearly a dozen infant boys were treated for life-threatening haemorrhage, shock or sepsis as a result of their non-therapeutic circumcisions at a single children's hospital in Birmingham, England. Since this figure was obtained by a special freedom of information request (and otherwise would not have been public knowledge), it has to be multiplied by orders of magnitude to get a sense of the true scope of the problem.
...One recurrent claim, recently underlined by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is that male circumcision can confer a number of health benefits, such as a small reduction in the absolute risk of contracting certain sexually transmitted infections. This is not typically seen as being the case for FGM.
However, both parts of this claim are misleading. Certainly the most extreme types of FGM will not contribute to good health on balance, but neither will the spearheads-and-dirty-knives versions of genital cutting on boys. What about other forms of FGM? Its defenders (who typically refer to it as 'female circumcision') regularly cite such 'health benefits' as improved genital hygiene as a reason to continue the practice. Indeed, the vulva has all sorts of warm, moist places where bacteria or viruses could get trapped, such as underneath the clitoral hood, or among the folds of the labia; so who is to say that removing some of that tissue (with a sterile surgical tool) might not reduce the risk of various diseases?
...a small and insistent group of (mostly American) scientists have taken it upon themselves to promote infant male circumcision as a form of partial prophylaxis against disease. Most of these diseases are rare in developed countries, do not affect children before an age of sexual debut, and can be prevented and/or treated through much more conservative means. Nevertheless - since it is not against the law for them to do so - advocates of (male) circumcision are able to conduct study after well-funded study to see just what kinds of 'health benefits' might follow from cutting off parts of the penis.
...But in medical ethics, the appropriate test for a non-therapeutic surgery performed in the absence of disease or deformity is not benefit vs 'risk of surgical complications' but rather benefit vs risk of harm. In this case, one relevant harm would be the involuntary loss of a healthy, functional, and erotogenic genital structure that one might wish to have experienced intact. Imagine a report by the CDC referring to the benefits of removing the labia of infant girls, where the only morally relevant drawback to such a procedure was described as the 'risk of surgical complications'.
...Medically unnecessary genital surgeries - of whatever degree of severity - will affect different people differently. This is because each individual's relationship to their own body is unique, including what they find aesthetically appealing, what degree of risk they feel comfortable taking on when it comes to elective surgeries on their reproductive organs, and even what degree of sexual sensitivity they prefer (for personal or cultural reasons). That's why ethicists are beginning to argue that individuals should be left to decide what to do with their own genitals when it comes to irreversible surgery, whatever their sex or gender.
This article is adapted from a longer piece originally published at the University of Oxford's Practical Ethics website. Links to supporting research can be found in the original essay, available here.
First Date Style vs. Relationship Style
More in the dating chapter of "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" (only $9.85 brand new at Amazon -- and buying a new copy supports the author...me!). 
"My Fellow Delicate Little Americans..."
This is how all presidential speeches should start from now on. Because we are a land of fragile little things, as evidenced by the culture of "trigger warnings" on campus. From a piece in The Atlantic, "The Coddling of the American Mind," by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt:
The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into "safe spaces" where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.We have been studying this development for a while now, with rising alarm. (Greg Lukianoff is a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars. The stories of how we each came to this subject can be read here.) The dangers that these trends pose to scholarship and to the quality of American universities are significant; we could write a whole essay detailing them. But in this essay we focus on a different question: What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?
There's a saying common in education circles: Don't teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.
But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.
They suggest cognitive behavioral therapy (the rationally corrective thought that comes from it) as one solution. Also, they mention the fallacy that avoiding thoughts that cause trauma is healthy:
According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance--standing in a building lobby, perhaps--until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she's standing in the lobby--if the fear is not "reinforced"--then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.
...Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism, Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can master your desires and habits of thought. This, of course, is the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy. With this in mind, here are some steps that might help reverse the tide of bad thinking on campus.
The biggest single step in the right direction does not involve faculty or university administrators, but rather the federal government, which should release universities from their fear of unreasonable investigation and sanctions by the Department of Education. Congress should define peer-on-peer harassment according to the Supreme Court's definition in the 1999 case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The Davis standard holds that a single comment or thoughtless remark by a student does not equal harassment; harassment requires a pattern of objectively offensive behavior by one student that interferes with another student's access to education. Establishing the Davis standard would help eliminate universities' impulse to police their students' speech so carefully.
Colleges need to abandon their current mission of making students feel comfortable at all cost and return to their prior mission of free inquiry -- a mission which cannot thrive without free speech.
Loopy
Madcappy links.
Florida Thug Cop Assaults Disabled Vet He Thinks Shouldn't Have A Handicap Space
Here's the video:
From PhotographyIsNotACrime, posted by PINAC's Grant Stern:
Florida man Isiah James served his country for 10 years. He survived two trips to Iraq and one to Afganistan.Riviera Beach cop G. Wilson took less than 10 minutes to decide that the Army veteran Isiah James didn't deserve a handicapped sticker.
Isiah's $800 iPhone 6+ didn't survive a trip to the Walgreens.
James had family in town on vacation, and father doesn't drive, so he took father to the store. On his way home, the two man stopped at a Walgreen's liquor store.
Cop followed Isiah James into the store before running the handicap space.
Isiah was getting ready to pay, when the officer entered the store and demanded that he leave. Another 20 seconds and he would've paid and left.
The Florida cop put on his doctor's hat and declared that, "You're walking, you're not handicapped, someone else should use this space."
When Isiah had already identified himself, the offer got upset at his tone of voice and took a swipe at his four month old iPhone 6+ which he used to record the incident, cracking the screen of the device.
"He had every right to check the plackard, it was displayed according to Florida law" said James, but about the assault he commented, "if I'd done the same to him, I'd have at least taken a taser in the ass."
It cracked the screen, but that wasn't enough for Officer Wilson, who extended the stop more than ten minutes further.
"He could've been a doctor, or Doogie Howser, it wouldn't matter. The tag was displayed legally. I wasn't bothering anybody, I don't understand why I was bothered and assaulted" said James.
The video shows most of the incident after Isiah James was summoned outside by the officer.
Disgustingly, people James asks to call the cops don't help him.
And really, listen to the whole video, where the officer starts telling him that he shouldn't have the space.
Completely Stupid: Having Doctors In Training And Air Controllers Work Without Sleep
Here, from the AP's Joan Lowy, are some air controllers' schedules (from a 2011 NASA study produced at the FAA's request):
The most tiring schedules required controllers to work five straight midnight shifts, or to work six days a week several weeks in a row, often with at least one midnight shift per week. The human body's circadian rhythms make sleeping during daylight hours before a midnight shift especially difficult....Schedules worked by 76 percent of controllers in the field study led to chronic fatigue, creating pressure to fall asleep. "Even with 8 to 10 hours of recovery sleep, alertness may not recover to the full rested baseline level, but may be reset at a lower level of function," the report said.
"Chronic fatigue may be considered to pose a significant risk to controller alertness, and hence to the safety of the ATC (air traffic control) system," the study concluded, especially when combined with little stimulation during periods of low air traffic and the human body's natural pressure to sleep during certain times of the day.
The 270-page study makes 17 recommendations to the FAA, including that the agency discontinue mandatory six-day schedules "as soon as possible." At the time, about 4 percent of controllers were being assigned "a six-day constant schedule," the study said, but the share of controllers who had actually worked a six-day schedule in their previous work week was 15 percent.
More than 30 percent of controllers who worked the six-day schedules said they had committed a significant error in the previous year. Three years later, controllers at several air traffic facilities told the AP that six-day work weeks are still common.
They studied air controllers but other research (in a December, 2014 LAT article) found no benefit from having medical residents work shorter hours. And then there's the lone comment on the article:
Surgery resident
This is because it is well known surgical and especially neurosurgical residents lie when reporting duty hours. Reporting a duty hour violation creates nothing but email chains and meetings and the blame is ultimately put back on the resident. Programs are mostly concerned about reporting hours compliance and not being cited by RRC and ACGME but don't really care about following the rules. Resident life is improved by a culture that allows you to go home sometimes without being shamed as lazy
Here's more, posted at KevinMD by Joyce Park, MD:
Let me repeat: Overnight, one sole intern less than a year of out of medical school cares for the same number of patients covered by 16 interns during the day. I will never forget my night shifts this year. I don't want to say I was terrified, but I will be honest, I was pretty damn nervous. There are other residents in the hospital (2 admitting in the emergency department and 2 covering the intensive care unit), but they were equally busy with their own patients as well. I remember being called to evaluate one decompensating patient with another call overhead 2 minutes after for me to see another worsening patient. By the time I finished quickly seeing the first one and then rushed to see the second, I had received around 30 pages on my beeper with other urgent questions for patients that I was not familiar with at all. I got paged on average every 3 to 5 minutes for the first few hours of the night, then it would die down to a page every 10 to 20 minutes in the middle of the night, and then ramp up to every 5 to 10 minutes again in the morning. By the time I left the hospital at 7:30 a.m., I was pinching myself to stay awake on the drive home. More than a few times, I've fallen asleep at a stoplight only to be woken up by the honking of an enraged driver behind me.Residents working in the intensive care unit regularly work 30-hour shifts in a row, taking care of the sickest of the sick patients coming through our hospital doors. This means making complex medical decisions and performing life-saving but invasive and potentially dangerous procedures, all on very little sleep. If you or your loved one were the patient, would you feel comfortable with that? One of my residents this year told me that he naps in his car after every 30-hour shift because he knows he will get into a car accident if he tries to drive home right away.
"Isn't it crazy," he asked me, "that I can't even trust myself to drive home, yet I'm entrusted with making life and death decisions and performing complicated procedures on the sickest patients in the hospital?"
Seattle Surprise! (To No One Who Is A Libertarian Economist)
Minimum wage in Seattle goes up...employment rate goes down.
Andrew Moran writes at EconCollapseNews that the Seattle restaurant industry has suffered the worst job loss since the 2009 recession:
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released a report Sunday that showed the unintended consequences of the phasing in of the $15 minimum wage in the city of Seattle. In the month of May, Seattle restaurants shed 1,000 jobs, which is the worst decline since Jan. 2009, when 1,300 jobs were eliminated.The large number of layoffs occurred one month after Seattle increased the minimum wage to $11 on Apr. 1. Last year, city council designed the measure to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by the year 2017. Even with the gradual phase-in it's creating havoc in the jobs market.
via @Mark_J_Perry
Limpie
Linkie with a sprained anklie.
What Happens To A Hipster Deferred?
(With deep but not necessarily sincere apologies to Langston Hughes.)
On Sunday, there was an asshole moment on my Venice street..."a hipster in the sun" -- in his air-conditioned mondo SUV, needing to wait a moment for a driver delivering a package.
I didn't want the Amazon driver to get in trouble, so I tweeted to @Amazon and @AmazonPrime. (The guy in the huge SUV screaming at him said he was going to post their verbal altercation on YouTube.) A few of my tweets (that managed to come up in a screenshot-able series): 
Government Spilled That!
Via CBS4 Denver, guess who released three million gallons of toxic waste into a river. Yes, the EPA -- via the cleanup crew they supervise:
Toxic wastewater from a mine continues to spill into the Animas River in La Plata County and has reached the confluence with the San Juan River in New Mexico.About 1 million gallons of wastewater from Colorado's Gold King Mine began spilling into the Animas River on Wednesday when a cleanup crew supervised by the Environmental Protection Agency accidentally breached a debris dam that had formed inside the mine.
..."This is going to be a long-term impact. The sediment, the metals in that sediment, are going to settle to the stream bottom and as we have storm surges, as we have flooding events, that sediment can and will likely get kicked back up," said EPA Region 8 Administrator Shaun McGrath.
The exact environmental impacts aren't known and there will likely be long-term impacts with how much metal is in the water.
via @adamkissel
Money Quote On The Iran Deal
From Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defense minister, in a piece at Free Beacon by Abraham Rabinovich in which he calls the Iran nuclear deal "an historic mistake":
"They still use cranes to hang people in the marketplaces. There is not going to be any Iranian Spring."
"I Grew Up Denying The Holocaust, Then I Led A Trip To Auschwitz"
A Palestinian professor takes his students on a field trip...
via @CathyYoung63
Linkus
Dorkus, with links.
Parental Problem
Wouldn't it be great if, when you wanted to go out for the evening, you could just tell your kids "stay!" and leave them with a chew toy?
Adult Brats Who Think They Should Be Allowed To Force A Tattoo Artist To Do Their Bidding
It's amazing that this is even an issue. (And yes, it mirrors that of the cake makers who are -- unfortunately, often by law -- forced to make a cake for people they don't want to for some reason. PS I'm an atheist and for gay marriage, but I support religious freedom -- even when I think a person's beliefs are silly.)
Anna Codrea-Rado writes for The Guardian on whether tattoo artists are "right" to refuse to tattoo necks and hands.
Short answer: Yes.
Slightly less short answer: Absofuckinglutely.
Excerpt from her piece:
Andrew Timming, a management professor at the University of St Andrews, says that 40% of US households have a least one member with a tattoo. Timming cautions, however, that despite this rise in popularity, visible tattoos may still be an employment hindrance. Timming has studied the perceptions of recruiters towards visible tattoos and found that they are less likely to secure employment, especially in customer-facing jobs.Timming thinks tattoo artists should be able to refuse clients' tattoo requests. "Tattoo artists are professionals - they need to be able to make decisions," he says. "Sometimes they make decisions for personal reasons, sometimes they make decisions because they think it's in the best interest of the client. But you can't take away that right."
Leaf Chang, owner of Brooklyn's Gnostic Tattoo shop, also thinks its for the tattoo artist to make a call whether or not to tattoo. "I definitely do not think the client should expect to get whatever they want in a tattoo shop, just like you wouldn't go to the tailor and presume to tell them how to cut your suit," he says.
Chang says he assesses hand and neck tattoo requests on a case-by-case basis. He says it's the artist's prerogative to not tattoo something they're not comfortable with, because their reputation is on the line. "Our name is attached to our work," he says. "So we have just as much of a stake in your tattoo as you do."
Marcus says that while he may not agree with every tattoo idea, it's his job to educate them about the implications of their decision. "I try to let people see all angles of their decision" he says. "If they still want to go ahead and do it after that, for me that's where my responsibility ends."
Truly, amazing that this is even a question -- the notion (absurd and the stuff of people who are clueless about civil liberties and natural rights) that you might be able to or "should" be able to force an artist to do art work they are opposed to.
Verbal Consent Is So HOT ("May I dry hump you?")
Verbal consent is what those pushing for those "yes means yes" rules want -- forcing college students to ask permission for every bit of sexual activity they engage in as their only way out of being prosecuted for sexual assault. (But even then, you have to wonder, when does proof mean proof and when can it be sanded down to not really proof at all?)
In the New York Post, there's a piece revealing exactly how hot this is. Maridel Reyes writes:
"May I dry hump you?"Julia*, 30, was at a date's apartment when the guy bluntly posed that question during a steamy moment on his couch. Barely able to contain her laughter, she made an excuse and promptly left. She appreciated the ask, but the wording? Definitely a mood killer.
Verbal consent is, thankfully, the new standard for sex as we move from a "no means no" to a "yes means yes" world -- but with that comes a potentially not-sexy moment for men and women when getting in bed together.
Maybe the federal government should leave demands that yes means yes to those engaging in the sexual activities. If this is what you need, you need to make it clear, and maybe hand out a set of FAQs and a consent form to sign to every person you date.
Mmmm, sexy!
Linkity
Splits.
What Ferrets Need When They Go To The Gym
What else?
"Jobs Aren't For Life Anymore"; Property Might Be
Tom Streithorst writes at LA Review of Books about a change in the way things are -- a lot of people just can't earn a living (or much of one) anymore but if they're older, they might own a home that's now worth a buttload:
A few years ago, at a rooftop corporate party in central London I was chatting with the fiftysomething guitarist hired to entertain us. Bitterly, he told me he used to be an advertising art director -- that a decade or two ago, he flew around the world making high-end TV commercials. Now, he couldn't get arrested. Despite his skills and experience, no advertising agency was even interested in hiring him freelance. "Thank God I bought a house 20 years ago when I could afford it," he told me. "That is the only thing I can leave my kids." Jobs aren't for life anymore, but property is.Today, with job security and defined benefit pensions historical anomalies, the middle aged and middle class depend on rising house prices to fund their retirement. Of course, this is a gravy train that cannot last indefinitely. Forty years ago, in my now fashionable London neighborhood, houses sold for well under £30,000. Today, many are worth £2 million. Few young people can afford the down payment, and, anyway, for houses to continue to appreciate at this pace, these houses would have to be worth £128 million by 2055.
High real estate prices are good for the old and affluent. They are terrible for the poor and young. Today, the average Manhattan apartment rents for $3,800 a month, while median New York income is around $65,000 a year. If you are young and renting, your landlord eats his daily bread by the sweat of your brow. The flip side of affluent old people being able to retire is young people having to live with their parents.
If house prices fall, the middle aged and middle class will be in an uproar. For almost all of us, real estate is our principal, if not only, asset. If our house stops appreciating, our dreams of someday not having to work utterly evaporate.
Banks also need housing prices to rise:
The fear of another financial crisis combined with the fear of angry middle-class, middle-aged voters gives politicians every reason to keep house prices from falling. During the Golden Age, strong unions and strictly regulated lending meant that wages went up faster than asset prices. No more. Today, the average home-owning Londoner earns more every year from rising house prices than he does from work. Easy credit, low interest rates, low down payments all stimulate ever-higher real estate values.
Where does that leave younger people? Maybe home with mom and dad -- into their 30s.
And sure, there are other places to live than Manhattan and also wildly expensive LA.
But it seems that jobs -- many of them -- just don't pay like they used to. And then, charmingly, Obamacare and other government programs have the young and broke funding the old and voting.
Lippy
Backtalky links.
Jury Nullification: How Citizens Can Protect Us From Unjust Laws
Glenn Reynolds has an important column in USA Today on jury nullification -- how jurors can let the accused go free:
If you are a member of a jury in a criminal case, even if you think the defendant is guilty of the crimes charged, you are entirely free to vote for acquittal if you think that the prosecution is malicious or unfair, or that a conviction in that case would be unjust, or that the law itself is unconstitutional or simply wrong. And if you do so, there's nothing anyone can do about it.Judges and prosecutors know this. But they don't want jurors to know it, which is why we occasionally see cases like this one, in which jury-information activist Mark Iannicelli was arrested and charged with "jury tampering" for setting up a small booth in front of a Denver courthouse labeled "Juror Info" and passing out leaflets. Putting up a sign and passing out leaflets sounds like free speech to me, but apparently Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey feels differently.
In a world where we have far too many laws (which means that people who are not criminals -- like the Pennsylvania woman who declared her registered gun in New Jersey -- can be arrested and imprisoned on bullshit charges), two words for Mark Iancelli: Thank you.
About an earlier case in this area taken by Reynolds:
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote: "It seems to me that such speech is constitutionally protected, and that the indictment therefore violates the First Amendment. One can debate whether jury nullification is good or bad for the legal system, but it's clear that it's not a crime for jurors to refuse to convict even when the jury instructions seem to call for a guilty verdict. So Heicklen is encouraging a jury to engage in legal -- even if, in the view of some, harmful -- conduct." It's legal, but prosecutors don't want jurors to know about it because if jurors knew they were free to acquit in the interest of justice, it would weaken prosecutors. (Prosecutors don't even like billboards aimed at educating jurors.)Of course, prosecutors have essentially the same power, since they're under no obligation to bring charges against even an obviously guilty defendant. But while the power of juries to let guilty people go free in the name of justice is treated as suspect and called "jury nullification," the power of prosecutors to do the exact same thing is called "prosecutorial discretion," and is treated not as a bug, but as a feature in our justice system. But there's no obvious reason why one is better than the other. Yes, prosecutors are professionals -- but they're also politicians, which means that their discretion may be employed politically.
The Gender Gap In Hillaryville
Women working on her campaign earn 87.6 cents for every $1 paid to her male staffers, blogs economist Mark J. Perry at AEI.
Perry links to a Washington Free Beacon piece by Brent Scher:
In May, women on her staff earned 88 cents for each dollar that was earned by men. In June, the campaign staff grew by 55 employees and women fared even worse, earning just 87 cents for each dollar earned by men. When projected out to reflect annual salary figures, it was calculated that the median annual salary for a woman would be about $7,000 less than the median male salary (see chart above).Clinton has chosen to make the issue of equal pay for women a central theme of her presidential campaign. "It's way past time to end the outrage of so many women still earning less than men on the job," Clinton said during her major July economic policy address.
Hey, Mrs. Clinton -- maybe ending the outrage ends at home!
Commenter Lyle at AEI gets it right on the gender gap:
Lyle August 6th, 2015
A recent study showed near parity for 22-27 year old women with men (some areas higher some areas lower) It appears that as family responsibilities intrude on life the gap widens as women bear the main impact of child rearing. Part of this may be the inability or unwillingness to make the total commitment required to get top jobs Which essentially means your life is your job.
California's Drought Man-Made? It Was Created By Environmentalists, Congressman Devin Nunes Says
Nunes writes at Investors.com, taking on the claim "There's not enough water in California":
Environmentalists often claim that the California water crisis stems from the state not having enough water to satisfy its rapidly growing population, especially during a drought.However, the state in fact has abundant water flowing into the Delta, which is the heart of California's irrigation structure. Water that originates in the snowpack of the Sierra Nevada Mountains runs off into the Delta, which has two pumping stations that help distribute the water throughout the state.
But on average, due to environmental regulations as well as a lack of water storage capacity (attributable, in large part, to activist groups' opposition to new storage projects), 70% of the water that enters the Delta is simply flushed into the ocean. California's water infrastructure was designed to withstand five years of drought, so the current crisis, which began about three years ago, should not be a crisis at all. During those three years, the state has flushed more than 2 million acre-feet of water -- or 652 billion gallons -- into the ocean due to the aforementioned biological opinions, which have prevented the irrigation infrastructure from operating at full capacity.
His eyes were first opened in the summer of 2002, at an "eye-opening meeting" with representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council and local environmental activist groups:
Hoping to convince me to support various water restrictions, they argued that San Joaquin Valley farmers should stop growing alfalfa and cotton in order to save water -- though they allowed that the planting of high-value crops such as almonds could continue. Then, as our discussion turned to the groups' overall vision for the San Joaquin Valley, they told me something astonishing:Their goal was to remove 1.3 million acres of farmland from production. They showed me maps that laid out their whole plan: From Merced all the way down to Bakersfield, and on the entire west side of the Valley as well as part of the east side, productive agriculture would end and the land would return to some ideal state of nature. I was stunned by the vicious audacity of their goal -- and I quickly learned how dedicated they were to realizing it.
He also has solutions to the water crisis:
The solution comprises these three simple measures:
• Return Delta pumping to normal operations at federal and state pumps. Because normal pumping levels are already paid for, this measure would cost taxpayers zero dollars.• Fix the San Joaquin River Settlement. Instead of continuing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on an unworkable scheme to recreate salmon runs, we should turn the San Joaquin River into a year-round flowing river with recirculated water. This approach would be good for the warm-water fish habitat and for recreation, and it would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars that will otherwise go down the salmon-run rat hole.
• Expedite and approve construction of major new water projects. This should include building the Temperance Flat dam along the San Joaquin River, raising Shasta dam to increase its reservoir capacity, expanding the San Luis Reservoir and approving construction of the Sites Reservoir in the Sacramento Valley. Because water users themselves should rightfully pay for these projects, they would cost federal taxpayers zero dollars.
These measures would not only end the water crisis, they would improve the environment for fish and wildlife -- all while saving taxpayer dollars.
Kinky
Linky with a ball gag.
Starbucks' Howard Schultz: Make Me King, And I'll Wash Your Feet. But Not Yet.
Ron Rosenbaum -- an wonderful writer and an incisive thinker worth reading -- gets it right in a tweet:
@RonRosenbaum1
Starbucks' Howard Schultz serves up VENTI BULLSH*T about why he's so humble he should be President.
Schultz writes in The New York Times:
FROM the earliest days of Starbucks, I've been captivated by the art of leadership. I was mentored over three decades by Warren G. Bennis, the eminent professor and scholar on leadership. I've gathered insights from peers, and I've drawn inspiration from our 300,000 employees. But nothing I've read or heard in the past few years has rivaled the power of the image I viewed on my cellphone a few years ago: Pope Francis, shortly after his election, kneeling and washing the feet of a dozen prisoners in Rome, one of them a young Muslim woman, in a pre-Easter ritual.In recent weeks, I have taken to recalling that humble, inspiring act of servant leadership as I observe the antithesis: a field of presidential aspirants unable to rise above petty politics.
Ron adds:
@RonRosenbaum1
He blames all on "petty politics" as if there were no real differences on vital issues.When you're CEO nobody tells you you're a fool.
More humbledrag from Schultz:
Despite the encouragement of others, I have no intention of entering the presidential fray. I'm not done serving at Starbucks. Although we have built an iconic brand while providing even part-time employees with access to health care, free college education and stock options, there is more we can do as a public company to demonstrate responsible leadership.The values of servant leadership -- putting others first and leading from the heart -- need to emerge from every corner of American life, including the business community.
...Our country is in desperate need of servant leaders, of men and women willing to kneel and embrace those who are not like them. Everyone seeking the presidency professes great love for our nation. But I ask myself, how can you be a genuine public servant if you belittle your fellow citizens and freeze out people who hold differing views?
People who "kneel" don't run for office.
People who truly care about making a difference often tend not to be all that interested in being fitted for the crown.
There's a woman here in my neighborhood who has done more to see that connected assholes don't get to violate laws and codes and abuse residents than I had thought humanly possible. I keep telling her if she runs for City Council, I'd support the hell out of her campaign. (In fact, for a while, I kept begging her to run for City Council.) She's really not interested. She doesn't want that job or to be in politics; she just wants things to not be unfair, and she works toward that as a citizen -- as I do...just nowhere near as much as she does.
Oh, and what I think Schultz is really saying? "Four years from now, vote for me for Prez!"
At UCLA, If You're Speaking, You're Probably Microaggressing Somebody
Brendan O'Neill writes at reason of new college speech rules that "chastise students who refuse to think racially, who balk at the idea that they should always be actively mindful of their own and everyone else's racial makeup":
UCLA says "Color Blindness," the idea we shouldn't obsess over people's race, is a microaggression. If you refuse to treat an individual as a "racial/cultural being," then you're being aggressive. This is a profound perversion of what has been considered the reasoned, liberal approach for decades--that treating people as "racial/cultural beings" is wrong and dehumanizing.UCLA offers the following examples as "color blind" utterances that count as microaggressions:
"When I look at you, I don't see color."
"There is only one race: the human race."
"I don't believe in race."
Apparently such comments deny individuals' "racial and ethnic experience." But on a campus like UCLA a few decades ago, refusing to treat individuals as "cultural beings" would have been the right and good thing. Now, in an eye-swivelling reversal, the polar opposite is the case: to demonstrate your politically correct virtue you must acknowledge the skin color of everyone you meet.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point similarly advises that color blindness is a racial microaggression. It lists "America is a melting pot" as an aggressive phrase. It brands as problematic any comment by a white person that suggests he or she "does not want to acknowledge race." Anyone who claims to be "immune to races"--that is, who prefers not to think about people as racial beings--is viewed as aggressive.
At the University of Missouri, the guide to "inclusive terminology" lists color-blindness as a form of prejudice, even as it recognizes that this term "originated from civil-rights legislation." Once, color-blindness was considered cool, but now we know it can be "disempowering for people whose racial identity is an important part of who they are," says the school.
This is the best (as in, the craziest) -- the idea that...
...Even static objects can commit acts of violence against students: one university bemoans "environmental microaggressions," which can include a college in which all the buildings are "named after white heterosexual upper class males." What these codes add up to is a demand that everyone be permanently on edge, constantly reevaluating their every thought before uttering it. It's an invitation to social paralysis.
Link Fu
Chop me a few.
Being For Due Process For The Accused Shouldn't Mean You're Smeared As Being For Rape
But it too often does. And in that, it's reminiscent of the hysteria that had people falsely accusing preschool teachers and operators of Satanic worship and ritual sexual abuse of children, Fredrik deBoer points out. These charges were "wildly implausible," a New York Times reporter observed, yet they were brought and people were convicted. Dozens of people, who actually served prison time.
Fredrik deBoer blogs about very similar hysteria now -- that of those who screech at and call for the head on a pike of anyone saying the accused in sexual assault accusations must have due process:
But even the most mundane calls for avoiding a rush to judgment -- not just due process in a court room, but fairness outside of one, given the immense damage these accusations can do to someone's reputation -- now results in immediate, angry condemnation. And, inevitably, the enforcement mechanism that people bring to bear in this debate:"Y'know, it's fascinating how often I see you worrying about accused rapists' lives being hypothetically ruined by internet commenters who don't want to give them the benefit of the doubt. This is doubtless unfair of me and will cause steam to come out of your ears, but your tireless efforts to save accused rapists from nonexistent problems makes me think you're taking such accusations a little too personally."
In other words, if you make the case for due process and basic fairness for those accused of sex crimes, you must be a rapist. For the record, you can review my actual output and find that I don't actually make this case nearly as often as the commenter suggests, but the point remains the same: if you suggest that we shouldn't operate under a blanket presumption of guilt when accusations of sex crimes are made, you deserved to be accused in similar terms.
The commenters at Gawker are not, I'm sorry to say, out of step with many young progressives today. Many of the vaguely leftish young people I interact with now deride any reference to due process or rights of the accused, when it comes to sex crimes, as inherently evil, conservative, and misogynist. Indeed, the topic of rights of the accused for those who face allegations of sex crimes is now frequently dismissed with eye-rolling and the blanket assumption of bad faith, as if maintaining rights central to a free society is similar to conspiracy mongering about chemtrails.
This would be weird enough, but it becomes even more bizarre when you consider that we are in a moment of unprecedented attention for criminal justice reform. #BlackLivesMatter is one example of a broad, increasingly bipartisan, cross-ideological reckoning in this country with the sorry state of our criminal justice system. Distrust of cops and prosecutors is rampant, and not just among the left-wing anymore. Indeed, that distrust is frequently found among Gawker's commenters... in every case except for allegations of sex crimes.
...Ultimately, this question is not merely about the left's stance towards our police state. It's about the left's relationship to certainty. For a long time, I've pointed out that the idiom of the left is not just strong belief in the superiority of our values but utter certitude in our superior grasp of the facts. We don't merely argue that our side is correct, anymore; we argue that anyone who has not already realized that our side is correct is a buffoon, if not actively evil. On Twitter, the default left-wing critique is that of open-mouthed disbelief that people do not already believe what we think they should believe. I think, in the long run, this belief in the totalizing, frictionless perfection of our ideology leads to a very dark place indeed. I ask instead that we remember that doubt has always been a left-wing value.
Hey, People Screaming "That's Racist!" -- America Itself Is The International Capital Of "Cultural Appropriation"
Jews eat Chinese food (or "Chinese" food, where I grew up) at Christmas in much of the country. Black people eat tacos and Chinese people go out for soul food.
A friend of mine (black, in case you're interested) who's in the music industry, describes the origins of American music as the intersection of "the Jews and the Blues." And, he noted, American music is unique because of that combination -- and all the other music that fed into it since Gershwin went down and lived with a black family to write "Porgy & Bess."
Well, Columbia University prof John McWhorter gets it right on those who scold that borrowing from other cultures is racist, explaining that what's racist is calling "cultural appropriation" racist. He writes in The New York Times:
A common argument is that to mimic an oppressed group's gestures is wrong because you haven't suffered their oppression. But this implies that, for example, the speech patterns and gestures of black women are all responses to oppression. Surely that is a reductive portrait of what it is to be a black woman or any human being. White Rachel Dolezal gliding around "identifying" as oppressed is one thing. White gay men imitating a few mannerisms of black women out of admiration is quite another.That's just it. Some academics are given to claiming that, as I once heard it put, "imitation is a form of negation." That is, to imitate is to cancel out. But what happened to "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?" If Harlem in the 1920s was fascinating cross-cultural fertilization, then why is the same kind of thing happening today condemned as "appropriation?"
I like this commenter at the NYT:
aspblom, Hollywood
If your ancestors did not use writing, then please don't you use writing. That is stealing. Please do not use the sauna if you are not Finnish (or Estonian or from parts of Russia).
Linkubus
A succubus, but with HTML.
The Center Of The Free Speech Movement Is Now A Center For The "Shut Up, You Might Offend Someone" Movement
Greg Piper at The College Fix reports that UC Berkeley student Shanzeh Khurram writes in her weekly column in The Daily Californian:
Even in Berkeley, the center of the Free Speech Movement, most people are so concerned about being politically correct that they end up stifling open discussion. But that is not what freedom of speech is about. Freedom of speech does not mean that no one should be offended or hurt. And it also does not guarantee that the speaker is protected from ridicule or criticism.
Earlier -- David Frum in The Atlantic on the campus activists who tried to keep Bill Maher from speaking:
In Maher's case as in Hirsi Ali's, the grounds of complaint was the invitee's attitude toward Islam. Maher criticizes all religion, but he has said especially harsh things about Islam. The Berkeley Muslim-students group, backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, condemned Maher as a bigot and racist. On his Friday Real Time program, Bill Maher delivered a scathing reply to the campus protesters. He noted the seeming irony that all this was occurring at Berkeley during the 50th anniversary year of the famed Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
The administration refused to bow to pressure from protests, as did Maher.
Frum writes:
More awkwardly still, those agitating to disinvite a commencement speaker will claim they are merely exercising free-speech rights of their own. Petitions, demonstrations, protest--why aren't those equally to be defended?Here's why. When protesters mobilize against an invited university guest, they are not merely expressing disapprobation of a selection. They are threatening the university with embarrassment or worse unless the university yields to their wishes. It's the university, not the speaker, who is their target. What they want from the university is not the right to be heard, but the right to veto. More exactly: These battles over campus speakers are not battles over rights at all. They are battles over power.
The anti-Maher protesters explicitly demanded this power for themselves: "Do not force us to tolerate the speaker that you selected, without our input, for our event. We demand the power for students to choose the commencement speakers and to reject the university administration's suggestions." But as a matter of fact, Berkeley students do choose their own commencements speakers. Invitations are issued by the elected leadership of a student society whose membership is open to all Berkeley students in good academic standing. The Maher protesters wished to over-ride this process--and to claim for their own pressure group the unique right to speak for all Berkeley students.
Wow -- How Rotten: 7-Year-Old Made To Eat Lunch By Himself For Three Days For Not Believing In God
This kid was in second grade at the time.
From the text of the filed complaint, via Volokh at the WaPo:
In February of 2015, A.B. was a second grader at Forest Park Elementary School, a school that is within Fort Wayne Community Schools. During a discussion with classmates on the playground he responded to a question by indicating that he did not go to church because he did not believe in God. This resulted in his teacher interrogating the child as to his beliefs and requiring the child to sit by himself during lunch and not talk to his classmates during lunch for three days. This violates the First Amendment. The defendant's actions caused great distress to A.B. and resulted in the child being ostracized by his peers past the three-day "banishment." No meaningful attempt has been made to remedy these injuries and the child seeks his damages.
The allegations:
7. In February of 2015, A.B. was a second-grade student at Forest Park Elementary School.
8. His teacher was Michelle Meyer.
9. On or about February 23, 2015, A.B. and his classmates were on the playground during the school day immediately before lunch when A.B. was asked by one of his classmates if he attended church.
10. A.B. responded by stating that he did not go to church and did not believe in God. He also stated that it was fine with him if his inquiring classmate believed in God.
11. The classmate said that A.B. had hurt her feelings by saying that he did not believe in God and started to cry.
12. A playground supervisor reported to Ms. Meyer what had happened.
13. At that point the students were going to lunch and Ms. Meyer asked A.B. if he had told the girl that he did not believe in God and A.B. said he had and asked what he had done wrong.
14. Ms. Meyer asked A.B. if he went to church, whether his family went to church, and whether his mother knew how he felt about God.
15. She also asked A.B. if he believed that maybe God exists.
16. Ms. Meyer told A.B. that she was very concerned about what he had done and that she was going to contact his mother - although she never did.
17. This was very upsetting to A.B. as he was made to feel that he had done something wrong.
18. A day or two after the initial incident, A.B. and his fellow-student who had become upset with his comment on the playground were sent to another adult employed at Forest Park Elementary School.
19. This person asked them what the problem was and A.B. indicated that his classmate had become upset when, in response to her question, he had said he did not go to church and did not believe in God.
20. Upon hearing this, the adult employee looked at A.B.'s classmate and stated that she should not be worried and should be happy she has faith and that she should not listen to A.B.'s bad ideas. She then patted the little girl's hand.
21. This was, again, extremely upsetting to A.B. as it reinforced his feeling that he had done something very wrong.
22. On the day of the incident and for an additional two days thereafter, Ms. Meyer required that A.B. sit by himself during lunch and told him he should not talk to the other students and stated that this was because he had offended them. This served to reinforce A.B.'s feeling that he had committed some transgression that justified his exclusion.
23. When V.S. was told by A.B. what had happened she called the Assistant Principal of the school and demanded an explanation.
24. The Assistant Principal set up a three-way telephone conversation with V.S., Ms. Meyer and himself.
25. Ms. Meyer confirmed her involvement in this matter as noted above.
26. V.S. demanded that the school not isolate her son or punish him for his beliefs.
27. After three days A.B. was allowed to join his classmates for lunch and all sanctions and restrictions were lifted.
28. After this three-day period, and after V.S. complained, A.B. was told by Ms. Meyer and other teachers that he could believe what he wants.
29. But this was after A.B. had been publicly separated from his classmates and informed that he could not speak to them. All the students in his class heard and were aware of this. He was publicly shamed and made to feel that his personal beliefs were terribly wrong.
30. No efforts were made to correct the damages that had been done.
31. A.B. came home from school on multiple occasions crying saying that he knows that everyone at school - teachers and students - hate him.
32. Even now there are some classmates who will not talk to A.B.
33. Even now A.B. remains anxious and fearful about school, which is completely contrary to how he felt before this incident.
34. At all times defendant acted, and refused to act, under color of state law.
Legal claims:
35. The actions of defendant violated rights secured to A.B. by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Request for relief:
WHEREFORE, A.B. requests that this Court:1. Accept jurisdiction of this case and set it for hearing.
2. Award him his damages after trial.
3. Award him his costs and reasonable attorneys' fees.
4. Award him all other proper relief.
via @freerangekids
Link...Link...
Goosed!
Popehat On Parenting -- Of Children And The Rest Of Us
A 2010 Popehat post on the lady, Monet Parnham-Lee, employed California Department of Public Health, who, with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, sued McDonald's -- supposedly -- because she couldn't say no to her kid's demands for Happy Meals:
Monet Parham-Lee is suing because, we're led to believe, her six year old daughter Maya harasses her on a daily basis for plastic Shreks. Monet Parham-Lee, evidently, is suing for negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress. Her emotional distress is caused by the fact that her six year old daughter, Maya, will not stop hectoring her about these plastic Shreks.I have a suggestion for Monet Parham-Lee. I have several suggestions in fact:
1. Tell your six year old daughter Maya to shut the fuck up. And eat her damned vegetables.2. Buy the damned Happy Meal on the way home from work, then throw out the hamburger and fries. Give Maya the plastic Shrek. A Happy Meal costs two dollars or something. You don't have two dollars? You're an overpaid state employee in a state that's going bankrupt because of people like you. You can afford it.
3. If you want to see emotional distress, wait until your six year old daughter Maya is old enough to Google herself. And her mom. So you can explain to her what the word "fuck" means. Because this post is NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY.
Of course this suit isn't being filed because Maya Parham-Lee eats too many damned Happy Meals. Or because she can't get her plastic Shrek. Or because Monet Parham-Lee is so damned weak that she's suffered ACTIONABLE EMOTIONAL DISTRESS from telling her daughter, six year old Maya, "No."
Maya Parham-Lee, the six year old daughter of Monet Parham-Lee, has probably never eaten a Happy Meal in her life. I'll bet she's eaten thousands of Unhappy Meals: wheat germ, carrots, whey, lentils, spirulina, oats, and raw, uncooked hay.
All of it steamed or boiled. Except for the raw hay.
It's been filed because Monet Parham-Lee, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, want to control what everyone eats. But they lack the persuasive skills to convince California voters to ban cheeseburgers, french fries, lard, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and all of the other things that make a meal truly Happy.
Nitwit commenting at Popehat:
Brittney Kara Wow! Lots of hatred on this blog. First off, while I don't agree with not taking responsibility for parenting choices, I do think that it is completely wrong for McDonald's to market to young children. There is loads of information out there exposing the ingredients in McDonald's to be toxic and very bad for your health. If you are not aware of this then you all need to see documentaries like Food Inc, Food Matters, and Super Size me. McDonald's is NOT FOOD! Fast Food is a huge factor in the rising childhood obesity epidemic. These corporations need to start to take responsibility for what they are marketing to young children. I have a 2 year old daughter who has NEVER eaten at McDonald's and never will because I refuse to feed my child poison. The truth is that people are not educated about what is really in those products and so most Americans believe that it is ok to eat there and feed their children this junk. I don't think that McDonald's should be 100% responsible for the decisions she makes as a parent, but I do believe that they need to be held social responsible for the damages they are causing people's health. By the way the marketing they use with the colors, themes, and toys they market to children has been proven to increase hunger, produce positive emotions, and is designed to make people addicted to their food. Trying to get children addicted to anything should be illegal!! At least she is speaking out about a problem that is negatively affecting our nation.
My parents, who acted all, you know, parental, rarely let us have McDonald's. We got it if we went with my dad to his office on Saturday, which happened about once every six months.
In other words, it was a treat.
We were allowed to scream -- but only if we were mortally wounded after being attacked by a rabid mountain lion...of which there were exactly none in the flat, deforested Detroit, Michigan suburb in which I grew up.
Happy To Have Murdered Them: Palestinian Terrorism Planner Talks About What She Did
15 people were murdered in the bombing of a Sbarro in Israel in 2011. Ahlam Tamimi, a female Jordanian Terrorist helped plan the attack:
From YouTube:
In October 2011, Ahlam Tamimi, a female Jordanian Terrorist helped plan and assist in a horrific 2001 suicide bombing in Israel, was released from an Israeli jail as part of the Palestinian prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.Tamimi had been serving 16 life sentences for her role in the August 9, 2001 suicide bombing of Sbarro's pizzeria in Jerusalem, a suicide bombing that killed 15 Israelis and wounded over 130 others. Among the murdered victims were eight children, a pregnant woman and another woman who was left in a permanent coma.
At the time of the killing, Tamimi was a 20-year-old Jordanian national who lived in Ramallah, studied at Birzeit University, and worked as a television journalist. She was also the first woman to have been recruited by Hamas' Izzadine el-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas that launched 138 suicide attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets during the al-Aqsa Intifada from 2000-2004, killing over 1,064 Israelis and wounding 7,462 others.
While Tamimi's most visible role in the Sbarro operation was to transport the suicide bomber to the target, in reality she was intimately involved in its entire planning, including intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, and target selection.
Needless to say, Tamimi -- whose fellow co-conspirator in the Sbarro bombing, Mohammad Daghlas, was also released as part of the prisoner swap -- was ecstatic about her good fortune, declaring upon her release:
It's a brilliant move of the Hamas negotiators to include my name in the swap deal although the Israeli military Courts recommended not to include my name in any prisoners swap in the future.If anyone had entertained the idea that Tamimi's ten years in prison may have engendered in her a feeling of remorse about her viscous actions, those ideas were quickly disabused in a television interview she gave in Jordan on October 19, 2011.
When asked by the interviewer if "she would carry out the attack today," Tamimi defiantly responded:
"Of course, I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]? This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner.The manner by which Tamimi carried out the attack on Sbarro's was both chilling in its details and terrifying in its effects.
As part of her intelligence gathering, Tamimi had picked Sbarro's precisely because it was unguarded and would be filled with patrons, most of whom were children and young mothers.
Apparently, Tamimi's choice satisfied Ezziddin Al-Masri, the operation's suicide bomber. In a later interview after her arrest, Tamimi said the only question he had asked her was: "Will there be religious Jews there?" which she answered in the affirmative."
via @LegalInsurrection
Welfare For The Rich Needs To End
No, that wasn't the word from Bernie Sanders.
It was Charles Koch talking, while surrounded by some of the wealthiest men and women in the nation, reports Eliana Johnson at NRO.
And, by the way, I sure do agree.
Koch condemned big bank bailouts and government handouts for the rich.
Doing away with crony capitalism might hurt some of the individuals in attendance, Koch said, and it would certainly hurt Koch Industries, but over the long term, it would revitalize the economy and benefit all parties. Bailing out the big banks, he said, had not only created a culture of dependency at the top, but crushed small community banks at the bottom."We need to start by eliminating welfare for the rich," he said. "Physician, heal thyself."
An example of welfare to the biggest and richest is the Ex-Im bank (aka "Boeing's Bank"), which Veronique de Rugy has been covering for Mercatus and reason. An excerpt from de Rugy's June 18 piece in reason:
Ex-Im is the epitome of that cronyism and has a charter that is set to expire, which is why it became such a great target. For instance, in recent years, some 60 percent of the bank's activities have benefited 10 giant U.S. corporations, with 40 percent benefiting one company alone: Boeing. On the foreign side, the cheap loans are extended to giant state-owned companies such as Mexico's petroleum company, Pemex, and the United Arab Emirates' airline, Emirates. When the Ex-Im financing isn't benefiting a state-owned firm, it is often flowing to very successful private firms with plenty of access to capital, such as the loan extended to the richest woman in Australia to finance her iron ore project at the expense of its U.S competitors.These Ex-Im companies may enjoy the perks of cheap financing and artificially inflated profits, but it's not fair for the 98 percent of U.S. exports generated without special treatment from the federal government. That's especially outrageous when the program has taxpayers on the hook for $140 billion.
via @instapundit
The Sort Of Thinking That Is Not Permitted In Islam
Part of the reason it is highly likely that Islam cannot be reformed is that it is designed to be fundamentalism in the strongest ways -- for example, in how the Quran is considered the word of Allah, handed down from the heavens, and is not to be questioned. (And "not to be questioned" means "on penalty of death."
I'm an atheist, but I appreciate the self-reflection and self-criticism I see encouraged in Judaism.
For a recent example, in Haaretz, in the wake of the tragic stabbings at the gay pride parade in Israel, Dr. Samuel Lebens, an Orthodox rabbi and a research fellow at Rutgers, writes:
In the midst of Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade on Thursday, a "religious" Jew stabbed six people. The assailant was apprehended and it quickly became clear that he had committed an almost identical crime before going to prison for ten years, only to be released last month; free to vent his blood thirsty hatred again.When Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Rabbi Aaron Lichtenstein delivered an address in the yeshiva that he headed. He lamented the fact that the religious Zionist community had produced a murderer. Don't say that Yigal Amir, who murdered Rabin, was a bad seed or an aberration, he said. Instead, recognize that our community has allowed a rhetoric to buzz around that was so violently opposed to Rabin's policies that a sick individual could get it into his head that Judaism would sanction such a heinous crime.
Rabbi Lichtenstein was a moral hero. He lived up to the Jewish value of heshbon hanefesh - which is the process of self-critical reflection essential for moral growth.
Linkmallow
Linkernutter.
"Due Process For All" Shouldn't Mean Some Get More Of It Than Others
Sarah Merriman, a spokeswoman for SAFER Campus, opposes a new campus due process bill, showing contempt for basic rights for those accused in sexual assault cases, writes Ashe Schow at WashEx.
Merriman: Schools "must prioritize the needs of survivors first and foremost."
Schow:
That's all well and good, but one does not know whether someone is truly a "survivor" unless his or her story can hold up to scrutiny, something deliberately absent from current campus hearings....Due process for all means due process for all, not due process for only accusers.
If opponents of the bill, like Merriman, think due process is such a hindrance to justice, why aren't they calling for its removal in all aspects of the legal system?
Ban It And They Will Come
One of the best ways to make something exciting is to make it forbidden.
Well, Cosmopolitan magazine is about to get a little sales help from Food Lion and Rite Aid. Hiroko Tabuchi writes for The New York Times:
The two retailers will soon place issues of Cosmopolitan magazine behind "blinders" to shield minors from the magazine's sexual content, they confirmed separately on Friday.Kristin Kellum, a Rite Aid spokeswoman, said the retailer would "continue to carry" Cosmopolitan but was "working to place future issues of this publication behind pocket shields." Rite Aid operates about 4,600 drugstores across the country.
Food Lion, which runs 1,100 grocery stores in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, will require Cosmopolitan's publisher, Hearst, to provide a holder that would shield the cover, according to Christy Phillips-Brown, a company spokeswoman. The plastic blinders are U-shaped and hide the headlines that appear around the outside of the cover, but do not hide the cover model or the Cosmopolitan banner that runs across the top of the magazine.
Um, on the Internet, kids can watch people having a threesome with a pony.
It's so quaint anybody thinks the equivalent of the old brown paper wrapper is going to do anything but make people want to look behind it. Especially the people whose eyes it's supposed to be kept from. That is, if they aren't too glued to their phones to care.
Linkuseum
Curiosities, please.
Spam Through The Ages
A tweet from @AdamKissel:
"I must without fail send him a thousand gold florins within eight days from this time, else will his head be cut off."
--14th-century scam
Hey, Israel Bashers: Israel Is A Model For Gay Rights
There was an awful and disgusting stabbing by an Orthodox Jewish nutbag at a gay rights parade in Israel.
In the week of tweets like "Will the Zionists continue their pinkwashing campaign?", David Kaufman writes a little "ahem" note to the Israel bashers in the NY Post:
As the tragic attack on Jerusalem's Gay Pride parade Thursday proves, even a nation as safety-conscious as Israel is prone to colossal failures of security and intelligence. But as the outrage subsides and the injured heal, Yishai Shlissel's stabbing spree must be considered for what it is: a relatively isolated incident in a nation that takes its LGBT citizens very seriously.Need proof? How about progressive LGBT military, marriage and employment-protection policies that long preceded their US equivalents. Or ample state and municipal funding for LGBT education and social-service initiatives.
Or an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance that has made Tel Aviv one of the most openly LGBT towns on the planet. Or the immediate outrage from Israeli politicians -- from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down -- condemning Thursday's horror.
These are not mere propaganda posings, but national realities that sharply contradict the growing portrayals of Israel as anti-democratic.
Meanwhile, the silence continues from gay rights activists about the Islamic command that gays be slaughtered -- and the fact that this actually happens in Islamic majority countries.
Sharia punishments for homosexuality via Wiki:
There are several methods by which sharia jurists have advocated the punishment of gays or lesbians who are sexually active. One form of execution involves an LGBT person being stoned to death by a crowd of Muslims; this precedence was set in the hadith Abu Dawud which states "Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done", then elaborates they be "stoned to death".[17] The majority of Muslim jurists established an ijma ruling that LGBT people be thrown from rooftops or high places,[18] and this is the perspective of most Salafists.[19]
Hangings of gays in Iran meets with silence from the West, including the activists so busy hissing at Israel on Twitter and elsewhere.
Obamacare Is Unicorn-Care: Fines Rise As Subsidies Go To People Who Don't Exist
Eric Boehm writes at Watchdog.org:
The IRS fined more than 7.5 million Americans who didn't have health insurance in 2014, even as Obamacare subsidies flowed to people who didn't even exist....Penalties will increase to $395 or 2 percent of income per person in 2015; that will jump to $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016.
Those penalties are supposed to force Americans to purchase health insurance -- or to at least make it financially wise for them to do so.
...But an investigation by the Government Accountability Office recently revealed that fake applicants who enrolled in health insurance programs through the federal exchange were receiving subsidies. Those phony applicants had initially enrolled during 2014, but they were automatically re-enrolled and continued to benefit from tax subsidies in 2015, the GAO said.
The application process used by the Healthcare.Gov federal exchange is not set up to detect fraud, concluded Seto Bagdoyan, chief of GAO audits and investigations, who submitted testimony to the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month.
@reasonpolicy
Stinks
Have you seen my skunk?
Still! Nice Prices For People Who Sometimes Say F*ck
Today again, my book seems to be on special or at an oddly low price at Amazon -- half off, at $7.61 (list price $14.99). Not sure how long it will stay that way (might be part of a pricing algorithm at Amazon).
So if you haven't read it, please use this opportunity to get yours now: "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck."
It's a science-based and funny book on how we can behave less counterproductively.
Along with positive reviews in the WSJ and other publications, Library Journal gave the book a starred review: "Verdict: Solid psychology and a wealth of helpful knowledge and rapier wit fill these pages. Highly recommended."
Orders of the book (new only, not used!) help support my writing on this blog and my answering questions that won't make my column.
To buy stuff you don't see in my links and give me a wee kickback (that costs you nothing), Search Amy's Amazon here.
And thanks to all who shop through my links! Every purchase you make is much appreciated!
