Alas, the Senate yesterday rejected a provision that would have capped credit card interest at 15%:

The proposal by Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, drew only 33 votes and needed 60. A bipartisan group of 60 senators opposed it, though the Senate pushed ahead with other restrictions on credit cards. Some Democrats and consumer groups have said that an interest cap is needed to put real teeth into an otherwise solid bill.

Evidently, usury still has strong bipartisan support.

I can't believe it's not already illegal for credit card companies to inflict late fees for payments submitted on time but processed late.

This is some posts I've enjoyed reading related to the whole Patrica Wrede Mammoth!Fail discussion.

elynross:

Slowly My "Buy New" (Or Read At All) Writers List Dwindles

and

When the 13th Child Was In the Planning Stages

From sanguinity:

And the Mammoth You Rode in On

The *head-deskiest* part of Wrede's statements that I've read so far:

The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel. [emphasis mine]

LE SIGH

Because Native Americans made NO CONTRIBUTION to the world as we know it whatsoever. They certainly didn't make any MAJOR contributions. *SARCASM*

If all this Mammoth!Fail is getting you run down/depressed, here's some books I read recently that I'd recommend as an antidote:

Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen

1491, by Charles C. Mann

Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children, edited by Beverly Slapin and Doris Seale (just started reading this, about halfway through, but it's excellent so far).

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

Plants and Society, by Estelle Levetin and Karen McMahon (actually a textbook, well worth the read if you can get ahold of a copy).

So I was on the road most of the day today, including New York City rush-hour traffic and suddenly I do not love humans very much. Then I came home to only dial-up for fuck's sake. And the milk had gone sour and I still can't find the dead mouse in the wall. It is there, somewhere, or perhaps the fridge finally needs thorough cleaning. What do you think? Don't say anything.

Then I read some of the posts (I mistyped that first as boasts) on a new duh-feminism website (or so it seems to me right now), and came across a post about how very unnecessary the old-style-feminism has become:

The same woman at the Times who snagged me in the elevator that day had done the same thing on an earlier occasion, to ask about a semi-spurious trend story published in the paper that day. It described Yale students and recent graduates (I'm one) who were planning to "opt out" for a year or two or five when they spawned. She was aghast to hear that I didn't have strong feelings either way, and warned me against dropping out of the workforce. God help my shallow self, as I stood there looking at her rumpled suit and dated hair and frown lines, I was overwhelmed with pity. Perhaps watching me breeze into the life she had so laboriously carved out for herself—or worse, stray from the hard line in a way that she and other feminists couldn't allow themselves to—felt to her like a bitter betrayal.

But it felt great to me.

So it's all settled then? Glad to hear that, though perhaps feminism is a little bit more than about the personalities of individual women or the nastiness of two of them, don't you think? And ageism isn't that pretty, either. But whatever. Duh.

Now this is fun. I think that I'm going to start writing posts like that, too. It's easy, takes no research and I'm sure I can think of something outrageous. For instance, I used to bite my toe nails when I was a tiny goddess. Then I'd spit them out all over the living-room rug. There is no need for nail clippers in my world.

Speaking of my world, I received some mail for my bullying piece. May I gently point out to all the nasties out there that I'm not the same as 'all feminists', that what I say is not the dogma of the feminist movement (as you can see from the above quote, duh) and that, indeed, I have no official standing among the stern sturm-troops of professional enforcers of feminist discipline. I am me. Is that so hard to comprehend? And isn't that ultimately what the feminist movement is trying to hammer into the thick skulls of nasties everywhere? That women are every bit as much individuals as men and deserve to be treated as such?

Finally, I don't like to argue with very stupid people. It's a waste of time and I don't get paid for the teaching. If you want to debate feminism, first at least read about it.

I've been reading James Berardinelli's movie reviews for about 7 or 8 years now. Maybe longer -- I'm pretty sure I was reading his reviews when I was still back in Philly. There are some things I disagree with him about (he still thinks that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was a good movie -- WTF??? :P ), but most of the time I find his reviews even-handed and insightful. He's no Roger Ebert, but he's usually pretty good. So I gotta wonder what the fuck he was thinking when he wrote this in his review of Management, the Jennifer Aniston/Steve Zahn Stalkers Are All Really Just Cute Misunderstood Guys And You Should Totally Go Out With Yours movie.

One might not think a creepy stalker movie would work well as a romantic comedy, but Mike is obviously harmless and Sue brings his increased attention on herself by first inviting him to "touch her butt," then compounding the error by having sex with him. One can forgive the guy for getting the wrong idea. [emphasis mine]

She shoulda known better, guise!!! SHE SHOULDA KNOWN!!! Remember: stalking is NEVER the stalker's fault! :P

Keep it classy, James.

Ways You Know Your Significant Other is All Right: He covers your face in red lipstick while you sleep, like, apparently, covers your face in red lipstick to the point where it has texture like a Van Gogh or something, but feels guilty enough to wipe it off before you wake up.

Although you won’t understand the reddish stains all over your face until he explains it to you later. With much vim.

Today has been an annoying day, so to counter-act it, I give you one thing on my long list of Things That Do Not Suck: Mindy Kaling and her blog things i bought that i love.

Physicists Prove That Vampires Could Not Exist

Oh, academia. :)

The Republican Party is at a crossroads, my friends. Deeply unpopular and bereft of power outside the South, the GOP needs to find a way back to the hearts and minds of the American people. They can do this many ways, of course: by moderating their views, by finding new and better ways to express themselves, or by simply being quiet and waiting for events to turn on the Democrats.

Or — and I’m just throwing this out there — they can behave like a bunch of seventh-graders, and hurl incoherent insults as loudly as possible, in the hopes that others will think that proves their mettle.

Sadly for the GOP and the country, this appears to be the Republican strategery for the coming years:

A member of the Republican
National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats
as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Ah, yes, calling the other party names. How juvenile. Truly, this is the way to prove to America that the real grown-ups are in the Republican party.

The sad thing is that America needs grown-ups in the Republican Party. I truly and absolutely believe that this country functions best with two functional parties. But this country does not have two functional parties right now; it barely has one. The Republicans are simply not up to the task of being thoughtful, intelligent leaders of our country; indeed, they seem to be permanently mired in a middle-school mentality, that if they just yell loudly and strut around, everyone will think they’re awesome.

Well, sorry, Republicans: the election of Barack Obama was a signal that America has tired of tough-talkin’ bullies. We actually want leaders who will engage with the issues of the day, who will take serious issues seriously. Who will listen to those he disagrees with, and who will treat his or her ideological opponents with respect.

So long as the Republicans stay stuck in a game of name-calling, petty politics, they will stay mired in the minority. At some point, wiser men and women will prevail, and the GOP will begin the hard but necessary task of updating itself for the 21st century. Until that day comes, the GOP will continue to stamp its foot like a schoolyard bully — and it will continue to get the respect that behavior calls for.

DoubleX blogger Susannah Breslin responds to feminist critiques of her magazine by asserting that Yes, Virginia, feminism is dead (apparently they rejected her initial title). The piece, in its entirety:

Apparently, if you launch a website for women in 2009, the most important question is whether or not it’s feminist. At least, that’s what you’d think, judging by today’s launch of the women-oriented website you’re reading. Only, the funny thing is, I thought feminism was dead. I mean, didn’t we kill it already?

At best, it seems odd to judge a 21st century production by the politics of a decades-old movement, the relevance of which has been dubious for years now. The sense I get reading Jezebel’s dismissive, snippy critique, which seems to amount to “you’re a bunch of old farts, blppph,” or Tracy Clark-Flory’s more considered missive is that the only way to judge a female-oriented site is by whether or not it’s “feminist.” What gives? Aren’t we over that already? I could have sworn feminism was cultural road kill, at this point. And isn’t it intellectually reductive and culturally retarded to imply that the only site for women worth doing is one that follows an abstract set of political rules upon which no one can agree? It seems to me that “feminist” sites like the aptly-named Feministe are interested in having it both ways. They want all the power their feminist foremothers promised them—and the right to play full-time victims of the patriarchy. Get over it. Get on with it. I hope the feminist mantle doesn’t fit Double X. I hope this site is bigger than that. I want to be more than a victim of the patriarchy, go farther than the feminist movement ever did, spend less time reading about women who are wondering if their supposed sisters are doing “the right thing” in terms of antiquated political concepts, and get the hell on with doing it already.

Except apparently in Susannah Breslin’s world, “go[ing] farther than the feminist movement ever did” and “get[ting] the hell on with doing it already” means blaming women when their husbands cheat and writing about how feminist writers are such whiners and victims.

If DoubleX isn’t a feminist blog and doesn’t concern itself with feminism, that’s totally fine — but Breslin acts as if feminist bloggers pinned those hopes on DoubleX with no indication that it would address feminist issues. We didn’t. We were responding to an article on DoubleX which describes the site as “a symposium on the current state of feminism.” The site has featured at least seven articles about feminism in two days. The beginning of many of the articles features a link to a site poll about Betty Friedan. Many of the DoubleX writers and editors cut their teeth in feminist blogs and magazines — Latoya Peterson, Katha Pollitt, Linda Hirshman, Jessica Grose, Meghan O’Rourke, and Emily Bazelon are all well-known writers who either explicitly identify as feminist or regularly cover feminist issues. The blogroll at DoubleX lists blogs as “aptly-named” as Feministe, Feministing, and Broadsheet.

But sure, it’s all of us whiney feminists with victim complexes who are attributing a feminist bent (or a claim of one) to DoubleX.

I’ll say again that I think DoubleX’s editorial staff is great; I think the writers they’ve chosen are by and large very impressive. But if they aren’t a feminist blog — if they joyfully announce that feminism is “roadkill” — perhaps they should alert their feminist contributors, editors and readers.

The New York state Assembly voted 89 to 52 yesterday in favor of a bill that would legalize same sex marriage in the state. The same bill passed the state Assembly, but was defeated in the state Senate in 2007, according to

The United States was elected to a three year term on the UN Human Rights Council yesterday. The Council is currently midway through a review of human rights in each UN member state, according to the

A member of Anonymous has pleaded guilty to his part in a DDOS attack on Scientology:

NEWARK, NJ—A New Jersey man pleaded guilty today to his role in a cyber attack on Church of Scientology websites in January 2008 that rendered the websites unavailable.

Dmitriy Guzner, 19, of Verona, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to computer hacking charges originally filed in Los Angeles for his role in the distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against the Scientology websites. A DDOS attack occurs where a large amount of malicious Internet traffic is directed at a website or a set of websites. The target websites are unable to handle the high volume of Internet traffic and therefore become unavailable to legitimate users. [FBI]

Guzner faces up to 10 years in prison.

For those of you not aware, there’s been a bit of a resurgence of Fail surrounding Race over in sciencefictionfantasyland. This latest debate/discussion surrounds a book called The Thirteenth Child. But this post isn’t about that (click on the link for the post about that). During the discussion, author Loid McMaster Bujold came along to defend the book and its author because said author (Patricia Wrede) is a friend of hers. During this defense she about knocked off every square on the BINGO card. At one point she posted this in the comments of a related discussion:

…never before have so many Readers of Color existed to *have* the conversation, or been able to communicate with each other to do so. When I went to my first midwestern convention in 1968, there was exactly one black fan, male; it’s only in late years that I’ve had cause to wonder how brave he must have been to venture in. Octavia Butler, at a library program, once described a young black reader meeting her as a black SF writer, and saying in some wonder, “I didn’t know we *did* that!” As far as I can tell, the biggest single factor driving the current shift and growth in diversity in genre readers has been the invention of the Internet.

Before you click that link to tell Lois how wrong she is, just know that she has been told and has indicated some understanding of where she went wrong with that thinking. Before that, though, delux_vivens made a spectacular post on the LJ community deadbrowalking calling for POC fans to step up and be counted. That post is at 21 pages now and growing. You don’t have to be a member of deadbro to post, but I think you do need to be on LJ.

The deadbro post is titled “wild unicorn herd check in” referring to the fact that a certain segment of SF seems to think that POC who read and watch SF media do not exist or are super rare because they do not see us. Pam Noles is LOLing:

I must add that ‘wild unicorn heard’ is absolutely hilarious, too. Someone who knows how to do those things should make us a T-shirt invoking that concept, with partial proceeds going to Carl Brandon Society, Verb Noir and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship. I would suggest that the design also include at least one or two Orcs in full combat regalia riding the wild unicorns. Or perhaps slaughtering them. Whichever works best. I would so buy as many of that T-shirt as I could afford, one to keep, the rest to do Other Things with.

As someone else said: “I will buy the t-shirt, the hoodie, the bag, the pencil, the toe warmer, the napkin ring, the bath set, the breakfast cereal, and the movie.”

So let’s do this. I know there are some talented artists out there, some photoshop geniuses, some people who just love to create stuff. Come up with a design we can put on some merchandise. Post links to the image(s) in the comments here. If we get enough really good ones we can open up a Wild Unicorn Herd store whose purpose is to benefit the organizations mentioned above. (Someone will have to talk to the Carl Brandon Society about this. Good thing we’re seeing them next week.)

In the meantime, you should go JOIN the Carl Brandon Society. They’re an organization for POC SF/F/H writers, creators, and fans who want to see more POC creating the media and in the media they consume.

An article appearing in last week's Miami Herald provides the somewhat stunning news that last year, more babies in Miami-Dade county in Florida were born by c-section than were born vaginally. While the c-section rate for the U.S. hit a record high in 2007 at 31.8% - a level and ...

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Blamer Kate reports via Blackberry from the West Coast:

Dear Twisty,

A laughably obnoxious ad cluster I spotted at the intersection of 6th and Anza in San Francisco while doing my very dudely pizza delivery work:

[For those of you who can't make out the slogans in the photo:

"Save the calories for bacon."
"0 calories. Great taste. Welded together."
"No gut. All glory."]

Dear Blamer Kate,

Thank you for sharing the stupid ad for this stupid soda. You may or may not be acquainted with an even stupider TV commercial for this stupid soda wherein the product is described as consisting of wolverine spit and scorpion venom, packaged in a macho black can made from the hull of a nukular [sic] submarine. Dudes crush the “submarine” with their bare hands. “Pepsi Max. The first diet cola for men.” You can watch it here.

What’s the big whoop? Well, you can’t have a “soda for men” unless “men” are considered a class unto themselves, defined in terms of the bacon-eating, welding, glorious nukular submarine-squashing aspirations that separate them from dainty vulnerable “women.” These ads are jokey, depicting average-looking dudes, but they tacitly allude to the noxious he-man/fragile damsel dichotomy that’s been chapping actual women’s hides lo these many millennia.

So Pepsi wins I Blame the Patriarchy’s first-ever Ditwuss (DTWS, or “Degrades the Whole Species”) Award.

Hugs,
Twisty

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Despite the billions of dollars they have spent trying to protect their turf, it has  finally dawned on the health insurance industry that some kind change in the way we pay for medical needs is likely.  How else to explain the Hail Mary magnanimous gesture of offering to quit charging women more than men for health insurance.

Wow. Forgive me if I don’t sound grateful. Let’s do a little math…

Since I don’t work for a large corporation, I have  been paying my own healthcare premiums for some 25 years now.  At first they were quite affordable, now in order to have a policy that would truly protect me  if I had major medical needs, it is a significant outlay.  Rough numbers, probably erring a tad low, let’s say my payments for health insurance have averaged $250/month over that period. So $250 x 12 months x 25 years equals…wait for it…$75,000.  A recent article by the New York Times uses the discrepency in charges by Anthem as an example and since this is the company that I get my insurance from,  just for kicks let’s use the 38% number they use.  By my reckoning, that means I have paid $28,500 more than my imaginary twin brother.

Wow again.  Not only  am I not grateful, I’m steaming mad.

But the best part of this is why we get charged so much more.  Not only do we bear the entire burden of pregnancy-related costs, but insurers say, “they charge women more than men of the same age because claims experience shows that women use more health care services. They are more likely to visit doctors, to get regular checkups, to take prescription medications and to have certain chronic illnesses”.

In other words, we are  getting penalized for bearing children and taking care of ourselves in a very big way.  But wait, it gets worse.  According to Reuters,

• 70 percent, or 63.8 million, working-age (American) women are uninsured, underinsured, have medical bill problems or medical debt, or did not access needed care because of cost. That compared with 59 percent, or 51.9 million, working-age men.
• 52 percent of women were more likely to leave a prescription unfilled, skip a recommended medical test or treatment, or fail to seek needed medical care. That compared with just 39 percent of men.
• 45 percent of women had medical debt or reported problems paying medical bills, compared with 36 percent of men.

The reasons that women fare worse than men in terms of being able to afford health care  are obvious–we tend to be paid less, are more likely to work in low-end or part-time jobs that don’t provide coverage and then we get penalized for bearing children and seeking medical care.

These numbers speak for themselves.  The American  system of paying for health care is dysfunctional, most especially  for  women, and insurance companies have contributed significantly to this literally deadly debacle.  So when  those same companies try to keep their grubby little fingers in the pie by ending misogynistic profiteering, the answer should  be a resounding no.

And while we’re at it, the women of this country are  entitled to a massive premium rebate.

          The House has passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which “would expand the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.” It awaits Senate approval.
          The attention over this bill has centered on hate crimes against gay or transgendered people. I’m thankful to LGBT groups for pushing its passage. But I’m concerned when these groups and others disappear male violence against women as women.
          Check out the information from the Human Rights Campaign. It doesn’t feel compelled to discuss violence against women, unless they are lesbian, bi or trans. It focuses on its particular issues. In contrast, a feminist organization like NOW could not limit itself to gender without being criticized.
         An NYT editorial endorsing the Matthew Shepard Act talks about protecting the rights of minority groups, but women aren’t a minority. The editorial says African-Americans suffer the most from hate crimes. Actually, women of all races suffer the most, but many states don’t include gender and thus, we aren’t counted.
          Even when people are on our side, even when they have done important work that will benefit us, we cannot allow them to define terms in ways that marginalize us.
--------
          I’ve written about this before.

The Women's Prison Association, an organization working to address issues faced by women with criminal justice histories, has released a new report on prison nurseries: "Mothers, Infants and Imprisonment: A National Look at Prison Nurseries and Community-Based Alternatives." The report examines U.S. prison nursery programs, which allow incarcerated women to keep ...

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Here it is:

A dyslexic walked into a bra.

I'm currently on the road and forgot to pack my muse, assuming that I could have found him. He's mostly carousing these days, getting new tattoos and trying to find someone else to be a muse to. Honest.

We should return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

I was pretty excited for the launch of Double X, Slate’s online feminist magazine. They have some thoughful writers, a great editorial staff and a big platform, so I was hoping for good things. Unfortunately, the magazine seems to have kicked off by hosting a feminist pissing contest — because what’s more fun than telling other feminists that they aren’t quite feminist enough?

The article in question is by Linda Hirshman, and it’s entitled “How Jezebel is hurting women.” Hirshman starts out by criticizing Jezebel writers Tracie and Moe for going on the Lizz Winstead show drunk and saying a variety of idiotic things — and I agree that Tracie and Moe did look like idiots on that show and did say some incredibly anti-feminist stupid shit. Tracie and Moe have admitted as much, and apologized. This is all old news; it happened a year ago, Moe has left Jezebel and Tracie primarily writes reviews of TV shows at this point. Jezebel’s more feminist-minded writers have gained prominence on the site — Anna, Megan, Dodai, Sadie and others write regularly, often with a feminist bent. Which isn’t to say that Jezebel is an explicitly feminist site; it isn’t, and it doesn’t bill itself as such. It’s a site that a lot of feminist writers certainly take issue with from time to time (but of course, so is Feministe and lots of other explicitly feminist blogs). Some of the Jezebel writers have put up posts that have made me want to throw something — that’s not an unfamiliar feeling when someone’s feminism doesn’t look all that much like mine. And as much as I find Tracie and Moe’s writing to be very entertaining, their feminism isn’t much like mine. At the same time, other Jezebel writers regularly produce content that is thoroughly feminist-minded, progressive and thoughtful; it’s a group site, and there’s a diversity of opinion and content. That’s ok.

What’s not ok is stuff like this:

Given the high level of risk the Jezebel life involves, it is surprising that the offense that arouses the liberated Jezebels to real political fury is the suggestion that women like them might be made responsible for the consequences of their own acts, or that there might be general standards that define basic feminist behavior. Suggest that women report the men who rape them for the sake of future victims, say, or that women should be asked why they stay with the men who abuse them, or urged to leave them, and the Jezebels go ballistic. Judgmental, judgmental!

Linda is referring to the fact that Jezebel writer Megan didn’t report a sexual assault that she survived when she was 17 and in a foreign country, and that Megan also wrote a post criticizing Linda’s article about how good feminists should hound domestic violence survivors with the question, “Why don’t you just leave?” Linda is also referring to the fact that the Jezebel writers often pepper posts with personal anecdotes — stories of crappy sexual partners, nights of too much drinking, and experiences with pregnancy, STDs and sexual assault. In other words, the Jezebel writers live “high-risk” lives of whoredom and then get mad when you tell them they got what they had coming to them. In fact, Linda argues, women are sexually vulnerable, and there are risks to the liberation that the Jezebels embrace; by not properly avoiding those risks, they’re responsible for the “consequences” of their actions — “consequences,” ostensibly, like getting themselves raped, or getting themselves beat up by their partners.

Women can pretend they’re female chauvinist pigs, but it’s still women who are more sexually vulnerable to stronger men, due to the possibilities of physical abuse and pregnancy. These Jezebel writers are a symptom of the weaknesses in the model of perfect egalitarian sexual freedom; in fact, it’s the supposed concern with feminism that makes the site so problematic. How can Tracie, who posted this picture, criticize the men who go to Hooters? How can writers who justify not reporting rape criticize the military for not controlling…rape? It’s incoherent.

If failing to report a sexual assault at 17 in a foreign country when you’re young and scared and the assault itself is what too many writers have termed “grey rape” or “date rape” — an assault that doesn’t fit into the Lifetime Movie image of a horribly violent stranger rape — is all it takes to be a Bad Feminist who loses her right to criticize the U.S. military for not cracking down on rapists, I’m happy to turn in my Feminist Club membership card right now.

In a paragraph I quoted above, Linda writes, “Given the high level of risk the Jezebel life involves, it is surprising that the offense that arouses the liberated Jezebels to real political fury is the suggestion that women like them might be made responsible for the consequences of their own acts, or that there might be general standards that define basic feminist behavior.” I was under the impression that one standard of basic feminist behavior is not arguing that women bring rape or assault upon themselves — and not saying that rape or assualt is one way that “women like them might be made responsible for the consequences of their own acts.” But maybe that’s just my shiny-shiny slutty-girl feminism.

I’m not arguing that feminism should be a movement of No Judging, or that we can’t criticize anything women say or do. I’m not arguing that because Jezebel is a feminist site, hands off. But I will argue that how women deal with surviving sexual assault should not be a deciding factor in evaluating whether or not they qualify as feminist. I will argue that a feminism which requires perfection from all women is not something I can be a part of. And I’ll also just throw it out there that one probably should not pull the “You’re a bad feminist” card when one writes for a feminist website that launches with front-page articles like “Whine, Womyn and Thongs: How feminism has failed” and “How I Got Bored With Feminism.”

Just to be clear, this isn’t an indictment of DoubleX. Their editorial staff is great, and I’ve heard that they have some amazing pieces lined up. I am genuinely excited to see what else they put out. But the “I’m more feminist than you, you slut” stuff? I hope it stops.

Via Rad Geek, the transcript of the first of a few 911 calls, made by a 17-year-old girl attempting to get an ambulance for her father, who had suffered a bad fall. McFarlan did eventually send help, but lied about the content of the calls. When the girl showed up at the police station, she was arrested on a trumped-up charge.

I suspect that if a man of McFarlan’s age had called and said “I need a fucking ambulance,” McFarlan would have kept his fucking asshat opinions to himself and just done his fucking job.

Adrianne Ledesma [while 911 is recording but handset is still ringing]: What the fuck?

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: 911.

Adrianne: I need an ambulance at [REDACTED]

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: Well, OK, first of all, you don’t need to swear over 911—

Adrianne: OK

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: —and slow down.

Adrianne: Send me a fucking ambulance!

[McFarlan hangs up on her]

And it just gets worse from there.

McFarlan was suspended without pay for two weeks. I can see an argument for not firing him — if this really was one single bad incident in an otherwise spotless record extending decades. I believe that everyone has more to them than their worst moment, and maybe McFarlan’s behavior here was his worse moment.

(It’s more likely, however, that McFarlan has always been an asshat, a bully, and a lousy cop, but has never messed up so publicly before. He was once sued for tasering a 14 year old boy (via), although the court dismissed the lawsuit.)

Two weeks without pay is a slap on the wrist, and suggests the police administration isn’t taking this seriously. Six months would have been better. In addition, McFarlan should be required, if Ms. Ledesma and her father are willing, to undergo a restorative justice process to try and make up to them for his assault on their safety and dignity.

I’ll be there. Will you? Shall we meet up?

(ABW, we better meet up. :) Ditto you, Nojojojo, if you’re going this year.)

Opponents of same sex marriage have submitted a people's veto application in Maine to repeal legislation that legalized same sex marriage in the state last week. The application was submitted just one day after Governor John Baldacci

A Quinnipiac University coach and student athletes testified yesterday while seeking a temporary injunction to prevent the school from eliminating the women's volleyball team while their lawsuit against the school is in court. If the injunction is granted, a full trial will be held while the team co...

Three Afghan schools have now been affected by alleged gas poisoning targeting schoolgirls. Nearly 100 girls were hospitalized in the most recent incident Tuesday and 60 students were hospitalized after a separate atta...

So there’s been major issues over on LiveJournal about conservative political ads (as well as some with other objectionable content) appearing on the pages of people who are not exactly the target market. And the ads are indeed offensive, but they are also an indication of what’s going on in the oppression business these days. It’s not a comfortable conversation from a business (or social) standpoint, but it is a necessary one. For a while now I’ve had thoughts brewing on the whole marriage protection movement and why Perez Hilton’s face off with Miss California isn’t quite the coup he thinks it is as well as on why these groups are proliferating courtesy of slick campaigns like the one behind The National Organization for Marriage and their (effective!) fear mongering tactics and pre-written talking points for supporters. Like it or not they have a coherent cohesive approach to achieving their goal, and the reaction to them (while certainly fun from the standpoint of easy mockery) isn’t anywhere near as well organized or packaged. Perez Hilton looks like a big old bully in that pageant clip and that’s a problem. So is the fact that the gay marriage movement is lacking in the charismatic leader department. And on the unified message front. Grassroots movements are great, but in order for them to be successful a focus and a leader are pretty much required or it winds up being much ado with nothing significant accomplished. Lots of comparisons are made to the Civil Rights Movement and even when I don’t agree with the analogy I can see how it can be used as a framework, but then we come back to history and the use of strategy to achieve a desired goal. Make no mistake Rosa Parks didn’t just happen to refuse to give up her seat on that bus. In fact the person who gave them the idea of organizing a boycott was another young woman entirely, but they decided she wasn’t a suitable test case because she was a single mother. Fair? No. But, totally understandable given the need for black people to have a movement as far above reproach as possible in order to effectively change the staus quo of Jim Crow laws being viewed as acceptable. All along oppressors have used specific tools to sway people to their way of thinking and I see it happening again in this situation. POC have (at various points to achieve various goals) been painted as dangerous, lazy, whores, incompetent, and even subhuman. We’re already on the “They want to destroy our way of life and silence us” as the primary message. And yes, I know the idea that gays getting married will somehow destroy marriage as a social construct is utterly insane, but you know logic generally has very little to do with these sorts of things. It’s all about the hyperbole and the carefully constructed propaganda. Not to Godwin my own post, but Hitler didn’t sell the Holocaust as “Let’s kill all the Jews in horrific ways” because that wouldn’t have been remotely effective. And no, I’m not saying that the people opposing gay marriage want to kill anyone (well some might, but I don’t think that’s a primary goal) but they do have an agenda that they want to advance and it’s useless to expect them to keep that agenda out of sight. Does that mean I want to hear their bullshit on LJ? No. But then I didn’t want to hear one of LJ’s biggest racist trolls (one rx_suicide) either. Or any of the people that periodically find their way to my LJ (and my inbox) to call me a nigger or a racist or whatever the word of the day is for their issues with my big mouth. I suppose I could figure out a way to lock my LJ (and my inbox) down, but that wouldn’t change the fact that those people are out there pushing their agenda. Post-racial America isn’t a particularly different place from racial America and I imagine that America really isn’t ready to be post-oppression so folks might want to consider coming up with useful ways to fight it. In my opinion that includes knowing your enemy (and their tactics) as well as coming up with your own methodology for combat. And I know someone is going to tell me that I don’t get to dictate how to run a battle that isn’t about me or tell people how to react to their content sharing space with hate. And on the one hand that’s totally true and valid. On the other…I’m just trying to help and while people are certainly welcome to tell me I’m doing it wrong (and I swear I will listen) I really want to see someone doing it right. I don’t want these people to win and as of right now? That’s what is going to happen if someone doesn’t push back effectively and start winning the people on the fence over.

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DUMBO, BROOKLYN.

A bitch is heading to Jefferson City…again…to get my lobby on…again!

‘Tis the last week of session for the Missouri legislature and there are a lot of shiny red policy changing legislation balls up in the air, so it’s face-to-face lobby time for those of us who believe women can make decisions about our reproductive healthcare all by ourselves.

Bitchitude shall continue when my ass gets back home!

Toodles…

So much for the Double Dose getting done this weekend, but you'll see our hard work in other areas has paid off: Meet the 2009 Women's Health Heroes When Our Bodies Ourselves launched the Women's Health Heroes Awards, we did so without knowing that we would hear from nearly 100 entrants ...

[This is a content summary only. Click the headline to visit Our Bodies, Our Blog for the full post, links, other content and more!]

*SNIFFLE*

Super Depressing Post in SF_Drama. This story yanked on my heart strings so hard they broke off.

One Hamster's Last Day on Earth

Bułeczka, a hamster dying of lymphoma, is taken by her loving human for a last romp in the park. Very sweet.


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WHY DID I KEEP READING THE COMMENTS??? BAWL!!!



AUGH!!! WHY DID I KEEP READING?!

You may have already read about Samantha Orobator, a British woman who was arrested on charges of smuggling heroin into Laos last August. If convicted, the sentence for her alleged crime is death by firing squad. On top of all of this, she is five months pregnant — which means that she became pregnant while incarcerated, in what is reportedly “one of Asia’s most squalid jails.” Her mother has stated that she’s worried her daughter may have been raped, but also has not been allowed contact with her daughter.

Obviously, Orobator’s mother’s concerns make a whole lot of sense — indeed, I have to wonder how she could have not been raped. She was in jail. The only males she is supposed to have contact with are the guards. And anyone who thinks that a person can give meaningful consent to someone who effectively acts as their captor seriously needs a remedial lesson in what exactly “meaningful consent” means.

Anyway, we last week we got the news that Orobator will not be executed due to the fact that she is pregnant.  Obviously the fetus’ life is more important than the grown woman’s, as the fetus is “innocent” and the woman may or may not be guilty of committing a crime.  There was also word of a possibility that she would be transferred to jail in the UK if convicted.

But now, outrageously, we get this:

A PREGNANT British woman arrested for heroin smuggling in Laos has been told she must testify she was not raped in prison in order to escape the firing squad.

Samantha Orobator, who is five months pregnant, was arrested last August at Wattay airport in the capital Vientiane for trying to smuggle 680g of heroin.

The Londoner was not pregnant at the time of her arrest.

The 20-year-old goes on trial this week and will be asked to declare publicly that she was not raped in Phonthong prison, one of Asia’s most squalid jails.

If Orobator co-operates, she will be transferred from Laos to a UK prison under a new treaty signed between the two countries on Thursday. If not, her trial will be postponed and she will return to jail in Laos.

If she faces trial again after the birth of her child, she will not have the immunity from execution that pregnancy gives her under the Laos penal code.

A Laotian Government spokesman, Kenthong Nuanthasing, said: “She will tell the court, otherwise she will stay here. Nobody can guarantee that she will not face the firing squad.”

So she can either deny that she was raped or be killed.  And the Laotian government seems to have no issue whatsoever with being public with such information.

It is worth noting that Orobator has reportedly written a letter denying having been raped.  We don’t know what might have coerced her into such a statement, and again I have huge difficulties imagining a scenario of consensual sex in her position — after all, the letter also reportedly said that she had not had sex.  So barring access to artificial insemination in the jail, one of those two statements must be a lie.

But, let’s assume for one moment, for the sake of argument, that she told the truth on the count of rape.  It’s hardly the point.  The point, those who would wish to make it something else, is that when asked the question of whether or not she was raped, a woman should be able to give an honest answer, whatever it is.  She shouldn’t be explicitly told that the price for just answering “yes” to that question is her life.

Then, even more ludicrously, there is this:

“We don’t want the world to blame us,” Mr Nuanthasing said.

Asked who fathered the baby, Mr Nuanthasing said: “It is a mystery - maybe it is a baby from the sky.”

Is that, like, supposed to be fucking cute or something?  Whatever the meaning behind such a statement, it’s outrageous and shows what kind of ridiculously self-serving and misogynistic apologism/denialism Orobator is up against.

I wish her the best and hope that she does whatever she has to do to save her life.  And I hope that no women is ever put in such a horrific position ever again.

via Hoyden About Town

Mother’s Day Brunch Buffet ‘09: How weak are the University of Texas Golf Club mimosas? I had to give the kid like 4 of’em before she would consent to pose with cherry-eyes. Photo by Tidy Faster.

Another Mother’s Day come and gone. It seems like only yesterday.

It will cause no one’s world to come crashing down around them when I aver that Mother’s Day is like a poke in the lobe with a prickly probe. It’s insipid and sentimental and highlights like no other fake holiday the line of demarcation between the Judeo-Christian heterosexes.

O, Mother dear! We love you so much we can only express it through this Hallmark card! Oh, and where are our clean socks?

And it practically goes without saying that any event involving a mandatory brunch buffet deserves the stink-eye.

Why does it always have to be a brunch buffet? Brunch is an aberrant, grotesquely heavy meal, and the buffet is the worst mediocre-food-delivery-system ever invented. Buffets! They’re worse than cafeterias! Not only do you have to crowd up for the grub like a waif in a Victorian orphanage, but the potential pathogen load multiplies exponentially when there are no dedicated servers dishing the crap out. Anybody might sneeze up a loogey into the vat of Chicken Core D’onbloo, and who’d be the wiser? Mysterious food items with heavy sauces hardening in chafing dishes, 10-year-old boys scooping up the crab claws with their bare hands, horrid mixtures of orange juice concentrate and warmish $5 Asti Spumante with maraschino cherries — euruhhgh. I mean it.

It is indicative of the low value placed on American motherhood that Mother’s Day is the only fake holiday where crappy, artery-clogging, self-service food, “complimentary” cheap mimosas, and a few brown-edged roses are considered the ultimate expression of filial gratitude.

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Rio Grande turkey poses on the bunkhouse porch. Cottonmouth County, TX May 2009

Following a satisfying fried avocado sandwich and prune juice lunch down at the Spinster Ornithology Lab, I was brushing the damned breadcrumbs off my elbows when lo and I did espy this magnificent specimen glaring at me through the window. Fortunately I had my giant camera handy; it is now official policy at Spinster HQ to keep affixed to the midsection with duct tape, at all times, a camera equipped with a super-telephoto lens, against the possibility that a bird the size of Guam might stroll through the compound and linger for a portrait.

She hurried off before I could get her email address, though.

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Or at least, that’s what the major US media seems to believe. From FAIR:

Early reports of a massive U.S. attack on civilians in western Afghanistan last week (5/5/09) hewed to a familiar corporate media formula, stressing official U.S. denials and framing the scores of dead civilians as a PR setback for the White House’s war effort.

Scanning the headlines gave a sense of the media’s view of the tragedy: “Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War” (New York Times, 5/7/09), “Claim of Afghan Civilian Deaths Clouds U.S. Talks” (Wall Street Journal, 5/7/09), “Afghan Civilian Deaths Present U.S. With Strategic Problem” (Washington Post, 5/8/09).

As is frequently the case with such incidents (Extra! Update, 8/07), the primary fallout would seem to be the damage done to U.S. goals. The New York Times reported that civilian deaths “have been a decisive factor in souring many Afghans on the war.” As CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric put it (5/6/09), “Reports of these civilian casualties could not have come at a worse time, as the Obama administration launches its new strategy to eradicate the Taliban and convince the Afghan people to support those efforts.” Other outlets used very similar language to explain why the timing was “particularly sensitive” (Washington Post, 5/7/09) or “awkward” (Associated Press, 5/7/09) for the Obama administration.

The US media also gladly reported anonymous and seemingly unverified claims that it was the Taliban’s fault, not the US’s. Read the whole thing.

Hamad Al-Razine, a Saudi Arabian Judge, made statements indicating that men can hit their wives as punishment for overspending during a recent seminar on domestic violence. According to the

Spain announced plans to offer emergency contraception over-the-counter today with no age restrictions. Spain's Health Minister, Trinidad Jimenez, said "It is an emergency method of contraception, not to be used except in emergencies....We don't want it to become another means of contraception," acc...

Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who was awaiting an appeal of a baseless espionage conviction, was released from prison today. According to the Washington Post

Facebook users beware, according to Newsweek, THE NIPPLE PATROL IS AFTER US!!Yes indeed, it seems that Facebook pays 150 people to check for porn on its site. That would be almost 18% of its staff checking Facebook content for violations of the “Fully Exposed Butt Rule, the Crack Rule and the Nipple Rule”. Really. Unfortunately last year these policies led to the removal of pictures of women breastfeeding their children because they were deemed pornographic.

And now it turns out that while breastfeeding is considered obscene, Holocaust denial is just a matter of free speech. As the folks at Tech Crunch put it so elegantly, “Jew Haters Welcome At Facebook, As Long As They Aren’t Lactating.” As their post says quite accurately, actually this has nothing to do with free speech because Facebook isn’t a public forum, it is privately owned. And one would certainly think that terms such as “Nigger faggot, Jew nosed cunt” would be a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service regarding hate speech.Or not.

Here’s hoping Facebook gets a clue and rethinks its policy because  what is obscene is not knowing the basic difference between right and  wrong.

Before we all go back to our stressed out overloaded even Superwoman couldn’t do this realities, take a minute to check out this terrific list of Mother’s Day related posts on Feministing. Every one of these is a good read all by itself, but as a collection of voices, awesome!

I just love this man:

Why? Because I’d be all over killing the bad guy. Not to mention not being willing to play the victim who gets held hostage or dropped off buildings or whatever. In fact as fantasy/horror/romance books go I’d make a terrible damsel in distress period. Because my first thought has always been that she shouldn’t be waiting around to be saved, she should be trying to save herself. Which isn’t you know…part of the formula or anything. On some level it has always felt like the women in those books weren’t quite representative of me (unless we start talking alter egos ala Jem, or secret identities, or even women like Eowyn who dressed as a man to fight for her land) and yet like a lot of genre fiction fans of color I kept reading them. Kept watching the shows and even going to the movies despite the fact that the women didn’t act the way I would or look the way I do. Because I grew up on a steady diet of Dark Shadows, Flash Gordon, Twilight Zone, Doctor Who, and Isaac Asimov.

And now? Now I’ve got people claiming that readers of color didn’t exist until the advent of the Internet. For the record? We were here at the start and we will be here at the end. Lois (Bujold in case you haven’t been following the latest incarnation of Race Fail to know that she’s the one eating her knee in that comment) seems to think that con attendance = fan. I can’t imagine why there would be so few POC at conventions held in the wake of segregation and Jim Crow. Or why fans of color today often prefer to discuss the books they love with people who don’t think the Open Source Boob Project is the height of social behavior. Oh wait, I’ve never seen the point to spending a ton of money to hang out with people who think my perspective is unwelcome or who think they should be able to touch me because they feel like it. I suspect I am not alone.

For the last time, just because it is not happening in full view of white people does not mean that it is not happening. I am so tired of dealing with this attitude that wanting sci-fi to represent and respect the reality of life as a person of color is somehow asking too much. Especially when the reaction from white authors who are told “Hey you’re doing it wrong” is to say “Well then I won’t do it at all” like we’re supposed to be a-okay with being erased, ignored, or misrepresented just to get a few crumbs from the table. I did an interview this weekend about Verb Noire, and one of the questions was about our hopes and fears for the press. You know what? As long as at least one new perspective is brought to the table of genre fiction I’ll count it as a success. Because it is time for the superhero’s girlfriend to learn to fight back and for the woman to ride as herself to save her people. It is time for the books to reflect more than one view of strength, of femininity, and of reality. And it shouldn’t be a case of “Well there’s this one author or this one perspective that represents *those* people” but I know that breaking the mainstream of this habit of viewing POC culture as monolithic is going to take a lot more than just attending cons and putting out books. We can’t be the only ones doing the work to change the face of fiction. So, less assuming and more listening? Probably for the best.

From The Hub:

In 2008, political violence erupted throughout Zimbabwe as a result of the contested national elections. Zimbabwean women of all ages, targeted for their political affiliations, were abducted from their workplaces and homes, raped, tortured, and beaten in secret torture centers. It is estimated that from May to July, state-sanctioned groups raped over 2,000 women and girls. The local police have ignored these women’s pleas for protection and justice, and national leaders have been equally unresponsive to local and international demands for an end to the violence.

Hear Us features four of these women, who have come forward to demand justice from the Zimbabwean government and the Southern African Development Community. Women like Memory and Abigail, who struggle daily with the physical and psychological scars of their abuse, tell their stories to uncover the enduring effects of this violence on the women of Zimbabwe and their families.

Can’t call it baby blogging anymore. This is kid blogging. (I used to do this regularly, but that was long ago, especially in blog years.)

I love these photos, which I found on the camera’s memory card. My guess is that Bean was the photographer, although it might have been Charles.

Sydney is actually as accomplished and eager a tree climber as Maddox, but I think the pics of Maddox came out a little bit better.

More photos under the fold.

A bit out of focus, but still worth posting because that grin is so purely Sydney.

Maddox has a beautiful smile, too, but she isn’t as free with it as Sydney is. Maddox is more reserved; she’s observing, withholding judgment, considering. I’m a big fan of hers.

Click through to see big versions of the pics.

This bitch spent the weekend blissfully offline. I turned the cell phone off and let Ms. SisterGirl MacBook power down and instructed our TiVo to stay away from new-based programming. And it was fantabulous!

Don’t get me wrong…a bitch adores y’all! I do!

Pause…consider…continue.

Yep, even the knavish trolls among you who have yet to figure out that a bitch moderates comments…I’ve been called that ig’nant shit so much it doesn’t have the impact you think it does…and every bigoted comment reminds me why I do this shit.

Enjoying 48 hours offline isn’t about disliking my time online…’tis more about needing a break from Corn Flakes so I can discover them again.

Anyhoo, a bitch is now refreshed…and this MacBook is happy as a motherfucker too.

Shall we?

Former Vice President…and yes a bitch is glad I can finally type that shit…Dickey C. is finding it hard to say goodbye to yesterday. A bitch caught up on what his ass said this past weekend and I can’t help imagining him getting his Boyz II Men on about torture.

I see Dickey C., rancid as ever and scowling hard as a motherfucker, on a darkened stage in the spotlight where he loves to be.

How do I say goodbye to what we had?
The good times (of causing other pain) that made us laugh
Outweigh the bad (like the ramifications of violating the laws of the religions I pontificate about living by when it suits my political objectives).

I thought we’d get to see forever (because I was shooting for a dictatorship, natch).
But forever’s gone away (in a landslide, damn democracy).
It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday (and the power of hold another’s life in the dewy palm of my hand).

Sigh.

Yeah, that’ll probably give me nightmares too.

The thing is that Dickey C. is demonstrating through his recent media blitz that he was full of shit when he said that he didn’t care about how history will judge him. He cares…a lot…so much so that he’s taking to the telly to make a case that he denied having to make over and over again when he was in office…that our government tortured people in that name of national security.

And that’s the bit that is lost in all the post interview speculation going on…that this knave is now defending what he denied. And that begs the question of why the hell deny it if it’s legal and justifiable and worthy of praise rather than condemnation?

And I’ll take with me the memories

That concern for the nation angle doesn’t pass the smell test.

To be my sunshine after the rain.

And the lifting up of policies that the Bush administration told the masses they weren’t doing…and then that they weren’t doing the way we think they were doing them…and finally that they of they did them they did them for the good of the people, but saying that in no way is an admission that they did them.

It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

No, this performance is about power and the lust for power now lost.

But Dickey C. should know…it’s the cover-up that gets you.

***logs off to beg David Frost for a sequel***

Douglas Adams teaches us many interesting things about Australia.

The New York Times tells us that women are horrible bullies towards other women:

YELLING, scheming and sabotaging: all are tell-tale signs that a bully is at work, laying traps for employees at every pass.

During this downturn, as stress levels rise, workplace researchers say, bullies are likely to sharpen their elbows and ratchet up their attacks.

It's probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

In the name of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, what is going on here?

Just the mention of women treating other women badly on the job seemingly shakes the women's movement to its core. It is what Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif., has called "the pink elephant" in the room. How can women break through the glass ceiling if they are ducking verbal blows from other women in cubicles, hallways and conference rooms?

How indeed!!! Note that the article isn't too bad in the middle, but returns to this lunacy in its conclusions:

"The time has come," she said, "for us to really deal with this relationship that women have to women, because it truly is preventing us from being as successful in the workplace as we want to be and should be.

"We've got enough obstacles; we don't need to pile on any more."

This piece sounds to me like yet another in that long series the Times has: What Is Wrong With Working Women? These stories always create or magnify a problem and then offer anecdotal evidence on how awful the problem is.

To get to that point, the present article quickly slides by the facts: Men are more often bullies than women and if you work a little on those percentages you will find that male-on-female (heh) bullying is a larger percentage than female-on-female bullying. But never mind, we shall write about the latter! Yes.

Then we are going to pretend that all working women know the names of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and we are also going to pretend that these feminists believed in some universal sisterhood, easily shared by all women in a society which is still based on patriarchy.

See how it works? Now we have a problem of evil women keeping other women down. To the extent this happens, might it have something to do with the musical chairs that many firms still play with women? If only a few promotion slots are available for women, and if women know this to be the case, well, they are going to compete against other women, right?

The conclusion of the article tells us that this is a problem women should fix, what with all the other problems women have to cope with (such as guys bullying them more). Those other problems or their solutions are not, however, written up in the New York Times. It's much safer to focus on what is wrong with women themselves.

Does that remind you of something? If female bullies mainly attack other women because women are seen as easier targets, could it be that the same motivation underlies articles like this one? Attacking the Big Boys With The Moneybags is scary, as those moneybags make excellent defensive weapons.
----
A Post-Script: Women do bully, of course. It would be odd to assume that they don't. But an article like this one takes out one slice (female-on-female bullying) from the bully-pie and focuses on it while completely ignoring the majority of bullying relationships. Does that treatment provide extra clarity and better solutions? I very much doubt that.

That phrase occurred to me when reading this piece about a plan to trim two trillion dollars from the costs of U.S. health care, purely by voluntary cost cutting measures:

President Obama will announce today that the health care industry will try to cut $2 trillion in expenses over the next decade to slow the rising cost of medical care, two White House officials familiar with the plan said.

If successful, the cuts could help reduce costs for families and provide money for an expansion of health care coverage backed by Obama and some Democrats in Congress, said the officials, who briefed reporters but refused to be identified ahead of Obama's announcement.

"If these savings are truly achieved, this may be the most significant development on the path to health care reform," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, which advocates for expanded health care coverage. "It would cut health costs for families and businesses, and it would enable adequate subsidies to be offered so that everyone has access to quality affordable health care."

Six medical trade groups, including the American Medical Association and America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents health insurance companies, have agreed to the cost-cutting, which could save the average family of four $2,500 in 2015, according to the sources. Health care costs would continue to rise, just not as quickly.

Are you salivating for more? I was, because I'm wired that way. But, alas, we are never told what these miraculous cost-saving acts might be. That's something for the future, I guess.

Neither are we told why those extra costs weren't already cut. After all, the market competition conservatives so worship should have forced them to be cut. So what's going on? Hmm. Note that the six medical trade groups could also be called monopolies if one wanted to be rude.

In any case, it's highly unlikely that those cuts wouldn't have any effect on the quality of care or its accessibility, and then we'll have an argument over that, too.

If that sounds grumpy it's because I don't believe that manna will suddenly fall from the sky. Cost containment is necessary, but so is learning exactly how it's supposed to come about.

General Motors contemplates just that:

The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company's new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.

According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.

The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.

As a result, the long-simmering argument over U.S. manufacturers expanding production overseas -- normally arising between unions and private companies -- is about to engage the Obama administration.

Essentially in control of the company, the president's autos task force faces an awkward choice: It can either require General Motors to keep more jobs at home, potentially raising labor costs at a company already beset with financial woes, or it can risk political fury by allowing the automaker to expand operations at lower-cost manufacturing locations.

Robert Reich points out that this example should make us do some serious thinking about the value of bailing out American companies if they then take their production (and often even their profits) abroad, leaving American workers worse off and the government with less tax revenues.

On the other hand:

Analysts who study the auto companies and their global operation warn against allowing political passions to obstruct GM's efficiency.

"If we start making political decisions with the auto industry, we're going to be in tremendous trouble," said Michael Robinet, vice president of global vehicle forecasts at CSM Worldwide.

Hmm. But this means that the auto industry shouldn't be bailed out in the first place.

“He’s dead because he’s Mexican. This is jury nullification….”

Meanwhile, check out the reaction of the woman interviewed about one minute into this piece:

Ornicus writes:

Considering some of the details of the killing, it’s also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

“Isn’t it a little late for you guys to be out?” the boys said, according to court documents. “Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here.”

… Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. “They yelled, ‘You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you’re gonna be laying effin next to him,’ ” she said.

That is, of course, the entire purpose of bias crimes: To hold the victim up as an example: “You’re next.” The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them.

Via: Racism Review. More on this case:

The Unapologetic Mexican
Stuff White People Do (source of the second video above)

An army contractor received a $12,500 fine, five years' probation, and no jail time for killing a flex-cuffed Afghan who had doused his colleague with gasoline and set her one fire.

The immolation victim eventually died of her injuries, but she was still alive when the contractor shot the prisoner.

As horrific as the provocation was, the sentence seems awfully light for first degree murder of a prisoner. Killing a handcuffed prisoner is absolutely beyond the pale.

Update: The contractor was initially charged with murder but the charge was later reduced to manslaughter, an offense which carries up to eight years in prison. Based on the circumstances outlined in the Danger Room post, I think the charge was way too light, and the sentence was a joke relative to the charge.

The contractor executed a prisoner in U.S. custody. I don't care how evil the prisoner's conduct was. In wartime, soldiers will inevitably take prisoners who have done terrible things to their comrades. The contractor ostensibly got an unusually light sentence because the judge agreed that he was suffering from diminished responsibility because of the trauma of the attack. If we let the fog of war count as a defense for killing prisoners, we're opening the door to summary executions on the battlefield. The contractor is a former Army Ranger, so he has been trained to control himself in battle. 

This is a dangerous precedent.

Daniel Taub in The Boston Globe:

…The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian territories, [...] Richard Falk, recently issued a report that goes one remarkable step further. In the conditions existing in Gaza, he asserts, any Israel military response would be “inherently unlawful.” According to Falk’s understanding of international law, Israel has no right whatsoever to defend itself.

Taub’s claim here — that Falk ever said “Israel has no right whatsoever to defend itself” — is not a fair or reasonable summary of what Falk wrote.

It’s true that Falk said, in essence, that under the conditions that existed in Gaza, there was no legal way for Israel to engage in a large-scale attack on Gaza. Taub’s trick here is to ignore that Israel could have changed “the conditions existing in Gaza.”

For example, Israel didn’t exhaust all diplomatic remedies before attacking; had they done so, that would have changed the legal basis of their attack, according to Falk.

Falk also emphasizes that Israel closed Gazas borders, essentially trapping all Gazans, including the elderly, the ill, and children, in a war zone. That’s another condition that Israel could have tried to alter.

Israel could also have really ended the occupation in Gaza — giving Gaza true independence — in which case, Israel would have had the right to treat Gaza as an attacking nation. But since Israel has for all practical purposes never ended the occupation, Israel has taken on the legal responsibility to protect the well-being of the citizens of Gaza — a responsibility which is incompatible with bombing the shit out of those citizens.

Israel has a right to defend itself. That doesn’t mean that Israel has a right to do anything to defend itself, or that it doesn’t have a responsibility to fully pursue all possible diplomatic routes before engaging in an attack that killed or injured 1 in every 225 Gazans.

* * *

Taub also writes:

I met with a group of eminent jurists who were on a fact-finding mission, examining Israel’s military operation in Gaza. After listening to their concerns and criticisms, I asked them: “Considering the rocket attacks launched against Israel by terrorist groups in Gaza, what in your view would have constituted a lawful response?” The answer was total silence.

I really wish I could talk to those “eminent jurists,” and get their account of that conversation. Call me cynical, but my bet is that their recollection would not entirely match Mr. Taub’s.

* * *

A total of 1,434 Palestinians were killed, of whom 235 were combatants. Some 960 civilians reportedly lost their lives, including 288 children and 121 women; 239 police officers were also killed, 235 in air strikes carried out on the first day. A total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured, including 1,606 children and 828 women.

This was in response to Hamas rockets that — horrible as they were — still killed fewer than five Israelis.

Marty Perez dismissed Palestinian concerns the hundreds of civilian casualties as “whining” and wrote:

this is what I would say to Hamas and to the people of Gaza: “If a rocket or missile is launched against us, if you take captive one of our soldiers (as you have held one for two and a half years), if you raise a new Intifada against us, there will be an immediate response. And it will be very disproportionate. Proportion does not work.”

When people argue that the appropriate response to the deaths of four Israelis is for Israel to kill a thousand Palestinians, their unstated premise is that Palestinian lives are worth enormously less than Israeli lives.

Hat tip: The Debate Link.

Post a short description of something you’ve written this week, along with a link. Make it specific; don’t just link to your whole blog.

To all the awesome mothers of color raising children of color (and every other mother, too!). I don’t celebrate Mother’s Day much since my mom died. But every now and then I do something to commemorate it.

This story is amongst those things. It is, for those of you keeping track, SF, with people of color, and, if I may say so myself, very good. And it’s about mothers and daughters and loss; three things I contemplate every year around this time.

        In a newspaper opinion piece, Casey Gwinn enumerates the mass killings of 60+ people in the United States since March, "with men responsible for all the deaths and nearly all the cases involving men with a history of violence against women." (Two were in my area.) He continues:

We all must redouble our efforts to raise awareness and call for more resources in the war against women and children. We must call it what it is. It is not violence against women. It is most often violence by men against women.

          This pertains to our recent discussion of what to call "domestic violence," and I was happy to see it in a newspaper whose op-ed page tends to be conservative.

Recently Al Robles, a figure prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American community passed away.  Here is a short excerpt from a post I did on him:

Manong Al was a native San Franciscan and fought for the rights of the poor and the elderly all throughout his life.  During the 1970s he fought against the eviction of elderly Chinese and Pilipino American residents at the I-Hotel during which time the fight for the I-Hotel became a symbol of corporate greed and community solidarity across race and class.  While the elders were evicted from their homes and the I-Hotel was demolished, creating a crushing defeat and feelings of despair for the Chinese and Pilipino community in San Francisco Manong Al (like many others as well) did not give up.  He and the community continued to fight and kept the spot where the I-Hotel originally stood from being developed.  Finally, around four or so years ago the I-Hotel rose from the ashes and became a center of housing for low-income senior citizens and a space for community organizers and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation.

Throughout the years Manong Al continued to be an advocate for the elderly and especially for the manongs and manangs of the Pilipino American community; those folks who immigrated from the Philippines to work, hunched over with broken backs, in the fields of California.  As he would deliver meals to the manongs and manangs and provide other services for them he would collect their stories of joy and hardship, and he was ever the consummate oral historian, and in turn would put their experiences down in the form of poetry.  He also became something of a father figure for many community artists and activists at the Kearny Street Workshop and imparted his wisdom onto the many folks who walked through those doors as well.

Note: I’ve never been in a position to post an actual leak before, but I’ve been able to confirm that this was an e-mail sent to members of the Maine State Legislature in opposition to the gay marriage bill. I have removed the name of the sender, other than that, it is exactly as it came in the e-mail. I’m not making this up. A.M.

When I Was A Child

I believe most men in this State, would have to agree, young boys are vile little creatures. When I was a child I did certain things I would not do today. They were shall we say childhood indiscretions of a sexual nature. These indiscretions took place from my earliest memory, which I grew out of by my mid teens, and if not for that present culture I may have grown out of them even sooner. I remember being curious of both sexes particularly girls. I remember us boys measuring ourselves against each other. Also friendly sword fights were known to break out amongst us, and I will leave that up to you to figure out. There were many other things to numerous to mention, and gory details will serve no purpose, but I grew out of these things quite naturally, and to my knowledge so did all the other boys and girls whom I am linked to by childhood indiscretion. Apostle Paul said, when he was a child he ".understood as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11

If Senator Damon's bill (LD 1020) passes it will make it nearly impossible, particularly for boys, to reach normal sexual maturation. Why? Answer, because they will have in essence, adult homosexuals standing over them sayings to every young boy "O! you thought this, you said that, you did this, op! you see you're a homosexual." No! No! No! They are not homosexuals they are normal boys. With this type of peer pressure we will not see males reaching emotional or physiological sexual maturity until some of them reach forty years old, or even older.

Molestation defined: to interfere with. I call Damon's bill Child Molestation, because it will interfere with their normal development by creating an environment where children will be made to feel guilt when comparing their actions to those of adults, and no child should have to feel guilt for what adults do, but more than that, this bill will retard children's normal development just so homosexuals can increase there numbers. Therefore, Damon's bill goes way beyond even child abuse; this is cruelty to children, with slavish overtones.

No legislator, if they were to be honest, can deny that most childhood sexual indiscretions would naturally disappear and others could be reformed through proper parental or religious instruction, unless this process is interrupted by some form of coercion-LD 1020 is that coercion. The biggest stumbling block being presented to children through this bill is, was I born this way, and the answer is yes, but adult homosexuals do not want them to grow out of it. This bill will hinder and may ultimately eliminate both natural and instructional growth. I would not want to be a child today and have to sift through the issues of sexuality fostered by adult homosexuals. This is Child Molestation and it will ruin the next generation of young people. There is no way Child Molestation will ever become permanent Maine Law.

Yoinked from sasha_khan:

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Shoulda paid for both, guys!

So...the movie Primer...You gonna watch it? Do yourself a favor, keep this link handy. Nuff said.

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BROOKLYN, NY.

Ingrid Jensen with Secret Society at the "Infernal Machines" launch party.

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BROOKLYN, NY.

Mark Small with Secret Society at last night's album launch party for Infernal Machines.

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BROOKLYN, NY.

Erica vonKleist with Secret Society at the "Infernal Machines" album launch party.

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BROOKLYN, NY.

James Hirschfeld and Mark Small with Secret Society at Galapagos artspace last night at the launch of Darcy James Argue's new record, "infernal Machines."

The event was a big success. Thanks to all the Majikthise readers who came out to support Secret Society.

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I resemble that remark...

I don’t know Maryland geography well at all, but if you are anywhere near either of the places where I will be appearing, it would be lovely to see you there.

Reading from The Silence Of Men

On Friday, May 15th, I will be reading from my book of poems The Silence Of Men at Coco’s Butter Cafe, which is located at 7361 Assateague Dr., Unit 1040, Columbia, MD 20794 (directions). From what I have been told, the cafe serves great chocolate and other desserts, great wine and lovely appetizers. Here’s the rest of the relevant information:

Doors Open/Open mic signup: 7 PM
Open Mic Begins: 8 PM
Feature Begins: around 9 PM
Cover: $10 general admission/$5 for open mic poets
This event is curated by Th3rd Avenue

Translation as Plagiarism as Cultural Transmission: How Benjamin Franklin Helped Bring Classical Iranian Literature Into American English

On Sunday, May 17, at a meeting of the Iranian-American Cultural Society of Maryland, I will be giving a talk and reading from my translations of two masterpieces by the 13th century Iranian poet Saadi, Gulistan and Bustan. At the center of my talk is the story of a plagiarism scandal involving Benjamin Franklin that resulted from publication of a story that he claimed was a chapter of Genesis, but which had actually been written by Saadi.

When: 1:30-3:00
Where: Towson University, 7800 York Building, Room 121, Towson, MD 21252
Information: (410) 258-6651

Admission is free.

Who does she own? Jeff Rosen, that’s who:

Emily, you are so right that Jeff Rosen’s unsupported whispers about Judge Sotomayor have become the conventional media wisdom in three short days. But more troubling still, he seems to have been arguing that female jurists are by definition “mediocre” for more than a decade! Here’s a piece he did for the New York Times in 1995, arguing that President Clinton’s “single-minded pursuit of diversity, combined with an eagerness to avoid controversy, has kept him from appointing the best available legal minds to the courts.” He then names the many, many white men passed over for federal judgeships and contends that liberal judges lack the intellectual firepower to challenge brilliant conservative jurists because “nearly 60 percent of the Clinton appointments have been minority members and women.” (Read: mediocre.) His single data point to illustrate that mediocrity: Instead of appointing a serious intellectual heavyweight to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a/k/a “The scholars Court”), Clinton tapped “Diane P. Wood, a little-known professor of antitrust law at the University of Chicago, who is currently an assistant to Deputy Attorney General Anne Bingaman.”

That same mediocre Diane Wood is not only on every shortlist for the Supreme Court today. She’s also widely regarded as one of the finest judges on the bench, to whom other brilliant judges turn for reviews of draft opinions.

I’ve been busy this week, so I haven’t had time to put together my thoughts on Rosen’s asinine article which, near as I can tell, said that Sonia Sotomayor was occasionally brusque, which would be great if she was Antonin Scalia, but alas, she lacks a penis, so she’s instead a raging bitch. Oh, and she’s dumb, because she’s a woman, and obviously graduated summa cum laude from Princeton (winning the highest award given to Princeton students in the process) because of afirmative action, probably at the cost of a more-qualified marginal white guy. And then she graduated from Yale’s law school, where she served as an editor on law review — again, probably at the expense of a connected white guy. And then she served as an Assistant New York District Attorney, probably just because she’s Latina. And then she ended up a partner at Pavia and Harcourt, which probably just promoted her because of PC whining.

Then, of course, she was appointed to the bench by committed lefty George H.W. Bush in 1991, in a move surely designed to get women and Latinos off his back. Then Bill Clinton appointed her to the Court of Appeals in 1997, again, clearly as a sop to minorities. I mean, obviously, this woman rose from the daughter of working-class parents, whose father died when she was nine, whose mother raised her and her brother to become a jurist and a medical doctor, respectively, only because those damn minorities and women get all the breaks that white guys don’t.

Needless to say, Judge Sotomayor would make an exceptional nominee to the Supreme Court. She’s everything we say we want in an American — someone who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, who lived the American dream. But she’s a woman, and she’s a Latina. In Jeff Rosen’s world, that’s clear evidence that she’s a step below her betters. That her betters are all white guys need not even be mentioned.

(Via Balloon Juice)

Via Think Progress, this is absolutely disgusting and obscene. CNN reports that rape victims in Texas are being charged for their own rape kits, to the tune of well over $1,000 no less:

Embedded video from CNN Video

A Houston paper reports:

Attorney General’s spokesman Jerry Strickland said the crime victim fund is enforcing strict guidelines imposed by the legislature as to which bills are paid and which victims are sent a denial notice.

Otherwise, he said that fund could become “insolvent.”

He said state law is clear that crime victims must exhaust all other potential funding sources, such as local police or their own health insurance.

“The legislature set it up that way,” said Strickland.

When asked for a number of how many denial letters had been sent out to Texas rape victims in the past, Strickland did not have an answer after checking with his crime victims’ compensation office workers.

Emphasis mine.

Yes, the law is apparently set up so that it’s a rape victim’s responsibility to figure out how to pay for her own rape kit. Not the state’s. And this is despite the fact that millions and millions of dollars sit untouched in the fund.

I know what it’s like to be raped. But I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to be raped and then charged a ridiculous sum of money as a direct result. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be raped and then be billed for it several months later. It absolutely churns my stomach, though.

The victim featured in this case has had her bills dropped by the hospital as a result of the media attention. But how many women have not gone to the media and just paid? How many didn’t go the media and had their credit ruined because they couldn’t pay? And how many will fall into both categories after this point?

Further, we know that this is a problem that goes beyond Texas.  Numerous states reportedly charge victims, despite the fact that it violates conditions of receiving grants under VAWA.  And the real rub is that governments largely get their power to charge rape victims without attention due to the rape culture that breeds shame and stigma, and therefore keeps victims quiet.

Thanks to Renee for the link

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Political geeks live too much in their heads, staring far into the cyberspace or having their livers riot in anger or in the glory of success. But life is much more than that:


A blueracer racing into hiding:





Spring wildflowers blooming:


Spiderwort





Jacob's ladder





Bellwort





These pictures are by 1Watt, Hermit.

And for those of you who need your daily kitten fix, don't miss Frankie, the Blue-Eyed devil kitten.

Duty calls to lend my hand to doing what I was certain was going to have to be done when it was put on the legislative agenda. I’ve got to help defend gay marriage in my state from an assault by the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland and the folks I’ve called the Maine Klux Klan more than a few times.

Some of you might know that an irony of this situation is that I think it’s the wrong fight for the wrong time. I’ve stated why here before. It’s not going to be easy, these folks have won a number of times through referendum in my state before. Maine is not anywhere near as liberal as it’s made out to be, We have a sizable and organized religious-fundamentalist presence, now they’re making common cause with a far-right Catholic bishop. That’s one thing we used to be able to count on, Maine used to have a relatively progressive bishop. If you don’t think there’s a difference between having a progressive one and the one we’ve got now, you just don’t know.
I don’t believe the state should be sanctifying anyone’s marriage, that’s up to them. I favor civil unions as the most a state should confer to any two adults and that it deal with all of those of any sexual orientation on an equal footing. I favor that form of union be given to any two adults who want to form a household, regardless of whether or not they have a sexual relationship. Ironically, I also do not favor giving special treatment to couples over single people. But you don’t always get to pick which fight is necessary.

In a year when the economy is in the condition it is, the struggle for national health care is beginning and a myriad of other problems endangering lives and the planet are on the agenda, this is not where I would have chosen to be spending my non-existent free time. A gay man can see that there are other peoples’ lives in danger, this seldom used right, one that he would like to be able to exercise, himself, is not the most pressing at this time. I do think that the healthcare of both children and adults is much more important than this issue, climate change perhaps even more important than that. I’d rather be fighting for those this year. And in the end, I’m not even expecting to get a marriage proposal out of it.

It’s an odd position to be in but you can find yourself in odd positions all the time. If you have the most radical agenda of them all, radical economic justice, that of a democratic leveler, you’ve got to be realistic. You have to realize that incremental steps towards the goal are the most you’ll live to see in your lifetime. That will win you the hatred of the impatient purists. Being opposed to both religious fundamentalism and also to several other fundamentalist faiths that are explicitly anti-religious, you get it on all sides, all the time.

I’m worn out, I’m taking classes so I can get a new job. And now this issue in this recession. I’ve got to cut back on my blog activities. Will that change? Maybe they won’t collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot this time.

I spent this afternoon cleaning out some closets in preparation for giving them a fresh coat of paint. You know how it is: things pile up, like sports equipment and camping gear and canned goods and cheap plastic dildoes that have developed unsavory discolored patches, and before you know it you have a cobweb-clotted mass of trash on your hands. So I went in with my fistful of papertowels and my Windex and my spider shoe, and after a couple of hours my closets were all clean and tidy. It was satisfying! I wish I’d done it sooner, but I have this tendency to let things pile up in my closets until things and closets are both past any use.

You know what’s not like a closet? My uterus.

More informed and pithy reproductive-rights bloggers have already gone to town on William Saletan, but this is just ridiculous. There is nothing controversial about “early,” just as there is nothing controversial–per se, anyway–in “safe,” “legal,” and “rare.” Nobody prefers later abortions to early ones; nobody who recognizes a woman’s right to choose believes that delay is a feature. “Early” is a problem for the exact same reason that those other three are. Given the choice between hurting women and permitting women to seek abortion, pro-life lobbyists will always choose to make women’s lives much harder.

Most women do not need several months to decide that they don’t want to be pregnant–in fact, many women make this decision before they actually get pregnant. Most women opt for earlier abortions. It’s safer, it’s less costly, and–most importantly–you don’t have all that fetus clutter to worry about when you have houseguests or need a place to store your toboggan. Really, why would you delay an important medical procedure that only becomes more difficult as time passes? Why would you keep an unwanted pregnancy longer than you had to? Anybody? Or maybe I’m reading him wrong–maybe he’s arguing that women should feel guilty about not working harder to secure earlier abortions?

Can Slate get a blogger who understands at least on some abstract logistical level what pregnancy means? Who doesn’t need to be told that there’s a difference between being pregnant for an extra few months and not? It was one thing to listen to Saletan nattering on about how pro-choice advocates really needed to incorporate the idea of choice into their moral arguments, but to hear him talk about abortion as though it’s something you can just put off indefinitely, no cost-benefit considerations involved? Like getting a wart frozen off your pinkie?

The only way anyone could attribute any natural resistance to “early” to women in general is through misogyny. You have to believe women are perverse or stupid, or you have to believe that women don’t have bodies, that there is no experiential component to pregnancy. You also have to believe that the debate is between two groups who both want the best for women. How do we know that’s just not true? Well, women have to delay medical treatment in order to make people like William Saletan feel better about themselves. The problem here is access. Dignity. Solve that problem–stop forcing women to make medical decisions based on political shibboleths–and Saletan’s new concern-troll toll bridge evaporates.

Just a quick entry to apologize for the slow posting this week; we’ve been hard at work finalizing everything for the end of the Women’s Health Heroes Awards (voting ends tonight!). Stay tuned for a Double Dose this weekend, and be sure to check in Monday morning for ...

[This is a content summary only. Click the headline to visit Our Bodies, Our Blog for the full post, links, other content and more!]

I stumbled across this in a JournalFen community a few days ago.

People bicker about rainbows

The Internet - Generating wank for just about everything! I love when people throw down and try to put their Mad Science Skillz on display.

Also? The phrase "actual science person" is the best thing ever.

Some of the best bits:

Brendan says:
April 14, 2009 at 3:47 pm

I am sorry but a rainbow is just light reflecting and refracting, not god sorry but iits a well known fact. (please do not say that god created light and refraction, because that’s just stupid.)

G says:
April 14, 2009 at 10:32 am

Congratulations to most of you, you fail at science.

Be sure to collect a t-shirt illustrating this fact to warn others of your ignorance.

Barry Gibbons, science writer-editor says:
April 14, 2009 at 1:12 pm

All of this is completely true. I once saw this phenomenon myself. Believe it or not, rainbows do touch the ground. I proved this to my colleagues by riding my unicorn directly up to the base of the rainbow then galloping gallantly skyward on top of the beautiful iridescent bridge of happiness. once I reached the other side where the rainbow touched the ground I danced in the beautiful light while skittles rained upon me. The most amazing thing about it all was, when I looked directly into the light of the rainbow, I saw Jesus and Frank Sinatra playing shuffleboard.

Snagged from Kynn's Journal

The Thirteenth Child, by Patricia C. Wrede

This is an alternate version of our world which is full of magic, and where America (“Columbia”) was discovered empty of people but full of dangerous animals, many of them magical. In this world the frontier is perilous and settlements need magicians to protect them, but the railroads are creeping across the continent and covered wagons are crossing the Great Barrier that runs along the Mississippi.

I've put in a request for this book from my local library, and I'm not going to make a final decision about it until I've actually read it.* That said, this sounds to me like a REALLY problematic concept for a fantasy novel, especially one aimed at the YA market. I know people are tired of fantasy stories that are all set in faux-European societies, but I don't think reimagining the European colonization of the Americas by completely erasing the Native Americans from the picture is a very good way to go about it.

*I'm currently 5 of 5 holds, so it's probably going to take a couple of weeks for me to get ahold of a copy.

This is an interesting article on an issue I know very little about. Thoughts?

Mississippi US District Judge Tom Lee applied the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 to a Jackson State University tenure discrimination case late in April. The case is the first known application of the Act in Mississippi. Though the judge has dismissed several of the suit's claims, the applicati...

I love Cristina Page and think she’s brilliant — her book How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America is a must-read — but I’m not sure she gets in right in this article about how Bristol and Levi could be the teen pregnancy spokespeople we’ve all been waiting for. She writes about Bristol’s work for The Candie’s Foundation, which focuses on lowering the teen pregnancy rate, and argues that Bristol is an effective spokeswoman when it comes to the message that you don’t want to be a teen parent:

But prevention is not Bristol’s area of expertise (for sure). Bristol is much more interested in warning teens about premature parenthood than putting herself forth as an expert on teen pregnancy prevention. That, I think, is part of the reason why she sounds confused when discussing what teens should or should not be doing. Being a teen mom is her new expertise. This is where she becomes clear: she wants to use her experience to help other teens avoid the same fate. She explains, “If I can prevent even one girl from getting pregnant, I will feel a sense of accomplishment.” It’s on this point where Bristol and the Candies Foundation (which supports both abstinence and safe sex approaches) have a truly shared perspective, one that gets overlooked by the traditional teen pregnancy prevention messengers. Bristol’s and Candies’ shared message to teens is: you don’t want to become a teen parent.

The traditional pregnancy prevention messages have often missed this. They have assumed teens don’t need convincing on that issue. They assumed teens just need to know how not to get pregnant. But statistics provided by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy indicate that about one in five pregnant teens was trying to conceive. For this demographic, messages about abstinence and/or contraception are useless.

She’s halfway there, but misses the real message: Teenagers don’t need to be told “pregnancy isn’t fun;” they need actual, tangible incentives to avoid it.

The one in five teens who intended to conceive probably know that pregnancy means more diapers to change and fewer Saturday night parties. Teenagers may not have fully developed adult reasoning skills, but they aren’t idiots. And I would bet that most of the teenage girls getting pregnant intentionally do not have lives like Bristol Palin. For all the data which shows that teen motherhood is socioeconomically damaging for the mothers, what often fails to be mentioned is the fact that a whole lot of teen mothers were coming from lower socioeconomic positions in the first place; so sure, a lot of teen moms won’t go to college, but if college wasn’t on the radar screen anyway, that’s not much of a threat.

And that’s the rub: If we’re serious about decreasing teenage motherhood, we need to give girls a variety of options. Girls need a variety of potential and attainable life prospects; a variety of ways to earn respect in their families and communities; and a variety of ways to feel needed and important. They need health care that doesn’t depend on their status as mothers. They need an educational system that preps them for bigger and better things, and that isn’t just a holding pen.

They need all of the things that Bristol Palin has.

Bristol, of course, is a perfect example of the fact that teen pregnancy happens even to girls with privileged upbringings. But her story doesn’t do much to make teen pregnancy look difficult. She jets around the country going on TV. She has a large extended family that provides for her — she doesn’t have to pay rent or buy diapers or work two jobs to take care of her kids. She doesn’t have to grimace through the intentionally humiliating and bureaucratic process of applying for public assistance benefits. She doesn’t have to stretch her food stamps budget to the max every month. She doesn’t have to worry that she might have to take her kids to the local homeless shelter if she can’t scrape together enough for rent, again.

And she’s very lucky to have all of that. Every child and every woman deserves that, and of course it’s wonderful that she has financial and social support from her family. It means that she and Tripp will probably be just fine, and will be the outliers in all the teen pregnancy scare statistics. But it’s not what a lot of mothers — teenage or otherwise — have in the United States.

So consider me officially tired of the “teen pregnancy sucks!” mantra as a prevention method. We need to radically re-evaluate the way we approach teen pregnancy in this country. Prevention through access to contraceptives and comprehensive sex ed is key, but actually making peoples’ lives better — giving girls a reason to delay childbearing, but also making sure all women have adequate resources when they do have children, regardless of their age — is what really matters. I’m not sure Bristol Palin is going to be the spokesperson for that movement. And I’m pretty sure the Candies Foundation isn’t going to be, either — at least, not judging by their teen pregnancy prevetion “sexy” t-shirts:

President Obama released a proposed fiscal year 2010 budget yesterday that includes provisions that would greatly reduce funding for abstinence only programs and would provide funding for comprehensive sexual education programs. According to the proposed budget (see

Johanna Justin-Jinich, a student at Wesleyan University, was murdered Wednesday while working at a bookstore near campus. The alleged gunman in her murder, Stephen Morgan, turned himself in to police last night, according to the

I don’t like the first part of two-part episodes. It’s fine when you’re watching them on DVD (unless it’s late and you know you shouldn’t watch another one, but you do it anyway and then it turns out to be a cliff-hanger so you have to watch the next one as well), but a week is a long-time between Echo walking out the elevator with Alpha and finding out what the hell is going on.

Or at least I don’t like the first part when I haven’t read spoilers, which has happened to me exactly once (I’ve been spoiled for every show that I was a fan of since 1995). I’m not sure that’s a good sample. But I’m sure I hate it.

But reviewing the first part of a two-parter is particularly difficult. So much of the meaning and point of this episode depends on what happens next. This episode raised far more questions than it answered, and while there is a lot to talk about, there’s a lot I won’t comment on (like who was Echo when Alpha left with her. We’ll all know in a couple of days, and speculating on it wastes precious review time that should be spent laughing at Paul Ballard). So consider this the first part of my review as there are many things that I am reserving judgement on, although my cliff-hanger won’t be as exciting as the show’s.

The theme of this episode - an inversion of Sleeping Beauty - couldn’t have been more clearly signposted if they’d spelled it out in flashing neon lights. But I think I liked it. I found the literal inversion of the sunken tower quite a compelling image.

I’ll talk more about the general ideas of rescue and waking when I talk about the whacky cop adventures of Ballard and Alpha. But I really appreciated that in the end Susan was the only person in this episode who rescues anyone. And she does from a place of solidarity and support, not from chivalry.

I liked the counter-point between the men’s selfish attempts to capture Caroline’s body, and Susan’s advocacy of rescue. Because obviously Ballard’s ridiculous effort to save Caroline needed to be undercut. But I don’t think that’s enough – to reject rescue without offering an alternative is dangerous individualism. The way Susan reached out to Susan shows that there is an alternative

This felt like a reworking of some of the ideas of Ghost, and generally I think this episode was a much stronger take on those ideas. But the similarity between the two did bother me. I find it hard to find the language to describe what I mean, so I hope people will understand the point I’m trying to get at. To me, it feels exploitative, how extreme the abuse depicted in this episode and Ghost. The abuse that Susan, and Eleanor Penn experience is a stand-in for abuse, rendered less real by its enormity¹

Also, I think the issues that Ghost brought up are still sitting there - while there was no space in this story to explore the ethics of inserting memories of abuse into people, I hope they will acknowledge it at sometime in the second season.² Because, no matter how altruistic the assignment, forcing memories of abuse on people is horrific.³

But what was strongest about this plotline was what Susan offered Susan. And it wasn’t help retelling the story,⁴ or giving up her knife, but the hope that she represented, the hope that she was. Hope.

I know everyone has said it, but Enver Gjorkaj was mind-blowingly amazing as Laurence Dominic in that chair.⁵ It was a deeply, deeply creepy scene that worked because of his acting. ⁶ It was a great way of showing the power, reach, and creepiness of the Dollhouse.

One of the questions I’m not going to leave unasked, even though we better know when the finale airs, is what did Dominic mean when he said “Whiskey” to echo. Whiskey like Echo, Sierra, Victor, November, and Alpha is part of the military alphabet. He clearly wasn’t asking for a drink. I still like the theory me and my friend Betsy developed that she’s an ex-doll (or maybe doesn’t know it, since she thought he was asking for a drink). But it’s looking possible that she is actually a doll. Which by itself doesn’t make much sense, since they can surely hire a doctor for a lot cheaper than the labour that they’re foregoing by having her not active, but we’ll see where it goes.

But the centre of this episode was Ballard and Alpha – the relationship and resonances between them.

Like everyone on the internet I knew that Walsh was playing Alpha. I was really annoyed when watching the episode that I’d been spoiled.⁷ I loved the conspiracy-theorist-environmentalist-stoner-misogynist persona of Alpha for most of the episode – hilarious and familiar. Although it did leave me wondering how Alpha worked. Are there different imprints competing in his brain – had the Dollhouse once imprinted him with the character we saw, or someone who could act like the character we saw? Or can he create imprints in his head, the way Topher can on the computer? Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

I’m sure the nature of Alpha will be explored more next episode, that wasn’t really the point of this episode. This was about Alpha, and Ballard’s quest to rescue Echo, Caroline, and maybe just Eliza Dushku’s body.

And Ballard’s version didn’t come across as righteous. Ballard has reclassified Mellie as a thing, not a person. It was clear in the break up scene and when he talked about her with Loomis – she called Mellie a victim – he called her a doll. And it was horrible to watch not because it was strange, but because it was familiar. Ballard doesn’t trust the women he knows because she’s in the same state that makes the stranger Caroline pedestal-worthy – that’s a nasty truth showing.

Ballard had a purpose to his actions; he was breaking Mellie’s heart, so he could use her reaction to find the dollhouse. That makes it worse to me – he has no more respect for the dolls humanity than Topher. And now, because of Ballard’s actions, she is, in all probability, dead.

When he actually finds Echo he has no respect for her as a person, or her autonomy. He talks to her slowly about being brainwashed, as if that’ll make a difference.⁸ And when she doesn’t come he drags her where he wants her to go, just like Alpha.

In fact, Echo made a choice, and fought against him. ⁹ I loved the ridiculous over-signalling of Ballard’s eventual down-fall through the steps by Stephen’s fear (a combination of very fine writing from Jane Espenson and fantastic acting from Alan Tyduk), and that his downfall was at Echo’s hands.

I think there’s a lot packed into that fight, because people do choose oppression over alternatives, and for many different reasons. This episode makes it clear why Echo sides with Boyd over Ballard, and makes you side with her - partly it’s lack of information, partly it’s relationships, partly it’s that the alternative isn’t any better. None of those are fixed, none of those are impossible to overcome, but they all exist in our world as well as in that fight.

But my favourite part of this episode was that it revealed that Ballard is also programmed – he has had less agency than Echo. Everything he has done since the beginning of the show he has done because someone wanted him to, either the dollhouse, or Alpha.¹⁰

There is much more to say, but that’s the thing with reviewing the first half of a two-parter. You’ll have to wait to find out the rest of my opinions, just like you’ll have to wait to find out why Alpha wants Echo.

1. and I really don’t mean that abuse over a less extended timeframe is not enormous – just that it’s comprehensible to the viewer.
2. There will be a second season. La-la-la-la-la I can’t hear you.
3. Although Jane Espenson did a very fine job with Topher’s characterisation. It was very clear that Topher’s pride came entirely from his programming skills. But clearly that wasn’t the place to explore the ethics – because Topher does not care.
4. although I enjoyed the Firefly reference
5. and his “people were fighting on me” is possibly my favourite line of the series
6. I quite enjoyed Sierra’s character, and loved Topher’s explanation that she was exposition central because he hadn’t had much time. But Dichen Lachman has been imprinted to fill the plot-hole in every episode since Needs, and she’s capable of so much more than that
7. and feeling guilty. I told my friend Betsy about Walsh playing Alpha in much the same way I told her that Fred was playing Dr Saunders. Bad me
8. one of the things that cracks me up, that I’ve never mentioned before, is that in Ballard’s web of Dollhouse obsession there’s a post it that says ‘Mind Control?’ I don’t know what’s funnier, that Ballard isn’t sure whether or not the Dollhouse involves mind control, or that they’ve shown that post-it at least half a dozen times
9. In a fight where a table broke. Every time a table breaks during a fight on this show, I expect someone to pick up the remains and stake someone with it.
10. at this stage I think Alpha was using the NSA chip to imprint the messages. If so my special review stop-watch action was pointless