New Blog: Femchat, from the Institute For Women’s Policy Research
New (to me) Blog: As The Tumor Turns
Cancer-treatment experiences from the writer of the late, lamented blog Granny With a Vibrator. It feels oddly trivializing to call someone’s cancer treatment journal really well-written and funny, but well, it is.
New Blog: The Etch-A-Sketchist
Exactly what it sounds like!
Barbara’s Blog: Why Did Home Depot’s Departing CEO Get A $210 Million Dollar Golden Parachute?
I want get paid millions to lose millions for a major company too!
The Republic of T: Homophobia = Apartheid
If you follow the same-sex marriage debate, you know that the mainstream media publishes many articles highlighting black leaders who oppose lesbian and gay rights. So this post – pro-queer-rights quotes from Bishop Tutu, Julian Bonds, Al Sharpton and Leonard Pitts (whose quote is especially wonderful) — is a good reminder of what those articles are leaving out. Thanks to Bean for the tip.
The Onion: Teenage Boys Helpfully Point Out Fat Girl’s Shortcomings
The Reality-Based Community: Scientific Research Into Mystical Experiences From ‘Shrooms
…The Supreme Court recently held (Gonzales v. O Centro) that the use of hallucinogens in religious ceremonies is protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and must be permitted unless there is a particularized showing of harm. It is well-established fact that psilocybin is neither addictive nor physically toxic, though it is not without psychological and behavioral risks, especially when used haphazardly.
If taking a dose of psilocybin under controlled conditions has a better-than-even chance of occasioning a full-blown mystical experience, it seems fairly hard to argue that forbidding such use doesn’t interfere with the free exercise of religion. How the courts will deal with those who want to seek out primary religious experience on an individual rather than a congregational basis remains to be seen.
Junkfood Science: When Schools Grade Kids’ Looks
Junkfood science: More Bad Science About Fat Kids
Women of Color Blog: Statement On The Brutal Murder of Dominique Samuels
Orcinus: Letter From Soledad Prison
A letter from a prisoner (the blogger’s brother) about the various ways the Prison sqeezes money out of prisoners. The library book cart scam is particularly striking for it’s catch-22 logic.
YouTube: Lara Logan, reporter in Iraq, gets eloquently pissed at criticisms of Iraq reporting
The Street Light: How Republicans Lie About Deficit Forcasts
Drawn! : Giant Puppet Girl In London
Soooo cool! And yet, kind of creepyish. Includes a link to documentary materials and a YouTube video.
Crooked Timber: Extremely Interesting Discussion Of The Moral Case For And Against Secession
Photography Touch-Ups Of Women: Before And Afters
The Debate Link: On The So-Called Sexism Of Ruth Bader Ginsberg
The Anti Essentialist Conundrum: Mayor Brings 100 Homeless People To Screening Of “The Pursuit of Happyness”
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum: Clarifying McIntosh’s Discussion Of Privilege
The Agonist: Link-filled post about the growing attempts to justify a war against Iran
Curtsy: The Arabist. Particularly striking was this quote from Josh Marshall:
I’ve said this before. But perhaps it seems like hyperbole. So I’ll say it again. The president’s interests are now radically disjoined from the country’s. We can handle a setback like Iraq. It really is a big disaster. But America will certainly surive it. President Bush — in the sense of his legacy and historical record — won’t. It’s all Iraq for him. And Iraq is all disaster. So, from his perspective (that is to say, through the prism of his interests rather than the country’s — which he probably can’t separate) reckless gambits aimed at breaking out of this ever-tightening box make sense.
Alternet: Marijuana Is Not A Gateway Drug
Geena Davis: Good Speech About Gender In Media (mostly children’s media)
Curtsy: Faux Real.
The Agonist: Congress Finally Investigates Credit Card Industry
Tiny Cat Pants: On White Congressmen Who Want To Join The Congressional Black Caucus
Paul Krugman: Assessment of Milton Friedman’s Career And Impact
Shorter Krugman: Friedman was a great technical economist; shame he was also a sloppy polemicist. Curtsy: The Sideshow.
YouTube: Juggling with five balls, a suitcase, a cane, and a hat.
I saw this juggler years ago, and was very impressed by his grace and creativity.
Orcinus: The New Racism: Beyond Rush
Feminist Law Profs: Even If Found “Not Guilty,” The Duke Lacrosse Players Aren’t Total Innocents
She’s right. But it does appear likely that the three accused men are innocent of the rape they’ve been accused of, which is a more than technical point.
YouTube: A daily photo of one dude for eight years
I’ve seen a few of these “photo a day for years” video projects, but this one is the one I enjoyed the most, probably because of the major changes in hair and beard over the years.
Owen Harries: How To Win Arguments And Influence Debate
Not a joke, just straightforward advice.
Obsidian Wings: Another Reason The Bush Administration Makes Me Ashamed To Be American
These men were captured by bounty hunters nearly five years ago. They are in all likelihood innocent of any crime, and of any act against the United States; they have certainly never been tried and convicted of any. We have held them in captivity since then, away from their wives and families. If they returned home now, their children probably wouldn’t recognize them — and as those of you who have kids will surely recognize, those are some of the saddest words there are.
And now, for some unfathomable reason, we have decided to lock them up in solitary, where we are driving them insane. Even if they were guilty, this would be wrong: having your mind and your spirit broken apart should not be the penalty for any crime. Our government is doing it to the innocent.
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I want get paid millions to lose millions for a major company too!
Ah, actually, if you read the comments posted in the blog you reference, you’ll find out that during this CEO’s tenure not only was Home Depot profitable but that it’s annual revenues doubled. It’s stock prices fell ~20% from their historic high, but that historic high was during the dot-com stock bubble and didn’t reflect it’s real value. Also, it doesn’t cost the company itself any money, only the stockholders.
I’m curious as to what the basis is for your comment?
Amp! (Norm!)
Great links, thx. :)
ABW
Here’s one that I love:
http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_020507WABinitiative957SW.546c6a4d.html
An initiative in Washington State to require married couples to have kids within 3 years or have their marriage annulled. How much support do you think there will be from the “Marriage is about children!” crowd? My guess would be very close to zero.
In Feminist Law Profs: Even If Found “Not Guilty,” The Duke Lacrosse Players Aren’t Total Innocents, the author says:
Kurtz’s pitiful attempt to demonize the victim in this case – and through her all Black women
However, I saw nowhere in Kurtz’s remarks where he did either of these things. Saying that the woman made accusations that are not supported by any evidence is not demonizing her. Saying that the racial aspects of the case caused it to be picked up and flogged by the media is not demonizing her. And I can’t see anywhere where he said anything about “all Black women”.
Also, the title refers to Duke lacrosse players that would be found “not guilty”, which means that she is referring to the lacrosse players that were charged with a crime. But when she then discusses the racial remarks and actions that are also alleged to have happened at that party, she never ties any of the accused to them. So it’s hard to see how she can support her comment that they are not “total innocents”.
“And Iraq is all disaster.”
Nonsense. The debate on the “surge” (made up mostly of keeping some units longer than they would have been there and accelerating deployment of units that were intended to be sent there anyway) has revealed to me that there are actually people that think this thing is over, and that the Iraqi people have lost. I find that amazing. There are a lot of bad things happening, and a lot of evil people working very hard to destroy Iraq, but taking a country from a tolitarian dictatorship that feels free to kill hundreds of thousands of it’s subjects with everything from guns to what amounts to human insecticide and getting them to the point that they’ve had free elections and are trying to govern themselves in something closer to democracy than any other Middle Eastern country except Israel is an accomplishment. It’s hardly surprising that it’s cost many lives, and that’s a terrible thing and not to be taken lightly. But that’s not a disaster. But if we end up with a reasonably free Iraq that has the ability to govern and defend itself, the cost in lives will not make that a disaster. That outcome is not yet guaranteed, of course.
“Lara Logan” – my big issue with Iraq reporting is that the MSM seems to have no problem putting out videos from sources with one particular agenda (to oppose the Iraqi government and the forces assisting it), mainly because they make great action video and are attention getting, without making much effort to publicize successes by the forces supporting the Iraqi government. They also don’t seem to talk much about the sources of much of these videos, which in many cases are essentially propaganda videos from Al-Queda and the like. I had a hard time downloading this clip – did Lara address the AP report from a number of weeks ago that 6 mosques were destroyed that turns out to have been completely false? Did she address the fact that the AP has yet to actually produce the “Iraqi Army Captain” that they named at the time and has yet to admit that in fact no mosques were destroyed and that the slaughter they publicized did not, in fact, occur?
I guess my only problem with arguments like the one she makes it that they always sound to me like the arguments I heard about Rodney King. “Sure, he didn’t deserve the beating, but come on! He was speeding, on drugs, had a criminal history . . ., clearly he wasn’t ‘innocent’.”
It’s a way of saying ‘whether or not he actually did X, he deserves to be punished, and punished brutally, for how he’s lived his life.”
I don’t like these lacrosse players . . . they’re reprehensible and exactly the kind of people I avoid, and I think their story dovetails nicely with Rachel’s recent posts on collegiate blackface parties, but I think the people who have been barking ‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!’ all along have a moral responsibility to recognize and apologize if the evidence turns the other way, and the fact that so many people are ignoring that is really fucking disgusting.
After all, if it looked like a 100% certainty that they really did rape her but they were otherwise really nice people (never said a racist word, did volunteer work on weekends, were kind to their classmates and families, etc . . .), that wouldn’t change the facts. It wouldn’t mean that they deserved acquittal for their crimes. It works the other way too.
Oh, and justifying a war against Iran? Wait for it folks, as there are at least two justifications that you’re going to hear used that will argue that in fact we are already at war with Iran. Note, though, that I’m not personally proposing to invade Iran, as I don’t think our armed forces have sufficient reserves to do so.
One is that Iran is supplying the insurgents and terrorists (insurgents target armed forces, terrorists target civilians, which in this context includes police) with weaponry, money, and fighters to kill Iraqi and American citizens who are on Iraqi, not Iranian soil. That’s a act of war.
The other will be a little more legalistic; the government of Iran permitted and encouraged the invasion of soverign American soil and assault and kidnapping of American citizens on that soil (the American embassy in Tehran), and has continuously occupied it. I do believe (although I’d love to hear the opinion of someone versed in this kind of law) that is formally an act of war, and it’s been going on since 1979.
Wanna hear something interesting? I clicked on the link to the Women of Color Blog (I’m at work, BTW), and I get a message saying that the website has been blocked for “Adult Content”!
WTF?!
Alternet: Marijuana Is Not A Gateway Drug
I was planning to use marijuana as a gateway drug, but I dunno. I just don’t feel motivated to move on to coke and heroin anymore.
I was planning to use marijuana as a gateway drug, but I dunno. I just don’t feel motivated to move on to coke and heroin anymore.
Try a little nicotine. That’ll get you on your way.
RonF wrote:
Good point. I’ve retracted the statement of mine (by crossing it out).
“And Iraq is all disaster.”
Nonsense.
That’s a stunning comment of denial. During the run-up to the Iraq Invasion, I was against it because I felt that it was illegal, a bad idea and that Bushadminco was lying and fabricating obviously false “evidence.” I never thought it would become the unmitigated disaster that it now is. Through sheer incompetence and hubris, Bushadminco has made the wrong choices (against advice from experienced professionals) time and time again at pivotal points.
Bushadminco has turned Iraq into Lebanon, circa 1980, only much, much worse. We have assured that Iran is unquestionably the dominant power in the region. We have busted the bank to rid the world of a single horrible tyrant while propping up others. Yet, that isn’t a disaster because you can repeat the same Bushadminco assertions that we’ve heard for how many years now? I shudder to think to what depths something would have to sink to have you consider it to be a disaster.
In the shameless self-promotion department, I’m hosting the Carnival of Feminists tomorrow. Please stop by — this one’s a two-parter!
Yeah, it’s the “Bush lied, people died” meme. Except that President Bush didn’t lie; he said that British intelligence, et. al., said that Saddam Hussein had WMD, and that is what the intelligence community at the time thought. The fact that so far no one’s been able to confirm that he had the WMD at that time doesn’t make his statement a lie. As far as the accuracy or lack thereof of that intelligence (which could have been superceded if Saddam had followed U.N. resolutions and not thrown the inspectors out of his country), it’s questionable how much of it was right, how much of it was honestly wrong, and how much of it was “let’s tell the boss what we think he wants to hear.” We are a long way from being able to say that Bush believed the statements he was making were wrong but said them anyway.
Now, the U.N.’s commission says that they couldn’t subsequently find any evidence of WMD, but a) I don’t trust the U.N. to be a neutral party in this matter as far as I can throw them, and b) Saddam had 6 months or more to get rid of the evidence before the invasion. So the question as to what Saddam had at the time is open, not settled.
As far as the actual conduct of the war I very much agree that there have been some serious mistakes made. How forseeable the consequences of some of them were is debatable (hindsight is always 20/20). But if you want to talk to someone to debate how the war has been run I’m not going to be arguing for the defense, except to say that in war decisions often have to be made with insufficient data.
I would consider Iraq a disaster if it ended up with Turkey invading Kurdistan from the north, Iran taking over in the south (either directly or via proxy) and Saudi Arabia streaming in from the west to protect a Sunni minority that would otherwise get hammered. That’s still a possibility, but there are other possibilities that would not be a disaster in my book, such as a reasonably stable and reasonably democratic government able to take care of Iraq’s security after the Coalition troops leave in a couple of years. Iraq could yet become a disaster, but it’s not there yet.
That’s not to say that I expect to never again see pictures of bombs being set off in marketplaces by that time. I’m sure Iran is going to do what it can for a long time to destabilize Iraq. But that has little to do with us; these two countries have been fighting each other since Biblical times and as recently as the Iran-Iraq war that was fought while Saddam was in power. I have little doubt that there’s going to be low-level stuff like this going on for a long time.
Finally – Congress Investigates Credit Card Industry
Many of the solicitations target students, persons currently on the economic edge, senior citizens on fixed incomes, and persons who have recently had their debts discharged in bankruptcy. I have long believed that we have an added responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society – and I believe that examining the targeting of these groups is critically important.
I keep getting credit card applications for my son, who is in college. I shred them. In fact, credit card solicitations show up in my mailbox on the average of about one every two days, year round. One of these days someone’s going to steal one out of my mailbox and send it in and get it mailed to them. Then, when they destroy my credit rating, my finances, and my peace of mind in general, I’m going to sue the shit out of whoever sent it to me.
I’m big on personal responsibility. But I also think there’s an issue of corporate responsibility here. If they solicit someone who is a bad risk and then that bad risk ends up doing something stupid, they should bear some of the responsibility for soliciting that bad risk and giving them a credit card to begin with.
The Republic of T: Homophobia = Apartheid
And Al Sharpton speaking out against the religious right’s “hysterical obsession with gay sex.”
Gay rights aside, if you want to quote reputable black leaders who support your position, fine. But if Al Sharpton told me the sun was up at Noon, I’d open a window and check. I’d never put him on a list of reputable anything.
Except that President Bush didn’t lie;…
So when we were told that Iraq posed an imminent and immediate threat to our safety, that was true?
Here is what I said at the time:
I don’t believe Iraq has “WMD,” as the new, popular, nebulous phrasing goes. Even if Hussein has “WMD,” he has no way to deliver them. How is this a threat to the USA if he has no missiles capable of reaching our territory?
I stand by that. I also think that the evidence is overwhelming that both US & British intelligence were far from convinced that Iraq had WMD. The evidence is also overwhelming that Bushadminco massaged the available intelligence to appear to give the answer that they wanted. But, since Iraq had no means to deliver their spurious WMD, it was a lie.
… b) Saddam had 6 months or more to get rid of the evidence before the invasion.
I can’t do anything about your distrust of an organization that is essentially owned and controlled by the US, but, given everything that I have read, even if Hussein disposed of his spurious WMD, he would not have been able to obliterate all evidence. Chemical traces, radiation, etc. would still be detectable now.
Was it the truth when we were told that Bushadminco knew exactly where the WMD were? Was it the truth when we were told that we had captured a couple of “mobile chemical/biological weapons labs?” For gods’ sake, these people were so filled with hubris that they didn’t even bother to coordinate their lies.
… such as a reasonably stable and reasonably democratic government able to take care of Iraq’s security after the Coalition troops leave in a couple of years.
The possibility of this is slightly more than that of the animated version of Peter Pan turning out to be a documentary. We have created chaos by deciding to invade and then doing everything wrong. The chance to correct the situation is long gone. Vietnam was a rousing success compared to how this is turning out.
Ron:
Don’t they bear the responsibility by failing to collect the debt?
I’m just always astounded by how much RonF is willing to look like an idiot in order to continue to insist that maybe Iraq had chemical and biological weapons.
Never mind that the US teams who investigated also found no sign of a biological or chemical weapons program (or weapons), it must be UN perfidy at work. Never mind that if Saddam Hussein were going to destroy all of his weapons during those six months, he would merely have had to present them to the weapons inspectors, say, “Yes, we have had a weapons program, but we are terminating it now. Please provide observers to confirm that we are demolishing the entire program,” and it would have made the war pretty damn hard to justify. Instead, let us imagine that he secretly utterly destroyed his weapons (and his weapons program, and all documentation of it, so that he would still be invaded but couldn’t use them to defeat the US (US war games suggested that if Iraq had chemical weapons, the US invasion would be defeated). This allows us to claim that the Bush administration wasn’t wrong and didn’t lie.
Of course, the Bush Administration could have been wrong and still not mislead, but we actually know that the Bush Administration intentionally mislead.
No, he said British intelligence reported that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, and he sourced it to British intelligence because the CIA told him that British intelligence was wrong. That is intentionally misleading, and a blatant lie by omission.
Don’t they bear the responsibility by failing to collect the debt?
I’m not sure what you meant by that. My point is that it seems to me that the credit card industry intentionally targets people who are bad risks to be profitable for the credit card company to have as customers, signs them up, and then loses money on them, they should bear part of the blame for the fact that they didn’t perform and exercise due diligence. Obviously, the people involved shouldn’t have incurred the debt, either. But in part this smacks of the credit card companies seeking to use public resources to bail out a private business because of it’s own bad business practices.
I can’t do anything about your distrust of an organization that is essentially owned and controlled by the US,
For an organization that you describe as such, it sure spends a lot of time condemning American foreign policy and undermining it as much as possible (Oil for Food being a prime example). If we own the UN, we sure are getting a lousy return on our investment.
The possibility of this is slightly more than that of the animated version of Peter Pan turning out to be a documentary. We have created chaos by deciding to invade and then doing everything wrong. The chance to correct the situation is long gone.
There’s some rather large parts of the country that are anything but chaotic. Of course, they don’t attract much media coverage, since there’s not a lot happening that will sell newspapers or TV time (one of the perils of capitalism). Unlike some, I don’t think this is necessarily a left-wing bias on the part of the MSM; a lot of it is due to the economic forces of news departments that have to earn their way. War zones and your local community have this in common; good news is rarely on the news or in the papers. “If it bleeds, it leads.”
A lot of it is also a reluctance of American news organizations and reporters to risk their lives (which I’m not going to blame them for), and a concomitant dependence in a country where few Americans speak the native language on local stringers that have their own political agenda and a willingness (which I do condemn) to run stories from such sources without a lot of editing or fact-checking, which seems to be how we ended up with the AP’s report on 6 mosques that are in fact still standing having been blown up among general slaughter that also didn’t happen. You have to wonder how many other stories like this are bull$hit.
In any case, you are entitled to your opinion, as am I. I don’t share your opinion as to the inevitability of what you think will happen in Iraq, but there’s little sense in debating it. All I can say is that I definitely think there’s a good shot at standing up a democratic government in Iraq and I favor the commitment of American money and lives to do so.
Ron:
When credit card companies lend money to someone who is genuinely uncreditworthy, then they’re punished by not getting the money back. What other responsibility do you want them to bear?
What public resources are you talking about? Court costs?
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About that link to retouched photos…
Scary. Notice that in multiple cases they lighten hair and eyes, not to mention making White people blindingly so. And the lone Asian woman gets a chalk-white treatment and a lipstick job that seems to mimic geisha makeup – urg.
One of the things that bugs the heck out of me when it comes to the retouched photos is how much ‘magazine pretty’ is totally unrelated to ‘real-world pretty.’ I mean, I know it’s cliche to look at before and after photos and note that you find the before more attractive, but in this case it’s also true.
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