As promised last night*, today's QotD is: What movie, if forced to watch over and over on a loop, would constitute your personal Hell? Pretending, naturally, that Hell exists, we're all going there (duh), and it's comprised of a screening room with a single uncomfortable chair to which you're strapped for eternity.
I'm sticking with the abysmal Barry Lyndon.
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* That was, btw, one of my favorite QotDs evah! Good one, Mama Shakes!
Highly shocking! The Douchicorn "can't recall" whether he dispatched Gonzo and Andy Card to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 to cajole Ashcroft into signing off on the administration's domestic spying program.
Today on CNN, in a preview of his interview with the Vice President tonight, Larry King said he asked Cheney about the allegation. "I asked the Vice President about that and the story that he was the one that asked him to go," said King. "And he said he had no recollection."Cheney's exact response to King's question is: "I don’t recall—first of all, I haven’t seen the story. And I don’t recall that I gave instructions to that effect. … I don’t recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital."
"He did not want to deal with specifics, which tells me, they’re looking at trouble," King added. "If you don't want to deal with specifics…I think you’re looking at trouble and you're looking the other way if you're denying it."
Those of you who were knocking around the blogosphere two years ago may remember Angels With Attitude, also known as the creepiest website in the history of the world. For those of you who don't know, though, the site was a collection of highly photoshopped pictures of girls, and when I say girls, I mean girls -- the oldest person on the site was between 11-14, and most were under ten. Mere words do not begin to do justice to the horror of the site, so I'll add a few pics below for illustrative purposes.
Nerd if By Land, Geek if By Email: Why We're Married Edition
Shakes: Check this out. [Warning: Elements of the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are revealed at the link.] Really interesting, and I think spot-on, especially the bit about sci-fi v. fantasy. It makes sense, when you think about it, because fantasy is rooted in tradition and sci-fi is rooted in progress, literally anti-tradition. Which makes the bar scene in Star Wars a possibility in a way that it would never have been in LotR. And sees Leia a princess and Padme a senator/queen, but Eowyn a Shield Maiden of Rohan." Etc.
Mr. Shakes: That is interesting, and like you say, spot on. Thanks for forwarding it. How cool are you, btw, that you know the term Shield Maiden of Rohan?
So, I see the headline House Approves Funding to Combat Abuse, Rape of Indigenous Women, and I get all excited, since an April Amnesty International report found that "indigenous women are at least twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as other women in the US. One in every three indigenous women will be raped or sexually abused in their lifetime." And then I read what the funding to "combat" rape actually funds:
In response to a recent Amnesty International report detailing the disproportionately high levels of rape and other forms of sexual abuse committed against Native American women, the US House of Representatives has authorized $2 million in funding to protect Native women from sexual assault. Passed by a 412-18 vote, the budget amendment calls for the allocation of $1 million to create a tribal sex offender registry and for an additional $1 million to fund a baseline study on violence against Native women.Not to state the obvious or anything, but a sex offender registry doesn't actually protect women from rape. In theory, it identifies convicted rapists so that women can avoid them, but in reality, that's just another way of handing the responsibility of rape prevention to women, which, as we know, doesn't stop rape.
At least 86 percent of these assaults are committed by non-Native men, yet these non-Native perpetrators are rarely prosecuted or punished, Amnesty found, due to a complex maze of tribal, state, and federal jurisdictions. A still-standing 1978 Supreme Court ruling renders tribal governments unable to prosecute non-Indian criminal defendants, even if the alleged crime took place on tribal land. The authority of tribal justice systems has been further undermined by chronic under-funding and a lack of adequate resources like rape kits and nurses. As a result, many crimes go unreported by victims who are frustrated by the untimely response of understaffed tribal authorities and the lack of successful prosecutions.Now I'm not sure why, if it takes $1 million to set up a sex offender registry and $1 million to do a study, more funding was not provided to address these issues. (Maybe that $85 billion tax break Bush gave the top 1% wasn't such a good idea after all, huh?) But let's say there was only $2 million to spare—might it have been wiser to prioritize the things that will actually help convict rapists? That sex offender registry doesn't do very much damn good if there's no one on it because of unreported rapes and unsuccessful prosecutions. Ahem.
You know, usually Louisiana takes first prize in any competition for most corrupt state, followed closely by Illinois. But Alaska has certainly established itself as a major player, hasn't it?
Alaska has 3 members of Congress, all Republicans, 2 senators and an at-large House member. Judging by the news, neither the House member, Don Young, nor the senior senator, Ted Stevens, is likely to be at large for very long-- and the other senator, Lisa Murkowski, from one of the most corrupt political families in the history of the state, was just caught in some financial and real estate improprieties which aren't likely to be swept under the rug too quickly either.
The House has started to undo some of the damage that the Roberts court wrought last year, passing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Play Act, which undoes the incomprehensibly stupid SCOTUS ruling that if you only find out two years after the fact that you've been discriminated against, well, tough. Speaker Pelosi sez:
Of course, I'm sure the SCOTUS will find a way to make the new law not say what it plainly says too. After all, how are businesses supposed to keep the women and minorities down if they can't actively discriminate against them?The New Direction Congress achieved a crucial victory today for justice and equality with the passage of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This legislation corrects a recent Supreme Court decision that severely restricted the right of workers to have their day in court when their employers have engaged in pay discrimination.
The Supreme Court’s decision ignored the reality that most workers do not discuss their paychecks with their colleagues, which makes it extremely difficult for employees to know if they have been the victim of pay discrimination. By rectifying the Court’s decision, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restores balance in the law and allows victims of wage discrimination to seek justice in the courts.
Star Jones admits she had gastric by-pass surgery.
You mean, she didn't just lay off the cheeseburgers and join a walking club? Who'da thunk?
And get the smelling salts ready for this bit:
It was a success, she says, though she found she was "still consumed with the same anger, shame and insecurity as before."
If one is mentally unable to stop themselves from assuaging their feelings with food, why would they then undergo weight loss surgery in which they risk irreparable physical harm and even death should they not be able to withstand the impulse to binge again?
Star Jones didn’t need weight loss surgery; she needed therapy.
No kidding. As I've said before, compulsive overeating is not well understood and very difficult to treat. But having your guts rearranged so that you get violently ill if you overeat is probably not the way to go. When a big part of your problem is fetishizing "bad" foods, making yourself physically unable to consume them without serious pain and misery is pretty unlikely to take away their power, wouldn't you think?
Also a bad idea? Lying through your teeth about how you lost the weight, when people see you as a role model. Grrrrr.
Honestly, I feel bad for Star Jones after reading all this. She has an eating disorder, a chopped-up stomach that rejects a whole lot of food, a questionable husband, and she was in her forties before she figured out you "can't control what other people think." It's not a bloody wonder being thin hasn't made her feel any better. But I still reserve the right to hate her for spending the last few years indirectly promoting the myth that a little willpower can make you drop 160 lbs.
And passes it big time: 411 to 8—proving the GOP really didn't care about ethics when they were in charge but sure do now that the Dems are running the show.
Wev. As long as it passed.
Some self-described watchdog groups called the measure, which now goes to the Senate, the most significant congressional reform in years.Kind of amazing they had to pass rules against some of this stuff. Yeesh.
...The House-passed bill would:
— Prohibit lobbyists and their clients from giving gifts, including meals and tickets, to senators and their staffs. The House adopted a gift ban in January.
— Require senators and candidates for the Senate or White House to pay charter rates for trips on private planes. House candidates would be barred from accepting trips on private planes.
— Require lobbyists to disclose payments they make to presidential libraries, inaugural committees or organizations controlled by or named for members of Congress.
— Bar lawmakers from attending large parties given in their honor by lobbyists at national political conventions.
— Bar lawmakers and their aides from trying to influence hiring decisions by lobbying firms and others in exchange for political access.
— Deny retirement benefits to members of Congress convicted of bribery, perjury or similar crimes.
I can't let Melissa have all the fun with magical creatures...
According to an interview on CBS, Vice President Dick Cheney is a "unique creature" with a foot in both the legislative and executive branches.
Q: There was an aide in your office who said that one of the reasons you weren’t abiding by that executive order was that you’re really not part of the executive branch. Do you have — are you part of the executive branch, sir?A unique creature, huh? But what kind?
CHENEY: Well, the job of the Vice President is an interesting one, because you’ve got a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch. Obviously, I’ve got an office in the West Wing of the White House, I’m an adviser of the President, I sit as a member of the National Security Council. At the same time, under the Constitution, I have legislative responsibilities. I’m actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive. I sit as the President of the Senate, as the presiding officer in the Senate. I cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. So the Vice President is kind of a unique creature, if you will, in that you’ve got a foot in both branches.
Cheney Says He is a 'Unique Creature': "Now that the political tempest over Cheney's exemption of his office has subsided a bit, the Vice President is back to claiming he is a branch of government all to himself — or as he says it, 'a unique creature' in constitutional government."
Republicans must be *really* worried about their prospects of retaining the White House in 2008: California Electoral Vote Split Proposed
In a nutshell, instead of all of California's votes going to the statewide winner, the proposal would change things such that the statewide winner gets awarded two votes, and the other votes would each be determined by the candidate receiving the most votes within each congressional district. Given the way California's districts are assigned, that probably guarantees Republicans an additional 19 or 20 electoral votes that they have very little chance of winning under the statewide system.
The motive is obvious. It's calculated move on the part of Republicans to alter the electoral math in their favor. It's an appalling powergrab, dressed up in 'power-to-the-people' clothing.
However, I am compelled to examine the principles at stake... not merely in terms of its immediate practical political impact, but also more generally speaking, as a matter of principle... Might such an approach actually be better for democracy, in general? Should electoral votes be assigned on the district level, rather than on the state level? What are the implications of some states going that way and others going winner-take-all?
Well, if applied equally, across the board... such that states of every size, red and blue alike, were required to split their votes by district... Republicans that live in 'blue' states and Democrats that live in 'red' states might feel less disenfranchised if they had some chance of altering the outcome of the election based on their vote. However, it should be noted that many voters still live in congressional districts dominated by the other party, and for those people, the disenfranchisement either remains the same (if the district is dominated by the same party that dominates the state) or else is simply reversed (if the district is dominated by the party that is the minority of the state as a whole.) It should be apparent that moving the locus of disenfranchisement to smaller and smaller geographical units does not inherently solve the problem.
Moreover, a blanket nationwide switch is not likely to happen all at once. Since states get to decide the dispensation of their own votes, a blanket solution isn't going to emerge overnight. And the prospect of a situation in which big 'blue' states are forced to hand out their votes piecemeal whereas big 'red' states continue to give their votes in a monolithic block to their favored candidate isn't a fair solution at all. It's gaming the system for partisan advantage.
Furthermore, even if every state simultaneously implemented the new vote-allocation-per-district system... that still wouldn't guarantee fairness. It might even be *worse*, inasmuch as state boundaries exist for largely historic reasons whereas voting districts are drawn expressly for reasons of representation (in principle) and vote allocation (in practice). Anyone who honestly believes that such considerations will be always handled in a fair and nonpartisan method hasn't been paying attention. If we think politics are ugly and partisan now, think how much worse it could get if the lines start getting redrawn any time there's an election at stake.
I am guessing (and very much hoping, of course) that this won't gain much traction in California, but as the article mentions, the mere possibility of it going to ballot means that Democrats might have to spend valuable resources campaigning against such a move. Not encouraging at all.
I've clearly had enough of Gonzogate to last quite some time. But at least one ray of light begins to shine through:
Inslee (D-WA) is introducing legislation that would require the House Judiciary Committee and the House of Representatives to begin an impeachment investigation into Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in the wake of his damaging testimony last week. The legislation reads:Be still, beating heart. No, really. Someone actually wants to do something about him? Well, tweak my nips and call me Nicky! That's not to say that this whole Gonzo thing won't keep me cranky, but it's a step.Resolved: That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto Gonzales for high crimes and misdemeanors.
"Tom Snyder, who pioneered an in-depth, conversational interviewing style on late-night television, died Sunday at his home in San Francisco. He was 71."
In Newsweek's August 6 issue, Anna Quindlen's column references a YouTube video in which anti-choice activists demonstrating outside a clinic in Libertyville, IL are asked what punishment should be meted out against women who have abortions if abortion is criminalized.
You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them." ... [H]e can't get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.Which is precisely what many of the interviewees do in the short film mentioned:
..."They never connect the dots," says Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. ... "How have we come this far in the debate and been oblivious to the logical ramifications of making abortion illegal?" June says.
Perhaps by ignoring or infantilizing women, turning them into "victims" of their own free will.
This can't be happening. David Petraeus and Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack and Joe Lieberman and John McCain and all those really smart and well-informed bloggers on the right have already told us that the surge is working, and that Iraq is a different place now than it was six months ago, and that there are real signs of progress, and that Iraqis are happy because they know the Americans are there to help them, and- and- I mean, CNN is lying, right?
About eight million Iraqis -- nearly a third of the population -- are without water, sanitation, food and shelter and need emergency aid, a report by two major relief agencies says.
Oxfam and the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Coordination Committee in Iraq have issued a briefing paper that says violence in Iraq is masking a humanitarian crisis that has worsened since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
The paper, called "Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq," is the latest documentation of the misery faced by Iraqis.
"Eight million people are in urgent need of emergency aid; that figure includes over two million who are displaced within the country, and more than two million refugees. Many more are living in poverty, without basic services, and increasingly threatened by disease and malnutrition," said the relief agencies' report. The population of Iraq is 26 million.
It said that not addressing the needs of Iraqis in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter would further create more unrest in the country.
"Despite the constraints imposed by violence, the government of Iraq, the United Nations, and international donors can do more to deliver humanitarian assistance to reduce unnecessary suffering. If people's basic needs are left unattended, this will only serve to further destabilize the country."
The report found that about 43 percent of Iraq's population endure "absolute poverty," and that more than half "are now without work."
Child malnutrition rates have jumped from 19 percent before the invasion four years ago to 28 percent now, and there are two million internally displaced people, many of whom have no or little access to food rations.
The number of Iraqis "without access to adequate water supplies" is 70 percent, up from 50 percent since 2003. The country continues to suffer a "brain drain."
As many of you have likely heard, FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents searched the Alaska home of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens amid a corruption probe that has already snared two oil-company executives and a state lobbyist.
Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure Monday, causing him to fall while at his summer home off the coast of Maine, the Supreme Court said.Roberts has "fully recovered from the incident," and a neurological evaluation "revealed no cause for concern," the Supreme Court said in a statement.
Doctors called the incident a "benign idiopathic seizure," similar to one suffered by the chief justice in 1993, the court statement said. An idiopathic seizure is one with no identifiable physiological cause.
A source close to the chief justice told CNN that Roberts fell five to 10 feet after the seizure.
Roberts, 52, was conscious after the fall, which caused only minor scrapes, the Supreme Court said.
I'm far from John Roberts' biggest fan, but I do wish him a speedy recovery. Aside from simple human decency, let's be honest, were he to die, Bush would find a way to appoint someone far worse. It's what Bush does.
One thing this does highlight, though, is why it's pointless to assume that the age of a Supreme Court justice is indicative of how long they'll serve. Roberts could serve forty years -- or this could be a sign of something awful. I myself would happily split the difference -- Roberts could serve two more years, and then live another fifty.They clog for thee: "All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence," said Dave Heller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Anchorage office. The search began this afternoon, he said.Federal law enforcement agents are currently searching the Girdwood home of Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, an FBI agent said.
Ah, that's the kind of culture of accountability the GOP has fostered.
Now, Stevens is of course in a bit of a sticky wicket. For one thing, as Paul Kiel notes, "That's the same home, of course, that was doubled by a renovation undertaken in 2000 -- the contractor, curiously, was Veco, the corrupt oil company. Veco, prosecutors have pointed out 'was not in the business of residential construction or remodeling.'" I'm sure, of course, that lots of oil companies suddenly decide to help someone remodel their home, if that someone happens to be, I don't know, the senior senator from an oil state or something.
The more problematic thing has to do with payment for the job. Stevens has said, "As a practical matter, I will tell you. We paid every bill that was given to us. Every bill that was sent to us has been paid, personally, with our own money, and that's all there is to it. It's our own money." And I'm sure Stevens did pay every bill that was sent to him. But if that bill happened to be for, say, $10.95, well, it wouldn't stun me.
Meanwhile, the GOP's ethical standards continue to remain at pre-2006 levels. It's almost like they're too corrupt at this point to change.
The answer is, Michael O'Hanlon. Check out Greg Sargent's post, at TPM Cafe:
Everybody has already taken their whacks at today's Times Op ed by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, which argued that we "just might win" the war and that the political debate in Washington is "surreal" and out of touch with the progress being made there.
But here's an amusing postscript to this whole saga. It turns out that this assessment by O'Hanlon today is in some key ways strikingly at odds with...
...the Brookings Institution's own Iraq Index, a meticulous and regularly updated compilation of stats designed to paint as realistic a portrait as possible of the situation on the ground.
And guess who oversees the Brookings Iraq Index?
Yup -- it's overseen by Michael O'Hanlon.
Saddam has a twenty-eight year pattern of aggression, violence, miscalculation, and purposeful underestimation of the consequences of his actions that should give real pause to anyone...
Even when Saddam does consider a problem at length...his own determination to interpret geopolitical calculations to suit what he wants to believe anyway lead him to construct bizarre scenarios that he convinces himself are highly likely.
Last weekend, while we were at dinner with Mama and Papa Shakes, I began a discussion about which movie, if forced to watch over and over on a loop, would constitute our personal Hells. (That is not, by the way, the QotD, but it will make a good one some other day, probably tomorrow.) I said Barry Lyndon, which Mama Shakes said she hadn't seen, although she had seen Paper Moon, the connective thread being Ryan O'Neil. "I haven't seen Paper Moon," I said, "but I do know you're like a doll with a paper ass!" which sent us both into fits of giggles.
(The nonsensical phrase is one that one of my childhood friend's grandfathers would use—without, evidently, any notion that the phrase was not in common usage—to describe an unreliable woman: "Well, you know how Delores is—she's like a doll with a paper ass!" He was a rather colorful fellow, to put it politely, who would also describe a real fury as being "so mad I was shittin' little green buttons!")
Anyway, recalling that her granddad used to threaten: "I'll hit you so hard, your shirt will roll up your back like a shade," Mama Shakes then suggested that a good QotD would be What weird or funny expressions did your family use that you'd never heard anywhere else?
Earlier in comments, Grumpy Old Man made a point by quoting his granddad: "If bullshit was music this guy would be a one man brass band." That's a good one.
San Bernardino County in Southern California is the largest county in the United States, by area. It has more land mass than nine individual states, and is bigger than New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island - combined.
And people there are losing their homes at an astonishing rate.
County defaults up 180% in Q2
Homes lost to foreclosure rocket 987% in same period
VICTORVILLE — Mortgage default notices in San Bernardino County surged 180 percent in the second quarter compared to the same time last year, while the number of homes lost to foreclosure rocketed 987 percent over the same period, a real estate information service reported.
From April to June, lenders sent homeowners statewide the highest number of notices of default in over a decade, according to DataQuick Information Services in La Jolla.
San Bernardino County registered 5,141 notices of mortgage default in the second quarter, up from 1,839 a year earlier. Homes lost to foreclosure in the county totaled 1,489 in the second quarter, compared to 137 over the same period last year.
The trend toward rising foreclosures will continue to accelerate in the Victor Valley, said Carolyn McNamara, a broker with the McNamara Group in Phelan specializing in foreclosures and repossessions.
“We have not seen the peak of foreclosure activity in the Victor Valley,” McNamara said.
“My office alone has received 18 foreclosures in the last two weeks, and I am just one of many agents that specializes in repossessions and foreclosures in the High Desert,” she said.
Analysts attributed the rise in foreclosures to stagnating home prices and sales resulting from a readjustment in the residential market following the home-buying frenzy of 2004 and 2005.
Don't worry...no spoilers.
I went to see the latest installment of Harry Potter film series with my friends Bob and the Old Professor. Bob seemed to like it, I enjoyed most of it, and the Old Professor thought it was a crashing bore.
As is the case of all films in a series, there has to be an assumption of knowledge on the part of the audience of what's gone on before so that you don't have to spend an hour or so recapping what went on in the first four films. The problem with that, however, is that it may have been a while since you've either read the book (I read Phoenix during Hurricane Katrina in 2005) or seen the last film in spite of HBO re-running Goblet of Fire over and over again. So I spent a bit of time rebooting the database to catch up with the story. But once I did, it moved along, and I remembered most of the story as it was told. The screenwriter, Michael Goldenberg, did a good job of paring the book, which is 734 pages, down to a manageable running time on the screen and tightening up the narrative. One of my chief complaints about Ms. Rowling as a writer is that her narrative gets a bit long-winded and her dialogue is clunky. However, she's richer than the Queen of England, so what do I know? So all in all, I think the translation from book to screenplay went well.
I continue to be impressed with the ability of both the story and the actors to maintain a strong sense of continuity from installment to installment. Harry Potter has grown, in more ways than one, into the role life has handed him yet he still has that sense of innocence, wonder, and self-doubt that infused him in the first film. He has been tested and beaten down, but he still strives on when others, especially teens, would have said something along the lines of "I'm outta here!" to the place the world has put him. Obviously he can't give up -- there are still two more books to go at this stage -- but his sense of perseverance and strength is very powerful and I think that's what makes him worth watching. (Daniel Radcliffe, the actor portraying him, has also grown; he's getting buff in his late teens, which may make the rest of the films hard to pull off. Harry Potter in his twenties with a six-pack and stubble might be hard to sell.)
The rest of the company is also aging well. Rupert Grint as Ron and Emma Watson as Hermione aren't nearly half as annoying as they were in the first two, and Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman are worth the price of admission alone.
I have no idea why the fundamentalists are up in arms about the Harry Potter books. These are stories about good versus evil and honor and right versus treachery and darkness. The fact that Harry is a wizard and that he is learning witchcraft is almost beside the point; those are devices and gimmicks to infuse the stories with a different interesting angle, but the real story has nothing to do with magic any more than Star Trek is about space flight. It's about our basic human nature and how we face the tests of being human. In other words, it's all allegory and parable, which, in case the fundamentalists haven't noticed, is what most of the bible is. What I think irritates them isn't that there's magic in these stories -- as opposed to changing sticks into snakes, parting the Red Sea, and making Merlot out of tap water. It's that the stories have captured the imagination of billions of children and adults and it makes them jealous; they don't see kids standing in line and waiting up all hours for the latest Left Behind book. (With good reason. I read one. It makes a Harlequin Romance sound like Faulkner.)
By the way, there was one unintentional laugh. There's a scene where the dreaded Dolores Uxbridge, played with delicious sugar-coated evil by Imelda Staunton, is proctoring the OWL exams in the Great Hall, sitting like a pink-coated queen on a dais. Someone in the theatre said loudly, "George Bush in drag!" Even the actors on the screen grinned at that.
Okay, I'm going back to reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Every time we have a discussion around here about how women's bodies are treated as public property, female Shakers always provide a plethora of examples of having been subjected to everything from inappropriate touching to sexual assault on public transportation. And every time, there are always a couple of guys who are totally shocked, because it's just completely removed from their experience as men. (And a few times, we've had a guy or two who was dubious, once even outright accusing women of lying, because the stories were so plentiful that he couldn't believe this whole world of abuse existed without his knowing about it.)
So, I thought I'd pass on this little tidbit with a nod back to those previous conversations:
After conducting a month-long citywide survey, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer has released findings that nearly two in three subway riders have been sexually harassed in the New York City subway system. Two-thirds of the 1,790 respondents to the questionnaire were women, but the findings reported both women's and men's responses. Women comprised 99 percent of the 10 percent of respondents who reported having been sexually assaulted and of the 63 percent who reported having been sexually harassed.Think about those numbers for a moment. If 99% of the people who said they'd been sexually harassed were women, and 2/3 of the entire group had been sexually harassed, and 2/3 of the entire group were women, that means that virtually every single woman who took the survey had been sexually harassed at least once on the subway. But almost no men had.
The WaPo has a big cover story today about Gonzo and how he's a useless gobshite whose recent testimony has been about as helpful to the Bush administration as an extra anchor on the Titanic. There's really nothing left I could possibly say about the lying sack of crap who steadfastly continues to occupy at the president's pleasure the highest law enforcement office in the nation, but I did just want to make a passing comment on this bit of the story, seven paragraphs in:
Whether Gonzales has deliberately told untruths or is merely hampered by his memory has been the subject of intense debate among members of Congress, legal scholars and others who have watched him over the years. Some regard his verbal difficulties as a strategic ploy on behalf of a president to whom he owes his career; others see a public official overwhelmed by the magnitude of his responsibilities.Now, I know there are professional administration fluffers who say that Gonzo is just a poor wee victim of a faulty memory, but is the WaPo honestly asserting that there are people who genuinely believe that horseshit? Because there aren't. There are those who say it because they're mendacious scumbags who don't care a whit for the truth and there are those of us who think they're soulless, intellectually and ethically bankrupt idiots, but no one actually exists who sincerely believes that Gonzo just plumb can't remember what happened back when the administration was plotting this travesty of justice or that one, aw shucks.
The first thing I noticed in this paean to the Iraq war by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack was who they didn't talk to:
VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.There's a lot more, but the "who" that O'Hanlon and Pollack did not talk to is not there, either. Give up? Why, it's anyone at all who wasn't wearing a U.S. military uniform! And guess what? O'Hanlon and Pollack -- far from having "harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq," have been two of the war's biggest boosters from the very start.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
... The op-ed contains “no mention anywhere of the fact that both men very prominently backed the initial invasion and the ’surge.’” Pollack, who authored a pre-war book he described as “the case for invading Iraq,” appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in Oct. 2002 uncritically touting the false intelligence about Iraq:Glenn Greenwald quotes from the transcript of an NPR interview from September, 2003, in which O'Hanlon makes the same upbeat claims that violence is down, the streets are safer, the counterinsurgency is working, blah blah blah, as he does in his NYT piece:POLLACK: What we know for a fact from a number of defectors who’ve come out of Iraq over the years is that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire nuclear weapons and is building them as fast as he can.O’Hanlon has shared Pollack’s euphoria over attacking Iraq. Prior to the invasion, he predicted a “a rapid and decisive” victory. He has sought to convince war critics to get behind the escalation. And now he is pushing a plan for Iraq that envisions a long-term occupation.
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. He just returned from a Pentagon-sponsored visit to Iraq and he's in the studio. Welcome back, Michael. What's it like in Iraq?O'Hanlon even cheerfully acknowledges the carefully controlled view of Iraq he got:
MICHAEL O'HANLON: Well, it's obviously tough. It's a little better, however, than I thought for a couple of reasons. One is I think the counterinsurgency effort is going fairly well. Now obviously, you mention the number of attacks per day that continue; it's a real concern. We're still losing troops. Everyone's aware of that. The truck bombings in August were tragic. The assassination of the Governing Council member was tragic, but overall, the counterinsurgency mission seems to be going well in that we are taking out a lot more people than we're losing and I believe we're using force fairly selectively and carefully on balance. There's some mistakes here and there. Also, security is pretty good in most of the country despite the fact that it's not good everywhere and that we certainly hear the reports of violence on a daily basis.
HANSEN: You say it was better than you thought. What were the surprises? Were there any?
O'HANLON: I would say that the main surprise for me was probably that one could travel around the country, even flying over contested areas, with relatively confident sense of security. There wasn't as much need to avoid certain areas as I might have expected. There is obviously violence. There was violence in some of the regions that we visited on the days we were there. But you're talking about specific, isolated acts just like you would get in an American city. I'm not trying to say that this is a country at peace, but overall, we really do run most of the country together with our Iraqi partners and the resistance forces are very small pockets who operate only at a given moment here or there.
HANSEN: American officials have claimed that foreign terrorists have entered Iraq. Were you shown any evidence that would substantiate those claims?
O'HANLON: I think it's compelling. I wasn't shown evidence directly, but certainly there's a lot of—we've arrested some people from other countries, not as many as I might have thought. And the numbers that are estimated of foreign jihadists are smaller than I had feared. Granted, the estimates could be wrong. It's always very hard to count people in an insurgency or a counterinsurgency, but it's probably several hundred to, at most, a couple of thousand from foreign countries. And we're starting to do fairly well at going after them, or at least limiting their ability to organize.
HANSEN: How are the American troops, who seem to be under daily fire, handling the dual role of being warriors on the one hand and nation-builders on the other?
O'HANLON: Our military is so spectacular at balancing these sorts of things. Whether you like the mission or not, whether you approve of the war or not, you have to admire the troops. And we spent most of our time with them and they just work extremely hard and they're very professional. They've done this throughout the '90s in the Balkans. We should remember that we've learned a lot from those '90s experiences, that the Bush administration, even though it opposes nation-building in principle, is now benefiting from the fact that we have a military so well-trained in precisely this balance of being warriors at night and then peacekeepers by day. And we're doing pretty well at the combination, I think.
HANSEN: Final question. Your visit was sponsored by the Defense Department. Are you concerned that you perhaps were given a rather narrow view of the country by your hosts?Of course, this didn't stop O'Hanlon, then or now, from making claims of progress uninformed by anything close to a balanced, accurate picture of conditions in Iraq.
O'HANLON: There's no doubt. But we only had a couple days there. We talked primarily to American officials. However, we could be quite prying and we could really push them. And I think overall, nonetheless, I was reassured. We didn't meet a lot of Iraqis who could tell us how things were going, but on balance, I think we had some access.
That O’Hanlon and Pollack describe themselves as observers who have “harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq,” is obviously a political strategy. If they can convince the reader that they’re White House critics, who work for a historically left-leaning think tank, then their support for the current strategy caries more weight.Of course, the surge-adoring hordes don't see it that way. It's fascinating to see how the same media critics on the right who see "liberal lies" everywhere in the MSM, can accept and repeat an outright lie when it supports their ideological position on the war. Still, if there is anything more astonishing than O'Hanlon and Pollack telling us, straight-faced, that they have "harshly criticized" Pres. Bush's handling of the Iraq war, it is seeing those two described by neocons as "prominent lefties" who have been "harshly critical of the war effort to date."
Except the claim is inherently misleading. O’Hanlon and Pollack endorsed the war before it began, and have eagerly backed the occupation ever since, including the so-called “surge.” These guys “have harshly criticized” the administration the same way that John McCain and Lindsey Graham have — as enthusiastic war supporters who’ve been frustrated at times by the Cheney-Rumsfeld policies. But that doesn’t make them objective, credible analysts; on the contrary, they’re touting dubious results that bolster their own predictions.
More importantly, O’Hanlon’ and Pollack’ evidence of progress in Iraqi is wholly unpersuasive.
Last Thursday, CNN sports anchor Larry Smith appeared with Nancy Grace to comment on NFL quarterback Michael Vick's arrest for running a dogfighting ring:
SMITH: Yes, well, that’s — he’s been in a lot of trouble lately, when you think about all the other incidents, and this is just the worst one of all. Keep in mind, too, that while Kobe Bryant is a situation we can sort of compare this to, this really is much worse. Not only can you argue that the crimes are much worse in terms of, you know, killing dogs and that kind of thing, but as an NFL starting quarterback, you are the most visible face in that city. I’ve said all along, in fact, you know, if you go through and, you know, very quickly name 10 mayors of major cities in the country…Technically, I believe what we heard was Larry Smith suggest that crimes against women and dogs are comparable. Presumably, Smith would think killing a woman was as bad as killing a dog, but killing is worse than rape, so submitting dogs to a dogfight where they could be killed is worse than raping
GRACE: Larry Smith, did I just hear you say…
SMITH: … you could have a harder time doing that…
GRACE: … mistreatment of…
SMITH: … than naming 10 NFL starting quarterbacks.
GRACE: Did I just hear Larry Smith, CNN sports correspondent and anchor, state that crimes on a dog are much worse than crimes on a woman? Did I hear that?
Ok, slight paraphrase. But if anyone was planning to visit the White House, you should remember to pack your polos and khaki pants (emphasis mine):
(CBS) WASHINGTON New signs are posted around the White House indicating a new strict enforcement of the dress code, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The code applies to all visitors and staff members, including tourists.
Some tourists are finding the strict clothing restrictions at the White House un-American.
The forbidden items include jeans, sneakers, mini-skirts, t-shirts, tank tops and absolutely no flip flops.
Phoenix Woman points us to the kind of story that I'm sure makes us all feel warm and fuzzy:
As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.
IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”
Nan A. Talese, former editor and publisher of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey:
As for Frey's use of fictitious elements in his ostensibly factual account of addiction and recovery, Talese said: "When someone starts out and says, 'I have been an alcoholic. I have lied. I have cheated.' ... you do not think this is going to be the New Testament."
From Gawker's live-blogging of the Frey flogging on Oprah with Talese in attendance:
Oprah's people were contacted by someone from the Hazelden clinic days after the book was picked. This person questioned the book, so Oprah had her people contact Talese. Talese's team backed it up and said Frey's book was "non-fiction."
I'm actually glad Talese has dragged l'affair Frey back to public consciousness; those were good times.
(Cross-posted.)
Paul Krugman says that the worst thing that could happen -- for the Republicans -- is that a government-supported health care program like SCHIP could actually work.
Now, why should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.In other words, the GOP and the president are willing to let a program that has proven to work end in order to prove a misguided political philosophy.
And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.
This sounds like a caricature, but it isn’t. The truth is that this good-is-bad philosophy has always been at the core of Republican opposition to health care reform. Thus back in 1994, William Kristol warned against passage of the Clinton health care plan “in any form,” because “its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”
It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.Oh, that's the problem: raising the tobacco tax. May the FSM forbid that we should actually ask the people who are going to be needing the health care system -- both public and private -- the most in the future to pay for it.
There are arguments you can make against programs, like Social Security, that provide a safety net for adults. I can respect those arguments, even though I disagree. But denying basic health care to children whose parents lack the means to pay for it, simply because you’re afraid that success in insuring children might put big government in a good light, is just morally wrong.These are the same people who weep and carry on about the oxymoronic "lives of the unborn" and label the Democratic Party as "baby killers" for being pro-choice. On the other hand, why should the Republicans worry about poor sick kids? Everyone knows they end up voting for the Democrats, so the less of them around, the better, right?
No one should be surprised by George Bush's exposed scheme to have Delta Black Ops Team Bravo Commando Force take out selected PPK leaders in exchange for Turkey not sending waves of troops across the border into Iraq. This was inevitable, given Bush's predilection for military solutions - when your only tool is a hammer, you treat every situation like a nail - and the desperate need to forestall an outright Turkish invasion of northern Iraq.
The truly interesting question which no one has yet posed involves the Iraqi Kurds. There has to be more than one quid pro quo at work here. Unless Bush and his minions are completely untethered from reality, they must have made some offer, some promise, some outright bribe to the oft-betrayed Kurds in order to buy a level of acquiescence.
So what have we offered the Kurdistan Regional Government?
And whatever it is, has anybody told the Shi'a and Sunnis?
(Cross-posted.)
The Patriot Act updated FISA. But oddly, no one wants to discuss that. From the Associated Press today:
Bush wants terrorism law updated
WASHINGTON - President Bush wants Congress to modernize a law that governs how intelligence agencies monitor the communications of suspected terrorists.Nonetheless, the Patriot Act addressed exactly these issues, nearly six years ago.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, provides a legal foundation that allows information about terrorists‘ communications to be collected without violating civil liberties.
Bush noted that terrorists now use disposable cell phones and the Internet to communicate, recruit operatives and plan attacks; such tools were not available when FISA passed nearly 30 years ago. He also cited a recently released intelligence estimate that concluded al-Qaida is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on U.S. soil.
"the PATRIOT Act modernizes surveillance capabilities by ensuring that pen register and trap and trace court orders apply to new technologies, such at the Internet, and can be executed in multiple jurisdictions anywhere in the United States. Criminal provisions dealing with stored electronic communications will be updated to allow law enforcement to seize stored voice mail messages the same way they can seize a taped answering machine message. Additionally, under this bill, a court may authorize a pen register or trap/trace order that follows the person from cell phone to cell phone rather than requiring law enforcement to return to court every time the person switches cell phones. The bill, consistent with our constitutional system of government, still requires a judge to approve wiretaps, search warrants, pen registers and trap/trace devices."Here's what President George W. Bush said when he signed the Patriot Act:
The changes, effective today, will help counter a threat like no other our Nation has ever faced...Simply put, this has nothing to do with any type of new technology. The President wants FISA updated because it's a law that he broke, and he wants to retroactively change it.
We're dealing with terrorists who operate by highly sophisticated methods and technologies, some of which were not even available when our existing laws were written. The bill before me takes account of the new realities and dangers posed by modern terrorists. It will help law enforcement to identify, to dismantle, to disrupt, and to punish terrorists before they strike...
Surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists. The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones. As of today, we'll be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this proliferation of communications technology...
This legislation is essential not only to pursuing and punishing terrorists but also preventing more atrocities in the hands of the evil ones. This Government will enforce this law with all the urgency of a nation at war...
It is now my honor to sign into law the USA PATRIOT ACT of 2001.
A longstanding prediction of global climate change is that things are going to get very bad for Bangladesh. The country lies in the Ganges-Brahmaputra River Delta, and is subject to flooding even under the best of conditions. If sea level rises, things could potentially get much worse. Like, say, this:
With floodwater pouring in through their windows, thousands of people affected by South Asia's deadly deluge are being forced to share the limited high ground with venomous snakes, surrounded by filthy water.Pudentilla asks, "do global warming deniers ever consider the possibility that the consequences, if they’re wrong, could be rather unpleasant?" The answer is simple: they know that's the case. But they don't care, because it isn't happening to them personally. As long as it doesn't affect them, there's no reason to park the Hummer.
With almost half of Bangladesh submerged, according to officials, and torrential rains pelting Nepal and India, at least 25 more people have died as a result of the weather since Saturday.
None of the front-runners is sufficiently retrofuckified to suit them. So they're making threats:
[James Bopp Jr., an influential conservative lawyer and general counsel to the National Right to Life Committee], who has signed on as an adviser to the Romney campaign, said that a Republican nominee who supported abortion rights "would essentially be at war with the base, and that would manifest itself in a lot of different ways."Oooh. Worse yet:
[Richard Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention] is also warning that the party cannot assume it will hold the anti-abortion vote in a general election if it nominates a supporter of abortion rights.ZOMG! Say it ain't so! If the GOP stops pandering to the retrofuck anti-choicers, they might stop being asinine one-issue voters and start giving their votes due consideration?! Heavens to Mergatroid! Why—that could mean anti-choicers actually notice they're often voting against their own best interests on just about every other issue or even (OMG) that Democrats don't really "promote" abortion! Don't do it, anti-choicers! Retain your focus—otherwise, you might just become—horror of horrors!—sensible people!
“If there is no difference on that issue, then all of a sudden a lot of other issues start getting oxygen,” Dr. Land said.
I saw Fanny and Alexander once. I didn't get it. Of course, Wikipedia wasn't around then.
Anyway, the director responsible for my confusion has passed away at 89.
I guess the rabid right has squeezed all the narcotic value that it can out of Scott Thomas Beauchamp and needs a new manufactured "outrage" to feed its addiction.
Here is the basic story: A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday and charged with a hate crime for throwing a Koran into a toilet on the campus of Pace University. The AP story about the incident [bolds mine]:
Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said. It was unclear if he was a student at the school. A message left at the Shmulevich home was not immediately returned.
The Islamic holy book was found in a toilet at Pace's lower Manhattan campus by a teacher on Oct. 13. A student discovered another book in a toilet on Nov. 21, police said.
Muslim activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.
The school was accused by Muslim students of not taking the incident seriously enough at first. Pace classified the first desecration of the holy book as an act of vandalism, but university officials later reversed themselves and referred the incident to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit.
The incidents came amid a spate of vandalism cases with religious or racial overtones at the school. In an earlier incident on Sept. 21, the school reported another copy of the Quran was found in a library toilet, and in October someone scrawled racial slurs on a student's car at the Westchester County satellite campus and on a bathroom wall at the campus in lower Manhattan. Police did not connect Shmulevich to those incidents.
Treatment of the Quran is a sensitive issue for Muslims, who view the book as a sacred object and mistreating it as an offense against God. The religion teaches that the Quran is the direct word of God.
I’ve received an email from Stanislav Shmulevich, who has been arrested in New York for putting a Koran in a toilet at Pace University. And his case is even more outrageous than we first reported.
First, Shmulevich was arrested and jailed for 24 hours. Second, he’s not facing misdemeanor charges—he’s being charged with two felonies, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment.
Felonies. For putting a book in a toilet.
Third, his income is on a borderline that disqualifies him for a public defender, so he stands to suffer incredible financial hardship as well.
Fourth, his name and photograph were published in several newspapers in New York, and he and his mother were ambushed outside the court by reporters. In a case like this, clearly with the potential to enrage radical Muslims, this is so irresponsible of the media that it borders on criminal.
Do we still live in a country that values free speech? This case is pretty good evidence that we do not. Mr. Shmulevich is caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare right out of the Soviet Union, and it’s all happening at the demand of the Muslim Student Association and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Stay tuned. This is not over.
