The King of Obvious Body Language never fails to show his true colors:
Laura: "We are not amused!"
(Energy Dome tip for the photo to Rising Hegemon.)
If Looks Could Kill...
Hypocrites of the Highest Order
Of course you knew as soon as Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery made a political statement at Coretta Scott King’s funeral, the wingers would go apeshit. And so they have.
Pam’s got the Freeper round-up, and Radical Russ looks back at Reagan’s funeral.
And I still stand by my original statement, that telling the truth was the finest way to honor Mrs. King.
Oy, Dems. Oy.
Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities. Ya don’t say.
Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president's approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November…Not good. Not good at all. And the problem is, of course, the party establishment.
"We're selling our party short; you've got to stand for a lot more than just blasting the other side," said Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. "The country is wide open to hear some alternatives, but I don't think it's wide open to all these criticisms. I am sitting here and getting all my e-mail about the things we are supposed to say about the president's speech, but it's extremely light on ideas. It's like, 'We're for jobs and we're for America.' "
But among more establishment Democrats, there is concern that many of the party's most visible leaders — among them, Howard Dean, the Democratic chairman; Senator John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential candidate; Mr. Kennedy; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader; and Al Gore, who has assumed a higher profile as the party heads toward the 2008 presidential primaries — may be flawed messengers.Really? Because Al Gore has given a series of brilliant speeches that left establishment golden boy Tim Kaine’s SOTU rebuttal in the fucking dust. And Howard Dean was able to lay out a great Democratic platform in less than 30 seconds at Katie Couric’s bidding. And John Kerry led the filibuster attempt against Alito, even if was too little too late.
It seems to me the thing that most of those people have in common is a connection to the netroots and progressive elements of the party, and a more discernible resistance to the idea that the Dems will win by being Republican-lite.
No wonder the establishment disdains them.
Interesting
Study Finds Low-Fat Diet Won't Stop Cancer or Heart Disease.
The study found that women who were randomly assigned to follow a low-fat diet ate significantly less fat over the next eight years. But they had just as much breast and colon cancer and just as much heart disease. The women were not trying to lose weight, and their weights remained fairly steady. But their experiences with the diets allowed researchers to question some popular notions about diet and obesity.Clearly this isn’t reason to throw all caution to the wind, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. I’d be interested to see a similar study started earlier in participants’ lives to see if that made any discernible difference, but I suspect it wouldn’t. I suspect the consternating truth is that we have much less control over preventing disease through diet than we’d like to think.
There is a common belief that Americans get fat because they eat too many carbohydrates. The idea is that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet leads to weight gain, higher insulin and blood glucose levels, and more diabetes, even if the calories are the same as in a higher-fat diet. That did not happen here.
Others have said the opposite: that low-fat diets enable people to lose weight naturally. But that belief was not supported by this study.
As for heart disease risk factors, the only one affected was LDL cholesterol, which increases heart disease risk. The levels were slightly higher in women eating the higher-fat diet, but not high enough to make a noticeable difference in their risk of heart disease.
Although all the study participants were women, the colon cancer and heart disease results should also apply to men, said Dr. Jacques Rossouw, the project officer for the Women's Health Initiative.
“Beautiful Madness”
That’s the headline of an article telling the tale of Nia, a 17-year-old schizophrenic.
A railway line ran a few hundred yards past the bottom of their garden, far enough away for the family to ignore it. Nevertheless, Nia said she could hear people talking about her inside the painted steel carriages. In the clank of heavy rolling stock she could pick out snatches of conversations about her—derogatory insinuations that crept into her room through the plastic veneer of the double-glazing. She also told him that she had seen things on television. The newsreaders had begun looking at her. In the corners of their eyes she began to read signs. They were sending her messages; messages that linked up with the voices on the trains…Does that madness sound “beautiful” to you?
On the day before her admission to hospital, Nia had stood at her parents’ front door, unmoving, for five hours.
Of course, the whole point of the story is not that Nia’s madness was beautiful; it’s that she was. And that when the effective antipsychotic drug with which she was treated made her gain weight, she suddenly wasn’t beautiful anymore. Nia didn’t care; she was just happy to be well again. But everyone else around her, including her doctors, were fretting endlessly about her having to give up her beauty for her sanity. So much so, that they took her off the drug and replaced it with a different one that didn’t have weight gain as a side effect. When she slipped back into psychosis, only reluctantly did they put her back on the original drug.
The treatment had reversed a Faustian pact in which Nia had been beautiful and mad, and replaced it with another—in which she was fat and sane.Give me a fucking break. The girl went from standing for five hours, not moving a muscle, to mental healthfulness. Perhaps the most devastating part of this article is the final salvo, in which her newfound sanity is actually questioned because she doesn’t care that she’s fat.
But was it really a blessing that Nia seemed to have no conception of what she had lost?I suppose the notion that Nia maybe managed to have a modicum of perspective and felt that extra weight was a small price to pay for a normal life is just too outrageous to consider—that maybe her priorities aren’t the ones that need questioning.
Twisty, Angelica, Amanda, and Zuzu all have more—great pieces each.
I just want to take a moment to address something I found particularly distressing in the piece—the notion that “fat” and “beautiful” are mutually exclusive. My entire life I was teased for being fat. Even when I was thin, I had large breasts, which got translated into being fat by my pre-teen peers. I was 12 years old, and not a pound overweight but already sporting D-cups the first time I got called “a fat cow.” I’ve spent my whole life feeling fat, whether I was or not. And consequently, I never felt beautiful, because there’s no such thing in our culture as being both fat and beautiful.
I’ve been told, “You’d be so pretty if only you lost weight,” I’ve been mooed at by cars of passing teenage boys, I’ve been called ugly more times than I can count.
I’ve also been called sexy, cute, and, yes, even beautiful. But those words don’t ring the loudest in my ears when I look in the mirror, because I have an entire culture telling me that you can’t be both fat and beautiful—and even trying to feel that way is of questionable sanity.
I never suffered from a dearth of potential partners, even those who had never dated a fat girl before, or never thought they would, and I’ve never felt that regarding weight as a preference, when it comes to attraction, isn’t legitimate; preferring someone thin is no different than preferring someone blonde. But I remember having a conversation with Mr. Curious once, before he lost some weight, during which he said, “You and I are both attractive, but most people don’t see it, because we’re fat.” And I was reminded of that as I read “Beautiful Madness,” in which Nia, so beautiful at first that she was considered “too beautiful to be in a psychiatric ward,” but stripped of her beauty, in the eyes of others, as she gained weight. You can be fat or you can be beautiful, but you can’t be both.
Or so goes the conventional wisdom.
But I know women who are fat and beautiful. I see famous women—Queen Latifah, Mia Tyler, Emme, Dawn French, Kathleen Turner, Kathy Najimy, Liza Tarbuck, Kathy Bates—who defy the conventional body shape and are stunning to boot. Are they crazy, or wrong, for feeling beautiful? Am I, when I manage it?
Are we crazier than those who value beauty over sanity?
Question of the Day
We've done some artist and song questions before, but I don't think we've ever done this one...
Who's your favorite artist, and if you had to choose one song to play for someone who'd never heard of them, which song would you choose?
Me (being utterly predictable): The Smiths, How Soon Is Now?
Oof
Related to the “should we give a shit what's hanging (or not) between one’s legs” question and resulting discussion in this comments thread, some numbers care of Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math posting at Ezra’s joint:
There is a strong argument that women are the most underrepresented group in Washington. The Mountain West and Prairie states make up fifteen states that combine for exactly zero female Senators. The South has a whopping three female Senators from its thirteen states. The Industrial Midwest has only Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Only the Northeast Corridor and Pacific Coast (including Alaska and Hawaii). have something close to equitable gender representation.Now, there’s no certainty that if women were proportionally represented we’d have guaranteed job protections for maternity leave in every field, that emergency birth control wouldn’t still be held up by the FDA, that Roe wouldn’t be hanging in the balance, that women’s reproductive cancers wouldn’t still be way more likely to be a death sentence than men’s, that women wouldn’t be making less than men for the same work, that family leave legislation would be more generous and accommodating to working parents, etc., especially since it’s not the progressive states with the biggest disparity, but let’s just say that it might, you know, help.
At present, women compromise over 50% of the population but only hold 14% of the Senate and 15% of the House, And the bench doesn't look much better; women have 22% of all state House and Senate seats. That's a drastic improvement over 1970, when fewer than 6% of all state Reps were female, but there is still plenty of work to be done on this front.
Alberto Gonzales is a Very Knowledgeable Man
And by that, of course I mean he’s an idiot.
Thanks to The Green Knight, we find this little gem at Crooks & Liars (who also, naturally, have the video):
President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.Good Sir Knight submits we write our own jokes, but it won’t be a laughing matter when the punditocracy reveals the long-hidden truth: Al Gore created the internets in 1775.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
“Is this a date?”
Oy. Funny post by Sean over at Cosmic Variance, which he introduces with the question: “Highly credentialed academics vs. nervous high school students—is there a difference?”
What do you think? Is it a date? And is there any difference between highly credentialed academics and nervous high school students?
(The last question is rhetorical. Of course there isn’t.)
“Lost World” Discovered by Scientists in Indonesia
This is so cool.
Soon after scientists landed by helicopter in the mist-shrouded mountains of one of Indonesia's most remote provinces, they stumbled on a primitive egg-laying mammal that simply allowed itself to be picked up and brought to their field camp.The primitive mammal referenced above is a long-beaked echidna, which, if its non-long-beaked cousin is any indicator, sort of looks like a platypus crossed with a porcupine. The scientists also found golden-mantled tree kangaroo, which were previously thought to have been hunted to near-extinction, among other animals. They’ve also discovered 20 new frog species and 4 new butterfly species so far. Totally fascinating. (More from Conservation International.)
Describing a "Lost World" — apparently never visited by humans — members of the team said Tuesday they also saw large mammals that have been hunted to near-extinction elsewhere and discovered dozens of exotic new species of frogs, butterflies and palms.
"We've only scratched the surface," said Bruce Beehler, a co-leader of the monthlong trip to the Foja Mountains, an area in the eastern province of Papua with roughly 2 million acres of pristine tropical forest.
"There was not a single trail, no sign of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.
Two headmen from the Kwerba and Papasena tribes, the customary landowners of the mountain range, accompanied the expedition, and "they were as astounded as we were at how isolated it was," Beehler said.
"As far as they knew, neither of their clans had ever been to the area."
The December expedition was organized by U.S.-based Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, and funded by the National Geographic Society and several other organizations.
I always love reading about the discovery of new species, or species thought to be almost or totally extinct. I’m not sure why, exactly. I mean, I adore animals, so there’s that, but it’s more something to do with liking the idea that we haven’t exhausted all the discoveries that Earth provides us yet, no less the universe. It’s sort of the same reason I like pictures like this:
That’s us—from 8 million km away, taken by the Mars Express spacecraft on July 3, 2003. We’re so small. Just a blip. I've seen one that was taken from even further away, in which Earth looks like no more than a speck of dust, but I couldn't find it. That's my favorite.
Tangentially, yesterday I found this collection of pictures of strange sea creatures washed up during the tsunami. They’re so weird and wonderful.
Bush Forced to Listen to Critic…
…who proceeds to eviscerate him. Shaker Merciless passes on the link to this video at Think Progress of Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery speaking at Coretta Scott King’s funeral and receiving a standing ovation for speaking the truth, which is, frankly, the best way I can think of to honor Mrs. King. Check it out; it’s pretty amazing.
Phyllis Schlafly is a Lunatic
I know that headline deserves my own “Actual Headline” treatment, but I just needed to plainly state the fact, irrespective of its abundant obviousness. LeMew passed on this post by Roger Ailes critiquing a recent column of Schlafly’s at TownHall (to which I refuse to link; you can click through at Rog’s place if you’re so inclined). Although I, like Rog, have no insight on the merits of the case being discussed—that of a man who was prosecuted for spousal rape—and therefore couldn’t begin to agree or disagree with Schlafly’s assessment, I will comment on this little chestnut, a critique of which isn’t predicated on one’s opinion of the underlying case:
A man's life has been sacrificed, and three children have been denied their father by malicious feminists who have lobbied for laws that punish spousal rape just like stranger rape and deny a man the right to cross-examine his accuser. They have created a judicial system where the woman must always be believed even though she has no evidence, one in which the man is always guilty.boing boing clunk
Just ignore that. It was just my eyeballs popping out of my skull and my head hitting the desk.
In what kind of twisted loopyland does this broad live that rape at the hands of one’s spouse is somehow less noxious than rape at the hands of a stranger? Even the narrowest reading of “honor and obey” surely doesn’t include submitting to sex against one’s will as part of the wifely duty. Good lord. But don’t bother listening to this malicious feminist and rape-resistant wife. I’ll turn it over to the guys:
Rog:
Yes, the testimony of a woman is not evidence. And rape is not rape. And protecting rape victims equally is malice…LeMew:
It's amusing to see Schafly make all the arguments about the criminal justice system that are usually ridiculed by purported law-and-order types -- unless it's a Republican on trial. Or it would be if Schlafly's arguments weren't a transparent excuse to pen another column displaying her contempt for women.
Oh my, those mean feminists and their crazy ideas about how "just because you've married someone doesn't give them the right to rape you at any time"! You can't get more "malicious" than that! As for the closing empirical claim, sadly, no.Sigh. I can’t even believe that retrograde reprobate and I reside in the same universe.
It's really hard to overstate what an odious figure Schlafly is; killing the ERA is just the beginning.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
Tomato, Tomahto
Our skin and our blood and our bones
Don't get in your way, making you ill
The way they did when we lived.
— Morrissey,
“There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends”
Pat Robertson thinks Europe is committing racial suicide:
Studies that I have read indicate that having babies is a sign of a faith in the future. You know, unless you believe in the future, you're not going to take the trouble of raising a child, educating a child, doing something. If there is no future, why do it? Well, unless you believe in God, there's really no future. And when you go back to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the whole idea of this desperate nightmare we are in -- you know, that we are in this prison, and it has no hope, no exit. That kind of philosophy has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe, and hopefully it doesn't come here. But nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate. And they just can't get it together. Why? There's no hope.I guess it’s useless to point out that there’s not a single race in Europe.
But as one of the despairing, deliberately childless masses, let me just clarify something for you, Mr. Robertson. We don’t really think of it as suicide, racial or otherwise. We’re just going to kind of slowly die out, taking existentialism, enlightenment, and reason with us, so the rest of you can scrabble about in the dirt unimpeded by our presence. Personally, I like to think of it as the Rapture in Reverse.
Guess Who Said It?
“I haven’t given [the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers] a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like."
Go see Pam for the answer. And more.
Wranglin’ Rove
Turd Blossom is counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee and threatening to blacklist any Republican who votes against Bush in the investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.
The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.Not totally unexpected, considering that if even a couple of Republicans defect from La-La Land and seek asylum back in Realityville, finding that the president violated FISA, it could lead to impeachment proceedings. Nonetheless, it’s just appalling that this is what the actual state of our union has come to—a slimy, power-grubbing, unelected bastard strong-arming elected representatives of the people to ensure that the Man Who Would Be Dictator can continue to operate outside the law with impunity.
"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said…
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove's message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.
"He's [Rove] lining them up one by one," another congressional source said.
Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.
Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist.
Here’s a tip to spineless Republicans considering collapsing to their knees and sucking Rove’s dick yet again: Call Bush on his bullshit, and you won’t need appearances and photo-ops with him in the fall. You’ll be able to hold your head up high and tell your constituents that you held a lawbreaker accountable.
One-Upmanship
Okay, I've been following the "Danish Cartoon" story, but I haven't really been talking about it. My opinion was pretty much covered by August when he said:
Are the cartoons freedom of speech? Well, yeah. Of course you have the right to print shitty, racist cartoons that serve no purpose but to inflame Arab sentiment and make racist right-wingers feel good about themselves. You have the right to show a black man hanging from a tree or a buck-toothed Asian, too. But in any of those cases you don't have the right to feign petty self-righteous faux-amazement that people got upset about it. Instead of saying "these are controversial but we uphold a standard of free speech, regardless of ones personal tastes," they claimed that people getting outraged were simply being ridiculous. Le Monde made this their cover today- they might as well have printed "dammit, we LOVE mocking Arabs and fuck you if you don't!" as the headline.'
This isn't South Park, where there's actually some concept of social mores being challenged or questioned. Agree or disagree with various South Park episodes (like I do), there's an intelligent justification for most of the racial humor in that show. There isn't any here. The cartoons were drawn for one single purpose: to attack Muslims and provoke their ire.
So then I read this headline today, and my blood just ran cold.
Iranian Paper Plans Holocaust Cartoons
TEHRAN, Iran - A prominent Iranian newspaper said Tuesday it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Hamshahri, one of Iran's largest papers, made clear the contest is a reaction to European newspapers' publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which have led to demonstrations, boycotts and attacks on European embassies across the Islamic world. Several people have been killed.
-snip-
The newspaper said the contest would be launched Monday and co-sponsored by the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons. The paper and the cartoon center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, well-known for his opposition to Israel.
Ahmadinejad, who was Tehran's mayor until being elected president in June, provoked outcries last year when he said on separate occasions that Israel should be "wiped off the map" and the Holocaust was a "myth."
-snip-
"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?" Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
They're just flicking matches at powder kegs.
You know, if everyone on the goddamn planet is finally wiped out over a racist cartoon bitchslap fight, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.
(This isn't funny cross-post.)
Bipartisan, Bitches!
Shayera (who hat tips Blah3) points to an article in the Boston Globe that takes a walk down memory lane to visit Jack Abramoff: The Early Years.
In 1981, a newly elected president was about to shift the nation rightward, and a 22-year-old Brandeis graduate named Jack Abramoff -- savoring his own victory as the newly elected chairman of the College Republicans -- was hatching plans to transform the nation's young people into stalwart Reaganites.Fast forward 25 years back to the present, and Shayera notes:
It was the start of a career that would roil Washington 25 years later, and a phase of Abramoff's life that provided signposts toward his later demise.
''Our job," Abramoff wrote, ''is to remove liberals ''from power permanently -- [from] student newspaper and radio stations, student governments, and academia.
''We are replacing these leftists with committed conservatives."
A lifelong Republican who never gave one red cent to Democrats and worked to make sure that the Democratic Party remained in the minority is now supposedly a "bipartisan scandal."Yeah, funny how that works.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
Question of the Day
Who's your #1 celebrity opposite-sexuality crush?
(In other words, straight people pick someone of the same sex; gay people pick someone of the opposite sex. Bisexuals, just go nuts and name your ultimate crush.)
I'm sort of torn between Angelina Jolie and Mariska Hargitay. Of course, they're both pregnant at the moment and therefore probably not up for much sexual experimentation with perfect strangers, so I'll go with Queen Latifah, who comes in a close second.
I've already deemed Paul Bettany Mr. Shakes' gay boyfriend. Mr. S. has been reading the Aubrey-Maturin series, and he can't stop babbling about what a perfect Dr. Maturin Paul Bettany was in Master & Commander, which has to get the prize for the mainstream movie with the most gay-porn sounding title of all time.
McCain’s not just a hack…
…but a crotchety old grumpy grumpson, too.
After Barack Obama asked him if he’d consider cosponsoring the Dems’ proposal on ethics reform, rather than appointing a task force on the issue, McCain sent back one hell of a nasty letter.
When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership's preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter. ... I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in political to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won't make the same mistake again…Good lord, man. Settle down. There’s no need to whip your old bones into a frenzy.
I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.
Matt Stoller calls McCain’s letter to Obama “the single most bitter, nasty letters I have ever seen from any Senator. It's rather remarkable, actually, and gives the lie to the notion that McCain is of a bipartisan mind.” Atrios says: “The real subtext of this story is that McCain wants an opportunity to preen in front of the cameras and an adoring media as he waxes nonsensically about ‘reform’ for months as we head into the presidential primary season. Oh, and that McCain is pretty much an asshole.”
Indeed. Let us never cease to speak of McCain with the firm conviction that he is an asshole, a man who will lovingly embrace the cretin whose political machine called his wife a junky and his daughter an illegitimate black child.
Second Verse, Same as the First!
George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld were fighting for illegal wiretaps 30 years ago.
The documents include one startling similarity to Washington's current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then-Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the "problem" of a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying inside Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh's apartment "to go after (his) papers," the document said.But, gee, that’s not similar, is it? The president keeps assuring us the current program is “limited,” even though they refuse to quantify that nebulous term. They’re not using it to spy on dissenters, or journalists, though, surely not. There are no parallels. Damn the liberal media.
(Hat tip Agitprop.)
