Them city folks just don't know how good love can be down on the farm:
Frustrated by the limits their jobs put on their love life, some farmers and ranchers are turning to a Web site designed to play Cupid to members of the agricultural community sprawled across the United States and Canada. "I had tried a couple of other sites," said Dan Temaat, a farmer in western Kansas. "Those people are all into their real expensive coffee and quitting at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. They just don't understand that out in farm country, that just doesn't happen."
So Temaat tried FarmersOnly.com, which caters to farmers and lovers of country living from Jerome, Idaho, to Stony Plain, Alberta, who are too busy to meet at bars or coffee shops.
Them city wimmin don't deserve you, Farmer Dan. Good luck! Hope you find somebody before harvest time.
(Crap - now I've got that theme song running through my head.)
(Cross-posted in the middle of a corn field...)
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Somehow, a fence just isn't enough... I've got it! Let's deny healthcare to non-English speaking people!
Executive Order 13166, signed by President Clinton on August 11, 2000, improves quality health care access for all patients, regardless of their primary language. This executive order requires Medicare and Medicaid providers to offer limited-English-proficiency (LEP) patients with a full interpreter or translator services in their own language.
This week, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) plans to offer an amendment that repeals this mandate. A look at some current problems Coburn's amendment would make worse:
- Parents with limited English proficiency are three times more likely than parents who report speaking English "very well" to have a child in fair or poor health.
- Parents often report language barriers as the single greatest issue to garnering access to health care.
- 19 percent of Spanish-speakers report having forgone needed health treatment due to a language barrier.
In other words, we don't care if you're a citizen, an illegal immigrant, or other. Speak English, or go die.
When I was working in the pharmacy, we had a very diverse patient population. Most of the patients were in the LGBT community; it was a health clinic set up specifically to help LGBT patients. But we also had a huge Latino population (most non-English speaking, and with health insurance), and an assisted-living/senior care facility across the street that provided many patients. Many of the facility residents were European immigrants, and many had trouble with the English language, if they spoke it at all. Our pharmacy (Walgreens) had the computer system set up with "language preference" software. If we, for example, tagged a patient that they preferred to speak Russian, all of their instructions, pill case labels, and forms were printed out in Russian.
I guess Coburn would like that software deleted. And our Spanish-speaking staff to remain mum.
Completely reprehensible and disgusting. How far will this hysterical xenophobia go?
(Tip of the energy dome to
August.)
(I put a cross-post on you...)
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Kevin Logan, a gay student in Gary, nearly next door to me, was turned away from his prom at the door by the school principal, because he was wearing a gown instead of a tux. Honestly, how much longer are we going to have to deal with this shit? It's so tired. Let the kid wear his dress and enjoy his fucking prom!
My local paper has reported this story under the headline Prom ‘queen’ not welcome. Ho ho ho.
The Indiana Civil Liberties Union is on the case, and they helped win a similar case on behalf of an Indianapolis teen in 1999, so they’ll do well by Kevin, too, no doubt—even though it won’t change the fact that he was denied access to his prom and won’t ever get that night back.
The most interesting thing about this story, though, is the kid at the center of it—and the support he’s getting from his mom and peers.
Logan said he had spent years defining and exploring his sexuality. This year, he took a major step toward self-identity by dressing as a female every day this school year.
“Last year I could not be myself. Now, I wear makeup, weave, nails, girls’ fitted jeans — what the (heck)!” Kevin proclaimed laughing, relishing his liberty from gender codes.
“I had a problem with her (Principal Rouse) the first day of school because I had a purse. A week before prom she told me female clothing would not be allowed,” Logan said.
Rouse directed questions to central administration. She refused to sit down for a talk with Donnetta and Kevin Logan, but told a counselor to make sure a receipt was given for the refund.
“I’m not surprised by this ignorance,” Donnetta Logan said. “I tell Kevin that in society there will be those who accept him and those who won’t.”
She and Kevin both believe Rouse might have been discriminating against his sexual orientation and cross-dressing.
“I’m gay. I’m a drag queen,” Kevin said matter-of-factly.
…West Side students reported that a girl was allowed to attend the prom in a tuxedo. … West Side student Deonte Cotton, 18, was one of several peers angry over the principal banning Logan.
“His wearing a dress wasn’t hurting anybody, so nothing should have been said,” Cotton said. “I feel it was discrimination.”
Kevin said he feels schools should be more respectful of student rights: “People are coming out more. They are not staying in the closet like they used to. They want to be themselves.”
Bravo, Kevin. And how cool is his mum? I couldn’t be more pleased to see such boldness in the face of discrimination right in my own backyard.
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If you can read this profile of “superman” Bill Frist, A Doctor at Heart, without wanting to hurl all over every surface in your immediate vicinity, you’ve got a stronger constitution than I have.
This journalistic hand-job is about the grossest thing I’ve ever read, making Frist out to be some sort of doctor-god, who oozes compassion from every pore and works miracles while Bless the Beasts and the Children softly plays in the background. This is, after all, the same man who used his credentials as a doctor to (incorrectly) diagnose Terri Schiavo via video as part of a cynical political ploy, and who adopted cats from animal shelters under the guise of giving them a good home only to kill them to practice his surgical skills—an inconvenient little bit of ickiness that haunts him yet, and was no doubt precisely what the glowing account of his surgery to save the life of a gorilla was meant to counter.
Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes. "Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity."
Blech. I smell
something all right, but I don’t think it’s “gorilla testosterone.”
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Watch out:
For College Republicans, large-scale recruitment and voter registration operations for mid-term elections began as early as March 5 this year. On campuses nationwide, over 275 new College Republican chapters were established, and over 1,000 existing chapters were strengthened during the past school year.
"The success of College Republicans this spring is a reflection of the organization and initiative that distinguishes the Republican Party," said College Republican National committee Chairman, Paul Gourley.
I can’t say I disagree with that. The GOP is nothing if not organized and single-mindedly determined.
Influential tax-payer advocate and President of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, was one of the original architects of the Field Program in the early 1980's when he served as Executive Director. His foresight and political ingenuity gave rise to the grassroots machine the Committee currently is.
A machine that will continue to produce people just like Norquist and Karl Rove, who will be rewarded for their efforts by the Republican Party. Right-wing radical visionaries are welcomed in the GOP—you can imagine a young Norquist, a young Rove, being given a pat on the back and a wad of cash with the blessing to “run with it, kid.” The GOP is ever happy to give a leg-up to an ambitious wingnut in his father’s tie, fueling the fire in his belly with institutional support and few reigns. They’re always willing to see how far a kid like that can go—and where he’ll take the rest of them with his success.
That clear career path offered via success in the College Republicans is something for which there is no mirror within the Democratic establishment. There, you pay your dues. Your Big Ideas don’t exempt you from having to do your time as a coffee gopher, where your internal fire is slowly reduced to smoldering embers as you’re indoctrinated into the status quo. Don’t dream about moving the party left; it won’t get you noticed—it will get you exiled.
And that’s why we don’t have our own Grover Norquist, our own Karl Rove. There will never be a visionary lefty with a ticket to the top, because the Dems refuse to work that way.
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Yeesh:
The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration.
"Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement," the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals.
"Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising," the proposals state.
Given the organization's longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals.
Nat Hentoff, a writer and former A.C.L.U. board member, was incredulous. "You sure that didn't come out of Dick Cheney's office?" he asked.
I sincerely hope that this proposal goes the way of the dodo. I understand their concerns about public disagreements potentially affecting support and fund-raising, but what they seemingly fail to consider is that some of us who support the ACLU very much like public debates on the issues they take up, because many of them
are controversial. It’s been useful for me in the past to hear opposing viewpoints from ACLU members, to help me get my head around both sides of a issues.
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What's your favorite Bushism?
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(Headline stolen remorsely from Jeff at State of the Day.)
Apparently Mort didn’t manage to rescue his spittle-flecked essay, Bush-hatred a threat to national security, from the jaws of the pooch determined to eat his homework, though, because it’s a pile of dogshit.
ENOUGH already! It's harmful enough that ideological conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal policy and energy. Now it's threatening our national survival.
…Yes, Republicans tried to destroy former President Bill Clinton over sex and politics. But now Democrats want to destroy Bush so badly that they are willing to undercut national security.
You’ve really got to read the whole thing. I ellipsised a lot of good stuff there. Like the invisible leap between the media who report on leaks—and, reports Mort breathlessly with an unshakable case of the vapors, “win Pulitzer Prizes for such disclosures”—and the Democrats, armed with their nasty case of vengeance. It’s impossible to know who Mort really blames the most, although I think it’s safe to say he’d prefer all criticism of Bush to cease immediately.
Oh, and that he also seems to be suffering from the misapprehension that Bush hasn’t done anything to warrant anyone’s displeasure. Including people outwith our borders—which also makes him blind to the painful irony of his headline.
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“Former oilman President George W. Bush sounds like a changed man when it comes to urging Americans to end their addiction to oil. But will he see Al Gore's new movie about global warming?
‘Doubt it,’ Bush said on Monday when asked by a member of the audience during remarks in Chicago.”
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That was what my dad once exclaimed when we were on vacation, stuck in the middle on nowhere in a torrential downpour—the four of us, miserable and impatient, cramped in a maroon station wagon with rain dumping on us so heavily that the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up, so we couldn’t go anywhere. We had the radio tuned to a local radio station, whose weatherman helpfully informed listeners: “It’s raining today!” My dad exclaimed, exasperatedly, in return, “No foolin’, Red Ryder!” He was totally irritated, like the rest of us, but I couldn’t help it and barked out a sharp guffaw, then repeated the phrase for my own amusement. Soon, all four of us were ending ourselves with fits of giggles—and “No foolin’, Red Ryder” became a mainstay of the family lexicon.
The Green Knight is calling “No foolin’, Red Ryder” on Margaret Carlson, who had the mind-numbing temerity to suggest, without a hint of irony, “Maybe Americans prefer to have a beer and burger with the charming frat boy to the student who always does his homework. But is that a wise basis for choosing a president?”
[C]ongratulations on finally realizing something that even a dull kindergartener could figure out: No, the "beer and a burger," "seems like a regular guy" test is not a good way to pick a President. This is so obvious it shouldn't even have to be stated -- even though the press has been yammering about this incorrect and irrelevant "regular guy" thing for the past five years. Which just shows how dumb the press can be.
I don't know about all of you, but I'm getting really annoyed by these sudden conversions lately, in which people who used to be either great supporters of Bush or else just enablers for him have finally come around to seeing what the rest of us have seen since Campaign 2000: that Bush has no qualifications or talent for his job. …The self-congratulatory tone of the new converts is just infuriating.
Agreed. Of course, they have to sound self-congratulatory in order to give the guise of legitimacy to the ridiculous notion that Bush being an unmitigated failure was something no one could have possibly predicted. Just like no one could have predicted 9/11. It’s not just that they’re loathe to admit that we were right; they’re using the appearance of this being some kind of eureka-moment as a means of rejecting responsibility for enabling the failure. It’s not that they were wrong—oh, heavens no. It’s just that no one could have guessed before 5 years of proof that a dimwit wouldn’t make a better president than a smart guy.
And for cripes’ sake—it’s not as if the dimwit and the smart guy had precisely the same credentials, other than their studiousness and (debatable) levels of likeability. Gore had a lifetime of public service, including the vice presidency, under his belt. The most relevant experience on Bush’s résumé was the mostly-ceremonial governorship of Texas. The only thing that thwarts an accurate description of his rise to the presidency as his being plucked from obscurity is his famous family name. Let’s be real: His pre-presidential qualifications are so pathetic it’s like he won the jackpot on a game show called “President for Two Terms.”
And so now we all sit, 300 million of us, in a stranded maroon station wagon with a torrent pissing down and the collection of yokel weathermen who pass for our national press telling us “It’s raining today!” Well, no foolin’, Red Ryder.
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Okay, I know I just said earlier today that Pat Robertson doesn’t have the market cornered on crazy, but there’s no denying he’s still the Nutball Champion of the World. The latest evidence:
Yes, that’s right. Pat Robertson’s got the recipe for a miracle shake that can allow him to leg press 665 pounds
more than
the all-time Florida State University leg press record-holder, who burst the capillaries in his eyes leg-pressing 1,335 pounds of weight which required a modification of the machine just to accommodate it. Is this “delicious, refreshing shake, filled with energy-producing nutrients” also filled with supercrack, or is Pat Robertson just full of shit?
Methinks it’s the latter.
The hat tip goes to
Griffin, who notes, “Oh, Pat. Didn't you hear? ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.’ Exodus 20:16.” Heh.
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The Senate Intelligence Committee has voted 12-3 in favor of the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden for CIA director. No info yet on the vote breakdown.
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What you’re looking at is a want ad for temps to move around voting machines on the day of California's upcoming primary election. You know, those “tamper proof” voting machines that ensure us fair elections. Harrumph.
So much for those vaunted claims by California's Sec. of State Bruce McPherson and his partners at Diebold, Inc. about increased security surrounding the physical access to electronic voting machines in light of newly revealed vulnerabilities to easy tampering...
Several recent independent analyses of Diebold's electronic voting machines (both optical-scan and touch-screen systems) have revealed that physical access to machines allows a malicious individual to easily alter, or completely replace, all data, voting software and operating system on the machines or their memory cards in a matter of minutes.
As always, Brad Friedman has
much, much more. If we ever do have fair elections again in this country, we will owe no one a greater thanks than Brad. Period.
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The oft-maligned Patrick Guerriero, who has served as the gay Republican group’s president for four years, is leaving his position to become the first-ever Executive Director of the Gill Action Fund, “a new organization that advocates for LGBT equality…created by philanthropist and software entrepreneur Tim Gill.”
As much as I don’t understand gay Republicans, especially in the current political climate, I respect that Guerriero was one of the unfortunately few voices in the GOP that argued against the Federal Marriage Amendment. And that’s about all the nice things I have to say about him. I hope in his new role he finds a way to advocate for the LGBT community without simultaneously supporting politicians who seek to limit their rights…not to mention the rights of a lot of other Americans.
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So, I just got this email from environmental warrior RFK, Jr. about Al Gore’s new film, An Inconvenient Truth, suggesting all the different ways we can help bring more attention to it. One of the things mentioned is organizing a group to go with Paramount Group Sales and having a “Take Action” party afterward. And so I thought I’d ask if there was any interest in trying to arrange something like that for any Shakers in the Chicagoland area (or willing to travel to the Chicagoland area; perhaps we can match people who can spare the time with other Shakers willing to put up guests for a night?) to go see An Inconvenient Truth as a group and then have a little party afterwards. Whaddaya think? I’m certainly willing to make inquiries if there’s interest in doing something like that.
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(A little joke for the Brit savvy readers.)
There’s been some discussion around the blogosphere the past few days about this AP article which reports on the use of birth control pills to essentially render periods obsolete—unless and until women want to have them again. Broadsheet’s Sarah Elizabeth Richards thinks it’s an awesome option; Jessica at Feministing is more dubious.
I’ve been hearing about this option for some time now, and I have to say I find it rather disconcerting for a few reasons, not the least of which, as Jessica points out, “We don’t know what the long-term effects are of not menstruating.” I know this is physiologically illogical, but I can’t help being reminded of stories of women in cultures who are forced to submit to having their vaginal openings stitched shut to protect their chastity; if enough of an opening isn’t provided to allow menses to flow, they can die of sepsis. Obviously, periods aren’t getting “backed up” in women’s bodies who opt out of periods through the pill, but I can’t shake off the image anyway, in spite of recognizing the relationship between the two resides in some distant recess of my mind that indulges abstract connections without much regard for practical distinctions.
Laying that aside for the moment, it seems I would be the perfect candidate for this option. I’m not planning on getting pregnant anytime soon, and I have horrid periods that usually last at least a week and are fraught with debilitating cramps—so it seems as though I ought to welcome the prospect of not having them anymore. But I couldn’t be less enthusiastic. What’s my glitch?
I don’t know. Maybe my reluctance (beyond hesitation over lack of long-term effects) is due to my having a terrible experience with the pill; I felt absolutely dreadful on it, and so I’ve always been a condom girl. (But I know in the last decade the pill’s come a long way, baby.) Maybe I’m just some sort of strange traditionalist, who can’t escape her associations between having a period and being a woman. (But I certainly don’t consider post-menopausal women not women anymore.) Maybe it’s about my general hesitancy with medication; I don’t even like taking aspirin. (But I take medication when I need it.) Maybe there’s a part of me who wonders how much women are getting rid of their periods for their own convenience as opposed to the convenience of male sex partners. (But my own period informs an understanding of why women would want to do this for themselves, and I know there are plenty of men who don’t balk at having sex during “that time of the month.”)
Seriously, I don’t know what it is. Shutting off my period just doesn’t strike me as something I’d want to do, because the prospect seems bizarre and unavoidably tinged with a sense of peril to me—and I’m not sure why. Especially since I don’t feel the same about the pill preventing pregnancy. That I find a great option. So why not preventing periods? All I’ve discerned from thinking about this is that I still have the capacity to flummox myself.
So, what do you think? Anyone currently on a contraceptive regimen that stops periods? Anyone considering it? Random thoughts?
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If Stephen King is smart, he'll stop writing books about people being turned into zombies by their cellphones, and head over to one of these horror shows to get some ideas.
Geez, and I thought the Hell House phenomenon was creepy. Onward, Christian Soldiers, indeed.
Tip 'o the Energy Dome to August.
Update: As this is just a "go here and read" post, I'll add on this: Top Ten Signs of an Impending U.S. Police State, and tip the energy dome again to Crooks & Liars.
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Former Democratic Senator and VP candidate Lloyd Bentsen has died. He also served as President Clinton’s first Secretary of the Treasury, “where he was instrumental in directing the administration's economic policy.”
The one thing I will always remember about Lloyd Bentsen is his retort to Dan Quayle during the 1988 vice-presidential debate, when Quayle compared himself to John Kennedy. “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”
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