First Vague Attempt at Podcasting Edition. I can't (for various reasons all going back to my stitched-together enterprise reliant on mostly free services) stream audio only, so you're stuck looking at my ugly mug. And this isn't a particularly interesting story, but since I was playing around with learning how to put this shit together, I figured I'd just post it, so you can put a voice to the rantings, should you be so inclined.
News from Shakes Manor
I Love Chicago - #2,536 in a Series
Sure, people love to attack Gov. Blagojevich, but he's got my vote. Time and again, he really shows that he has the people of Illinois in mind.
His latest announcement? EC is going to be available over the counter, no matter what the FDA says.
CHICAGO -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Wednesday he'll find a way to make emergency contraception available in Illinois without a prescription, prompting criticism from his opponent in the upcoming election.His opponent, Rep. Judy Baar Topinka (who admittedly is pretty moderate on some social issues), supports the sale of EC without a prescription, but availability is dependent on the woman's (or girl's) age.
Blagojevich urged the Food and Drug Administration to approve over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill in a letter sent to the agency Wednesday. If the FDA fails to act, he pledged to introduce legislation in the fall that would allow Illinois pharmacies to dispense it.
And if that doesn't work, Blagojevich said he might issue an executive order that would circumvent legislative approval.
"The evidence is clear and overwhelming that making Plan B available over-the-counter is the right thing to do," he said in the two-page letter.
And Jessica reminds us:
You may remember that Gov. Blagojevich has already shown support for EC by requiring pharmacists in his state to fill women’s prescriptions--even if their “conscience” doesn’t want them to. (You know, the kind of conscience that says premarital sex is for whores.)Rock on, Blagojevich. Rock on, Chicago. Wheaties- breakfast of champions.
(Rock and roll cross-posts...)
Scared Straight
You might remember my mentioning recently a story out of Santa Fe in which a woman and a gay man were held hostage and tortured by other people at a party they attended. Well, three men and one woman are being held in connection with the case, and two of the men have been charged with aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit kidnapping—and they’re already beginning to mount their defense in the press.
So why did they beat the gay man (and his female friend) until the sun came up, leaving him with “bleeding on the brain, a concussion, facial lacerations and bruising”? Because one of them told the other he thought the victim tried to “grab his butt.”
In an interview, York told state police the comment upset him and made him want to fight the 18-year-old man, the statement says. York said everyone at the party made fun of the 18-year-old man because he was gay, the statement says.Of course, not everyone at the party made fun of the victim for being gay. I’m sure his female friend didn’t, and probably even defended him, which is why she was held against her will and kicked and beaten, too.
York said he wanted to “scare” the victim to “make him straight and to get him to stop acting the way he was,” the statement says.The ignorance is just astounding. Who has failed in their obligation to educate these young men about being gay and what that exactly means? Their quite possibly homophobic parents? Their schools, where, once upon a time not so long ago, health classes taught that homosexuality was not a choice? Their churches? (At least one of the two wore a rosary to court.) The media, who refers to being gay as “a lifestyle,” making it seem as if sexual orientation is like choosing between being a ski bunny in Aspen or a beach bum in Boca? Our politicians, who at worst exploit homophobia and at best still can’t muster an unyielding defense of the marginalized LGBT community? Our entire culture? All of the above?
And worse yet, we’ve failed the victim of these idiots’ ignorance and thuggery. Our casual disregard for the inevitable consequences of allowing such bigotry and stupidity to flourish uncontested will be the unnamed co-conspirator on any indictments in this case. And so shall it be, until we treat with all due seriousness the evil of homophobia.
Is Bush banishing the press?
All things not being equal, as Evan astutely notes, it sure as hell sounds like it.
Paranoid? Me? If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention.
Dobson uses churches to get out the evangelical vote
Throwing caution to the wind -- or, to be precise, throwing caution to the IRS' increased scrutiny of nonprofits getting political -- Focus on the Family's James Dobson is coordinating an extensive registration drive using "a variety of methods -- including information inserted in church publications and booths placed outside worship services" in order to mobilize voters for the mid-term elections. The program was announced via e-mail last week.
According to the e-mail, county coordinators are being asked to work about five hours a week and would be responsible for "recruiting key evangelical churches."The program's organizers claim to "pay careful attention to the law," by emphasizing voter registration and "discussions of values" and refraining from endorsing any specific candidates or political party, but also admit that their objective is recruiting new conservative voters. And, of course, paying attention to the law doesn't stop them from being mendacious pricks and doing fun things like misrepresenting the positions of women's organizations in a brochure subtitled "Exploiting women in the name of science."
The church coordinators, devoting one or two hours per week, would be in charge of "encouraging pastors to speak about Christian citizenship, conducting a voter-registration drive, distributing voter guides and get-out-the-vote efforts."
...The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the evangelical voter registration drive a "blatant effort by Dobson to build a partisan political machine based in churches."
"He has made it abundantly clear that electing Republicans is an integral part of his agenda, and he doesn't mind risking the tax exemption of churches in the process," Lynn said. "Dobson wants to be a major political boss, and this is his way to get there."
The only way to stop these people is to throw out of the office the cynical base-pandering miscreants who are held in their thrall. Reasonable representation, irrespective of party affiliation, is their kryptonite. Hence, their voter drives.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
I think the living would envy the dead!
So, I’m writing a horror novel and I’m publishing it in serial format via Blogger. It’s about a young man in southern Maine who watches his world fall apart when the country is faced with an epidemic no one was prepared for- an epidemic of zombies.
Here’s a preview:
I drifted. Couldn’t sleep, no matter how tired I was, but drifting was okay. Dad would be home soon, we’d have dinner, maybe watch a movie… I still had some homework to do… and there was someone under my bed. What? No, of course not. Didn’t make any sense. But I had to force myself to breath regularly again, and I started sweating, even though it was very cool. Because there was a, a someone, a something, right below me, listening to me breathe, maybe even timing its breaths to match mine so I wouldn’t hear anything. Maybe it didn’t have to. Maybe it wasn’t breathing at all.Right now I’m aiming for three installments each week, around a 1,000 words per installment- this might slow down once the fall hits, but I will update at least once a week, guaranteed. The site needs some more work (suggestions welcome), but Shakespeare’s Sis is giving me some pointers, as well as providing me with an absolutely badass logo.
I could’ve checked. Simplest thing, move over to the side and poke my head down. I listened, instead. My parents slept downstairs, their bedroom was right below mine, and I wondered if there was something underneath their bed too. And in their closet. I had a closet. There were, what five or six closets in the whole house, anybody could be inside. Or under the couch. Or behind the woodpile in the basement.
Not just our house, either. There were ten or twenty other houses in the neighborhood, more down the road, more when you got to town, apartment buildings and motels, and there were cities and other places all over the state, and the next state too, every state, thousands, hundreds of thousands of millions of beds and closets and dark places where things could hide. Were hiding. You couldn’t get free of them no matter where you went. And there was something under my bed. And, like all the others, it was getting ready to come out…
Give it a try (via clicking the previously mentioned badass logo)- I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Who Would Jesus Molest?
Last October, Lou Beres, former head of the Oregon Christian Coalition, denied allegations made by family members that he had molested them, blaming "personal and political enemies" for motivating the complaint. But now, according to Gay Rights Watch, Beres has confessed to the charges.
Sources from within the family tell us that Lou Beres told the truth because he thought the police report would stay sealed and the statute of limitations were over.In typical fashion, this good Christian child molester has dedicated his public life to denying opportunity to those hideous deviants, the LGBT community. In his role as head of Oregon's Christian Coalition, Beres led the charge against same-sex marriage in that state, suing Multnomah County after it began issuing same-sex marriage licenses, trying (and failing) to force a recall vote for two Multnomah County commissioners who approved the decision, advocating a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and opposing legislation that would have permitted civil unions. And when he wasn't busy hatin' on the gays, he was diddling his own daughters.
He got that part right... but not in civil court. Now we've got the report and Mr. Beres is being sued by Liz Jonas, one of the victims he admitted to molesting.
...Beres claims in the police report that he "has sinned in the past". The investigating detective recorded the phone call with Lou Beres with his permission. During this phone call Beres made admissions to three separate victims at three different times. All involved underage females.
(Hat tip Pam. Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
Stranger Things Have Happened
Slate’s John Dickerson wants to know why Bush is reading Camus’ The Stranger, and the equally curious Steve Benen notes, “It’s a novel steeped in philosophy, most notably Camus’ existentialism, and delves into a not-so-subtle atheism.”
The Stranger is a slim book I first read in high school; I enjoyed it then, and even more so later. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys thinkin’, which, admittedly, makes it seem an odd choice for G-Dub, who’s not known for his intellectual pursuits. So, how, one then inevitably wonders, did the president come upon the decision to pick up The Stranger? Perhaps it was the same way I did—he heard The Cure song based on the book. In my case, well, anything that was of interest to Robert Smith would surely be of interest to me, but I’m thinking G-Dub just fancied the lyrics.
Standing on the beach
With a gun in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring down the barrel
At the Arab on the ground
I can see his open mouth
But I hear no sound
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an Arab
I can turn
And walk away
Or I can fire the gun
Staring at the sky
Staring at the sun
Whichever I chose
It amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an Arab
I feel the steel butt jump
Smooth in my hand
Staring at the sea
Staring at the sand
Staring at myself
Reflected in the eyes
Of the dead man on the beach
The dead man on the beach
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an Arab
Question of the Day
Re: Spudsy’s earlier post, So Tucker Carlson Thinks He Can Dance, whose participation would be most likely to get you to tune in to Dancing With Celebrities, in the hope of witnessing a horrible conga-line wreck? I’ve got to go with Dick “Twinkle Toes” Cheney, who I’m quite certain would, at some point, pull out a gun and blast his partner in the face if she flubbed her step-ball-change.
“Positive, Constructive Ideas”
This is video of presumed 2008 presidential candidate and Republican Senator George Allen referring to one of his opponent’s staffers as “macaca,” which is a kind of monkey. The staffer is 20-year-old S.R. Sidarth, a Virginian of Indian descent.
"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere… Let’s give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.”
George Allen is, of course, a raging racist and a total asshole, but claims he didn’t mean anything by it.
All That Glitters Is Not Gold
Claire just forwarded me a link to the most awesome thing ever—a Morrissey glitter painting.
If I were rich, I would so buy that shit.
Claire has correctly identified this as the Mozza equivalent of Fusilli Jerry. My only question is whether the glitter was affixed with Glamorous Glue.
From the You Can’t Make This Shit Up Files
G-Dub never ceases to amaze: “As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology.” (Hat tip Zoe.)
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
trendy
So Google has added a new feature: Google Trends. Trends charts the frequency of search words or phrases as put in in different regions/countries and then charts them and ranks them by place. The Salt Lake Tribune caught wind of this and decided to "peek into Utah's psyche":
Consider that predominantly Mormon, family-friendly Utah leads the nation in searches on such terms as LDS Church President "Gordon Hinckley," "Jesus," the "second coming," "scrapbooking," "baby names," "potty training," "quilting," "Barbie" and the sappy 1980 romantic movie "Somewhere in Time."
Utahns also apparently are hungry, and guilty about subsequent feasting. Salt Lake City ranked No. 1 in the nation searching for "Twinkies," "smores," "cookies," "chocolate" and "fry sauce" . . . and for "bulimia" and "anorexia."
[...]
But explanations fail for some other search entries for which Salt Lake City computer users take top ranking: "Sponge Bob Square Pants," "sheep," "earwigs," and "bookers." Utah's capital also has a strange interest in "gerbils," second only to Cincinnati.
Now, according to the seach I just did on Trends, the #1 worldwide city googling "gerbils" is Milton Keynes (United Kingdom) and the #1 US city is Tampa (but the data may have changed since the article went to print).
But of course the author had to explore the "salacious" side of Utah:
And there apparently are more than a few Utahns looking over their shoulders as they troll the Internet realms of the salacious and fetishism. Salt Lake City ranks No. 1 for the term "panties," loses out only to Detroit for the voyeuristic "up skirt" search, and is No. 3 - runner-up to first place Meriden, Conn., and No. 2 St. Louis - for "masturbation."
Never fear, St. Louis, for I just searched "panties" and now you are #1 (but Chicago has beat you out for masturbation).
I'm wondering about writing this article. I didn't see how one could just pick a city and see it's demographics, looks like the author had to pick out phrases to search for. Interesting. Trends is still in beta and the data only comes in bar graphs, not numbers yet.
BTW, London is leading the world in snark with Minneapolis coming in as the US' #1 snark city beating out NY and San Francisco.
Cheeky on Chertoff
I love it. Sploid pulls no punches in going after Skeletor:
The monstrous cretin who runs America's "Homeland Security" is now publicly calling for new fascist laws that would make the Bush Administration's domestic-spying crimes totally legal.Ouch. And, y’know, totally fucking true.
Michael Chertoff -- who many say looks just like an undead version of Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin -- says the United States needs more constant surveillance of everybody so he can lock up more "possible terrorists."
It's just the latest outrage from an administration desperately trying to turn last week's phony terrorist scare into justification for more fascist laws before the bogus scare is completely forgotten by Americans.
"It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants," the little totalitarian said Sunday on one of those political talk shows.
…Chertoff, who presided over the horrific drowning of more than 1,500 citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is very excited about the opportunity to put anybody in jail for no reason at all.
While the White House and the administration's henchmen in Congress rush to pass new laws that will make everyone a potential terrorist and Halliburton builds the new concentration camps that will soon hold hundreds of thousands of "political prisoners," Chertoff is pursuing a two-pronged assault on Americans.
First, his goons at airports around the nation are methodically getting Americans "comfortable" with constant fear, harassment and intimidation. Second, his outrageous public statements are intended as a "trial balloon" to see just how much the White House can get away with.
The lack of outrage over Chertoff's latest insane proclamations will be used as "proof" that the administration can move ahead with the next phase of canceling the "g-ddamned piece of paper" known as the U.S. Constitution.
Proving the "U.K. terror plot" was manufactured fearmongering, U.S. airports have already been told the "threat level" has been reduced to the usual constant hysteria rather than the top-level hysteria enacted last week.
Caption This Photo
"Psst...Turd Blossom, who's bright idea was it to have
me read Gore's book for a friggin' photo op?"
Gore’s #1
Literally. The paperback edition of An Inconvenient Truth has hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Awesome.
Try a Little Tenderness
The BBC reports on a new German study that finds “four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex,” but “the proportion of men wanting regular sex remained at between 60-80%, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship.” The study’s lead author, Dr Dietrich Klusmann, a psychologist at Hamburg-Eppendorf University, attributes the differences to human evolution.
I can’t find the actual paper on the study, but the first thing I’d want to know is whether the researchers controlled for children and division of child-rearing labor. I’m a 32-year-old woman who’s been married for four years, and I can’t say that my sex drive has decreased—but it does ebb, expectedly, with increased stress or exhaustion or illness. The thing is, we don’t have kids. I haven’t had the hormone changes that accompany pregnancy and childbirth; I haven’t had to do late-night feedings; I don’t have to worry about Junior interrupting us. I’m sure there are women who have kids whose sex drives don’t change significantly with the birth of children, but I imagine mine would.
I’m also curious to know if the women had a decreased sex drive full-stop, or just a decreased interest in her long-term partner, and, in either case, why they thought it might be. If women tended to answer, “My libido just isn’t what it used to be,” that’s a much different issue that if they tended to answer, “I’m bored as fuck.” Maybe the logical explanation is evolution; maybe it’s more about emotional maintenance. Without knowing anything else about the study, it’s hard to say.
Another finding of the study, however, certainly seems to suggest to me that emotional vigilance could be playing a big part in the libido issue.About 90% of women wanted tenderness, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship, but only 25% of men who had been in a relationship for 10 years said they were still seeking tenderness from their partner.
Of the 75% of men who aren’t still seeking “tenderness” from their partners, how many of them do you think are endeavoring to provide it nonetheless? With 90% of women still wanting it, but probably nowhere near 90% of men still supplying it, its absence may be indicative of why women’s sex drives wane.
We are animals, but we’re animals who experience a heavy association between emotion and sex, which makes biological determinism, extrapolated from the animal behavior studies of other species, a dubious prospect when it comes to providing explanations for human sexuality. Thusly, I get a bit annoyed with studies that purport to explain women’s sexual behavior with evolutionary rationales, particularly when within the same study there are indications that social conditions may provide valuable insights. If there is a biological reason for diminishing sex drive in women, fair enough—but asserting such a conclusion in spite of other possibilities is the kind of thing that leads to the marketing of pills and potions claiming to “solve” women’s “problem.”
Perhaps their “problem” is just down to being stuck in unfulfilling relationships created by a culture that seeks to strip men of every emotional impulse and expression unless it’s somehow aggressive. We’ve been told endlessly that the disparity in emotionality between the sexes is also biological, and while there are certainly general differences, any man, straight or gay—especially those who were regarded as “gentle” or “sensitive” as a child—can share stories of being told to “toughen up” or “be a man.” Boys don’t cry and all that. We do socialize boys differently than girls when it comes to the expression of emotion, and not to their benefit, either, considering that men who can healthily express emotion are less disposed to heart disease and other stress-related illnesses.
It doesn’t seem particularly radical to me to suggest that the disparity in emotional involvement in long-term relationships is quite likely inextricably linked to the disparity in sexual interest, nor that addressing the former would benefit both sexes.
(Hat tip Sara.)
