Nadege Brunacci was washing her hands in her [NYC] bathroom before dawn Monday when she glanced back and saw the slithering serpent peeking out from her toilet, most of its body hidden in the pipes.
"I turned on the light and screamed," Brunacci, 38, told the New York Daily News. "It still makes my heart race."
Brunacci slammed down the lid, put a heavy box on top of the toilet and began calling for help, which came from her landlord and firefighters. Plumbers had to tear apart the downstairs neighbor's pipes to capture the snake, she said.
It's unclear how the snake made its way into the pipes.
Well, like any tourist, he probably just wanted to see the city's hotspots. If you're a human, you go to the top of the world-renowned Empire State Building. If you're a snake, you crawl through NYC's infamously awesome sewer system, highly-ranked by snakes, rats, and alligators for decades. And then, like any tourist, he just got lost. No biggie.
Glenn Greenwald takes a look at the Democrats' decision to gift telecoms with immunity for helping the government spy on American citizens. I know this is an unusually long excerpt, but it's incredibly important for all of us to understand what's happening here (emphasis original):
Let's just describe very factually and dispassionately what has happened here. Congress -- led by Senators, such as Jay Rockefeller, who have received huge payments from the telecom industry, and by privatized intelligence pioneer Mike McConnell, former Chairman of the secretive intelligence industry association that has been demanding telecom amnesty -- is going to intervene directly in the pending lawsuits against AT&T and other telecoms and declare them the winners on the ground that they did nothing wrong. Because of their vast ties to the telecoms, neither Rockefeller nor McConnell could ever appropriately serve as an actual judge in those lawsuits.
Yet here they are, meeting and reviewing secret documents and deciding amongst themselves to end all pending lawsuits in favor of their benefactors -- AT&T, Verizon and others…
Snip. Continuing on…
The question of whether the telecoms acted in "good faith" in allowing warrantless government spying on their customers is already pending before a court of law. In fact, that is one of the central issues in the current lawsuits -- one that AT&T has already lost in a federal court.
Yet that is the issue that Jay Rockefeller and Mike McConnell -- operating in secret -- are taking away from the courts by passing a law declaring the telecoms to have won ("Senators this week began reviewing classified documents . . . and came away from that early review convinced that the companies had 'acted in good faith' in cooperating with what they believed was a legal and presidentially authorized program"). They are directly interfering in these lawsuits and issuing a "ruling" in favor of AT&T and other telecoms that is exactly the opposite of the one an actual court of law has already issued.
Just read what Bush-41-appointed Federal Judge Vaughn Walker -- operating out in the open, in an actual court of law, with both sides present and in accordance with due process -- ruled when rejecting AT&T's argument that they are entitled to have the case dismissed because they operated in "good faith" [Decision (.pdf) at p. 68]:
[AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonably entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal.
Just think about what is really happening here. AT&T's customers sued them for violating their privacy in violation of long-standing federal laws and for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. Even with the most expensive armies of lawyers possible, AT&T and other telecoms are losing in a court of law. The federal judge presiding over the case ruled against them -- ruled that the law is so clear they could not possibly have believed that what they did was legal -- and most observers, having heard the Oral Argument on appeal, predicted that they will lose in the Court of Appeals, too.
So AT&T and other telecoms went to Washington and -- led by Bush 41 Attorney General (and now Verizon General Counsel) William Barr, and in cooperation with their former colleague, Mike McConnell -- began paying former government officials such as Dan Coats and Jamie Gorelick to convince political officials to whom they give money, such as Jay Rockefeller, to pass a law declaring them the victors in these lawsuits and be relieved of all liability -- all based on assertions that a court of law has already rejected. They are literally buying a judicial victory in Congress
And Democrats are not just failing to obstruct this egregious nose-thumbing at the rule of law; they're actively orchestrating it right alongside the GOP.
(Maybe Chris Dodd will be a hero here…? I certainly hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.)
You know, I think it's time to revisit Dr. Lawrence Britt's 14 Characteristics of Fascist Regimes:
So M and I are motoring along our street, heading for home after work. As we approach our drive, we note that the street is barricaded two blocks away by a police cruiser and a couple of orange cones. A car that tries to pass is redirected by an officer.
"What's going on up there?" wonders M.
A tiny voice inside my head whispers "armed standoff," but I disregard it, as I watch entirely too much television. "Beats me," I reply. We turn into the driveway and think no more about it.
So the tiny voice is right, of course. It generally is.
Police cordoned off several blocks near Tamm Avenue in the Dogtown neighborhood for several hours Wednesday as they as they negotiated by phone with a disturbed 42-year-old man barricaded in a home.
The standoff ended peacefully about 7:30 p.m.
The man's family had called for help about 1 p.m., saying the man has a history of mental illness and was threatening to harm himself. Police were told he had a number of weapons in the four-family flat in the 6400 block of Nashville Avenue.
Students at nearby St. James the Greater Catholic Elementary School, 1350 Tamm Avenue, were evacuated as a precaution, Harris said.
The results predicted that increasing height could help boost feelings of wellbeing.
If men could add just 7cm (2.7in) to their height and women 6cm (2.3in), their health-related quality of life could improved by 6.1%.
No, it's not April 1, and that's not from The Onion. That is the BBC reporting on actual doctors saying that if short people would just grow, their health would improve. An extra two inches would take away those grubby little fingers and dirty little minds, evidently.
And it gets better.
Professor Gary Butler, a professor of paediatrics and growth at the University of Reading, said that there was biological evidence that taller people enjoyed better health and lived longer.
"We do know there is an association between being healthier and being taller. This relates to many types of diseases, but particularly heart disease.
"As people get healthier with better nutrition and disease prevention, their growth is better. The two factors go along in parallel."
Gosh, I had no idea nutrition was responsible for the fact that I'm not growing anymore! I thought it was, you know, because I'm 32 years old. SILLY ME.
Oh wait, you mean he's talking about the population as a whole, not individuals? Well, then it's a little funny he didn't mention what else "goes along in parallel" with improved nutrition, disease prevention, and a population getting taller: the same population getting fatter.
Huh. Weird.
Seriously, you guys, you all need to bookmark this article for perspective when reporting on THE OBESITY CRISIS gets you down. Because the language? Is exactly the same. The article even helpfully compares that imaginary addition of 2.wev inches to an imaginary loss of 10-15 kg. in an obese person. No mention of whether that's an obese person built like Sharn or Kell or Heidi, of course. But losing 10-15 kg. would totally help any obese person! Just like growing two inches!
Hell, if I grew 4 inches, I wouldn't be obese anymore, and if I grew 11 inches, I'd be "normal." MAYBE THEY'RE ON TO SOMETHING!
One more thing to pay attention to in this article. Did you notice how it said "health-related quality of life" would be improved by additional height, not plain old health? That's because of this:
[T]he study did not ascertain how healthy the individuals actually were.
Lead researcher Dr Torsten Christensen, senior health economist at Novo Nordisk, said: "We know that people who are short experience more difficulties in areas of their life such as education, employment and relationships than people of normal height.
"Although our study does not show that short height directly causes a reduction in physical health, it does indicate that short people are more likely to feel that they experience a lower health-related quality of life."
So what they're saying is, short people are discriminated against, which causes stress, which causes a "lower health-related quality of life," even if being short doesn't directly affect physical health.
I don't suppose the same could possibly be true of fat people, do you? Naaaaaah.
Also, get a load of this:
"This work reinforces a message that being taller is better. But we should not make judgements on people if they are tall or short within the normal range. It makes short people feel less adequate or well off which should not be the case."
Apparently it's still okay to judge people who are tall or short outside the normal range, though. Whew. LITTLE PEOPLE AND PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL PLAYERS ARE TOTALLY UNHEALTHY AND SHOULD TAKE BETTER CARE OF THEMSELVES!
On that note, I was going to go for a different conclusion, but I just ran into barely-awake Al (always a party) on my way to the coffeepot. And I've had several requests for more Al convos recently, so let's kill two birds with one stone.
Al [hugging me]: Hi. You blinded me with science.
(Yes, that's a fairly typical morning greeting around here.)
Me: Thank you. Speaking of science, I just found a BBC article saying that if short people would just grow two inches, their health would improve.
Al: So... are you gonna do it?
Me: Totally.
Al: [blink]
Me: I'm posting right now about how people need to remember this article when they get bummed out by obesity crisis reporting, because the template for the article is exactly the fucking same.
Al: But, um... Sorry if I'm being dumb, but how are people supposed to get taller?
Me: Yeah, they never say that in the article. Just like they never say how fat people are supposed to lose weight permanently.
Al: Ahhhh.
Me: Indeed.
Update: Eagle-eyed Spaced Cowgirl over at my place noticed that one of the researchers quoted in the article is employed by Norvo Nordisk, a company that pushes ... wait for it... growth hormone therapy!
So, yeah, it's exactly like an article on obesity, then.
Fred Phelps, the leader of the Topeka, Kansas, church whose followers picket the funerals of dead soldiers waving signs that say "God Hates Fags," says that he and Fred Thompson see eye to eye on gay issues.
Thompson was hired for a mid-1980s legal case in Kansas on the recommendation of Margie Phelps, daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps.
The Topeka, Kan.-based church is now best known for protesting at soldiers' funerals, claiming their deaths are retribution for the nation's acceptance of homosexuality.
[...]
Church members released an open letter to Thompson this week, saying he had discussed his views on homosexuality with them while handling the case of a woman who had sued the state's Republican attorney general for sexual harassment.
"We know what your position used to be on the homosexual question — and it was wonderful, and we saw eye to eye," church members said in the letter to Thompson.
The Thompson campaign tried to distance themselves from the church.
Thompson campaign spokeswoman Karen Hanretty on Wednesday dismissed the church as "a radical fringe group, looking to draw attention to themselves."
"Their behavior at the funerals of fallen soldiers is disgraceful and reprehensible," she said. "In no way do these people share Fred's values."
Yeah, yeah, we all agree; picketing dead soldiers' funerals with signs saying they died because America tolerates gays is bad. But does Fred Thompson still see "eye to eye" with the Phelps horde about gays themselves?
Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.
The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.
Yes, you read that right. The legislation now includes immunity for the corporate douchebags who have passing on your info to the government whenever they ask for it, legal or not. Why? Because Bush threatened to veto any legislation that lacked the immunity-for-secret-demonstration-of-legality provision. And still apparently don't know now not to act like the fucking minority.
Meanwhile, progressive Dems were still worried that the bill didn't protect basic Constitutional rights, but conservative Dems were "worried about Republicans' charges that the Democratic bill extended too many rights to suspected terrorists." Caroline Frederickson of ACLU, says the GOP was then able to exploit the lack of unity among Democrats: "It was a total meltdown."
As we all know by now, Jeff Fecke is the sexiest thing on two legs with a dongle in-between, but did you know that he's also likely to live longer (while he's getting all that hot steamy sex from Teh Fem'nists)?
If you were (or still are) monitoring the Thread-That-Would-Not-Die in response to Jeff's MRA Explainer, you might have noticed a certain amount of chest-thumping and "male display" going on there (Comments: Now six days and counting -- but hey, it's zombie season, neh?).
Turns out, however, that all that energy expenditure on the part of males to secure their right to "mating privileges" may actually be killing them off early:
"The researchers explained that as competition among males for sex grows more intense, each male on average has less time to breed. As such, there is no strong incentive to evolve longevity among males in such species.
Since men age faster and die earlier than women, these findings suggest that "at the time when current human physiology evolved, perhaps around the late Stone Age, polygynous breeding was the norm," Clutton-Brock told LiveScience. "Of course, this doesn't provide any justification for polygyny or promiscuity now for males."
So, to any males seeking sexual "conquest" -- relax -- stop "conquesting" already -- become a Feminist ---- the nookie will come to you!
What -- You want you should drop dead from a heart attack?
So a contributing editor of New York, Vanessa Grigoriadis, wrote the cover story for the magazine this week, in which she asserted: "With Gawker, there is now little need for the usual gossip players like... The New York Post's 'Page Six,' emasculated by the Murdoch hierarchy after the Jared Paul Stern scandal."
Grigoriadis' choice of the word emasculated rubs me the wrong way up one side and down the other, for reasons I'm going to assume I've made evident in no fewer than a nonillion posts about defining strength, power, etc. in contradistinction to the feminine. (Also see Portly Dyke's recent post on its use.) Suffice it to say, I would judge criticism of her use of the term as fair and legitimate.
But then there's Page Six's response, which, in addition to making fun of Grigoriadis' appearance, notes that she "ignores that fact that half the Page Six staff is female," then adds, ominously, "The male half might take her someplace private and disprove her theory, but we don't like a woman with a mustache."
Take her someplace private and disprove her theory. Jezebel wonders: "Is that a sexual threat?" Leaving aside that there's no such thing as a "sexual threat"—if you're threatening someone with sex, it's a rape threat—I am hard-pressed to see how, precisely, the suggestion of a group of men taking a woman "someplace private" for a display of their virility could be construed as anything but threatening.
It isn't an invitation; they're not offering to meet her someplace private, but to take her.
Most tellingly, however, is the reliance on the familiar "rape as compliment" structure. They might take her someplace private to "disprove her theory," but she's too ugly. It's the written equivalent of the man who goes out of his way to physically intimidate a woman in public on her own, only to scoff, "Don't flatter yourself!" before wandering away.
Jezebel's readers are decidedly unhappy, and further not fooled by the thin veil draped over the threat:
That's clearly a "You know, if we could get that bitch in a corner we'd show her we do so have a dick, and we know how to use it!"
Yep - rape threat and then an insult. "We'd rape you, but you're too ugly to rape."
So yeah, thinly veiled rape threats and followed up by an insult on her looks? I'm so appalled I'm almost embarrassed for them.
And then one commenter astutely poses the question that really gets to the heart of the matter: Would this tactic even have been employed if Grigoriadis were a straight man?
Right. I can't recall ever having seen a public spat between two professional men end with one threatening to (at best) show the other his dick and (at worst) rape him. Or, better yet, saying he would do that, if only the other guy weren't so ugly.
It's just complete and utter lunacy the kind of shit to which women are routinely subjected, right out in public, like it's no big deal. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves that we allow the two halves of the population to be held to such egregiously different standards, that we allow a truly sickening level of abuse to be heaped on so many people for no other reason than because they're girls.
In a better world, we'd all just get on with condemning this shit and ideologically savaging the pigs who perpetrate it. But instead, we'll probably have to spend the next two days parsing whether this is really a rape threat with people who have never been and will never be habitually targeted with precisely this kind of menacing rhetoric, who, without a trace of irony, will provide the space for the plausible deniability built into veiled threats against women and dependent on there being privileged dodos who have never had to become fluent in such language telling those of us who have that we are wrong.
Photo of Larry Craig checking his email on his Blackberry
Remember that time when Ted Stevens called the internet a "series of tubes"? Of course you do. And what was so egregious about that was that he the chair of the the Senatorial body in charge of regulating the internet.
Well we've got another one of those moments. Larry Craig (yes, that Larry Craig) is a member of the Congressional Internet Caucus and was once presented with the Internet Keep Safe Coalition Award. The problem? Craig said this in his recent interview with Matt Lauer:
Matt, you won't believe this. But I don't use the Internet. I don't have a computer at my desk. I've never used the Internet. It's just not what I do.
So, either he's lying through his teeth or he's pretty much Ted Stevens' soul mate (no word on whether Stevens swings that way).
Unfortunately, at least for the purposes of humor, it seems he's merely lying through his teeth, and for no apparent reason. Craig has personally written about doing Google searches and has had several other documented encounters with the information superhighway. So Larry, if you're reading this, feel free to leave a comment.
I actually haven't seen a single episode of any of the new shows, so I'm going to kind of cheat and say that I wish HBO/BBC would turn their six-part weekly miniseries Five Days into an ongoing series, because it is just spectacular.
"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."—President Bush, today, at a press conference.
"This is inane. World War III? Against Iran? Really? Because Iran seems a lot like a medium-sized middle income country with few military capabilities rather than a near peer-competitor of the sort against which you might fight a world war."—Matt Yglesias
Yglesias also notes that Bush appears to have moved the goalposts from "preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon" to "preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I'm not sure what the significance of that switch is, but it seems significant."
I will note that the official White House transcript has Bush saying "from have the knowledge," not "from having the knowledge," although that seems more like a typo than a Bushism. I hope so, anyway. Yeesh.
Via Oliver Willis, Bill Schneider has some big news about the black vote:
"What does our poll show about the black vote in the Democratic race?
"Well, it shows that black voters respond to other things besides race."
Classic.
I'm learning so much about Teh Blackz these days. First Bill O'Reilly informs me that they don't scream "M-Fer, I want more iced tea!" in restaurants, and now I find out that they have other interests besides race when casting a ballot. Well, that finally clears up my long-unanswered question about how Black Illinoisans were able to choose between Alan Keyes and Barack Obama in 2004.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced today that she has secured an agreement from the Democratic leadership to introduce an amendment to H.R. 3685 that would restore gender identity protections to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The amendment would be considered on the House floor next week, after the bill moves through the House Education and Labor Committee this Thursday.
…Clearly, our preferred strategy is to pass the original ENDA (H.R. 2015) out of committee. However, if we are faced with a non-inclusive bill following the committee vote, we will work with Congresswoman Baldwin to repair ENDA to include protections on the basis of gender identity. We appreciate that Congressional leaders like Congresswoman Baldwin continue to share our commitment to pass an inclusive bill, and we expect Speaker Pelosi and the House leadership will actively support the Baldwin amendment.
365Gay has more here, including the infuriating history that necessitated the introduction of this amendment.
Rep. Baldwin, btw, is a lesbian. In fact, she's the only openly lesbian member of Congress. The only reason I mention that is because I have this vague recollection of some blogger somewhere intimating that gays and lesbians, particularly in the general Beltway area, don't care about trannies…
For a guy who thinks he's still relevant, Bush is getting quite the wake-up call from Turkey that he's not really calling the shots anymore:
President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Turkey not to carry out cross-border strikes on Kurdish rebels in Iraq, advice shrugged off by lawmakers in Ankara who greenlighted such attacks.
Between this and being dictated by Turkey on how to label a genocide, I think it's safe to say that Bush has lost all influence, dare I say "relevance," in that particular part of the world.
And while he chastises Congress for "antagonizing a democratic ally in the Muslim world," he has no problems whatsoever in flipping the Bush-bird to China (the second largest holder of US debt) by publicly meeting with the Dalai Lama. While I clearly have no objections to the actual meeting, I can't help but wonder that he didn't fully think the move through when he says something like this:
"I don't think it's going to damage -- severely damage -- relations."
Angelina Jolie on the set of Clint Eastwood's The Changeling.
"Angelina Jolie is sort of amazing because everyone thinks she's like this great beauty. And I'm not saying she's an unattractive woman, but she's not beauty, by any stretch of the imagination. I really understand beauty. And I will tell you, she's not—I do own Miss Universe. I do own Miss USA. I mean I own a lot of different things. I do understand beauty, and she's not."—Donald Trump.
Leaving aside how much I want to puke listening to that wankstain talk about how he "owns" Miss Universe and Miss USA like he means more than the pageants, and how much I want to retch at the implication that pageant girls are the apotheosis of physical beauty, I just feel compelled to point out that Angelina Jolie is an Oscar-winning actress who has had enormous professional success and is also a UN good will ambassador and world-renowned human rights advocate who has donated millions of dollars to international charities. If your imagination can't "stretch" to include that in your definitions of what makes a woman beautiful, that's not saying much for your imagination, dude.
I also want to mention how much I loathe that Trump seems to revel like a pig in shit at being generally regarded as an ugly guy who gets to comment with impunity on women's beauty (especially the lack thereof). He so clearly regards it as one of the best entitlements he's afforded by being obscenely wealthy.
Though he claims he never changes that ridiculous hair of his "for good luck," I am quite certain the real reason is because the uglier he is perceived to be, the more he gets off on being nasty toward women who he's convinced himself would never give him a second look if he weren't rich, despite the fact most wouldn't give him a second look now because he's a vulgar, contemptible asshole.
As I have mentioned before on my own blog, I loves me some Gawker. The gossip about New Yorkers of whom I know little, the on-the-fly creativity of the commenters, the unadulterated wickedness that makes me smile since it's directed at people other than myself. But even though the NY-based publishing world is well within the website's purview, I have to say that Gawker isn't the first resource I think of when it comes to serious literary questions.
Imagine my surprise, then, to see the site bring up the seldom-discussed relationship between authors, editors, and the work that they jointly produce. Okay, so Gawker probably wouldn't have bothered had the people involved not been named Carver, Gallagher, and Lish, but still:
You know how all Raymond Carver's short stories are like, "We sat in the kitchen. It was raining. I poured another scotch. I drank it. She sat on the chair, drinking. We drank together a while"? Apparently they weren't always so minimalist. In fact, according to Raymond's widow Tess Gallagher, they were downright "expansive" before his editor Gordon Lish got hold of them, radically cutting them and in some instances changing their titles and endings. And in a recently-unearthed letter, Raymond seems to plead for Gordon to stop publication of the altered book. So Tess wants to bring out an alternate edition of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" that contains the unedited stories. Is this a terrible, terrible idea?
As the adjunct professor in your Seldom Read American Writers (Eng 250) class used to say: Discuss.
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