Britain's Home Office may want you to believe that homosexuals "[aren't] routinely persecuted purely on the basis of their sexuality" in Iran, but we know better:
Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference.To pretend that sending Mehdi Kazemi back to Iran is anything other than a death sentence is complete and utter horseshit.
Suggested by Shaker Mr. Bill: If you could impose ONE Constitutional Amendment on the US by personal fiat, what would that be?
No more Bushes for president—evah!
Admiral William Fallon, CENTCOM commander, has handed in his resignation:
Secretary Robert Gates has announced that Centcom commander Adm. William Fallon has submitted his resignation. Fallon was subject of a recent Esquire article, which stated that the admiral could be “relieved of his command before his time is up next spring,” in favor of a commander more amenable to war with Iran.It's interesting how with all his legacy-loving bravado, Prez Mondo Fucko doesn't have the balls to state outright that he's firing the guy for not being on board with bombing Iran.
In reaction to Geraldine Ferraro’s remarks on how gosh-darned lucky Barack Obama’s non-whiteness has made him in his quest for the White House, the Obama campaign had a choice of Response A…
When life hands you melanin, you make melanade.
…and boring old Response B.
Denounce! Reject!
I guess Response A was never really in the running. Too bad.
The adult analysis, of course, holds that Obama’s “race” - for those who have decided for themselves just what that is, exactly - is indeed an advantage in the eyes of some, and a detriment to others, and in any event just one lonely factor among many that make up the candidate and the campaign. If Rep. Ferraro will think back a few months, she’ll recall that race wasn’t much of an advantage for Obama even among African American voters until they learned more about him.
But that kind of thinking is even more boring than Response B.
I can't believe this woman hasn't been sucked into a vortex of her own stupidity yet, but, alas and alack, she is still talking:
When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings—sexually, personally—to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman. […]First of all, any man who needs to be made to feel like a "hero" by his spouse has serious insecurity issues, requiring increasing levels of attention and devotion that cannot possibly be sustained (especially if the hero and the mere mortal to whom he is wed decide to have children). That's a recipe for failure right out of the box.
The cheating was his decision to repair what's damaged and to feed himself where he's starving. But yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.
"We got people in Iraq who murder the innocent to achieve their political objectives—and we've got Americans, who heal the broken hearts of little Iraqi girls."—President Mondo Fucko, apparently still operating under the catastrophic delusion that W Stands for Women.
It does not.
This started as a comment at Pandagon in response to Pam's "Has the Clinton team gone stark raving mad?" post, but it kinda took on a life of its own, so here you go.
Before cataloguing a bunch of recent WTFs from the Clinton campaign, Pam says:
For the life of me I just don’t understand the thinking inside the Clinton campaign (and inside the heads of surrogates). Strong supporters of Clinton — please clue me in; I don’t know how the following developments make any sense in terms of political strategy that’s helpful to the candidateAll right, I'll give it a whirl.
I think it is a cynical ploy to swing undecided voters or voters who like them both equally into voting for her by suggesting — with absolutely no obligation — that they can vote for her guilt-free and she might bring him on board as veep.Doing that after accusing Obama of not being ready to be president is dumb, but not necessarily dumb enough to make it a bad strategy. (I think Wolfson's comments about it were particularly redonk, but then, I think a lot of what Wolfson says is. See point 1 below for why that doesn't matter.) If you accept that it's a cynical ploy to swing people who would really like to vote for BOTH Clinton and Obama (and hell, I'm one of them, even though I realize it's not bloody likely at this point), then the people it's aimed at are going to focus on that, not on the inconsistencies. And you know, it's perfectly fine to find cynical ploys distasteful, but it's not like they're historically ineffective in politics.
Excuse moi, but I believe she’s only a hundred or so delegates behind right now. Y’all might not like it, but she represents half the Dem party, the half that could stay home or vote for McCain, since McOld doesn’t seem bent on telling them to “fuck off and die” like the other half.Almost immediately, someone jumped on this being a "threat" by Clinton supporters. It's not; it's reality. I'm a Clinton supporter, and there's no way in HELL I would vote for McCain -- nor would I, based on my personal beliefs, stay home. If Obama takes the nomination, I'll be voting for him. But I do not represent every Democrat or every Clinton supporter. People vote all different ways for all different reasons. And like I said, to the average moderate voter, McCain doesn't look so bad, given the media's hard-on for him and the residue of the 2000 narrative that painted him as a moderate. That fact turns my fucking stomach, but it's still a fact.
From 60 Minutes:
Q: Is waterboarding torture?Q: Is it ok for the USA to torture people via waterboarding?
McCain: Sure. Yes. Without a doubt.
Great Caesar's Ghost! I cannot begin to convey the scuttlebutt that has been whirling like a Dervish around the offices of the Agency for Environmental Fortitude these days! Apparently, some reporter chap published a print-newsy regarding a few simple drops of pharmaceuticals in the public's drinking water, and, zounds! Mr. Bell's invention has been "ringing off the hook," as they say! And confound it, you "Liberal" types have been sitting on your backsides, sputtering away about this like my old Model T, filling the ether with tall tales on your visual-teletypes! As I have stated, the Agency for Environmental Fortitude is aware that this is a growing concern, and we are giving this a good sound looking-over! Dash it all, do you not realize that the security of this great nation is at stake?
Your "blogger-madam" has had great fun in making mock of me, Benjamin H. Grumbles, but I assure you that this bunko artist will be quite sorry when the enemies of This Great Country arrive to wipe that smirk off her face! I assure you, dear reader, these savages will stop at nothing! Nothing! By hook or by crook, these scallywags will have us all saluting the Kaiser while wiping our feet on Old Glory before you can say Jack Robinson!
I am flabbergasted that you ruffians are actually complaining about the amount of medicinal elixers in your drinking water! Hogwash! I'll tell you what should be making you shake in your Wellingtons: the accursed Turks using your drinking water for their steam-powered war machines! They are already developing a fantastic black-powder elephant cannon that can blow our mighty airships out of the sky! And yet here you sit on your visual-teletypes, complaining that your drinking water may contain foreign matter! The Turks have begun winding their massive clockwork mechano-men, my good people, and don't think these monstrosities will think twice about popping your noggin off your shoulders like greased lightning!
Let me tell you, my cowardly "Liberal" friends, I have whipped my weight in wildcats during my day. 'Twas many the afternoon I would ride the penny farthing down to the gym-nasium, where I would engage only the most vicious blaggards in fisticuffs. And whom do you think it was delighting in flavoured phosphates with the lovely ladies afterwards? It was I, Benjamin H. Grumbles!
Yet, my heart turns to ice when I imagine these sausage-swilling Huns riding their mammoth tread-driven iron horses over the hills, belching fire and flame, destroying our way of life and delivering a sockdologer right to the manly clenched jaw of This Great Nation! No, I will not have it! The Grumbles are a proud people! I fought alongside my bosom chum Prescott to keep This Great Nation free from goose-stepping Krauts in the past, I stood astride MacArthur at the 38th Parallel to beat off the Red Menace, I will not see it fall due to drinking water!
Hear me now, you "Liberal" rapscallions, I will ride you out on a rail if you continue this talk. Consider yourself forewarned! Benjamin H. Grumbles is a huckleberry above a persimmon, and I will wake snakes if I am crossed! Benjamin H. Grumbles has arrived to engage in fisticuffs and drink sarsaparilla! And he is all out of sarsaparilla!
Addendum: I understand there has been much chin-wagging regarding my associations with one William Ulysses Stickers. I wish to officially state that I have had no dealings with this scoundrel, and I don't care a continental for this four-flusher's ridiculous stories. William Ulysses Stickers should and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!
And rape you by the side of the road:
[Albany] It was early evening and already dark when the patrol car's emergency lights flashed in the rearview mirror of Lisa Shutter's Mitsubishi sedan on Quail Street, just off Central Avenue.Perhaps because she had been.
Police records show the officers called out a "Signal 38" to alert a dispatcher they were onto something suspicious and about to pull someone over. They would later write in a report that they had pulled her over for "failure to signal," although no ticket was issued, according to police records shared with the Times Union.
The actions of police in the minutes that followed would end in controversy rather than with an arrest. They would also leave Shutter, a 28-year-old single mother from Ravena, shaken and angry after one of the officers allegedly inserted his finger into Shutter's vagina on a public street during an apparent search for drugs.
When it was over, "I pulled off down the road and I just cried for probably a half hour," Shutter said. "I called my dad. ... I felt like I had been basically raped."
…looking forward to the The Dark Knight with any greater slavering anticipation?
The e-mail system at my office is on the fritz, so I told one of my colleagues about it when she arrived:
ME: The e-mail system is off-line.That reminds me of the time I was working for a small-town radio station one summer. We got a thunderstorm that knocked out the power to the station. When the lights went out and the music stopped, the DJ, who was hired for his voice but not his brains, burst out of the studio. "We're off the air! What'll I do?" The station manager, without missing a beat, replied, "Get back in there and announce it!" The DJ was halfway back into the studio before the light came on.
SHE: Oh, really, how do you know?
ME: I got an e-mail about it.
SHE: Oh, okay. [Beat.] Wait...
I love the talkies, but I sure do miss the good old days of sneaking into the nickelodeon with a couple of local scalawags and enjoying a fountain soda while Mickey Macgillicutty played a classic ragtime on his pipe organ.
Progress: Dagnabbit!
What book-to-film adaptation has made you want to read the book on which it was based after seeing the film? (Obviously this excludes films you've seen made of books you've already read.)
Mr. Shakes and I just watched From Here to Eternity last night, and it made both of us want to read the book—which is what made me think of the question.
I'm sure it's happened to me a dozen times before, but I'll be darned if I can think of any other examples at the moment...
[Original post with video of presser here.]
Spitzer is now expected to resign, possibly as soon as tonight, as some details of the allegations begin to trickle out: "New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is under investigation for allegedly meeting with a prostitute in a Washington hotel, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. One of the sources said Spitzer is identified in a criminal complaint as 'Client-9,' and that Spitzer's alleged involvement was caught on a federal wiretap."
You can read the Complaint, with the Warrant Affidavit, here; the portion regarding "Client-9" begins at paragraph 73. A commenter at Feministe, to whose comment Shaker Betty Vagynomite Boondoggle pointed in comments, interprets some of the more disturbing passages (e.g. sometimes asking sex workers to do things that they feel are unsafe) to mean he may have been asking sex workers to perform without condoms. Shaker Car also points out, quite correctly, that the complaint appears to detail his haggling over the price of services. Sounds like Spitzer didn't just frequent a brothel, but he also treated the women who worked there poorly.
As I mentioned in comments, Spitzer's having been a champion of women's rights makes this particularly disappointing to me. I can only imagine the feelings of betrayal being experienced by women who worked closely with Spitzer and considered him a feminist ally, only to now hear that he was not only involved with a prostitution ring but also allegedly mistreated the sex workers. Mostly, I feel for his wife and especially his three daughters, who must be devastated and whose lives will never be the same.
Recently, I wrote a post about one of the ways I think men are damaged by sexism and misogyny. I was surprised at the number of feminist women (I think they were all women, but I may be wrong about that) who assumed that I was somehow asking them to take responsibility for the healing of this damage, or that I had somehow implied that this damage was the fault of feminism. I read and reread my post to see if/where I might have even slightly intimated such a thing, and I honestly couldn't find it.
I understand feminist women's anger at the patriarchal system, and at men (and women) who participate in sexism and misogyny. I understand their fatigue and impatience in the seemingly glacial movement toward change (teaspoon by teaspoon), and I understand why they feel like they're the only ones doing anything about it.
I understand it because I've been there, with my own anger, and fatigue, and impatience, and loneliness, and feelings of futility.
At one point in my life, I lived on lesbian separatist land for three years -- land where men were literally not allowed to set foot on the property without the full advance consensus of every woman living there -- because I needed a complete respite from the rigors of life as a woman in patriarchal society (or as much of a respite as I could possibly get). I believe that this retreat into women-only space was also a very necessary part of my healing process as a survivor of severe abuse.
I don't want any woman whose level of exhaustion with (or simple personal choice not to engage in) the "education of men about feminism" to engage in that activity.
I fully agree that it's not any woman's responsibility to educate men (or even other women) about sexism and misogyny, just as it's not a person of color's responsibility to educate white people about racism.
But . . . I'll do it.
I'll do it, not because it's my responsibility, but because it's my choice.
I'll do it because I believe that no human being is "born" sexist, misogynist, racist, classist, or homophobic. They are born into societies that are sexist, misogynist, racist, classist, and homophobic, and they are systematically trained to accept these systems , even though these systems are not truly natural to them.
I'll do it because I know that I didn't spring full-blown from the brow of the Goddess Diana as a Paragon of Feminism one day. I spent years un-learning a lifetime of conditioning toward self-hatred, self-devaluation, and gender-role entrainment. I had to awaken from the stupor that allowed me to miss subtle (and even grossly overt) misogyny in language and interaction, advertising, and the culture in general.
I'll do it because I realize that I am still doing this -- still unlearning -- still awakening, and I need other people to help give me new eyes and ears to help me see and hear what I've missed because I was born into a culture so saturated with sexism and misogyny that the forest is obscured among the trees.
I'll do it because I know that seeing the problem in the forest is even more difficult when you're not one of the trees that is slated for the saw-mill -- because without the help of friends and associates who are people of color, I would probably not have begun to lift the few teaspoons that I have in examining my own racism and white privilege -- without the help of friends and associates who are transsexual, I would probably not have been able to begin to etch away at the boulder of transphobia that is in me.
I'll do it because it wasn't their responsibility to educate me -- but they did. They bothered with me -- they held me as capable of change -- and I have profound gratitude that they took their time and energy to do so, and that they continue to invest that time and energy to do so -- and if, one day, they choose to stop, and tell me that they are exhausted and need a break from hanging out with my privileged, slow-learning, white/cisgendered ass, I will respect that completely, and my gratitude will not be diminished.
I'll do it, not because I think it's the "right" thing to do, not because I think that men are incapable of getting educated without me, not because anyone "needs" me to do it, or because I think I'll get some "Really Good Person" award (in my head or from someone else) -- in fact, I'll do it even if other people think I'm being a "really bad person" for doing it.
I'll do it because it's the only thing that makes sense to me right now, from my current life perspective and understanding of how things work (or at least, how they have worked for me) -- and I'll do it as long as I think that it's a logical, rational avenue of action -- as long as I see benefit in it, and I don't think of it, or feel it, as a burden.
I'll do it because I want to.
[cross-posted]
