"Pink-Clad Pooch Stolen from Gay Bar by Man With Britney Tattoo." That, my friends, is perfection.
Dear Texas Board of Education,
After your public high-schools have produced kids that are too ignorant and reality-deficient to be able to contribute to the economy or society anywhere outside of a conservative thinktank, I'll be happy to teach the ones who fail to meet Richard Mellon Scaife's requirements for rightwing affirmative action employment the full history of what has happened in this country, including the attempted brainwashing by a bunch of worthless dipshits in their state board of ed.
Yours truly,
Space Cowboy
[Trigger warning.]
"The Mugunga Internally Displaced Persons Camp sits in a land of volcanoes and great lakes on the edge of Goma, a provincial capital in the eastern Congo. The camp is now home to 18,000 people seeking refuge from a cycle of violent conflict that has left 5.4 million dead since 1998. … Women and girls in particular have been victimized on an unimaginable scale, as sexual and gender-based violence has become a tactic of war and has reached epidemic proportions. Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day. … I came to Goma to send a clear message: The United States condemns these attacks and all those who commit them and abet them. They are crimes against humanity. These acts don't just harm a single individual, or a single family, or village, or group. They shred the fabric that weaves us together as human beings. Such atrocities have no place in any society."—Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a piece for People magazine (!) called "What I Saw in Goma."
Crimes of sexual violence against women and girls are crimes against humanity.
I don't believe I've ever heard any US official ever say that.*
I can't stop blubbing.
---------------------------------
* And do you know why that simple thing is never spoken? Because there are people who whine that it leaves room to infer that the perpetrators of sexual violence aren't human, and it's more important to indulge the delicate sensibilities of rapists and their apologists than it is to acknowledge the humanity of women.
I've got a new piece at The Guardian's CifA that expands on the theme of alienated progressives re: healthcare:
Worse even, perhaps, than the loss of progressives' trust is, in fact, the endemic loss of coherent and cohesive progressive advocacy, thrown in utter disarray by constantly moving targets and mixed messaging. The public option is "not the essential element" of healthcare reform; the administration considers the public option an important healthcare reform; healthcare reform can't pass in the Senate with the public option; healthcare reform can't pass in the House without the public option. The public option is on the table, the public option is off the table, the public option is in a room with a table, the public option is in the broom closet.The whole thing is here.
While the administration dances around a firm commitment to the public option, and the Democratic congressional caucus dithers, progressives who regard it as the biggest (or only) selling point of the proposed reform are left standing blindfolded, trying to pin the tail on a dancing donkey.
And while trying to pin a tail on a dancing donkey is a pain in the ass, ahem, trying to move an obdurate elephant from its fixed position is a virtual impossibility.
...The hopey-changy rhetoric of bringing new politics to Washington that may have looked like optimism and confidence at one time now looks a lot more like the naiveté and arrogance that cynical progressives always feared it was.
Shaker Thumbs
Recently, I asked as the QotD: What product or service have you purchased/used lately that you'd like to recommend to other Shakers (or recommend against)?
Several people requested it become a regular feature, so here is the newest installment of "Shaker Thumbs," in which you've got the opportunity to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a product or service you'd recommend to other Shakers or warn them away from. [Previously: One, Two.]
My review today is of EyeBuyDirect.com. After I got my new specs, I wanted to get a second pair with the new prescription (as my old specs were a decade old and I've developed astigmatism in the interim), because I am genuinely nonfunctional without my glasses. Quite literally, I can barely get from room to room in my own home without them, no less read or work or cook or drive, so being without a back-up plan is not a good idea.
But my insurance pays for only one pair, which meant I needed to find a cheap alternative. So I requested my prescription from my eye doctor, and, after researching both meat-world franchises and online alternatives, I decided to go with EyeBuyDirect. And, if I'm honest, I was learning toward an online provider anyway, because I was hoping to be able to recommend an affordable alternative to Shakers lacking vision insurance.
So: I picked out my frames (Parsley, in clear/purple), which cost me $17.95, and entered my prescription for basic lenses, which were free. Because my prescription makes for super-thick lenses, I added the "Super Thin" option for an additional $42. (There is a cheaper "Thin and Lite" option for $25, and an "Ultra Thin" option for $67. And, to be clear, thinning is not required for strong prescriptions; I just prefer it.) I added an anti-reflective coating for $6.25 (anti-scratch is free). Shipping was $4.95, so I got the whole pair for $71.85—less than a third what my other new specs would have cost without insurance, not even including the eye exam.
About two weeks later, I got my new glasses, complete with free case and cleaning rag. And they're absolutely splendid. The frames certainly don't look like I paid only $18 for them. And if I didn't have such a strong prescription (and skipped the anti-reflective coating), I could have gotten the whole pair for less than $25.
I've been wearing my EyeBuyDirect frames for about a week now to give them a good test, and I couldn't be happier with them.
Granted, you need to know your prescription to make this work, but, if you do, it can save you a lot of money. And it may still be cheaper to buy online even if you pay for an exam, depending on the options available in your area.
There is nothing more revolting than the "moderate" Democratic Senators and Reps who do whatever they think is necessary—i.e. vote against progressive reform—to keep their stupid jobs on the premise that, if they don't, a Republican might grab the seat and, I dunno, vote exactly the same way or something.
So they vote like Republicans to keep their job, as if it that D behind their names is itself providing some sort of benefit to people. Um, nope. That D doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference if the person whose name it follows doesn't vote like one.
But there's this persistent idea that just having Democrats in Congress is important, an idea that seems positively intractable even when (some of) those Democrats vote like Republicans and avoid reform to stay in office.
Even when they got into office by promising reform.
So actual progress just keeps getting kicked down the road by people who say they can't risk their seats by voting for reform or else real reform will never happen, and who continually count on the fact that no one ever notices the giant snake eating its own tail.
They're masking naked self-interest behind a promise of reform they'll never deliver, because they care more about keeping their jobs than just enacting reform and, yeah, maybe losing their jobs but having actually accomplished something in exchange.
(Say what you will about the GOP, but they're willing to risk seats to advance their agenda.)
What makes this exponential idiocy is the "moderate" Democrats' failure to understand that, come the next election, their Republican challengers will bark like mad dogs about how the Dems failed utterly to get anything done. And the thing is, they'll be right.
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Deeky's Wax Ears.
Recommended Reading:
Laura: Greer Shows Her Transphobic Colours
Tami: What Does a Woman Look Like?
Kate: Let Me Fix That for You, E. Jean
Ann: Roseanne the Riveter & the New Guilted Age
Macon: Stuff White People Do: Miss "Their" America
Aliya: Race & Racism in The Time Traveler's Wife
Kyle: God Commands You to Kill Gays (Big time trigger warning)
Leave your links in comments...
by Shaker BGK Starbuck
Howdy, Shakers!
This is Starbuck filling in for Dad-Dad. Things are a bit stressful around Chez BGK and I hope a brief update from will be acceptable.
You see, Dad-Dad's a wee touch on edge of late. I think it has something to do with something he calls, "Asshat Morality Judgment Conservative Wankers." He's been trying to write a guest post for Shakesville on the recent political events in Washington State, but he's been too angry to write coherently. Since I'm not sure he's up for the task, I decided to take matters into my own paws.
On May 15, 2009, Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire signed bill 5688 which "provides that for all purposes under state law, state registered domestic partners shall be treated the same as married spouses and that provisions of the act shall be liberally construed to achieve equal treatment, to the extent not in conflict with federal law." (See here.) As Dad-Dad explained, this means that for the purposes of Washington State, registered domestic partners will have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples. While this law does have its flaws from the progressive worldview, i.e. separate but equal is never really equal, it did precisely what the moderate conservatives wanted. It gave all the rights and responsibilities of marriage to both same-sex and dual-sex domestic partners.
In today's column, Paul Krugman addresses Obama's Trust Problem:
According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the "public option" for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.In fact, I would argue that there were lots of progressives, such as myself, who had grave doubts about Obama's alleged closet progressivism, but were nonetheless willing to be the progressive base that any Democratic president needs to pursue a progressive agenda.
Well, I'm shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.
…[T]here's a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will "pull the plug on grandma," and two days later the White House declares that it's still committed to working with him.
It's hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can't be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.
Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable.
So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it.
I saw the Obama Healthcare townhall with Organizing for America yesterday. I found it different from other Obama speeches in that he was talking directly to his body of community organizers, and giving them tips on how to sell the health care reform. He spoke about being committed to a public option. And when he talked about downplaying the public option, it was specifically a SELLING POINT (paraphrase): "Don't lean too hard on the public option, because all the happily insured people will ask, what's in it for me? To them you need to talk about how our current system is not sustainable—explain how if they are happily insured now they will NOT be in 5 years. The public option is only ONE PART of the reform, talk to those happily insured people about lower deductibles, lower premiums, talk about the public option as a way to keep the insurance companies' costs down through competition, etc."That's not something I want to do, nor is it something I'm going to do. And his constant wishy-washiness on the public option—which is the biggest (only) selling point for me, and something I'm not going to downplay if it is on the table but something I don't feel comfortable selling when I don't know if it will be delivered—means that Obama's lost more than my trust: He's lost an active and effective progressive advocate.
Turning Point Needs Your Help
[I'm bumping this back up to the top for those who may have missed it earlier in the week. I want to thank everyone who has already contributed. Thanks so much! And if anyone else can send a few bucks their way, please do.]
This morning I received the following email from a good friend of mine. Joe works for Turning Point, a Chicago-area center serving women and children who are victims of domestic violence. Turning Point provides a help line, shelter, and courtroom advocacy to victims of abuse.
Funding for Turning Point has been drastically slashed, and some of the services they provide are in danger. Please read Joe's message below, and if you can help, please do. Remember, no donation is too small.
Since 2005, I've been working for Turning Point, a non-profit located in Woodstock Illinois that provides services to victims of domestic violence. We see about 1700 people a year as "walk-in clients" and can house twenty-one women and children a night in the area's only secure shelter. And I do mean secure — these victims are fleeing serious violence in their homes, often with only the clothes on their back (or what they can carry) to our shelter with bulletproof glass and double security doors. We rely on a mix of private donations, private and government grants and government funding. That funding provides individual and group counseling, legal and other advocacy, emergency food & shelter, a partner abuse intervention program and a myriad other services for victims. We provide 24 hour service and our trained advocates often go out in the middle of the night to a hospital emergency room or police station where a victim needs help. That's what we do.Shakers, if you can in any way help, please do. Again, no donation is too small. Every little bit helps keep these valuable and necessary services available to the women and children who depend on them. Thank you.
Late in 2008, we got word that the federal government was not renewing a $170,000 annual grant to fund our Law Enforcement Advocacy program (LEAP). This program funds our courtroom advocacy, after-hours orders of protection, police trainings and ride-alongs (going out with Police to train them how to better deal with their most common call: Domestic Violence). We were able to temporarily continue these services through a combination of belt-tightening and some additional community support but we recently were forced to make cuts in this program. It was painful, but we really don't have a choice: if new funds are not forthcoming, we cannot continue to deliver the full slate of services we have been. There isn't a lot of "fat" to trim from the Turning Point budget.
As I write this, the Illinois budget is supposedly settled, but we have still not been told how much our state funding will be cut, only that it will be cut. This is the second consecutive year Turning Point's State of Illinois funding has been cut. Other agencies in the county have already announced big service cuts, program cuts and are even cutting the number of clients they can serve. We have eliminated two positions in our courthouse office and cut back staff hours in the shelter. These cuts were chosen as the ones that would impact our agency services the least. These cuts will not be enough if funding continues to decrease. Can you imagine a day when a victim of Domestic violence summons the courage to ask for help only to be told that Turning Point isn't accepting new clients right now? That day is coming if we do not do something.
Since the beginning of 2009, five women and children with a connection to our county have been murdered in incidents of domestic violence*. Thirty-four percent of adult female homicide victims are killed by their husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends — about 1500 women each year. We can not cut back now on the programs that help keep these people safe.
The need is so great and the situation is so urgent, I have to ask: Can you help? "Take a Stand for Turning Point" is Turning Point's biggest fundraiser and a great opportunity to get our message out to the world. Our local radio station Star 105.5 spends 36 hours on the air, telling our story and asking for donations. Each year that we have done this, in addition to an outpouring of donations, victims come forward after hearing about Turning Point on the radio. Our first radiothon had been on the air about an hour in 2006 when a woman pulled up, crying. She had been in an abusive relationship for years, but had been too scared to ask for help. She sat with a Turning Point Advocate in that parking lot, and for the first time, got the help she needed to end the violence in her own home.
If you can help, this is the time to do it. No donation is too small or too big:
1. $5 can buy a ream of printer paper that might be used to write an order of protection, stopping the violence in one home for one family.
2. $50 provides one session of counseling for a victim in crisis: One session might connect her to services that could potentially save her life.
3. $600 is enough to provide crisis intervention, legal advocacy, and non-legal advocacy for one "walk-in" victim of domestic violence who comes to Turning Point for help rebuilding her life.
4. $1800 provides 35 hours of counseling for a child who has witnessed or experienced violence in their home. Children in abusive homes tend to model their parents and grow up to be in abusive relationships as adults without counseling and early intervention.
5. $2,700 provides emergency shelter and supportive services for one victim of domestic violence who had to flee their home in order to be safe. Staying in the Turning point Shelter isn't just "bed & board." Residents get individual and group counseling and often job training, parenting classes, financial counseling- whatever they need to successfully transition to peaceful, healthy homes of their own. In the short term, that shelter saves lives; in the long term, staying there can also CHANGE lives.
There are several ways you can make a donation (which is tax deductible as allowed by law):
1. Write a check and mail it to Turning Point, PO Box 723, Woodstock IL 60098.
2. Make an on-line donation by going to our website. You can click on that "Donate Now" link and make a contribution with a credit or bank card. (There is also a lot more information about Turning Point at the site.)
3. If you are on Facebook, you can visit the Turning Point page, become a supporter and make an online contribution there.
4. The event is held LIVE on air Friday August 28 and Saturday August 29. You can stop by Sam's Club in Crystal Lake and make a donation in person. Or call in (during those two days only- phones are live 6 AM Friday until 6 PM Saturday, 8/28-29 ONLY) on our donation hotlines 815-276-9499 or 815-549-6655.
5. Or call Turning Point during business hours and give us the information: (815) 338 8081.
I know times are hard all over. If you can make a donation, believe me it will be much appreciated and put to good use. If you can't, I certainly understand, you don't need to explain or apologize. I know a lot of good causes are hitting hard times these days and the begging is fast and furious!
If you think of someone you know who you think can help, feel free to pass this on. The internet is a powerful tool. Thanks for reading to the bottom and I promise it will be a long, long time before I write one of these again!
Thank you,
Joe Kvidera
Turning Point
What is the very first thing you do after you get out of bed in the morning?
Brush my teeth. It is the very last thing I do before I go to sleep, and the very first thing I do after I wake up.
Unless I'm desperate for the toilet. And I am very annoyed by the mornings when I can't wait until after I brush my teeth. I don't need a clean mouth just to have a slash, but I certainly prefer it!
So.
There's this article, a very big article, as a matter of fact, as part of an entire section called "The Women's Crusade," all about the ladybusiness, in the New York Times Magazine, and that very big article, all seven virtual pages of it, can be read here.
Lots of Shakers have sent me this article, and most of them have mentioned they're very curious to see what I'll make of it. I suspect that's because they have some problems with the article, and they imagined I would, too.
When a Shaker's right, a Shaker's right.
Let's start right at the top.
IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.Inflicted by whom?
Yet the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater.The injustices perpetrated by whom?
"Women hold up half the sky," in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that's mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized.Marginalized by whom?
In India, a "bride burning" takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry.Takes place at the hands of whom?
The implication of the sex ratios, Sen later found, is that about 107 million females are missing from the globe today.Missing because of whom?
Girls vanish partly because they don't get the same health care and food as boys.Are vanished by whom?
It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century.Missing because of whom?
The number of victims of this routine "gendercide" far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.A "gendercide" perpetrated by whom?
For those women who live, mistreatment is sometimes shockingly brutal.Mistreatment by whom?
If you're reading this article, the phrase "gender discrimination" might conjure thoughts of unequal pay, underfinanced sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In the developing world, meanwhile, millions of women and girls are actually enslaved.Discrimination by whom? Enslavement by whom?
In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report. Girls and women are locked in brothels and beaten if they resist, fed just enough to be kept alive and often sedated with drugs — to pacify them and often to cultivate addiction. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country.Enslaved by whom? Held hostage and beaten and forcibly addicted by whom?
Money was tight in her family, so when she was about 14 she arranged to take a job as a maid in the capital, New Delhi. Instead, she was locked up in a brothel, beaten with a cricket bat, gang-raped and told that she would have to cater to customers.By whom?
One hundred years ago, many women in China were still having their feet bound. Today, while discrimination and inequality and harassment persist, the culture has been transformed.Discrimination and inequality and harassment care of whom?
If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries.The whole family is spending money on beer and prostitutes, are they?
"Gender inequality hurts economic growth," Goldman Sachs concluded in a 2008 research report that emphasized how much developing countries could improve their economic performance by educating girls.Gender inequality facilitated by whom?
Yet another reason to educate and empower women is that greater female involvement in society and the economy appears to undermine extremism and terrorism. It has long been known that a risk factor for turbulence and violence is the share of a country's population made up of young people. Now it is emerging that male domination of society is also a risk factor; the reasons aren't fully understood, but it may be that when women are marginalized the nation takes on the testosterone-laden culture of a military camp or a high-school boys' locker room. … Indeed, some scholars say they believe the reason Muslim countries have been disproportionately afflicted by terrorism is not Islamic teachings about infidels or violence but rather the low levels of female education and participation in the labor force.Surely, based on that last bit, we will not only find the answers to all my questions in the last two pages of prescriptive suggestions but also some recommendations on how to educate men on gender equality!
SO WHAT WOULD an agenda for fighting poverty through helping women look like?
I've gotten dozens of emails today about Caster Semenya, the South African teenager who won the 800-meters at the world track championships so decisively on Wednesday that she was asked to undergo tests to confirm she's actually a woman.
Earlier today, she took the gold in the final.
More coverage here (check out the repeated use of misogynist epithets) and here, with more coverage easily found with a quick Google, all of which is so rife with a clusterfuck of misogyny and transphobia that I'm rather convinced I could spend an entire decade parsing it all.
Have at it in comments. And please note that misogyny and transphobia will not be tolerated in this thread, as in all others.
