Not being a lawyer I can't figure out the rightness of this ruling, but there it is.
Lawyers for the father of a Marine who died in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters say a court has ordered him to pay the protesters' appeal costs.I get it that Phelps, being the defendant in the suit, has the right -- somehow -- to demand that his legal costs for the appeal be covered by the plaintiff. It's one of those things that makes our justice system so infuriating... and frequently unjust.
On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered that Albert Snyder of York, Pa., pay costs associated with Fred Phelps' appeal. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at the funeral of Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, in Westminster in 2006.
Lawyers for Snyder say the Court of Appeals has ordered him to pay $16,510.80 to Phelps for costs relating to the appeal, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Court of Appeals' decision.
They say that Snyder is also struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We are extremely disappointed," said Sean E. Summers, an attorney for Snyder. He added that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely hear the case during its October term and make a decision in June of next year.
"The Court of Appeals certainly could have waited until the Supreme Court made its decision," Summers added. "There was no hardship presented by Phelps."
Summers said there is no timetable for when the costs must be paid, but if his client doesn't have the money when Phelps requests payment the matter would go into collections. Snyder could lose his property or his wages, Summers said.
Summers added that if Snyder pays Phelps' court costs and then receives a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court, "imagine him trying to get money back from Phelps."
Professional Ding-a-ling Doc Thompson, subbing for Glenn Beck on his radio show today, claimed that the 10% tax on indoor tanning salons included in the healthcare bill to "disincentive the carcinogenic practice of indoor tanning" is actually racism "dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans."
I now too feel the pain of racism. Racism has been dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans. The health care bill the president just singed into law includes a 10% tax on all indoor tanning sessions starting July 1st, and I say, who uses tanning? Is it dark-skinned people? I don't think so. I would guess that most tanning sessions are from light-skinned Americans. Why would the President of the United Stats of America — a man who says he understands racism, a man who has been confronted with racism — why would he sign such a racist law? Why would he agree to do that? Well now I feel the pain of racism.Okay, this is wrong on about a thousand different levels, but the wrongness I love the most is that "light-skinned Americans" constitutes a specific race.
No one could have predicted that corporate America would act like greedy, belligerent shits:
An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T, Caterpillar and other companies to announce substantial charges for the current quarter.Blah blah blah. Because if it's just explained to them in a reasonable voice, voraciously avaristic corporations will realize they were mistaken and that the health, happiness, and general well-being of the American Worker really is more important than mountainous fuckpiles of profits.
The association, the American Benefits Council, said the provision — which reduces the tax deductions for companies with drug coverage for their retired employees — would deal a significant blow to corporate profits and would discourage companies from hiring more workers.
...James A. Klein, the president of the American Benefits Council, called the provision "a serious mistake that is having negative and unintended consequences."
White House officials defended the provision, saying it was a deliberate effort to eliminate what they said was an unusually generous tax loophole. ... White House officials said it was rare for companies to obtain a tax-free federal subsidy and be able to deduct it as well.
..."We're confident that the benefits are going to accrue and strengthen business's bottom line," said Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House Health Reform Office.
..."Let's put these changes into perspective," Ms. Douglass said. "While accounting rules required companies to book this cost upfront, there are a whole set of benefits that will accrue to companies over time..."
In a piece seriously and not ironically titled "How Should Conservatives Deal with the Left's Disrespect and Lack of Empathy?" the always-amusing Dr. Helen—who is totally "not saying here that liberals are psychopaths, for this would be incorrect for the most part"—suggests that one reason liberals are such assholes is because of our insularity:
The second possibility is that liberals do have the capacity to empathize with conservatives, but they do not have to do so because of the liberal bubble they mostly live in. Schools, the media, and many of the cities they live in lean left. This means that there is no incentive to understand other ideas and there are no consequences for showing disgust and ugly feelings towards conservatives.Leaving aside the idea that "most" liberals live in beautiful blue enclaves of progressiveness (I've this week alone spoken to five different friends or acquaintances who are struggling at their jobs in conservative states because of a work culture that creates a hostile environment for them), and the myth that a "left-leaning" city creates a protective bliss for every liberal (ask any feminist, any person of color, any member of the LGBTQI community, any liberal person with a disability who lives in a left-leaning city if they're cloistered in contented inclusion), I'd like to address the quite genuinely hilarious contention that any liberal in America has found a place of residence hermetically sealed from conservative ideology.
Liss forwarded me this story a few days ago and I've been flipping it around in my head, trying to figure out how best to approach it.
I've decided that maybe we can have a conversation of sorts about it and the larger issues. I'll tell you what I think, of course, and then give you some background (on me) for context.
The headline reads "Mother furious after in-school clinic sets up teen's abortion" and the first paragraph is
The mother of a Ballard High School student is fuming after the health center on campus helped facilitate her daughter's abortion during school hours.The mother, referred to as Jill, says she feels her rights were stripped away.
I didn't see the interview discussed here, because I don't watch TV in the morning. But according to the article, President Obama "recognizes the movement involves 'folks who have legitimate concerns' about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously."
As Liss and I discussed it this morning, she said "I guess it's easy to be magnanimous toward FUCKING TERRORISTS when you've got a 24/7 Secret Service detail. The rest of us? Not so fortunate."
Yeah, exactly. And as the article states "he said he didn't want to paint Tea Party activists 'in broad brushes' and he hopes to win over members who have 'mainstream, legitimate concerns.'"
Great. More of the same old shit.
No matter what Obama says or does, they will always hate him. And he tells them they've legitimate fucking concerns. No. No, they don't. And no matter how much you suck up to them, Mr. President, they'll always hate your stinking guts.
I just got back from a doctor's appointment, which was for 10:15, although I didn't actually get called in to see the doctor until 11:15. That sort of wait would be aggravating enough for any old appointment, but this was for a routine pap smear—a procedure that is anxiety-provoking enough already without having an extra hour to sit and contemplate it. Luckily, I had Deeks at the other end of my phone to keep me company…
Liss: "Are you ready to do something about overactive bladder?"
Deeky: I'm ready to urinate.
Liss: That made me LOL 4 realz right in the waiting room.
Deeky: Yay!
Liss: They've got "The View" on and the ladies are talking about fat people. It's a GREAT discussion. P.S. It's not a great discussion.
Deeky: LOL.
Liss: OMG coming up on "The View": Ricky Gervais. I predict: High blood pressure today. Thanks, "The View!"
Deeky: LOLOLOL!
[Note: I actually had high blood pressure today, which I normally don't. It was so high that the nurse took it again manually because she couldn't believe the machine could be right, given my usual numbers. That's what happens when you leave me in a waiting room for an hour before a pap smear to watch "The View."]
Deeky: You should have brought your iPod. Some Oasis would have soothed you.
Liss: Shut up, fuckface! You know I don't have an iPod, lol!
Deeky: That's right: You're a no-iPod asshole.
Liss: Be quiet—I'm trying to hear Ricky Gervais' rape jokes!
Deeky: LOL for realz.
Liss: I shit you not: Next on "The View"—the cast of "The Jersey Shore." It would be more efficient if Barbara Walters just took a shit directly into my skull.
Deeky: Double-plus LOLz for real.
Liss: I'm glad I got here five minutes early for my appointment!
Deeky: Totes. It gives you a chance to get caught up on People magazine from 1997. How are the Spin Doctors doing, by the way?
Liss: Awesome. They're putting out a new line of plaid skater pants. "Little Pants Can't Be Wrong."
Deeky: LOL… You're killing me here.
Liss: Also: Jesus Jones says hi.
Deeky: They say hi everyday. On my iPod.
Liss: Joy Behar just asked "The Situation" if he uses condoms. Oopsy! Now I'm celibate.
Deeky: LOL.
Liss: Tomorrow on "The View": "The Octomom."
Deeky: WTF???????
Liss: This show is a real thing in the world.
Deeky: Totes.
I've just returned to my laptop and inbox, having been struck down with a brutal migraine in the early hours of Monday morning, after we'd gotten back from Shakago.
I saw a number of e-mails from various Shakers with links of beauty and outrage, and I'll try to get caught up with them over the next few days. Just wanted to explain why i'm not answering right away, I've got work to catch up on that was due yesterday evening. :)
That David Brooks' columns are poop is a well-established fact. So you don't need me to tell you about that David Brooks' columns are poop, nor that his latest execrable emission is something that the editors of the New York Times should have demanded was dispatched via courtesy flush before anyone else had to suffer, just like every other thing Brooks has ever written.
But wow, really wow, about casually appropriating Sandra Bullock's life for an opening salvo in a truly cynical attempt to make his stinking deposit look more "hip" and "relevant."
Two things happened to Sandra Bullock this month. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?Ha ha what a terrible, terrible question posed by a terrible, terrible man.
…would have the amazingly poor taste to crap out sentences like this—Yup.
"Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives."
—at literally the exact moment when tens of millions of American men and women are watching their tomorrows being obliterated in a brutal tsunami of lost homes, lost jobs, lost savings, lost health care, lost retirement, lost marriages and lost futures.
And in the face of such widespread fear and pain, who but an utterly oblivious and insufferably privileged asshole would have dared to print such drivel in the New York Times, reminding us yet again that, as millions of hardworking citizens go broke, David Fucking Brooks—for reasons that passeth all understanding—continues to be inexplicably and lavishly remunerated, year after year, for cranking out what are essentially two, perfunctory, 800-word, C-minus high school book reports a week.
by Shaker Katebears
[Trigger warning.]
MTV has a new reality prank show called Disaster Date. From their website: "Disaster Date is MTV's hilarious new hidden camera dating show that puts unsuspecting singles on the worst blind date of their lives. And it all comes courtesy of a best friend looking for payback." So the "unsuspecting single" friend gets set up with an actor, and that actor will usually personify the person's biggest pet peeves. For example, the actor will talk way too loud or smoke at the non-smoking table or send his or her food back multiple times. The unknowing dater gets a dollar for every minute he or she lasts. After 60 minutes, the date is over and the ruse is revealed.
The dates are usually unpleasant but not dangerous. They are annoying and maybe even embarrassing but never scary... Or so I thought.
The recent episode shown on March 29 featured as the unknowing dater a woman roughly in her 20s, whose pet peeves were controlling men and people who insulted her fashion sense. At first, it followed the established pattern of obnoxious but not sinister—her date made fun of her hair-vest and made a big embarrassing fuss when her food tasted gross.
Then, it took a turn for the worse. He started talking about her facebook profile, telling her that he had visited it several times. She seemed weirded out by this but continued with the date, uncomfortably giggling and smiling. He then pulled out a collage he had made of pictures he'd found on her facebook profile. He'd left a space in the middle for her to include a picture of the two of them, and he asked the woman sitting at the next table to take a picture. The unknowing dater continued to look uncomfortable.
Then he mentioned coming over to her house and visiting. That made her more uncomfortable. Then, he said that he had already been in her house and took a lipgloss out of his pocket which she confirmed was hers. He explained that he had taken it so he would have something of hers. To this girl's knowledge, he had never been in her home. Finally, this was the breaking point and she got up from the date to get the hell out. Like many prank shows, this is where it is revealed to the victim that it was all a joke.
Hilarious, MTV! Really, really funny. And by funny, of course, I mean horrifying. This disaster date was not the same kind that they usually feature on the show. The jokes usually just rely on making the dater feel annoyed and embarrassed. This young woman, however, probably felt fear, terror, and extreme anxiety at the notion that her date was a stalker and an intruder and likely dangerous. Her fleeing from the date wasn't out of annoyance, but was of self-preservation and fear.
And here it is again: the rape culture. Rape culture is the belief that unwanted and frightening male attention is just an annoyance and similar to other "disaster" dates.
I am sure that all of the women who are raped on dates and by dates don't consider those to just be "disasters" in the way that MTV is defining the word. I am sure that all the victims of stalking in real life don't think of it as merely an unpleasant blind date. I am sure that those dates are life-altering and terrifying and terrible.
Those dates aren't fiction, either, MTV. Those dates are not exaggerations of bad dates like many of the other scenarios are. People really do go on dates with stalkers who terrorize and abuse their "dates". Not so funny, really, when it is the truth.
Rape culture is when violence against women is made to be a joke and prank and something that could casually be dismissed as a "disaster date".
Contact Viacom, owner of MTV, here.
Is there anyone from your childhood/early adulthood with whom you've lost touch that you'd like to reconnect?
(You don't need to provide their actual name, if you don't want to, of course. A description of the relationship, e.g. "my first boy/girlfriend," is sufficient.)
Have you ever tried to find or contact hir? Why or why not? If you did, what was the result?
Thanks to everyone who attended the Chicagoland meet-up this weekend. It was, as always, so much fun. I loved meeting everyone new and seeing everyone who I haven't seen in awhile, and getting the opportunity to spend time with so many truly amazing people—even though I always feel like I don't get enough time with everyone who attends; there's always someone I'm just about to go sit down with when my food arrives, or someone new walks in the door, and I don't talk to them again until they're leaving. I need better mingling management skillz!
My gratitude to RedSonja for coordinating RSVPs to the event once again, and to RedSonja and KarateMonkey for nametag organization.
Random Notes: Anything worth eating at all should always be eaten with gusto (especially squid, if you're into that sort of thing). Laughing makes costochondritis simultaneously better and worse. These are the ZOMG Shoez I was wearing. Anyone who has ever used the term "humorless feminists" should spend a few minutes at a Shakesville meet-up. A good thing to do before bed is stick your feet in the freezer. True fact.
Also: I found a pair of fingerless gloves left behind on a table. Email me to claim them.
P.S. BrianWS is totes an eyebrow actor.
[Trigger warning.]
Dear friends, I confront you today, my whiskers a-bristling with outrage. I was traversing o'er the Great Plains in my airship on my way to a gentlemen's conference on Potions, Elixirs, and Poisons, where I was to deliver what reviewers of the talkies call an "epic tour de force" on the potential curative properties of kudzu for sufferers of Pantaloon Fever, when I was indefinitely delayed by the most scandalous report!
My faithful yeoman Bruce was perusing his favorite web windows on the visual-teletype (keyword: men) when he stumbled across an outrageous electronic-newsey regarding the male brain.
Quite obviously, I am in no disagreement with the assertion that the male brain is a special and robust organ, which should be self-evident to any man with even the most modest of educations. One needn't have spent thirteen years of diligent matriculation at Emmett Q. Crumblecorn's Preparatory School for Fancy Lads to understand that the male brain is the finest organic machinery ever created by our gracious and wise Lord above.
It is as natural as silencing a babe in arms with a nip of moonshine that the male brain would respond to a lady's petition for support in the midst of a crisis by "racing to find a way to resolve the problem as soon as possible." If a gentleman does not make available the extraordinary capacities of his brain to a lady in her moment of desperate need, how will her problem ever be solved?
But I most object most strenuously to the decision by the editorial slobberchops over at CNN—which I had never taken to be a hotbed of Suffragette sucklemucking!—to allow a woman to seize control of their virtual newspaper in order to report this "news." A lady doctor, they say. Poppycock and balderdash! Curses on CNN! Fie!
The lady-brain is a highly delicate instrument that must never be taxed with complex thought, lest it overheat and cause a dreadful case of the vapors, requiring a cooling period in repose upon a fainting couch, preferably on a shaded veranda, during which the swoonful lass must be cautiously revived with a steady influx of mint juleps. The lady-brain cannot be stressed writing for web windows! Complete uterine collapse will not be far behind such wanton willynillying!
Such fragility is precisely why no one of the female persuasion is allowed on the airship! Not only can I not abide the exploitation of gentlewomen by the unnecessary strain of their pitiable mental facilities, but I cannot fit a fainting couch in the infernal contraption, anyhow—not with Bruce's enormous collection of classic gentlemen's calendars and physique magazines lying about!
The chap is very interested in good health.
As well should we all! Let us begin promptly with a collective endeavor to cosset the precious and weak lady-brains into which we shall entrust only the simplest of tasks, such as raising children. Particularly virile young men, who will someday realize their birthright as superiors to the mothers who raised them.
Good day to you, Shakesvillians! I said good day!
[Previous Grumblings: Benjamin H. Grumbles, Progress: Dagnabbit!, A Day in the Life of Benjamin H. Grumbles, What in the Sam Hill Are You Rascals Thinking?, Friday Cat Blogging, Damnable Milkshakery, Grumbles' Gashouse, Dash It All, McCain Is Off His Trolley, I Say, Somebody Bet on the Bob-Tailed Nag, Grumbles Writes Letters, Hosiery Is No Laughing Matter, Fear Not, Shakesvillians!, Bunsen's Balderdash!, Taint a Good Man, A Hearty Yawp of Well Wishes.]
The FBI has arrested nine members of a Christian militia group. The group, called the Hutaree, "planned to kill an unidentified member of local law enforcement and then attack the law enforcement officers who gather in Michigan for the funeral" using IEDs.
I poked through the Hutaree's website and didn't see much of interest. Lots of crap about Jesus, as per usual, and end times, and blah blah blah. They seem to have a big boner for a man who "lay[s] down his life for his friends" which I think means they've seen one too many John Wayne movies. And they certainly seem to have missed that bit in the bible that says "Thou shalt not kill." In fairness, that's probably the least known passage in the whole book.
According to the FBI's press release "Hutaree members view local, state, and federal law enforcement as the 'brotherhood,' their enemy, and have been preparing to engage them in armed conflict." Or, as the militia's website puts it "We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. All christians must know this and prepare, just as Christ commanded." I'm not sure how killing cops figures into that.
I'm glad the FBI and state and local authorities were able to apprehend these d-bags before they started shooting.
by Shaker Ethyl, a geologist and feminist who lives, much to her dismay, in Upstate New York. Special Friend Holocene is a feminist ally and biologist in the Pittsburgh area and has been Ethyl's BFF since before the dawn of time (i.e., those dark ages before the internet).
[Trigger warning.]
In recent "Today in Fat Hatred" installments we've noted some of the ways in which scientists can allow their prejudices to influence their work. Unfortunately, as we all know, it's not just obesity research that suffers from the insidious intrusion of the kyriarchy into what is idealized as a strenuously objective enterprise. A recent article from the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) of all places really drives this home.
Spring break season is here and many teenage girls may be tempted to take their first drink. The AAAS Science Inside Alcohol Project suggests that parents, teachers and caregivers help girls delay that drink by telling them of scientific research that shows they may be more vulnerable than boys to alcohol-related problems.I'll leave aside the vague and undefined "alcohol-related problems" for the moment to address instead the purported reasons that girls "may be more vulnerable" to them.
• Girls have less water in their bodies than boys. Girls have a slightly higher proportion of fat to lean muscle tissue, concentrating alcohol more easily in their lower percentage of body water. This means they become intoxicated faster after drinking less alcohol.So...about these facts. The first thing I did after reading this article and deciding to write a post on it was to get with my biologist friend (code name: Holocene) to do some fact-checking. According to Holocene, the True Science Facts are generally true—women tend to have differences in body type that seem to be able to affect how much alcohol is kicking around in one's bloodstream—but he noted, however, that there are also plenty of other variables (age, race, body type, etc.), and there's much that is not known about the ways in which our bodies process alcohol. So how much can one really generalize these True Science Facts to an entire population of people…? Never mind that! If one's agenda is not, in fact, the health and safety of humans but instead the prevention of damage to one's property, then the conclusions make a lot more sense.
• Girls have fewer enzymes to break alcohol down. Alcohol dehydrogenases are a group of seven enzymes that help break down alcohol so the body processes it. Girls have fewer of them, so it is not as easy for their bodies to metabolize the alcohol they drink.
• Girls are smaller and often weigh less than boys. When drinking the same amount as a boy, a girl will experience a quicker rise in her blood-alcohol level, and she may stay intoxicated for a longer period of time. Girls who drink heavily can be at greater risk for alcohol poisoning because it takes less alcohol for them to get really sick.
• Girls often prefer sweeter, carbonated mixed drinks. Such drinks can speed up the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream.This...this is my current favorite True Science Fact. Holocene could find nothing at all to support either the claim about women's preference in alcoholic beverages, or the assertion that these types of drinks are likely to make women drunker faster.
If those points don't sell girls on abstention or drinking less, here's another reason: Boys don't like it when girls drink heavily, according to David J. Hanson, professor emeritus of sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam and a member of the Science Inside Alcohol Project's advisory board.And I was just beginning to wonder: Where are the boys in all this? Oh right. Turning up their noses at girls who drink (unless it's to target them), because girls who drink are dirtybadwrong and probably sluts to boot, whereas boys who drink are just having a bit of fun, right? These are True! Science! Facts!
On his "Alcohol Problems & Solutions" Web site, Hanson discussed a recent study in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors that found seven out of 10 of the college-age women surveyed thought their male peers wanted them to have five drinks during social occasions, while the men preferred they drink half that or less.Okay, it doesn't take a ton of scientific understanding to note the enormous piles of cultural baggage that are inherent in a study asking women what they think men want from them, and following that up by asking men what they want from women. This result, IMO, is not surprising, but I think maybe it doesn't mean what Hanson thinks it means.
"Not only does alcohol affect girls' bodies differently from boys, the result of heavy drinking can be a turn-off for boys," says Hanson. "Boys don't want to take care of a girl who is drunk."Wow. That is...that is quite a statement there. I mean really, there is much that could be discussed regarding expectations and pressures to drink for people of any gender, especially in college. The study Hanson mentions could even be used to explore some of these issues. But to leap to the conclusion from the data he quoted that "boys don't like it when girls drink heavily," and that "boys don't want to take care of a girl who is drunk" says far more about Hanson and his prejudices than it does about These Girls These Days. Because, in Hanson's world, women only ever do things to appear attractive to men, and the way to keep them from doing things that are unattractive to men is to use our favorite tools—shame and fear!
seeks to "To advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people."I guess those "all people" don't, as usual, include women. Typically, the use of fear and shame to keep those pesky womenfolk constrained to roles that men approve of is the "benefit" that is being sought here.
