[Taken from an actual text conversation...]
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
Last week, I wrote about a rape case in which two Michigan State University basketball players were accused of taking turns "assaulting an unidentified woman for nearly an hour in their Wonders Hall dormitory room late on Aug. 29 and into Aug. 30," and, despite one of the players' voluntarily corroborating the victim's statement, including the fact that she did not consent, prosecutors had nonetheless declined to pursue the case. (On Friday, I linked to a follow-up on the story here.)
Julie from The American Independent, which has been vigorously following this case, just emailed me with an update, which I'm quoting with her permission:
Hi Melissa,What I find particularly interesting in this case is the prosecutor's contention (pdf) that the player who made a voluntary statement did not actually corroborate the victim's allegation that she was raped, even though the transcript clearly has the player reporting she said, "Stop," at one point, that she then got talked into continuing, that she argued with the other player about his unwillingness to wear a condom, and that she told him she felt as though she couldn't leave because they were physically intimidating.
Just wanted to pass along an update on the MSU sexual assault case. The prosecutor has now released the transcript of the interviews with one of the men as well as the victim (with very little redaction, thus making her identity obvious). Michigan Messenger talked to a number of experts to evaluate what the prosecutor is claiming is an absence of crime vs. what the police report suggests, and that story went up live this morning. Ed Brayton has also been looking at overall prosecution rates for sexual assault in Ingham county as well as nationwide, and will continue following up on the story.
Reuters: Many Tea Partiers part of religious right.
Thanks for the hot tip, Reuters. I haven't been so excited about a news story since your three-part investigative series on the wetness of water.
[H/T to Shaker Lizard.]
"It's great that President Obama is showing a fighting spirit in the weeks before an election, but what his former voters need to see is that same fighting spirit when he's governing."—Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an org launched to advocate for progressive legislation and candidates who will champion it.
On the one hand, I'm like: Yeah!
On the other hand, I'm like: The problem isn't that he's not showing a fighting spirit; the problem is that he's just not using it to fight for the things I want and/or in the way I want. For someone who got elected on the soaring rhetoric of hope and change, he is frightfully indifferent to the value of being visionary. Even if his team is certain they are going to have to end up with compromised, bipartisanized, uninspiringly pragmatic legislation if they want to get anything passed, instant capitulation isn't ideologically helpful, even if it's politically expedient.
It does matter whether we win or lose, but it also matters how we play the game.
Is all I'm saying.
This blogaround is brought to you by Shaxco, Soupmakers to the QCoFM and to the surrounding areas of Faggottown and Mildendorf since 2010.
Recommended reading:
Andrew Price: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money
Ginny W: So, you’re in pastry, right? (H/T Zuska)
Dana Goldstein: Now That There's an Election, Democrats are Remembering They are Pro-Choice!
Michael Erard at Design Observer: It's the 16th Ed. of the Chicago Manual of Style and I Feel Fine
femmephane: Why I don’t like Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project as a response to bullying (Via Samia's must-read post, [TW suicide discussion] *what* "gets better," exactly?)
Latoya Peterson: On Rick Sanchez, Jon Stewart, and Why We All Lose Playing the Oppression Olympics
scicurious: Sensitivity to Social Rejection and Inflammatory Responses to Stress
The Selfish Seamstress knits a gorgeous Missoni-inspired scarf in Still here, still making you jealous: the Envy scarf
Blog of the Carl Brandon Society: Regarding the Elizabeth Moon Controversy. The post to which they are responding is here.
Jesse Sharrard of Corduroy Orange: Corn Sugar Confusion and a great quinoa pilaf recipe
Share your links in comments!
And when it was taken off the table.
In addition to Igor's piece, also see: Glenn, DDay, and Digby.
[Trigger warning for homophobia; suicide.]
Dear Warren Throckmorton:
If you and your fellow Evangelical Christians really want to be "part of the solution" to stop anti-gay bullying, you'll stop teaching your children that being gay is sinful.
You can argue all you want that the solution is Christian compassion despite a belief that being gay is sinful, but as long as you believe and preach and teach that gay kids are inherently abominable to God, you're always going to be part of the problem.
And no, the philosophical contortions in which many Christians like to engage, claiming God only hates homosexuality but doesn't hate homosexual people, does not absolve you of your responsibility. Treating people as though their humanity is somehow separate from their intrinsic characteristics is not merely absurd bullshit; when you seek to wrench apart the components of people's whole selves and throw away pieces of their identities, it's just eliminationist rhetoric dressed up in its Sunday best.
This reflexive insistence that anti-gay Christians can't just toss away their institutional homophobia because it's in the Bible is contemptible nonsense. There are all kinds of things in the Bible that modern evangelicals don't teach their children, and for less reason than because to continue to believe it has demonstrably deadly consequences.
Listen, I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't believe. I'm just telling you that it's disingenuous to pretend that your anti-gay beliefs themselves don't have cultural consequences.
Any well-known and widely-discussed and deeply-held belief of millions of people in a democratic nation is going to have cultural consequences. Especially when that belief marginalizes millions of other people.
If you really and genuinely and authentically want to be part of the solution, you'll take a good, long, hard look at the particular bit of dishonesty that is telling yourselves the belief itself is okay to have. Because there is nothing—and I mean nothing—that is helpful about telling "straight evangelical students that following your faith means treating your neighbors well. That means all of them - even the gay ones."
Even the gay ones. That shit, right there, suggests to the very students you want to dissuade from bullying that their gay peers are less than, which is the precise attitude that leads to bullying in the first place.
You can't hope to be part of the solution when your beliefs are exactly the problem.
You want to help? Stop marginalizing queers.
It's that simple. Anything else is an empty gesture, designed to make you feel good—not designed to help gay kids.
Sincerely,
Liss
Ugh, the mendacity of this asshole drives me to absolute distraction:
Palin, delivering a paid speech to an anti-abortion group in Texas, claimed that President Barack Obama oversaw "the biggest advance of the abortion industry in America" by signing landmark health care reform legislation that, she said, allows for taxpayer-funded abortions.No. The reform legislation specifically does not allow for taxpayer-funded abortions. That's what the whole Stupak shit was about. That's why the president had to issue an executive order in association with the legislation banning the use of federal funds for abortion. It's flatly untrue that "Obamacare" funds abortions.
"That's why it's essential that we use the 2010 midterms to elect a Congress that will make undoing the damage of Obamacare its first priority," she told an audience of more than 2,500 gathered at First Baptist Church of Houston, a megachurch on the city's west side.
Palin starkly framed the midterm elections on Tuesday as a choice between political candidates who favor a "culture of life" and those on the opposite side of the issue wanting to implement "a culture of death."Says the supporter of the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War, whose warmongering position on Iran places her to the right of Dick Cheney. Ugh.
'Tis Autumn, and it's chilly and damp here in Pennsylvania--good soup weather. I am making matzo ball* soup. To paraphrase Marilyn Monroe, the balls really are the best part of the matzo. I like to start with the leftovers of a roasted chicken for any chicken soup, but today I just had a pack of chicken drumsticks (on sale!) I roasted them, and am making soup stock from the bones while the matzo ball mix chills in the fridge.
So, here's the question: what's your favorite soup? (Besides Autumnal Metaphor Soup, that is.)
For non-vegetarian options, I'd go with chicken soup in all its forms--from Thai-style with coconut milk and lemongrass, to my usual simmered roast chicken soup with leek and potato. Mushroom soup is a close second. For vegan options, mushroom works very well, as does butternut squash soup made with apple cider, a bit of curry power and cinnamon, and coconut milk instead of cream. In season, fresh tomato with basil can't be bested. Yum!
If you don't like soup, feel free to tell us why.
_________
*Matzo ball recipes vary greatly of course. I use chicken fat plus a dash of canola oil, and no seltzer or plain water (just 2-3 tablespoons of the soup stock). I then poach the balls at a bare simmer in the soup stock itself. Not everyone approves of this last practice, as it clouds the broth. The chicken fat has some herb flavor left over from roasting, and I add a little minced cooked onion. Now you know. More from Epicurious here.
I've talked a fair amount of shit about previous chapters. They were awful; I don't think I was being unfair. The writing really is terrible. The plot nonsensical. The characters flat, inconsistent. The book is, quite simply, garbage.
And as much as I've complained about those early chapters, this one is, inarguably, the worst. Because as ridiculous as everything has been up this point, chapter thirteen is even stupider. In fact, it is so poorly constructed that it's insulting.
Here's what happens: Noah wakes up in Molly's arms, in the back of a police van. The patriots are perp walked past the liberal media. Noah's fancypants lawyers gets the charges against him dropped. But before Noah can leave, he sees all the most radical patrons from the bar standing around the police station having a laugh. Because they were all undercover cops!
Really.
This is, literally, the most ridiculous and unbelievable thing that could have happened. I dare you to come up with something stupider. Can't be done. No Twinkies for you!
He opened his eyes, and found her looking down at him.
It was the wide variety of aches and pains that told him for certain she wasn't a figment of his imagination. His head was resting in her lap, and Molly held him steady as the crowded police van bumped and jostled along the patchy downtown streets.
Noah looked up at her again. "What happened—"
She hushed him with a fingertip to his lips, and he saw that her wrists were bound with nylon ties.
After a time he saw something that he couldn't begin to understand; he must have been mistaken. The man from the back of the tavern, the one with the gun, was being escorted from an adjacent cell. He wasn't in handcuffs or restraints of any kind. He was just walking along with the officers toward the exit.
Charlie Nelan was one of those old-school, silver-haired überprofessionals who swore by the power of image. No matter where you happened to see him, he always looked as though he'd just stepped out of the "Awesome Lawyers" issue of Gentlemen's Quarterly. Fortunately, he was every bit as sharp as he looked.
Out in a common area, a dozen or so men were gathered together having coffee and a collegial chat with some uniformed police. He stood and stepped closer to the glass, trying hard to believe his eyes.
In this surreal gathering was every heckler, every troublemaker who had made himself apparent during the speeches at the bar. Every one of them was dressed similarly, the differences being confined to the inflammatory slogans on their clothing and their selection of cracker-chic accessories. When scattered among a larger group they'd been harder to spot as co-conspirators, but all together like this, with their guard down, their costumes were obvious and their mannerisms out of character. It looked like the after-party of a Larry the Cable Guy stunt-double audition at Central Casting.
One of them matched a picture in Noah's memory to the very last detail. He was sure this time: the man was wearing a loud flannel shirt, a hunter's vest, a do-rag torn from the corner of a Confederate battle flag, and a shoulder holster.
"Those guys, right out there"—Noah pointed through the glass, and Charlie looked briefly in that direction—"they were at this meeting tonight, where all this happened, and they were there specifically to start something. When they got tired of waiting for the people to get violent they did it themselves."
"Let me see if I understand you. You're saying that you think an undercover New York City police officer discharged his weapon in a crowded bar to incite this whole incident?"
That wasn't welcome news, but Noah took a deep breath and nodded his permission.
[Background.]
Joe The Plumber, the Tea Party, and the Alliance For Truth have taken on the most evil of evil organizations. (No, not NAMBLA.) I'm talking about The Humane Society. Yes, the evil, despicable, free-market-hating Humane Society.
Proposition B or the "Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act" ... aims to help eliminate the "3000 puppy mills" in Missouri that constitute "30% of all puppy mills in the U.S.," according to Michael Markarian, the Chief Operating Officer of the HSUS.The Alliance For Truth (HA!) will have none of that and are fighting back against this "radical agenda." Or, as spokesdouche Joe The Plumber says, the propsed bill is "taking our constitutional rights away."
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is the latest prominent Democrat to tell progressives to suck it up and vote blue:
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says discouraged liberals need to "get over it" and support the Democratic Party, before they regret it.1. The Democratic Party ain't exactly the Democratic Party of old, either. In many ways, that's a good thing, because the party has progressed with the country on many social issues, even when it still lags behind public opinion. But in other ways, it's lamentable: The Democratic Party of the New Deal has been replaced by the Democratic Party of the Bipartisan Deal.
"This isn't about President [Barack] Obama," Rendell said on MSNBC's "Last Word" Monday night. "It's about whether the Democratic Party, not perfect, but certainly bent on trying to preserve theories in government and progressive practices, is going to be in charge of the Congress or the Republican Party. And it's not the Republican Party of old. This is a scary Republican Party."
Of conflicts the left has had with Obama, Rendell said, "We ought to get over it."
"If we've got some issues with President Obama, save them for another day," he said.
(Trigger Warning for attempts to coerce sex from a position of authority, and prosecutorial misconduct toward a victim of domestic violence)
Wisconsin's Calumet County D. A. Ken Kratz, whose attempts to coerce women who came to him for professional help (including a victim of domestic violence whose assailant he was prosecuting) into sexual relationships were detailed here and here, has resigned, faced with a hearing on removing him from office which was called by the governor after receiving formal complaints about Kratz from citizens.
In a statement, Kratz said that he had lost the confidence of those he represented
primarily due to personal issues which have now affected my professional career.No.
