Heather Small: "Proud"
Cable "News" Network
This morning, CNN has a story up about segregation. Well, not segregation-- actually, "segregation."
What, you ask, is CNN referring to when it talks about "segregation", once in the title of the story, and again in the text?
Well:
A Pennsylvania high school says some students are separated by race, gender and language for a few minutes each day in an effort to boost academic scores.
In other words, segregation.
Look, if administrators at this high school (or anyone else) want to defend segregation as a tool for increasing academic success, I suppose they're welcome to discuss their idea, even if they're really not entitled to do so as public school administrators.
But they don't get to pretend that this policy isn't real segregation. I know the term segregation in reference to schools brings to mind things like Brown vs. Board, Little Rock Central, and Governor Wallace. But, uh, that's because those are also things that involved actual, yes literal segregation.
Responsible news media wouldn't enable folks' claims that polished versions of the same old shit are fundamentally different from past policies that many people (including :ahem: these guys) acknowledge to have been horribly wrong.
Let's be clear here, racial (and economic) segregation is still a problem in the United States, and public schools are no exception. We are not in a post-racial, post-feminist, post-civil rights era, and no amount of scare quotes changes that fact.
Whoops I Barfed on Your Time Magazine
The cover story, "The Role Model: What Obama Sees in Reagan," will open in a tab on your computer labeled "Obama's Reagan Bromance." Seriously.
Oh, Time. What are we going to do with you?
Question of the Day
What or who would you like to see hosting an open thread(s)?
There have been a couple of weeks recently where I forgot to set up the Open Thread on Sunday night for Monday morning, and Melissa has kindly filled in. She likes to challenge me to build a theme around weird stuff, which is great, because after doing this for a while I've been running out of ideas. So what would you like to see?
Without a Trace of Irony Dept.
In an altogether too familiar story, a Harps Supermarket in Mountain View, AR received "several" complaints from customers regarding the cover of a US Weekly magazine. They therefore placed a "family shield" over the magazine, to shield young, impressionable eyes.
Here's the cover:
So, let's recap, shall we? Harps used a "family shield" to "protect young Harps shoppers" from the sight of... a family. A family with a child.
Of course, they're not the right kind of family, and children must be protected from those.
The shields have since been removed, thanks to a lot of squeaky
Daily Dose of Cute
Video Description: Sophie lies in the crook of my arm, grooming herself and purring away.
This video is two years old now, but Sophie still loves to leave her perch on the monitor to come snuggle in the crook of my arm at least once a day. It makes writing difficult, but I think that's sort of the point. "Take a break, Two-Legs!"
Important Announcement
I like Helena Bonham Carter and I like her mismatched shoes.
I rented Lady Jane on VHS from Blockbuster Video when I was 13 because I liked the picture on the cover. And it was this revelation, a movie about a girl not so much older than I was who became the Queen, and she was smart and progressive and wouldn't compromise her religious or cultural beliefs and holy shit they killed her for it.
That's a simplification of the film, and the film itself is an embellishment of a largely undocumented nine days.
But I didn't get all that when I was 13. I got that being smart and uncompromising and progressive, especially while also being a woman, was controversial and sometimes dangerous, but that it's worth doing anyway.
Which is all an aside to my main point, which is that I fell in love with Helena Bonham Carter while she was playing Lady Jane Grey, who I imagine would have thought wearing two different colored shoes was kinda cool.
LOL UR Mendacious Arithmetic
Yesterday, the Republican controlled House passed a bill to eliminate public financing of electoral campaigns.
In light of Citizens United and President Obama's decision to turn down public funding in his 2008 campaign, this certainly strikes me as an opportune time to revisit the federal government's role in campaign spending. Unfortunately, if this bill was to become law (it won't in the immediate future), it would signal a further step towards cementing the United States' position as a corporatocracy.
That said, permit me to talk about math.
One of the prime arguments the Republicans are making about this legislation (indeed, about virtually all legislation) is that the US needs to reduce government spending to get our budget deficit under control.
So.
Yesterday, on the same day Mitch McConnell took up the flag in the Senate, saying:"In a time of exploding deficits and record debt the last thing the American people want right now is to provide what amounts to welfare for politicians."
the Congressional Budget Office announced that it expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.48 trillion this year. CBO estimates that the decision to extend the Bush tax cuts (which Republicans pushed for) is responsible for $390 billion of that deficit. Indeed, the interest payment on the tax cut extension will be around $50 billion per year.
Eliminating public campaign financing would save the federal government about $62 million a year.
To recap:
2011 deficit: $1,480 billion
2011 cost of the Bush tax cuts: $390 billion
2011 cost of interest on the Bush tax cuts: $50 billion
Potential savings of eliminating public financing: $0.062 billion
I call bullshit.
DADT Update
Pentagon to outline training for post-DADT life:
Pentagon leaders will roll out a plan Friday that is expected to give the military services about three months to train their forces on the new law allowing gays to serve openly, officials said Wednesday.Indeed so.
The plan, they said, will outline the personnel, recruiting and other regulations that must be changed. It will describe three levels of training for the troops, their commanders and the key administrators, recruiters and other leaders who will have to help implement the changes.
Under that training schedule, full implementation of the law could begin later this summer. Once the training is complete, the president and his top military advisers must certify that lifting the ban won’t hurt troops’ ability to fight. Sixty days after certification, the law would take effect.
...According to officials, the training will be broken into three categories. One will be for administrators and other leaders who will have to be able to answer detailed questions about the new policy. The second will be for senior commanders who will have to enforce the policies and also be on the lookout for signs of unease or problems among service members. The third group will be the general training for the troops.
...The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, however, wants officials to hurry along certification that the change won’t hurt military effectiveness.
“We think there should be certification from the president, [Defense] Secretary Robert Gates and [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Chairman Michael Mullen in this quarter,” the group said in a statement Wednesday. “We need to make ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal a reality sooner rather than later.”
Yikes
[Trigger warning for unethical sexual behavior, possible sexual assault and stalking.]
So, CNN has this big exclusive on misconduct at the FBI, and I'm not especially surprised that there is some percentage of agents who are creeps, but I am certainly intrigued by the FBI's position on what constitutes an appropriate punishment for unethical sexual behavior (which may actually be sexual assault, depending on context like some element of coercion, unclear in the article) and borderline stalking (or legal stalking, also depending on context not made explicit in the article).
I mean, how did the agency know, for example, about the supervisor who watched "pornographic movies in the office while sexually satisfying himself" during work hours unless somebody saw him (which was quite possibly the whole point) and/or he talked about it? That's sexual harassment at minimum.
Which seems it ought to warrant a more serious response than a 35-day suspension.
I'd really like it if the US government started taking sexual harassment, assault, and violence seriously, because I'm really tired of reading about sex crimes in various federal agencies (and Congress), sex crimes in the military, sex crimes in the Peace Corps, sex crimes by subcontractors, etc. etc. etc.
If anyone at the White House is interested in making rape prevention a priority, there's a lady at the State Department who might have some ideas about how to do that.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for violence and homophobia]
"When we called for hanging of gay people, we meant ... after they have gone through the legal process...I did not call for them to be killed in cold blood like he was."—Giles Muhame, editor of the Ugandan tabloid The Rolling Stone (no connection to the American publication) [TW] speaking about the murder of gay rights activist David Kato.
In late 2010, Muhame's paper published the names, addresses, and photos of "[the] top 100 homosexuals" (including Kato) under a banner that included the phrase "Hang Them."
Blog Note
I've been feeling a little under the weather, nothing to be alarmed about, just the same old shit, so I'm taking it easy and posting may be a little lighter than usual over the next few days.
No need to feel obliged by this post to wish me well (and the usual suspects can hold the tiresome emails accusing me of attention-seeking); I just wanted to post something informational for the Shakers who tend to worry when I deviate from my routine.
Question of the Day
What's the worst back-handed compliment you've ever received?
I don't know if this is precisely the worst, but, not terribly long ago, someone said to me, "You're a really great female blogger." Oof.
An Observation About Bootstraps
In the conservative lexicon, ownership is good, and there's no dirtier word than entitlement. In last night's GOP response to the State of the Union, the idea that entitlement programs like Social Security and universal healthcare (to which we unfortunately do not have anything close) are THE WORST and individualism and self-governance are THE BEST was a rather prominent theme, because BOOTSTRAPS.
Which are the thingies conservatives wave around to distract our attention primarily from the existence of privilege and prejudice, but also from the reality that entitlement programs are not, actually, the "wealth redistribution" programs they assert them to be. To hear conservatives tell it, entitlement programs are some kind of wealth-punishing equalizer, as opposed to components of a fraying safety net that is often the only thing keeping low- or no-wage earners from falling off the edge.
I'll leave aside for now the tropes about the legions of straw-people who could be earning a livable wage at an awesome job but inexplicably choose not to work, living high on the hog off our generous welfare system. Suffice it to say, that is abject nonsense, and being poor is one of the most difficult things to be in this country. Poverty is not for lazy people.
My present concern is with the working poor, and the way they are regarded by the architects of the Ownership Society.
Those men—and they are indeed almost all men, most of whose lives have been dictated by inherent privilege and family connections, which we're not meant to note while admiring their shiny bootstraps—believe quite firmly, and without seemingly a trace of irony or compunction, that one gets what one deserves in life. From the imposing height of their handsomely recompensed sinecures, they will assert with the particular condescending authority bestowed only by unearned success that, with a little hard work, anyone can be a productive member of their magnificent Ownership Society.
Now, I don't feel inclined to get into a whole Marxist discussion about the means of production here, but what these insufferable, vainglorious, classist captains of self-aggrandizing bullshit seem never to grasp, or possibly just acknowledge, is that if you want to live in a capitalist society that gives you the opportunity to get nasty rich, then we can't all be wealthy. And if you want to be the kind of person who doesn't pump your own gas, or make your own sandwiches, or clean your own house, or manicure your own fingernails, or drain your own dog's anal glands, then there are going to have to be people who fill all those jobs.
And most of those professional, hard-working people will put in at least 40 hours a week, or more, and even still, many of them won't be given healthcare benefits, and many of them won't earn enough money to feed a family, and many of them won't be able to save as much as they'll need for their retirement.
People who honorably dedicate their time, energy, and talents to jobs that might not pay well are indeed entitled to something—to not work their whole lives only to find themselves poverty-stricken, or hungry, or homeless after one small (or not small) medical crisis. And if we're not going to ensure that every job comes with a livable wage, access to affordable healthcare, and retirement benefits, then we've got to provide a robust and well-funded social safety net.
I don't think that's asking for much, in exchange for a lifetime of providing service to their chosen vocation.
Though I grant it's certainly easier to scream BOOTSTRAPS! and carelessly assert that people who don't have everything they need just aren't trying hard enough.
Funny how the Grand Advocates of Hard Work are always the ones making the easy arguments.
Daily Dose of Cute
I've heard there are people in the world who think greyhounds aren't cute.
Does not compute.
Don't cut me off, I'm heteronorrrrrrrmmmatttiiiiiiiivvvvvveeeee........
You know those car decals that you can buy to showcase how nuclear, hetero, and fecund your family is?
I'm gonna buy, like, fifty ladies and put them all over my rear window. Fifty ladies and four cats.
