This is what came up first for me today:
You?
Open Thread: Operation Odyssey Dawn
I'm watching the Pentagon presser on the "coalition" attack on Libyan targets, and I am, quite frankly, stunned at how this all went down. President Obama seemed totally detached for so long while other people (ahem) threw rocks at his windows, and then, without any meaningful national debate, we're leading a military coalition and bombing Libya.
I agree with the person who once said: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
Too bad Barack Obama doesn't agree with himself anymore.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Daily Dose of Cute
Ms. Matilda, who is quite genuinely one of the sweetest creatures I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. She is equal parts affectionate, awkward, and silly—and if there is such a think as cat dorks, she is their queen.
Case of the Sads
I has one. For America's millionaires who don't feel rich.
Of the 1000 respondents in a survey by Fidelity Investments, all with at least $1 million in investable assets, 42% said they do not feel rich.I guess the one thing money can't buy is feeling awesome about having money. Or something.
...The group, on average, was valued at $3.5 million.
Photo of the Day
James Franco showers in his tux, because James Franco.
What—did you think that James Franco doesn't wear a tuxedo in the shower? You're so weird.
[Picture via Andy, from a shoot for Vogue Hommes International. H/T to Shaker bgk.]
Number of the Day
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
18.9: The percentage of female airmen (nice term, btw) who report having been sexually assaulted since joining the Air Force.
It is one of the most comprehensive studies undertaken by the US military to assess sexual assaults within its ranks, and could become a model for how the military as a whole begins to address the problem, defense officials say.For that reason, among others (e.g. it was a superior officer who committed the crime), there may be statistically significant under-reportage, which means the actual percentage of women who have been sexually assaulted in the Air Force is even higher. (See also.)
While the data suggest the sexual-assault rate in the Air Force is roughly equal to what it is in the broader civilian population, the survey – obtained exclusively by the Monitor – points to unique challenges presented by the culture of the service. The vast majority of crimes are committed by male arimen on female airmen, and nearly half of rape victims said they did not report the crime because they "did not want to cause trouble in their unit."
[Previously on rape in the US military.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proudly not profiting from war since 2004.
Recommended Reading:
Lisa: [TW for transphobia, homophobia, and violence] URGENT: Help Stop LGBT Murders in Brazil
noir180: [TW for sexual violence] My Sister's Keeper: A "B" Side for Cleveland, TX
Fannie: [TW for homophobia and violence] Sally Kern Takes Christian Persecution Complex Up a Notch
Brian: [TW for fat hatred and eating discussion] A Radical Idea
David: Bachmann accuses Weiner of trading in 'fiction' on budget. His retort: 'I don't think you want to go there.'
Stephanie: Seriously? These Are the 100 Greatest Female Characters?
Leave your links in comments...
Same Victims; Different Government Failure
[Trigger warning for police corruption; multiple institutional prejudices; rape culture.]
Shaker Anitanola emailed me a heads-up about the report issued by federal investigators following a nearly year-long Justice Department investigation of the New Orleans police department. The Times-Picayune describes the report (viewable here) as "blistering."
Federal investigators who have spent the past 10 months delving into the New Orleans Police Department found routine constitutional violations in several areas of policing in the city, according to a blistering report released this morning by the U.S. Department of Justice.And, much like the neglected levees ensured the most vulnerable population in the city were most effected by Hurricane Katrina, the police department's multiple failures have disproportionately affected marginalized populations:
Officers were too quick to use excessive force on the streets and, too often, neglected to document such use of force after the fact. The investigations that followed were inadequate, even in the most serious cases, when an officer fired his gun, the Justice Department found.
New Orleans police also routinely stop people without any legal basis for doing so, often conducting "pat-down" searches that don't meet the requirements of federal law, investigators concluded.
The patterns of policing in New Orleans are biased against several demographic groups, including black residents, people who don't speak English fluently, gay and transgendered people and women, the report says.Swell.
Additionally, the sex-crimes unit was singled out for criticism after investigators found "the unit's deficiencies are deep."
In many cases, detectives conducted victim interviews with the seeming aim of categorizing the allegations as false, according to the review. The report suggests many more complaints might need to be reinvestigated.Also singled out: The domestic violence unit, which is staffed with only three officers in total, which "means investigators too often don't interview witnesses, according to the report."
Until recently, the NOPD had an "unofficial" policy of not interviewing sexual assault suspects, even if the suspect was identified by a victim, which meant cases were built almost exclusively around the victim's testimony. However, the new commander of the unit has changed this de facto policy -- which is not typical of American police departments -- and he has purchased video equipment for an interrogation room.
...The authors found disconcerting patterns in a series of sexual assault complaints categorized as "Signal 21s," or "miscellaneous incidents." Detectives often emphasized inconsistent statements by victims or gaps in memory, while expressing doubt about their credibility or motives for fabricating an attack, the report said. Detectives seemed to believe many stereotypes about how victims of sexual assault behave.
The neglect of the sex crimes and domestic violence units were so severe that, because the crimes disproportionately affect women, the units' collective failure was "the basis for the Justice Department's findings that the NOPD violates the constitutional rights of women by not properly investigating allegations of violence against them."
The New Orleans police department says it's instituting changes. How reassuring.
I hope for the sake of my sisters and brothers in New Orleans, that promise actually means something. And that, if it doesn't, the Justice Department makes sure changes happen anyway.
A Thought
by Shaker and Shakesville Moderator Aphra_Behn
The difficulty of getting reliable news on Japan's crisis has made me think about why, frankly, everything feels so fucked in the US right now.
Thanks to the GOP, quite simply, USians, whether left or right, have no one we can trust.
The GOP has spent years accusing the media of having liberal bias, whilst simultaneously voting in policies that favored increasing conglomeration and corporate control. They have deregulated it to the point that it is now perfectly legal to knowingly report false news. And this week, they had an "emergency" meeting to attempt to finally dismantle public broadcasting. The result? We can't trust the media.
The GOP has spent years dismantling the New Deal-era protections that held Wall Street in check, that forced honest financial accountings from banks and other lenders. They have stripped labor, environmental, and other regulations that once limited the ill effects of industry. They have granted corporations all the rights of persons with none of the responsibilities. They have stripped consumer protections down to "caveat emptor." The result? We can't trust business.
The GOP has spent years claiming that "government isn't the solution" whenever the Democrats are in office, and claiming to be a leaner, more responsible government when they are in office. In practice, this has meant constant obstructionism under Democrats and thinly-disguised corporate giveaways under Republicans. Under Rove, the GOP took the old art of government cover-up to new heights, proclaiming that disastrous failures were "mission accomplished" and a "heckuva job," never backing down from these assertions, EVER, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The result? We can't trust government.
The GOP has spent years meddling with election laws and political funding regulations, while its corporate donors set up think tanks and astroturf organizations. On everything from gay rights to environmental policy, on political campaigns from local to presidential, they deployed these supposed "experts," "neutral parties," and "concerned citizens." With names invoking research councils, veterans organizations, or serious policy experts, these shadowy organziations choke out the voices of those with genuine knowledge as well as true grassroots movements. The result? We can't trust either "grassroots" or "professional" organizations.
The GOP has spent years belittling colleges and universities as little better than Marxist training camps, full of traitors actively plotting to overthrow the nation. Meanwhile, they have pursued educational policies that have slowly siphoned away public funding for education, particularly targeting aid programs for economically disadvantaged students, as well as research funding. Students end up deep in debt, and universities are forced to turn to more private donors and corporations for funding, eroding their appearance of objectivity. The result? We can't trust academe.
So as Japan shakes and its nuclear reactors face a potential disaster that most of us can't begin to understand clearly, we literally have no one, no body, no entity, that we can turn to, and generally agree, "this entity can be trusted."
On both the right and the left, we feel doubt about every "expert." All opinions have become equal, in part because there are no referees, no cops, no one to step above the fray and guide us. And while I'm a big fan of "question Authority," that doesn't mean much where there is no authority left to question.
I'm not so naive as to romanticize the past, but for much of the 20th century, U.S. political society had enough checks and balances built in that despite the Gulf of Tonkin, despite Watergate, despite all the crap and scandals, we had enough trust in at least some institutions that an environmental crisis did not also provoke an existential crisis as we argued over whether "up" actually did mean "down."
It seems as if today, there are not just two sides to every story, there are six, twelve, an infinite number of sides are represented...all but one.
Ours.
The Best Thing You'll Read All Day
Byron Hurt's "Why I Am a Male Feminist." An excerpt:
I had internalized what I had seen in my home and was slowly becoming what I had disdained as a young boy. Although my mother attempted to teach me better, I, like a lot of boys and men, felt entitled to mistreat the female gender when it benefited me to do so.Go read the whole thing.
After graduating from college, I needed a job. I learned about a new outreach program that was set to launch. It was called the Mentors in Violence Prevention Project. As a student-athlete, I had done community outreach, and the MVP Project seemed like a good gig until I got a real job in my field: journalism.
Founded by Jackson Katz, the MVP Project was designed to use the status of athletes to make gender violence socially unacceptable. When I met with Katz, I didn't realize that the project was a domestic violence prevention program. Had I known that, I wouldn't have gone in for the job interview.
So when Katz explained that they were looking to hire a man to help institutionalize curricula about preventing gender violence at high schools and colleges around the country, I almost walked out the door. But during my interview, Katz asked me an interesting question. "Byron, how does African-American men's violence against African-American women uplift the African-American community?"
No one had ever asked me that question before. As an African-American man who was deeply concerned about race issues, I had never given much thought about how emotional abuse, battering, sexual assault, street harassment and rape could affect an entire community, just as racism does.
...I read books and essays by bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis and other feminist writers.
Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading the work of these black feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After digging into their work, I came to really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these women.
Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as my father had silenced my mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men silenced feminists by belittling them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are.
...Not only does feminism give woman a voice, but it also clears the way for men to free themselves from the stranglehold of traditional masculinity. When we hurt the women in our lives, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt our community, too.
Quote of the Day
"Unemployment has become a trap, one that's very difficult to escape. There are almost five times as many unemployed workers as there are job openings; the average unemployed worker has been jobless for 37 weeks, a post-World War II record. In short, we're well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless."—Paul Krugman, who then wonders, "Why doesn't Washington care?"
Which of course is rhetorical, and Krug's got some ideas about that you should definitely read. But, ultimately, I think the broader answer to that question is something I mentioned earlier today already: "That the GOP isn't even pretending to be remotely reasonable anymore underscores how utterly confident they are that they don't need to persuade voters now that they can just buy elections." And much of the Democratic Party, especially the Obama-triangulist-Third Way-Blue Dog-bipartipoop wing, has bought into that paradigm, too.
They don't care because they don't believe they have to anymore.
News from Wisconsin
A Madison judge has issued a restraining order blocking the enforcement of the recently passed anti-union bill.
UPDATE 1: The ruling judge is Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi.
UPDATE 2: The judge says she's not ruling on the merits of the legislation, but on the "not minor detail" of the GOP's failure to issue a meeting notice. (Via @news3jessica.)
It's Delightful, It's Delicious, It's De-Lovely...
...it's De-lurk Day! We haven't had one of these since last July (!), so all you Shaker lurkers who rarely or never pipe up, don't be shy; say hi!
Cheeky devils!
Abortion Audits, Care of the GOP
[Trigger warning for hostility to agency and bodily autonomy.]
The Republican Party is absolutely out of control. As if further evidence was needed that the corporate takeover of the US government was complete, the fact that the GOP isn't even pretending to be remotely reasonable anymore underscores how utterly confident they are that they don't need to persuade voters now that they can just buy elections.
The latest complication in their unfettered onslaught against people with uteri? Abortion audits.
Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?Apart from the obvious breach of privacy this would create for women/trans men who had abortions, compelling IRS agents to discuss sexual violence with taxpayers quite evidently risks exposing survivors to potentially triggering work, at a job where such an expectation is wildly inappropriate.
In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to determine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.
The proposed law, also known as H.R. 3, extends the reach of the Hyde Amendment—which bans federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake—into many parts of the federal tax code. In some cases, the law would forbid using tax benefits—like credits or deductions—to pay for abortions or health insurance that covers abortion. If an American who used such a benefit were to be audited, Barthold said, the burden of proof would lie with the taxpayer to provide documentation, for example, that her abortion fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.
"Were this to become law, people could end up in an audit, the subject of which could be abortion, rape, and incest," says Christopher Bergin, the head of Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit tax policy group. "If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it."
There is so much wrong with this single bill, it's almost incomprehensible.
I know the president has a lot on his plate right now, but he really needs to find the time to be the ally to half the population of this country that we were promised he would be. We need loud and prominent opposition, and we need it now.
The GOP Goes After Haywood Jabuzoff
The House of Representatives held an emergency session to debate job creation ending funding for NPR. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) dishes out the snark.
Nevertheless, the House voted to defund NPR. It's basically meaningless since the Senate won't pass it and the president won't sign it, but it does amaze me that the Republicans are willing to go along with a right-wing scam perpetrated by fraudster James O'Keefe. (Actually it doesn't amaze me at all.)
What we're seeing here is a great example of what Digby calls Cokie's Law: It doesn't matter if it's true or not; it's what everyone is talking about.
Transcript, via C&L, below the fold.
Crisis averted, ladies and gentlemen. What a relief. What a relief. I'm glad we got the economy back going, I'm glad we've secured our nuclear power plants, I'm so glad the Americans are back to work. We finally found out our problem. We discovered a target that we can all agree upon.
It's these guys. This is the problem, it's Click & Clack, the Tappet Brothers. We're finally getting rid of them. Thank God we solved this problem for the country. Now let's look at them. Let's look at the record here.
For one, they talk in that Boston accent. Cah tawk? It's a car. It's a car, ladies and gentlemen. I need to call Congresswoman [sic] Capuano whenever they're on the air.
Secondly, they talk about master cylinders and slave cylinders. It's kinky! And so I am glad my Republican friends are finally getting to the bottom of this.
And then with all the giggling and snorting they do every week on their show, it's got to be some kind of a code. They're clearly talking to the Russians or the Chinese or something with all that giggling and snorting.
It is why I'm so relieved that we had this emergency session that we waived the rules of the House to require 72 hours so we finally get these guys off my radio. Click & Clack the Tappet Brothers on Car Talk. I know it. Because these guys clearly are political. Well, I don't know if they're political, they make no sense about most of what they say. But you know, I'm glad we're finally not going to have to listen to them. I'm glad the Republican party finally said enough of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers.
That clearly was what the American people said in campaign 2010, clearly it's in their Contract with America or something, right? Get rid of Click and Clack? It's about time. I have to tell you something, because the last thing we want is informative solutions to how we fix our cars and the Car Talk puzzler. And think about the people we're finally going to put out of work. You know, their customer care rep, Heywouldjoobuzzoff? [sic] (I'll tell you how to spell that later, I say to the stenographer) And the director of ethics, Youlyinsack. All of these guys that are finally going to be taken off the public payroll.
The Republican Party. No one can say they're not in touch. They get it. They understand where the American people are. The American people are not concerned about jobs and the economy, what's going on around the world.
They're staring at their radio, saying get rid of Click and Clack. Finally my Republican friends are doing it. Kudos to you.
