[Trigger warning for fat hatred and body policing.]
I know it's early, but I'm pretty sure there's not going to be anything worse than this horrendo Daily Fail article about getting liposuction to fix your cankles.
Good lord.
Whenever I hear the word "cankles," I am reminded of a former acquaintance of mine who once groused to me that it was no fair that she was skinny (her word) but had cankles and I was fat and had "nice ankles," followed by this plaintive look as if she expected to me apologize, or, perhaps, offer to exchange ankles with her in acknowledgment of the injustice that a skinny girl was forced to envy a fat girl.
Instead, I told her, "There's nothing wrong with your ankles."
"You WOULD say that," she sneered disgustedly in reply.
My fervent hope is that, in the interim, she has found body acceptance. Or, failing that, doesn't read this article.
[H/T to Shaker JPlum.]
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
I Found Me an Upside!
All we have to do is keep Michele Bachmann thinking she has a shot at the presidency through next June!
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's not running for re-election in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District while she's campaigning for the Republican nomination for president.[H/T to ThinkProgress]
However, state law would allow her to drop out of the presidential race and seek re-election for her current job by June 5, 2012.
Are you following Shakesville on Twitter? If not, you should be! Our twitter feed is @Shakestweetz, on which I tweet content updates but also other good stuff I'm reading, watching, listening to that I don't have the time or inclination to write about.
And, quelle surprise, frequently Deeky and I tweet very silly things to each other.
Some of the other contributors and mods have Twitter feeds, too, which I'll let them promote in comments, if they're so inclined. :)
Question of the Day
Is there any word you compulsively mispronounce, because you got it into your head it was pronounced one way, and even though you've found out it's totally not pronounced that way, the mispronunciation refuses to unstick?
Capillary. Which is correctly pronounced KAP-uh-ler-ee, but which I persistently mispronounce ka-PILL-er-ee. I also routinely mispronounce rhetoric as reh-TOR-ic, like rhetorical missing its last syllable.
Iain is famous for these. He has one of the most prodigious vocabularies of any person to whom I've ever spoken—it's genuinely impressive. It was also gleaned almost entirely from a voracious reading habit, so he's often never heard these words actually spoken by anyone but himself, and it turns out he's not the greatest pronunciation-deducer of all time. My favorite ever is you-BICK-tchoo-us, which is how ubiquitous tumbles out of his mouth.
Another favorite is his mispronunciation of lascivious, which he pronounces, as though it is perhaps a desert destination town founded by a punk rocker, Las Vicious.
I should note, in case it isn't obvious, that I find this habit to be one of the most charming, utterly endearing things evah about him.
Reason to Believe
While I'm not generally a fan, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has always struck me as an incredibly astute politician.
This afternoon, Cuomo unveiled a bill to make marriage gender-neutral. He's previously insisted that he wouldn't do so unless he was confident there were the 32 votes necessary for Senate passage. (The Assembly has been on board for a while.) On Monday, he stated that "I've had enough conversations with enough legislators. I believe the votes are there."
Also this afternoon, Senator Roy McDonald (R-ight on) became the 31st Senator to announce his support for Cuomo's bill, which includes various exemptions for Jesus et al.
Not only will gender-neutral marriage happen in New York, it appears entirely likely that it will happen this year.
Happy Pride Month, Archbishop of New York Timothy Michael Dolan.
On a related note, GENDA is stalled in committee. Because bathrooms. Still, this is good news.
In Case You've Forgotten...
...Gwyneth Paltrow is THE WORST [trigger warning for fat hatred and body policing]:
Last November, Gwyneth Paltrow gave Ross Mathews, the late night TV comic from Chelsea Lately – a little tough love.Gwyneth Paltrow, you are SO GOOD at fat-shaming! You should win an Oscar for Best Shamer!
"We were taping a Chelsea special," Mathews, 31, tells PEOPLE, "and she pointed at my tummy and said, 'What's going on here? I love you. Get it together.'"
That was all the motivation needed by Mathews [who has now lost 40 pounds].
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for homophobia; Christian supremacy.]
"Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people."—Archbishop of New York Timothy Michael Dolan, in a piece titled "The True Meaning of Marriage" which, naturally, excludes from its definition same-sex couples. But those beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination! Because he says so!
Okay, player.
The definition of "discrimination" is not the only thing about which Archbishop Dolan is a little confused. He also appears to need some assistance understanding the concept of representative democracy:
Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to "redefine" rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of "family" and "marriage" means.Whooooooooooooooops. Voting!
But, please, not here! Our country's founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.
News from Shakes Manor
There is a major roadwork project going on outside our house, which is super annoying for reasons ranging from noise pollution to having found our roadside mailbox shattered into 10,000 pieces on the ground. But the most annoying part (so far) is the further destruction of the perilously wrecked sidewalks which we must use to walk the dog. That's our main use (and many of our neighbors'): Other neighbors use them for walking/jogging/children's biking, and kids use them, during the school year, to get to the middle school that's just down the road.
Since the start of the project, I've fallen four times tripping over construction detritus or walking into unmarked holes in our yard or the sidewalk. A couple weekends ago, Iain fell into an unmarked hole in the sidewalk that they'd filled with sand, which had turned into quicksand after another torrential storm. He sunk in instantly to mid-thigh:
He's a strong dude in his 30s, and he struggled to free himself. Our next-door neighbors are a couple in their 80s, both recovering from cancer. The hole was just past their driveway.
On the other side of the street, they've completely torn out the sidewalks altogether. The nearest cross-street to our west has no sidewalks at all. The nearest cross-street to our east has them only on one side of the street.
Yesterday, a representative of the city came to my door to talk about the ongoing project, which was supposed to be finished by this fall after a year and a half, but now probably won't be finished for at least another year. I noted that sidewalks were a reasonable amenity to expect to be maintained, especially in an area with the outrageously high, regionally-inappropriate property taxes we pay. He agreed. And then shrugged. Because I live in a garbage state with a garbage governor.
The sidewalks, they keep telling us, are going to be fixed. They won't be left crumbled. But there are rumors that the sidewalks will never be repaired. New sidewalks take time, cost money.
Anyway, there is a point to this sidewalk rant, and here it is: My little exurban Indiana town is not the only place with crumbling sidewalks. There are crumbling sidewalks all over this nation. (And, as an aside, as First Lady Michelle Obama takes her "Let's Move!" campaign all over the country, I hope she will take notice of the number of places in which moving is next to impossible because so many US townships don't give a fuck about whether their people are able to move, unless it's in a car.) Yet our government—and this is true of both parties—by and large continues to pretend that our streets are paved with gold.
We're at war in five countries, there is "no appetite" for the kind of progressive economic policy that makes meaningful differences in people's lives, our standard of living is moving backwards, the real unemployment rate is 15.8%, and we've got crumbling sidewalks, which should be a basic amenity in any residential community in a global superpower.
On May 17, 2006, I wrote a piece about the governance (or lack thereof) of then-President George W. Bush:
We aren't being led forward. We aren't growing, or moving toward a glimmering future, or blazing a new 21st century trail. We are stagnating. And the first signs of decay are starting. I look around my community (and others like it)—a middle class suburban town that borders increasing urbanization toward Chicago on one side and rural farms for endless miles on the other—and I see a community in decline. Subtle things, that no one else seems to notice, as they happen ever so slowly. The schools and the library and other public buildings aren't quite as clean, quite as kept-up, as they used to be. The streets aren't quite as clean. The potholes and the cracked sidewalks don't get fixed as quickly, or at all. There are more houses around town that need fresh paint, more vacant retail spaces. Little things. Little degrees of difference. But they're everywhere, when you really look.Five years later, it's still true.
They're the little things that indicate that salaries aren't keeping up with inflation, that local and state governments don't have the funds they used to. Belt-tightening everywhere. The house can go another year without paint. The City Hall can go another year, or two, without tuckpointing. We can get rid of a couple of sanitation trucks, give up a couple of salt trucks in the winter. We don't need two toll booths onto the interstate open; one is fine. Little things that no one really notices, to stave off the rot for as long as we can.
Little things that happen in communities like mine before crime starts to go up in communities that aren't as fortunate, communities that don't have any give in their belts to begin with.
I keep hearing about this great economic recovery we're having, but what I see is different. What I see is people readjusting to a new circumstance—and that can't go on forever. We're going to need some governance. We're going to need someone to care about putting money—and attention—back into America again.
And every time I step into quicksand through our crumbling sidewalks, I can't help but think of it as a bitter metaphor for the state of the American Empire, the governors of which aren't governing with anything remotely resembling reason or decency.
"We are not being governed," I wrote in 2006. And we are not being governed still.
I sure hope those sidewalks get fixed.
Random YouTubery: Viscous Liquid Moving Machine!
The viscous liquids being moved by this machine are very grody-looking. But the fact that they are being moved while retaining their shape is very cool! SCIENCE!
Video Description: Scenes from FOOMA Japan 2011, the international food machinery and technology exhibition, of a young Japanese man demonstrating SWITL, a "pick-up and conveyor system using unique technology." It looks like a hand-held vac with a sort of flat tongue that zips out, underneath a pile of ketchup and mayonnaise (aka barf), and picks it up, without changing the shape of the pile of barf. Yow! That is very cool! (And gross, because they are using barf in their demonstration!)
The rest of the video repeats this demonstration, and then shows other applications of the Barf Robot, like moving assembly-line lunchmeat and packing containers of sol-gel products for shipment. It's very hard to describe! But very neat!
[Via Kelly.]
Blog Note
It's not just you: It's taking a couple of minutes for comments to show up on the page again. They appear to post immediately, but, if you refresh the page, they're gone for a couple of minutes.
There's no need to resend them; they're just taking awhile to post.
Hopefully Disqus will resolve the problem soon. My apologies for the inconvenience.
Anti-Choice All the Way
[Trigger warning for discussion of right-to-die law for terminally ill people.]
Below is video of the exchange that Misty mentions in her letter, of which the quote she highlights is the most egregious part. But also note his reference to "dignity of people at the end of life."
CNN Moderator John King: Let's go back down to the floor here. Jennifer Vaughn has a question.Santorum was not, as I'm sure you've guessed, signaling his support for giving people end-of-life choices, but, in fact, restricting those choices. Michele Bachmann also weighed in her support of "the dignity of life from conception until natural death. … I stand for life from conception until natural death."
Jennifer Vaughn, WMUR Anchor: Thanks, John. Senator Santorum, staying with you for a moment, if I may, you are staunchly pro-life. Governor Romney used to support abortion rights until he changed his position on this a few years ago. This has been thoroughly discussed. But do you believe he genuinely changed his mind, or was that a political calculation? Should this be an issue in this primary campaign?
SANTORUM: I think, I think an issue should be, in looking at any candidate, is looking at the authenticity of that candidate and looking at their, at their record over time and what they fought for. And I think that's, that's a factor that, that should be determined.
You can look at my record. Not only have I been consistently pro-life, but I've taken the, you know, I've not just taken the pledge; I've taken the bullets to go out there and fight for this and lead on those issues. And I think that's a factor that people should consider when you, when you look—well, what is this president going to do when he comes to office?
A lot of folks run for president as pro-life and then that issue gets shoved to the back burner. I will tell you that the issue of pro-life, the sanctity and dignity of every human life, not just at birth, not just on the issue of abortion, but with respect to the entire life, which I mentioned welfare reform and, and the dignity of people at the end of life, those issues will be top priority issues for me to make sure that all life is respected and held with dignity.
As the right-to-die movement gains momentum in the US, social conservatives are staking out their position in opposition to giving terminally ill people the choice on their own terms. (Note: For a fair and exceptionally moving treatment of Oregon's trailblazing right-to-die law, I highly recommend How to Die in Oregon.) The forced birthers are, unsurprisingly, forced drawn-out-deathers, too.
Anti-choice all the way.
"Pro-life" is, by any reasonable reckoning, a meaningless term when it does not concern itself in even the most cursory way with quality of life. They believe in the sanctity of life, they assured us at last night's debate, as they rotely intoned their alleged respect for the dignity of life—but what is sacred about an ebbing life that even the person living it no longer wants?
And what could be more private, more personal, more individual by definition than control over one's own body and life? Conservatives love to talk about giving people control over their money and their healthcare and whatthefuckever in support of fiscal policies that benefit corporations, but never is their mendacious lipservice to individual liberty more obvious as the manifest horseshit that it is than when they stand on a stage and speak their support of laws dictating what people can and cannot do with their own bodies and lives.
[Commenting Guidelines: Although discussions of right-to-die laws routinely refer to patients' death as "physician assisted suicide," right-to-die laws are really not about suicide, which is the intentional taking of one's own life. Terminally ill people's lives are already being taken by disease; they are just being given control of the "when" of their deaths. Please bear that distinction in mind in this thread and be careful not to conflate "suicide" with physician assisted choice to die—which really shouldn't be at issue, anyway, because the topic is not "debate right-to-die laws," but "discuss the GOP's garbage ideology."]
I Write Letters
[Trigger warning for violence.]
Rick Santorum,
Last night in the GOP debate you said:
"Not only have I been consistently pro-life, I have not just taken the pledge, but I've taken the bullets to go out there and fight for this and lead on those issues."
People disagreeing with you on the issue is not the same as being shot. People thinking you're a hideous, woman-hating, policy-horror-show is not the same as being shot. Yes, you were using a rhetorical device, we know. Still? Completely and totally inappropriate to the point of being extremely fucking offensive.
You see, people who go out there and fight for women are the ones who are shot. Actually shot--and sometimes actually killed. Also? Being shot is not the only danger they face.
So you? Can go fuck right off you reprehensible, morally reprobate douchecanoe.
With extreme disgust,
Me.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Another winner from CNN's resident auditor of other people's behavior, LZ Granderson: "Are Weiner's women blameless?"
Here is but one gem from this clusterfucktastrophe:
If Weiner's a bad guy, if Arnold Schwarzenegger's a bad guy, if John Edwards and Newt Gingrich are bad guys, then why aren't we calling out these willing accomplices as "bad girls" with the same fervor? Why do they seem to be catching a break in the realm of public opinion?I admire Granderson's magical powers of deduction. Personally, I cannot discern which women, if any, are "seeking cameras" versus those who have reluctantly granted interviews in the hopes of being left the fuck alone by the media who started searching out every woman with whom Weiner had public communications once he publicly tweeted a picture of his cock.
Yes, the men in these scandals all made stupid mistakes and deserve what they got.
But their girlfriends -- cyber or real -- are not all innocent victims. Particularly the ones now coming out of hiding, seeking cameras in the wake of their playmate's public demise. Those are the ones I really wish would shut up.
But, then again, I'm not a Very Wise Man, like LZ Granderson.
Number of the Day
$6.6 billion: The amount of money for which federal auditors simply cannot account, i.e. that has gone missing, in Iraq.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.Whooooooooooooooooooooooops!
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.
For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."
Phew!
For a moment there, I thought Charlie Sheen WASN'T going to continue having a lucrative career on television, but CRISIS AVERTED! He will AT LEAST make lots of money doing zany cameos, if not given his own new show.
Good luck, Charlie Sheen! If anyone deserves ALL the good things, it's definitely you!
So I Guess We're at Not-War in Yemen Now, Too
We're officially at war in Iraq and Afghanistan; we're officially at not-war in Libya; we're unofficially at not-war in Pakistan; and now the unofficial not-war in Yemen is officially escalating:
The CIA is expected to begin operating armed drone aircraft over Yemen, expanding the hunt for al-Qaeda operatives in a country where counter-terrorism efforts have been disrupted by political chaos, U.S. officials said.Emphasis mine.
The plan to move CIA-operated Predator and other unmanned aircraft into the region reflects a decision by President Obama that the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen has grown so serious that patrols by U.S. military drones are not enough.
U.S. officials said the CIA would operate alongside, and in close coordination with, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which has been flying Predators and other remotely piloted planes over Yemen for much of the past year.
Because it operates under different legal authorities than the military, the CIA may have greater latitude to carry out strikes if the political climate shifts in Yemen and cooperation with American forces is diminished or cut off.
...The new tasking for the agency marks a major escalation of the clandestine American war in Yemen, as well as a substantial expansion of the CIA's drone war.
So, I guess we're just going to go around bombing every majority-Muslim country we want to now, whenever we feel like it, with or without a national conversation about going to war. Swell. Meanwhile, rightwingers continue to assert that Obama is a covert Muslim terrorist without a trace of fucking irony. What a neat country I live in!
Anyway... Kevin Drum asks: "[E]xactly what theory of military action allows President Obama to do this without congressional approval?" Good question! I would also like to know its answer!
GOP Debate Discussion Thread
So, some of the 2012 GOP presidential wannabes met for a debate in New Hampshire last night, during which Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Eally?!) announced she is officially a candidate for president.
Shorter Debate:
CNN Moderator John King: Tell us a little something about yourselves.
GOP Candidates: We're assholes!
CNN Moderator John King: Tell us a little something about your positions.
GOP Candidates: They're garbage!
CNN Moderator John King: Tell us a little something about President Obama.
GOP Candidates: He's the worst!
CNN Moderator John King: Tell us a little something about your proposed solutions.
GOP Candidates: President Obama is the worst!
CNN Moderator John King: Tell us a little something about facts.
GOP Candidates: They stink!
CNN Moderator John King: Thank you all. Good night.
Discuss.
