"This is not a favor to women; it is not simply a nice thing to do. No country can get ahead when it leaves half of its people behind."—Melanne Verveer, a US State Department Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, at a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing called this week to examine the role of women in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
The full inclusion of women into policy-making roles has been an issue championed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her entire career. She has spoken to the need for equality, and the rich mine of ideas and passion and energy that goes untapped when women are marginalized, on countless occasions. It is no surprise, but no less delightful for its predictability, that her State Department would take an active approach to addressing inclusion in what blooms from the Arab Spring.
Less charming is this, buried deep in the same article:
The United States, which along with states like Iran and Somalia, has yet to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, should do so, said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California. She said repressive governments could use that fact as a pretext to not live up to their own obligations under it.
The U.N.-sponsored treaty has languished in the U.S. Senate since its adoption in 1979.
I will note that the US Senate currently has a Democratic majority. Still no action for the nation's women.
Brought to you by Sweden. Sweden: We tried to warn you. Nobody listens to us.
Thanks to a recent free trade agreement, South Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-Sik tours America in his chromed-out Cadillac Escalade. [Kim drives his sweet ride while singing "Everybody's working for the weekend."]
Meanwhile:
Paul Krugman wallows in self pity outside of a Seoul bar, alone, unloved. [Krugman holds his head in his hands while thinking "I could've gone to the University of Chicago.]
I've not heard hide nor hair from Sears since I spoke with Dee again yesterday, which is fair enough, since the only thing I want to hear from them is that they're working intently with the manufacturer on a recall, so I'm not the only person with this issue who's offered a free repair, and that's not something in which they seem to be very interested.
I have also, however, not heard from Kenmore, after they publicly accused me of not having tried to contact them, even though whoooooooops I did. Kenmore has also suggested that my failure was in tweeting at them directly, instead of sending a DM (direct message), despite the fact that their Twitter account is prominently displayed on the front page of their website without such a direction and the troubling little issue that it's impossible to send a DM to someone who is not following you.
And then there's this: If you send a DM, no one else sees it, and if this whole episode has proven anything, it's that Sears/Kenmore only respond after someone makes a lot of noise.
Every single polite and private entreaty I made before posting about this was ignored.
When I spoke to Brenda C. in customer service, I told her point-blank at the end of the conversation that I would be writing about it and exactly who my audience was. I also asked her if there was someone else, e.g. a PR person, to whom she'd like to direct me, and she said no.
So even having warned them that I would make a public stink, they still didn't care.
UNTIL I DID.
Which suggests to me that the only reason Kenmore wants to get direct, i.e. private, messages is because they're easier to ignore.
If Kenmore would like me to have a different, and more favorable, impression, then perhaps their one and only direct contact with me should have been something other than claiming to have "no previous knowledge" of this situation, despite the fact that my very first tweet was directed at them, and then "apologizing" if they "missed something." Not an apology for wrongly snarking on their Facebook page about how I never contacted them, but, you know, for if they missed the fact that I did indeed contact them.
How to Create a Public Relations Nightmare 101, by Sears/Kenmore. Chapter 7: Fauxpologies.
Here's the thing: The first place we went when we were looking to replace our dishwasher that also broke last weekend? Sears. The second place we went? Sears Outlet Store. Yep, the first two places we went to price dishwashers were Sears stores. You know why? Because we were happy with our stove, even though it had just broken.
I'm not an unreasonable person. I understand things can break. I figured Sears/Kenmore would deal with us fairly.
Well. We just bought our new dishwasher at Lowe's.
[Oakland Men's Wearhouse. Photo tweeted byOakland Tribune reporter Matt O'Brien.
The Guardian's live coverage of the Occupy Oakland General Strike is here. InsideBayArea's live coverage is here.
In a bitterly emblematic incident, a Mercedes driver hit two protesters in Oakland last night, delivering non-life-threatening leg and ankle injuries to the woman and man who were hit. The police questioned the driver, then let him go.
Back in New York [trigger warning], a 26-year-old man has been arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting two teenage women in Zuccotti Park. #OccupyRapeCulture
CNN reports that Occupy Wall Street is gaining favor among USians:
As Americans learn more about Occupy Wall Street, they are becoming more supportive of the movement's positions, according to a new poll from ORC International.
The survey, taken Oct. 28-31, shows more adult Americans saying they have heard of Occupy Wall Street than when the question was asked in early October. Sixty-four percent of respondents now say they've heard of the movement, compared to only 51% in the earlier poll.
The new poll also shows more Americans supporting the movement. Thirty-six percent say they agree with the overall positions of Occupy Wall Street, while 19% say they disagree.
Nearly any protest movement that can just hang in there inevitably grains credibility among the general population, for the sheer appearance of having unwavering principles and not just being the dirty hippies/crackpots/fools/lowlifes/extremists/whatever that their opponents, with the help of the media, make them out to be.
In US domestic news...
BBC—US manufacturing growth slows to a crawl: "US manufacturing continued to expand in October, but growth slowed to a snail's pace, according to the latest monthly survey of the sector."
Pat Garofalo at Think Progress—For the First Time Since 2007, Federal Reserve Official Dissents from Central Bank Policy from the Left: "The Federal Reserve today released its latest policy statement, announcing that it is taking no new moves to boost the economy's sluggish growth. However, for the first time since 2007, one of the voting members of the central bank—Chicago Fed President Charles Evans—dissented from the Fed's decision from the left...support[ing] additional policy accommodation at this time."
ABC's The Note—Mitt Romney Directs New Attack at Rick Perry, Telling Him 'Deficits Matter': "Romney's new line of attack comes days after Perry suggested he is less concerned about how his economic plan will affect the federal deficit in the short term and more focused on creating incentives for job creators to spur hiring in the country."
Nate Silver in the New York Times—On Obama's Reelection Chances: "[T]he conventional wisdom long held that Barack Obama would most likely weather his midpresidency slump to win another term. Then came the debt-ceiling debates of July and August, which seemed to crystallize Obama's vulnerabilities in a way that even the Democrats' midterm disaster of 2010 did not. It's probably because he handled the situation so poorly, simultaneously managing to annoy his base, frustrate swing voters, concede a major policy victory to Republicans and—through the fear imported into the market by the brinksmanship in Congress and the credit-rating downgrade that followed—further imperil the economic recovery. ... Obama has gone from a modest favorite to win re-election to, probably, a slight underdog. Let's not oversell this. A couple of months of solid jobs reports, or the selection of a poor Republican opponent, would suffice to make him the favorite again."
In international news...
The Guardian—Greek crisis: PM 'expected to step down today': "Reports are breaking in Athens now that George Papandreou is set to meet with the country's president within the hour. Greek Mega TV claims that following a meeting of his parliamentary group after his cabinet session, the embattled leader will soon visit the president, Helena Smith tells me. This is probably to ask the president to dissolve the government and call early elections. But seperately, the BBC is reporting that Papandreou plan is to step aside and make way for a new coalition government to take over."
CNN—Young Italians fear uncertain future: "Youth unemployment in Italy runs at 28%, well above the eurozone average of 20%. When I asked [Italian youth] how worried [they] were about [their] job prospects, [they] all laughed nervously. 'There is no money in Italy, there is no opportunity,' [they] said."
CNN—Tax evasion is a national pastime afflicting southern Europe: "'Wherever the olive tree grows, you won't find much tax being collected,' the mayor of a small town in southern Spain told me a few years ago. He shrugged; such was life. ... That is partly because of the higher number of self-employed and family businesses [in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal], which tend to deal in cash and pay little tax. But to many economic commentators, tax evasion is also a national pastime in much of southern Europe, and a significant factor in the region's burgeoning financial crisis."
The Guardian—G20: Europe faces the nightmare of a euro breakup: "The four members of the eurozone attending the G20 summit—Germany, France, Italy and Spain—were holding talks in Cannes this morning to discuss what to do next. Unsurprisingly, the mood was grim. Splits were appearing in the Greek cabinet, Italian bond yields were rising after Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet came up with no new proposals for tackling Italy's debts and for the first time European leaders have had to confront their worst nightmare: the euro may break up."
BBC—Obama calls for urgent debt deal: "US President Barack Obama has warned that there is still work to be done on how the eurozone can end a financial crisis that threatens engulf the world. Speaking on Thursday ahead of the opening of the G20 summit in France, he said that the most important topic on the agenda was Europe's problems."
What piece of information or anecdote about your life would Shakers (or family, or coworkers, or whatever group you prefer to use) find most surprising?
I can't imagine what anyone would or would not find surprising about me, since I'm always amazed by what wildly divergent impressions people seem to draw of me from the blog. I guess maybe people would be surprised to find out how naturally shy and still and introverted I am. Which is not to say that I'm timid, but observant and quiet, except for my loud laugh—unless I am among people I trust. And even then I am loathe to be the center of attention, and I don't know how to take compliments without blushing.
I quite enjoy talking to strangers, one-on-one, especially if I can get them talking about some interesting bit of their lives; I love listening. I appreciate endlessly people who will allow me to be nosy in finite times and spaces—waiting for a bus together, sharing a cab, online at the grocery store, getting my hair cut. Those slices of passing intimacy are precious to me.
I am, on the other hand, dreadful at small talk. Awkward, hopeless, ever in real danger of looking horrendously rude—my inelegance misconstrued as aloof disinterest. My friend Miller, who I've now known and loved dearly for a decade, loves to tell people how she thought I was "a total bitch" when we met, those first months after she was hired at an office where I already worked. When she threw out her back and ended up bedridden, I appeared with pizza and the promise of good company for an evening, surprising her utterly.
Shy then, she realized. Not an asshole after all. We've been friends ever since. And so my life goes.
[Trigger warning for sexual harassment, violence, racism, terrorism.]
There is A LOT of news today that I do not want to write about!
There is the Great Kardashian Divorce of 2011. Does the internet need one more person making some sneering comment about straight people and their sanctity of marriage, which is an Actual Point, but one I'm increasingly reluctant to make since I sort of want same-sex couples to have the right to forge wildly inappropriate unions in lavish, multimillion dollar ceremonies if that is what they REALLY WANT? No, the internet does not need that.
There is also the Ongoing Saga of Sexual Harassment Allegations against Unserious Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain. This is genuinely an Important Story, but I feel like the only people discussing it are those who have an agenda, the primary example of which seems to be Bitchez Be Liars. I have heard that song before! I don't guess I have anything to say about this other than: I believe the women are telling the truth. The end.
There is also the Video of a Judge Beating His Daughter. I'm not linking to it. You can find it, probably on the front page of CNN, if you really want to look at it. He is terrible. His daughter is right: He should not be trusted to be a judge, because his decision-making skills are DEEPLY FLAWED. His daughter is also right that he should not be getting death threats, but psychological care.
There is also Another Incident of Ann Coulter Saying Something Totally Racist and Also Very Stupid. Not only will I not link to it, but I won't even reprint the asinine and attention-seeking thing she said, because fuck her. I'm so tired of you, Ann Coulter. You are THE WORST.
There are also the four dudes in Georgia who have been arrested by the FBI after allegedly plotting to turn the shitty terroristic online novel (very good, I'm sure) of some Fox News contributor into a real-life scenario of murdering lots of people to "save the Constitution." That seems like something about which I should have something smart to say, but all I've got is thank Maude they're as stupid as they are terrible. Also: Good thing no one but Deeky has read The Overton Window.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
$6.6 trillion: The cost of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's proposed economic plan. With interest, the cost grows to $7.8 trillion over the next 10 years. Wheeeeeeeeeee!
That would help SO MANY job creators create SO MANY jobs at the bootstrap factory!
This is an interesting story about a reformed skinhead who, with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center and an anonymous donor, is ridding himself of the extensive white supremacists tattoos covering his face, neck, torso, and arms.
While MSNBC's headline makes a prominent reference to the "agony" Bryon Widner is suffering with the tattoos' removal, Widner himself is less inclined to indulge concern about the pain he's experiencing: "If anything he felt that he deserved the pain and the public humiliation as a kind of penance for all the hurt he had caused over the years."
Widner's straightforwardness about the depth of his previously-professed "principles" is compelling, too: "I wasn't on any great mission for the white race. I was just a thug."
I would've liked to read more about what brought Widner to reject white supremacy—a movement in which he was so enmeshed that, when he approached the SPLC, their chief investigator of hate and extreme groups, Joseph Roy, described it as "like the Osama Bin Laden of the movement calling in."
It's a profound transformation, and I hope Widner will continue to use the new life he is being given to move ever further from hatred and to inspire others to similar changes of heart and mind.
Olivia contemplates sticking her paw into my water glass, to draw out the last drops of melted ice on her wee fuzzy digits. Normally, I'm not a mind-reader, but I've seen this look before. Ahem.
This amazing video was posted on YouTube with the description: "Two cams, anything goes, you decide. The future of live entertainment." At first, I wasn't sure—but then I was like, yeah, this is definitely the next logical step after Jersey Shore. Bring it on.
Video Description: From a boombox set on a table in a backyard emanates "Rebound (Original Mix Edit)" by Arty. Nearby, an elderly white woman wearing sunglasses and a windbreaker, sits in a plastic yard chair hanging out with a little Corgi dog. A young white woman in pink shirt and jeans dances with what appears to be a katana. Then a young white man in blue shirt and jeans comes out; he hands the beer bottle he is carrying to the elderly woman. Then he whips out a butterfly knife and begins to do a choreographed dance with the young woman. Obviously.
President Barack Obama is crafting his own laws of political physics these days, insisting that inaction by a divided Congress requires White House action in order to get something done.
Nineteenth and twentieth paragraphs of the story [emphasis mine]:
Almost three years into his term, Obama is on a similar pace in issuing executive orders issued as his recent predecessors such as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
While some executive orders are routine or ceremonial in nature, presidents since Jimmy Carter have used them more for major policy directives to sidestep the legislative or bureaucratic process.
Paragraph twenty [!] actually gets at the important story here. Recent US presidents (like Reagan!) have expanded their use of executive orders. They may, as the article insinuates, have used executive orders to circumvent the legislative branch of government. Of course, the president also has a fair amount of discretion over how to run the executive branch, which AFAIK is the point of his issuing executive orders, so maybe this isn't the whole story. In any case, this seems like a kinda important discussion to have.
However, OMG Obama is doing a unique job of ruining America by being just like Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and other Bush doesn't strike me as a particularly productive discussion. Of course, I have this strange feeling that one of the MSM's objectives is to paint Obama as a brazen socialist who hates freedom and American democracy, so it really depends on how you define "productive."
Scatx has an amazing picture from Occupy Iran. I love the wall the women are themselves forming a wall, as if showing the world what the alternative to Wall Street really is. It gives me chills.
"I believe life begins at conception. Unfortunately, this personhood amendment doesn't say that. It says life begins at fertilization, or cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof. That ambiguity is striking a lot of pro-life people here as concerning. And I'm talking about people that are very, outspokenly pro-life. ... I am concerned about some of the ramifications on in vitro fertilization and [ectopic] pregnancies where pregnancies [occur] outside the uterus and [in] the fallopian tubes. That concerns me, I have to just say it."—Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Eallyrightwing), on the proposed amendment to the state constitution being put to voters next week, which would redefine a person as "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof."
How extreme is this bit of anti-choice maneuvering...? So extreme even HALEY BARBOUR is concerned about its extremism. Yiiiiiiiiiikes.
I left several updates in yesterday's thread, but I wanted to do a follow-up piece to let everyone know where things stand.
Toward the end of the day, Dee from Sears Executive Office rang me and offered to send someone 'round to replace the broken panel, free of charge, and give me a 90-day warranty on the new part.
It is an offer Iain and I ultimately declined, because I frankly did not feel good about accepting service in what Sears certainly expected to be an exchange for my letting the issue drop, because I am not letting the issue drop.
I'm not seeking anything further from them in terms of reparations to me, personally. My stove is now my issue. But I have some grave concerns about how this issue is being handled by Sears with its other customers.
If my stove had still been under warranty, it would have been fixed for free, and I never would have started down this road. But I did—and now I know not only that this is a very costly repair (especially relative to the price of the stove), but also that the repair is being made with the same faulty part that cannot withstand typical use.
Sears isn't fixing these stoves; they're patching them. People who get it fixed under warranty may end up with the same broken bracket again a year later, and face a pricy repair then. People who pay for the pricy repair once may end up with the same broken bracket again a year later, and face a pricy repair once more. Sears is kicking the can down the road, and expecting their customers to foot the bill for the problem.
It's a nice little racket, though, to replace a shitty piece with the same shitty piece, and sell $100 extended warranties on the back of a $300 repair—extended warranties that last one year, which seems to be the approximate lifetime of the bracket.
Sears/Kenmore clearly knows the piece is faulty. Dee told me that Sears plans to "address the problem" in the future, but when I explicitly asked if there was going to be a recall, and if I should advise my readers to not pay for a pricey repair on a stove that would be recalled, she said she could not confirm that there would be a recall, nor that future repairs would be made with a different, improved part.
So, on the one hand, they acknowledge having sold a bad product to lots and lots of people, and, on the other, they won't promise to do anything about it.
What they want to do is offer to fix patch the stove of the person with a platform and the willingness to use it to make some noise, and hope that the whole thing will go away.
Sears/Kenmore needs to do better by ALL its customers. Not just me. And they need to something more serious than what is essentially a patch on a known problem.
(I will note that there is also the possibility Sears/Kenmore is already actually repairing the stoves with better pieces, in which case that's just a different problem—charging people to do what they should be doing for free with a recall.)
As I said in my post yesterday, this is a low-end model Kenmore stove, bought primarily by people unlikely to be able to purchase "optional" extended warranties in the first place, unlikely to be able to afford $300 repairs, and unlikely to be able to buy a new stove when faced with a $300 repair (plus $100 extended warranty!) to avoid giving more money to a company that exploited them.
Six months after Louis J D'Ambrosio took over as CEO of Sears Holdings in February of this year, he was given a $2 million bonus, bringing his total compensation to $3.15 million. He is the 27th highest ranked CEO within the retail sector.
How many people have paid costly repair bills to replace a part Sears/Kenmore knows to be faulty, in order to give Mr. D'Ambrosio a $2 million bonus?
Do the right thing Sears/Kenmore. Recall this stove. And don't charge another person for a shady repair.
Note: If you're a lot like me, you're probably wondering why today's episode doesn't refer to the very latest developments in global economic wankery. Unfortunately, Wank Swap has a rather long production cycle. Between calming the egos involved and finding technicians to work our very pricey photographic voice capture device, our lead time is months. (I'm making these after work on Fridays, when I'm extra punchy.)
I'm sure if Shakesville's board of directors picks up its option for another season of Wank Swap, the show will revisit certain European leaders' outrage over the sudden outbreak of democracy in Greece OF ALL PLACES. Or at least it will if French President Nicolas Sarkozy finds a way out of the Detroit airport. ---
Today's episode of Wank Swap is brought to you by Fiat, makers of fine luxury cars since last month when we hired J-Lo.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer pitches a familiar proposal to the island nation of Australia. [Brewer stands in front of Uluru Ayer's rock, asking "Have you tried building a wall?"]
Meanwhile:
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard faces a restless crowd at a California Barnes & Noble. [The crowd chants "We want Opie!"]
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