"Hello, baby! Gleep glorp! Maybe you can grow up to be one of the twenty-seven Supreme Court Justices someday!"
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"Hello, baby! Gleep glorp! Maybe you can grow up to be one of the twenty-seven Supreme Court Justices someday!"
[Getty Images]
Ron Paul: Freedom Fucker
Ron Paul is for freedom! Ron Paul loves liberty! And other alliterative phrases about Ron Paul and his independence-championing ways!
Not so fast, people with wombs.
Female voiceover, over images of Ron Paul doing doctory things: Dr. Ron Paul. More than 4,000 babies delivered. A man of faith. Committed to protecting life.Yiiiiiiiiiiiikes. That is very heavy-handed! Ron Paul may be a doctor and a congressman, but he is clearly no professor of subtlety!
Laura Mays, former patient, an older white woman: Some people need to have a good word said about them. Ron is the sort of person that his life is his good word.
Marcie Holt, former patient, an older white woman: You know, you just knew that Ron cared about you. Life begins at conception [image of white baby's feet] in my opinion and, as a result, I loved to go to a doctor who felt the same way.
Kara Gore, a younger white woman: He not only protects unborn life, but he also walks through journeys with women, and he has for years.
Holt: I love the fact that he hasn't changed in all these years. Ron's still the same guy, saying the same things, and now, all these years later, still standing his ground.
Mays: Ron did not let Washington change him.
Diane Wilson, former patient, a middle-aged white woman: It's not hard for someone who's a Christian and who truly believes to stay on the right path, and I think that's what kind of person Ron Paul is.
Gore: America has to have someone like Ron Paul today. There is no question.
Text Onscreen: Ron Paul 2012 | Restore America Now.
It would have been a lot faster and cheaper to write, "I am anti-choice. I am racist. Mitt Romney is a poophead." on a piece of paper and upload it to geocities.ronpaul2008.fart.
The pink fades between each interviewee were a nice touch, though. Where "nice" equals some value of "LOL FUCK OFF."
I pretty much already said everything I had to say earlier today on Twitter, on the subject of Ron Paul and his hilarious contention to be a champion of freedom despite being anti-choice. But, for those who don't follow my stupendously awesome Twitter feed (I talk about how Ron Paul stinks AND frequently about Deeky's butt, so), here is my series of tweets, in all their disjointed glory...
I will say again that Ron Paul cannot be considered a champion of "liberty" so long as he believes women's bodies should be state property.
"Freedom" and an anti-choice position are fundamentally incompatible.
I can't put it more plainly than this: I am not free, if the word is to have any meaning at all, as long as Ron Paul is up in my uterus.
A major issue w/ which progressives have yet to seriously reckon is how often candidates who are good for men are simply not good for women.
In case my point remains unclear: Ron Paul is terrible for women.
He's terrible for lots of other people too, but overlooking his anti-choice record while touting his record on "freedom" is esp. mendacious.
Have I mentioned Ron Paul's terrible record on reproductive choice? It's terrrrrrrrrrrrrible. Just FYI.
Ron Paul is a defender of freedom for men. Which I guess is cool if you're a dude.
(Yeah, I don't actually think it's cool for any dude, lol.)
In summation: Ron Paul stinks.
The end.
[H/T to @ShelbyKnox.]
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelly Belly
Another milestone for Zelda this week: When she first came to us, she would never, ever, let me scratch her chin. Her head was always down, very submissive, and if I tried to scratch her chin to lift her head, to communicate to her you can be confident here, she would stick her nose under my hand and nudge it upwards, back to the top of her bowed head.
This week, she let me scratch her chin. She closed her eyes in blissful contentment, and her head rolled backwards until her nose pointed clear to the ceiling. "Good girl," I told her, and scratched and scratched until she collapsed against my side with the great heaving sigh of a satisfied dog.
Bonus Cute: Dudley standing in the middle of a grass bush, rubbing his eyes, because he's allergic to it. He does this pretty much every time he goes outside, because he is a hilarious dildobrain.
Quote of the Day
"NO ONE EAT THESE. They're going in a safe deposit box. I'll sell them in twenty years and retire...to SPACE!"—Paul F. Tompkins, on his box of Snowflake Limited Edition Ritz Crackers.
HOBBIT TRAILER!!!
Old Bilbo (Ian Holm) says in voiceover: [scenes of Hobbiton] My dear Frodo, you asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures. [scene of Old Bilbo at his writing desk] While I can honestly say I have told you the truth, I may not have told you all of it.
Cut to Gandalf (Ian McKellan) talking to Young Bilbo, played by Martin Freeman (!!!YAY!!! I AM STILL SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS CASTING! !!!YAY!!!): Bilbo Baggins, I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure.
Bilbo in voiceover: [scenes of Bilbo doing Hobbity things] I can't just go running off into the blue. I am a Baggins of Bag End!
Cut to Gandolf showing up at Bilbo's front door to make introductions of the company of dwarves, ending with Thorin. (THORIN!!!)
Singing: Misty Mountains. OMG SQUEE!!! Caverns old. HOLY SHIT!!!
As the dwarves chant, we get montagery: Gandalf looking anxious, Bilbo finding Sting, Gandalf talking to Galadriel, caverns, rocks, a journey, pipes. Thorin tells Gandalf: "I cannot guarantee his safety, nor will I be responsible for his fate." Mountains, journey, swelling music, horses, suspenders, fights. Gandalf tells Bilbo he cannot promise that he'll come back. "And if you do, you will not be the same."
The One Ring. It's in Gollum's cave. "My name is Bilbo Baggins," says Bilbo. "Bagginses," hisses Gollum. "What is a Bagginses, precioussssssss?"
Coming to a theater near you in ONE YEAR!
[Via Peter Jackson.]
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by helicopters.
Recommended Reading:
Steve: Republicans Literally Get up and Walk out of Congress During Debate
Maya: Pharmacists Routinely Misinform Young Women about Whether They Can Get Emergency Contraception
Shayera: [TW for sexual violence] Paterno's Excuse-Making Plumbs New Depths
Melissa: [TW for bullying; gender essentialism; gender policing] One Teacher's Approach to Preventing Gender Bullying in a Classroom
Echidne: You're Doing It Wrong. On The Reverse Gender Gap.
Mustang Bobby: When Fact-Checkers Cave
Arturo: Is It Time for a Geeks of Color Convention?
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Recommended Reading
[Trigger warning for violent misogyny.]
Mass March by Cairo Women in Protest Over Abuse by Soldiers, Dec. 20:
Several thousand women demanding the end of military rule marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking female demonstrators in Tahrir Square.Secretary Clinton's Remarks on Women, Peace, and Security, Dec. 19:
"Drag me, strip me, my brothers' blood will cover me!" they chanted. "Where is the field marshal?" they demanded of the top military officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. "The girls of Egypt are here."
Historians called the event the biggest women's demonstration in modern Egyptian history, the most significant since a 1919 march against British colonialism inaugurated women's activism here, and a rarity in the Arab world. It also added a new and unexpected wave of protesters opposing the ruling military council's efforts to retain power and its tactics for suppressing public discontent.
The protest's scale stunned even feminists here. In Egypt's stiffly patriarchal culture, previous attempts to organize women's events in Tahrir Square during this year's protests almost always fizzled or, in one case in March, ended in the physical harassment of a small group of women by a larger crowd of men.
"It was amazing the number of women that came out from all over the place," said Zeinab Abul-Magd, a historian who has studied women's activism here. "I expected fewer than 300."
The march abruptly pushed women to the center of Egyptian political life after they had been left out almost completely. Although women stood at the forefront of the initial revolt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak 10 months ago, few had prominent roles in the various revolutionary coalitions formed in the uprising's aftermath. Almost no women have won seats in the early rounds of parliamentary elections.
Now I know some of you may be thinking to yourself, "Well, there she goes again. Hillary Clinton always talks about women, and why should I or anyone else really care?" Well, you should care because this is not just a woman's issue. It cannot be relegated to the margins of international affairs. It truly does cut to the heart of our national security and the security of people everywhere, because the sad fact is that the way the international community tries to build peace and security today just isn't getting the job done. Dozens of active conflicts are raging around the world, undermining regional and global stability, and ravaging entire populations. And more than half of all peace agreements fail within five years.I highly recommend reading both pieces in full. This is a real thing in the world, and it is terrible and awesome and takes my breath away with an expansive hopefulness for a possible future so close I swear I can smell the earth on its dusty feet, yet just far enough away that the realistic contemplation of its never being realized terrifies me.
At the same time, women are too often excluded from both the negotiations that make peace and the institutions that maintain it. Now of course, some women wield weapons of war – that's true – and many more are victims of it. But too few are empowered to be instruments of peace and security. That is an unacceptable waste of talent and of opportunity for the rest of us as well. Across the Middle East and North Africa, nations are emerging from revolution and beginning the transition to democracy. And here too, women are being excluded and increasingly even targeted.
Recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago. And this is part of a deeply troubling pattern. Egyptian women have been largely shut out of decision-making in the transition by both the military authorities and the major political parties. At the same time, they have been specifically targeted both by security forces and by extremists.
...That is why this morning, President Obama signed an Executive Order launching the first-ever U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security – a comprehensive roadmap for accelerating and institutionalizing efforts across the United States Government to advance women’s participation in making and keeping peace.
...Excluding women means excluding the entire wealth of knowledge, experience, and talent we can offer. So the United States will use the full weight of our diplomacy to push combatants and mediators to include women as equal partners in peace negotiations. We will work with civil society to help women and other leaders give voice to the voiceless. And we will also help countries affected by conflict design laws, policies, and practices that promote gender equality so that women can be partners in rebuilding their societies after the violence ends.
I want a world in which women are heard, in which women are agents of peace. I want it so bad, so goddamn bad.
MLK Day Bomber Gets 32 Years for Not-Terrorism
[Trigger warning for terrorism, violence, racism.]
In January of this year, I wrote about an incident of Totally Not Terrorism that our Liberal Media failed to widely report with the breathless intensity reserved for brown-skinned terrorists who target white men: An undetonated backpack bomb, in which the packed shrapnel was coated with an anticoagulant to prevent blood clotting, was found along the parade route of a Martin Luther King Day event in Spokane, Washington. Fortunately, the device was discovered before its engineer could remotely trigger it, and no one was injured.
By March, what was obvious was confirmed: The suspect, Kevin Harpham, is a white supremacist, and for years had been on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, despite his not even being a significant player in organized white supremacy.
Harpham is a terrorist.
The good news is that he was found, charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to commit a federal hate crime, pleaded guilty in September, and has now been sentenced to 32 years.
The bad news is that this is still barely a blip on the radar, and the linked story at CNN does not even use the word "terrorism," despite quoting a Justice Department statement reading: "Harpham admitted that he is a white supremacist and white separatist, and that he placed the explosive device at the march with the intent to cause bodily injury to the person or persons in order to further his racist beliefs."
Meanwhile, Harpham, from whose home FBI agents excavated "racist books and magazines, and information about domestic terrorism ... an AK-47 assault rifle, a handgun, and a digital clock that had been modified as a timing device," was described by his federally-appointed defense attorney Kailey Moran as someone who "cared for others" and was viewed by his friends and family as "a kind-hearted and gentle soul who would go to any length to help someone in need."
Moran's just doing her job (hoo boy, I would not want that job, and I am grateful to the people who are willing to do it); the media, however, is under no obligation to report the irrelevant sentimental bullshit that a federal defender presents to the court on a confessed terrorist's behalf.
Is it newsworthy that Harpham's family thinks he's a swell fella? Nope. And I daresay I don't remember reading what Zacarias Moussaoui's BFFs thought of him during his trial. "He was always there to help us move to a new underground hideout!" Great. Who cares.
But suddenly when it's a white man (who served his country!) who conspires to murder people of color, it is of the utmost importance to report that the people who loved a dude who made no secret of his violent racism thought he was a nice guy.
Yeah, he's a real goddamn charmer. Rot, fucko.
[H/T to Pam.]
Primarily Awful
Here's the latest from White Men Can't Stump aka the Republican Primary...
Speaking of white men, a white man named Bob Vander Plaats, who is the head of Iowa's American Family Values Children Christian Liberty Freedom Patriot Association Foundation Organization, recently gave his very coveted endorsement to lucky fucky Rick Santorum, another white man. But, before doing do, Vander Plaats reportedly "called Michele Bachmann and urged her to drop out of the race and endorse Rick Santorum. ... Bachmann declined, the source said, noting to Vander Plaats that she has consistently polled ahead of Santorum in the race and still does." Bachmann is, of course, famously not a man.
Whoooooooooooooooops Michele Bachmann you are a lady running to be president for a party that does not like ladies.
Rick Perry is still definitely a man, still definitely polling lower than Bachmann, and still definitely in the race! Also, he's an outsider. Stay gold, Ponyboy.
Speaking of gold, Ron Paul made a lot of money from virulently racist newsletters once upon a time, from which he's tried to distance himself in a very unconvincing way. But obviously he's not racist, because Andrew Sullivan endorsed him. Ha ha just kidding. That definitely means he's suuuuuuuper racist. I hope he is elected president so he can make Andrew Sullivan Secretary of the Bell Curve and UFOs.
The second most popular Mormon in the pack, Jon Huntsman, is distantly related to four former US presidents! Willard is related to six, and Ponyboy Perry to one. Neat! "Time and again American politicians have family ties to our country's founders and past leaders," said Anastasia Harman, lead family historian for Ancestry.com. "It seems the traits that forged past leaders have been handed down through generations to our current and hopeful leaders." Ha ha yep. Traits like privilege.
Newt Gingrich snagged a great endorsement from professional douchestew Don Wildmon, the founder and chairman emeritus of the American Family Association. It's no wonder, either, with Gingrich groovin' the smooth moves like telling a gay man at a campaign event to go vote for Obama. Newt Gingrich 2012: He don't want your cooties vote.
Mitt Romney is very rich! And he's gonna keep getting richer, son.
And in spoiler news, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who has been running for president as a Republican to the tune of Who Cares, has announced he will instead seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. "Yay!" said no one. Johnson has no capacity to be a spoiler, but it turns out that Ron Paul does.
Paul-Johnson 2012! "Who's Paul Johnson?" This just in from CNN News: Third-party candidate Paul Johnson is now leading the Republican field by fully 100 points.
Breaking News from the Conservative News Service: Paul Johnson has a Christmas tree positively FILLED with Jesus ornaments.
Reuters Newsflash: Paul Johnson has just been endorsed by the American Conservative Babies Jesus Constitution Bootstrap Brigade.
AP Breaking News: Paul Johnson campaign over after candidate discovered to be two totally unelectable dudes.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Question of the Day
What one actor/actress would you like to see in hir own television series, with a perfectly matched writer and director and superb supporting cast?
On any given day, I could give a dozen different answers, but since she was already top of mind this week, I'm casting my vote for Anna Deavere Smith.
Not that I want to steal her away from Nurse Jackie, but she is just the greatest. I first remember seeing her in The American President; it was a small part, but she totally grabbed my attention. She was a total scene-stealer in Rachel Getting Married, too.
And don't even get me started on Gloria Akalitus. SO. GREAT.
The Best Thing You'll Read All Day
Lakshmi Sandhana for FastCompany's Co.Exist: An Indian Inventor Disrupts the Period Industry.
When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn't dream of. He wore one himself--for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat's blood, Muruganantham went about his life while wearing women's underwear, occasionally squeezing the contraption to test out his latest iteration. It resulted in endless derision and almost destroyed his family. But no one is laughing at him anymore, as the sanitary napkin-making machine he went on to create is transforming the lives of rural women across India.Turns out, he could. And, in the process, he's not just created an important product for poor women, he's also created an easily replicable production process and a business model that he hopes will "create 1 million employment opportunities for rural women and expand the model to other developing nations."
Right now, 88% of women in India resort to using dirty rags, newspapers, dried leaves, and even ashes during their periods, because they just can't afford sanitary napkins, according to "Sanitation protection: Every Women's Health Right," a study by AC Nielsen. Typically, girls who attain puberty in rural areas either miss school for a couple of days a month or simply drop out altogether. Muruganantham's investigation into the matter began when he questioned his wife about why she was trying to furtively slip away with a rag. She responded by saying that buying sanitary napkins meant no milk for the family.
"When I saw these sanitary napkins, I thought 'Why couldn't I create a low cost napkin for [my wife]?'" says Muruganantham.
[H/T to Shaker Kathy_A.]
The Enlightened Thread
Today in Good TV News: HBO has renewed Enlightened for a second season.
When HBO first announced that it was going to air a series helmed by Mike White (who is great) and starring Laura Dern (who is amazing), I was extremely excited. I mean, honestly, to merely say I adore Laura Dern isn't sufficient. She is a brilliant actress, whose work I've admired since I was a kid. Wild at Heart's Lula is one of my all-time favorite movie characters, not because the character is lovable, or even particularly likeable, but because of the way she is played by Laura Dern.
Then came the marketing for Enlightened, which made me nervous. The poster pictured Dern in close-up with mascara streaking down her face, wearing an expression I can best describe as stricken. Still, I am well aware that the marketing of a TV series or film can wildly misrepresent its actual content, for good or bad.
So I watched the pilot episode. And it was...okay. If it hadn't been Laura Dern and Mike White, I wouldn't have kept watching. But it was. And Dern's real-life mother, the fab Diane Ladd, playing her character's mother, as she did in Wild at Heart. That was enough to keep me watching. I kept watching.
And by the time the series ended last week, I was a committed fan.
There are a lot of reasons I like Enlightened. The relationship between Dern and her mother. The exchanges between Dern and White. The subtle but incisive commentary on how do-gooding frequently can't pay the bills, if a path to do-gooding is even apparent (which it often isn't). The commentary on corporate workplace culture, and how it differs at different professional levels. For me, though, it's mostly about Laura Dern.
She plays the central character, Amy Jellicoe, with such extraordinary finesse: Jellicoe is an awkward, clueless, self-centered, privileged pain in the ass, but Dern imbues her with enough vulnerability and decency that she is a character worth caring about, even as she fumblefucks her way through each day, constantly disappointed by the people around her who haven't been enlightened by recovery.
It is a source of both humor and angst to watch her practice the good approaches recommended by therapy and repeatedly bump up against the disinterest of an apathetic world where healing is hardly a priority. Jellicoe, in Dern's capable hands, becomes a relatable character, and when I see myself in her, I squirm. But I also laugh.
And then there's this: Laura Dern is 44. She is stunningly gorgeous, and she looks 44. I want to neither explicitly nor implicitly condemn actors who make the decision to get plastic surgery or fillers, because that is a valid choice and an entirely understandable one especially in an industry that puts such a premium on youth and compliance with the Beauty Standard. Dern has simply made a different choice, equally legitimate but much rarer, and it is remarkable to see a woman with beautiful lines on her face every week.
The ten episodes of the first series of Enlightened were directed by either Mike White, Miguel Arteta, Jonathan Demme, Nicole Holofcener, or Phil Morrison, all five of whom give the audience something to which we are rarely treated: Long, lingering shots on the face of an actress.
We gaze at her countenance straight on; her face is not tilted up and shot from above, from the "male" perspective. The shots hold her expression, and let us look at her feel something. The way the show is directed says this person means something, and it was breathtaking to me week after week how radical it felt to me for that message to be conveyed by a show about its female lead.
Anyway. I'm thrilled Enlightened is being given a second season. I can't wait to see it.
Quote of the Day
"One great benefit of our relationship is that Megan has gone through everything a couple of chapters ahead of me, so there's an easy student-master quality to it. When your wife is a legend of comedy, you have to be a huge jackass not to assume the student role."—Nick Offerman, who plays Ron Swanson on my favorite show, Parks & Recreation, on how he and his wife, actress Megan Mullally, who played Karen Walker on the sitcom Will and Grace (and plays Ron Swanson's ex-wife Tammy Two on Parks & Rec), "negotiate[d] the disparity between [their] careers before Nick landed Parks and Recreation."
The quote is from a February interview, but Shaker alabee just passed it along with a note that it's a "great interview all around," and so it is. I hope their relationship is as awesome as it seems to be.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
Bloomberg: Bankers Seek to Debunk Attack on Top 1%.
Everything about this article is perfectly hilaritragic. I especially looooooove the insistence that the richest people in the country are rich exclusively because of hard work and perseverance. "Instead of an attack on the 1%, let's call it an attack on the very productive." Ha ha sure. Let's do that, fucko.
But first, let's you and I see which one of us works harder in a day. Let's see if you or the last waitress who served you works harder in a day. Let's see if you or any one of the hundreds of people in service jobs with whom you come into contact on a daily basis whose humanity you don't even notice, no less acknowledge, works harder in a day. Let's see if you or a homeless person just trying to stay warm, fed, and alive works harder in a day.
Let's do that math, and then let's indeed call the increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots in this richest country in the world "an attack on the very productive."
Productivity isn't the issue. The kind of work we choose to value and the people whom we choose to do that value is.
The Not-War in Pakistan
[Trigger warning for state-sponsored killing.]
Karen DeYoung in the Washington Post: Secrecy defines Obama's drone war.
Since September, at least 60 people have died in 14 reported CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions. The Obama administration has named only one of the dead, hailing the elimination of Janbaz Zadran, a top official in the Haqqani insurgent network, as a counterterrorism victory.Emphasis mine.
The identities of the rest remain classified, as does the existence of the drone program itself. Because the names of the dead and the threat they were believed to pose are secret, it is impossible for anyone without access to U.S. intelligence to assess whether the deaths were justified.
The administration has said that its covert, targeted killings with remote-controlled aircraft in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and potentially beyond are proper under both domestic and international law. It has said that the targets are chosen under strict criteria, with rigorous internal oversight.
It has parried reports of collateral damage and the alleged killing of innocents by saying that drones, with their surveillance capabilities and precision missiles, result in far fewer mistakes than less sophisticated weapons.
Yet in carrying out hundreds of strikes over three years — resulting in an estimated 1,350 to 2,250 deaths in Pakistan — it has provided virtually no details to support those assertions.
In outlining its legal reasoning, the administration has cited broad congressional authorizations and presidential approvals, the international laws of war and the right to self-defense. But it has not offered the American public, uneasy allies or international authorities any specifics that would make it possible to judge how it is applying those laws.
Over the course of three years, in a not-war for which there is no direct authorization by Congress as required by the US Constitution, and no oversight, and thus no accountability, we have killed an estimated ~2,000 people in Pakistan.
There were things I expected about Barack Obama when I cast my vote for him. Some of them were low expectations—I expected fuck-all on women's issues, and he has managed to limbo right underneath even my rock bottom garbage expectations—but some of them were great expectations, among which were high hopes that his foreign policy would be a radical departure from the warmongering, secretive, accountability-free nightmare of the preceding administration.
This has not been the case, and it is a grave disappointment.
[H/T to Atrios.]
Obama Thinks He's Better Than Jesus!
Also, as we all know, he is Muslim, so it's no wonder that his giant Capitol Christmas tree doesn't even feature (or maybe does but WHO KNOWS!) any ornaments about Jesus, even though it's sporting an ornament about him!
![screenshot from the website of the 'Conservative News Service' of a story headlined 'U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Pays Homage to Obama—But Not Jesus' and showing an image of an ornament obviously made by a child reading 'I [heart] President Obama.'](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes3/obamavsjesus.jpg)
OMFG I love the Conservative News Service. It is the greatest thing ever.
I can't decide what my favorite part of this story is: I mean, the headline is obviously GREAT, and the picture of the ornament that has obviously been handmade by a child is TERRIFIC, and the breathless reporting that the office of the Architect of the Capitol, which curates the tree, could not confirm "whether or not this year's Christmas tree does in fact include even a single ornament that directly references or depicts Christmas or Christ" is PERFECT in every conceivable way, and the scare-quoting of "lesson plans" is BRILLIANT, but, ultimately, I guess my favorite part might just be the straight-up length and detail of the story.
Congratulations, CNS. You have won me over yet again with your passionate dedication to creating an online repository of petty, suspicious, and unjustified complaints that would rival any professional crankypants' Big Leatherbound Book of Grievances. Good job!
