Bow Wow Wow: "I Want Candy"
Number of the Day
Zero: The effective tax rate of just over 10% of the companies on the S&P 500.
There are 57 separate companies listed on the index that paid a zero percent rate from the past year. Those companies include both household names like Verizon and News Corp. and lesser-known corporate giants like the data storage manufacturer Seagate (market value $15.9 billion) and Public Storage (market value $29.5 billion). Many of the companies USA Today identified in its analysis as paying negative rates make the list because they lost money, but several were profitable. Previous analyses have shown that the typical corporation pays a lower effective tax rate than most middle-class families, and a far lower one than the statutory corporate tax rate against which business interests disingenuously rail.Neat!
Getting to a zero percent tax rate despite turning a profit requires creative accounting, but not lawbreaking. The corporate tax code allows companies to avoid tax liability even in years when they turn a profit. Some of the profitable companies on the newspaper's list, such as General Motors, achieved a zero percent rate by banking tax credits from previous years when business was bad. But the more common gambit involves moving revenues from parent companies to offshore subsidiaries based in tax haven countries in the Caribbean, Europe, and elsewhere.
Breaking News
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is "a strong supporter" of widespread surveillance and thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor. Because of course he does.
Terrific "exclusive," CNN.
The Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by birds.
Recommended Reading:
Emi: [Content Note: Violence, abuse, bullying, self-harm] The Uses of Negativity: Survival and Coping Strategies for Those of Us Who Are Exasperated by the Empty Promise of "It" Getting "Better"
Flavia: [CN: Racism; imperialism, violence] An Intersectional Feminist Approximation to Aesthetics around Zwarte Piet
Robert: [CN: Drones, violence, PTSD] Psychologists Propose Horrifying Solution to PTSD in Drone Operators
Libby Anne: [CN: Homophobia, abuse, emotional auditing] Can We Not Tell Gay Christians What to Do Please?
Angry Asian Man: [CN: Racist Halloween] The Guys Who Dressed Up as Bloody Asiana Flight Attendants
Summer: [CN: Racist Halloween] Today in Post-Race History: The Halloween Press Release
Marisa: [CN: Disordered eating Halloween] Part One: That 'Anna Rexia' Halloween Costume Is Back. Part Two: Sketchy Halloween Site Selling Anna Rexia Costume Taunts Us Via Text. (I love how no one ever gives two shits about what fat women think about anything except when it comes time to defend the Anna Rexia costume.)
And Trudy's got Janelle Monáe's excellent performances on SNL (video of one; link to the other), in case you missed 'em. SHE WAS SO GREAT.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Seen
This weekend, while we were out running errands, a church sign reading:
I'm just sorry I didn't have my camera with me to take a picture of it, because it was obviously perfect the end.
Daily Dose of Cute
Look at this face! Just look at it! She is SO FREAKING CUTE!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
The Walking Thread
[Content Note: Violence. Spoilers are lurching around undeadly herein.]
Uh-oh. Daddy's on the brink again.
This week on The Walking Dead: Everyone has a job, feelings are for dum-dums, and there's a new Governor Cyclops in town!
When we pick up with our ragtag group of future zombie chow, the Icky Poopoo Cough Flu is ravaging the population of no-names at Grimes Jail. Dig dig dig. So many graves. Glenn and Maggie share a Meaningful Look. RIP people who never even got a line because the excruciatingly meticulous investigation of the Newton's Cradle kinetic pendulum that is Grimes' emotional state does not leave room for NONSENSE like other people's lives.
Elsewhere, Tyreese, standing over the charred bodies of his girlfriend Karen and Rick from Accounting, gets super enraged by the collective lack of concern being demonstrated by Rick, Daryl, and Carol. On the one hand, Karen was Tyreese's girlfriend, and if you think it's hard to find someone who gets you in the real world, imagine how hard it is during the zombiepocalypse. On the other hand, Karen and Rick from Accounting were definitely going to die anyway and in the meantime were totes contagious, so.
The weighing of these realities are plastered all over Grimes' and Daryl's and Carol's faces as they look at Tyreese's angry face, and their ambivalence only makes him hulk out all the more. He smashes Daryl up against a fenced wall, and Daryl wisely gestures to Grimes to back off and let Tyreese get it out of his system, and Grimes takes that excellent advice for fully three seconds before jumping in and telling Tyreese to "calm down." It is at this point I figure Tyreese will just murder Grimes and I won't mind and let's wrap it up the end.
But Tyreese just pins Grimes, a tiny little man who somehow manages to overcome the much larger Tyreese, and smashes his face into the pavement, until Daryl pulls him off before he kills him. Grimes looks horrified and stares at his bloody fist. Whooooooops your brain is broken again, Grimes!
That is, of course, Hershel's cue to find Grimes and have some insufferable conversation about how Grimes has to protect and save people blah blah fart. Which happens.
Meanwhile, Sasha is sick, too. Oh hell no. These writers are so goddamn lazy! Off the top of my head, I can think of about eleventy-seven different ways to create emotional conflict for Tyreese that doesn't involve endangering and/or killing the two women who are affiliated with him. BUT FUCK INGENUITY! And double-fuck giving female characters their own agency so they can do more than just serve as imperiled appendages to facilitate male plot arcs. It's so much easier to just demolish Tyreese's property.
Something something council meeting. Daryl and Michonne will go on a run to a veterinary hospital 50 miles away to collect antibiotics. Children and old people will be quarantined for their protection.
Carl the Hat is pouting (NO WAY!) about having to go into quarantine with a bunch of babies and fogies. Grimes tells him to shut it. He's got people to protect. "You wanna be treated like a patriarch?! THEN ACT LIKE A PATRIARCH!"—Grimes, probably. Carl the Hat tween-sneers that he hopes his dad realizes he will have to shoot anyone who gets sick and turns. This terrific conversation lasts a few moments longer.
Uh-oh. The water hose is clogged. Someone needs to go out in zombie territory to fix it. Uh-oh. Glenn is sick. You know it's really getting dire when someone with a name AND a penis gets it!
(NB: Not all men have penises. Not all people with penises are men. But this show has neither the sophistication nor the sensitivity to include trans* characters. If, however, I am one day happily proven wrong about that, I will eat Carl's hat.)
Maggie and Blonde Girl have a great conversation through the quarantine door about everyone has a job (which is the vaguely drawn thematic topic of this episode) and about how having a job to do means "we don't get to be upset." Whut? One of the most exhausting and infuriating things about this show is the aggressive emotional auditing and policing that goes on between characters constantly. Telling other people how to feel is as constant a presence as gurgling zombies.
If I had even the slightest faith that the writers of this show knew what they were doing, I might be inclined to make an argument that the show was secretly a brilliant commentary on how the ubiquity of emotional policing in our terrible culture of judgment can feel like an onslaught of voracious, fetid, nightmare creatures lurching toward you with outstreched arms, seeking to poison you with their toxic disease.
But I'm pretty sure this show is actually arguing that emotional policing is the awesomest tool in the kyriarchy toolbox.
Anyway.
Hershel heads for the woods to collect elderberries to make tea for the sickies, and Carl the Hat insists in a typically obnoxious way on accompanying him. Carol heads for the stream to fix the water hose, and Grimes has to save her (or at least he thinks he does), so he yells at her. Tyreese and Bob the Army Doctor join Daryl and Michonne, and they all head for the vet clinic.
Hershel says a bunch of things about choosing how to risk your life, which I can't hear over the sound of my own yawning. The doctor coughs blood DIRECTLY into Hershel's face, which is presumably not supposed to be funny, but makes me laugh uproariously. Blonde Girl holds Baby Zombie Whistle Grimes, because we all have a job, and that is hers! Glenn coughs. Maggie frets. The vet run crew hears a voice on the radio. Whuzzat?! Before we can find out, they drive into a swarm of zombies. SO MANY ZOMBIES! The car gets stuck in the muck of zombie corpses, so they have to make a run for it. Slash slash slash. Thump thump thump. Arrows. Tyreese is taking his anger out on all the zombies.
Grimes investigates the scene of the murder, and finds a bloody handprint smaller than his own. THAT COULD ONLY BE ONE PERSON! He confronts Carol and asks her if she killed Karen and Rick from Accounting, and she says yes. Which is really going to complicate things since all the dudes have been promising to ruthlessly punish whoever dunnit.
Next week on The Walking Dead: The plot moves forward in a virtually imperceptible increment.
Discuss.
Early Birds
This morning, a passing migration of birds set down in our neighborhood. For just a few brief minutes, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of birds descended on lawns and in trees, resting and seeking a quick bite, chattering noisily. And then, as quickly as they'd arrived, they were gone.
I watched the first part of their visit from my porch, and then went back in for the camera, so I could catch a bit of it to share.
Video Description: Across from me, in a small field, dozens of black birds congregate in the grass. (When I first looked out at that same field right after they landed, the grass was not even visible for all the birds on it.) There is much chirping and chattering. More and more birds swoop in and land. I pan up, to catch the birds in the trees and air, then back down to the field. Then, in one movement, the entire field of birds lifts into the air and flies into formation. All of the birds from the surrounding trees take off into the air. A huge swarm flies overhead, making all kinds of communicative noise. The clouds of birds come and come. And then they are gone.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
The Spanish government has asked for the US ambassador to Spain to account for reports that the NSA spied on more than 60 million phone calls in Spain. What a fucking embarrassment.
Juan Cole: "Among the founding principles of the United States was 'no taxation without representation.' But the NSA appears to be a secret kingdom that appropriates our money with no oversight or accountability. We didn't elect it, and if it doesn't let our chosen representatives know what it is up to, then it is taxing us without giving us any representation. It is a tyrant. It is an ominous homunculus within the body politic. Secrecy is anathema to a democratic republic. If we ever had one, it is long gone."
Meanwhile, the trial of Rebekah Brooks and her colleagues employed by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, resulting from the phone hacking scandal at the now defunct British tabloid News of the World, begins this week. Seems kind of horrifyingly quaint post-Snowden.
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham is "threatening to block every single nomination from the Obama administration until he gets what he wants on Benghazi." I don't have enough sighs in my lifetime for this guy.
[CN: Misogyny] Whenever some d-bag like Richard Dawkins asserts that feminism and Islam are incompatible, I think of Saudi women's driving campaign: "Saudi women demanding the right to drive said they would keep up their campaign a day after government warnings and a heavy police presence thwarted their call for many women to get behind the wheel." Brave, brave women.
Surprise: The US pays more for broadband because of corporate monopolies. Thanks for busting those antitrust laws, President Reagan!
There were two digital shorts on SNL this weekend that were pretty darn funny.
RIP Lou Reed.
RIP Marcia Wallace.
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that not everyone wants to get married. The neat thing about opening up choice is that the spectrum of choices becomes ever more evident.
I mean, once cats and dogs start teaming up, it's all over for humans.
Call of Cheesethulhu
Do you like looking at pictures of specially-styled party food? If not, you might want to skip this post! If so, read on!
This weekend I hosted my irregular-but-regular Arkham Horror board game night. If you are not familiar with the game, it is a co-operative game (meaning, all the players work together for a group win), set in the universe of USian horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.
So I served some appropriately Cthulhu-themed foods (which basically means a lot of tentacled-looking stuff). Like a Cheese-thulhu ball! With crackers! Covered in turkey bacon bits, pecans and green onions.
And a Vegthulhu! Rising from the sea guacamole.
And here is the Cthulhu army of hot-dog cephalopod minions!!!
And for dessert? Well here are always cupcakes... cupcakes topped with Cthulhu's evil visage (aka a marshmallow chocolate cookie), minty wings and tentacles formed from chocolate Twizzlers.
And then we played the game, which, as you can see, takes a little doing (thus the food-fortification.)
Do you have any fun party food you'd like to share? Feel free to do so in comments.
Condoms for Everyone!
In a policy statement that will surprise no one who has ever paid attention to teenagers, sex, or facts, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Adolescence has said that making condoms available to teens is a good idea.
[The AAP committee] said schools are a good place to make condoms available. To be most effective, they should also be accompanied by sex education programs.It should basically be raining condoms anywhere there is a concentration of teenagers.
There is still some resistance to making condoms more accessible for young people, researchers said.
"I think one of the main issues is the idea that if you provide condoms and make them accessible, kids will be more likely to have sex. But really, that's not the case," Amy Bleakley said. "Getting over the perception that giving condoms out will make kids have sex is a real barrier for parents and school administrators," she told Reuters Health.
...She said some studies suggest teenagers with access to condoms and comprehensive sex education actually start having sex later than their peers who don't.
...The new policy statement, an update to the AAP's 2001 statement on condom use by adolescents, was published Monday in Pediatrics.
"The biggest difference is that we have more evidence about how effective they are against sexually transmitted infections," Dr. Rebecca O'Brien, the policy statement's lead author, said. That's especially true for viruses like herpes and HIV, she added.
...In its recommendations, the committee said doctors should support consistent and correct use of condoms. They should also encourage parents to discuss condom use and prevention of STIs with their adolescent children.
Sexually active teenagers should have access to free or low-cost condoms, such as in pediatricians' offices and schools, the committee emphasized. At retail stores, condoms sold in multi-packs typically cost 25 to 50 cents each.
"For teens to use them, they have to have them available, and they're not going to come in necessarily asking for them," O'Brien said.
O'Brien specializes in adolescent medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. She said her office has a fishbowl full of condoms.
"Having them available, not just in healthcare settings is really important," she told Reuters Health. "Have them in the mall. They should be everywhere."
This idea that making contraceptives available to teenagers will encourage, enable, tacitly permit them to have sex is absurd and tiresome. That's not the way humans work, at any age. The availability of condoms will not make a huge difference in the number of kids having sex; it will only make a difference in how many kids have safer sex.
The Worst Part of Halloween
[Content Note: Racism; racist imagery; appropriation; violence.]
In the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen, there are still white people who think it's okay to do blackface for Halloween. (See also.) Over the weekend, actress Julianne Hough was snapped in a blackface costume, and a couple of nightmares from Florida dressed up as George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, the latter complete with blackface and bloody bullet hole in chest.
This is not okay. This is not okay.
Treating eliminationist violence like a joke is not okay. Turning identity into a costume is not okay. Making costumes that look like pieces of a marginalized person's body have been literally torn from their bodies and turned into trophies for privileged people to wear like a fucking punchline is not okay.
Stop it. Just stop.
Open Thread
This week's open threads have been brought to you by snowperson accessories.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
Belly up to the bar,
and be in this space together.
Nope
[Content Note: Rape culture; child sexual abuse.]
This is an actual fucking headline in the world: Dave Herman, Radio Personality, Tried to Arrange Sex With Girl, 7.
Nope. No, he didn't. What Dave Herman, Radio Personality, tried to do is rape a child. He did not try to "arrange sex with" her. Specifically, he tried to "arrange" to kidnap who he thought was a 7-year-old child but was actually a law enforcement agent, and take her from New Jersey to the Virgin Islands so he could rape her.
Special contempt sneers at NBC News for repeating that shit right on its front page in the featured news section:
This is rape culture.
Discussion Thread: Halloween Costumes
If you are dressing up for Halloween this year, for a party or to take a younger person trick-or-treating or to answer your door, what is your costume going to be?
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by sweaters.
Recommended Reading:
Aaron: [Content Note: Racism; violence] 12 Years a Slave and the Power of Owning Our Own Narratives
Dianna: [CN: Christian supremacy; misogyny; sexuality policing; rape culture] Purity Culture as Rape Culture: Why the Theological Is Political
Shannon: [CN: Privilege; emotional auditing; tone policing] Hey Allies, Let's Talk Shall We?
crunktastic: [CN: Misogyny; bullying] On Black Men Showing Up for Black Women at the Scene of the Crime
Jon: [CN: Hostility to consent; class warfare] Right to Life [sic] Chapters Sue to Prevent Medicaid Expansion in Ohio
Trudy: [CN: Misogynoir; illness] On Those UK Stats about Young Black Women and Young White Women with Breast Cancer
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
