Here is some stuff in the news today...
Major (and terrible) news for the shredded vestiges of the US democracy: The Supreme Court has "struck down restrictions on the grand total that any person can contribute to all federal candidates for office. Today's decision left intact the cap of $2,600 per election that a contributor to give to any single candidate for federal office, but it invalidated the separate limit on how much can be contributed to all federal candidates put together—$48,600. ...Supporters of what's known as the aggregate contribution limit said its purpose was to help prevent corruption. Without it, warned Fred Wertheimer, a longtime proponent of federal regulation of contributions, 'you will establish a system of legalized bribery like we used to have before the Watergate scandals.'" Which is to say nothing of the fact that it further erodes the equalizing effect that universal suffrage is meant to achieve.
[Content Note: Disaster; death] There was an 8.2 magnitude earthquake off the coast of northern Chile last night, which triggered a tsunami that pounded the shore with seven-foot waves. Six people were killed. Damage to infrastructure and property was limited. "President Michelle Bachelet, declared parts of Chile's north a disaster zone, promising troops and police reinforcements to maintain order while damage was repaired after landslides blocked roads."
In news that surprises no one: "US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a 'back door' in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans' communications." This country. Seriously.
[CN: Homophobia] Not learning the lesson that this shit will not pass Constitutional muster anywhere, Mississippi "has passed legislation that would allow people to use their religion to justify discrimination." For people who claim to love small government and hate waste, Republicans sure do love wasting taxpayer dollars defending indefensible bullshit in court.
[CN: Airline disaster] Authorities have cleared all passengers of foul play in the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and finally admit that we may not ever know what happened. No shit. I don't mean to sound flippant, but I'm just angry that outcome was not stressed as a possibility from the start, which I feel would have been much more sensitive to the families and friends who have been desperately waiting for answers they keep being promised will come. That was a promise there was never any certainty could be kept.
Yikes: "The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Atlanta apologized Monday for building a $2.2 million mansion for himself" with a massive donation. Archbishop Wilton Gregory says of the nearly 6,400-square-foot mansion: "I am disappointed that, while my advisors [sic] and I were able to justify this project fiscally, logistically, and practically, I personally failed to project the cost in terms of my own integrity and pastoral credibility with the people of God of north and central Georgia." Ha ha whoops!
In other Catholic Church news: "Vatican super-charges social media for saintings: The Vatican is turning to social media to reach out to the millions of pilgrims expected to attend the canonisation of John Paul II, the Polish pope who attained rock star status by the time he died in 2005. Rome police expect up to five million people at the mass officially making saints of John Paul II, who was pope from 1978-2005, as well as John XXIII (1958-63)—in the first double papal sainting ceremony in the church's history. Besides the www.2papisanti.org official website, the Vatican has set up several Facebook pages using the "2popesaints" theme, as well as accounts on Twitter (@2popesaints), YouTube (2popesaints) and Instagram (#2popesaints)." Those 2popesaints are 2legit2quit. True fact.
In the News
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Dehumanization; war on agency. NB: Not only woman can be pregnant.]
"This is not about a woman's body. This is about the life of an unborn 20-week-old baby."—Republican Mississippi State Senator Angela Burks Hill, on the Mississippi State Legislature's passage of a 20-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, about which Republican Governor Phil Bryant says he looks forward to "receiving it and quickly signing it into law."
This is not about a woman's body. Welp.
They're not even trying to be circumspect about it anymore. Shades of Republican Virginia State Senator Steve Martin's cool Facebook post about "the child's host (some refer to them as mothers)."
We are to be nothing but incubators. Property of the state.
[H/T to Shaker Jennie.]
Transcript Update
Not too many more of these left to go! We are rolling-rolling-rolling (keep those doggies rolling...)!
Record | Splice | Transcribe | Proof (Vol.) | Proof (Prof.) | ePubify | ePublish | |
SB5 Video | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started |
HB2 Video | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | working | not started |
SB1 Video | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started | not started |
Citizen (1) | complete | complete | complete | complete | complete | not started | not started |
Citizen (2) | complete | Complete | complete | complete | working | not started | not started |
Couple of things to add:
1. If you are already a Volunteer, please-please-please check your email for an important update I just sent out and please let me know if you did not get it. I want everyone to be able to weigh in on some stuff-and-things.
2. If you are not already a Volunteer, but would like to help me by checking that the links in an epub/mobi/pdf file (they're identical, so you can pick whichever to examine) actually go to where they are supposed to go, that would be super-helpful because links take time to check and I'm trying to get this finished. Drop me an email if you wanna help with this, and all my thanks in advance.
Principles!
[Content Note: War on agency; Christian Supremacy.]
Hobby Lobby's employee retirement plan has invested tens of millions with companies that make reproductive healthcare drugs and devices they have sued not to have to fund, because of course it does:
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).The lawsuit filed by Hobby Lobby, regarding which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments just last week, explicitly objects to having to pay for covering Plan B, Ella, and IUDs.
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby's retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby's health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.
All nine funds—which have assets of $73 million, or three-quarters of the Hobby Lobby retirement plan's total assets—contained holdings that clashed with the Greens' stated religious principles.Whoooooooooooops!
There are specifically designed investments for investors who want to avoid investing in companies that make abortifacients or do stem cell research. (Likewise there are specifically designed investments for people who only want to invest in sustainably green companies, or those who avoid animal testing, etc.) I'm certain Hobby Lobby knows this. It's just that pharmaceutical investments are so damn profitable.
It's hard being a woman-hating, money-loving conservative Christian corporation these days!
Question of the Day
When was the last time you laughed out loud? If you laugh out loud a lot, please feel free to interpret as the last time you had a great, heaving, tear-inducing belly laugh.
Headline of the Day
TPM: "CNN's Missing Plane Coverage Turns Up Garbage."
Yes, yes it has.
I think that was fair to say at the point when CNN contributors were speculating on live air whether the plane could have been sucked into a black hole over the Indian Ocean.
(I wish that were a joke.)
(It is not.)
The CIA Misled on Torture
[Content Note: Torture.]
This is what anyone without a pro-torture agenda suspected all along, and now we have confirmation of it. As unsurprising as it is profoundly infuriating, sad, contemptible:
A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.Paul Waldman has some excellent commentary on the report:
The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.
The part that will likely get the most attention is the conclusion that torture produced little if any useful intelligence, which is extremely important. But even more damning is the picture the committee paints of a CIA that all along was trying to convince everyone that what they were doing was effective, even as it failed to produce results.That rings true, at least for some members of the Bush administration who developed, facilitated, and advocated this policy. And I strongly suspect that, for other of their cohorts, possibly including the former vice-president who says, perhaps without irony, that "the results speak for themselves," there was simply a cruel indifference to whether torture was effective, except insomuch as the claim that it was engendered support among some parts of the public to which they are ostensible accountable.
...In the case of the CIA (and the Bush administration), they had a moral sunk cost in the torture program. They had made an extraordinary ethical choice, to make torture the official policy of the United States (and renaming it "enhanced interrogation" wasn't going to fool anyone, not even themselves). Once that decision was made and the torture began, it had to be effective, and not just effective but fantastically effective, in order to justify the moral compromise they had made. When the torture program failed to produce the results they hoped for, they could have said, "This stuff isn't working; let's focus on what does." But by then they couldn't retreat; the only hope of balancing the moral scales was to go forward.
...The picture this paints is one of an agency that is simultaneously torturing prisoners, without much effect, and also trying desperately to tell a story to the rest of the government that the torture is working. And to this day, everyone on up the chain—most recently Dick Cheney, who said the other day of the torture program that he'd do it all over again, because "The results speak for themselves"—insists the same thing. Because if it didn't work, what are they? They're monsters. They transgressed one of humanity's most profound moral injunctions, for nothing. And no one wants to believe that about themselves.
By which I mean: There are almost certainly architects of this lamentable policy for whom the fact that torture was simply torture for torture's sake was not a bug, but a feature.
When we are governed by people who are eager, rather than profoundly reluctant, to pursue policies that will result in harm, we should not be surprised to discover that there are among them people who simply enjoy doing harm on a grand scale.
That is a lesson we have been taught over and over by certain of our leaders, and yet we repeat the same mistakes. I suppose because there are enough of us who, like those ruthless stewards of the state, don't regard them as mistakes.
Debt Collection Nightmares
David Dayen has a good piece at TNR about the complete clusterfuck that is debt collection in the US: "Someone Else's Debt Could Ruin Your Credit Rating."
This happened to me many years ago. Someone with a name sort of like mine (good enough!) racked up a bunch of debt in Indianapolis, and the debt collectors came after me. It ended up being filed on my credit report, and I wrote to the credit agencies to get it removed (which is all you can do, since they don't have public contact info beyond mailing addresses). My entreaties were ignored, so I had shitty credit for years, through absolutely no fault of my own.
It's horrifying how costly these careless and common misidentifications can be. And how little control we have over trying to rectify it.
Often, getting this sorted out depends entirely on the good will of debt collectors and credit agencies who profit explicitly from not having any good will in the first place.
Quote of the Day
"One of the things that my training in liberal humanities has helped me to understand is that our social position determines a lot of what we actually know about the world. People of color understand racism far more than white people ever will because we have experienced it. We live with it. We must learn how to navigate it. Women understand sexism far more than men ever will. We have experienced it. We live with it. We must learn how to navigate it. So that means in my corner of the world, that when a person speaks out of their experience of marginalization we listen. We recognize the limitations of our epistemology, or knowledge system. We recognize that as much as we may have tried to learn about something, we don't know everything. Some things we simply can't know."—Brittney Cooper, in a must-read piece about #CancelColbert and the reactions to it.
[H/T to Amanda Levitt.]
Daily Dose of Cute
No, YOU'RE fuzzy!
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Two Facts
[Content Note: Privilege; bootstraps.]
1. David Brooks is still being employed by the New York Times to write a garbage column.
2. This week's garbage column is like a trophy to garbage.
Under the headline "The Employer's Creed," David Brooks metes out advice to employers about who they should and shouldn't be hiring. Now, generally speaking, I agree with the advice that the perfect résumé does not axiomatically translate into the perfect employee, and I enthusiastically advocate abandoning the idea that someone with a less traditional résumé should be reflexively rejected. Sometimes people with the most interesting lives and experiences have the least impressive résumés.
But. BUT. Bear in mind that David Brooks has long been a proponent of BOOTSTRAPS! and a denier of the advantages of privilege when you read this shit:
Bias hiring decisions against perfectionists. If you work in a white-collar sector that attracts highly educated job applicants, you've probably been flooded with résumés from people who are not so much human beings as perfect avatars of success. They got 3.8 grade-point averages in high school and college. They served in the cliché leadership positions on campus. They got all the perfect consultant/investment bank internships. During off-hours they distributed bed nets in Zambia and dug wells in Peru.So, basically, now anyone who precisely follows the model that "lifting yourself up by the bootstraps" has always required (within the confines of Corporate America) is either unoriginal or cowardly. Perfect.
When you read these résumés, you have two thoughts. First, this applicant is awesome. Second, there's something completely flavorless here. This person has followed the cookie-cutter formula for what it means to be successful and you actually have no clue what the person is really like except for a high talent for social conformity. Either they have no desire to chart out an original life course or lack the courage to do so. Shy away from such people.
That's maybe the kind of thing that makes some sort of sense to say in the brainpan of someone who pictures "middle class, able-bodied, thin, white, cishet male" as the default
• People who are not able-bodied, thin, white, cisgender, straight, and/or male, for whom approaching a vanilla "perfection" has been their only means of being competitive.
• People who are first-generation travelers through the middle-class process, for whom the "cookie-cutter" model may be the only model to which they have access, simply by virtue of its ubiquity, as opposed to people whose parents and other relatives have provided multiple models of navigating middle-class access to them.
• People with names that indicate a background, ethnicity, religious affiliation, etc., prejudiced responses to which have "othered" them throughout their lives, who have learned that conformity in other ways is required to balance their very names.
• People who have overcome learning disabilities, social anxiety, illness, neglect, oppression, and/or other limitations to achieve what they've long been told (by people like David Brooks) is the right résumé of accomplishments to achieve success, whose arrival at this "boring" result is, in fact, indicative of a bravery paper cannot convey.
That's not a comprehensive list.
I'm sure David Brooks would balk at the suggestion that he seems to be moving the goalposts, now that people from marginalized classes are scoring goals in larger numbers. But if he doesn't like that accusation, then perhaps he should stop writing garbage that invites it.
[H/T to Shaker Mod aforalpha.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Seven million: "Beating expectations, President Barack Obama's health care overhaul was on track to sign up more than 7 million Americans for health insurance on deadline day Monday, government officials told The Associated Press."
Meanwhile: "On the final day of Obamacare's open enrollment, Fox News host Jenna Lee hammered Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about why Republicans have yet to offer a comprehensive alternative to the health law—despite repeatedly voting for its repeal." She bluntly asked: "What is preventing the Republicans from putting forward a real plan that everybody can look at, even before November?" LOL. Oh boy. When the GOP has lost Fox News...
Support is prevention: "While large organizations and local governments believe that preventing teenage pregnancy is achievable through expensive public service campaigns like New York City's controversial $400,000 public service campaign, which do not lend themselves to quantifiable data regarding their success, these groups are failing to realize that supporting teenage parents and their families would go a long way in preventing teenage pregnancy now and in the future—such as by helping them to stay in school and complete their education, as well as access to safe, quality, and affordable day care services, health services, housing, career readiness services, and more." This is just a terrific piece by Gloria Malone.
This is what our democracy now looks like (thanks, Citizens United!): "It's hard to imagine a political spectacle more loathsome than the parade of Republican presidential candidates who spent the last few days bowing and scraping before the mighty bank account of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. ...The ability of one man and his money to engender so much bootlicking among serious candidates, which ought to be frightening, has now become commonplace. Why talk directly to voters when you can get a billionaire to help you manipulate them with a barrage of false television ads, as the Koch brothers are doing with Republican Senate candidates around the country. It's a cynical calculation that is turning people away from political involvement. Mr. Adelson thinks that's not only terrific, but hilarious. Politico reported that at a party on Saturday night for the Republican Jewish Coalition, Mr. Adelson said he couldn't give the group the $50 million it requested because its director didn't have change for $1 billion." Oh my aching sides.
[Content Note: Worker exploitation; death] The invisible hand of the market won't catch you: "Tower climbing, a small field of roughly 10,000 workers, has been called the most dangerous job in America. And as ProPublica and Frontline reported in 2012, cell phone carriers and tower owners have insulated themselves from legal and regulatory liability for on-the-job injuries by delegating this work to layers of subcontractors. Now, for the first time, OSHA is systematically tracking which companies subcontractors were working for when accidents occurred, collecting paperwork that spells out such relationships. In a letter sent in February to industry employers and state wireless associations, the agency criticized 'check the box' language written into contracts that doesn't set out clear standards for safety." Cue the cries about how regulation is a job-killer. Which seems especially pathetic when people are literally getting killed on the job.
This is interesting: "Methane-spewing microbes—not volcanoes or asteroids—triggered a global catastrophe 252 million years ago that wiped out nearly all life on Earth, according to a new theory put forward by scientists. The mass extinction represented the worst of five such catastophic events thought to have occured during the history of the planet, with more than 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land vertebrates were wiped out. The scale of this even drawfs the calamity that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, thought to have been triggered by a six-mile wide asteroid smacking the planet." Interesting and also terrifying: "The resulting outburst of methane produced effects similar to those predicted by current models of global climate change: a sudden, extreme rise in temperatures, combined with acidification of the oceans."
And finally: RIP Frankie Knuckles. [Note: Video may begin playing automatically at link.]
Today in Just Like Jesus Would Do
[Content Note: Homophobia.]
Insert the requisite disclaimer that not all conservative evangelical Christians are any one thing, something that ought to be evident as I'm linking to an evangelical Christian writing about this turn of events (emphases mine):
On March 24, World Vision announced that the U.S. branch of the popular humanitarian organization would no longer discriminate against employees in same-sex marriages. It was a decision that surprised many but one that made sense, given the organization's ecumenical nature.When you reach the point where you think it's reasonable to say, "I will stop supporting this needy child because you are being slightly less hateful toward gay people," you have derailed.
But on March 26, World Vision President Richard Stearns reversed the decision, stating, "our board acknowledged that the policy change we made was a mistake."
Supporters helped the aid group "see that with more clarity," Stearns added, “and we're asking you to forgive us for that mistake."
So what happened within those 48 hours to cause such a sudden reversal?
The Evangelical Machine kicked into gear.
Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the decision pointed to "disaster," and the Assemblies of God denomination encouraged its members to pull their financial support from the organization.
Evangelicals took to Twitter and Facebook to threaten to stop sending money to their sponsored children unless World Vision reversed course.
Within a day of the initial announcement, more than 2,000 children sponsored by World Vision lost their financial support. And with more and more individuals, churches and organizations threatening to do the same, the charity stood to lose millions of dollars in aid that would otherwise reach the poor, sick, hungry and displaced people World Vision serves.
So World Vision reversed course.
Stearns told The New York Times that some people, satisfied with the reversal, have called World Vision headquarters to ask, "Can I have my child back?" as though needy children are expendable bargaining chips in the culture war against gay and lesbian people.
Many of us who grew up evangelical watched with horror as these events unfolded.
As a longtime supporter of World Vision, I encouraged readers of my blog to pick up some of the dropped sponsorships after the initial decision. I then felt betrayed when World Vision backtracked, though I urged my readers not to play the same game but to keep supporting their sponsored children, who are of course at no fault in any of this.
But most of all, the situation put into stark, unsettling relief just how misaligned evangelical priorities have become.
When Christians declare that they would rather withhold aid from people who need it than serve alongside gays and lesbians helping to provide that aid, something is wrong.
Which would be true irrespective of the belief system underwriting that indecent calculation, but is especially absurd when the person around whose teachings your entire belief system is based is believed to have spoken incessantly about caring for the poor and said bupkis about same-sex marriage.
This is a complete abandonment of perspective and decency.
When secularists and religious liberals of various stripes express contempt for conservative evangelicals' legislative meddling, they reflexively accuse us of being hostile to their faith. And when we note it's really the bigotry they practice under the auspices of faith to which we object, they caterwaul about how they don't hate queer folks and accuse us of intolerance.
Well. Yeah. And frankly I don't feel particularly inclined to apologize for being intolerant of choices so evidently motivated by fear and hatred it is laughable to claim otherwise.
How I Met Your Mother Finale
[Spoiler warning for the series finale of How I Met Your Mother.]
I don't believe I've ever seen an entire episode of How I Met Your Mother. I do recall watching a few minutes of one episode and, ahh, not enjoying it a whole lot.
But the series, which ran for nine seasons, came to an end last night, and I read a synopsis of the finale, and I feel like I would have been pretty pissed if I'd invested nine years in that show for that finale, lol!
So I figured I'd put up a thread in case there's anyone who did invest those nine years, or part of them, or whatever, and wants to talk about the finale, whether you loved it or hated it or fell somewhere in between.
On April Fools' Day
I have mentioned once or twice or fully one million times that I hate pranks. Pranks are the fucking worst. And April Fools' Day can go straight to hell.
Anyway. I don't have anything to say about pranking that I haven't said a dozen times before (PRANKING IS TERRIBLE), so here's a thread to talk about pranks you see played today, previous April Fools' pranks you hated, or whatever.
In conclusion: Fuck pranks.
Question of the Day
Inspired by Shaker masculine_lady: To what are you looking forward at the moment? It could be as simple as looking forward to getting to put your feet up at the end of the day, or as grand as looking forward to a vacation you've been planning for years.
Discussion Thread: Nostalgic Toys
One of the things that makes me love 2048 so much is that it reminds me of playing with slide tile puzzles when I was a kid. Remember slide tile puzzles?
I had about a million of the things, and I would play with them for hours. Long after I'd already solved them multiple times, I'd just mix 'em up and solve them again and again.
I can still picture the crumbling cardboard box in my bedroom in which I kept all my slide tile puzzles, my Jacob's Ladder, and my magnetic gyro wheel. It sat right beside my cardboard box full of "little animals," which was just a tumbling mass of miniature plastic animals with which I used to play "zoo."
Anyway!
I thought it would be fun to have a thread on what toys (or games, or hobbies, or whatever) are nostalgic for you. It doesn't necessarily have to be a mass produced toy, especially since not everyone owned mass produced toys. If what's most nostalgic for you is an old pie tin your granny gave you to play "kitchen" in the backyard, that totally counts.
