My convalescence team.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Daily Dose of Cute
My convalescence team.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Number of the Day
[Content Note: War on agency.]
Five: The number of anti-choice bills introduced by Republican legislators in the first three days of the new session of Congress.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) this week introduced four new anti-choice bills in the Senate, including a measure to defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level.Following the midterm election in November, Republicans have control of both the House and the Senate, meaning these proposals now have a greater chance of passing. Let's hope President Obama is ready with his veto pen.
...Vitter's proposed requirement that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges with a local hospital would likely close many safe, legal clinics for no sound medical reason, which has already happened in Texas and other states.
His proposed ban on sex-selective abortions is one that reproductive rights activists decry as being both unnecessary and racist.
And under the guise of "non-discrimination," another bill would allow health-care providers to refuse women abortion care even in cases of emergency.
Combined with the U.S. House's speedy introduction of a national 20-week abortion ban bill on Tuesday, Republican legislators introduced a total of five anti-choice bills in the first three days of the new Congress.
[H/T to Imani.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; death] I noted on January 5 that Boko Haram had started the year by seizing a multinational military base in Nigeria and massacred hundreds of people. In subsequent days, reports began to emerge that Boko Haram had killed "as many as two thousand people in at least sixteen towns and villages in the last week. ...Today I spoke to Hamza Idris, a friend and senior reporter with the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust, who has been covering the Baga massacre for the past week from the Borno State capital of Maiduguri. He had spoken with Baga residents and a district head who said that they had seen hundreds, but not as many as a thousand, bodies: people who were breathing and eating one moment and dead the next, from a grenade or bullet. ...I asked Idris if he knew what was happening in Baga. He sounded defeated: 'They've taken over the town, so we don’t know if they've stopped the killing or not.'"
The massacre in Nigeria has gotten comparatively little attention in the Western media, which has been obsessively documenting the attack in France on the staff of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Though both attacks were committed by men who are Muslim extremists, here are some key differences between the two massacres:
1. In Nigeria, the victims are black, many of them women and children. In France, the victims are almost exclusively white men.
2. In Nigeria, many/all of the victims were themselves Muslim. In France, all but one of the victims were not Muslim.
These are the facts underwriting Western indifference to the massacre in Nigeria, which has exponentially more victims. As "reprisal" attacks on French Muslims are justified or contextualized with rhetoric about people being "fed up" with Muslim extremism or terrorist violence, we are not meant to question the yawning apathy directed toward Nigerian victims who don't fit into simple narratives of Muslims attacking non-Muslims, or dark-skinned people attacking white people, and who don't inspire calls for solidarity because they were killed for simply living their lives instead of something "heroic" like publishing reprehensibly racist cartoons.
Everyone definitely cares about Muslim extremist violence—except, apparently, when it's directed at black Muslim women and children.
I am not, of course, suggesting that we shouldn't care about the victims in France. I am saying that we should care, at least as much, about the victims in Nigeria.
* * *
Mitt Romney really wants to make sure my Photoshop skills stay in tip-top shape: "Romney forcefully declared his interest in a third presidential run to a room full of powerful Republican donors Friday, disrupting the fluid 2016 GOP field as would-be rival Jeb Bush was moving swiftly to consolidate establishment support. ...'I want to be president,' Romney told about 30 donors in New York. He said that his wife, Ann—who last fall said she was emphatically against a run—had changed her mind and was now 'very encouraging,' although their five sons remain split, according to multiple attendees." OH NO! I hope this Romney family discord doesn't ruin the next family retreat at the giant beautiful boat house!
In other 2016-ish news: Rick Santorum accuses his potential rivals of having thin resumes without a trace of irony. Rand Paul has hired someone yawn who cares. And Jay Leno says Hillary Clinton seems old and slow. Well, maybe some of us don't have time to dip our toes into the Fountain of Youth that is telling shitty jokes as a career and zipping around town in exhorbitantly priced cars while wearing head-to-toe denim, Mr. Leno.
* * *
President Obama has unveiled the America's College Promise proposal, which would "make two years of community college free for responsible students, letting students earn the first half of a bachelor's degree and earn skills needed in the workforce at no cost." That is definitely better than nothing!
In related news: "Senior Democrats, dissatisfied with the party's tepid prescriptions for combating income inequality, are drafting an 'action plan' that calls for a massive transfer of wealth from the super-rich and Wall Street traders to the heart of the middle class. The centerpiece of the proposal, set to be unveiled Monday by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), is a 'paycheck bonus credit' that would shave $2,000 a year off the tax bills of couples earning less than $200,000. Other provisions would nearly triple the tax credit for child care and reward people who save at least $500 a year. The windfall—about $1.2 trillion over a decade—would come directly from the pockets of Wall Street 'high rollers' through a new fee on financial transactions, and from the top 1 percent of earners, who would lose billions of dollars in lucrative tax breaks." Sounds great! Too bad it will never pass out of the Republican-controlled Congress.
* * *
[CN: Domestic violence] George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of killing unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, has been arrested, again, for domestic violence. It's almost like if you let a guy literally get away with murder, he acts like he can get away with murder. Huh.
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Extended video footage of the police killing of Tamir Rice has been released, and shows that his 14-year-old sister "was pushed to the ground, handcuffed, and then shoved into the back of a patrol car as her 12-year-old brother lay dying after being shot by a Cleveland police officer who mistook his toy gun for a real one." Honestly. None of these people should be police officers. None of them.
[CN: Rape culture] In a survey of 73 men by University of North Dakota researchers, 31.7% of the respondents said they "would force a woman to have sex with them if there was no chance of being punished." When asked if they would rape a woman if there were no consequences, only 13.6% said they would. I am pretty disturbed by the cognitive dissonance there, but I am way the fuck more disturbed that nearly 1/3 of men will confess to raping women (as long as it's not called rape) if they can get away with it.
[CN: Rape culture] Veterans who have been discharged from the US military after sexual assaults are fighting to get veterans' benefits, which are often denied to them on the basis that they didn't serve long enough to qualify for them. Got that? The military doesn't do enough to prevent sexual assault, then denies benefits to service members who are discharged after being sexually assaulted. Fucking hell.
[CN: Appropriation] The Golden Globes were last night, and of course Eddie Redmayne, an able-bodied man, won Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) for playing Stephen Hawking, a man with a disability, and of course Jeffrey Tambor, a cis man, won Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series (Comedy or Musical) for playing a trans woman. Yeah, it's a real celebration for trans women, I'm sure, when someone playing a trans woman wins Best Actor.
RIP Taylor Negron, who was one of my absolute favorite character actors. The very first thing I ever saw him in was Better Off Dead, as the worst mail carrier ever, and I always got so excited every time I saw him in something, because he just had a droll style I adored, and the greatest face.
And finally! Please enjoy this ridiculous video of an adorable begging bunneh.
Open Thread + Update
Hosted by apples.
Well, I am still feeling incredibly shitty. I now have a relentless cough, which has left me with almost no voice, aching sides, and the inability to sleep for more than about 20 minutes at a time without waking myself with MORE COUGHING. Hey, do you want some coughing? BECAUSE I'VE GOT PLENTY TO SPARE!
I don't know what this hell-flu even is. My eyes feel like they have to sneeze.
Anyway, I am going to try to post a few things today, although my brain is utter mush from lack of sleep, so I cannot promise they will be terrific, and will probably contain even more typos than usual.
I HAVE ALL THE COUGHING AND ALL THE TYPOS YOU COULD EVER NOT WANT!
Open Thread + Update
Hosted by Pegasus.
I went to the doctor yesterday afternoon, and, because I never do anything halfway, lol, I not only have the flu, but ALSO a sinus infection and ALSO infections in both ears PLUS the usual complications care of my autoimmune disorder!
No wonder I've been feeling shitty.
I've now got a course of antibiotics, a million blankets and dogs and cats to keep me warm, and orders to hydrate and sleep.
I will be back as soon as I possibly can. ♥
Update
So, it turns out that having no heat for a day while you've got the flu makes the flu exponentially worse. We've now got heat back, thank Maude, after someone came out to fix it, but last night, I started getting acute pain in my chest and back, so I'm going to the doctor today.
As our run of extraordinarily bad luck continues, when Iain went to clear my car this morning, it was dead. I'm now working on arranging transportation to the doctor, and I'll worry about the car another day.
I'm sorry. I'll be back as soon as I can.
Ugh Ugh Ugh
Yesterday, I woke up feeling poorly, congested and headachy and a vicious sore throat, and, by the end of the day, I was in bad shape. Fever, shivering, the whole lot. I went to bed early and piled on the blankets and slept hard.
That is until 4am, when Dudley woke us up whining, because our furnace had stopped working and the house was freezing.
Iain tinkered with it for awhile, trying to get it to work, but no joy. So, we're waiting for someone to come out and see if it can be fixed. In the meantime, the inside temperature has plummeted to 50 degrees, and I'm feeling worse and worse, and my fever keeps going up.
So I'm going back to bed, with every blanket in the house, and all the dogs and cats, in an attempt to stay warm and get well, until we have working heat again.
2015 was supposed to be better than 2014. This is not an auspicious start.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker boutet: "What book/movie/show do you wish you had never read/watched? Either frustrating, boring (wish you had that time back), triggering, or put stuff in your head that you wish you never had to remember again."
Snowbirds
Two sparrows, sitting in the winter-bare vines on our front porch, after our first significant snowfall of the year.
How's the weather where you are?
![screen cap of tweet authored by Senator Cory Booker reading: 'Anyone in DC need to be shoveled out? He may preach the gosple [sic] of self help but I think I can convince @SenRandPaul to grab a shovel & help.'](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/apix/tweet2.jpg)
Daily Dose of Cute
Cute snuggly greyhound type person.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Racism; guns; death.]
"Surely [Michael Brown and Tamir Rice] must have done something to invite their deaths at the hands of law enforcement? Meanwhile, a white Christian man plans and executes a terrorist attack in Texas' capital and he's just a nice guy who lost his way, a Renaissance Faire enthusiast in a tricorn hat who enjoyed tubing and trying to blow up government buildings. This response accomplishes two things: It obfuscates the role of racism and white supremacy in the construction of the 'victim' in our discourse, and it excuses white-perpetrated violence as a fluke, rather than as the not-illogical result of pro-gun, anti-government, and anti-immigrant rhetoric."—Andrea Grimes, in a must-read piece for the Texas Observer, "The Mental Gymnastics of Excusing White Men's Violence."
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Rep. Louie Gohmert is challenging Rep. John Boehner for the position of Speaker of the House today, and he says that the US will be "devastated" if he doesn't win. Hahahahahaha okay player.
Speaking of elections, you might have heard we have another presidential election fully one million months from now, so let's see what's happening with that! Jeb Bush is ramping up his fundraising apparatus. Give him all the money, old white people! Chris Christie hugged someone from Texas, so we have our first scandal of the 2016 election, involving someone who isn't even running, because no one is running yet, since it is like three centuries away. And Jim Webb is for sure white and for sure a dude. You heard it here first!
[Content Note: Misogyny] Tom Watson makes the argument that Hillary Clinton's greatest credential for the US presidency is putting "the interests of women and girls atop the global development agenda." The fact that Clinton having made safety and opportunity for women and children globally a centerpiece of her career is widely ignored as a meaningful legacy and leadership credential is one of the most pointed commentaries on how little women and children are truly valued.
The 114th Congress is 80% white, 80% male, and 92% Christian. The representative democracy of the world's melting pot!
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Los Angeles police have shut down a protest outside LAPD headquarters, because of course they have: "The protesters set up a camp of makeshift tents and a kitchen about a week ago, prompted by the release of the autopsy report on Ezell Ford, a mentally ill 25-year-old shot dead during a confrontation with police in August. ...On Monday, the Times reported, police ordered the protesters to pack up their encampment and leave the sidewalk. The protesters complied peacefully, although they traded shouts with police. Two protest leaders, Melina Abdullah and Sha Dixon, were arrested after trying to deliver letters with their demands to police chief Charles Beck. The women, a professor of pan-African studies at Cal State and a television producer respectively, attempted to bypass the police line and enter the building, at which point they were detained. Both Abdullah and Dixon were released hours later." I continue to think it's just terrific (not terrific, not at all) that black people can be arrested for protesting, but white people aren't arrested for killing black people.
Meanwhile, in New York City, both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton have said that officers who used the occasions of the funerals of slain Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos to turn their backs on de Blasio made asses of themselves. Not the time, not the place.
[CN: Homophobia] Indiana's proposed "Religious Liberty" bill is really a "sure, same-sex couples can get married here now, but we don't have to like it" bill. Fucking bigots. Jesus Jones.
Jourdan Dunn is the first black model to appear solo on the cover of British Vogue in twelve freaking years.
RIP Christine Cavanaugh. "She was able to do incredible and amazing things with her voice and bring lots of smiles and many laughs to many people."
And finally! French Bulldogs in a ball pit. I repeat: French Bulldogs in a ball pit.
Fatsronauts 101: Permission to Live
[Content Note: Fat hatred; eliminationism; weight loss talk. This piece is being republished at the request of Shaker B, who wanted to revisit it at a time when lots of people are making and talking about weight-loss resolutions.]
The "war on obesity" is eliminationist. That is not hyperbole: It only sounds like it is because its warriors aren't honest enough to call their crusade what it really is—a war on fat people.
Aside from the equally contemptible embedded fallacies arising from the false equivalence between "fat" and "unhealthy," the "war on obesity" is contingent on profoundly dishonest rhetoric which wrenches apart fat people from their actual bodies—"We're not waging a war on you, heavens no! We're just waging a war against your disgusting fat body!"
This is precisely the same sort of reprehensible semantic game that underwrites "love the sin; hate the sinner" needle-threading identity-policing. When you seek to wrench apart the components of people's whole selves and throw away pieces of their identities, or their very bodies, it's just eliminationist rhetoric dressed up as Concern.
And nothing exposes that more nakedly than the fact that there are plenty of fat people for whom not being fat would necessitate sacrificing one's health, or one's very life.
This war on fat people kills people. And when it isn't actively trying to literally eliminate us, it's discouraging us from participating in the world, from being visible, from living.
It's telling us we have to lose weight before we start dating, before we go sleeveless, before we take that dream vacation, before we ask for a promotion, before we buy a bike, before we get tattooed, before we sign up for dancing lessons, before we splurge on a beautiful dress, before we get the haircut we really want, before we go the doctor, before we go to the gym, before we set a wedding date, before we have kids, before we even think about doing anything wonderful that fat people don't deserve.
It's telling us to lose weight before pursuing our dreams. It's telling us to lose weight before wearing a bathing suit. It's telling us to lose weight before "knowing real love and real fear, walking naked in the winter snow and in the summer tide, playing like a child, thinking as a martyr, making love to a stranger, tasting sin and purity at the same moment in time, being as a lamb in a den of wolves." (Whut? I know.) It's telling us to lose weight before living the life we want to live.
Which is entirely in addition to the too-small seats, the too-low weight maximums, the higher costs for clothes and healthcare and travel and anything else the price of which can be hiked and justified by fat bias, the totally legal rules against hiring, serving, treating fat people, and all the other deterrents and disincentives against our participation in the world.
The incessant drumbeat of messages that we aren't entitled to live a full life, that our fat denies us the all-access pass, creates in many fat people a shame so deep and intractable that we become unable to give ourselves permission to do any of the things that fat people aren't "supposed" to do.
I can't. I can't put myself out there. I can't wear a sleeveless shirt. I can't wear tight jeans. I can't cut my hair short. I can't try to be beautiful. I can't go on a beach holiday. I can't wear a bathing suit in public. I can't show my legs. I can't go to the gym. I can't have my picture taken. I can't go to a club to dance. I can't join the Peace Corps. I can't fall in love. I can't let myself be loved. I can't be happy. I can't live.
Not until I'm not fat anymore. And then I'll deserve it. All of it. Then I'll have permission from the galactic granter of access to life to do all the things I want to do.
That is bullshit.
It is dehumanizing bullshit. It is internalized eliminationist bullshit. It is harmful, hateful, despicable bullshit that exhorts us to remove ourselves from life as much as we can, so as not to sully it up with our imperfect aesthetics.
We are not obliged to delay life, to hide from life, to participate in life on some kind of reduced plan in accordance with arbitrary rules about what fat people are and are not "allowed" to do.
We don't need body policers' permission to live just as we are.
That said, I know what it's like to be in a space where it's nigh impossible to give yourself permission to life, just as you are. So, if you're still in that place where it helps to have someone else tell you what a lifetime of hatred makes it difficult for you to tell yourself: You have my permission to live your life just as you are. I give you the permission that our garbage fat-hating culture won't.
You have permission to live.
You do not have to wait until you lose weight to do anything that you want to do and can do right now. You have permission to live right now.
You have permission to be in the world, to participate, to take up the space that you need without apology. And you have permission to say FUCK YOU to anyone who disagrees.
We have a right to live as we are. Get out of the way, haters.
An Increasingly Hostile Nation
[Content Note: War on agency.]
The Guttmacher Institute has published a new report, reporting the legislative results on abortion restriction last year: "During the 2014 state legislative session, lawmakers introduced 335 provisions aimed at restricting access to abortion. By the end of the year, 15 states had enacted 26 new abortion restrictions."
This continues an awful trend: "Including these new provisions, states have adopted 231 new abortion restrictions since the 2010 midterm elections swept abortion opponents into power in state capitals across the country."
231 new abortion restrictions. In just four years.
Included in the report is a powerful infographic showing what this has meant in terms of increasing hostility toward abortion rights across the nation:
In 2000, 13 states had four or five types of abortion restrictions in effect and so were considered hostile to abortion rights. In that year, no state had more than five types of abortion restrictions in effect. By 2010, 22 states were considered hostile to abortion rights; five of these had six or more restrictions, enough to be considered extremely hostile to abortion rights. By 2014, 27 states had enough restrictions to be considered hostile; 18 of these can now be considered extremely hostile. The entire South is now considered hostile to abortion rights, and much of the South, along with much of the Midwest, is extremely hostile to abortion rights.Now, more than half of women (and other abortion-seeking people) in the United States live in states that are hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights. And the people who want to exercise those rights.
There is much more at the link.
This is visible proof of the tremendous and terrible success of the strategy anti-choicers have used in trying to render Roe an empty statute: "We don't have to see a Roe v. Wade overturned in the Supreme Court to end it. …We want to. But if we chip away and chip away, we'll find out that Roe really has no impact. And that's what we are doing."—Rev. Pat Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition.
Slowly and determinedly, while an ostensibly pro-choice president has occupied the White House, and while elections have come and gone in which progressive women are told, every time, we must vote Democratic if we want to retain our basic rights of agency and bodily autonomy, anti-choicers have chipped away and chipped away, and now half of the country lives in states hostile to abortion rights.
I am angry, friends.
I am angry that women and others who need abortions are being denied access to this legal medical procedure, because of people with no legitimate claim to our bodies and no non-religious justification and no willingness to understand the basic truths about abortion and the people who seek them.
I am angry that our ostensibly pro-choice president will not address, firmly and routinely and without apology, this all-out assault on our autonomy and agency.
I am angry how few men are engaged in this fight. That reproductive rights are treated as woman's work.
I am angry that this campaign of violence against women and others is allowed to go unchecked. I am angry that fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them. I am angry that women are not trusted to make the best decisions for our lives and our bodies. I am angry that I am just supposed to accept as reasonable men (and women) who sit in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent, though it is a crime for a person to use physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.
I am angry that my body is not mine, that my mind is not mine. That legislators can claim to know what is best for my body and can claim to know my mind better than I do. That is dehumanizing, infantilizing, a theft of my dignity.
I am angry that we have lost ground.
And I am angry that more people aren't angry about that.
This Kid Is Amazing
Via The Root, I was just introduced to 15-year-old blues prodigy Christone "Kingfish" Ingram:
[Video is a news segment on Kingfish care of his local Fox affiliate.]Now, here is video of Kingfish playing (and singing) "Don't Waste My Time" at the Big Eyed Blues Festival in October, so you can really see what all the fuss is about:
Kingfish, a fat black teenage boy, sits on his living room couch, holding and playing a guitar. In voiceover, the male reporter says, "With his fingers to the guitar threads, 15-year-old Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram shreds." Video of Kingfish shredding. Reporter, in voiceover: "He has played the White House and met First Lady Michelle Obama."
Cut to Kingfish being interviewed. "No words, no words. It was the same feeling I got when I met B.B.—B.B. King. You know? It's—it's no words that can describe it."
Over video of Kingfish playing, the reporter says: "He has played guitar, drums, or bass since he was five years old, but credits his parents for signing him up for classes at Clarksdale's Delta Blues Museum, for really teaching him to play. He started playing gigs in seventh grade."
Cut to Kingfish being interviewed. "When there was no place that I probably wouldn't be playing on the weekend, man. It was—that's when I just got hooked. You know? I'm like, you know what, this is what I'm gonna be doing for the rest of my life."
Over video of Kingfish playing, the reporter says: "Later this month, the Kingfish tours France."
Kingfish: "I'm very excited about that trip, man. I'm very ecstatic about it, man. It's gonna—it's gonna be awesome, man, you know. The morning I woke up and she told me about it, I really didn't believe it." Shreds.
Reporter: "His goal in life: To have two albums out by the time he is twenty. Reporting at Friars Point, Mississippi, I'm Tom Dees for Fox 13 News."
Hello, sir!
Kids today. Get ON my lawn!
Question of the Day
The obvious choice... What's the best art exhibit you've ever seen? And please feel free to define that as narrowly or as broadly as you like.
