More Hollywood donations:
A bill has just passed the Georgia House making it a crime to allow a child’s genitals to be mutilated (including male circumcision) but allowing consulting (er, that should be consenting) adults to do whatever the hell they want to their own genitalia.
Just kidding. Male circumcision is still allowed. But all female genital mutilation — including adult women seeking piercings on their own bodies — are expressly forbidden.
When the issue of consentual female genital piercing was brought up to sponsor Bill Heath (after a 160-0 debate-free vote), he was reportedly “slack-jawed”.
“What? I’ve never seen such a thing,” Heath said. “I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing,” he went on to say, as if what he thinks women should be doing to their own bodies is in any way relevant.
Stone Gossard gave $2,000 to Howard Dean. Janeane Garofalo gave $2,050 to Howard Dean, which exceeds the maximum allowed donation of $2,000. If she knew about the limit she may have tried to hide it: she divided her contributions between NY and LA addresses.
Is it a good thing that I can find this information in a few seconds? I don’t think so. But if there is one lesson to take away from this, always, always, use a PO box or PMB for political contributions.
(I guess this post could be titled “George W. Bush: Thanks, Dad!“)
(Note added 30 March 2004, and for readability not in the standard red: This is not how this post originally appeared. There was an alternate version that was on the site for about twelve minutes that I hoped, after revision, that people would miss. That’s the problem with having legions of devoted readers (insert appropriate string of punctuation that qualifies that as a wry attempt at humor): they catch you on that stuff. I was asked if I had “gotten an email” and was trying to “cover [my] ass”. So, for the record: no, I was not. I was just being an ass, and caught myself. My original post, which was intended to be somewhat funny, had said something really snarky along the lines of “Janeane Garofalo gave $2,000, but at least she tried to hide it.” I of course have no evidence of this, and although what she did was illegal, it’s wise to “never attribute to malice [or malfeasance] that which can be attributed to stupidity.” I respect Janeane Garofalo and apologize for any offense. I do, however, think she should get a letter from the FEC.)
We all know that some conservatives are dumb as fucking rocks. Some liberals are dumb as fucking rocks. Some moderates are dumb as fucking rocks. But it’s still mildly amusing when The Associated Press uses “conservative” as a euphemism for “dumb as a fucking rock.”
Donald Rumsfeld to Eric Westervelt: “We’ve been working the U.N. from the very beginning.”
Now presumably he accidentally ommited a crucial preposition, but not to put too much of a pop-Freudian spin on it, how indicative are lapses like this of underlying mindsets?
Hear for yourself: NPR News, headline “Rumsfeld: Iraq Improves Despite ‘Uneven’ Security”, timecode 04:03.
Let’s say you’re convicted in Great Britain of a crime you didn’t commit. After decades in prison proof of your innocence comes to light. David Blunkett (Home Secretary) wants the right to bill you for your time spent in prison. No joke. The reasoning is that you shouldn’t have been able to scam free room and board off the state if you didn’t have reason to be there in the first place.
Five British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay for two years without trial are set to be released. The British government lobbied for their release, and does not expect to file any charges against the men, if for no other reason than the fact that they were held so long in violation of international law. Some academics are speculating that the men have a good case for seeking compensation from the United States.
I completely support this. The way we treated these men is a disgrace. I say let them sue. I say settle the lawsuit. Make a big deal about it, have a special investigation, create a constitutional amendment that explicitly ratifies the Geneva Convention, let heads roll. All of that.
That being said, if The Herald wanted me to believe the men had been falsely imprisoned, as I believe was there intention, they did a horrible job. Really, three young Muslim men from the same town (one third the size of Pasadena) all happened to end up in Pakistan, at the same, with shaky reasons for being there? All three of them disappeared and ended up in the remote mountains of Afghanistan by complete accident?
The father of Rhuhel Ahmed, one of the detainees, said of the 23-year-old man that “He is a kid, straight out of school. How could he be a terrorist?” Who the hell does he think terrorist groups recruit, senile pensioners? I started the article believing them to be innocent. I finished it very skeptical. Read it for yourself and see what you think.
Female inmates are forced to work on a chain gang, wearing bags of rocks on their backs, if they want three meals a day. They work digging graves and burying people: homeless, elderly, infants. One woman had to bury her own baby. The draconian sheriff, a self-styled Old
West hero, has instituted cost-cutting measures. Slashing inmates’ caloric intakes. Housing them outside in tents in 125°F (52°C) weather. Feeding them ruined batches of processed food. And all this for mass murder? Serial child molestation? Genocide? No. Petty theft, substance abuse problems, and prostitution.
What third-world country am I talking about? Phoenix, Arizona.
Russia has pulled out of Kyoto talks.
Thanks, George.
Terrance Cottrell was an autistic 8-year-old boy. His mother was a member of a storefront fringe Christian church called Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith. Believing the boy to be possessed by evil spirits, the pastor of the church crushed the boy to death during an exorcism service while his mother held his legs down. While the death was ruled a homicide, the pastor was only charged with (and convicted of) felony child abuse rather than murder, a decision made because the pastor believed he was helping the boy.
According to Oregon Peaceworks, the following signs were seen at various war protests:
In other news, Edward Teller is dead, 60 years too late. (Too harsh? Hardly.)
Three Shots And He’s Out: “After serving just three years in prison for killing a 16-year-old, Tony Martin has been paid £125,000 for his ’story’ by the Mirror - and this is what we call justice?” From The Sunday Herald.
The inmates of Camp X-Ray will not appreciate the comparison, but there is a large slice of Alice in Wonderland about their predicament. It is not just that they have fallen down a rabbit hole of their own making, where they find themselves held in conditions which breach the Geneva Convention’s recommendations for the treatment of prisoners-of-war. What brings an even more bizarre touch to their fate is Bush’s decision to mount a kind of show trial for six of their number before a specially convened military tribunal.
Tennessee is scheduled to execute Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman June 18 for the 1986 murder of Patrick Daniels in Davidson County. Abdur’Rahman, an African American male, received exceptionally poor legal representation at his trial, and problems concerning possible innocence, mental illness, prosecutorial misconduct, and racial discrimination continue to surround his death sentence.
At the sentencing phase of Abdur’Rahman’s trial, his attorneys failed to present available mitigating evidence, namely the violent abuse he suffered as a child, which likely would have changed the jury’s sentencing decision. His father beat him with a baseball bat, and used various forms of torture as disciplinary tactics. These included stripping the young boy and tying him up, locking him in a cupboard, and forcing him to eat a pack of cigarettes. When Abdur’Rahman vomited after eating the cigarettes, his father made him eat the vomit. As a result of his upbringing, Abdur’Rahman developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and he has shown serious symptoms of mental illness, including Dissociative Disorder. During the appeals process, eight of the jurors who sentenced him to death expressed doubts over whether they would have voted for the death penalty if the defense had presented any or all of the available mitigating evidence at trial.
Furthermore, there is strong reason to believe that Abdur’Rahman, although present at the crime scene, was not the assailant in the murder for which he was sentenced to death.
The National Audobon Society has a Guide to Seafood to educate consumers about the impact of various fishing operations. Fish are conveniently rated into “red”, “yellow”, and “green” categories, and information is further broken down by population status, management status, and bycatch and habitat concerns. Not surprisingly, shark, swordfish, and orange roughy top the list. As I mentioned on my veganism blog, orange roughy can reach 150 years and do not reach sexual maturity until age 30, leading to a rapid depletion of the species. Shark and swordfish populations are also being severely depleted. Shrimp, surprisingly to me, entail the highest bycatch (incidental catch of non-target species) of any seafood. On average, for every pound of shrimp retrieved, seven pounds of other sea animals were accidentally killed and were then shoveled overboard. Groupers are subject to the same low growth rates as orange roughy, and even if measures are in place to “toss back” juveniles caught, they frequently die anyway due to pressure changes when they are pulled up from their deep water habitat. Anyone following the saga of British cod fisheries knows that Atlantic groundfishes (including cod, haddock, and monkfish) are in critical danger. Chilean seabass have almost disappeared and suffer from rampant illegal fishing.
Some species are in slightly less dire straits but are still poorly managed, in decreasing supply, or entail significant habitat disruption: salmon, tuna, red snapper, Pacific red snapper, and lobsters fall into this category. Species that are generally safe to eat are halibuts, mahi mahi, mackerels, squid (calamari), farmed tilapia (also known as Nile perch), crabs (other than Alaska king crabs) and striped bass.
The society provides a whole website dealing with this topic, including “seafood cards” that can be printed and kept in one’s wallet or purse to help one remember which are safe species, and a FAQ list that will help you with advocacy in your local restaurants and grocery stores.
If you eat seafood, please take a moment to commit this information to memory or download one of the memory aids. As the Audubon society says, “Your choices can help make our oceans healthy again.”
Let me introduce you to the easiest thing you have ever done to help fund progressive causes: Working Assets Long Distance. Let Working Assets be your long distance carrier, and they will donate 1% of top-line revenue to carefully selected nonprofits. Fifty are being funded in 2003, including Doctors Without Borders, Adbusters, Rainforest Action Network, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood. Since 1985 they have donated over $30 million, including $6 million in 2001 alone. The bills are printed on recycled paper, and every month for the first year you get a certificate for a free pint of Ben and Jerry’s (Vegans can give theirs to a non-vegan friend: Ben and Jerry’s used to sell eleven sorbets and six ices, but all have been dropped from their lineup.) Combine that with charges of 7 cents per minute (with a $3.95 monthly fee), 180 free minutes, and a reimbursed carrier switch fee, and you cannot go wrong: that’s actually less than I paid with AT&T. If you support progressive causes, I cannot think of a reason not not to take two minutes and switch your service. You can do it all online. Here’s the link again.
They tell us there are only two sides to be on
If you are on our side you’re right if not you’re wrong
But are we innocent, paragons of good?
Is our guilt erased by the pain that we’ve endured?
Hey look it’s time to pledge allegiance
Oh god I love my dirty Uncle Sam
Our country’s marching to the beat now
And we must learn to step in time
Where is the questioning where is the protest song?
Since when is skepticism un-American?
Dissent’s not treason but they talk like it’s the same
Those who disagree are afraid to show their face
Let’s break out our old machines now
It sure is good to see them run again
Oh gentlemen start your engines
And we know where we get the oil from
Are you feeling alright now
Paint myself all red white blue
Are you singing let’s fight now
Innocent people die, uh oh
There are reasons to unite
Is this why we unite?
If you hate this time
Remember we are the time!
Show you love your country go out and spend some cash
Red white blue hot pants doing it for Uncle Sam
Flex our muscles show them we’re stronger than the rest
Raise your hands up baby are you sure that we’re the best?
We’ll come out with our fists raised
The good old boys are back on top again
And if we let them lead us blindly
The past becomes the future once again
– Sleater-Kinney, Combat Rock, from the album One Beat
The Tuesday, 29 April 2003 edition of Terry Gross’s peerless Fresh Air is very much worth listening to. Diane Ravitch discusses her new book Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (the next book I plan to read), and linguist Geoff Nunberg discusses, in a captivating under-six-minutes essay, the stylistic differences between left-wing and right-wing authors (you’ll also learn the word polysyndeton, unless you are far too educated and know it already.)
The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has revamped its email newsletter. It is now presented in a colorful if somewhat garish graphical format, contains news on death penalty legislation and moratoria, is populated with numerous hyperlinks, and, as always, provides upcoming execution alerts. An exciting new function is the ability to link directly to a form that will send a letter of protest to the appropriate persons; the message is not all boilerplate text, but rather is specifically tailored to each execution and you can, of course, modify the text of the message as you see fit. Click here to sign up: if you enter your state and ZIP code, you will also receive information on local news and activities.
From the White House press briefing:
Q Ari, many estimates we’ve seen on the war’s cost in tens of billions, up over $100 billion. Can you explain the wisdom of continuing to pursue hundreds of billions in tax cuts when you have this large potential liability out there that could increase the budget deficit? And didn’t Lyndon Johnson get in trouble for the same sort of thinking during Vietnam, in wanting to maintain his fiscal program while funding the Vietnam War?
MR. FLEISCHER: Whether or not the President decides to authorize the use of force, it is vital for out country that the economy grow. And the President believes one of the best ways to help the economy grow is to provide the tax relief that can give a boost to the economy and create jobs for the American people. Whether or not the President authorizes the use of force, the American people deserve to have jobs. And whether or not the President authorizes a use of force, it still is important to get prescription drugs to our nation’s seniors and to strengthen the Medicare program.
I’m certain you would not suggest that if we go to war, seniors somehow don’t deserve prescription drugs. There are still a series of initiatives that are important, and the fundamental focus of the President will be on growth policies can help people get jobs and get the economy growing stronger.
Pardon my language, but WHAT THE FUCK? The reporter asks about tax cuts, and Ari accuses him of saying that seniors don’t deserve prescription drugs? People call Fleischer a master of spin, but this is just clunky. Can anyone possibly fall for this? More to the point, realize that this is apparently the best the administration can do, the best rationale they can come up with to justify their policies: ignore the question, and make it into an accusation of bigotry.
Damn, damn, damn. For the past year or so I’ve been priding myself on reading Metafilter as a source of balanced, reasoned political discussion. Then this thread came up, discussing the Political Compass that mcgees.org discussed last June. If you remember, here was my score:
Economic Left/Right: -3.88
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -7.85
| Authoritarian | |||
| Left |
|
Right | |
| Libertarian | |||
People posted their scores in the discussion, and someone bothered to chart the distribution of scores:
Everyone’s like me! I’m about two and a half squares due south of average (the blue square)! Damn, damn, damn. The other day I was quoting two things from the board to David (my brother). “Damn, you guys are a bunch of arrogant assholes,” he said. Au contraire! A bunch of arrogant, Left-Libertarian assholes.
I also learned a great new word from the discussion, enthymeme, that I probably should have known already.
A female police officer in Portland, Oregon was suspected of drug use, so the Portland police went through her garbage set out for pickup. They found a bloody tampon, sent it to a lab for drug analysis, and upon result of the tests issued an indictment. Privacy groups are going nuts, but the police chief, mayor, and D.A. of Portland each support the notion that once garbage is at the street it is no longer private.
Accordingly, the newspaper Williamette Week raided the garbage of the police chief, mayor, and D.A., finding personal notes and photographs, financial details, and many other private details of their lives. Needless to say, they were less than thrilled when the tables were turned. The mayor “went ballistic”. Check out the link: it’s a fascinating article.
There is a good exclusive interview with Al Gore at washingtonpost.com.
Last night I was fortunate to catch the second half of a National Public Radio roundtable between the American Independent, Natural Law, and Green Party candidates in California’s gubernatorial race. It was an interesting half hour. The American Independent party is frightening, seeming to be right of Pat Robertson. In his closing statements, their candidate expressed his desire for the state to — I am not making this up — “return to an Ozzie and Harriet California.” The Natural Law candidate, after she loses this election, could probably get a job writing greeting cards for Hallmark. Her speech was packed full of platitudes such as, “We must remember that our greatest resource is our human resource.” Well, thanks; that was informative.
The Green Party candidate, for whom I am voting, generally came across well. He completely blew his top at one point, however, to the point of near shouting, and in the process seemed to disparage European-descended Americans (he is a Latino.) He did have a bit of provocation: the American Independent candidate had just stated that the solution to California’s immigration problems is to — and again I am not making this up — return to an Ellis Island model in which prospective immigrants are screened for diseases and their criminal records checked to make sure we are not letting rapists and murderers into the state. The quote out of context, unnerving as it is, does not give his sentiment enough force: the intonation and context were akin to his saying “we need to keep those filthy, criminal, diseased wetback animals from polluting our beautiful state”; that is, our beautiful, white, Ozzie and Harriet state.
According to an ABC poll, the Green Party candidate is receiving 9% support (I don’t know if this is all people surveyed, registered voters, likely voters, or some other subgroup.) That’s close to double-digits. Europe went from Fascist leaders to Green leaders in half a century: I can still hold out hope for California.
Deception has a new name: Joshua McGee
From inksyndicate.com
Last week Joshua McGee went so far as to leave the mainstream completely and enter a kind of obsessive and even dangerous alternate universe of duplicitous spin.
Like Bin Laden, Joshua McGee believes in a bizarrely hollow philosophy of mendacity. Isn’t it clear by now that the world is menaced by a weaseling psychopath who has already tried to get his hands on uranium? Joshua McGee and his outrageous slanderers are at it again. “Don’t hurt me,” he said on his web page. Well, duh.
Breathtakingly, to be one of the hate-crazed cultural elite is to deceive and disgrace.
When will Joshua McGee come clean about the way he attacks President Bush?
A leader not trying to take the war to Saddam would be outrageously pro-shoplifting in the extreme.
Had you going, didn’t I? Visit Ink Syndicate’s R. Robot is making sense, enter the name of a liberal, and let the ‘warbot’ automatically craft an anti-liberal rant.
Washington, behaving like a police state. It makes me want to scream.
Pull the innocents from a crowd,
Raise the sticks then bring ‘em down
If they fail to obey,
If they fail to obey…
I pledge my grievance to the flag…
We’re all deserving something more
Wow, now I really want to move to Oregon. Measure 23, if passed, would enact a single-payer state-wide comprehensive medical insurance program with zero point-of-service fees. Citizens would be free to visit any licensed doctor or specialist. The current government spending (out of general taxation) would cover one third of the expected costs, with the remainder payed by employers and a personal tax on taxpayers. Depending on income, the personal tax would range from 0% of income (for those making 150% or less of the federal poverty level) to 8% for the wealthiest. One’s personal contribution will never exceed $25,000 (this is relevant if you make more than $312,500 per year which, um, I don’t.) On the state level, total personal taxation for these benifits will not exceed 3.9% of total personal income. This means that the average personal expenditure will be less than 4%, although I do not have a sense of how this cost would be distributed across the population.
It looks like good legislation. It looks like it can pay for itself. From a personal perspective, Jennifer and I already pay roughly 2% our combined income for our portion of employer-paid health insurance, and another 2% in co-pays for prescription drugs, office visits, etc., and that is before I count in my hospitalizations required in 2001 ($150 apiece) and emergency room visits ($30 apiece.) Even if our contribution had to double, or even triple, it would still be worth it to ensure that everyone in the state has health insurance.
I have read arguments for and against this measure, and really wrestled to see from the conservatives’ perspective, but still weighs in for me as overwhelmingly positive. Thoughts? Join the discussion page.
Remember the mcgees.org post about the Masai who donated fourteen blessed cows to the United States after they heard of the 11 September terrorist attacks? How could Americans hope to repay such a touching gesture?
American tourists Edward A. Lefrak and Don Hutchins might have done a bit: Hutchins flew one of the tribe’s girls to the U.S., and Lefrak gave her a heart transplant.
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