Uh oh

Bloomberg reports that the Bank of America won't loan money to McDonald's to upgrade kitchen equipment.

Whaddya think, guys: how many of you are as solid credit risks as McD's?

How about the State of Massachussetts? Maine, Billings, or NYC?

Soxblogging

We promised you sportsblogging back in the Summer, and sportsblogging ye shall have. Not about football, though, at least not yet. Tonight, I'm watching the White Sox' one-game playoff against the Minnesota Twins from the comfort of my couch (in HD!). It's only the seventh one-game playoff since the playoff format was changed in 1969. For you non-baseball fans (truth be told, I can't really call myself a baseball "fan" either; I only start to pay attention when things get exciting), I'll explain what's going on. When I'm watching sports I always have a million questions, so after grilling my boy for the last week I think I get it. If you know lots about baseball, you can skip this post: I'm just explaining stuff.

It's a bizarre thing. I mean, after a hundred and sixty-two games, two teams have the exact same record, and it all comes down to this one game.

In fact, it's the third time it's come down to "this one game" in as many days, for the White Sox. So, in baseball, you've got to win your division, which consists of five teams, to make it to the playoffs. You win your division by having the best record, that is, winning the most games. There are typically no division playoffs. Once you win your division, then you go to playoffs against the other division winners in your league (i.e. American League or National League), to determine the League champion. The two league champions then play against each other in the World Series.

As of Sunday morning, the Sox were half a game behind the Twins in the race for the Division title. How could they be "half a game" back? Well, there was an earlier game scheduled between the Sox and the Detroit Tigers that got cancelled. So the Sox had played one fewer game in the season than the Twins. In Sunday's games, if the Sox lost (against the Indians) and the Twins won (against the Royals), the Sox would be a game and a half back, making the division title out of their reach. So they had to win just to get to play the make-up game against the Tigers, to get rid of that pesky "half." As it turns out, they won.

Next came the make-up game against the Tigers on Monday night, which they, again, had to win to stay in the running. If they lost, they would be a full game behind the Twins, giving the division title away. If they won, it would make the two teams exactly tied at 88 games won over the whole season. They won, with the benefit of a grand slam by rookie Alexei Ramirez (did you know that it was his fourth slam for the season, a record for a rookie? And an overall Sox record?).

Which brings us to tonight, the one-game playoff. Whichever team loses is out for the season, whichever team wins goes on to the playoffs. And as of 7:45 CT we're at the top of the 5th, tied at zero, with only three hits in the whole damn game so far. It's nerve-wracking.

Holy Jesus. Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski just caught a long-ass throw from center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. to tag a runner out at home. Most exciting moment of the game so far, keeping the score at 0-0. Stay tuned.

8:05 CT: Talking heads on TBS tell me that this is the first time a tie-breaker game has gone for five scoreless innings. Kinda meaningless statistic, given that there have only been seven such games in the history of the game, but still crazy. As a latecomer to sports-watching (I don't think I watched more than 5-6 sporting events on television before the age of 18; mine was not a sport household), the funny statistics announcers come up with always crack me up. Like, this is the third time that this team has gone 20 minutes without scoring since May 2006!

And now we're to the top of the seventh, still no score.

8:19 CT: Jim Thome with a home run!! FUCK YEAH. Okay, maybe I was wrong in comments about the extra innings. 1-0 Sox.

8:32 CT: What the hell is with Uribe's bleached goatee? Muy unattractive, but hey, if it's some good-luck thing, rock on with your bad self. Also, Pierzynski is hott, and Jim Thome is, as I said in email, so American it hurts.

8:40 CT: A beautiful double play to wrap up the top half of the 8th, still 1-0. Three more outs and the Sox win the division. Great game so far.

8:53 CT: At this point, I kind of want to bone any White Sox player who is in a position to lock this thing up. At this point, that person is Bobby Jenks. Plus, he's got that attractive-burly thing going on. You know, they could really make a lot more money in sports if they marketed the players as sex symbols the way they seem to do with all hot female athletes. The only person I can think of in baseball notorious for being hunky is Jeter, and he's not even that hot. Football's a little better, with QBs-cum-celebrity-girlfriends Tony Romo and Tom Brady. But still, capitalize on that shit, yo. Or what, objectification is only kosher when it makes money and props up the patriarchy?

8:57 CTGlorious in-air catch by Anderson for Sox win!!! Bobby Jenks, you know where I live.

And it's on to the playoffs. This is going to be a big time in Chicago for baseball, as the Cubs won their division as well. Hot damn.

To speak clearly

I know you guys are worried about the economy and stuff, but I can't stop thinking about Sarah Palin and how much I don't want her and her petulant asshole buddy McCain to be running the White House. Via my friend The Dolphin, this piece over at Salon is by Cary Tennis. A lot of the time Cary Tennis annoys the shitout of me, but in his response to a woman who's obsessed with her dislike of Sarah Palin, he comes out with something incredibly insightful about why Sarah Palin is so maddening:

The very thing that appalls us about Sarah Palin -- her discomfort in the realm of reason -- is her main selling point. This is so mind-boggling that you have to take a minute to let it in. Take a deep breath. Read that sentence again. Face it: Sarah Palin represents what many people want: a retreat from reason; a regression to childhood.

Inarticulateness is the weapon of the authoritarian in this way: To speak clearly is to risk being understood and thus disagreed with. To speak clearly is to invite debate. To obfuscate and muddle is to avoid disagreement and debate and force the issue to one of power. The refusal to speak clearly is an invitation for issues to be resolved by power alone: I don't have to speak clearly because you have no choice in this anyway. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. (emphasis mine)

I've been saying for at least a week now that Sarah Palin is actually a worse communicator than President Bush. That's really saying something. One of Bush's main problems was that he would stumble, mess up, get the wrong word, or start a joke he couldn't finish. His ideas were often coherent, or at least coherently wrong. Palin's problem is worse. She hasn't even coherently explained her positions.

A couple of weeks ago, I got really angry at work over something small. I was preparing for a hearing, and I was instructed to make a particular argument. From what I could understand, the argument wasn't a persuasive one for our particular client. My confusion was sort of waved away. As I said then, either you can't explain it to me, in which case it's not a particularly good argument, or you won't explain it to me, in which case you're being a shitty boss.

The same thing applies to Palin's incoherence. Either she can't explain what she's talking about, or she won't, but in either case it makes her unqualified to hold any major political office whatsoever, let alone be my supervisor.

(p.s. you really should read the Shakesville post I link to above. I don't have much to say other than what McEwan said, but it's a real eye-opener as to what sort of person John McCain is.)

the American economy, explained by a Brit

So its the house Republicans of all people who have finally vented our anger. Next comes the reality check.

In the US and UK at the least, we (individuals, companies and countries) are hooked on credit. We buy our cars, houses and food on borrowed money. The companies we work for borrow money to pay us. Our hospitals, schools and buses are all bought with … yep, you guessed it …. more borrowed money.

With that in mind, our current dose of credit cold turkey is a pretty sickening wrench for all of us -- our banks have lost a stack of money on risky mortgages and have, as a consequence lost their appetite to lend to anyone but the very safest of creditors. I guess their pain has secretly entertained us. We've all raised a smile at the news of unloved banks going under and laughed more openly at the sight of individual bankers and traders carrying their stuff home in boxes (I used to be one and even I struggled to shed too many tears)

If the pain went no further than the banks (so far this week, there have been interventions and rescues in 9 different countries ... and its only Tuesday), or the individual bankers that work for them, we would be nothing more than mean and our sniggers nothing worse than petty.

If, as seems increasingly possible, however, its not just individuals but rather the entire banking system that's in trouble, the fact that some former traders are cashing large pay-checks is the least of our troubles. If a sufficient number of banks go bust or the remainder get so nervous that they refuse to lend to anyone other than their own governments, then none of us will be able to either get new debt or, worse, renew the debt we have. In that situation, small towns and companies with middle and lower income employees will lose their ability to pay for just about anything. They wont be able to buy inventory, pay creditors or, worst of all, pay salaries.

In other words, organizations that we really do care about will be sacking people that truly can't afford to be sacked.

That's why we have to live through the bizarre spectacle of hearing Republicans claim to represent working America whilst our man tells them to stop being stupid. That's also why we have to suck in our breath and prop up the flawed, panicking banking system that got us into this mess whilst we find a longer-term solution to our debt dependency. Finally, its why we have to stop venting on Henry Paulson and let him get on with buying time for a systematic review of our financial companies, systems and regulations.

And to the angry idiots in Congress: pass the damned rescue deal already.


posted by bitchphd for BritFriend

Coincidence? I think not.

The world's falling apart around our ears, but That Bérubé guy's started blogging again.

Dear Washington, DC Bitches:

Please go see this all-female production of Romeo&Juliet for me, because the damn show closes a mere week before I'll be spending a week in the District.

I really should go see more theater; I always enjoy it immensely. A brief renaissance in my theater-going was brought on by seeing The Hypocrites' production of Tennesee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It was January 2007, and The Bear, who was then not my boyfriend, but a good friend of mine who I'd had a secret crush on for some time, invited me to come see the play with him. We'd known each other a couple years, and that winter was the first time that both of us were single at the same time since we'd met. What I didn't know about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is that it's an intensely sexual play, where the protagonist spends half her time on stage trying to get her husband to sleep with her. It was a truly fantastic performance and production, and the small venue, combined with the great script and stellar acting, and the overwhelming attraction I felt toward the dude next to me, made for one of the most intense play-watching experiences I've ever had.

Whew. Good times.

Bailout for Beginners

Some links:

1. The bailout plan.

2. Hilzoy, who as always is smarty-smart-smart *and* good at explaining stuff clearly. I bet she's a great professor.

3. Pelosi, in the Guardian.

4. The Economist explains.

Those last two links were sent to me by BritFriend, who as it happens used to work in the financial markets. Plus his parents have always had their hands in various small businesses to some degree (as he and his brother do now), so he kind of knows this economics/business stuff from both the high, abstract end and the low, mom-and-pop end.

I asked him over the weekend to explain to me why, exactly, we need a bailout. I get what's happened (if you don't, hopefully Brit Friend or I can cover that later, but at the moment I'm in a hurry), but I don't get exactly why or how it needs fixing. Figuring that, like me, a lot of you understand this economics crap only very generally, I'ma post our conversations below. BritFriend had promised to write a post for us, but since today is bailout day I'm posting the raw chat transcripts and he can write something more coherent later. I hope.

Saturday:
10:22:30 AM Brit Friend: helloo
10:22:55 AM bitchphd: BF!
10:23:18 AM Brit Friend: so how are you?
10:23:37 AM bitchphd: i'm good. my country is apparently crashing around my ears, but hey.
10:23:58 AM bitchphd: PK stole a lime this morning from an orchard after his soccer game, so i think we're fixed for food, even if the economy tanks.
10:24:25 AM Brit Friend: well that good
10:24:42 AM Brit Friend: I think that the shitty bit of your crisis just got buried on a big news day
10:24:53 AM bitchphd: ?
10:24:55 AM Brit Friend: they gave up on support for low-income home owners
10:25:00 AM Brit Friend: as part of the negotiations
10:25:08 AM Brit Friend: that was an expensive objective
10:25:10 AM bitchphd: they did? fuck.
10:25:20 AM Brit Friend: but shitty to give it up
10:25:24 AM bitchphd: i admit i haven't seen or followed the stuff carefully
10:25:31 AM bitchphd: want to do me a guest post? you understand this shit.
10:25:39 AM Brit Friend: I though about it actually
10:25:46 AM Brit Friend: but its pretty fast paced
10:25:51 AM bitchphd: splain it to the americans
10:26:01 AM bitchphd: well, yes, but i mean, what the fuck *is* the crisis?
10:26:18 AM bitchphd: i mean, supposedly if these institutions fail, Terrible Things Will Happen
10:26:24 AM bitchphd: how does that work?
10:26:35 AM Brit Friend: do you have 5 mins now?
10:26:46 AM bitchphd: sure, but i really am serious about saying can you do it as a post
10:26:53 AM Brit Friend: ok
10:27:02 AM Brit Friend: so lets start in the middle
10:27:08 AM Brit Friend: (not how it happened)
10:27:13 AM Brit Friend: (but what it means)
10:29:11 AM bitchphd: i, myself, am clear enough on how it happened
10:29:15 AM Brit Friend: so, fundamentally, we live in a system where the vast majority of financial ventures are financed by debt
10:29:27 AM Brit Friend: (I'm not, entirely, but lets leave that for a sec)
10:29:49 AM Brit Friend: so most (practically all) businesses have a certain amount of debt
10:30:07 AM Brit Friend: (rather than save up profits before they do something new)
10:30:23 AM Brit Friend: and most, practically all households are run the same way
10:30:27 AM bitchphd: right, of course.
10:30:30 AM Brit Friend: we buy houses on debt etc, etc
10:30:48 AM bitchphd: right
10:31:08 AM Brit Friend: and the distribution system for that debt is through our banks
10:31:36 AM Brit Friend: (they borrow money from us and from the govt and then lend it out)
10:31:48 AM Brit Friend: (apologies if this is a slow build up but it is needed)
10:32:11 AM Brit Friend: and, to refind my narrative
10:32:31 AM bitchphd: no, it's fine
10:32:43 AM Brit Friend: (nearly) all businesses now need 2 things to keep their businesses running
10:32:50 AM Brit Friend: a) a profitable idea
10:33:08 AM Brit Friend: b) ongoing access to debt in order to execute that idea
10:33:31 AM Brit Friend: so the problem in the banking system is not simply a problem for bank shareholders
10:34:02 AM Brit Friend: its a problem for anyone who uses the banks as a "debt-distribution" system
10:34:05 AM Brit Friend: i.e. all of us
10:34:14 AM bitchphd: what happens if the bank tanks?
10:34:33 AM Brit Friend: 2 things
10:34:45 AM Brit Friend: a) the bank shareholders etc lose money
10:34:49 AM Brit Friend: which is no big deal
10:34:54 AM Brit Friend: we dont care really
10:35:09 AM Brit Friend: except that our pension funds hold bank shares
10:35:15 AM Brit Friend: so we lose indirectly
10:35:37 AM Brit Friend: we care more, however, because we don't currently have an alternative debt distribution system
10:35:53 AM Brit Friend: so, even though there are many alternatives to a commercial banking system
10:36:18 AM Brit Friend: (in terms of distributing the debt that the real economy needs to keep going)
10:36:29 AM Brit Friend: we dont have time to put any single one of them in place
10:36:41 AM Brit Friend: before pretty much every business has to close its doors
10:36:53 AM Brit Friend: and pretty much every family loses its house etc
10:37:05 AM Brit Friend: not because they dont have a profitable idea
10:37:20 AM Brit Friend: (or, in the case of families, enough future income to pay off the house)
10:37:25 AM bitchphd: right, i get the pension thing, which mostly is going to affect people who are retiring now or in the next few years
10:37:38 AM Brit Friend: right .... but that is small change for most of us
10:37:50 AM bitchphd: wait, how do people lose businesses and homes if the banks go down and there's no debt distribution thingy?
10:38:05 AM Brit Friend: so if company x has a debt
10:38:07 AM bitchphd: i get that you can't start or buy *new* houses (and our mortgage lender is now rumored to have problems, so we're a little worried about that0
10:38:12 AM Brit Friend: right
10:38:22 AM Brit Friend: but, again, relatively small beer
10:38:24 AM bitchphd: but if i owe money on my house and the bank tanks, i mean, woo! the people i just owed money to no longer exist!
10:38:31 AM Brit Friend: (for most of us)
10:38:38 AM Brit Friend: unfortunately not
10:38:44 AM Brit Friend: you still owe the money
10:38:49 AM Brit Friend: just to somebody else
10:38:59 AM Brit Friend: its easier to understand with companies
10:39:09 AM Brit Friend: say company x has a debt
10:39:28 AM Brit Friend: which must either explicitly or implicitly be renewed every year or so
10:39:42 AM Brit Friend: (explictitly you have to ask for renewal)
10:39:56 AM bitchphd: okay
10:40:00 AM bitchphd: (is that how it works?)
10:40:01 AM Brit Friend: (implicitly = the bank just doesnt ask you for the money back)
10:40:08 AM Brit Friend: (pretty much)
10:40:16 AM Brit Friend: so if company x has this debt
10:40:29 AM Brit Friend: which is financing the execution of a really good business idea
10:40:35 AM Brit Friend: and then the bank goes bust
10:41:03 AM Brit Friend: either a) there is no-one to ask for an explicit renewal
10:41:18 AM Brit Friend: or b) the liquidator of the bank
10:41:37 AM Brit Friend: who's job is explicitly to get as much money back for the creditors as possible
10:41:42 AM bitchphd: so basically the loans get called in immediately?
10:41:49 AM Brit Friend: pretty much
10:42:02 AM bitchphd: i don't quite get that. who is "the liquidator of the bank" if there are no buyers?
10:42:03 AM Brit Friend: (if we take a slightly flexible view of "immediately")
10:42:15 AM Brit Friend: if a company goes bankrupt
10:42:26 AM Brit Friend: (tho details vary from country to country)
10:42:50 AM Brit Friend: then an "independent" official is appointed to sell off their assets
10:42:58 AM Brit Friend: and pay as many debts as can be paid
10:43:06 AM Brit Friend: i.e. they dont sell the company
10:43:22 AM Brit Friend: but they sell of the machinery, customer lists, etc
10:43:33 AM Brit Friend: and then see how many creditors they can pay
10:43:45 AM Brit Friend: i.e. liquidation of the company
10:43:47 AM Brit Friend: rather than sale
10:43:50 AM bitchphd: ah, okay.
10:43:54 AM Brit Friend: does that make sense?
10:44:04 AM bitchphd: yes. who appoints the independent official? the government?
10:44:11 AM Brit Friend: I'm not sure
10:44:20 AM Brit Friend: there is certainly a legal process to be followed
10:44:41 AM Brit Friend: but I think the company has to ask a "suitably qualified" person to do it
10:44:49 AM Brit Friend: i.e. a specialised kind of accountant
10:45:11 AM Brit Friend: who is certified by either government or professional body
10:45:21 AM Brit Friend: they tend to be pretty conservative
10:45:24 AM bitchphd: right, okay
10:45:34 AM Brit Friend: so the problem
10:45:38 AM bitchphd: doesn't everyone in finance tend to be pretty conservative?
10:45:50 AM Brit Friend: no
10:45:55 AM Brit Friend: as a side note
10:46:22 AM Brit Friend: the people we have seen closing down (bear stearns, merrill lynch etc) have been the bigger risk takers
10:46:34 AM Brit Friend: and the survivors have been the more conservative types
10:46:40 AM Brit Friend: (financially I mean)
10:46:44 AM Brit Friend: (not politically)
10:46:57 AM Brit Friend: i.e. the risk takers are dying
10:47:03 AM Brit Friend: and the plodders plod on
10:47:19 AM bitchphd: right, but part of the problem is that the massive deregulation basically forced everyone to take ridiculous risks in order to keep their share prices up.
10:47:23 AM bitchphd: yes?
10:47:29 AM Brit Friend: forced, no
10:47:32 AM Brit Friend: allowed, yes
10:47:52 AM Brit Friend: and allowed for such a long time that people forgot about the real nature of the risks they were taking
10:48:01 AM Brit Friend: if you keep taking stupid risks
10:48:07 AM Brit Friend: and keep getting away with it
10:48:19 AM Brit Friend: you forget how stupid those risks are
10:48:38 AM Brit Friend: (am obviously saying "stupid" with the benefit of hindsight)
10:48:44 AM Brit Friend: so any-hooo
10:48:52 AM bitchphd: right, i get that
10:49:07 AM bitchphd: and i agree, but isn't there also a sort of reality whereby if, say, banks a, b, and c are all taking stupid risks
10:49:17 AM bitchphd: and showing massive short-term gainsn b/c of it
10:49:27 AM bitchphd: that bank d has to worry about losing shareholders?
10:49:30 AM Brit Friend: exactly
10:49:38 AM bitchphd: and therefore is okay, not forced, but under a lot of pressure to take the same risks?
10:49:43 AM Brit Friend: you dont lose shareholder exactly
10:49:49 AM Brit Friend: but you do lose customers
10:49:56 AM Brit Friend: and your share price goes down
10:50:07 AM bitchphd: right, but if the price is down, don'ty you lose shareholders?
10:50:19 AM Brit Friend: different discussion
10:50:22 AM bitchphd: you only lose the bad customers, if the customers you're losing are the ones who need stupid loans.
10:50:33 AM Brit Friend: am quite happy to cover this
10:50:40 AM Brit Friend: but think its too big to be a side note
10:50:45 AM Brit Friend: can we come back to it?
10:51:27 AM Brit Friend: want to finish the thing about the debt-distribution
10:51:46 AM Brit Friend: if every company in your economy depends on your debt distribution system
10:51:57 AM Brit Friend: and your debt distribution system collapses
10:52:13 AM Brit Friend: everyone is in trouble
10:52:23 AM Brit Friend: and the part that your commentators were missing
10:52:46 AM Brit Friend: is that, even if you want a better system than the one provided by capitalism and its banks
10:53:00 AM Brit Friend: you need enough time to put that system in place
10:53:26 AM Brit Friend: i.e. you need enough time to get solid, otherwise profitable companies used to the new way they will be expected to get debt
10:53:41 AM Brit Friend: (or in a more extreme case, more time to get rid of their debt)
10:53:49 AM Brit Friend: (i.e. pay it off)
10:54:03 AM Brit Friend: the fundamental problem here is one of speed
10:54:41 AM Brit Friend: you might be able to build a better system than our current version of banking
10:55:01 AM bitchphd: right, of course
10:55:06 AM Brit Friend: and you might even be able to find a better system than capitalism
10:55:27 AM Brit Friend: tho no-one is entirely sure what it is or how it would function
10:55:43 AM Brit Friend: but you cannot expect to have that system ready by Monday morning
10:56:10 AM Brit Friend: so, unless you want a huge number of real, solid, profitable businesses to go bust
10:56:27 AM Brit Friend: and, by extension to stop employing people
10:56:35 AM Brit Friend: you need to rescue the banks now
10:57:00 AM Brit Friend: and then hold your debate on tweaking / revolutionising our economic system
10:57:08 AM bitchphd: right
10:57:14 AM bitchphd: so in a sense there is a certain urgency
10:57:42 AM Brit Friend: huge urgency
10:57:47 AM Brit Friend: and to extend the point
10:58:01 AM Brit Friend: the 700 billion is only partially meaningful
10:58:20 AM Brit Friend: its really a code for "so much fucking money, of course it will work"
10:58:24 AM Brit Friend: in order to buy time
10:58:32 AM Brit Friend: to have the discussion you really want to have
10:58:48 AM bitchphd: ah
10:58:52 AM Brit Friend: which, I believe, was paulson's plan all along
10:59:02 AM Brit Friend: the rumour in the specialist press
10:59:09 AM Brit Friend: was that the day he announced it
10:59:22 AM Brit Friend: the problem was about to spread to the money market funds
10:59:30 AM Brit Friend: i.e. one step beyond the banks
10:59:46 AM Brit Friend: into the "conservative" part of the financial system
11:00:03 AM Brit Friend: at which point it would have been almost impossible to stop the panic
11:00:16 AM Brit Friend: so imho
11:00:26 AM Brit Friend: you have to pass the bail out NOW
11:00:57 AM Brit Friend: help low income households real soon
11:01:11 AM Brit Friend: and worry about a few people on wall street when you have time
11:01:42 AM Brit Friend: e.g. launch a really nasty criminal investigation into the extent to which they committed fraud
11:01:48 AM Brit Friend: but do it in a year or so
11:01:56 AM bitchphd: what's the reason for helping low income houses, besides just it's the right thing to do?
11:02:00 AM Brit Friend: when we have a functional financial system again
11:02:10 AM Brit Friend: option b)
11:02:16 AM Brit Friend: its just theright thing to do
11:02:23 AM Brit Friend: actually, a little bit more
11:02:50 AM Brit Friend: we (the general population) are taking on the banks fuck up
11:03:00 AM Brit Friend: and, ok, we have to
11:03:21 AM Brit Friend: because of the systemic problem we've just been talking about
11:03:35 AM bitchphd: right
11:03:59 AM Brit Friend: but the costs should be shared proportionately
11:04:13 AM Brit Friend: i.e. we shouldnt have some of us with a little more debt
11:04:21 AM Brit Friend: and others totally fucked and homeless
11:04:42 AM bitchphd: "fairness"
11:04:42 AM Brit Friend: thats just following bad with worse
11:04:52 AM bitchphd: i fear that that's a really poor argument, convincing-america wise.
11:05:06 AM Brit Friend: yeh, I know
11:05:13 AM Brit Friend: and is more complex than I have just said
11:05:29 AM Brit Friend: cos the more people you help, the bigger the problem gets
11:05:35 AM Brit Friend: but even so
11:05:43 AM Brit Friend: and, now I'm ranting
11:05:54 AM Brit Friend: the other bit that REALLY pisses me off
11:06:17 AM Brit Friend: is Bush and Co talking about the "risk" of a serious recession
11:06:17 AM bitchphd: yes?
11:06:31 AM Brit Friend: you are probably already in recession
11:06:38 AM bitchphd: oh, we totally are, of course.
11:06:46 AM Brit Friend: and this problem is so big
11:07:24 AM Brit Friend: that its going to be a) long, b) nasty and c) shared by all of us in developed economies
11:07:41 AM Brit Friend: the real question is how do we stop it getting much, much worse
11:07:53 AM Brit Friend: i.e. limit the problem to a long hard recession
11:08:04 AM bitchphd: right, the global problem i see
11:08:11 AM bitchphd: i also wonder what we mean by a "hard" recession.
11:08:34 AM bitchphd: and i think most americans do too. i mean, if you can still basically keep your job and buy shit on credit and pay your mortgage, who cares about The Economy?
11:08:55 AM Brit Friend: not sure we live such separate lives
11:09:03 AM Brit Friend: debt will cost more and be harder to get
11:09:16 AM Brit Friend: some of us will lose our jobs
11:09:21 AM bitchphd: okay, that's a good reason. so interest rates go up
11:09:45 AM bitchphd: and yes re job loss, but of course everyone thinks they won't lose *their* job
11:09:48 AM Brit Friend: (not in a recession but you will find debt harder to get)
11:10:11 AM Brit Friend: headline rates go down in a recession
11:10:23 AM Brit Friend: but people will get more and more desparate to find debt
11:10:24 AM bitchphd: headline rates?
11:10:31 AM Brit Friend: the one on the TV
11:10:36 AM bitchphd: ?
11:11:12 AM Brit Friend: so when they say that the fed cut rates, that is a reference to the rate at which the fed lends money to banks
11:11:22 AM Brit Friend: and is what I call a "headline" rate
11:11:40 AM bitchphd: right, i got it
11:11:47 AM Brit Friend: but if you cant get a personal loan and are forced to put debt on your credit card
11:11:50 AM bitchphd: actual interest rates for real people are higher if you're borrowing, lower if you're earning
11:11:56 AM Brit Friend: you still pay more for borrowing money
11:12:26 AM bitchphd: absolutely
11:12:34 AM Brit Friend: right
11:12:38 AM bitchphd: okay, so that's the "why it matters to joe america" question
11:12:49 AM Brit Friend: right
11:12:53 AM bitchphd: plus, people's pension funds will go down, etc.
11:13:03 AM Brit Friend: right
11:13:06 AM Brit Friend: and more subtley
11:13:39 AM Brit Friend: your neighborhood will have fewer coffee shops, clothes stores, innovative business start-ups etc
11:13:48 AM Brit Friend: all of which will hurt your quality of life
11:14:08 AM bitchphd: right.
11:14:17 AM bitchphd: though it'll help you save money :P
11:14:22 AM Brit Friend: not sure
11:14:28 AM bitchphd: if there's less cool shit to buy?
11:14:31 AM Brit Friend: less competition means higher proces
11:14:37 AM bitchphd: ah, this is true.
11:14:39 AM Brit Friend: (prices)
11:14:50 AM bitchphd: then again, a *lot* of what we buy is totally discretionary
11:14:51 AM Brit Friend: so recessions are flat out shitty
11:15:18 AM Brit Friend: most of it
11:15:27 AM Brit Friend: but if it were easy to stop
11:15:34 AM Brit Friend: why havent we done it yet?
11:15:44 AM Brit Friend: oh, and one more thing
11:15:51 AM Brit Friend: (on the bail out plan)
11:15:58 AM Brit Friend: is that its not really a bail out
11:16:12 AM Brit Friend: its a mass purchase of the banks assets
11:16:25 AM Brit Friend: so if the govt buys them cheap enough
11:16:34 AM Brit Friend: it wont cost the taxpayer a penny
11:16:48 AM Brit Friend: it may even make them money
11:17:15 AM bitchphd: right, that i've heard.
11:17:17 AM Brit Friend: so the way that the bail out is executed really, really matters
----
Sunday:
4:44:18 PM bitchphd: we're doomed.
4:44:31 PM Brit Friend: I was surprised at how basic the economist article was
4:44:44 PM Brit Friend: suggests that very few non-professionals really understand this shit
4:44:49 PM bitchphd: well of course not!
4:44:50 PM Brit Friend: and we're not doomed
4:44:53 PM Brit Friend: for now
4:45:31 PM bitchphd: you know what ticks me off, is when people say things like, about the subprime crisis, "well, if those people took those loans, then they deserve to lose their houses etc." because "if you're making a big investment like that it's your responsibility to know what you're doing"
4:45:53 PM bitchphd: that's what bugs me about the whole republican economic attitude
4:46:09 PM bitchphd: it's as if, well, if you don't devote your life to focusing on and understanding money, you *deserve* to be poor.
4:46:17 PM Brit Friend: right
4:46:35 PM Brit Friend: the difficult thing is that some people do deserve to lose their homes
4:46:42 PM Brit Friend: or at least their investment
4:46:51 PM Brit Friend: but a huge number do not
4:46:59 PM Brit Friend: its like the whole welfare argument
4:47:24 PM bitchphd: yes, absolutely.
4:47:25 PM Brit Friend: "because some people abuse welfare"\
4:47:34 PM Brit Friend: "we shouldnt give it to anyone"
4:47:36 PM bitchphd: but surely it would be easy to distinguish
4:47:42 PM bitchphd: if you are losing a *second* home, tough shit.
4:47:54 PM Brit Friend: the argument is, at the very least, far more nuanced than that
4:47:55 PM bitchphd: if it's your primary residence, okay, we'll figure something out.
4:48:07 PM Brit Friend: nah, if you lose on an investment tough shit
4:48:24 PM Brit Friend: but separately, if you need help with the basics of living, we will help you
4:48:29 PM bitchphd: but how would you determine which was which?
4:48:35 PM Brit Friend: its the overlap that gets really nuanced
4:48:51 PM Brit Friend: not sure that you need to
4:48:56 PM bitchphd: i think canada, if i remember properly, has really tough laws about second properties, which seems reasonable to me.
4:49:06 PM bitchphd: it would suck to lose your vacation home, but i mea, you don't *need* it
4:49:14 PM Brit Friend: right
4:49:26 PM Brit Friend: or in my language, it is definitely an investment
4:49:30 PM Brit Friend: so you lose
4:49:32 PM bitchphd: right.
4:49:34 PM Brit Friend: thats moral hazard
4:49:47 PM Brit Friend: or rather, thats avoiding moral hazard
4:49:51 PM bitchphd: agred. it's too bad you can't run for president.
4:49:59 PM Brit Friend: I would suck
4:50:06 PM Brit Friend: far too private
4:50:08 PM Brit Friend: and direct
4:50:09 PM bitchphd: well, of course, but at least you understand economics
4:50:23 PM Brit Friend: some of it
4:50:33 PM Brit Friend: and I have 2 new things for you to care about
4:50:43 PM Brit Friend: (well, new-ish)
4:50:46 PM bitchphd: excellent. what are they?
4:51:30 PM Brit Friend: 1. at the bottom of the economist article, they mentioned something that I was ranting about over dinner last week
4:51:50 PM Brit Friend: that whilst we are all scared about the risk banks taking down the "safe" ones
4:52:17 PM Brit Friend: i.e. investment banks going bankrupt causing regular high street banks to go bankrupt
4:52:55 PM Brit Friend: we are all missing what happens when regular savings (high street) banks buy shaky investment banks
4:53:12 PM bitchphd: yeah, i've wondered about that.
4:53:31 PM Brit Friend: i.e. that the risky shit gets hidden inside a "safe" bank
4:53:41 PM Brit Friend: so guess where our next crisis is coming from
4:53:48 PM bitchphd: if part of the original problem is letting banks sort of multitask, and thereby introducing the possibility for local banks to start playing in the big games, yes, exactly
4:54:01 PM bitchphd: my limited understanding of the bailout plan is that it's shitty.
4:54:07 PM bitchphd: and is just gonna complicate the situation more.
4:54:12 PM Brit Friend: no, its a lifesaver
4:54:37 PM Brit Friend: but the attempt to save money by letting savings banks take over investment banks is, potentially a time bomb
4:54:52 PM Brit Friend: cos the govt will always step in to save a savings bank
4:55:14 PM Brit Friend: and the big savings banks now have investment baks inside them
4:55:18 PM Brit Friend: (banks)
4:55:29 PM Brit Friend: so guess who the govt is now implicitly guarenteeing
4:55:29 PM bitchphd: the economist types that i read are all saying that the proper solution is just to nationalize the big investment banks
4:55:32 PM bitchphd: right.
4:55:40 PM Brit Friend: I think we just did
4:55:55 PM Brit Friend: by the rather back-door method I just described
4:56:04 PM Brit Friend: or at least we put a govt guarentee on them
4:56:05 PM bitchphd: okay, good point.
4:56:18 PM Brit Friend: any-hoo, thats the less interesting one
4:56:19 PM bitchphd: but a guarantee /= regulation worth the name
4:56:24 PM Brit Friend: no
4:56:29 PM Brit Friend: and that is the problem
4:56:33 PM bitchphd: zackly
4:56:44 PM Brit Friend: so the second thing
4:56:48 PM bitchphd: kayo
4:56:50 PM Brit Friend: which is more up your street
4:57:04 PM Brit Friend: is that I went to a talk on aging on friday
4:57:18 PM Brit Friend: (part of a conference on the future of health care)
4:57:30 PM Brit Friend: (which has interesting implications for techie types)
4:58:00 PM bitchphd: why, b/c ttechnie types are all so inactive?
4:58:09 PM Brit Friend: lol
4:58:23 PM Brit Friend: no, cos hi-tech home-care is becoming a really big deal
4:58:28 PM Brit Friend: "assisted living"
4:58:44 PM bitchphd: ah
4:58:45 PM bitchphd: ok
4:58:45 PM Brit Friend: anyways, the emeritus professor talking after me
4:58:57 PM Brit Friend: was looking at the detail of our aging population
4:59:21 PM Brit Friend: and arguing (very convincingly) that our pre-decreptitude retirement
4:59:26 PM Brit Friend: i.e. the good bit
4:59:35 PM Brit Friend: was unsustainable in its current form
4:59:51 PM Brit Friend: i.e. we cant get educated for longer, retire earlier and then live longer
5:00:02 PM Brit Friend: as we are now doing
5:00:06 PM bitchphd: totally
5:00:23 PM Brit Friend: and that the group who get totally shafted as that situation changes
5:00:28 PM Brit Friend: are single women
5:00:39 PM bitchphd: hm. b/c why?
5:01:11 PM Brit Friend: cos, as a group, they are less likely to have a 40-year record of always being at work
5:01:26 PM bitchphd: single women? you mean women who have formerly been married.
5:01:37 PM Brit Friend: and have, in many cases, relied upon a partners pension to support them
5:01:42 PM bitchphd: right.
5:01:53 PM Brit Friend: and in our new lifestyle
5:01:58 PM bitchphd: i have absolutely zero retirement right now, including social security. my ss earnings are pathetic.
5:02:01 PM Brit Friend: the idea of a life partner is also changing
5:02:04 PM bitchphd: agreed
5:02:07 PM Brit Friend: so that pension may not be there
5:02:26 PM Brit Friend: they have under-paid for their own pension (and are t4 penalised)
5:02:42 PM Brit Friend: and there is no fucking way on earth that the state is going to be able to look after us
5:02:51 PM Brit Friend: frightening stuff actually
5:02:57 PM Brit Friend: so there you have it
5:03:09 PM Brit Friend: pensions = the next big feminist issue
5:03:16 PM bitchphd: right. one of the things that helps divorced women, at least, is places that have community property laws (which is what community property was invented for)
5:03:16 PM Brit Friend: (bigger than it is now)
5:03:37 PM bitchphd: and yes, there's a woman named crittendon who has a nonprofit set up to try to get social security for homemmakers
5:03:53 PM Brit Friend: yeh, but back to the top of the conversation, that implies that your property is in some way an investment
5:03:59 PM Brit Friend: which is not always the case
5:04:07 PM Brit Friend: (good for crittendon)
5:04:32 PM Brit Friend: any-hoo, hi point was that we're all fucked
5:04:48 PM Brit Friend: but that, collectively, single women are more so than the rest of us
5:05:00 PM bitchphd: what do you mean isn't always the case? the property is always an issue in a divorce. you know this.
5:05:08 PM Brit Friend: (and, to answer your question, not only previously married women)
5:05:17 PM bitchphd: and you have to discriminate between single women who have always been single, and single women who were once married.
5:05:20 PM Brit Friend: always an issue
5:05:23 PM bitchphd: whether divorced or widowed
5:05:26 PM Brit Friend: but not always an investment
5:05:42 PM Brit Friend: in the sense that you can use the capital in it to eat when you're old
5:05:55 PM Brit Friend: and yes, different groups, different profiles
5:05:58 PM bitchphd: ah. well, sort of you can. reverse mortgages, downsizing, etc.
5:06:13 PM Brit Friend: some of are lucky enough to be able to
5:06:20 PM Brit Friend: but actually very few worldwide
5:06:27 PM bitchphd: but yeah, this is the big problem for feminism, i think, and always has been: women's economic vulnerability
5:06:30 PM Brit Friend: and fewer than you'd want in the west
5:06:34 PM bitchphd: true.
5:06:45 PM bitchphd: and the thing is, it all gets back in the end to children.
5:06:52 PM bitchphd: kids make women economically vulnerable
5:06:58 PM Brit Friend: right
5:07:03 PM bitchphd: it's the kids that keep you from working.
5:07:16 PM bitchphd: of course, if you follow a spouse around from job to job, that also really impacts your lifetime earnings.
5:07:19 PM Brit Friend: or rather the old system used to offset that with support from your kids in old age
5:07:26 PM Brit Friend: and we just removed the offset
5:07:31 PM Brit Friend: not the obligation
5:08:00 PM Brit Friend: so whilst different women have different profiles, it not just the ex-marrieds that have the problem
5:08:07 PM Brit Friend: its the child-raisers
5:08:09 PM bitchphd: right.
5:08:12 PM Brit Friend: and the ex-marrieds
5:08:13 PM Brit Friend: etc
5:08:21 PM Brit Friend: right, I'm off to bed
5:08:27 PM Brit Friend: soon?
5:08:28 PM bitchphd: night. you're a good man.
5:08:31 PM bitchphd: and yes, as always.
5:08:45 PM Brit Friend: you are still my favorite
5:08:49 PM Brit Friend: soon then
5:08:50 PM Brit Friend: 'night

great.

So Citigroup just bought Wachovia. Wachovia was handling our house loan. Which I'd locked in at a nice interest rate. And which for all I know just blew up. But I won't find out until I can call the mortgage guy (who used to be a woman, but she suddenly handed all her accounts over to him last week--obviously she knew something I didn't) and find out.

Sigh. This has to be one of the most ridiculous drawn-out house *purchasing* experiences ever.

fun with my new iphone

Check it out.

I bought this application for PK, but I made this particular cartoon myself. Once PK starts making some, though, I'll upload 'em and occasionally link 'em. Hell, I'll probably just put a link to PK's flipbook page somewhere on this blog, because I'm a mama like that.

David Broder, beta male

Leaving aside the fact that labeling one candidate or the other the "alpha male" is a crock of faux-masculinist, sexist bullshit, David Broder is hilariously wrong in this Washington Post column.

[The debate] suggests an imbalance in the deference quotient between the younger man and the veteran senator -- an impression reinforced by Obama's frequent glances in McCain's direction and McCain's studied indifference to his rival.

Whether viewers caught the verbal and body-language signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male on the stage in Mississippi, I do not know.

David, you don't know whether viewers caught on because viewers caught on to the exact opposite dynamic: that McCain wasn't looking at Obama because he is not the top dog, and he knows it, and he's scared and pissed off.

Look, I've known some top dog alpha male debaters in my time. As it turns out, I'm dating one. Now, I'm no shrinking violet, but let me tell you, when you've got someone looking you right in the eyes, and demanding that you explain the inconsistencies or fallacies in your argument, the first thing you want to do is look away. Making eye contact is an expression of aggression; refusing to look at someone is an expression of disdain or fear.

The truth is, neither Obama nor McCain were pulling classic alpha-male behavior, and good on them for it. But to say that McCain's refusal to look at Obama demonstrated that he is the alpha male is just absurd. If it demonstrates anything besides racism, it demonstrates contempt and fear.

Support Listen to the Troops People

So in last night's debate, McCain closed by promising to take care of the veterans. Which was nice and all. But I have two questions:

1. What about the rest of America? We need health care and affordable houses and retirement plans, too.

2. How about asking the veterans themselves what they want?

Lovely things for the weekend

Two very different essays about two very different people, but both pieces are, to me, really quite beautiful.

1. Ta-Nehisi Coates on Sarah Palin.

The Palin pick was the most crassest, most bigoted decision that I've seen in national electoral politics, in my--admittedly short--lifetime. There can be no doubt that they picked Palin strictly as a stick to drum up the victimhood narrative--small town, hunters, big families and most importantly, women. . . . To the McCain camp, Palin isn't important as a politician, or even as a person. Her moose-hunting, her sprawling fam, her hockey momdom, her impending grandmother status are a symbol of some vague, possibly endangered American thing, one last chance to yell from the rafters "We wuz robbed." Lineup all your instances of national politicians using white victimhood to get into offices--Willie Horton, White Hands, Sista Souljah, Reagan in Philadelphia etc.--they were all awful no doubt. But I have never seen a politician subject an alleged ally to something like this.
....
In election season, there is a price for being turned into a symbol. When actual journalists, with a rep to protect, show up, they are going to do their job. Which brings me to the sexism of John McCain. He knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they'd quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves. Think on that for a mement. For one last run at the White House, he risked a future star of the party he claims to call home. How do you do that? I don't meant to rob Palin of agency, certainly she is also a victim of her own calculations and ambitions. But where I am from the elders protect you, and pull you back when you've gone too far, when your head has gotten too big.

2. Robert Ito on David Foster Wallace:

"Inevitably our thought was, if only he could have held on a little bit longer," says sister Amy. "And then we realized, he did. How many extra weeks had he hung in there when he just couldn't bear it? So we're not angry at him. Not at all. We just miss him."

The Front-Runner

The thread in ding's debate open thread surprised me. Were you guys drinking? For one night, I put down the computer, and went to watch the debate with some friends. Obama supporters all, there was a lot of cheering and yelling at the tv, and saying "come on, bring it home..." and then "yes!" when he did so. When you get six lawyers in the room together, well, you sound like you're getting ready to tell a lawyer joke.

All joking aside, I thought Obama came out of the debate a clear winner. McCain performed well, at least when he was speaking (he looked awful when he was listening), and it's a testimony to how poorly his campaign is going that a competent performance from him was a surprise. Standing up on that stage, he seemed like a reasonable candidate for the Republicans to have chosen, unlike the rest of the time where his flurry of surrogates, and his attempts to be a Republican, a maverick, and appeal to the Christian conservative base all at the same time make him seem utterly incoherent. Tonight, at least when he was talking, he seemed okay.

When he was listening, he showed to the country a side of him that even his supporters won't deny exists. He is grumpy, easily frustrated, and temperamental. A lot of what he's done in his years in the Senate, things that have been spun as evidence that he's a "maverick," are really evidence that he's just pissy. He doesn't like to be challenged, and he's so secure in his own importance and moral and intellectual righteousness that he seemed, time after time, insulted and angry that Barack Obama dare challenge him, even in the most polite and diplomatic way possible. Sputtering and huffing, he got his back up time after time when Obama corrected his assertions, refused to lie down and be steamrolled. And his answers to questions were either pro forma or overly-rehearsed, like his piece on Georgia that he'd written to fit as many foreign names into as possible, to make it seem like he knows what he's talking about. And on tonight's most crucial issue, the economy, the issue that he claimed to consider to be of such paramount importance that he "suspend" his campaign and cancel the debates, what did he do? He talked, over and over again, about earmarks. Earmarks are not the problem with the American economy. Earmarks are not the reason that unemployment is rising, that banks are failing, that oil costs $4.25 a gallon.

John McCain's insistence on myopically focusing on earmarks during an overwhelming financial crisis demonstrates that he is either completely ignorant, or has no respect for the intelligence of the American people.

All this is to say that John McCain was flailing around like a dying fish trying to get jabs in. Because he's losing. If there's anything that tonight's debate demonstrated to me, it's that Barack Obama has become the front-runner in this election, and is behaving as such. Throughout the evening, he was relaxed. His answers were, down to the very last clause, coherent and even elegant. He seemed prepared without even once sounding rehearsed. He never stumbled or faltered, and did not let McCain have a single "gotcha" moment. He was firm without being indignant, and when appropriate, twisted the knife ever just so much (the moment where he brought up Spain was brilliant).

Meanwhile, for an old guy, McCain was acting childish. Grimacing and looking mildly constipated, he refused to look at Obama. He seemed frustrated that he was having to prove himself. He seemed frustrated that this younger, first-term senator was standing on the other side of the stage as his political equal.

And Obama seemed pleasant and calm, perfectly happy to show up and debate all night about why he had it right and John McCain had it wrong.

Just like a winner.

blogging the debate: open thread

I'm sitting here, with my girls and amid a fab spread of cheeses, pate and chips/dips (as well as a hell of a lot of beer), watching the debate. And we're taking a drink everytime we hear the words: war, POW, Main Street, and hope. We won't get as plowed as watching the Orientalizing opening cermonies of the Olympics, but maybe we'll get a nice buzz on.

Consider this your space to share your thoughts, reactions, funny asides and observations during this debate.

Carry on!

follow-up to the palin / wasilia rape kit story

Remember this post?

Well, now it's in the NYT. Which credits the AP rather than the humble blog that broke the story, or the other blogs that helped spread it. But I do notice that the NYT writer ends on the same note I did.

So that's where my overdraft fees have been going

From the NYT:

[WaMu CEO] Mr. Fishman, who has been on the job for less than three weeks, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus.

I know a campsite that's beautiful this time of year

Contrary to what one might suppose about a woman who blogs for a site called Bitch PhD, I am an extraordinarily *nice* person. It's kind of a terrible adjective, but I'm afraid I inhabit it. I am nice. I endorse and promote generalized niceness.

But really, this is too much even for me.

Stop this! Of course we should 'overly parse' McCain's campaign suspension!

I loved Bill's speech at the Pepsi Center so much I had nearly forgotten how pissed I was at him during the primary. But now I am remembering. And, I don't know, maybe it's completely routinized habit at this point, the self-interest, the non-stop politicking for one's own family and legacy, the inability to think of the party without first thinking of one's self at the helm. Maybe, in other words, Bill can't really help what he's doing. Maybe, on the other hand, he's being a total dick, shilly-shallying around what's at stake for the country, downplaying the huge gulf between the two candidates, and refusing to let Hilary's name, and therefore his own legacy, drop out of the limelight. Regardless of which is the case, let me encourage the good President to take a fucking vacation. From now until November. We don't need you out there making the rounds. See some more of the country. Maybe the deep south. Maybe a campsite. Or a Country Inn and Suites.

[In conversation with ari, who is also quite nice.]

oh look

The government's taken over my bank now.

In other news, a bit of advice. If your partner spends three days looking for a new stockpot to replace the one you burned and then broke, and finally ends up having to buy it from amazon because no retailer within twenty miles stocks a decent stockpot at a decent price, it's really a bad fucking idea to get all pissy about the fact that it's made of aluminum and oh noes what about Alzheimer's when it finally arrives. Especially if every decent pot, casserole dish, cookie sheet, plate, and piece of ceramicware in your entire kitchen has been acquired by said partner because you yourself cannot be bothered.

Luckily, the ongoing financial meltdown likely means that your life insurance isn't worth shit, so you'll probably live through the night.

This blog is now suspended

Until the nation's severe financial crisis is over. In this difficult time, we should all be putting our country first.

Therefore, Sybil and I will be immediately cancelling all of our classes, while Ding and LeBlanc will simply have to put their clients on indefinite hold. The bitch team will immediately head to Washington DC in order to celebrate Ding's birthday by getting drunk and peeing on the White House lawn ensure that Congress finalizes a bailout plan as soon as possible.


Inspired by this and this.

Effigy

It's a good thing we live in a post-racial society now, and that racism has been eradicated, otherwise I'd be really upset by this:

A campus custodial crew discovered the cutout of the Democratic presidential nominee about 7 a.m. Tuesday. Crew member Katlyn Search, 21, a George Fox senior from Battle Ground, Wash., said the cutout was hung by fishing line from a tree near Minthorn Hall. She, another student on the crew and their supervisor took down the cutout and reported the incident to the administration. Search said Obama cutouts can be purchased at a local supermarket.

The cutout was accompanied by the words "Act Six reject." Act Six is a scholarship program that was established two years ago and is aimed at including more low-income and minority students in the George Fox student body. Students are chosen for their leadership potential; all receive full scholarships.

George Fox is a Christian college in Oregon.

shorter mccain: 'the dog ate my homework'

McCain wants to postpone the debate.

Really?

"McCain called Obama before he made the statement and told him he was going to suspend his campaign and move back to DC until the economic crisis has been figured out."

Really?!

Why not just call a state of emergency ("We were attacked by bad markets!") and just suspend the whole election?

Consider this your space to drop your thoughts on the bailout plan, today's news re: the bailout plan, the debates (yes, even the part about moving the goalposts a little closer so Palin can reach them) and what you're doing instead of looking at your financial statements.

On the joys of getting enough sleep

It's a beautiful sunny day, I'm cheerful, I've done all my grading before finishing my morning coffee, I've banned three tiresome trolls, and comments to the previous thread are now closed.

Now I'm going to go find various checks that I've gotten recently paying me for my fruitful labors, swing by the bank to deposit 'em, take my bike in for a tuneup, send Ding the money I owe her, and buy myself a goddamn iPhone because I want one. So there.

What are y'all's plans for the day?

Let's discuss the intentional fallacy

Jack: Your breath stinks.
Jill: That's rude!
Jack: No it's not; your breath really does stink.

Jack is being:

(a) disingenuous;
(b) sincere;
(c) it doesn't matter; the fact is that telling someone their breath stinks *is* rude.

Tom: Women are stupid.
Tina: That's a sexist statement!
Tom: No it's not; all the women I know really are stupid.

Tom is being:

(a) disingenuous;
(b) sincere;
(c) it doesn't matter; the assertion that women are stupid, given the history of aspersions against women's intellectual equality with men, is a sexist assertion.

Brenda: Obama is a Muslim terrorist!
Brad: Given the fact that that statement relies on an implicit association between non-European names and violence, that statement is racist.
Brenda: No it's not; I wasn't even thinking that.

Brenda is being:

(a) disingenuous;
(b) sincere;
(c) it doesn't matter; given that the statement invokes on such an association, whether or not Brenda "meant" to do so, the statement is racist.

In all cases, (c) is the correct answer. Notice how nicely (c) frees us from having to divine the intent of someone who may or may not be fully honest about admitting to what is an acknowledged social gaffe. The point, in all cases, is that the statement in question is objectionable, regardless of the speaker's intent, because it the social context in which the statement exists makes it so. Whether or not one is aware of that social context and is being offensive "on purpose" is irrelevant.

See also. This too. Oh, and especially this.

You can issue as many denials as you want to, but the fact remains: in this society, at this historical moment, with this history, "that's not racist" is bullshit. It may be bullshit born of ignorance, rather than bullshit born of ill intent, but it is bullshit nonetheless.

Finally!

Some good news! I just got the breaking news alert that the US Supreme Court issued a stay of execution, scheduled for a bit over an hour from now, for Troy Davis!

Just homeschool already

And keep your political stunts out of my public school district.

A 5th grader in CO interpreted a school directive to wear red, white and blue to show your patriotism (which I admit is dumb) as an opportunity to wear a shirt reading "Obama: a terrorist's best friend" (I am spotting him the colon, which appears to be absent from the actual shirt). He was sent home. The school says he was asked to take it off, but also that he was sent home for "disobedience" and not the shirt per se. I mean, honestly, they probably sent him home for the shirt. And bully for them.

Meanwhile, the kid's crazy dad is going to sue. Because of the First Amendment doncha know. His dad who regularly protests outside of Planned Parenthood doctors' homes, taking his young children with him and claiming it to be "God's work." No, you're not an instigator at all, guy. No inflammatory political stunts for you.

Your kid doesn't get to wear whatever he wants to at school. And while I've no doubt that in your house suggesting that a man running for the most high profile public service job in the nation is aiding terrorists can, in fact, be the same as demonstrating one's patriotism, that is not how most of the normal people view it. Most of the normal people think you are an asshole. And that you are raising your 11 yr old kid to be an asshole.

Your kid's shirt is racist. Further, your kid's shirt does not participate in any good faith understanding of an assignment to wear something red, white, and blue to show patriotism. Moreover, your remark that your kid's public school is full of "liberal loons" is truly something. Clearly, you are not hoping that the public school system be free of political ideology, otherwise you wouldn't send your kid to school dressed like an ideologue. Quit hijacking the public education space with your fringe positions and antagonistic stance. Some of us are here to learn.

student voting: a handy legal guide

So I'm at work, trying to put together communications for GOTV and I realize that there is a huge gap in my knowledge re: the voting process for students.

Everyone I've spoken to has drawn a blank when I try to develop a guidesheet for students voting in this election. The best I can come up with is, 'Uh, be familiar with the laws of the state you're going to school in or, uh, vote absentee.'

Not good enough. I had no idea there were so many barriers to student voting - and it's no wonder that previous elections have seen younger voter turnout remain so flat. We make it virtually impossible for them to vote!

Some states have flat out refused to recognize students' residency as valid (hello, Texas, Virginia and New York); some states don't recognize student IDs as valid identification, making it impossible for students to comply with HAVA (Help America Vote Act) guidelines; some states require drivers licence addresses to match voter registration card addresses, which unfairly burden students from another state; and then there are those state officials who claim that students voting where they go to school could endanger financial aid or scholarship awards.

Some states are just sloppy about information, but other states are ferociously coordinated in their attempts to suppress the youth vote.

So what are the rules? Where can student voters go for clean information?

Thank goodness I didn't have to do much legwork.

The Brennan Center has developed a web tool that provides a handy legal guide for students during this election year. They code states according to how student-voting friendly they are - green is friendly, red is not. (Just guess which states aren't friendly.) They give you what the regulations are and what maze of red tape you'll have to navigate to come out the other side. They also dispel all the myths WRT losing financial aid, imperiling parents' taxes and endangering tuition.

The guide does not say that students merely have to show up to vote, but helps prepare students for whatever bullshit their state throws in their way. Forewarned in forearmed.

So, professors and grad student instructors - do your students a solid and tell them about this guide so they can prepare themselves for what they need to do to vote without too much issue. They don't have a lot of time.

Updated: to add that Jack (from Jack & Jill Politics) has created a Voter Suppression Wiki. They have an action page that is pulling information together from voter suppression watchgroups, contact information to report irregularities, different campaigns and legal actions already in progress to halt voter suppression.

End the Death Penalty

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia tomorrow night. 18 years ago, Davis was convicted of shooting a cop in a Burger King parking lot. At the trial, 9 individuals ID'd him as the shooter. No murder weapon was found. In the subsequent years, 7 of those 9 have recanted their testimony, with several saying they were intimidated into identifying Davis. 1 of the 2 remaining witnesses has been implicated as the murderer himself by as many as 9 individuals.

The death penalty is always terrible, regardless of guilt or innocence. And frankly, I am too cynical to even feel uniquely outraged by the possibility (or probability) of an innocent man's being executed. It happens, I've no doubt. What is especially galling in this case is that the US Supreme Court is scheduled to decide about whether a final appeal is warranted on Sept. 29. And yet the state of Georgia, which has been waiting 18 yrs to execute this man, cannot wait even one more week.

The state today denied clemency.


I really can't imagine, honestly, that it will do any good, but info about petitions and protests and vigil here at Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

A good NYTimes op-ed from the weekend about Davis.

the bullshit liberal/educated/coastal/feminist elite meme

Let me tell you some things about me:

I grew up in the Rust Belt. I currently live in the South. My family is quite religious. My parents will vote Republican, always - my dad for what he understands as economic reasons, my mom because she will vote pro-life. I went to a religious high school and a religious college. I got married at 23, in a church.

I love professional sports. I read a lot of celebrity blogs. I watch some shitty TV shows and I sometimes read People magazine.

At my house we eat meat. And drink soda. And domestic beer in cans. We are inconsistent recyclers. We have a Wii.

My husband works for a huge international corporation. My best friend works for a Republican congressman. Several of my closest friends are deeply religious.

My politics have nothing to do with contempt for the heartland, or the south, or for my own fucking family, as some asshole suggested in a comment thread down there a ways. On notice: anyone who dares talk to me about my disconnect from regular Americans or the insularity of the academic life. How sad for you to have such an impoverished imagination.

If endless war and financial ruin don't motivate you

How about free books? Ayelet Waldman, writer, DNC Blogger and former HipMama (in other words, me, only more successful), has a pretty cool Obama fundraiser going: donate $250 through this link, forward your email receipt to Ayelet along with your mailing address, and she'll send you ten randomly-picked signed books by one of these authors.

Because, you know, we're all about the literary elitists around here.

Thanks, Denver Friend!

I went camping—in my apartment

Another Sunday night, another sweet, sweet weekend gone. My boy has been gone for a few days visiting his people in Western lands, and I was rocking it solo for the first time in a while. Things I did this weekend:

-Got drunk at Morseland again, but not drunk enough to start yelling about racial equality again. Also, the band sucked. Whereas, the week before, the band was awesome and made me start yelling about racial equality and how we have to elect Barack Obama. Highlight: me saying loud enough for people at the next table to hear: "I hate them! I just fucking hate them!" Then the nice hipster girl with the tattoos scoots her chair over. "Who do you hate?! I wanna know!" Me: "The fucking Republicans!" Her: "Me TOO!"

-Had brunch with my bff of yore The Dolphin. We don't see each other as much anymore, and it was awesome to reprise breakfast at the place we ate at 14,000 times during law school. They still know us, and we still always order the same damn thing.

-Downloaded copious amounts of porn.

-Took multiple daytime naps.

-Went to the movie theatre alone, which I haven't done in ages, and saw Towelhead. Felt like a perv, because there were only like 4 people in the theatre. One of the other patrons felt this gave him license to take his shoes off and prop his feet up on the chair. When I looked directly behind me, I saw socks.

-Drove around in the middle of the night because I was bored and didn't feel like going home. Pulled over and talked on the phone to the one friend I knew would be up, for an hour, sitting in my car, at 2 am, until I was tired.

-Contemplated getting a tattoo.

-Contemplated going to church. I thought it would be nice to sing the songs, but I know they would know I wasn't a part of the congregation and then they would get my contact info and then they would send missionaries to my house. I should just order a hymnbook off the internet already.

-Finally straightened out my gym membership, and went and lifted weights for the first time in over a month.

-Cleaned out the shower drain, the material that I extracted from it being nightmarish, because my lovely boyfriend finally got around to shaving that damn beard and clogged the thing up. He looks good. The drain does not.

-The drain being clogged helped me get my ass to the gym, because I woke up this morning and thought "If I go to the gym, I can take a shower there, and not have to deal with this shit."

-Harassed friends into coming with me to the beach to toss around the football. It was a beautiful day. After we'd been there about an hour, a dense, thick, cold fog rolled over the beach, the thickest I've seen in years, and we couldn't see very far. It was beautiful and eerie and kind of dystopic.

-Stood and watched ten men try to pull a truck out of Lake Michigan that some dumbasses had parked too close to the water, and found themselves stuck when the water rose. The effort failed. I was like "have you guys contemplated calling a tow truck?"

-Did a shitload of laundry.

-Bought two shirts and some new sunglasses.

Things I didn't do:

-Work.
-Clean any part of the house, including the kitchen and the bathroom
-Do any of the dirty dishes that are piled up in the kitchen.
-Cook.
-Worry about the banking bailout.

All in all, a fine, fine weekend. SolsticeEquinox tomorrow, right? I love the fall weather--it's energizing, and it smells good.

Mr. Vane 1, Forethought 0

So that was a good idea.








So goes another weekend.

UPDATE: Camping was pretty. That's all I mean to say.

McCain: pay no attention as the entire financial system crumbles around you

Just too much:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Yes! What a fabulous fucking idea that is!

Boy, that's some real maverick shit right there, man. Let's just throw everything into the crapper and see what happens. Yee-haw!

Update: Oh, right--Hilzoy reminds me that McCrazy wants to throw social security to the wolves, too.

Weekend Family Blogging

Yesterday around 4, Mr. Vane called me and asked if I wanted to go camping. We are not really camping people. We have a tent (wedding present) and sleeping bags (practical), but we've only camped once in the 10 yrs we've been together. And we sure as hell haven't camped with little Vane, she who has been torturing us by getting up 3 times a night since June. Perhaps more importantly, we are not especially spontaneous people. Or I'm not anyway. I like plans. And forethought.

But I don't like to be a total drag, so I say, Sure we can go camping. But I can only manage 1 night. I have a bazillion papers to grade and classes to prep and I've already committed Sunday afternoon to making phone calls re: women's issues and Obama and then the Steelers have a really big game. But Mr. Vane has decided that going for one night TOTALLY SUCKS and he has to go for 2. So after a little hemming and hawing and rhetorical poking to make sure everyone is being forthright, it is decided that Mr. Vane and little Vane will leave straight away, and I will join them sometime the next afternoon. We run around like crazy people for an hour throwing shit in the car, and they're off.

And I'm home alone. Which would've been more awesome if I didn't have all these papers to grade.

So I start grading, and pretty soon Mr. Vane is calling asking me to pull up a map. Huge accident on the interstate, he needs an alternate route. An hour later when he calls back to discuss how clogged the alternate route is, I can hear markedly more irritation in his voice. An hour after that, when he is still a good 40 minutes away from a location that should take only an hour to get to, he is really sounding stressed. Here is where I don't want to be all 'told you so,' but can't help but congratulate myself for knowing that rushing into things attracts bad vodoo. He's thinking about turning around, we decide that would be dumb, and yet he feels pretty stressed about how late it is, how tired he is, the fact that he has to pitch this tent we've never opened by himself in the dark, and so on.

After commiserating for a bit, I go out for sushi with friends. I am a bit worried, don't get me wrong. I hate for people to be miserable, especially my spouse and child people. But my eating alone, dragging some old shit out of the freezer, won't help. Midway through my dinner, when I think surely they must be in place and at least partly through set-up, I call to check in.

They are at the Country Inn and Suites. And looking for something for little Vane to wear in the indoor swimming pool. At 11pm.

You know how sometimes you feel like a story has *exactly* the right ending? Not in the sense that it's an aesthetically brilliant ending necessarily, but just that precisely the right thing happened given what we know about the characters and their propensities? This kind of ending seem surprising at first, but then you realize, right, that's exactly what should've happened. It's not all that common when you really think about it. A Handful of Dust is my favorite literary example of this. And Mr. Vane camping at the Country Inn and Suites is now my favorite real-life example.

Meanwhile, I'm home alone on Saturday morning! Grading papers, sipping coffee, and enjoying crisp outside air. Happy fall weekend, everybody.

by popular demand

Pseudonymous Kid: Mama, I hate you!
Me: No you don't, you loooooooove me.
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes, but that's the only reason I don't hate you!

A Question

Can someone tell me what has crawled up the ass of the commentariat? Is it the election? Getting frustrated with Palin? Stock portfolios looking bad?

Case of the Fridays?

Happy Friday!

Margaret Cho makes me happy with this post, where she addresses something B and I were worked about about last month: people who think they get to question someone else's religiosity.

I like this part:

Don’t fucking question my Christianity you fucking idiot assholes. If you continue to have a problem, then talk to God about it, not me, you fucking racist homophobic misogynist fake Christian shitheads. God thinks it is funny that I swear so much. He said I could use his name in vain or whatever. He just wants me to use it. He loves me. So fuck you.

Preach it.

Because I do

Am I entitled to think that people with "McCain 08" bumper stickers are stupid idiots?

And that people with American flag bumper stickers that say "NOBAMA" are racist fucks?

HHS Regulations

As you likely already know, a couple of weeks ago, the Department of Health and Human Services released proposed regulations that could seriously undermine women's access to reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion. The language of the proposed regulation leaves "abortion" undefined, leaving room to expand it to encompass emergency birth control and even contraception.

We've got a button down there a bit on the right sidebar that links to the ACLU's page where you can submit your objection to the regulation. The button reads "Religion and Reproductive Rights" because this is the bullshit regulation that would allow people to refuse to perform services (e.g. distribute birth control) on the basis of their religious beliefs.

You know what, assholes? If you don't want to distribute contraception, don't work in a pharmacy, how 'bout that? These same jerks will tell you that they want smaller government, don't want activist judges telling people what to do, and yet they seem to love the idea of the government giving a pass for NOT DOING THEIR JOBS. It's really very simple - we get to chose our vocations for the most part. I, for example, would not be especially ethically comfortable working in a plastic surgeon's office. Fortunately for me, I can just chose not to do so instead of asking the government to pass regulation that allows me to be employed by a plastic surgeon and sit on my ass refusing to pass him the scalpel.

Planned Parenthood has a nice rundown of reasons this is troubling here, including a link to submit comments to the Department of Health and Human Services. I know we are all feeling antsy about the election and are forward-looking in that respect, but let's not drop the ball on the last few things Bush is going to try to get through.

The period to get comments submitted to HHS ends on Sept. 25, so get on it.

Lies and Taxes II: The Real Average

In an earlier post today, I talked about John McCain's lie that Obama would raise taxes, implicitly and explicitly offering himself as a alternative, who won't raise taxes. The actual general consensus is that both Obama and McCain will cut taxes. The question is, who will cut taxes more? As this Washington Post chart shows, Obama's cuts for lower-income brackets are larger than McCain's, while McCain's highest cuts are for the very top income brackets, those comprising the top 1% of incomes. Obama, on the other hand, has planned a tax increase for the top 1% of earners.

As I pointed out in the earlier post, the Washington Post's chart gives a "average cut" percentage that makes no sense (McCain -2%, Obama -.3%). It appears that they added up the average tax cut percentage for each bracket, and then divided by the number of brackets. This would make sense if each bracket represented the same number of people, but the brackets most decidedly do not. Even given their "straight average" strategy, their numbers are wrong; they flipped the sign on Obama's average, writing -.3% instead of .3%.

This data calls not for a straight arithmetic mean, but a weighted average. Which I have calculated in the chart below (which anyone is free to use on their blog if they obtain permission), thanks to this comment by Zach of Alchemy Today, which tells us what the brackets represent.



The average was calculated by weighting the percentage cuts according to the population they represent (20% x -5.5, 20% x -3.6, et cetera) and then taking the average adding them up (Edit: Thanks, commenter Sibylla!). The result is an accurate representation of the average tax cut under both McCain and Obama's plan, which shows that the average tax cut under Obama plan is almost three times that under McCain's plan.

The Washington Post should issue a retraction or correction. Its chart is misleading and incorrect. Their "average cut" percentage figures proclaim that on average, the tax cut under McCain's plan would be greater, when in fact it is Obama's plan that would provide the greater average tax cut.

Lies and Taxes

I want to make two points:

1) John McCain is a liar. The campaign, and McCain himself, have repeated over and over again that Barack Obama wants to raise taxes, and the media has uncritically reported it. Given John McCain's track record lately for telling the truth, I don't really want to take his word for it. Instaed, let's have a look at this tax-plan chart, from Chartjunk:



Is there more blue surface area on the chart, or more red surface area? First one to guess correctly wins a John McCain condom (not really, I never could get my hands on one).

2) The Washington Post doesn't understand averages. Contemplate this chart, covering the same data, linked here before:


It shows proposed tax cuts for various income brackets under Obama and McCain. As discussed at ChartJunk, the chart is flawed because it gives an equal amount of space to each bracket. However, what's worse is that the "Average Cut" percentages at the bottom makes no sense. What did they do to calculate the 'Average Cut' percentage? They added together the nine numbers above and divided by nine. But that's idiotic. That's why we have something called a "weighted average," which is what you use when you have data points that apply to different-sized groups of objects. The WaPo's method is like saying: If 10 people are given a hundred dollars and 1 person gets $0, the average received by the eleven people is $50.

The "Average Cut" percentage (-2% versus -0.3%) is not just misleading, it's wrong. It proclaims that John McCain will lower taxes overall more than Barack Obama will, when in fact just the opposite is true. Barack Obama's tax plan proposes larger cuts for the income brackets with the most people in them, and in fact, his tax cut is only smaller for the top 20% of earners. So let's recap: larger tax cut (than McCain) for 80% of the population, smaller tax cut (than McCain) for 20% of the population. I don't have the population numbers at hand (if someone gives me a link, I'll be happy to calculate the actual average), but what I've just said makes it clear (given the small difference margins) that the average tax cut under Obama will be higher than under McCain.

Let John McCain continue to proclaim that Barack Obama will raise taxes, and let's keep harping on his lies. Even now, his advisor are starting to sputter. Here, Tucker Bounds basically admits that Obama's plan will cut taxes more than McCain's, but that basically we should ignore his tax plan because "he's voted for tax increases in the Senate." Apparently Megyn Kelly is giving Obama "too much credit" by comparing McCain's plan to Obama's plan, rather than comparing McCain's plan to unfounded and untrue statements about Barack Obama. Isn't this supposed to be Fox News?



All via Yglesias.

UPDATE: Madeleine points out in comments that the dollar amount of the "Average" cut isn't a straight average of what's above it. She's right. I should have clarified that I was talking about the percentage average being a straight rather than a weighted average. Post edited above to make it clearer.

As for the raw dollar "average cut," I'm really not sure where the hell those numbers came from, and you're right, it's not a straight average of what's above it. Maybe they took their fake "average cut percentage" and calculated how many dollars that would be off the median income? Or got those numbers from somewhere else?

In which case, their chart is even more screwed up than I thought.

let me repeat myself

McCain, trying to claim that he knows something about the economy, emphasis his service on the Senate Commerce Committee. He lies about what it does, but the implication of those lies--that he's responsible for what's happening to the U.S. economy--is actually true.

McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.
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That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market.
....
As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee for more than a decade, McCain did not have direct oversight of the financial sector. But he sat at the center of arguments between telephone, cable and satellite companies, almost always pressing for more competition.

"I'm always for less regulation," he told the Wall Street Journal in March. He added: "I'd like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated."

McCain: liar, idiot, or senile?

McCain's statement that the fundamentals of our economy are strong: is he completely stupid, or is he actually losing his mind?

It does kind of seem like he can no longer remember facts or do simple math.

Update: hahahahahahaha.

McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.
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That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market.

P.S. I am sorry I posted this right over the post below; I meant it to go up later today but hit the wrong button.

Rapegate

In case you already weren't worried enough that Sarah Palin doesn't give a flying fuck about sexual assault victims, the McCain campaign is here to remedy that right quick.

First, the story breaks that under Palin's watch, Wasilla women who went to the police saying that they had been sexually assaulted by a man, were charged for the rape kit. In case anyone doesn't know, a rape kit is an exam done for the purpose of collecting and preserving evidence--it's not a medical procedure. And yet, despite the fact that it's similar to collecting fingerprints, taking photos of a crime scene, or doing ballistics analysis, the city of Wasilla insisted on charging women, or their insurance companies, for the kit, rather than using city funds. As of today, neither McCain, Palin, nor anyone on either of their staff teams has commented on this story. What's the problem—too ridiculous to dignify with a response? Hardly, especially when the former Governor, Tony Knowles, has acknowledged that Wasilla was the only town in Alaska doing it. Prompting the state legislature to pass a law forbidding them from doing so.

And yet, silence. However, the McCain campaign was nice enough to give us a rape-related nugget today, though there's nary a word about the rape kit controversy. Instead, they brought up rape when talking about Troopergate, the controversy where Palin allegedly had the Department of Public Safety Commissioner, Walter Monegan, fired because he wouldn't fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law.

Palin didn't fire Monegan because of her sister's ex-husband, the McCain campaign reassures us. No, actually, it was because Monegan had the gall to seek federal funding for a program to attack Alaska's problem with sexual assault. What's Alaska's problem with sexual assualt? It's got the highest rape rate in the country, a title it's held for a while. And Monegan wanted to do something about it. And the McCain campaign has no problem asserting that that's the reason he was fired:

The last straw, the McCain campaign said, was in July, when Monegan planned to travel to Washington to seek federal money for a plan to assign troopers, judges and prosecutors who could exclusively handle sexual assault cases — one of the state's most intractable crime problems.

Sarah Palin to rapists: Don't worry, guys, I got this one.

Why This Feminist Hates Sarah Palin

So the WSJ presumes to explain why feminists hate Sarah Palin. Consider me baited, Cathy Young: let me tell you why *this* feminist--feminists being, you know, not all the same, any more than women are all the same--hates Sarah Palin. Oh, and that "not all the same" thing? We'll get back to that; it's a key point.

Left-wing feminists have a hard time dealing with strong, successful conservative women in politics such as Margaret Thatcher.

Liberals generally dislike conservative policies and the politicians who support them. Big surprise. Even women, if they are liberal, will dislike conservative women politicians because--here's that key point--women are not interchangable. This point is why the SNL sketch was funny. Just in case you didn't get that.

Moreover! Feminists, in general, dislike--not "have a hard time dealing with", "dislike"--conservative women, where conservatism means things like "opposes women's reproductive rights" and "opposes support for single mothers." That kind of thing being, y'know, central to the point of feminism, which is a political movement that aims to promote the rights and equality of women as a class. Which isn't the same, by the way, as promoting every single individual woman. This should be obvious, but if you have a hard time with that whole "women aren't all the same" concept, it's a big leap to really *get* that.

Sarah Palin seems to have truly unhinged more than a few, eliciting a stream of vicious, often misogynist invective.

Unlike "truly unhinged," which isn't the least bit misogynist, oh no.

On Salon.com last week, Cintra Wilson branded her a "Christian Stepford Wife" and a "Republican blow-up doll." Wendy Doniger, religion professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, added on the Washington Post blog, "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

Those examples are indeed misogynist and sexist. Many feminists will freely admit that women can be sexist, too. Given that sexism is kind of embedded in our culture, it's difficult to come up with ways to express anger at or about women that *aren't* sexist, actually.

You'd think that, whether or not they agree with her politics, feminists would at least applaud Mrs. Palin as a living example of one of their core principles: a woman's right to have a career and a family.

No, see, there's a difference between supporting a *principle* and supporting every single individual who happens to benefit from that principle. Again: a stretch, I know, but just repeat after me: "individual women are individuals; they are not representative of All Women Everywhere."

Yet some feminists unabashedly suggest that her decision to seek the vice presidency makes her a bad and selfish mother.

See upthread, re. women being capable of being sexist, too. Even feminists. What with sexism being culturally ingrained and all.

Others argue that she is bad for working mothers because she's just too good at having it all.

Mmmmm, that's not *quite* the argument. Let us keep reading to see what the argument actually is, shall we?

In the Boston Globe on Friday, columnist Ellen Goodman frets that Mrs. Palin is a "supermom" whose supporters "think a woman can have it all as long as she can do it all . . . by herself." In fact, Sarah Palin is doing it with the help of her husband Todd, who is currently on leave from his job as an oil worker.

Mmm-hm. I, for one, seriously doubt that the "help" of Todd Palin (and why is he just "helping," given that they're his kids too?) is the only assistance Sarah Palin's getting with raising five kids, including a special-needs baby. Call me crazy, but as the mother of just one kid, I just sort of doubt it.

But Ms. Goodman's problem is that "she doesn't need anything from anyone outside the family. She isn't lobbying for, say, maternity leave, equal pay, or universal pre-K."

That's not Goodman's problem. It's Goodman's argument. Which isn't that Sarah Palin is "too good at having it all." It's that Sarah Palin has the same needs other women do, but that she refuses to support policies that would supply them to women who, unlike herself, don't have large extended families, husbands with good-paying flexible work, jobs of their own that pay well and require very few hours, and lots and lots of money to pay for help if and when those other things aren't enough.

This also galls Katherine Marsh, writing in the latest issue of The New Republic. Mrs. Palin admits to having "an incredible support system -- a husband with flexible jobs rather than a competing career . . . and a host of nearby grandparents, aunts, and uncles."

Oh rilly??? You don't say.

Yet, Ms. Marsh charges, she does not endorse government policies to help less-advantaged working mothers -- for instance, by promoting day-care centers.

Right, well, again: this is a good argument, is it not? Most people aren't making a solid 200k/year, as the Palin family reportedly is. And most people who do live in far, far more expensive cities than Wasalia, AK. Why not address the claim here, rather than trying to ignore the actual substantive issue by hiding behind the "but Sarah Palin's a woman!!!" nonsense?

Mrs. Palin's marriage actually makes her a terrific role model. One of the best choices a woman can make if she wants a career and a family is to pick a partner who will be able to take on equal or primary responsibility for child-rearing.

Marrying "down" is indeed a very smart thing to do if you are highly ambitious, as Palin is. Men have known this for years. But should *all* women who want both a family and a career "pick" a partner who is "able" to take on "equal responsibility" for raising his own children? Why is it the responsibility of women to find men like this? Why do we not hear people telling men that if *they* want a career and a family, they should pick partners who will be able to take on equal responsibility for children?

Oh right, because we still assume that child-rearing is women's first and most natural job, and that having kids *and* a career is optional (for women). A luxury we're only allowed if we make good "choices" like "picking" men who will care for their own children.

Our culture still harbors a lingering perception that such men are less than manly

Indeed. And assumptions like the ones I was just explaining are a big reason why.

-- and who better to smash that stereotype than "First Dude" Todd Palin?

Why? Because he's Alaskan? Because he snowmobiles? Because he works on an oil rig? Because he makes six figures? I'm kind of feeling like maybe there are some unarticulated lingering perceptions about manliness underlying this idea that Todd Palin is the best man for smashing the sexist presumption that men can't take care of kids.

Nevertheless, when Sarah Palin offered a tribute to her husband in her Republican National Convention speech, New York Times columnist Judith Warner read this as a message that she is "subordinate to a great man."

Bullshit. Read Warner's column again; the "great man" referred to isn't Todd Palin, who isn't so much as mentioned in Warner's piece. It's John McCain.

Perhaps the message was a brilliant reversal of the old saw that behind every man is a great woman: Here, the great woman is out in front and the great man provides the support.

McCain's running for VP under Palin now?

Isn't that real feminism?

What, tokenism? No, actually, it isn't. Nor is misrepresenting the arguments of others, as it happens.

Not to Ms. Marsh, who insists that feminism must demand support for women from the government.

See above, in re. "feminism is a political movement." The government would therefore be the proper focus of it, yes, just as it is for all political movements.

In this worldview, advocating more federal subsidies for institutional day care is pro-woman; advocating tax breaks or regulatory reform that would help home-based care providers -- preferred by most working parents -- is not.

False dichotomy. Actually feminists support both tax breaks and regulatory reform for home-based care providers. See, for instance, Obama's amendment to H.R. 796, "To provide certain employment protections for family members who are caring for members of the Armed Forces recovering from illnesses and injuries incurred on active duty."

Trying to legislate away the gender gap in earnings (which no self-respecting economist today blames primarily on discrimination) is feminist.

Yes, it is. And in fact there's quite a bit of evidence of remaining discrimination. Including the structural discrimination of how full-time work is defined, and the social discrimination of letting men as a class off the hook in re. caring for their own children--see above.

Expanding opportunities for part-time and flexible jobs is "the Republican Party line."

Part-time and flexible jobs are awesome--if they provide benefits, and if they are what workers are actually looking for. Where people want or need full-time employment in order to, oh, say earn a living wage or provide health care for their families, expanding "opportunities" for them to work as temps or part-timers is bullshit.

I disagree with Sarah Palin on a number of issues, including abortion rights.

That's mighty big of you.

But when the feminist establishment treats not only pro-life feminism but small-government, individualist feminism as heresy, it writes off multitudes of women.

Real individualist feminists wouldn't expect all feminists to approve of all political agendas, as long as they're being espoused by some woman somewhere.

Of course, being a feminist role model is not part of the vice president's job description, and there are legitimate questions about Mrs. Palin's qualifications.

Again, mighty big of you to acknowledge this. Why not write an article about Palin's qualifications or lack thereof, rather than one about why feminists should be supporting her--especially since you're allowing that there are, in fact, legitimate reasons not to do so?

And yet, like millions of American women -- and men -- I find her can-do feminism infinitely more liberated than the what-can-the-government-do-for-me brand espoused by the sisterhood.

Well, sure; being rich is really, really liberating. The problem is that most Americans--and especially most American women--aren't rich. And yes, talking about that and figuring out what the government--you know, the one that's supposed to be by, of, and for the people, including the women people--should actually *do* about that fact isn't nearly as easy as writing yet another half-assed article about what's wrong with feminists.

But no one ever said that democracy was supposed to be easy.


Anyway, yeah. So that's why this feminist bitch hates Palin. Because her presence on the ticket is being used to make bullshit arguments like that one. Because she's a token. Because she, and her handlers, refuse to acknowledge that she's a token. Because the party for which she is running, and the policies she supports, and the presidential ticket she's on, actively promote a political agenda that's inimical to feminism. Because feminism isn't, and never has been, about supporting every single thing every woman everywhere does. Because there is a difference between women as a class and women as individuals.

Because I, with my very own personal brain, think that Palin is underqualified; that she's more likely than most v.p. candidates to actually end up running the country, given McCain's age and state of health; because I viscerally dislike being condescended to; because I viscerally dislike being told what to think; because I viscerally dislike it when people try to do an end-run around my principles and throw in a ringer and tell me that a spade's a freaking laurel wreath.

And you know what? Maybe, just a little bit, because being told that the amateurish, untaught beauty queen is the feminine, feminist ideal, the best women can aspire to be--YET AGAIN--is seriously fucking irritating.

Bitch, the magazine

God, I wish this blog were a monthly magazine with money and lots of contributors. You know, I have been a reader of this blog since way before I was ever a blogger, where I would link to Bitch's posts from my livejournal adoringly, 'cause I thought she was kickass. And continues to be. And now that there's Sybil and ding, well shit, I'm just proud as punch to be a part of it.

Anyway, there is an actual Bitch, the magazine. You know, before I knew much about much, I tried to subscribe to Bitch, but I got confused and ended up subscribing to Bust instead. Not. The. Same.

Bitch keeps it real. It's a feminist magazine, and although I've disagreed with a lot of stuff in there, it's consistently entertaining and interesting, and basically never wants to make me tear my hair out, like, say this article in the Wall Street Journal, or Sarah Palin, or Tucker Carlson.

And as you can see right there on the top of the website, Bitch needs forty grand by October 15 not to fold. So I'm finally doing what I should've done ages ago, and subscribing to the damn magazine. I may not buy it off the newsstand every time it comes out, but I buy it about half the time, and it's a magazine I want to continue existing (interesting note: they file it in the "Culture" section at Borders instead of the "Women's Interest" section. What do we make of that?)

If you've got a little money to spare, $5 or $10, consider throwing it their way, so they don't die off. It'd be sad to see that bitch go.

Via Latoya at Feministe.

John McCain exercised Poor Judgement

As a particularly insightful friend noted today, wouldn't now be just the right time for some well-meaning 527 to start running ads about the Keating 5? Just sayin'.

Poor judgement indeed.

Remember when this was an academic blog?

So I wrote a li'l column about the shift from t-t research university work to adjunct community college work over at Inside Higher Ed today. Check it out.

Which candidate wants to enfranchise more Americans?

I think you already know the answer.

Through this link, you can check your registration, find out your polling place, even register to vote. Pass it on.

Advice Bleg - FUMLAJIL edition

Like B, and many of our readers, I've chosen a career in which it is astonishingly difficult to attain the job security that is so much ballyhooed, i.e. anything other than a one year contract. As I am currently enjoying a one year contract, it's time for me to get the academic job market on the brain. Again.

The internet has no shortage of people lamenting the impossibility and overall dumbness of the job market, I don't need to pitch in. What I do need is some advice, ideally from those of you who may have served on search committees recently. I'm thinking of using Interfolio for my applications this year. I upload documents, make requests, they send the stuff. This will streamline my process and, more importantly, will eliminate printing and post office-ing from my process. I am definitely using them for my letters of recommendation, as my own university's dossier service is unreliable, so I figure why not just have them send it all.

But here's why: I can upload my letters, my cover letters, on digital letterhead, but as near as I can tell, Interfolio will print them in black and white and on stock paper. Now, I figure applications are generally xeroxed by admins and distributed to search committee members, so at least the majority f not all of them get photocopies anyway. But - well, I don't know. I mean, why did I bother using the nice paper last year then? It sure as shit didn't get me a job, I can tell you that.

Is this a dumb thing to worry about? Can I get some opinions?

The annoying part of this, or one annoying part of this, is the fact that it is, categorically, a dumb thing to worry about. I mean, here I am, trying to figure out the best way to convey my very truly thoughtful ideas about teaching and my pedagogical goals, as well as my scholarship, which I take seriously. And I can't really focus past how much it matters that my letterhead be in color. I hate that the chances of getting a good job in this field are so very small that all comers have no choice but to nitpick and second guess the tiniest, most insignificant things. I hate that there will be so many applicants for each job I put in for that it very well may matter if my letterhead is in color, because there are only so many ways to whittle down the field. I hate that the MLA JIL is making me hate a time of year that had, prior to the last few years, meant mostly a joyous return to football season and taking back out my nice sweaters. Eff you, MLA JIL, and the horse you rode in on.

(But really, I'm still worried about the cover letters. Thoughts?)

Infinite Dusk

David Foster Wallace, suicide. I'm so sorry to hear it.

He brought the boyfriend and I together, indirectly--at least, it was our mutual admiration of his work that gave us the initial common ground that led to a three-year (!) and counting relationship. And I did so very much love reading what he wrote. I think this is the saddest any celebrity death has ever made me.

Via EotAW.

Friday Catblogging

Take Your Daughter To Canvass Day - Sept 20 in PA

Another Jack & Jill find. What can I say, they're energized over there.

If you want to help in Pennsylvania, here's where you can sign up.

And if Pennsylvania's not your thing, you can find out what's happening near you over at Obama's campaign site. Do some phone banking, register some new voters. Get your butts in gear.

ah, the GOP: leaving no vote unchallenged

via Too Sense and the Michigan Messenger comes the story that the Michigan GOP has obtained a list of foreclosure records and is planning to purge these eligible voters from the rolls, preventing them from being able to vote in November.

From the piece:

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

Outrageous? Hearkening to a day gone by when only 'landowners' were allowed to vote? Horrifyingly heartless to prevent people most affected by this administration's current economic disaster from voting? Blatantly unconstitutional, in addition to being fundamentally asshatty?

Ah, Republicans - gleefully disenfranchising folks who've lost their homes.
What mavericks.

The upswing

It's funny that Bitch posted below that she doesn't give a shit that it's the anniversary of 9/11, because this is actually the first year I have given a shit that it's the anniversary of 9/11. I remember the first anniversary, where I was walking through the quad at my college, and there was a memorial of sorts, with singing, and patriotic speeches, and go-get-em rousing calls to action. I was disgusted and sad. I felt like I wanted to mourn what had happened, but there didn't seem to be any social acceptable way of mourning that didn't involve misguided calls for revenge.

9/11 "where I was" stories are a dime a dozen, and mine isn't particularly interesting. I found out about the attacks when I was walking through the student center on my way to class, a junior-level English course called, I think "Critical Theory and Practice for English Majors." I was a sophomore. It was a great course, my favorite that semester. When I got to class, the prof filled us in and said he was so upset that he didn't have the heart to hold class, and let us go. I went home, and snuggled up on the couch and watched CNN all day. I called my roommate at work and he came home early, my boyfriend stumbled out of bed (the three of us lived together), and we spent the afternoon sitting around watching the news. When it got dark, we went out to the patio/backyard and lit a fire in the giant ben-franklin-style stove the previous tenants had left. We played a few games of chess, as we did a lot that year, and smoked cigarette after cigarette. The smoke from the fire penetrated our hoodie sweatshirts and we drank a bottle of cheap wine and tried to parse what the events might mean.

I remember that I was very upset. Not just because of the people that died, but because I felt a great sense of impending doom. Not that I felt afraid for what would happen to America, but that I felt afraid for what America would do to the rest of the world. And I cursed the terrorists, cursed them not only for their hideous ideology and their callous use of innocent human lives for political gain—but for their indifference in the face of certain knowledge that their acts would unleash even greater violence against the people they were supposedly fighting for.

I remember sitting there, in front of the fire, with tears welling up in my eyes, and saying "it's going to get so, so much worse before it can ever get better." It's one of the few instances where I'm not happy to have been right.

And every year since then, I haven't really taken part in the annual discussions that seem to accompany the anniversary of the attacks. For a long time, I could remember only hideous things, like the way my classmates singled me out for being an Arab, and the way I felt scared, and the sign on my drive to school that read "God Bless America--Pray, Pledge, Punish."

But this year, I can think back and feel like maybe, just maybe, things are starting on that upswing that I feared was so far away. I feared it was ten, twenty, fifty years away. For all Barack Obama's problems, he's a candidate that I identify with strongly, and his rise to be a real contender made me feel hope even before Hope became the official campaign message. Both of us were raised by a single parent, both of us are mixed-race, both of us got to go to fancy private schools on scholarships, both of us were exposed to Islam without being Muslim. Both of us worked in poor communities, both of us went to law school. His story is more than just a great story, it's a story that makes sense to me.

And this winter, he just may get to be our president. Despite the he's-a-Muslim fear-mongering, despite his incendiary pastor, despite his blackness and his funny name. His candidacy has reminded me that there are many faces of patriotism, and one of them, the one that both Obama and I have, is a deep commitment to justice, fairness, helping the weak, and sticking to first principles.

So this year, I can remember that cool evening back in 2001 in front of the fire, and our conversation on the porch, and think that maybe, just maybe, we hit the bottom somewhere and we're starting to fight our way back up.

Confession

I really don't give a shit that it's the anniversary of 9/11.

French Cooking with Lazy LeBlanc

In our house, my dude does the vast, vast majority of the cooking. It's not that I don't like to cook or that I'm not good at it, but The Bear likes it more and he's better at it. Plus, he hates doing dishes and I don't mind it. So, most of the time, when we eat in, he cooks, I clean up (an easier task since we have a dishwasher now), and it's all delightful. But sometimes I just get a hair up my ass to cook. My problem is that I'm an ambitious cook, and when I decide to make dinner I kind of go crazy, often making things I've never made before or trying exotic cuisines (like the time I got in in my head that I was going to make Tom Kha Kai soup) (not as hard as you'd think). I'm not so good for everyday cooking, just throwing stuff together. But today, around 6:00 pm I was sitting in the office thinking about fall foods, and then thinking about French food, and I ended up on the gourmet.com website, and all of a sudden I was planning a meal. Two hours and two grocery stores later, I was at home elbow deep in chicken legs. What did I get myself into?

I made a modified version of this Poulet à la Fermière recipe. One thing about it was kind of a pain in the ass: I really don't get the whole "bouquet garni" thing. Why do I have to tie up herbs in a bit of cheesecloth? I did it, after spending fucking $5 on a hunk of cheesecloth and $2 on some twine, but I don't know if it was worth it. But as The Bear said, "French chefs have been doing that shit for centuries. It must be good for something." Whatever. I feel like I should just be able to throw the herbs in there, then take them out at the end. Or, heaven forbid, leave them in and get some errant leaves in my mouth. No!

The rest of the recipe was easy. It calls for frozen peas and frozen pearl onions, for god's sake! My prep method was: wash, dry and season the chicken, then pre-measure out the wine, chicken broth, onions, peas, and get B. to grate a giant mound of cheese while watching White Sox. Then, ready, set, go! I didn't bother thawing the onions properly--I just left them on the counter when I got home instead of putting them away. That's my version of "thawing." I followed the recipe from there, with a few "I'm lazy" modifications. I couldn't be bothered to look for crême fraiche, and sour cream seemed too thick, so I got "crema ranchero" from the Mexican Grocery, out of a misguided impression that it was lighter than regular sour cream. Verdict: tastes basically the same as sour cream. The white wine I used was what happened to be in the fridge, not particularly dry. Used salted instead of unsalted butter 'cause that's what I had. Didn't bother to peel potatoes or carrots. Stuck religiously to their times.

Result: sooo very delicious! Not aptly represented by mediocre food photography.




But the other thing I made was the real smashing success. When I was reading through recipes on the gourmet.com site, something mentioned "lardons" and I started having flashbacks to me and The Bear's trip to Paris back in March, when we ate these giant 8-euro salads at Chez Gladines that left us going "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god." Over a fucking salad. And so I embarked on a recipe search. I finally came up with this, for "Frisée Salad with Lardons." And really, it was very easy to make what is one of the best salads you will ever taste. Lazy LeBlanc modifications: didn't want to go to Whole Foods or similar to get slab bacon, used regular bacon already in my fridge. Couldn't find frisée, similar lack of desire to go to WF, used what was labeled "green leaf lettuce" at Mexican grocery down the block. And finally, was totally indifferent about actually poaching eggs. I planned to poach them, but as the end neared, and I was hungry, I decided "fuck it," having never poached eggs before, and just fried them over-easy in a bit of canola oil (heat oil, crack eggs into pan over medium heat, let cook until bottom is browning, then flip over, wait 10-15 seconds, slip out the pan). I halved everything in the recipe except the eggs, which I quartered (did I really need two fried eggs on my salad?), but in general I didn't measure anything.

Plus, the timing factor is a lot easier if you don't poach the eggs. 'Cause you can wait until everything is done, then fry the eggs, which takes about two minutes. None of this simmering water immersion nonsense. And seriously, frying baguette cubes in bacon fat is like.. unbelievably heavenly. Basically, this salad is about putting bacon fat and shallots all over everything. Good lord. And then you break the fried egg and you get some yolk mixed up with your dressing and... well.



That's some of the shallot-bacon fat-red wine vinegar dressing on top of my egg. God, the whole thing was just ludicrously good. And since the bottle of white wine was already open, we drank the rest of it with dinner. And used the rest of the baguette to sop up the sauce from the chicken dish. Economical! Now I've just got to figure out what do with all this thyme and parsley.

And now that I've shelled out for cheesecloth and twine, I'll be putting bouquets garni in my fucking cereal. I'm so French.

Links to share

Jack and Jill Politics has some awesome posts on the front page right now--go on over and have a look. Links below shamelessly lifted from two favorites.

This will not make you feel better, but it's important: Republicans are trying to purge voter rolls. Notice that one of the techniques is *illegally* purging voter registrations of people who have gotten a drivers' license in another state. Like, oh, say, college students?

If you've moved recently, especially if you've moved from a different state, check your registration, people. And if you're inclined to work on the election, registering people would be a good way to go. Hilzoy posted the deadlines for new voter registration, by state, in a recent public service announcement.


Also from J&J, this handy page that tells you what your income tax situation would be under Obama. Just in case any of you--or anyone you know--is spouting the "liberals will raise MY taxes" bullshit. (Skeptics can compare their results with the information from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.)

Bouncing

At the mall closest to our house, there is a kids' contraption/racket - giant bungee cords attached to harnesses hanging from big cranes over trampolines. You know what I mean, right? The thing where you strap a kid into the harness and they adjust the lengths on the bungees so they can bounce 20 feet in the air on the trampoline, do flips, whatever. For $5 you get 10 minutes of ridiculousness on this thing.

My daughter freaking loves it. She calls it "the bucking duck" because in the hallowed tome The Berenstein Bears Get the Gimmees , Brother and Sister have a favorite ride at the mall, "the bucking duck," with which they are obsessed. The irony that Brother and Sister Bears' obsession turns them into greedy, sociopathic monsters is more or less lost on her. Once or week or so we field requests to go ride the bucking duck and because of a combination of laziness, unimaginative-ness, indulgence, and too much dispensable income, we usually agree.

She looks very small in this apparatus; she weighs enough to ride it, obviously, but is dwarfed by the cranes and giant trampoline. She waits very seriously and quietly as they strap her into the harness and begins bouncing as the cords are shortened. Finally, when they are short as they can go, the attendant grabs the harness and pulls her down hard, releasing her into a giant bounce that lifts her over the balconies of the mall's second story. Often, Mr. V goes up to that second story so he can make funny faces at her when she bounces up. We both do a funny thing while she is bouncing where every time her feet hit the trampoline we do demi pliés and then straighten up and bob up our shoulders and chins as she should release. It's totally involuntary, totally inevitable, and completely absurd.

I resist taking her every time it comes up because I know it's absurd and because spending $5 on 10 minutes is ludicrous. And because it's just so ridiculous, I can't emphasize enough how clear that is to me. And yet. When I am watching my daughter bounce up and down in the ridiculous harness, pointing her toes like a ballerina, and watching my husband involuntarily bounce up and down with her while cheering from a mall balcony, I feel as perfectly and completely happy as I ever have in my life. No doubt because the activity is so utterly insignificant that it is totally free from my cathecting any kind of ambiguities or complications on it. I just feel entirely happy; not even content, which would be calm, but a kind of bubbling, rippling happy.

This story doesn't go anywhere else. It's not a lead-in to any sort of political or feminist observation and I can't extrapolate anything universal from it. But I've had a shit couple of days, am very sleep-deprived, and went this weekend to a memorial service that really busted me up. And I am really miserable about the politics anymore. So I want to put something out there about perfect happiness, both to remember that I am capable of it, if only for 10 minutes, and to remember that what I know of it has nothing to do with the things that actually upset me deeply. That's all.

Mommybloggers, we're such assholes, god.

Our Rogers Park Ranch

Me: Dude, when are you going to shave that fucking beard?
Bear: Who can say?
Me: I think you'll never shave it.
Bear: That's very unlikely.
Me: You're just going to let it grow and grow and grow. You'll be like...Rumplestilskin of the face!
Bear: What?
Me: Rumplestiltskin of the face!
Bear: That doesn't even make sense.
Me: Yes it does!
Bear: I think you mean Rapunzel. Rapunzel was the one who had the long hair, with the tower?
Me: Who was Rumplestiltskin?
Bear: He's the scary one, who stole the first-born.
Me: Whatever. Rapunzel of the face!

Naming the RNC Street Video Collection

First off - thanks to M. LeBlanc, Ding, Sybil, and especially Dr. B for the use of their microphone.

Second, I'm taking that Themes and Memes post over to nihilix, unless my hostesses really want to have a public media work project here at their place. In any case, you can find the Police State on a Stick round Two over there.

I'll probably pop in with some legal updates. The RNC8 are the RNC Welcoming Committee anarchists and anti-authoritarians who are facing state terrorism charges. Despite the fact that they were in jail for most of the convention.

One last thing, though - I'm hoping that we can make a DVD with the best of the worst - some documentiation of the police state that showed up here - and I want to know what people think the best title will be. The nominees are:

• Police State on a Stick
• Fascist Brigadoon
• Baghdad on the Mississippi
  

Under Palin's leadership, Wasilla charged rape victims for collecting evidence

I shit you not. This article doesn't mention her by name, but check the dateline: Palin was mayor of Wasilla.

That means that under her leadership,

the Wasilla police department [did] charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

Back in 2000, Alaska's then-governor, Tony Knowles,

signed legislation protecting victims of sexual assault from being billed for tests to collect evidence of the crime, but one local police chief said the new law will further burden taxpayers.

That police chief was Charlie Fannon, Palin's appointee. One can only assume that she supported Wasilla's policy of billing rape victims for their own rape kits--the kits police and hospitals use to collect evidence after a rape--not only because Fannon was her appointee, but also because this was four years into her tenure as mayor and because, let's be honest: in a town of that size, the mayor doesn't get to plead ignorance of policies or public statements of her own chief of police.

What was Fannon's rationale? He didn't "want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer."

Palin was willing to raise taxes to build a sports complex. Her police chief was unwilling to use public funds to investigate rapes.

This shit needs to be in the national news. And Palin and McCain need to answer some hard questions about it.


Via Jack and Jill politics, who got it from Op-Edna.

Dear Dahlia:

Pwned, by LeBlanc, except without the sexism.

Cheers -

sv

A funny thing happened at the abortion party ...

Except it didn't actually. Which was sort of the funny thing, given that the theme was Stand Up for Choice. With, like, a stand-up comic; that kind of Stand Up.

This is back to DNC blogging, by the way (or mini-blogging, anyway). I'm finally writing about the NARAL party B and LeBlanc and I went to. Has the moment passed? At any rate, we had heard the party would be a big to-do, so were psyched about it even though they would only comp us 2 tickets. And even though I had to take a cab from wayyyyy over at the Pepsi Center where I had just heard Bill Clinton speak. It was a lot of to-do about a sort of middling party, as it turned out. The stand-up comic wasn't funny; I couldn't stop referring to the event as an abortion party, which I thought was sort of funny, but objectively might not have been. The highlight of that party was when they turned off the music and put Beau and Joe Biden's speeches up on all the TVs. The feminists were riveted, and charmed.

The one thing was funny-odd, if not funny-ha-ha, was one of the door prizes: stripper pole-dancing classes for you and 6 of your friends. Ummm, really? At the feminist party? What's more, who has 6 friends willing to pole dance with her? Is there something wrong with my social circle?

Anyway, we didn't win. So we left and went to a party at a dinosaur museum instead. The end.

(Wow. Did that sound like the kind of disjointed narrative generated by the early-semester + up-all-night toddler haze?)

Themes and memes for the RNC - streetside

Once upon a time, I had a fling with academics, although I did not climb the same august peaks as Dr. B. My seven year postgraduate career did produce a Masters in Linguistics. My big paper was on political metaphor, particularly George Lakoff's Moral Politics.

I've been trying to wrap my brain about the story that I think needs telling based on my experience with the protest movement. I'm not talking a thematic analysis of the images the RNC wanted you to see. In other words, I'm on Zinn's mission of working on history from the other side. Let me know what resonates with you.

The values espoused by the protesters, particularly the pagan cluster (who are doing the most interesting semiotic work, I think) are abundance and common wealth, interconnectedness of everything, and fun. Rebellion and resistance to injustice are others on the anti-authoritarian left.

The values of the Republicans are out of Lakoff's book - strong hand, justice delivered, hierarchy of god above man above planet. A harsh response to disobedience is to be expected; violence is sadly necessary. They were asking for it, doing what they did. The glittery side is glitzy, the ugly side is very ugly.

I also came up with a list of thing I would want to include in any good story about the convention. (It was added to by many, including unhappy student and joanna and white trash academic and taddyporter and TA)

• The Twin Cities became a police state for four days
• There were numerous unprovoked attacks by officers
• Sheriff Fletcher in trouble and possibly crooked and that motivated his behavior
  
• The police criminalized radical dissent, particularly with regards to anarchists
• Sub: Felony charges will impair their democratic rights
• Sub: Arrest records will follow people
  
• The important role of journalists society was not respected
  
• The RNC brought the methods of Iraq to Saint Paul
• Sub: The convention center security was like the Green Zone
• Sub: People who were in jail were hooded and abused like Abu Ghraib
• Sub: Overwhelming use of superior weaponry was the first choice of response
• The police were comical in their use of force
• Amnesty International says that human rights were likely violated
• ron paul had a mostly ignored totally peaceful action across town
• most charges are dismissed, most detainments not charged
• people detained were requred to give info to get away , getting on FBI database
• the corporate media buried the story
• the corporate media's coverage of the protest was all cops vs robbers, ignoring the antiwar message
• the police did to others what they do to communities of color all the time (drug war, etc)
  

Three other points made by people:

• Earth activists - pagans, environmentalists - need to know that the reason this police state matters to you is that you - supposedly - care about the earth
• That Saint Paul was taken over by a 'fascist Brigadoon' that showed up and then disappeared
• That someone needs to re-write the lyrics to 'Springtime for Hitler' to 'Springtime for Fletcher'
  

Way to go, Saint Paul! Human Rights Violations!

And I criticize people for press release journalism.

PRESS STATEMENT
For immediate release:
Friday, September 5, 2008
Contact: AIUSA media office
202-544-0200 x302

Use of Force Against RNC Protesters “Disproportionate,” Charges Amnesty
International

[London]--Amnesty International is concerned by allegations of excessive use of force and mass arrests by police at demonstrations in St. Paul, Minnesota during the Republican National Convention (RNC) from September 1-4, 2008. The human rights organization is calling on the city and county authorities to ensure that all allegations of ill-treatment and other abuses are impartially investigated, with a review of police tactics and weapons in the policing of demonstrations.

The organization’s concerns arise from media reports, video and photographic images which appear to show police officers deploying unnecessary and disproportionate use of non-lethal weapons on non-violent protestors marching through the streets or congregating outside the arena where the Convention was being held.

Amnesty International urges that an inquiry be carried out promptly, that its findings and recommendations be made public in a timely manner. If the force used is found to have been excessive and to have contravened the principles of necessity and proportionality, then those involved should be disciplined, measures put in place and training given to ensure future policing operations conform to international standards.

Police are reported to have fired rubber bullets and used batons, pepper spray, tear gas canisters and concussion grenades on peaceful demonstrators and journalists. Amnesty International has also received unconfirmed reports that some of those arrested during the demonstrations may have been ill-treated while held at Ramsey county jail.

Amnesty International is also concerned at reports that several journalists who were covering the RNC were arbitrarily arrested while filming and reporting on the demonstrations. They include host of independent news program Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, and two of the program’s producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, who were both allegedly subjected to violence during their arrest. A photographer for the Associated Press (AP) and other journalists were also arrested while covering the demonstrations.

Kouddous described his arrest to media, “…two or three police officers tackled me. They threw me violently against a wall. Then they threw me to the ground. I was kicked in the chest several times. A police officer ground his knee into my back…I was also, the entire time, telling them, ‘I’m media. I’m press….,’ but…that didn’t seem to matter at all.”

Amnesty International recognizes the challenges involved in policing large scale demonstrations and that some protestors may have been involved in acts of violence or obstruction. However, some of the police actions appear to have breached United Nations (U.N.) standards on the use of force by law enforcement officials. These stipulate, among other things, that force should be used only as a last resort, in proportion to the threat posed, and should be designed to minimize damage or injury. Some of the treatment also appears to have contravened U.S. laws and guidelines on the use of force. The U.N. standards also stress that everyone is allowed to participate in lawful and peaceful assemblies, in accordance with the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For more information, please contact the AIUSA media office at 202-544-0200 x302 or visit our website at www.amnestyusa.org.

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This post is about two thousand words

Re. Barbie, Waco

My own personal boss-lady comment re. the post below, since I do feel kinda responsible for the whole "official blog policy" thing in re. guest posters.

Yeah, I'm not going along with "Barbie" or with the idea that the right "caused" Oklahoma with Waco etc. I'll grant right-wing *rhetoric* some causative, or at least contributory, power, what with the anti-government, pro-gun crap, but by the same token you'd have to say the left was "responsible" for, I dunno, Susan Smith or whatever.

Violent, socially marginalized people will always latch on to the rhetoric that's available to them in whatever their historic moment, and their actions will always be interpreted within existing frameworks. Part of the *point* of this blog is to question those frameworks, not to accept them as a given.

Sorry, Nihilix. I Officially Disapprove of this post. Except for the point that yes, using horrific events for political gain is offensive--no matter who's doing it.

I do want to say, though, how important and appreciated Nihilix's posting about the protests in Minneapolis has been; this post isn't intended as a reprimand or anything, merely a clarification/correction.

RNC: New Oklahoma Barbie, comes with playset.

The woman on the stage is Congresswoman Mary Fallin (god bless). The backdrop behind her is the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, bombed by Tim McVeigh.

This is the worst thing ever. The right is responsible for that bombing, and now they use it as a backdrop for their "tuff on stuff" message.

Worst. Thing. Ever.



Photo credit nihilix

RNC: From the inside of the Xcel. Practically liveblogging.

Ohh, this was a night.

I made it into the Bowl tonight - the nosebleed row at the top of the Xcel in the press section. I had press credentials through the radio station.

About halfway into it, I started writing this post. Here's what I scribbled in my little 'reporters have to have notebooks' notebook. It's very stream of consciousness, kinda disjointed and weird, but that's how tonight felt.

There is a scary vibe in this convention...

I've seen Imperial Troopers in their ninja turtle armor, I've seen teargas, and the Bean Bag Buggy.

The cadaverous face of Ramsey County Sheriff Fletcher, the glints on the dark pebbles that are Senator McCain's eyes...

In between the security gate and the TSA magnetron, at about 8 PM, I saw them.

Two, three, four men who were not the ones you saw at podiums, behind Fox News desks. The man who's pure evil. Hard men. Men who say 'flip the switch' or 'push the button' or 'pull that lever.' When they were younger, they might have done it themselves.

They are the hidden men, not even the grey eminences. The fixers. "That one, now!"

Now the convention is booing Obama. Perfunctory, and unenthusiastically. Oh, line about immigrants being Americans too. Pro forma applause.

The crowd boos, the crowd cheers the war. Rudy Giuliani moves them to froth - Lindsay Graham moves them to scorn.

It's an... evil triumphalism. It's the party of Jupiter Maximus, with Mammon on the one side and thuggish Ares on the other. A party where the leaders are feted till they puke, where the powerful pushing down the weak, those declared 'entarte' or unclean - is not only allowed, not only encouraged, but considered a sacrament.

He's against public money. He says he's against foreign aid - and the rousing cheer, the triumphal roar that he got when he said that surprised even the candidate.

The speech is flat in delivery, the crowd, partisans all, know what to do. There are spaces - seats unfilled in the auditorium.

Iran, Russia, the fears!!

The reptiloids. Those men I refered to earlier were preditors on the body politic. They chattered like velociraptors.

Seriously, those dudes I saw really freaked me out. I talked to some volunteers who were Republicans off the record, and they were fine. Local small town pro-life vaguely racist in a not too mean way Republicans. But these dudes looked like what happens when a bad CIA guy gets his soul dragged off to hell and something from beyond comes back and reanimates the corpse. It was like these guys had different mitochondria than the rest of us - evil suck your soul mitochondria. Of course I didn't take pictures of them.

I did get some pictures from tonight. Wonder if any are any good. I felt totally restrained about shooting the fences. The cop in the head...

Tomorrow - Cleaning up the cop poop. 200 more arrests.

HHS Regulations

As you likely already know, a couple of weeks ago, the Department of Health and Human Services released proposed regulations that could seriously undermine women's access to reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion. The language of the proposed regulation leaves "abortion" undefined, leaving room to expand it to encompass emergency birth control and even contraception.

We've got a button down there a bit on the right sidebar that links to the ACLU's page where you can submit your objection to the regulation. The button reads "Religion and Reproductive Rights" because this is the bullshit regulation that would allow people to refuse to perform services (e.g. distribute birth control) on the basis of their religious beliefs.

You know what, assholes? If you don't want to distribute contraception, don't work in a pharmacy, how 'bout that? These same jerks will tell you that they want smaller government, don't want activist judges telling people what to do, and yet they seem to love the idea of the government giving a pass for NOT DOING THEIR JOBS. It's really very simple - we get to choice our vocations for the most part. I, for example, would not be especially ethically comfortable working in a plastic surgeon's office. Fortunately for me, I can just chose not to do so instead of asking the government to pass regulation that allows me to be employed by a plastic surgeon and sit on my ass refusing to pass him the scalpel.

Planned Parenthood has a nice rundown of reasons this is troubling here, including a link to submit comments to the Department of Health and Human Services. I know we are all feeling antsy about the election and are forward-looking in that respect, but let's not drop the ball on the last few things Bush is going to try to get through.

The period to get comments submitted to HHS ends on Sept. 25, so get on it.

Community Organizing: Not a frakkin' tea party

I live in Chicago.

My adopted city is one with a history of immigration, ethnic pride, migration, violence, politics, poverty, ambition, and working class values (with a little head breakin' and racial segregation thrown in for good measure.)

It's also a city that has always taken part in grassroots community organizing, the thing the GOP sneers at.

The thing about grassroots organizing is that it happens outside of power. It goes directly to the folks being impacted by bad policies, by inequity, by disenfranchisement and it helps them fight and work in their own best interests.

It's hard work helping people fight in their own best interest, especially when those in power say that the interests of Authority ARE the interests of everyone under Authority. It's hard to mobilize folks to go up against big institutions and work for reform and actually win, especially when those institutions pretty much depend on the bafflement of the communities they exploit or neglect.

Mainly, it's hard because community organizing does what government refuses to do or lacks the capacity to do.

The organization I work for was founded in the 19th century by 13 women meeting in someone's home. They saw women migrating to the city from Illinois farms with no way to navigate this new environment and so they vowed to do something about it. These women helped with housing and employment; they helped these women build community with one another and, later, they integrated their clubs long before most other women's clubs were comfortable with the idea. They went on to agitate for women's sufferage and then, during the Civil Rights movement, they helped organize south and north shore women for Wednesdays in Mississippi. In the 70s, these women helped mobilize other working women of Chicago to fight for sexual harrassment and gender discrimination laws that literally transformed the way thousands of working women were treated in this city.

I am, and we are, the product of community organizing by women. These were ordinary women, hidden women. Wives, daughters, secretaries and students - going up against political disenfranchisement, racism, and sexual discrimination - meeting in lunch rooms, living rooms, libraries, churches, and community centers, sharing their stories, identifying systemic problems and dedicating themselves to solving them. These were women writing letters, crashing city council meetings, rallying in plazas, and riding buses to help other women fight police violence and racial conflict.

Who benefits from community organizing?

Mostly poor people, working people, elderly people, children, people of color, people who don't usually have access to power and influence.

Who doesn't the GOP care about, if they're so ready to be contemptuous of community organizing?

Poor people, working people, elderly people, children, people of color, people who don't usually have access to power and influence.

Ideally, grassroots community organizing allows for the flattening of power. Maybe, just maybe, this is a clue into why the GOP hates it so much. For some reason, the GOP just doesn't like the idea of ordinary people taking up the mantle of changing their circumstances - or the idea of anyone helping them do so. Though they say they're the party of 'personal responsibility,' when a community decides to take responsibility for itself and mobilizes to fight for its own interests, they characterize the effort as lazy or irresponsible and feckless.

It's funny. They give a lot of lip service to Christian values. They spend a lot of time holding hands with (or kissing ass of) the Christian Right. To me, a woman who grew up in Sunday School and still remembers her lessons about the sermon on the mount, religious minded folks who express contempt for the poor and disenfranchised screams hypocrisy.

If you work as an organizer share your story here: what you do, who you fight for and what you're up against.

Tell the GOP, and other folks who hate the idea of fairness, exactly what community organizing is about.

In Republican America, "citizenship" is something to sneer at. I'm just saying.

This recurring theme of turning "community organizer" into some kind of epithet, like communist . . . that's really disgusting.
....
Community organizers are the ones who take the responsibility upon themselves to help their fellow citizens without the benefit of a government budget behind them, and go out there every day doing the hard, thankless work to make this country livable, which is what allows you politicians to be able to go on tv and brag about how this is the greatest country in the world. And for you to go on that tv show and spit in those people’s faces for the sake of a rhetorical flourish? Is disgusting.
....
All you Americans out there . . . who go out there with your fellow parents or your church to help the community. The Republican party just went on tv last night and said that you and your church are a bunch of suckers. Are you just gonna take that?

Via EotAW. The American West is *all about* citizenship. Or should be.

Rhetoric

All those lines about the celebrity culture surrounding Obama, the lefties' deification of him as the great hope of the party, that all seems pretty silly now, eh?

The Republicans have been big so far about putting on their "American hats," which has inspired me to put on my discourse analysis hat. Last night's Gov-Palin-speech was very very heavy on the rhetorical flourishes, which Republicans have suggested tend to obfuscate a lack of substance when deployed by Obama. In keeping, I tried to push on a few of Gov Palin's rhetorical highlights. Here are a few of my digital margin notes on Palin's speech:

It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves. With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost, there was no hope for this candidate, who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.

So, right from the beginning you can see what the driving force of this speech will be: we the Republicans are the outsiders. The Washington experts don't get us, the media pundits don't get us. When we look bad on TV and in all the stories all over the world, it's because we are misunderstood. Seems off topic, if "topic" is "real problems facing the country"; and yet I continue to be staggered at how well this meme sells.

The voters knew better, and maybe that's because they realized there's a time for politics and a time for leadership, a time to campaign and a time to put our country first.

False opposition. How are these not all the same time? Define "politics" in this equation.

So I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education even better. And when I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and I knew their families, too.

Again, the thrust here is anti-voter analysis? Surely Gov. Palin knows that as VP one would not have the luxury of knowing all constituents personally. Is having the time/geographic scope to personally know all constituents a credential in and of itself?

I guess -- I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.

Nasty. The much-lauded grass roots voters, those who are most "energized" by the VP pick, are community organizers. Martin Luther KIng Jr was a community organizer. If state-sponsored service is the only service that counts, say so plainly.

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes and whoever is listening John McCain is the same man.

Dicey. Take, for example: John McCain has in this last week noted (rightly) that candidate's families are not appropriate subjects of political discourse, and yet famously made jokes about Chelsea Clinton's ugliness. One doubts he made such jokes when HRC was listening.

Well, I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I've learned quickly these last few days that, if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But -- now, here's a little newsflash. Here's a little newsflash for those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.

Again, not running against media, right? Strategy of victimization as selling point is perhaps not most substantive one available.

We suspended the state fuel tax and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that Bridge to Nowhere.

Insufficient evidence. Hired lobbyist secured $27 million in earmarks during tenure as Mayor. Bridge to Nowhere was supported before rejected, the latter happening once it became nationally unpopular and emblematic of earmarking.

But the fact that drilling, though, won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

True. And yet - is anyone advocating doing nothing at all? Please support this implication.

And now, I've noticed a pattern with our opponent, and maybe you have, too. We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers, and there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

Again, I do think this approach - devoted followers = lack of substance - is going to seem radically less effective after a quick scan or morning headlines and rightie blogs.

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot...When that happens, what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?

Nasty and, ironically, totally without substance. "Turning back the waters?" What does that even mean? A metaphor for parting the Red Sea? Mixed with a metaphor about overwrought environmentalism? Empty rhetoric here, please support with content.

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

Rudy's line. Also, nasty. Also demonstrative of gross misunderstanding of international law. Being opposed to torture is only shamefully equated with "worrying" about Miranda rights.

And let me be specific: The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Inaccurate. Non-partisan Tax Policy Center provides accurate info re: comparative tax plans.

My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery.

Nasty. Perhaps true, in some strictly semiotic way, but implication is that Obama has campaigned on the strength of believing the presidency to be a journey of personal discovery. Patently false.

This world of threats and dangers, it's not just a community and it doesn't just need an organizer. And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they're always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely: There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you.

Sen McCain served his country and in an abstract and ideological framework where"American international and military interests in the 1960s and 70s" are understood to mean "me," then yes, John McCain has fought for me. But if "me" means "ideals, legislation, and policy I endorse and value" then no, John McCain has not fought for me. Please be more clear with referents.

I could go on with this, but I really have a class to prep. Please, feel free to fill in gaps in comments.

Rage Against the Police Machine

The two big corporate papers in town - the Star Tribune and the Pioneer press have each had one good article about protests in the last ten years. The Rage Against the Machine review by Jon Bream is one of them.

I went to the show, and it was awesome. I'm a huuuuge Rage fan and frankly, I needed this. I got news today or yesterday that two of my friends in the blockade crew, the pagan cluster, are arrested. The guy was taken down, tasered while not resisting, and is in jail. I've seen the video of it on Kare11. I haven't even called the people I know yet, so I needed to limber up my strength to push for what they need. Do I respect wishes for jail solidarity, and ask for all of them to be released? Or do I ask for them directly?

A good friend of mine is one of the dispatchers for the legal observers so she's near tears for all the cute protest kids getting messed with. The police are really being a testy gang; those ninja turtle suits make them mean. The corporate media is fetishizing the violence against property (because there's no good direct evidence of any violence against person) and the police are making shit up. And I might be wrong on some of this - information is hard to grab and process, things are very multifasceted. It's a cluster [expletive].

And the Rage show rocked. (I've got some tinny video from my cellphone...)

Police ringed Target Center as political rockers Rage Against the Machine took the stage.

There were two different messages Wednesday night at Target Center -- one outside, another inside.

A blur of blue surrounded the downtown Minneapolis arena. "I've never seen police presence like this in Minneapolis," said Bobby the Brain, a ticket tout who is a fixture at concerts and events. "I've seen this in France and Spain for the Olympics and the World Cup."

The event that brought more than 100 uniformed officers -- on horses, on bicycles and on foot, all carrying batons and most with riot helmets on their belts -- was Rage Against the Machine, a hard-rocking, vitriolically rapping band that has been a champion of the disenfranchised.

Inside, Rage's message was obvious from what the lights over the stage spelled out during intermission: R-N-C [expletive] Y-O-U.

Rage Against the Machine is the most pulverizing, galvanizing and exhilarating protest band in the history of popular music.

Actually, not crossposted at Nihilix. But other things are...

RNC 08!: y'all are giving me a rash

Seriously. I thought it was the SPF that I accidentally rubbed on my face but now there's a little bit of a rash-y thing going on on my forehead and jaw and I'm blaming McCain and Palin. God, I hope it's not shingles. I really don't want to ride the bus reading a pamphlet with the words herpes zoster on it.

What about the John 'I have no judgment' McCain/Sarah 'I have more executive experience than Carly Fiorina' Palin ticket makes me itch?

Everything. The hypocrisy, the short-sightedness, the lack of long term planning, the assumptions about how women will vote, the circus-sideshow aspect of the whole thing, the grinning radical Christian Right sitting on their judgment seats hoping this is the perfect moment to bring on the Second Coming.

But it's even more disgusting to watch the GOP finally demonstrating how they've become a hollow party, having hitched their political wagon to the Christian Right, doomed to follow them wherever they go.

Perhaps there is hope and my rash can ebb a bit.

This morning Emily's List released national polling data on how McCain's judgment is faring among women. Some takeaways:

*This selection puts Senator John McCain squarely in the realm of politics over principle in women voters’ eyes.
*Governor Palin’s inclusion on the ticket squanders Senator McCain’s previous advantage over Senator Barack Obama with regard to experience and readiness to lead.
*Several of Governor Palin’s positions on issues, including her position on abortion, alienate large segments of the women’s electorate and add to the perception that the GOP ticket is out of step with women voters’ views and priorities.

If we take this poll and read it against a previous Emily's List study, 18 to 80: Women on Politics and Society, a couple conventional wisdom nuggets are challenged:

CW: McCain picked Palin because her personal story is relatable and appealing to women.

Palin's personal narrative is not particularly appealing to women. In that previous study, three generations of women were asked which messages appealed to them: change and hope or safety and security. McCain far outpaced Obama when it came to giving women voters a sense of safety and security. However, by deciding to choose Palin as his running mate, McCain cedes that ground.

What's the main weak point in her narrative? Her lack of experience.

CW: A McCain/Palin ticket represents boldness and being a maverick.

I don't know if women are responding well to 'bold,' especially if it means 'too risky' or without long term benefits or measurable results. According to the poll, women's reluctance to buy into a McCain/Palin ticket goes beyond McCain/Palin being out of step on women's issues. It goes directly to the question of leadership. Can McCain lead?

To paint a better picture, the context of women's alarm can be found in that previous study (which I'm paraphrasing): heading into these elections, we're worried about the economy and we're worried about what's going on abroad. Because of our identified worry, the role of the president is that much more crucial and women want a president with a long term, positive plan for the future and one who is capable of addressing their pocketbook concerns as well as foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the nation's global standing and national security. In other words, we want someone to handle it, correct it, not make things worse.

With his Palin pick, especially how he made the Palin pick, McCain has shown that he can't handle it. He can't even rally his party behind him without risking the envangelicals throwing the convention into chaos. And though this pick may have reenergized his base I can only hope it has also tanked McCain's chances with the majority of women by making him appear too unconcerned about his running mate's national security bona fides and underestimating how important issues like those are to us. (In addition, of course, to proficiency in other areas like energy policy, children, social security, medicare, jobs/employment, pay equity, reproductive justice and ethics reform.)

I was hoping for a pithy way to wrap up this post but I'm really itchy. It's distracting. Much like the Palin pick.

[Consider this your space to share your thoughts on the Palin speech tonight.]

I need some coffee with my whine

Jesus fuck, people. This semester continues to be a pain in my ass, and will be until Christmas. Two weeks ago was the first week + PK's school camping trip + prepping for DNC; last week was the DNC, obvs.; this week is... well, let me just give you a window onto my life schedule for the next three months, shall I?

Monday will be a car day! PK school by 7:55.  Home, then class prep. Teach 11:30-12:30.  Quick lunch, then helping in PK's class 1-2:15.  After school snack/errands/grading/nap/whatever. PK to TaeKwonDo 5:30-6:15.  Dinner, bedtime.
 
Tuesday No car!  Bike PK to school, leaving 7:30.  Bike home, back by 8:30.  Shower.  Prep for class/eat breakfast/blog/stare blearily into space.  Teach 11:30-12:20.  Quick lunch (I forgot to eat yesterday.  Bad idea).  Bike to PK's school, help in PK's class 1-2:15.  Bike PK home (it's about 2.5 miles.  Uphill.  'Tis muggy.)  Shower. Snack/nap/start dinner.  PK to TKD 5:30-6:15.  Dinner, bedtime.

Wednesday  Thank god I have the car!  Same schedule, including helping in PK's class and excluding multiple showers. Instead of TKD it's soccer practice from 4:45-5:45. Today and for the next few weeks add in "give class mice antibiotics in morning and afternoon"--PK's teacher got some mice for the class, only he got them from the pet store in town that has Bad Mouse Husbandry, so one died yesterday of pneumonia (right in front of PK; oh, joy) and I have appointed myself Official Class Mouse Doctor. If/when the remaining two die, we will replace them from the pet store that has Good Mouse Husbandry, dammit.

Thursday  No car!  Same as Tuesday. Including multiple bike rides, class volunteer time, and TKD.

Friday  This is the easy day. I have a car, and PK gets out of school at 12:15.  The only catch is that I don't get out of class until 12:20.  I'm assuming that the teacher, who likes me and PK, will be willing to put up with my not getting there until about 12:45. But I'll have to decide if I'm going to bike, which would be quicker since I can leave straight from campus, or if I'm going to bike/walk home to pick up the car, which will save me pedalling PK's ass up the hill.  PK has fencing at 4 pm.

Saturday morning: Soccer games. Every week.

Sunday: My goal here is to try, desperately, to get as much class prep as possible done on Sunday. We'll see how it goes.


This week I made the stupid, stupid mistake of collecting some papers from students yesterday and telling them I'd return the papers, with comments, today. That's not going to happen, both because I'm not grading Right This Minute (bad professor! Bad!) and because I have a doctor's appointment in an hour to find out what's up with this painful lump under my left tit. Joy.

Oh AND. I have to call the realtor. The fixer upper sellers have accepted our post-inspection reduced offer of $417. Which puts us in VA loan territory for a 2000+sf house! And everyone said that couldn't be done, hmph. (Seriously, the only things we've seen at that price were half the size, sans "improvements.") The catch is that the sellers will only do the repairs that constitute "hazards." I'm not sure if this includes exposed wiring and ungrounded outlets or not; maybe it just means they'll secure the water heater and put in some fire alarms. I'm a little worried that the owners have the ex-tenant, who I believe was supposed to be out by Monday, doing the repairs (owners' brother is a contractor and previous tenant works for him); I biked by yesterday and the tenant's car was in the drive. The house certainly didn't *look* moved out of, unless the tenants just left their trash in the driveway....

So in a few weeks, knock on termite-free (I hope) wood, we'll be adding "moving" and probably "deep cleaning" along with "beginning home improvements" to that schedule.

Who does one hire to remove a dead cat from under the house?

this is how you secure Western PA

Some days its hard to figure out what the hell you want to say, you know? So instead you just throw up an image that warms your heart.

UPDATE (cause I can't resist):

Get up everybody and dance

Here is my take on the convention's primary theme, the party's current thesis, and a subcategory of the "unity" leitmotif: we are family.

I freaking loved Michelle Obama's speech last Monday. There's been plenty of criticism that she was basically just reassuring white people that she's not scary, or that she was underplaying her professional credentials--see, for instance, Rebecca Traister's piece in Salon, if you haven't already--but those reactions kind of bug me, for two reasons.

1. She's the candidate's wife. Candidates wives, historically, have *always* emphasized the softer, feminine, family-oriented virtues. I'm not saying there wasn't a certain amount of reassuring going on, but the only comparable modern first lady we've got is Hillary Clinton, and she, too, was seen as threatening and scary. God knows that the "terrorist fist bump" and the "she hates America" crap was racist, yes, but I honestly did not see this speech as racial pandering at all.

2. What I *did* see--and loved--was that in talking about her family, Michelle Obama wasn't downplaying her professional accomplishments. Instead, she was doing what I wish more of us were able to do, gracefully or no; demonstrate that a professional, accomplished, polished woman can also be an accomplished, skilled, loving mother and wife. That the two aren't in conflict, and that talking about the one does not involve erasing or downplaying the other.

Michelle's job last week was to talk about her husband's domestic side, to help America get to know him "as a person"--and it's clear that to him, and to her, their family life is really central. Which is awesome; family life should be central to people with children, dammit. It doesn't have to be the only thing, and it doesn't have to preclude a career, but it's freaking stupid to pretend that if a professional woman--or man--talks lovingly and at length about her or his family that that somehow implies that they don't take their job seriously. I'm sick to death of that assumption, and god bless Michelle Obama for showing us all, by juxtaposing her words with her polished demeanor and her *very clear* statements about the importance of education and opportunity (and I'm really pleased to have education being repeatedly emphasized by the Democrats in this election, given that they don't have to be talking about it this year, what with the whole economy + war memes).

And it wasn't just Michelle, either. Obama's video apperance at the end, and the way little Sasha kept interrupting--with the best of mannered intentions! "Hi, Gerardo family!" Very sweet, and very intimate, really; it was as though the audience was listening in on a dad calling his family from the road--which is exactly what we were doing. "Hi Daddy!" "I want you guys to look after the girls . . . look after mommy. Love you sweetie, you were great." I bet you anything that "the girls" is how he regularly refers to Michelle, Malia, and Sasha as a group.

Then there was the entire first half of Joe Biden's speech--the interesting part, that is--was also about family. And was, in fact, extremely moving; I think all three of us bitches teared up at one point or another, what with the car accident and the dead wife and daughter and the son in the hospital bed and the fond elderly mama in the audience. Not to mention the obvious way that Joe and Jill Biden adore each other.

And then all the short speeches on the last day, before Obama's speech, from "regular Americans"--talking about economic problems, yes, but also about their families. Over and over again it felt like, *finally* we have a candidate who *gets* that families actually matter. Not as a way of dividing us from each other--my family's not better, or more moral, or more important than yours--but because we all, every one of us, have families of one sort or another. Birth families or families of choice, with or without children, we have people we care about. Not because they represent some kind of politicized "issue" with which to beat other folks over the head, but because we love them.

Michelle's speech really made me feel like this blog, with its focus on politics *and* personal lives, wasn't there by accident. That Obama, and the Obamas, really get it: the personal is political, because in the end, politics is about people.

Amy Goodman Released, Tells All

Democracy Now! journalist, Amy Goodman, was released this evening, and being a trooper and a smart newswoman, has video out already.



Crossposted at nihilix

Lies and big lies (and radicalizing moments)

There's a GREAT picture of some kid dressed in black throwing something into a store window. Clearly the violent protesters are violent and doing violence.

And three broken Macy's windows, two broken police car windows, and two popped tires are plenty of reason to deploy batons, pepperspray, pepper balls (like paintballs but with pepperspray), tear gas, flash-grenades, and at least 200 arrests, including Democracy Now host Amy Goodman. At least they didn't use the tasers. But they did pepperspray a girl trying to hand a cop a daisy.

Sigh... it's been a long day in Saint Paul. I got my press pass and didn't make in into the convention center, but that's OK because there really wasn't much going on inside.

My sweetie works at a church where they gave out water all day. There was a guy with a red-white-and-blue doggie. He was fabulous. So was the dog. The permit march brought at least ten thousand out. After the permit march, the direct action crew tried to blockade delegates, even though the convention was a party for a no-show, to nominate the also-ran.

Of note are the attempts (largely successful) to blame police violence on the protesters, the attempt (somewhat successful) to create 'good' and 'bad' protesters*, the arrest of Goodman, and the wonderful day where lots of people gave time and bodies to try to make this world a little better place.

I love these protest kids. I get their politics (agree with some of them), and love their energy and courage. Check this amazing Minnesota Independent story about being 'embedded with the anarchists' and don't believe anything CNN tells you.



Here's a quote from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which used to have a liberal editorial board but news reporting has been conservative for some time... check this out...

The peaceful mood really started to change after 1:30 p.m., when several groups broke off and began resisting police.

What this means is these groups broke off and tried to walk down other streets. The police then pushed these groups around. The agency of 'began resisting police' clearly is with the protesters, while the actual use of force was by the police. The suspect resisted my baton with his head, your honor.

A lot of progressives in this city are being radicalized right now. Actually seeing the hordes of jackbooted, armored, visored police in their spiffy new matching riot gear in their hometown does that to a person.


*This from Stauber and Rampton's book, Toxic Sludge is Good For You...

The public relations industry . . . carefully cultivates activists who can be coopted into working against the goals of their movement. This strategy has been outlined in detail by Ronald Duchin, senior vice-president of PR spy firm Mongoven, Biscoe and Duchin [MBD]. . . In a 1991 speech to the National Cattlemen's Association, he described how MBD works to divide and conquer activist movements. Activists, he explained, fall into four distinct categories: 'radicals,' 'opportunists,' 'idealists,' and 'realists,.' He outlined a three-step strategy: (1) isolate the radicals; (2) 'cultivate' the idealists and 'educate' them into becoming realists; then (3) coopt the realists into agreeing with industry.

According to Duchin, radical activists 'want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives' and see multinational corporations as 'inherently evil. . . These organizations do not trust the . . . federal state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry. . .

Duchin defines opportunists as people who engage in activism seeking 'visibility, power, followers and, perhaps, even employment. . .The key to dealing with opportunists is to provide them with at least the perception of partial victory. . . If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution.' (pp. 66-67)

Quick Hit: Why I Dig Joe

CNN:

If Sen. Joe Biden was hurt that Republican operative Karl Rove called him a “big blowhard doofus” at an event in Minneapolis Monday, he didn’t show it.

On hearing the news, Biden grinned and said “he’s a great American.”

If I could come up with shit like that on the fly, I'd be the happiest girl in the world.

we interrupt your political outrage

for a moment of hilarity.

Some questions:

1. Don't you always take a good deep whiff of your tires before you get into your car? I know I do.

2. When purchasing new tires, it's true; aesthetics matter *way* more than price, performance, safety or warranty.

3. What, they don't come in pink?

4. Presumably these will be very popular on Ford Probes. Right?

5. As women, haven't you always wanted to buy your woman-focused car products from a company named KUMHO?

6. I bet LeBlanc is buying these tires right now. Aren't you, LeBlanc?


h/t Doctor Dave, who begged me to blog this.