First Draft

God Said to Abraham, Kill Me a Son

Eventually, we have to stop talking about these things like they don't mean anything:

But the president’s tone of being the only adult in Washington, everyone else is a child, that he’s going to summon people to the White House as if they are kindergartners, well, even if you agree with them on the substance, it’s kind of hard to go along with someone who is insulting you all the time.

Look. There are people who agree with me on important things, who I wouldn't swerve to miss if they walked in front of my car. Part of living in the world in which we have not yet found a way to implement Dickhead Control involves learning when it is critical to important functions to suck it up, realize you have to deal with this fucking garden weasel to get stuff done, and not let it bother you so much that he or she is a total jerk. 

To which end, are we REALLY SERIOUSLY ARE WE discussing whether Republicans are justified in blowing up the economy because the president was mean? Because last I checked out here in grown-up-ville, it's not really okay to not do your job and/or actually set your place of employment on fire because one of your colleagues is a total dillhole. Get the fuck over it. Land hard, roll left, and get on with your day. Therefore, if the president is in fact mean, and rude, and insulting you, possibly you should decided that eh, there will be a new president possibly next year and certainly in four years and in the meantime I'd like to get to that lunch date I have so here, let's raise the debt cieling and not fuck the dog any harder than it is currently being fucked. Maybe this is not the hill to die on.

This is not a theoretical debate. A default would actually hurt people in their real actual lives. And here we have Bobo, talking about how even though the president has the important things right, he's got them right in the wrong tone of voice. It's the eternal goddamn hippie argument, like we're having the war debate all over again: I agree with you that the case against WMD is probably bullshit, and Bush couldn't pour water outta boot if the instruction was on the heel, and we have no earthly way of paying for it, but those anti-war folks had a mean sign so I'm all for killinating the FUCK out of Iraq. I do not understand this, out here in the world where facts matter.

I do not understand where we get off, morally, talking about the tone of somebody's voice as if it's a real thing. I do not understand how we can do this and survive as a species. Even the "we should default because it'll teach those filthy poor people a lesson" Freepi are making a better argument than this, and when the Freepi have one over on the columnists at the New York Times it is time to consider whether to redirect one's talents toward digging a bomb shelter. I mean, somebody please tell me they have seeds stockpiled somewhere. I am starting to root for the asteroid scientists keep telling us is coming, just so that one day can pass without having to be reminded that in some quarters it is more important to suck David Brooks' rich white cock than it is to run the free world without doing so. 

A.

In Case You Weren't Despairing Enough for Humanity Today

Oh my bloody God and fuck:

Nelson, 30 and African-American, was convicted on the charge this week by six jurors who were not her peers: All were middle-class whites, and none had ever taken a bus in metro Atlanta. In other words, none had ever been in Nelson’s shoes:

They had never taken two buses to go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart with three kids in tow. They had never missed a transfer on the way home that caused them to wait a full hour-and-a-half with tired and hungry kids for the next bus. They had never been let off at a bus stop on a five-lane speedway, with their apartment in sight across the road, and been asked to drag those three little ones an additional half-mile-plus down the road to the nearest traffic signal and back in order to get home at last.

And they had never lost control of an over-eager four-year-old as they waited on a three-foot median for a car to pass. Nor had they watched helplessly as a driver who had had “three or four” beers and two painkillers barreled toward their child.

That’s right: Because Nelson did not lug her exhausted little ones three-tenths of a mile from the bus stop to a traffic signal in order to cross five lanes of traffic, she is guilty of vehicular homicide. Because she did as her fellow bus riders, who crossed at the same time and place, and because she did what pedestrians will do every time – take the shortest reasonable path – she is guilty of vehicular homicide.

Jude sent this over earlier this week, and what I said at the time was that OF COURSE she could have done something differently. When an accident happens there's always something you could have done. Gone to another grocery store and therefore avoided the dangerous intersection. Left an hour earlier or later. Gone the next day. A split second, a moment's decision. The universe is horribly random. It's why we have to take care of each other so much.

But just because you can second-guess somebody's actions in order to be a smug busybody trying to let yourself off the hook for giving a shit doesn't mean that person deserves CRIMINAL CHARGES. For fuck's sake. When Mr. A and I were living in far-flung suburban hell, there were plenty of times we hustled on foot across six-lane roads because a) no sidewalks and b) no crosswalks even at the lights. Walking through a mall parking lot was like taking your life in your hands anyway. If some nob had come tearing down the road doped up and drunk and nailed either one of us, would the other have been at fault?

Probably not. We're nice and white, after all.

A.

Friday Ferretblogging: Claire Crochets

Or rather, Claire paws at the yarn to see if it will make a suitable nest for her lazy caterpillar self:

A.

Everyone Doesn't Suffer The Same

Lessons from the 1995 Chicago heat wave.

Fuller Park, on the South Side, saw the equivalent of 92 heat-related deaths per 100,000 residents, the highest rate in Chicago. In Woodlawn, the ratio was 73 heat-related deaths per 100,000 people. Of the top 10 community areas with heat-related deaths adjusted to a population of 100,000 people, 8 were overwhelmingly African-American, with 5 of those communities being 99 percent black.

At the same time, Latinos in Chicago fared much better than other racial groups, according to Klinenberg. They represented just 2 percent of the heat-related deaths that year, but 23 percent of the city's total population.

Klinenberg offers two primary reasons to explain this, and he compares adjacent communities on the Southwest Side--North Lawndale and South Lawndale, or Little Village, to make his case. North Lawndale and Little Village were in 1995 black and Latino areas, respectively, as they are today.

For all the challenges a working class, immigrant-heavy neighborhood like Little Village faced in 1995, it had not had to grapple with what Klinenberg calls the "particular constraints of ghettoization," as had black residents of Chicago. Those constraints left a frayed social fabric in poor black neighborhoods bearing the burden of "rapid and continuous abandonment of institutions and residents ... arson and violence." A "local social ecology" that could have protected seniors--that did protect seniors elsewhere--was destroyed.

Background on the media response back then, from Steve:

"The Tribune also says today that the city 'came under severe scrutiny' for its handling of the 1995 heat wave. Really? Not by the local media, according to Klinenberg's exhaustively researched book, published in 2002. It was Klinenberg, not the local press, who reported nauseating nuggets like this one from a 'key member' of the Department of Health:

"'When Daley denied the Chief Medical Examiner's reports, he defined everything that the city would do on this for the next six months. You have to understand, there were nine refrigerated trucks holding bodies in the parking lot of the morgue, a long line of police cars delivering more, and there is the mayor - mayor of the third-largest city in the United States - denying that people were dying, or later denying that the deaths had anything to do with the heat. Imagine what the mayor's position on the heat wave did for the morale of other city employees and city agencies, or how it limited their capacity to do their work. Once the mayor took the position that the death rates were overstated it became impossible for city employees to say anything else. We were forced to find all sorts of ways to reframe the issue or to talk around what was happening. We couldn't contest his position, and in this case that meant we couldn't be fully explicit about what we were finding.'

This is the kind of weather makes even people with adequate options to cool off go Gaius-Baltar, fighting-with-the invisible-aliens-in-your-head crazy, so add in chronic neglect of the parts of the city Michigan and Wisconsin don't visit, and you've got a recipe for disaster not just once but over and over again.

A.

The Fool Who Follows Him

Taking advice from the stupidest fucking guy on the face of the earth. No wonder people want Rick Perry in the Republican race for president.

A thank you to the 457 people who e-mailed this to me. My blood pressure is always so nice and low before I check my inbox.

A.

Associated Press to Start Doing What They Sue Bloggers for Doing

Crediting other news organizations for their reporting? Admitting that they didn't just invent everything they send out over the wires? LINKING TO STUFF???!

SHUT UP.

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Harry Potter Thread of Awesome Diversions

I was hoping someone had started this blog because goddamn.

Also, Molly Weasley: Feminist Mom.

Speaking of all things nerdly, do we need a Dance with Dragons thread? Has everyone else finished devouring it yet? Or should I give it another week or so?

A.

The Only Moral Government Assistance is My Government Assistance

I can't be on food stamps! I'm WHITE!

This table demonstrates the effectiveness of decades of Republican propaganda equating "social program" with deragatory stereotypes of poor people and non-white people.  When you call someone up and say, "Are you in a government social program?", you're going to get a lot of white, middle or upper class conservatives thinking, "I'm not some low rent welfare queen," and they're going to answer no without really connecting the dots. 

In all seriousness, this is about as deep as it goes. Tommy T posted that graphic up on Facebook this morning and honestly, it just reminds me of conversations with acquaintances around the holidays, when they talk about how their grandparents might have been on public assistance during the Depression, but they were ASHAMED of it. Not like those people are now, with their low-hanging jeans and cell phones, parading around in their cars with the shiny spinners.

They don't actually know or understand who is using various kinds of government assistance, or for what. They just hear the cocktail party jokes and the late-night comic stereotypes, and they couldn't be that, after all.

And it just makes me sad, because when we make this all about shame, about wishing for the ability to judge others as worthy and unworthy, we just expose as a society how scared we all are of being found wanting. How scared we are of falling so low that our own neighbors, our own friends might judge us the same way. If we don't stigmatize this, if we don't make it the most shameful thing that can happen to you, then we can't keep it far enough away from our own doorsteps not to be scared out of our minds all the time.

A.

Suck It, WI Teawads

The first of the Democratic senators up for recall is retained, soundly.

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The Enemy of My Enemy Is Still a Ginormous Douchebag

Conrad Black, character witness:

There is no sense going on about Murdoch’s character. It would be very hard indeed to improve on the pounding Conrad Black, a former newspaper publisher and himself no paragon of virtue (29 months in jail on various charges), gave him recently in the Financial Times: “He is not only a tabloid sensationalist; he is a malicious myth-maker, an assassin of the dignity of others and of respected institutions, all in the guise of anti-elitism.” Prison has not dulled Black’s pen.

Black also likened Murdoch to Napoleon — “a great bad man.”

Oh, Uncle Conrad! That charming rogue. Isn't he just the cutest, all rapier-witted and derring-doing? Fucking gag me. Those are the nicest things anyone's ever said about Murdoch, first of all, and second of all, do we really think Conrad would be bagging on his erstwhile competitor if he didn't think it was the only way to get his sad old imprisoned ass some attention?

But hey, Cohen goes on to note, the Murdoch scandal is GREAT NEWS for newspapers!

The amazing thing about the current scandal is that at its heart is not some Web site or cable network or even a conventional broadcast property, but ink on processed pulp. The News of the World (now deceased), the Sun, the Times of London and the Sunday Times were Murdoch’s weapons. It was these newspapers that politicians and others feared. No TV outlet could come close.

The Murdoch imbroglio is a celebration of print.

How awesome is that? Thanks, dead guy! WHOO NEWSPAPERS! Somebody gimme my foam finger!

As much as I don’t like Murdoch and his brand of journalism, I thrill that what we are witnessing is a good, old-fashioned newspaper scandal.

Seriously, how do you get to be this much of a solipsistic garden weasel?

There is no sadness here, merely just deserts. “Rosebud.” “Hacking.” It amounts to the same thing.

NO SADNESS?

Also, can someone tell this twat that Citizen Kane was a movie? And that Hearst was not some charming character created for his amusement? These things were real, and playing around with them like they're paper dolls is disgusting.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I talk about the lazy bloodlessness of modern newspaper commentary. Everything that's happening here is a big joke to Cohen. It's like a movie! It's awesome for him and his colleagues! It's so cool, like something out of a history book! Nowhere does he acknowledge the real lives that were ruined, the real damage done through Murdoch's media of hate and fear.

He talks about Murdoch helping to create Margaret Thatcher, but it's just like a play to him. That people were affected, that people died, that people suffered, that's immaterial. Think of the drama! Revel in the spectacle! For God's sake, don't bother pretending you have a stake in the game. It's just a show, that's all.

A.

Hansen vs. This Asshole

Election day!

A.

Circus Ferret Is OUT

My mom sent me this over the weekend:

Circus art director Zhanna Lazerson told the Moscow Times: "We believe the creatures have fled because of their depression - the rain in Chita just doesn't stop.

"We found the monkey in a doghouse in the morning, and the two animals were cuddling in their sleep. But the search for the ferret and the parakeet goes on."

She said the escape has added to the animals' depression in the circus because the male parakeet was partnered on stage with a female parakeet who was now missing him.

The ferret is less missed, with Ms Lazerson calling him a "terrible glutton, idle to the core".

That description could fit any one of mine easily, though if Riot escaped, he wouldn't hang around for food. He'd be down the road in a heartbeat, trying to hitch a ride to Vegas. 

A.

$17,000 Per Year

Until they're paid like movie stars and quarterbacks, you can't convince me they can ever make enough money:

Yet the three million professional, long-term home caregivers today are faced with a rapidly aging Baby Boomer population and a lack of adequate support, compensation or respect. Yesterday in Washington, the National Domestic Workers Alliance held what they called a Care Congress, an event where they introduced a campaign to “transform long-term care.” The campaign is designed to push legislative changes to Medicare and Medicaid—creating jobs by increasing the amount of money eligible people can spend on at-home care and allowing a rapidly aging population to avoid institutionalization.

The women (and it was nearly all women) who cared for my grandmother in her last years deserved every penny they earned and then some. Grandma had family who visited almost every day, but there were people in her assisted living and nursing homes who saw their shitty, mean kids once a year, if that, and their nurses and aides were the only friends they had in the end.

A.

Framing the Internet for Murder

The Internet killed the newspaper star:

National news chains arose because the barriers of entry to printing, promoting and distributing a newspaper were so high. You needed printing presses, trucks, a telemarketing team, and an advertising and promotions budget. Oh yeah, you needed content, too, which meant hiring reporters and paying syndication fees for state, national and international news and features.

Corporations brought a load of capital to the table, and could leverage economies of scale in the purchase of newsprint, equipment and syndication deals. The could employ national sales staffs to sell ads across communities to regional and national chain retailers. And they could centralize telemarketing, IT support and even newspaper (and later website) design.

Over time, more and more locally owned papers sold out to the chains, as the chains amassed vast fortunes to buy out family-owned papers where the next generation decided to cash in rather than fight on alone in a consolidating industry.

But in the late 1990s, the Internet blew all those advantages away.

Actually, what happened is corporations began sacrificing actual local news coverage in favor of bigger and bigger profit margins. There's nothing inherently evil about a newspaper chain, even a national one, provided its papers still serve their readers and have the interests of the community at heart. Does your boss being in Sacramento automatically have a detrimental effect on coverage of Baltimore? If your boss is an idiot who doesn't know where his bread's buttered and can't pick up the phone, absolutely.

As is true with so many things, the problem isn't location, it's morons. Greedy, lazy morons who wanted to swim around in giant piles of money like Scrooge McDuck and place bets that said piles would continue to grow forever. When they didn't, said lazy morons tried to make them grow by decimating the very thing they sold to make the money in the first place. As coverage got worse and worse, and readers got less and less for their money, they started looking around for alternatives.

Things were going to hell regardless. The Internet just made sure readers and reporters had somewhere else to turn when they did. But the Internet isn't some kind of magical cure-all where you just set up a web site and the money faucet turns on:

One journalist could publish to an entire community, or the entire world, without having to pay for presses, trucks or newsprint. One journalist could link to all the state, national and international news and features his or her readers wanted, without having to pay for expensive syndication rights. One journalist could leverage social networks (even before Facebook and Twitter) to publicize his or her work, without having to pay for advertising or a promotion team. Open source and online instant publishing solutions allowed that individual journalist to create and manage interactive news without having to pay for huge IT and design teams. And national ad networks such as Google's AdSense gave independent publishers who were savvy enough to make that system work access to lucrative national ad buys.

Emphasis mine. You know why Politico is so well-known? Because they HIRED PUBLICISTS TO MAKE THEM FAMOUS. You know why everybody knows what HuffPost is? Because Arianna had celebrity friends to get the word out in influential forums. Making a successful go of things takes a lot of work in old-fashioned businesses like marketing and promotion. The Internet makes the content creation and distribution easier, but you still need promotion to get readers and dollars, and the way I know that is that I am not writing this from my private island in the Caribbean.

A.

Friday Ferretblogging: Sleepy Claire Edition

A.

You Bought It, You Broke It

Cole on the need for the Beltway press to prop up lunatic Republicans:

There simply is no reason on earth to have this debate any more, except that it serves the needs of assholes like Ross Douthat and David Brooks and other members of the conservative “intelligentsia.” If we all recognize that the conservatives are nuts and their ideas are disastrous, they would lose their respectable media/beltway credibility, and you can’t have that happening.

There is not now nor is there likely to be in the future significant money to be made telling the actual truth about anything with any kind of feeling at all. There is, however, a fuckton of cash being shoveled into the bank accounts of hucksters who believe in nothing higher than their next paycheck, who think all of politics is a big ironic joke, and who pretend that hipsterish detachment is some kind of principled stand.

I can't tell you how many speeches I sit through from these assholes in a year, and every last one of them thinks they're better than anyone with an actual passion for anything at all, just BECAUSE BASICALLY. They practice disinterest and proclaim it dispassion, confusing glib amorality with actual analysis. The things going on in the world shouldn't be chronicled as though they don't matter, by people who will keep making a living no matter how the earth burns down around them. I have so much less quarrel, I can't even tell you, with actual partisan commentary than I have with our Very Serious Men of Journalism who can't seem to comprehend that people will die based on the decisions our Beltway press covers as if it's a fucking baseball game.

No, you know what? I take that back. They cover baseball as if it matters. To a ridiculous point, sometimes, but truly, I'll take some emotional investment in an outcome where I can get it in our commentary these days.

It's tempting to blame this, as we good liberals are supposed to blame everything, on Bush, and certainly some of it does date back to when 9/11 happened and our press collectively declared that New Belligerent United America was so gonna kick Old Complicated Fucked-Up America's ass in the History Olympics and weren't we all longing for Something To Give Our Lives Meaning. The problem with hitching yourself to a wagon like that, though, is that you have to have the stones to make it stick. You can't just turn around a decade later and be all, "Republicans have some STUPID ASS PEOPLE UP IN THIS HERE NOW" and go back to actually parsing things out. Especially when there is zero financial incentive to do so, and the narrative has already been memorized.

(I mean, you can, nobody actually cares, but that would force you to give up the idea that you're Protecting the Realm from the Dishonorable Hordes of Those Who Give a Shit, and we can't have that.)

A.

We Need To Shame the Sluts More to Prevent Men from Cheating

Okay, look. If you are fucking married guys and you or the marrieds are lying about it to people other than yourselves, you are probably making some life decisions that need further evaluation. This is not some kind of pro-infidelity statement on my part, saying that this is utter horseshit: 

Yes, many people feel sympathy for the wives. But consider how high-profile adulterous affairs play out in the media: The shamed husband and father is dragged into the public square, generally now before cameras, for a well-deserved “stoning.” And the “other woman” is escorted on stage by a team of publicists, lawyers and other handlers who turn her into a celebrity.

There is a danger in fame and infamy being synonymous.

We are, as a society, a long way from making such women wear a scarlet “A.” But it was not so long ago that the community of mothers was organized and vocal and got fighting mad at women who were a danger to their families.

Our society needs similar values today.

Back then, women who preyed on other women’s husbands were shunned, shamed and excluded, not made into media darlings. They were publicly pointed out as “those kinds of women” to young girls as examples of what not to become, and to young boys as the type of women not worthy of their attention.

Mothers knew that these women were as much predator as they were prey. That’s why they were called ‘‘home wreckers” in polite company and worse when the kids were not in earshot. These angry mothers, while rightly holding their husbands and the fathers of their children to the pledge of fidelity, realized what would happen not just to their families but also to society if this type of behavior were celebrated rather than confronted.

Yes, we have a trivial, starfucking society of freakazoids askeered of missing the Next Big Trend and therefore lionizing everything they see regardless of its actual news value. And people hurt each other and then we all get to hear about it and feel like we get to have opinions on people's marriages. None of that is anything that is going to be changed by yelling BOO YOU WHORE at some girl.

The men are escorted into the public square for a stoning because they're ones who fucked up. How hard is this? They're the ones who said, "I will marry you and at the very least not put my penis in other ladies," and then failed to live up to this spectacularly low standard. If we're going to shame anybody, it certainly shouldn't be the "home wrecker" who "stole" some nice lady's husband. It should be the fucking idiot who banged the waitress.

(I believe this the way I believe that in breathing in I take in oxygen: The only surefire way to make sure some lady doesn't steal your husband is to not marry a total dipshit. Whether that means you negotiate the terms of your relationship to include doing other people, or it means you promise not to do other people and just take the occasional cold shower and remind yourself that you don't get to boink everyone you have chemistry with, it still something YOU have to do. You can't depend on other people not to be hot around you, not to tempt you, not to flaunt their charms at you or your partner. People will always try to fuck with you, because people are like that. The only thing you can control is who you are and what you do.)

All that fortune cookie advice being said, I long for the day when we don't parade either mistresses or stupid horny dumbasses around and talk over the intimate details of their dick pix and love children, because it's none of our goddamn business how anybody else gets through the day. That attitude would go a long way toward correcting the lionizing of people behaving badly, much farther than standing in the street stapling construction paper A's onto women.

A.

Imagine the Debates. Just Imagine Them.

There's not enough crack to keep the van running, people.

A.

Up All Night

These Night Lives stories are outstanding. A reporter colleague once did a similar story, about people who worked during the holidays, like gas station attendants and people in the county morgue, and it's the kind of piece that does what newspapers can do very well: Chronicle the day.

This is a particularly good one:

The voice on the other end tells her about other private, painful matters, about realizing that he’s lost everything. The voice tells her about the knife.

“It sounds like you’re feeling worthless, insignificant, that people would be better off without you,” Haley says, setting up a pivot. “What’s kept you going?”

She absorbs the catalogue of woe, one “mmhmm” at a time, her heart rate quickened but steady, her eyes following her note-taking. Haley is 25. She lives in Gaithersburg. She just got her master’s in professional counseling from Liberty University. She has worked at CrisisLink, a crisis hotline for suicide prevention based at the Arlington Urgent Care Center, for a year and a half.

“I’m concerned about your safety,” she says. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

Suicide-related calls between midnight and 8 a.m. — Haley’s shift — were up 90 percent from 2009 to 2010. America tosses and turns in the wee hours, when there are fewer distractions, when dark nights of the soul climax in last-ditch dialings of 1-800-SUICIDE.

“I’d like you to be alive for your family. . . . I’m hearing how miserable you are.”

A.

Can We Execute Them?

Corporations and the death penalty.

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News Judgment

In the News of the World hacking scandal and why nobody gave a shit until just now:

There are those who insist that the widespread decision not to cover the story is driven by straightforward news judgment—and that ulterior motives drive devoted attention. “With this whole story I just hear the shrill shriek of axes being ground,” said Roger Alton, executive editor at The Times. As editor of The Independent in 2009—after ten years at The Observer, which he left acrimoniously—he felt the story was old news. “Everyone has an agenda. The New York Times certainly has an agenda, after Murdoch’s very forceful attempt to rival them with The Wall Street Journal.” There was no way to condone what had happened, Alton added, but that doesn’t mean the story merits coverage today. “For me this is stuff that happened a long time ago. People have gone to prison. Coulson’s resigned twice. It’s not as if any perceived wrongdoing hasn’t been sufficiently addressed. For me it’s roughly on a par with parking in a residents’ parking bay in terms of interest.”

[snip]

In early April, police made their first arrests in the case in five years: Ian Edmondson, the former news editor, and chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, who’s been on a knife’s edge ever since an e-mail containing records of hacked messages with the subject line “transcripts for Neville” emerged in 2009. Days after the arrests, with a series of lawsuits looming, the company finally took a step it had been agonizing over for months, and issued a lawyerly statement admitting some failings. The company said it would approach “some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria,” conceded collective “genuine regret,” and promised compensation to some victims.

So if I'm parsing this correctly, this was over and done, except it completely, completely wasn't. The New York Times obviously had an axe to grind, as did, you know, the POLICE, apparently.

This sort of thing is why I get so bent out of shape when journalists, particularly those in high-ranking, decision-making, agenda-setting positions in major media companies, act like they're powerless to decide which stories merit coverage. They do it all the goddamn time. They just don't want to take responsibility for having the power to set the agenda, because if they acknowledge that they can, that means they have to do it, and that's exhausting.

It's easier just to send one more reporter to wherever there's a whole bunch of other reporters, because you never ever get beat while chasing the same story everybody else is chasing, and ignoring the same stories everybody else is ignoring.

A.

The Wisconsin GOP's Brightest Lights, Ladies and Gentlemen

Boy, I'm sure glad there are upstanding fellows like this running against those dastardly Democrats who left the state!

The Republican recall candidate hoping to oust state Sen. Dave Hansen from office has a history of legal and financial troubles, including nearly $25,000 in unpaid property taxes and arrests for domestic abuse.

Police and court records show David VanderLeest, 34, of Green Bay has been arrested on at least four occasions dating back to 2006, mostly for offenses that include disagreements with his ex-wife, Rachel Gerritsen, 42.

VanderLeest, who also organized petition efforts to recall Hansen, will face the Green Bay Democrat for the 30th Senate seat on July 19. It's the first of nine elections this summer across Wisconsin that could change the balance of power in state government.

Revelations about VanderLeest's business and legal problems detract from election issues, he said. He noted that he is an anti-abortion candidate who supports gun rights and would advocate for Gov. Scott Walker's agenda. He also wants to reform the state online court record search so innocent defendants won't show up in the system.

Of course he does. God, it's like douchebag bingo with him.

Speaking of this fellow, Scout noticed, way back when, that VanderLeest was perpetually referred to in the Wisconsin press as a "resident" or "citizen" or "grassroots activist" or similar innocuous terms in stories about his gathering recall petitions against Hansen, despite this:

"The police reports are good for nothing but slinging mud," said VanderLeest, who served as vice chairman of the Republican Party of Brown County from 2007 to 2010. "If we're going to talk issues, I'll show up and do the job."

Just goes to show, the Tea Party is a grassroots movement, while liberals are all Obama-bots funded by Media Matters and George Soros.

A.

Nancy SMASH

Seriously, Pelosi 2016, if not actually 2012:

At a private caucus meeting Thursday morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told her members that if Obama's serious about putting Social Security on the chopping block, he'd left her in the dark about it. And after an at-times-contentious meeting about how open Dems should be to significant entitlement cuts, leaders departed to the White House to read Obama the riot act.

And okay, maybe not telling Nancy means this is all just theater and horseshit and trial balloons and whatnot, and nothing actually is going to happen to Medicare and Social Security, because if Obama really was serious surely he'd have talked to, you know, the most powerful Democrat in the House.

However, the semi-pro pessimist in me says this is just one more example of fucking amateur hour and in case nobody's noticed the world is burning down out here. We could use some adults around. Mercifully, we seem to have Nancy.

"You [asked], 'could the changes compromise the vote?'" Pelosi said at a Thursday afternoon briefing near the House chamber. "I said yes."

That's FUCK YES, Madam Minority Leader.

A.

Friday Ferretblogging: Parade Edition

So last year we figured out it was free to enter the Fourth of July parade in Lyons, Ill., where our ferret shelter is located. A half dozen of us walked the route, but we only had one ferret with us, Balthazar, the pet of some friends, and by the end of the route he was EXHAUSTED from being petted by every child and most of the parents lining the streets.

This year we gathered a few more people, and a few more ferrets, including Bucky:

photo by Kate Switalski

He was a furry little love-slut all along the route, where we were greeted with yells of "Hey, the ferrets are here!" and "Yeah, ferrets!" Little kids, but a surprising number of adults wanted their pictures taken holding a ferret, or to tell us a story about this one guy they knew who used to have a ferret, or to ask how to get a ferret of their own. Everybody wanted a piece of Bucky, and by the end of the afternoon he was totally sacked out:

It took him a couple of days to recover from all that adoration. Even yesterday, he was still kind of lolling around like, "I have nothing more to give to my public."

A.

The War Never Ends

My friends Jesse and Jennifer visited the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in February, to photograph military honors there. Go look at the results and chat in comments. 

A.

In All Seriousness, Fuck This Day

Well, there goes the neighborhood:

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

Um, YES. These moments come along at most once a decade, moments when you can screw over poor and old and old poor people, in order to ... "do something of some significance." Toward what end? WE HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE. But it will be bold and different and "something."

"Something" like losing every election from now until the end of time, most likely.

A.

Dooce, Bangladesh, and Acting Charitably

Oh, enough already. Seriously, I've been reading Dooce for years.  Do I love everything Heather says? Of course not. I don't even love everything I say. But I find myself on her side in these mudfights more often than not because the criticism of her stems from the most vile, sexist place. It's always, always, "How dare someone like you do this? How dare you write about your family? How dare you make money writing about your family? How dare you put your family's business out there for everyone to see!" Now it's just an extension of that: "How dare you put your stupid silly female self out there in the world and experience something different and write about it?"

 

Well, guess what. When male writers put their family business out there for everyone to see, they get invited on Oprah and win awards and prizes, and so somewhere along the line women got the idea that they could do the same thing, only to be subjected to this kind of carping horseshit about how dare they be so indiscreet. When male writers go to impoverished countries and come home and write about their experiences and how they've been changed, about the people they encountered and about our connectedness and universal humanity, we give them Pulitzer Prizes and Nobels. We don't call them poverty tourists.

 

And this is so completely true:

I guess I am one of those “means justifying the ends” types of gals. I don’t care how or why Madonna adopts children in other countries. I don’t care about Angelina’s motives for being a UNICEF ambassador. And I don’t care whether Nike donated $100 million to human rights charities for good publicity and the tax deduction.

I will praise Paris Hilton to the skies for shoveling bucks to animal causes, because I work in a shelter and I know what neverending, backbreaking, spirit-destroying work it can be, where for every happy adoption story there's some pet that had to die solely because its owner was stupid or cruel, some pet that loved that owner anyway, some pet that in the hands of a kind and competent owner would have had years of companionship and joy.

 

Yes, Paris Hilton could cure death if she wanted to. Paris Hilton should do more. Nike should do more. Charitable acts shouldn't be acts, they should be lives. They should be business as usual. WE ALL SHOULD DO MORE. No matter how much you or I or Paris or anyone is doing, it is not enough, and the way that I know that is that we are all still seeing bombed-out burned-out shitholes where lives used to be, all around us, all the time.

This is the thing, though: You can say we should do more, without having to append that what is already being done is worthless.

And then there’s the uber-condescensing line that really got me: “Bloggers are firmly discouraged from poking paupers with sticks and asking people to wave their stumps for the cameras.”

Get it? Because bloggers are idiots! So cute.

Allow me to offer another perspective:

Bullshit.

This is a line of thinking that keeps westerners in our own little bubbles, afraid to step out and do more– for fear that we’re doing it wrong. For fear that someone with more poverty cred and more commitment to The Cause will take us to task for it.

What do we say around here, all the goddamn time? YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING. You don't have to be able to drop $1 million from a helicopter. You don't have to be able to build a building with your name on it. You don't have to take over the church or the school or the community foundation or any of the other bazillions of places where you can lend your time and talent and treasure. You don't have to do it all.

But you have to do some of it.

The earth is presently caving in not because people aren't doing huge grand gestures but because people aren't making the little, day-to-day, bits-and-bobs choices that would lead to a better society for everyone. Grand gestures abound, and they are fantastic. If I won a squillion dollars from the lottery tomorrow, I would seriously have the best time zipping up to people's front doors and solving their problems. I would have the most fun ever, doing that.

But grand gestures fade. They're not enough. There are not enough people and enough helicopters dropping $1 million. Superman is one guy, that's why that story's a tragedy. That's why we need your five bucks. That's why we need your vote, election after election. That's why we need your hour of volunteer time a month. Your letter to Amnesty, your dime in the collection plate, your moment of thought for someone who isn't you, your hand out to the world saying anybody need an assist here?

I think somewhere along the line we decided that if we couldn't do everything, if we couldn't solve a problem in one fell swoop, then it wasn't fun to try to solve problems anymore. If we couldn't be the hero, in dramatic inspiring movie fashion, there wasn't any reason to be the hero any other way. I get it. It's exhausting. I keep flashing back to this thing Joss Whedon said about writing, "Why is it still so hard? When do we just get to be good at it?" When will the work be done? Why can't we just kick back, I mean, there's too much misery and we only have two hands each.

If we can't fix everything, we can't fix anything, is what I think we've come up with, as a society. Instead of, if we can't fix everything, we can fix something.

We can't fix everything. But we can't do nothing, either.

A.

 

 

Only Squillionaires Work Hard

Seriously, it's hard out there for a pimp:

So why are Republicans so intent on protecting the top .o3 percent of Minnesotans from paying any increase in taxes, preferring instead to cut health care services for the poor, the sick and the elderly? According to Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, the former Secretary of State under Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, the state really doesn’t need revenue, it just wants to punish rich people. “It’s not about revenue,” Kiffmeyer said. “It’s about a tax increase, because they want to go after those who’ve actually worked hard.”

Yes. If Democrats, the darlings, wish to take care of poor people, or at least not suck at taking care of them more than we already do, it therefore follows that we hate rich people and want to punish them, because the one naturally means the other.

You know, I actually have less quarrel with rich people who do a job and pay their taxes and go home and hang out with their kids and whatever, than I have with rich people who whine in public that everyone hates them and it's haaaaard Mommy. Bitches, you were born in America, you have enough to eat and a roof over your head and you're not in hock to the bank or the Russian mob for your fillings, and you have a boat that you didn't have to patch yourself with duct tape and a car that runs, just SHUT UP and nobody will say mean things about you. We only get irritable when people with $30,000 marble inlays in their foyers talk about how rough things are these days, okay? Why is this so hard to get?

As for working hard, there's really no point in playing Battle of the Workaholics over whose job sucks more, except to say that if you really have built a company from dust and are now only enjoying the fruits of your personal labors, it behooves you as a human to make sure you have functional human beings to continue working for you, and part of that responsibility involves making sure the whole rest of the country doesn't end up in the gutter.

A.

Oh, What Did You Think Would Happen?

Lately in life, I find myself with zero sympathy for emergencies created because of poor planning. Genuine emergencies, in which things are on fire or people are in prison or someone gets hit by a potato chip truck, create totally excusable situations where people can run around doing things in crisis mode. Otherwise, it's just the lack of ability to read a calendar that causes most problems. I feel similarly about things like this:

On June 29, Christie signed a bill that stripped state employees of collective bargaining rights while forcing them to pay between $1142 and $6058 more per year for their pensions and health benefits. According to the NJ Spotlight, “Christie handed the first pen he used to sign the bill to Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), whom he praised for his bipartisanship and ‘political courage’ for joining with the GOP to pass legislation that two-thirds of his own Democratic Party members in the legislature virulently opposed.”

The veneer of bipartisanship was swept away two days later, however, when Christie “took an axe” to the state budget, using a line item veto to eliminate every proposal championed by the Democrats, ranging from a proposed tax on millionaires to funding for education, health care for the poor, and the state’s most financially troubled cities.

Sweeney was furious, especially since the governor had repeatedly promised to discuss the budget with him beforehand. “This is all about him being a bully and a punk,” he told Tom Moran of The Star-Ledger in an interview Friday. “I wanted to punch him in his head.”

According to Moran, Sweeney believes many of Christie’s cuts are vindictive in nature, “designed to punish Democrats, and anyone else who dared to defy him.”

“He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons,” Moran writes, “including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services. But the governor added $150 million in school aid for the suburbs, including the wealthiest towns in the state. That is enough to restore all the cuts just listed.”

Well, what did you think he was going to do, you stupid fucking bologna pony? Have you met the man? Have you seen him on TV? Did you just wake up and figure out who won the election and then go, "You know, I should bake him a cake right now, because that will make him nice to me, because politics is so totally like a vending machine, and if I put in virtue I will receive virtue in return."

I mean, I'm sorry, but I seriously am starting to wonder if any of these people have been functionally awake for the last 11 years. Did they miss the memo we all got, about how Republicans want to give tax cuts to rich people and after that what they're mainly interested in is pointing out with less and less subtlety how white they are? And did they miss the memo that says if you help them out in this noble task, by agreeing with them on TV or actively pushing legislation to fuck over your own base, they then owe you exactly dick, and must in fact go out of their way to run you over?

This is like the last decade here, just day after day after day of this, of the same bullying and lack of reciprocity and I'm not talking about civility in politics, which I think personally we could all stand a little less of. I'm talking about how the best way to deal with a bully taking your lunch money is not to start giving him your best friend's and in fact collecting it for him in advance, and then acting all virginal and shocked when he kicks your dumb ass in the stomach.

THERE IS NO WORKING WITH THESE PEOPLE. They do not care. They are not working with you. They're working on their own stuff and you're basically a fashion accessory. They don't put a chip in the Bank of You Did Me a Favor and you can take that chip out later, or use it to get a boat loan, or whatever. THEY HATE YOU. They view you working with them as you baring your neck, and when the axe comes down you've really got no cause to be surprised.

A.

Inalienable Rights

Let freedom ring:

In all, the budget, including measures already enacted in March, reduces state spending by $15 billion. Brown’s first enacted budget as governor is the largest single reduction in spending in the history of California, bringing total spending to its lowest level in 29 years.

The cuts includes:

* $2.06 billion to the state’s Medi-Cal program, which provides health services to poor residents

* $861 million to mental health services

* $837 million to the CalWorks Welfare to Work program

* $567 million in assistance to the state’s developmentally disabled children and adults

* $413 million to the In Home Support Services Program, which allows families and other professionals to take care of medically disadvantaged residents

* $2.08 billion from the state’s Proposition 98 funding guarantee for K-12 education. As Proposition 98 requires the restoration of lost funding in later years, this has allowed the governor to claim that his budget spares education even though the restoration of funding has not been enforced in the past.

* $1.38 billion from the University of California and California State University public university systems

* $400 million from the California Community College system, raising costs from $26 to $36 per credit

* Nearly $4 billion from the state’s court system, along with department closings and state employee wage cuts and layoffs

Brown also passed an additional $270 million in cuts via line-item veto, which primarily came at the expense of railway and mass transit.

This is what tax cap laws do to you, this is what goverment by constant referendum does to you. We see it every election cycle here, too, where the schools have to beg while the rich go sailing. That usually my neighborhood votes to raise its own taxes doesn't take away the brutal sting of having to do it ourselves, of having to say yes, there is value in teaching people to read and write and do some math now and again. Of having to declare what should be obvious.

In church on Sunday, we prayed, as we always do, for the victims of discrimination and hatred, for the care of the poor. We put food on the altar for the local food pantry, and stood silent, hand-in-hand, in consideration of those far away and nearby suffering because of war. That alone is about as likely to solve America's problems as things like this.

I swear I don't understand it. I know people live richly even among the most brutal poverty, here and elsewhere in the world. I know people can tint their car windows and just keep driving, take the freeway past the old neighborhood, never go down "that" street. I know how hard people can pretend that anyone poor, anyone helpless, anyone hurt deserved what they got.

But contact is inevitable, leading to information bleed: Can you really spend your whole life not knowing that the world is burning down? And that you will be a king over ashes? Is there really enough beauty left, in this scenario, for you to surround yourself so thoroughly you never smell the smoke? I live close to the places you'd speed through, I worked in the places you'd avoid, so maybe that's why I can't block it out, the knowledge that you can throw a rock and hit a school district where the windows are grated and the doors are chained and the children at the age of nine know it's pretty much over for them. How do you not know that, though? How do you not see?

And how does it not haunt you, the knowing? Are we breeding that capacity out? I know so many good people working so hard to improve their communities, that's what makes this incomprehensible to me. I know that given the chance, we are not like this, we do not want this. We are told, day after day, that this is the only way, that this is how you solve your problems, but we don't believe it. And yet it happens. Sometimes this reminds me of the early days of the Iraq war, watching TV, wondering why, if everybody was so unsure about all this, it was happening anyway.

A.

 

Friday Ferretblogging

Riot loves my shoes, and he knows that he is not allowed to love my shoes, because love generally means chew on. But sometimes I leave my shoes where he can get them anyway, because he loves my shoes. Still, when noticed with them, he gives the best WHAT MOM I DIN'T DO NOTHING face ever: 

A.

While I'm On This Whole Girl Things Kick Today, Smile at THIS

QUIT TELLING US TO SMILE:

If my public bitchface prevents even a tenth of the annoying and unwanted attention from nimrods, it is a treasured possession. A conventionally pretty girl probably has exponentially more of that shit to deal with and is likely even MORE fed up with it. Thus bitchface.

(And yes, it does mean the occasional fuckweed yarking out orders to smile. I long since determined that the answer to that is "Bark like a dog!")

I am loath to mention things like this. Some people - large, physically intimidating men - have implied that I'm making this up because it never happens when they're around. (ahem) Wow, I wonder what the defining factor is THERE?

Some other women have called this bragging. yes. I am totally bragging about the joy of getting bayed at, honked at and offered uninteresting sexual acts from some dong in a busted Civic at 40mph. It makes me feel like a Real Woman.

God, I hate that. I used to get told to smile all the time* when I was younger, shyer and lacked the stones to say something like Felis suggests, or to respond to the "Why don't you smile more?" with "Because I don't like you very much." And it's always the most bullying, obnoxious, sexually harrassative dillholes that do this, too, because normal people, if you approach them with a pissed-off expression, ask you what is wrong, or say or do something nice to TRY to make you smile, instead of just jawing at you.

Nothing makes girls smile like being instructed to do so, by the way. Just like telling us to calm down, it works magically! People always do what you tell them to do! Oh look, over there, a unicorn getting blown by a goose laying golden eggs under the money tree!

A.

* I had buck teeth that could open a soda bottle and, later, huge and hideous braces. So I tended not to show my gums to the world. Little did I know this would be interpreted as an affront to the portion of the population that felt it should dictate my behavior.

For Serious, Let's Hold Two Thoughts in Our Minds at Once

Those thoughts are:

Aborting fetuses because they are girls, and girls are unwanted, sucks, and is a sign that something has gone deeply wrong with our humanity that we devalue female children this way.

Giving the state the power to force a woman to bear a child against her will is a terrible violation of her human rights.

No matter what Ross Douthat might think, those thoughts are not actually in conflict. As Freddie puts it:

No, I don’t think people are going to come up to me at a party and ask me what I think about them aborting a female fetus because it’s female. The social conditioning I’m talking about is building a culture that recognizes the equal value of women. That’s called feminism, and liberals have been working on it for decades.

Creating a culture that recognizes the equal value of women would, on its own, reduce the number of abortions, as well as the number of high-risk pregnancies, the amount of domestic violence, the murder rate, and all kinds of other things women are subjected to because we still consider their concerns to be so trivial compared to those of Douthat and other old white scolds pissed off that girls can make decisions about sex on their own.

But then, they and other professional opponents of abortion rights are not actually concerned with reducing the number of abortions. They're concerned with making some imaginary slut suffer for making shitty decisions, and that's all there is to it. Douthat is only interested in the issue of sex-selective abortion because he thinks it gives him a "gotcha" moment at his next cocktail party.

A.

Obligatory Blogger Ethics/Internet Murder Joke Goes Here

Seriously, is there anything the 'tubes haven't ruined?

A witness at the murder trial of Casey Anthony testified Tuesday that he was paid $15,000 by ABC News to license a snake photo. Meter reader Roy Kronk, who eventually found the body of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony, discovered a dead rattlesnake in the same area several months before. ABC News interviewed Kronk just after the body was discovered. The interview touched on the idea that snakes might have initially impeded a police search for the body, but it would be difficult to argue the snake photo was critical to ABC’s story. In fact, Kronk reveals the motivation behind the fee. “I was paid for a licensed picture of a snake but I knew there would probably be an interview involved,” he testified.

This is the latest revelation that ABC News has paid licensing fees for access to interviews, including $200,000 to Casey Anthony while she was under investigation but before she was charged with killing her daughter.

You know, I'm not so much pissed that ABC paid for stuff as I am that they paid for stuff for THIS story, about which I keep being asked to care and keep politely declining. It's a big deal for this person's family and friends and community, but to the rest of the country it's just one more tawdry soap opera in the style of every single other tawdry soap opera involving a murdered or missing person.

Yes, I'm sure it Says Something Meaningful About Our Culture, but I'm not sure what that is, or how it would justify spending more than $200,000 (or about what you could use to buy 5 reasonably experienced reporters for a year) to get scoops. If you're going to fling money around — and don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to doing so in all circumstances — it really should be spent on things other than pointless titillation.

At least it should if, later, you're going to expect me to sit in a stuffy conference room and listen to people complain that foreign news bureaus are being closed because kids today just don't want to read anymore.

A.

'A Terrible Muddle'

Only if you, you know, let it, Newt.

God Almighty. I was in the woods, getting bit on by woodland pests and drinking too much brandy, when the news came across the Twittertubes that New York had doubled down on ruining America. Which was awesome, because a) already drunk so b) could sort of yell incoherently with joy while conservative relations assumed noise was motivated by cocktails consumed in blinding hot sun on board boat as opposed to rampant East Coast elitistism.

But now that the dust has settled and America's headline writers are just about out of glitter jokes, conservatives are once again making dire predictions about What This Means for Our Future, and I gotta tell you, it's almost like all the energy's gone out of them. Pat Buchanan has a radical misreading of the story of Sodom but it just comes across as nutty instead of genuinely enraged, and the most inflammatory commentary we can even come up with to mock comes from the Cornhole, which is just depressing.

I keep thinking, myself, about 2004 and about all the dire predictions that hitching one's wagon to the Great Gay Marriage Train would doom any Democratic candidate who chose to speak up on the subject. Which of course was just as much bullshit as saying that hopping onto the anti-war movement would doom any Democratic candidate, or allying with the unions, or standing up for the working poor, or any other actual Democratic position.

(Funny how it's always something to be so scared of, doing what's right. Funny how that's always the case. I wonder why that is.)

And what I think people forget is what winning actually looks like, winning at what you're supposed to be doing, not winning elections. It looks like some small measure of justice, and it sounds like the roar of the ocean coming in to the shore, and it hits like a wrecking ball, crashes into everything we know, and changes its shape.

It looks like this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

Is that what we're so afraid of? I read Newt's thing linked up there, and all I heard was we don't wanna, with regard to the rightness and wrongness of what the future will look like. All I heard was old, and scared, and done, and over. Newt may be right that some parts of America will be terribly muddled by this. I have no doubt that some people are terribly confused today, and tired of having to think about people who are different from them, and unsure about what's so great about their own marriages now that two dudes can get hitched, but the fucking club of the most of us aren't muddled at all. 

A.

Pawlenty is the New ZZZzzzzzzz

I'm starting to think Republican primary voters just don't give a shit really.

Honestly, I don't think it's that Pawlenty's any more likable or unlikable than any of the other fascists and fools the GOP is throwing out there to the ravening hordes. I mean, if you're into that sort of thing I suppose he'd be fine for you.

I just don't think they're ready to fall in love with anybody, because falling in love with somebody would mean they'd have to let go of how much they hate Obama, and how much they hate Democrats generally, and that kind of white-hot flame doesn't allow much oxygen left for anything else. RIght now the only thing they're jacked about is the chance to vote against the Kenyan socialist Muslim. Voting FOR someone else won't cross their minds until next year around, like, June, when whatever ignorant-ass neck they put up there will magically transform into Republican Voltron Jesus who will be the embodiment of all their dreams.

I know it drives some people crazy when I use dating metaphors for politics, but it really is like this. If you spend all your time thinking about how much your ex sucks and you hate him and his hair and his ass face, and picturing all the slow horrible ways in which he needs to die, you don't have a lot of mental real estate available for crushing on the cutie barista around the corner.

A.

Nobody Dreams of Being on Welfare

Dennis Prager opines that black women totally heart welfare: 

It has rendered vast numbers of black males unnecessary to black females who have looked to the state to support them and their children (and the more children, the more state support) rather than to their husbands. In effect, these women took the state as their husband.

We can talk about a culture of dependency and whatnot, and that's all interesting from a sociological standpoint, but do we really think little girls are sitting around hoping to grow up and go on welfare? There is still a tremendous societal stigma against being on any kind of public assistance, I don't care what Rush Limbaugh and this asshole say. 

You may know in your heart of hearts there's a fairly decent chance you'll end up on some kind of public assistance at some point, you may see that as normal and/or not the end of the world, but I'm asking: As they're sitting around playing with dolls or watching TV, kids are saying, "Boy, when I get old enough Imma get me some welfare money and then I will win at life?" I find this scenario more likely to exist among the imaginary black people Dennis Prager and casual racists like him see populating the "ghetto" than among actual human beings in the world.

It's just one more facet of the racist outlook that black people can't possibly have the same aspirations as white folks, that they can't possibly want to be successful and independent and have their children grow up happy in the world, because they're Not Like Us. My need for help is a genuine need. Yours is taking the state for your husband, because your entire culture is bankrupt.

(Also, what is so fucking virtuous about looking to a man to support you, anyway? That's not like a foolproof design for joy in life either. What exactly is this fuckstick advocating?)

A.

Not Everybody Has the Internet

Keep this in mind, media future folks:

I'm not an isolated case -- up to 10 percent of the country can't even get basic broadband. That may not sound like a lot if you're among the people who can get it, but in rural areas of the country, there are huge stretches of Internet dead zones (take Nebraska for instance -- the FCC recently reported that more than 300,000 people -- almost 20 percent of the state -- can't get even low-end broadband).

As we rush to go online-only, who are we depriving of information? 

A.

You See, My Homophobia is For My Children!

Oh, fuck that bullshit right in its ear:

Perhaps most titillating, when the Toronto Maple Leafs hosted the Philadelphia Flyers in March, there was a Kiss Cam “ambush” of a different sort. At the end of the segment, the camera framed two young women in the crowd who were dressed as cheerleaders. While they weren’t a couple, they decided to indulge the audience’s entreaties and kiss,  but the camera cut away at the last moment.

During times of rapid cultural change, you’ll always get resistance from the seemingly sensible middle position on these matters. It goes something like this: “It doesn’t bother me so much, but I don’t want my kid to see that …”

That sounds like a copout to me. If you don’t treat two men kissing on the jumbotron like a big deal, then your kids won’t think it is, either. But I don’t think it’s really about “the kids.” I think it’s more about the parents being squeamish about answering uncomfortable questions. Are there many 50 year olds these days who are thankful that they weren’t exposed to “interracial touching” in their early years watching TV?

Truly, what’s more offensive: having to explain a same-sex smooch to your kids or the premise of the Kiss Cam ambush? “See, sweetheart, they’re implying that they’re gay, and some still think of that as an insult, so that’s why they’re laughing.”

I've said this before, but: Own your opinions. Be a bigot because you want to be a bigot, not because you've given birth. Your kids didn't ask to be born, and they certainly didn't ask to be born to you, so stop acting like they've dictated that you need to be a backwards-ass priss.

Is this that difficult to discuss with children? Ladies kissing on each other? "Well, honey, they love each other just like Dad and I do. Some ladies are like that. You want a hot pretzel? I'm sending your brother on a concession run. Mama needs another beer."

A.

How To Help ND Flooding Victims

Per Chet:

Donate to the local Red Cross here.

There are, as there are in every disaster, displaced animals all over the place. The Central Dakota Humane Society is here.

The town of Minot is expecting another two to three feet of water TODAY.

A.

Friday Ferretblogging: Guest Ferrets

This is Nikko and his sister Sierra, who live at the GCFA shelter where I volunteer, and from which we acquired all three of our present beasties. We're not supposed to play favorites, but Nikko is mine. He's a big fluffy stuffie who looks like a baby seal, and when he lolls around the playpen you can just about hear the Barry White soundtrack in the background. This is them at the end of playtime, just chillin':

A.

Something Happened While Punditry was Obsessing over Bristol's Memoirs & Anthony's Weiner

Here's a crisis what could use some more attention quick-like:

MINOT, N.D. (AP) - Many of the thousands who have fled their homes as the Souris River spills into the North Dakota city of Minot have been scrambling to relocate in a region that boasts few vacancies in even the best of times, thanks largely to the state's oil boom.

Officials said as many as 10,000 people had evacuated Minot by Wednesday, and while a few hundred were staying in temporary city shelters, many others were staying on friends' couches, under tents or even in vehicles.

Aquira Fritt, 23 years old and 7 1/2 months pregnant, planned to spend the night in a van with her boyfriend and 5-year-old son.

Follow BisFloodInfo and North Decoder for more.

And don't bother looking for national coverage. As of this posting, the top stories on CNN's home page were:

Is Life Giving You 'Popcorn Brain?'

Are Pippa and Harry Dating?

What to Cook When It's Hot Outside

Greek Rioters' Canine Companion

JD Power's Best New Cars

Nothing on the New York Times homepage, which finds room for Harry Potter news, either.

A.

We're Not Going to be the Assholes in Afghanistan

That's basically what our Afghanistan strategy comes down to at this point.

Leaving quickly, leaving completely, leaving now would make us the assholes, the ones who said, "You know what? Things will be chaotic and shitty if we leave, but they are chaotic and shitty now, and we have no plan that is guaranteed or even remotely likely to stop all the shitty chaos, so on balance we're choosing the lesser evil of not getting American kids killed to further blow up a place what is already kind of bombed to shit. Yeah, that makes America the dicks. Again. We're leaving unexploded ordnance and holes in people's lives, just like the Russians, just like everybody always has, because we only like the beginnings of wars.

"We suck, but the first step to not sucking is to stop the current sucking that we are doing, and so we're stopping it. The second step is to go forth and suck no more, which is really only guaranteed if you stop electing insane Republicans and everybody goes back to work, so we're going to dedicate ourselves to that henceforth."

That's basically always what our Afghanistan strategy has been, from about day six when we turned our focus towards more-blow-uppable Iraq until now. We are aggressively avoiding the conversation about how this all got so fucked up, in order to "move forward," and I get the avoidance and all the psychological whatsit, except that there's ALL THESE DEAD PEOPLE, which makes our feelings kind of irrelevant.

Also, Michael O'Hanlon is a tool:

But some national security experts said Obama risked jeopardizing advances against the Taliban achieved with the troop-intensive counterinsurgency strategy Petraeus had championed.

"The President's plan strikes me as solid in concept but a bit rushed," said the Brookings Institutions' Michael O'Hanlon. "Ideally next year's drawdown would have until the end of the year or until early 2013 so the U.S. troops could successfully conclude the fighting season."

Yes. "National security expert" Michael O'Hanlon, the genius who wrote:

Of course, Iraqi attacks against civilian populations in places like the United States could be serious, especially if they involved biological agents, in which case plausible casualties could reach into the hundreds or even the thousands. But Iraqi special forces have not focused on preparing for such attacks in the past; instead, they have reportedly been dedicated to efforts to acquire technologies for producing weapons of mass destruction. It is also unlikely that Iraq has access to the most dangerous pathogens, such as smallpox. On the other hand, Saddam may be willing to provide such agents to Hezbollah or al-Qaida operatives under certain circumstances. On balance, the risk that germ or chemical weapons will be used successfully may be relatively small—but it is also quite real.

Iraq could also increase casualty levels of U.S. or coalition forces by using WMD against them, particularly its thousands of chemical-filled artillery shells and rockets.

Let's definitely hear more from him about how we just need to give ourselves a little more time to get some more people killed before we have to be the assholes. 

A.

 

Girlfight

On not limiting children to gender roles because given the choice, they won't limit themselves:

“Do you want to learn to do some karate?” I hear Carmel saying to yet another miniature Cinderella. “You do? That’s great! It’s a lot of fun! OK, take off your shoes, and put your wand here. Oh, your scepter. Sorry. No, you can leave your crown on. That’s fine.”

Around and around we go, coaching these tiny women on how to make a fist, punch a target, kick with a “Barbie foot” (toes pulled back), and kiai—“That means, yell really loud!” Dozens of them, scores of them. We could have a whole army of these fabulously dressed warriors.

I can't remember how much princess programming I was subjected to. I liked wearing dresses when I was little, but that's just because pants were weird and dresses were easier. I played with my boy cousins whose idea of a good time was stuffing firecrackers into Coke bottles and lighting them off in the alley, or going down the toboggan run in the park on a piece of cardboard coated in Crisco. I had Barbies and watched TV some, but I don't recall it ever having to be all one thing or all the other. 

A.

Someone Who Thinks You Are Less Than? That Person Does Not Love You.

Ugh, I hate this conservative defense of bigotry:

He said he has not hate. He loves everyone.

Yeah, you know what? No, he doesn't. Love isn't just being nice to somebody when you see him on the street. Love is actually valuing a person for who he is, understanding and respecting that person, and working with him to build something greater through that relationship.

Someone who thinks you don't have the right to equal protection under the law does not love you.

Someone who would raise his voice in opposition to yours simply because of what you were born to do does not love you.

Someone who treats people like you with vague contempt even as he professes love for you does not love you.

I don't know where we got this idea that love is a feeling. I really don't, and it's such utter HORSESHIT. I don't know where we got this idea that your feelings excuse your actions, either. Love is your actions. Love is what you do. Love is how you treat people. Love is, in fact, measurable, testable, despite what the songs would have us think, because you live your love for someone, for a group of someones, for any and all someones, every day.

Or else you don't love them, and you know, that's okay. I'm fine with you not loving people you don't want to love. There are plenty of people who, if they stepped in front of my car, I wouldn't swerve. But just be honest, then, and say you hate them or say you don't care. It's this idea that you can claim to love "everyone" and then go out and publicly despise everything they are, that's the idea I quarrel with.

A.

Twitterweenies

Oh, for fuck's sake:

Rich Eisen was not "so horny." He was hacked.

Ray Allen did not ask anyone if when they masturbate, do they "think about my tongue or your clit and switching back and forth from my dick to my tongue." He was hacked.

Carmelo Anthony did not put out a hit on groupie Kat Stacks. He was hacked.

Will Hill did not and does not go harder than a Russian, nor does he shit in airports. He was hacked.

I really think there needs to be some kind of on-ramp for the Internet, especially for adults. For every stupid drunk picture I see some college-age kid uploading to Facebook, there's some grown-ass man sending pictures of his dong out into the public and expecting, despite Brett Favre's spectacular example, nobody to actually notice it. Is something going on with people my parents' ages, where we have to sit down and have The Talk about appropriate online behavior? I ask you.

A.

The Other Problem with Tracy Morgan

IT WASN'T FUNNY.

I think it's also important to understand precisely how this story came out. Kevin Rogers, a fan of Tracy Morgan's, who happens to be gay, went to Morgan's show, was offended by his act, and via Facebook, posted a write-up of what he saw. Louis CK admits that "he didn't get the context," and is upset that "people hear this shit mostly third hand." But Rogers isn't reporting third-hand. He was there, saw the context and was offended.  From the write-up:

The sad thing is that none of this rant was a joke. His entire demeanor changed during that portion of the night. He was truly filled with some hate towards us. As far as I could see 10 to 15 people walked out.

Now perhaps Rogers overreacted and missed the joke, but he was present for it.

WHAT JOKE? In all the coverage I've read of this, and it's been more than I've wanted to read because gah, basically, I have yet to read about anything approaching a joke. I've read things that sounded like threats and things that sounded like rants and things that sounded like shit your relatives say when they haven't figured out how to be enlightened human beings yet, but I haven't yet read a joke in any of this. So to pull this bullshit "all humor is inherently cruel" dodge just drives me nuts.

I mean, God almighty, when will douchebag comedians figure this one out? You can be incredibly offensive, so long as you are original and hilarious. Threatening to kill your own kid if he acts stereotypically gay or effeminate? Not original. Also not really all that hilarious. I'm about done with the "you can't take a joke" argument, because in order for people to take a joke, there HAS TO BE A JOKE.

Just being an asshole is not, in and of itself, a joke. This is the thing that people don't get, right now, and we see it every time somebody does something offensive and tries to make it amusing. Lenny Bruce wasn't funny because he cursed a lot, he was funny because he was funny, and he was making a point by cursing. Getting up on stage and yelling FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK doesn't make you Lenny Bruce, any more than yelling the N-word makes you Chris Rock.

Part of great humor is making your audience think. When George Carlin asked if anybody had ever noticed that most people who were against abortion were people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place, he wasn't just being ooh, controversial. He was talking about sexual hypocrisy and the inherent unattractiveness of somebody telling you you shouldn't control the very same body you're about to use to have sex with them. Louis CK says:

I've said to many audiences that I think you shouldn't rape someone unless you have a good reason, like you want to fuck them and they won't let you. That's worse than what he said! And I didn't wink and say, just kidding. I just said it.

Which, buddy, you're actually saying there is no good reason to rape anybody, ever, and that rape is never okay, and what makes you laugh is the absudity that anyone would ever say that, and then the whiplash realization that some people do, in fact, consider that a justification. I believe you can joke about a lot of things, but you have to be joking. I have yet to see anything that leads me to think Morgan was.

A.

WWII Translator Denied Veterans' Benefits

Man:

The air-raid sirens would sound and the people would run for cover, defenseless against what happened next. Bombs exploded upon impact, littering the streets with bodies and body parts. With no electricity, the night skies filled only with the sound of weeping.

By then, Japanese forces had rolled through much of China, and the outmatched Chinese military seemed unable to stop them.

But half a world away, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration had authorized a secret unit that would change the course of the war in Asia. Soon, Yee would find himself working as a translator to Claire Lee Chennault and the American Volunteer Group, the aviation legends who became famously known as the Flying Tigers.

Now an American citizen and a retired high school history teacher living in Aurora, Yee is one of the last men alive today to have served with Chennault and the original Flying Tigers.

His unique spot in history — a member of the Chinese air force who served with a secret American unit, then traveled to the United States and was allowed to stay for fear of reprisals in Communist China — means he has never been officially recognized as a veteran by the country he served and has called home for more than 65 years.

Via Angry Asian Man.

You know, I usually tag these things The War Isn't Over, because so long as there are veterans living with it, it isn't.

A.

Light the Sky and Hold on Tight: Game of Thrones Thread

She's always been amazing.

It's just that she knows it, now.

Spoilers within.

You Women Who Have to Work, You Suck

Reading this antiquated marriage advice book over at the Hairpin I came across something blood-boiling:

 

Most of the crap in this book is about what you'd expect from the 1947 copyright date: If you kiss boys before you're married you're a giant slutty whore and no man will ever want you. Also don't wear too much lipstick, you clown-faced slag.

But this bit really chafed at me, and not just because it's crap advice and hectoring during ANY era. Because something I've been talking a lot about lately (mostly due to research on the Irish pub book, actually, and the women who ran the places that bore their husbands' names) is the forgotten truth that poor women have always worked outside the home.

Women in factories, schools, hospitals, and in the homes of the wealthy and well-off, those women were working wives, working mothers, too. They didn't have the option to NOT leave the kids with the neighbor or a relative (or just leave the kids alone) and go off to the job. It wasn't the desire to make something of themselves or have their own lives and incomes or not be dependent on their husbands that led them to enter the workforce. It was the powerful desire to EAT and PAY RENT and buy their children SHOES.

They weren't being "contrary to nature" so much as they were being "contrary to debtors' prison."

And I'm guessing those ladies had bigger problems than somebody in a book calling them morally inferior to good upstanding housewives, but for some reason it particularly cheeses me right off that the same nonsense women were subjected to back then so neatly forshadows the same treatment today, from the same militant Ladies Against Women types: 

I believe that many people are realizing that the decline in stay at home moms has been a major factor in the decline of the American family. In the past several decades we have seen a significant rise in the rates of crimes, teen pregnancy, childhood behavioral disorders, and violence.

I think that many moms have decided that enough is enough. They have decided that their children should be raised by a loving, nurturing mother and not a cold, impersonal daycare. I realize that there are some daycare providers that truly do love the children they care for, but unfortunately many only think of it as a job.

These smug people assume everyone has choices, and I know this is becoming a Thing for me lately, but not everybody can choose one path or another. Plenty of women would probably love to work, but can't, because a lack of affordable child care options in the community make working either income-neutral or actually more expensive than staying home. Plenty of women would probably love to stay home with the kids, but Dad's sick or unemployed, or Dad's job pays 10 percent less than it did last year and somebody needs braces, or something.

I mean, the number of ways you can be fucked these days approaches infinite, so to assume that the only reason a woman wants to work is for herself (and don't get me started on THAT, either, like how dare you have a life when you have a husband!) is just the worst kind of privileged bullshit. Lifing women about their choices — whether those choices involve work or home life — sucks anyway, but it comes from a place of assuming they have them, and that's not a safe assumption. It never was.

A.