The state's director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design. Chris Comer who has been the Texas Education Agency's director of science curriculum for more than nine years offered her resignation this month. In documents obtained Wednesday through the Texas Public Information Act agency officials said they recommended firing Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. But Comer said she thinks political concerns about the teaching of creationism in schools were behind what she describes as a forced resignation. Agency officials declined to comment saying it was a personnel issue. Comer was put on 30 days paid administrative leave shortly after she forwarded an e-mail in late October announcing a presentation being given by Barbara Forrest author of "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," a book that says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Forrest was also a key witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case concerning the introduction of intelligent design in a Pennsylvania school district. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities saying. "FYI."Agency officials cited the e-mail in a memo recommending her termination. They said forwarding the e-mail not only violated a directive for her not to communicate in writing or otherwise with anyone outside the agency regarding an upcoming science curriculum review. "it directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science."The memo adds. "Ms. Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."
Mostly because nothing seems to light my writing fire today. I have dawdled over various parts of my daily chores such as checking my e-mail. The ads I have to go through first tell me what is going on in "Entertainment" and "News of the Day" and I decided to look at what it is that should entertain me. It's news about the private lives of celebrities. Many of these are about babies being born to some celebrity or another and all the headlines are of the form where "x" welcomes "baby girl/boy/multiples". Wouldn't it be more entertaining to read that "x" was furious and wanted to cancel the baby order? Or is there a special welcome ritual that I've missed about the arrival of babies? Yes. I know that what I wrote above is curmudgeonly and that it's difficult to think of an interesting way to say that the new parents are delighted to finally hold the baby. The annoyance I feel is much more severe when the news are about how someone reacts to horrible events. You know the kind of thing where someone is asked how they feel about having their whole family killed in a fire or lost in an earthquake. It seems wrong to even ask such question and the answers have very little news value. Of course the survivor is devastated. To ask her or him to expand on that feeling is voyeurism of the nastiest kind. Then there is about a man who killed his ex-wife and his children. The story is written in an odd way almost as if family violence is some sort of a virus that just happens:
The couple who divorced in 2005 had a history of domestic violence police said. The family lived in Frederick County for about five years with Brockdorff moving out in 2005 and Pumphrey leaving this year neighbors said. Brockdorff was a self-employed electrician who had coached T-ball and Pumphrey was a flight attendant said Mullen who lives two houses away. The three Brockdorff children were close friends with Mullen's. The couple's relationship was stormy and police were often called to their large home to help settle their disputes. Mullen said. In fall 2005. Pumphrey asked Brockdorff to move out and he moved to nearby Urbana. But he continued to visit Pumphrey and harass her. Mullen said. Pumphrey got a restraining order and even suspected that her phone had been tapped."She was very scared," Mullen said. "She wanted to protect her kids and herself."
Reuters. It's always useful to remember to take stories like that with a grain of salt because they might be part of the business which makes up faux trends with no real statistical evidence to back them up. But supposing that it indeed is true that older white women travel to Kenya in order to have paid sex with young Kenyan men what should a feminist say about it?That would probably depend on the feminist. My first step in analyzing stories like this is to do a gender-reversal. If you do that all the article tells us is the old and nasty story about colonial oppression and prostitution or about the power of wealthier individuals to buy sex from poorer individuals who have few other alternatives. Perhaps the advantage of the actual story is that these other aspects become much clearer when the entitlement aspect of being an older white man has been removed. Older white women are usually not regarded as entitled to sex after all. My second step was to think how I would feel about the article if the older women went to say. Florida for their sex tourism and if the younger men working in the industry were of the same race and with other alternatives to escorting as a way of making a living. Would the arrangement then be just fine? After all it is mostly viewed as just fine when it is older white men who do this by paying for mistresses or casual sex. I'm not sure. My final thoughts had to do with wondering about how all this would be explained by the misogynistic section of evolutionary psychologists. Women aren't supposed to do this kind of stuff and certainly not older women.
What Buchanan is saying that white non-Hispanic Americans are not breeding enough and that this is the reason why Mexicans will take over the country. If all those abortions had not happened we could have solved the need for cheap labor in agriculture and the hospitality industry by using our own people!Buchanan's arguments really do seem to come from his private nightmares except for his assumption that the United States of the past was a happy mixing pot where everybody was boiled until they looked quite nicely European. He fails to apply social science to his fears too. For instance more educated people always have fewer children and the average children per family drop pretty fast once an immigrant population becomes mainstreamed in the United States. But what he never fails to do is to blame white women for not having more children to keep Pat's nightmares at bay. This is especially weird considering the fact that Pat personally has done nothing to help those birth rate numbers he so deplores.
Ninety-seven women were burnt to death and 27 others killed in the three Kurdish provinces during the past four months the human rights minister in the Iraqi Kurdistan region revealed. "I cannot say that violence against women has lowered," Yusuf Aziz Muhammad told reporters after taking part in a conference held in Arbil on Sunday to discuss means to stop violence against women. The statements coincide with the international day to eliminate violence against women. November 25."Surveys conducted in Arbil (the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region) showed that there were 60 cases of women burning in Arbil. 21 in Duhuk and 16 in Sulaimaniya. There were also 10 cases of women killing in Arbil. 11 in Duhuk and six in Sulaimaniya," Muhammad said. The Kurdish official citing the figures of 2005 noted that there were 59 cases of women killing in the region which rose to 118 in 2006."Cases of women burning themselves in Sulaimaniya during 2006 were 64 and in Duhuk 185," said the minister. Women proved involved in honor-related crimes are forced to burn themselves and sometimes they are set ablaze by their male relatives.
That article notes one of the reasons for all this violence: contempt towards women and their role in the family and society. You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to reconcile that contempt with the simultaneous push in Basra to make women act according to the most limited roles possible. But misogyny has never been bothered by its own illogicality. And what of the response from the West to news like these? Some fear that even talking about them foments war against Iran or some other suitable country despite the obvious futility of war as a weapon for democratizing a country. If anything things have gotten worse for Iraqi women since the U. S invasion and I don't quite see how it would help women in any of the countries where women are not much valued if they or their family members were first killed by U. S bombs. Others turn suddenly all relative in their ethical judgments when otherwise they would not do so and point out that we shouldn't judge what other cultures do. I wonder if they would have the same reaction should we be reading about the burning of children or if the corpses in Basra all belonged to members of a religious minority. No it is something about the victims being women that causes the "look elsewhere" syndrome. Because deep down somewhere many of us still believe that the women belong to their husbands fathers families and their societies to treat as those parties see fit.
Interesting that these kinds of ads are still being used given the state of the housing market. Note also that any ad specifically pointing out that there will be no credit check would get a much larger than average number of responses from those who have bad credit and people who have bad credit are often going to continue having bad credit. That "no money down" part is also very suspicious. Taken together the ad promises mortgages for people who really cannot afford mortgages. There is a sense in which the housing markets in the last few years (pretty much the Bush reign) have acted as if the equivalent of gravity in the physical world no longer works: No you don't have to save money for a fancy house. No we will not look into your past credit history. Yes indeed you can get something for nothing. But of course you can't get something for nothing or certainly not on the scale that the housing bubble suggests. What is it that they used in the place of all those old rules about mortgages? The one new theory or myth seems to have been the idea that the prices of housing will keep on rising and rising and rising. If that myth is true it makes sense to take a loan which is front-loaded with nothing but interest. You get to deduct the interest against your taxes you get to live in the house and if the value of houses rises you gather equity from just that. When finally the day arrives with monthly payments for not just the interest that day when your monthly payments will double say well your house has appreciated in value and you can either sell it and make some money or you can refinance it based on its new and better value. Neat is it not?Except of course in the case when housing prices are falling. In that case you are in deep trouble. And that is the scenario that is now unfolding. What is especially bitter about that scenario is that the very reason WHY the prices of houses have stopped rising is the vast number of bad mortgages taken by people on the hope that prices would keep on rising. A sort of a suicide if you like. So yes the outlook is not rosy in the housing markets. But the meaning of all this is even more grave and the debacle might hit all of us whether we ever gambled with houses or not. The reason has to do with the role the wealth in the form of houses has taken in the United States. One article quoted an expert who stated that Americans have used their houses as ATM machines as sources of money for things quite unrelated to housing. That may be a little too rude but it is indeed true that the wealth in the form of housing has been fueling the U. S economy for the last eight years. People spend more when they have more wealth and when the value of their houses increased they felt that they had more wealth to spend. Now that the value of their houses is not increasing and may well be decreasing they will spend less. Less spending by consumers means fewer orders for firms. That means more unemployment and the vicious cycle starts turning: Unemployed people will not consume that much unemployed people will lose their houses.... So what happened to allow this all? The government didn't disallow it for one thing. Then the financial markets invented a new tool: that of mincing up all the poor mortgages and then tossing them into the general mortgage salad for the purposes of reselling. That way nobody could tell exactly how many bad mortgages they had just acquired! In short the general investments in the housing markets were not protected from the bad investments. And as I mentioned the government didn't declare this new tool illegal. The latter reminds me a lot of the 1929 stock market crash. The new tool then in play was leveraging. It worked beautifully when the market was going up and it crashed every bit as spectacularly when the market was going down. I hope that we have all learned enough since 1929 to contain the current housing market crisis before it gets worse.
If you missed the Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee on illegal immigrants earlier this month you missed some fun. Huckabee while the governor of Arkansas floated a proposal to give some kind of tuition break to the children of illegal immigrants in his state. Panicking that he might have spent mightily and lose to Huck Thin in Iowa Romney attacked him on this issue only to have Huckabee say. "I guess Mitt Romney would rather keep people out of college so they can keep working on his lawn," . Seems Mitt had hired a lawn care company that depended on cheap illegal immigrant laborers for twelve years. Fred Thompson got in a few kicks in on Huckabee too. You’d imagine that the effort must have winded the laziest candidate in the race. There is also talk about Huckabee turning over state owned space in Little Rock for use by the Mexican consulate. Illegal immigration is the code phrase for a well prepared strategy the Republicans are relying on in next year’s election anti-Latino bigotry. Conservatives unable to run on their actual platform which would disadvantage the large majority of middle-class and working class people for the advantage of the oligarches have always reverted to bigotry their most trusted tool. Bigotry has won them election after election. CNN’s Lou Dobbs well really the entire cabloid-hate talk media have been laying the ground whipping up anti-Latino mania to the point where it is actually going to have a real impact on the election. Republicans are practicing with it against each other before using it against Democrats in the general election. On Russert’s program this morning was fantasizing that anti-Latino bigotry would drive black voters into the arms of the Republicans a fantasy so wacky that has the smell of being Oked by some consultant or other before that hack mouthed it. The other reliable tool of Republicans. Biblical fundamentalism is also being kept handy. Huckabee’s success in the Iowa polls is primary based on the pseudo-christian vote. The “Values Voters” and other pseudo-religious Republican fronts SHOULD have a problem with the anti-alien plank which is certain to be a part of the Republican platform. That is they would if liberals had the wit to have read the Bible. For example in her of The God Delusion. Marilynne Robinson made this potentially useful point in response to the false assertion that The Law as laid down in Leviticus - one of the favorite books with cherry pickers on both sides of the God Wars - was meant to only apply to Jews. .. the verse quoted here. Leviticus 19:18 does indeed begin. "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people," language that allows a narrow interpretation of the commandment. But Leviticus 19:33—34 says "When an alien resides with you in your land you shall not oppress the alien. You shall love the alien as yourself." In light of these verses it is wrong by Dawkins's own standards to argue that the ethos of the law does not imply moral consideration for others. (It would be interesting to see the response to a proposal to display this Mosaic law in our courthouses.) My boldWhat would the “Values Voters” answer be if it was repeatedly and relentlessly pointed out that this “law” was as much part of the bible as the ones allegedly opposed to gay people? Would it have an impact? Would it shame them? I don’t know but anything is worth trying at this late date. Perhaps it won’t work politically next year since the groundwork of anti-Latino bigotry has been so well laid by hate-talk media. But Democratic strategists should always be on the look out for what the corporate media is preparing for use by Republican candidates and they should attack early and continually pointing out that it is morally repugnant. It is only by a wall of resistance that hate campaigns can be fought. When you have the entire commercial media against you you have to use every weapon available. If Lou Dobbs had been condemned for his promotion of bigotry over the past several years one of the potentially most potent tools of division and conquest by the party of the privileged it might not work as well as it probably will. Ok maybe the picture of Matalin was over the top. But ain't it the truth?
Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts. In a state-by-state district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data. Michael Franc vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats. He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats."If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said. A key measure of each district's wealth was the number of single-filer taxpayers earning more than $100,000 a year and married couples filing jointly who earn more than $200,000 annually he said. But in a broader measurement the study also showed that of the 167 House districts where the median annual income was higher than the national median of $48,201 a slight majority. 84 districts were represented by Democrats. Median means that half of all income earners make more than that level and half make less. Mr. Franc's study also showed that contrary to the Democrats' tendency to define Republicans as the party of the rich. "the vast majority of unabashed conservative House members hail from profoundly middle-income districts."
It sounds very convincing does it not? There's only one problem: The study doesn't actually say that it is the rich who vote Democratic and the poor or the middle-class who vote Republican. Perhaps the easiest way to understand what is wrong with the Times arguments is to imagine a slightly different study one relating the percentage of blacks in a state to whether the state on average tends to vote Democratic or Republican. I would not be at all surprised to find in such a study that the states with the highest black populations also tend to elect Republicans to the Congress. Now does this mean that the Republican Party is the new party of the minorities? Of course not. And the same argument applies here: The rich are more likely to vote Republican and. In states with higher average incomes the tendency of the rich to vote Republican is less pronounced.
I want to give thanks to visual arts. They are one of the deep mysteries for me because what they give is not easily explained using just intellect or aesthetics or in fact any arguments at all. Some works of art are like a fist into the stomach unyielding in their demand to look to see to understand something which always just escapes understanding. Others are like the scent of vanilla or cinnamon or like the scent of Solomon's Seal: the more you try to inhale the scent the less you smell it but when you give up and stop trying there it is - suddenly - and gone as quickly leaving behind only something which matters but why?Trying to analyze art is for me a fascinating and fun game but it never gets to the reasons for that basic reaction a physical one which forces me to pay attention to something. It's not that the analyses don't matter they do. But they cannot unravel the mystery completely and totally and they can never make the explanation for that initial stunned moment something that one can just file away as an intellectual fact. I have many favorites among the visual artists but today I'd like to mention. She is not well known but her work gives me that inexplicable initial thump. Or perhaps something subtler in her case. Anyway this is one example of her paintings: Adelita FleesShe is a surrealist as you can see but what kind of a surrealist? What is surreal in her world view? What is the painting really saying? It speaks to a nonverbal part of me sadly. Also happily of course.----Link to the Guardian article by Darryl Pearce.
I wanted to put up this short story about sexual desire but it's not on the computer and I can't find the notebook in the mess that is supposed to be my libraries. Instead you are going to get another short story about root canal work. Well it's a short story but the events described in it actually happened to me. I know it is very unsuitable for today. But then it is unsuitable for every day. A Dental AppointmentSara is late. She is running for the train. The driver sees her running and takes off exactly one second before she reaches the still open door. Sara swears silently. She can still make it she hopes. The coin exchange machine is malfunctioning again. She starts turning her pockets and bag over in search for coins. The next train should come within ten minutes. Her appointment for a root canal isn't for another forty-five minutes. Not that she is looking forward to it. Once she has the coins she sits down on the bench and looks at the pigeons perching on the roof of the deserted station building or flying through the empty shell of its second floor. The station house is a ruin of some long-gone civilization and the pigeons are the new power that has taken it over. Lucky birds they have no teeth. A woman and a man cross the tracks and join Sara and another woman already there at the train stop. The new arrivals look Middle Eastern probably a mother and a son. He looks affluent. Americanized in his forties. She doesn't look Americanized. Her scarf is on crooked and she wears no bra. She has missing teeth in the front. Sara practises deep breathing. Her stomach rebels against the prospect of a dental visit. The couple seem to know the other woman on the bench. The mother doesn't speak any English. She wants to compare how dark her hair is to the other woman's grey curls. The train arrives. Sara finds a single seat in the back and continues deep breathing and relaxation. She has a fobia about drills. The trio from the stop seat themselves across from her. The man has brilliantly white teeth. Breathe gently breathe deeply. He talks with the American woman over his mother's head. "Do you know how many children my mother has had? Sixteen! And do you know how many survived? Eight!" The train takes off from the station and slowly rolls through the suburban landscape. Backyards and trees go by. Birds without teeth. One neat fence has graffiti which Sara can't read. She can never read any graffiti and it is all in the same handwriting. She imagines a jet-setting graffiti artist flying from one country to another scrawling graffiti everywhere. Most likely someone with perfect teeth. The train stops and takes off again. The houses look more expensive now and less of them is visible from the tracks. There are proper woods now green. Sara tries to relax in the green."Don't you think that women belong in the home?" asks the Middle Eastern man of his neighbor. Sara can't hear her answer. A group of schoolgirls enter the train laughing and chattering. Sara hopes that their voices would drown out the man but they move on. Now the landscape is citified. Poor backyards with clotheslines and derelict cars more graffiti. Then highrises. Soon the train would go underground. Then she'd be nearly there. Breathe in breathe out."My mother never liked girls" says the man. "Why do you think she doesn't care for girls?" There are no free seats no standing room anywhere. Sara starts to sing quietly to keep his voice out. Her stomach has clutched into a tight fist. It won't relax. It won't let go. The train dives into darkness. The color inside changes to greyish cold. Everybody suddenly looks tired and old and in need of dusting. Sara counts the remaining stops. Three. She is afraid that she'll need to find a restroom soon. The train slows in preparation for a stop. Large advertisements flash by. Do you need to lose weight? A woman in bikinis lying in the sun. Two happy people buying insurance. No graffiti. Nothing about root canals or the dislike of little girls. They take off again. Sara has forgotten to sing so she can't avoid hearing the man. "What is wrong with selling your daughters if you don't want them?" She has to get up. She has to leave right now. On the next station. It means having to run three more blocks. She gets off. She runs three more blocks. She is late for her dental appointment.
The quest for things exorbitantly exotic has reached a fever pitch of late. For one thing more people than ever can afford to join in the pursuit. "This is the richest year ever in human history," said Steve Forbes chief executive of Forbes whose recent Forbes 400 list consisted entirely of billionaires for the second year since its inception. The past year has seen the number of billionaires grow 19% to nearly 1,000 according to the company. In the past 10 years the number of financial millionaires has more than doubled. Half the new members on the Forbes 400 list come from hedge funds and private equity and they form a fiscal fraternity that is not only wealthier but also younger more diverse and more numerous than ever. While managing and making billions the economy's latest whiz kids are shaking up the financial world and quite often the planet's spending habits along with it. "Never before have so many Americans gotten so wealthy so quickly. And never before have the wealthy spent so much on lifestyle and consumer goods," says Robert Frank author of Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich. "So what do you do to stand out? The challenge for today's rich is to set themselves apart from the merely affluent. You want things no one else can afford or experience. The challenge is to always stay ahead." And while the recent stock-market turbulence may stall the tide it is unlikely to stem it. "You can't get rich off financial markets and not be exposed if they fall," Frank says. "The next year or two we might have a slight decline in numbers of millionaires as well as a decline in the amount of their wealth. But long term. I'm bullish on wealth. The rich are going to get richer and more important they are going to get more numerous."
Like vultures the mortgage lenders began circling the single-family house with the tiny front lawn on Merrill Avenue. They knew that the woman who owned the house was old and sick and that her two aging daughters were struggling with illness and poverty as well. That was all to the good as far as the lenders were concerned. The predator's mission is to home in on the vulnerable."The people that wanted to put through the loan called me about a hundred times," said Rosa Dailey who is 65 and going blind and needs an oxygen tank at times to help her breathe. "I kept telling them no because I didn't think we could afford it. But they kept saying how it was to our advantage. So I finally said: 'All right let's see what we can do.' "... That was the beginning of a tragic spiral with one unaffordable loan following another. As Ms. Dailey put it: "I feel like they led me down a dark alley."Ms. Dailey told me her story in the freezing living room of the house on Merrill Avenue which no longer has a working furnace and is growing shabbier by the day. It's all she has left. Her mother and her older sister are dead now. Her only income is about $1,300 a month from Social Security — less than the monthly note on the house which is in foreclosure proceedings. One aspect of the so-called mortgage crisis that hasn't been adequately explored is the extent to which predatory lenders have committed fraud against vulnerable homeowners. They have pushed overpriced loans and outlandish fees on hapless victims who didn't understand — and could not possibly have met — the terms of the contracts they signed.
I guess we could all say thanks for not being Ms. Dailey at least yet. Many people probably did take badly thought-out loans because of greed or gullibility. But the case of Ms. Dailey is unlikely to be a unique one. It's still not uncommon for ordinary people to view bankers or lenders as professionals as people in a trusted role as people who will tell you with a heavy and serious tone of voice if you really can't afford that mortgage you set your heart on. This is how mortgage lenders have been regarded for quite a long time. And my guess is that Ms. Dailey believed the lenders. If they said that she could afford the loan and that it would make her payments smaller well they must be right given that they know all those technical terms and wear three-piece suits and so on. It's almost as if your physician suddenly turned on you and started feeding you drugs you don't really need or urging you to have unnecessary operations. Such physicians do exist but they are rare because the legal framework and training is geared towards making physicians behave in a different manner that of a trusted professional. When did this change about bankers and mortgage lenders?Ms. Dailey is going to have corn flakes and canned vegetables for Thanksgiving while sitting in her cold house.
MAY COLVINFalse Sir John a-wooing came To a maid of beauty fair;May Colvin was this lady's name. Her father's only heir. He woo'd her but he woo'd her ben. He woo'd her in the ha';Until he got the lady's consent To mount and ride awa'."Go fetch me some of your father's gold. And some of your mother's fee,And I'll carry you into the north land. And there I'll marry thee."She's gane to her father's coffers Where all his money lay,And she's taken the red and she's left the white. And so lightly she's tripp'd away. She's gane to her father's stable Where all the steeds did stand,And she's taken the best and she's left the warst That was in her father's land. She's mounted on a milk-white steed. And he on a dapple-grey,And on they rade to a lonesome part. A rock beside the sea."Loup off the steed," says false Sir John. "Your bridal bed you see;Seven ladies I have drown'd here. And the eighth one you shall be."Cast off cast off your silks so fine And lay them on a stone,For they are too fine and costly To rot in the salt sea foam."Cast off cast off your silken stays. For and your broider'd shoon,For they are too fine and costly To rot in the salt sea foam."Cast off cast off your Holland smock That's border'd with the lawn,For it is too fine and costly To rot in the salt sea foam.""O turn about thou false Sir John. And look to the leaf o' the tree;For it never became a gentleman A naked woman to see."He turn'd himself straight round about To look to the leaf o' the tree;She's twined her arms about his waist And thrown him into the sea."O hold a grip o' me. May Colvin. For fear that I should drown;I'll take you home to your father's gates And safe I'll set you down.""No help no help thou false Sir John. No help no pity thee!For you lie not in a caulder bed Than you thought to lay me."She mounted on her milk-white steed. And led the dapple-grey,And she rode till she reach'd her father's gates. At the breakin' o' the day. Up then spake the pretty parrot. "May Colvin where have you been?What has become o' false Sir John That went with you yestreen?" –"O hold your tongue my pretty parrot! Nor tell no tales o' me;Your cage shall be made o' the beaten gold And the spokes o' ivorie."Up then spake her father dear. In the bed-chamber where he lay:"What ails the pretty parrot. That prattles so long ere day?" –"There came a cat to my cage master. I thought 't would have worried me,And I was calling to May Colvin To take the cat from me."
Yup. And the rest of us who make well under that amount are suffering what I like to call "regressive wages." Meaning your career gets tied up with a big red bow and shipped overseas leaving you to deal with unemployment or underemployment for a year or two or three. Then you spend your savings to go back to school and start over in a new career. Upon starting over you can't make any better than a shitty entry level salary despite two decades of work experience. Meanwhile the nest egg is gone and you're up to your eyeballs in debt again because even though your wages have taken a nose dive the cost of living has continued to increase. You're forty-something now and have no idea where your child's college money is going to come from let alone retirement savings. And then as if you haven't been kicked in the balls hard enough you find out your new career is likely to experience an "explosion" in offshoring by the end of 2008.
The point jen makes is an important one: Changing careers is not a costless operation but an incredibly costly one and the post doesn't quantify the costs of mental suffering at all. In general economic arguments tend to downplay the costs to people from moving or from changing careers or from other adjustments the market deems necessary. Moving for instance is seen as an easy way to adjust to your firm juggling its operations and it may well be better than being laid off. But moving means losing all the support structures your family may have developed pulling the children out of the schools in which they have made their friends and possibly also causing your spouse to lose a job he or she likes and needs. Moving is expensive. And so is job retraining caused by globalization. These costs should be kept in mind when discussing the advantages of global markets.
And what have we learned from these beginning paragraphs of yet another entry in the "id" diaries of one Maureen Dowd? That a woman in power is a dominatrix? How very feminist. Or that Hillary Clinton specifically is a dominatrix? What is the evidence Dowd provides on this? That she is cold towards Barack Obama. This my friends is how a woman becomes a dominatrix. What else might we learn from these few paragraphs? Might there possibly be an innuendo here about race too? I'm not sure about that. But Maureen Dowd sure hates Hillary Clinton and thinks that it's important for her readers to know that including the reasons for her hatred which appear something to do with sado-masochistic sex and Dowd's insistence of interpreting a powerful woman in politics in such terms. Dowd also wants to tell us that she knows the inner motivations of Hillary Clinton ("a move meant to remind him that he was an upstart"). It's pretty sickening. Politics is not really who gets to tie whom to the bedposts with those velvety ties. Maureen. It's about which people get bombed in the future about the Constitution about unemployment health care education and all those other incredibly non-sexy matters. Sigh. I'm preaching to an empty room while all the fashionable pundits sharpen their pencils to scribble down intimate details about the Clinton's marriage and about Hillary being a dominatrix in a leather harness and about the Democratic men all being bottoms. If you are not convinced by Dowd's series of "I Hate Hillary" columns. Andrew Sullivan has the bitch-hunt too:
Here's a more paranoid explanation: at some point in this campaign if you believe the Washington rumor mill there may well be some Clinton bimbo eruption stories i e. Bill's post-presidential extracurricular activities will come under discussion again. This Novak flap therefore may be a dummy-run for the various responses if such alleged doodoo eventually hits the campaign fan. The story would be relevant again not so much because of Bill but because of Hillary. She is now the candidate and would be forced to respond to such allegations if they became in any way legit.
I almost passed by Eve LaPlante's which looked like it would be a rehash of nonsense about the Pilgrim Fathers and associated New England Yankee propaganda but that would have been a mistake. Oh it is all about the Pilgrim-Puritan tradition of "public days". However at the heart is interesting information about one of LaPlante's ancestors. Judge Samuel Sewall of witch hunt infamy. In addition to leaving a full description of an early 18th century thanksgiving menu (yech!). LaPlante gives details about how he came to see the error of his witch persecution and became a better person for it.
In January 1697 for example the Massachusetts government called a public day so the community could repent and beg God's forgiveness for the disaster of the Salem witch hunt in which a Colonial court had executed 20 innocent women and men. One of my ancestors. Judge Samuel Sewall was one of nine judges who had presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials. On Jan. 14. 1697 during the fast-day service at Boston's Third Church now Old South. 44-year-old Judge Sewall stood up from his bench and bowed his head as his minister read aloud Sewall's public statement of acceptance of "the blame and shame" for the witch hunt. Sewall donned a coarse penitential hair shirt on that fast day and wore it according to family lore for the rest of his life as a constant painful reminder of his sin.
During the long period of repentance that followed. Judge Sewall tried to improve not only himself but also his society. He became an unlikely spokesman for the advancement of civil rights and individual liberties. In the summer of 1697 not long after the fast day he published an essay. "Phaenomena quaedam Apocalyptica," that portrayed America - and Native Americans - as virtuous and godly. In 1700 when one in five families in Boston owned African or Native American slaves. Sewall composed and published the first abolitionist statement in America. "The Selling of Joseph," which argued that slavery was immoral. His 1725 essay. "Talitha Cumi," or "Damsel. Arise," stated the "right of women" and women's fundamental equality to men. Having had the traditional myths of ye olde Pilgrim fathers force fed in my youth- largely created by ye olde Yankee historians and used as "nativist" propaganda- I'd never gone into the aftermath of the anti-witch mania and so didn't know about the repentance. Holding a grudge against the Puritans. I'd assumed that anti-slavery efforts began with John Woolman the Quaker saint. And I'm ashamed to say that I knew little about feminism before Anthony. It's good to be upended once in a while forced to question basic assumptions and customs of thinking. Apparently Sewall found that to be true. I have a hard time imagining Scalia or Roberts or Alito repenting their corrupt actions in public or reforming themselves into something other than henchmen of the powerful establishment. Thomas as his recent book proves is never going to be any better than the pathetic self-motivated limpet to the powerful that he has always been. Ronald Reagan liked to make fun of the Puritan tradition for all the wrong reasons. He saw the discouragement of self indulgence as their major failure. The refusal to self-indulgence is one of the primary sins of our establishment today usually expressed in some pop-psychological terms of inhibition and hang-ups. Fun is good but it isn't the greatest good. The real sins of the Puritans weren't the ones cited most often today they were injustice inequality sexism and bigotry hypocrisy and vainglory. The sins of the Puritans are exactly the virtues of today's conservatives.
Diane Feinstein has been worn by Joe Lieberman and others who have used the support of Democrats and then stabbed us in the back repeatedly supporting Republicans. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility that she will go the whole route and jump parties in order to forestall a challenge to her re-election by a popular Republican. With her record she isn’t shoring up her support from Democratic activists. Any Democrat in California who is reading this and who gets the chance should get her on record saying she will honor the choice of the Democratic voters of her state should they decide that she doesn’t represent them again. She should have to say in absolute terms that she will not run against a Democrat who wins the nomination that she will not support the candidate of any other party or who runs as an independent against the Democratic nominee and that she will not leave the Democratic Party if she is elected as the nominee of the Democrats of her state. All politicians who have won election as Democrats or who ask for the nomination of the Democrats in their state should have to make this promise. If they won’t then Democrats will know what their plans are and they should vote accordingly. Any member of the Democratic Party has the right to press the issue they do not need the permission of anyone in the hierarchy of the party. The nomination doesn’t belong to anyone it belongs to the Democratic voters not the office holders. Just think what might have happened if Joe Lieberman had been forced to make that declaration before Ned Lamont won the nomination of Democrats in Connecticut. Connecticut might not have a Republican senator today.
In his novella. Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party. Graham Greene looked at the extent to which people will degrade themselves to get a reward and what happens when someone won’t degrade themselves. The return of Don Imus and the flood of announcements from those who hope to benefit from publicly handing him their integrity and respectability for publicity and book sales brings Dr. Fischer and his guests to mind. While Greene probably intended his book as a picture of capitalism it also does as a mirror of the American media. Greene’s story is narrated by Alfred Jones. Dr. Fischer’s son-in-law married to Anna his estranged daughter. Dr. Fischer being very wealthy holds ritual dinner parties in which the rich and famous allow him to humiliate and degrade them in exchange for valuable prizes he uses as bait. He considers this research. Anna who wants nothing to do with her father refuses to accept the invitation to a party which comes unexpectedly after she married Jones. She calls those who go to the parties her father’s “toads” obviously short for “toadies”. Her husband interested in meeting his father-in-law does go but won’t play along and after putting up with a lot of abuse about his having lost a hand in the war. Having stood up to the abuse he isn’t asked back until after the death of his wife in a ski accident. Dr. Fischer announces what will be his final dinner party in or on New Years giving Jones an invitation which he accepts. This time the victims have to take a Christmas cracker from a bucket they are told that inside all but one of them is a large check but inside that one cracker is a small bomb. If it wasn’t such a good story I’d be tempted to ruin it by telling you how Jones keeps his integrity. Rory O’Connor has of Don Imus’ “toads” and the excuses they are giving for going back to the racist ritual where they exchange their honor for a lot less. James Carville. Bob Kerrey. Bill Richardson. Clarence Page. Tim Russert... Imus might taunt them especially if they happen to be black but he saves his worst venom for members of other minorities. Unlike Dr. Fischer no one pretends it’s research and no bravery is required of his stooges. As we can see with Imus himself there is no permanent price to be paid for promoting bigotry sexism racism homophobia if you’re profitable enough. Dr. Fischer made his fortune by inventing a perfumed toothpaste which one assumes was good at covering bad breath. Imus’ guests should stock up on hygiene products. After his racist sexist attacks on the basketball players there’s no more denying what Imus made his fortune on and what they are finally proving themselves to be. They’ll need lots to cover the stench.
Or: If You Could See Them Through My Eyes. Maybe you heard it the cosy interview that Scott Simon did with Hanna Rosin and a graduate of Patrick Henry College this morning contained a very fine example of a particularly important tactic of dishonest reporting. The kid whose name I didn’t write down is apparently an aspiring film maker which is fine with me. I’d rather have him doing that than working in the Justice Department. Scott Simon who seldom passes up an opportunity for sucking up to the Republican establishment asked Hanna Rosin if there was any difference between a far-right-wing fundamentalist christian* making a movie advocating a position and Robert Redford making a movie advocating a position. Rosin answering like a true WaPo. New Republic hack said that there wasn’t any difference between Robert Redford making a movie advocating his POV and an adherent of the Patrick Henry College** mind-set making an advocacy movie. Concentrating on the form instead of the content and it's predictable results is a favorite tactic of hack media. By pretending that the content of the two points of view are equivalent you can save yourself mentioning some career hindering reality. There is all the world of difference between advocating civil rights for gay people women having control of their bodies economic equality etc and trying to “take back the country” in order to deny civil rights and to impose a rigid anti-freedom agenda on the unwilling. Rosin and Simon pretend to not be able to see the difference but anyone with a brain and the slightest hint of intellectual honesty would see that the two are entirely different. The effects of Robert Redford’s ideas becoming law and the country living under the ideas expressed in the Patrick Henry College’s required “affirmations” would be quite real in a way the form alone doesn’t reveal. And both of these hacks know it. It has been my experience that when you make this point the next part of the discussion most often goes to questions of legal equity of the law not making a distinction between the two POVs. Ideally that is how THE LAW should treat people but since when were journalists or anyone else for that matter restricted in their personal judgements of peoples’ ideas? And it’s also my experience that this phony even-handedness is applied quite unevenly. The dishonesty of a lot of the media in the United States stems from its assertion that the left is supposed to not make those kinds of distinctions but it is a rule that has never been applied to the right. Hanna Rosin and Scott Simon seemed to be concerned with whether the product of Patrick Henry College believes that Jews go to hell. I somehow had the feeling that neither Rosin or Simon was really worried about going to hell. I suspect most people aren’t. But the matter of who is going to hell isn’t something that is in the hands of the “spearheads” of Patrick Henry College and unless you are on your deathbed it’s not a matter of imminent danger. The rights of women gay people etc. ARE decidedly in the hands of these christian zealots whose representation in the Bush junta is rather enormous considering the size of the student population. They are making policy here and now. Pretending that they are cute cuddly friendly and harmless might be good for a hack journalist betting on the continued political and economic power of the very far right but it’s hardly reporting the facts.* I have read the gospels. I fail to see the teachings of Jesus in the program of the fundamentalists who pretend to base their activities on his words. I will not capitalize the word for them.** For those who aren’t aware of the place for once I’d recommend Wiki as to begin finding out about the place. Hanna Rosin might not find it disturbing. I suspect most of the people who read this will. I’ve got a feeling that Patrick Henry a vehement critic of the church and its establishment would protest in the strongest possible way if he knew his name had been given to a place so at odds with his ideas.
This whole article is perfect for showing how to do feminist lab work on all sorts of idiotic statements. Note first that this Family Task Force seems to base its recommendations on Mr. Theyn's personal beliefs and life experiences. Well they also listened to speakers who associated increased crime and drug use to single-parent families (and probably did this by not taking into account the income levels of those families). But how they came up with the idea that mothers should stay at home is not at all clear and the idea that a traditional family would have less domestic violence is just plain rubbish. Second note that the proposals the Task Force created are both very detailed: repealing no-fault divorces and extremely vague: finding ways to encourage mothers to stay at home. Why are those encouraging ways left so fuzzy? Probably because Theyn isn't actually planning to help mothers to stay at home in any concrete fashion requiring money. Will all mothers paid the salaries they forfeit? Will all of them get health insurance for themselves and their children? Will their retirement funds be taken care of? When their children are viewed as acceptably mature will their retraining costs for the labor market be covered? And when the re-enter the labor market will their fair treatment and promotion chances be guaranteed?I suspect not. And this is an important feminist point: The problems this Task Force sees with Idaho families are to be fixed by the mothers essentially for free. Even a non-feminist reader of the proposals might spot the difficulty in expecting women to stop working when their families depend on that money. But a feminist interpretation gives the woman some rights over and above those of the eternally self-sacrificing mother. It also casts light on all the different costs that the mothers are supposed to bear (in silent submission. I guess). Third the odd combination of recommendations: removing no-fault divorce and encouraging mothers to stay at home have more things in common than just their origin in Mr. Theyn's dreams about the mythological 1950's families. They both serve to lock a woman into an abusive marriage by directly affecting her chances to leave it behind and by making her less able to earn her living in alternative ways. Fourth the proposals are utterly and totally based on the view that the best possible family is one where the mother stays at home with the children. Other family arrangements are ignored. There is nothing about "one parent" staying at home. Nope it's the women who are to stay at home. And the justification given for this extreme focus on mothers? This:
In the genteel world of bridge disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003 a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions including a yearlong ban from competition for a spur-of-the-moment protest. At issue is a crudely lettered sign scribbled on the back of a menu that was held up at an awards dinner and read. "We did not vote for Bush."By e-mail angry bridge players have accused the women of "treason" and "sedition.""This isn't a free-speech issue," said Jan Martel president of the United States Bridge Federation the nonprofit group that selects teams for international tournaments. "There isn't any question that private organizations can control the speech of people who represent them."Not so said Danny Kleinman a professional bridge player teacher and columnist. "If the U. S. B. F wants to impose conditions of membership that involve curtailment of free speech then it cannot claim to represent our country in international competition," he said by e-mail.
I'm a real cappuccino lover myself but many of my female colleagues don't seem to go for the stuff. I'd never thought too much about it until recently. I suppose I carelessly assumed that men and women have different tastes probably as a result of different social influences. Now I know better: My female colleagues don't go to coffee shops because they're shabbily treated when they get there. That's the conclusion of American economist Caitlin Knowles Myers. She with her students as research assistants staked out eight coffee shops (PDF) in the Boston area and watched how long it took men and women to be served. Her conclusion: Men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than do women. (There is also evidence that blacks wait longer than whites the young wait longer than the old and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But these effects are statistically not as persuasive.)Perhaps says the skeptic this is because women order froufrou drinks? Up to a point. The researchers found that men are more likely to order simpler drinks. Yet comparing fancy-drink-ordering men with fancy-drink-ordering women the longer wait for women remained. It is also hard to attribute the following finding to a female preference for wet-skinny-soy-macchiato with low-carb marshmallows: The delays facing women were larger when the coffee shop staff was all-male and almost vanished when the servers were all-female.
It's worth pointing out that Becker's seminal (ovular?) work looked at three types of discrimination all aimed at the workers in the firm not at its consumers: discrimination by the owners of firms discrimination by other worker groups (e g whites against black colleagues or men against women) and discrimination by the firm's customers against one type of workers (who might be directly serving them say). It's in the context of the owners discriminating against workers that Becker draws the conclusions Harford mentions. The conclusions in the other submodels are less clear-cut. Note also that Becker's model has no uncertainty and lack of information. In reality women at coffee shops may not know that they are being served more slowly and you can't react to something you are not aware of. The current study is therefore not an obvious application of Becker's reasoning. It looks at a different type of discrimination one possibly by workers towards customers and it's not clear whether the female customers think (or know) that they are served more slowly or not. If they are unaware of this the firm has no real incentive to fix any problems.
Of course this very dilemma is a direct consequence of the tradition of having only (at least apparently) heterosexual men be presidents of the United States. Thus the quandary Broder argues the Clintons present is not separate from the American tradition of barring women from positions of public power. Broder really the idea of an ex-president as the First Lady. Bill might steer the country from the back seat you know! What does this do to the American system of government? How are we going to preserve our myths of the First Spouse as a powerful image of utter supportiveness but of zero real-world significance? What could Bill Clinton possibly do that wouldn't either make him the mastermind of the universe or a silly henpecked husband in an apron breaking champaign bottles against the sides of new destroyers all named Vagina Dentata?If I were an observer from another planet I'd find this all most hilarious. Alas. I'm stuck here on earth and that makes me wonder just how much the various pundits in the media who hate the Clintons would be willing to sacrifice not to have to write about them anymore. A war or two abroad? A Supreme Court full of little cloned Scalias? Perhaps.
We should look to Nicaragua for information such. For instance they can kill women with ectopic pregnancies because the fertilized egg doomed to die in any case is still alive outside the uterus proper and that life is more important than the life of the pregnant woman. I can imagine all sorts of terrible dilemmas this measure could create. For instance how do we KNOW if there is a microscopic American inside a woman? What if she hides the presence of one in order to get rid of it? We should probably test all fertile women every month to be sure that no microscopic Americans are flushed down the toilet. And do pregnant women count as two persons if this measure is passed? Do they have to pay for two at theaters and at movies? Do they get double rations in the military? What about a pregnant woman who watches an R-rated movie? Should we punish her for exposing the microscopic American to filth?It would be a very odd world to live in especially if you happen to be a woman. On the other hand if the quote is correct and this ballot measure wouldn't ban contraception or abortion why bother with it? Microscopic Americans would still be denied life liberty and the pursuit of happiness by being prevented from birth. The real kind of birth. I mean. The kind that takes place nine months after fertilization.----Link via.
Hillary Clinton who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling may hope that we're evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route with lots of speed bumps. Perhaps smart women can take hope — as long as they're built like Marilyn Monroe. Scientists at the University of California. Santa Barbara and the University of Pittsburgh have released a zany study on the zaftig positing that men are drawn to hourglass figures not only because they look alluring but because hips plumped up by omega-3 fatty acids could mean smarter women bearing smarter kids. Yet Alex Williams recently reported in The Times that the new income superiority of many young women in big cities is causing them to encounter "forms of hostility they weren't prepared to meet," leaving them "trying to figure out how to balance pride in their accomplishments against their perceived need to bolster the egos of the men they date."
It is such an odd column in many ways. On one level it's all about the impossibility of a woman ever being happy if she is smart and earns too much. On another level it's all about what horrible creatures men are but women can't do anything but go along with that. Well those that try to do something different such as Hillary Clinton obviously want to be queen bees and to make men into slaves. What can one say about this all? That Dowd probably dug rather selectively in the available studies to find those which support her own odd powerless melancholy? That perhaps she should have asked some scientists not linked to the studies for some criticisms? That she confuses cultural influences and evolution and appears to use the term "evolution" for all sorts of things which are not evolution at all?I have never quite been able to figure out what the audience is that Dowd writes to. Sometimes I think she writes to herself. A lot of her arguments appear to center on her own experiences. If I wrote a similar column on my own experiences in the dating scene I'd argue that my smartness always served me very well and I'd probably dig in the available studies for those which support that opinion. Note how very different that story would be. Yet it's Dowd's story the New York Times chooses to give us not mine.---Added later: To give you an example of the kinds of studies which Dowd could have cited: There are some which show that more educated women have happier marriages and fewer divorces.
I was planning to put that statement up as the Deep Thought of The Decade but forgot because I was watching Chris Matthews how Clinton's "people" are trying to intimidate CNN host Wolf Blitzer about the debates. Even though Blitzer denied that accusation! Now isn't that fun and relevant for understanding the candidates too. It is mostly Hillary Clinton who is the object of the really weird stuff that some pundits write these days. Maureen Dowd wrote two columns on her perfidies after the and she is supposed to be one of the liberals in the New York Times stable. Andrew Sullivan how horrible writing will be if the Clinton's get back into the White House. Indeed many of the arguments I hear against Hillary Clinton have to do with how unpleasant her presidency would make the job of a pundit. That's a fair argument among pundits. But it doesn't say very much about her impact on the rest of the country. For instance would she attack all sorts of small Muslim countries or not? Would she pour the rest of the Constitution down the toilet and flush afterwards? It's hard to know whether the dirt-digging on Hillary Clinton is to do with her gender or with the Clintons who evidently were greatly hated among the press corps. But in either case I think we all have gotten the message already. Please stop with the silly Hillary-bashing. Bash her on the issues sure. And no that Chris Matthews has issues with her does not legitimize those as real issues.
If I could resurrect one batch of files it would be those reflecting the advice of his staff that he not pursue his desire to free convicted rapist Wayne DuMond. By "advice," I mean I think some of them all but pleaded with Huckabee not to do it. Though DuMond's prior record included a conviction for assault and his alleged involvement in a slaying and one other rape by the start of Huckabee's governorship DuMond had become a national figure thanks to Republican efforts to depict him as a victim of the Bill Clinton machine. The rape victim was a distant relative of Clinton's. Huckabee perhaps persuaded by DuMond's supposed conversion to Christianity announced his intention to commute DuMond's sentence without talking to the victim. Outraged she stepped forward to protest publicly. The backlash was swift and powerful. Huckabee backed away from commuting DuMond's sentence but in a private meeting lobbied the state Parole Board to release him. Huckabee said in writing that he supported DuMond's release. DuMond moved to Missouri in 2000 where he molested and killed one woman and was suspected of doing the same to another but died in prison before he could be charged in the second case.
I have read about this earlier with a suggestion that the victim's family relationship to Bill Clinton had an effect on the urge to free DuMond. If that is true the other murdered women must weigh heavily on the consciences of some politicians. Whatever the truth about all that might be. I find it astonishing how being a social conservative is somehow seen as almost the same as being a cuddly and furry pet. Like a tarantula perhaps at least from the angle of those whom the social conservative would like to put back into their proper places. So we can read reams about McCain the straight-shooter but very little about McCain the anti-choicer. Because social conservative issues are irrelevant for most of the political writers. I think. They're on the other side of the fence. It is not their freedoms which will be curtailed not their human value which will be doubted. This is perhaps also why Glenn Greenwald that Ron Paul is getting a bad deal among the liberals. After all the guy wants to honor the constitution and to get the U. S out of Iraq. That he also otherwise resembles the Taliban in his social values is not that important for Glenn it seems. There are certain tradeoffs one can contemplate when called Glenn rather than Glenda. I guess. Though I'm not sure what Ron Paul might have in stock for gays so it could be that Greenwald is serious about the tradeoffs involving his own life. All this is somehow linked to that idea of politics as all about hard stuff: money and bombs and jostling elbows. In that definition it is mostly men who are into politics and nobody much cares about those fluffy labels such as "social conservative." It's other people that fluffiness would suffocate and it's not really politics but special
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