I loathe American irony, but I found this apt:
Voter Registration in all 50 States. Ginger doesn’t want to hear you didn’t know how to register to vote. She knows baby is muuuuuch smarter than that.
“Shaking a virus to death is not a new idea. Arizona State University physicist Kong-Thon Tsen, who pioneered the practice, conducted eight peer-reviewed studies in 2006 and 2007 demonstrating that vibrations can deactivate a number of viruses. But Tsen’s latest work may have found a way to destroy HIV, just by hitting the right note.
I”n much the same way that opera singers use sound waves to shatter glass, laser light has shown considerable potential for killing viruses such as the tobacco necrosis virus and M13 bacteriophages. Like a wineglass, a virus’s outer shell—known as a capsid—has an intrinsic frequency of vibration. Tsen uses a near-infrared laser to excite the target’s outer shell and spur vibrations powerful enough to rupture the capsid.
“In March 2008, preliminary testing revealed that Tsen’s lasers were able to destroy HIV in test tubes. For people with AIDS, Tsen’s antiviral attack could be more effective and safer than the current drug cocktails, which have a slew of side effects. In the next two or three years, Tsen hopes to test the technology’s effects on HIV in monkeys, zapping blood outside the body.”
Zapping HIV With Lasers. Lasers set to the right frequency may effectively knock out the virus, by Orli Van Mourik, Discover, June 10, 2008
So there IS something to look forward to!
“SAN FRANCISCO - California’s highest court Wednesday refused to stay its decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, clearing the final hurdle for gay couples to start tying the knot this month.
“Conservative religious and legal groups had asked the California Supreme Court to stop its May 15 order requiring state and local officials to sanction same-sex unions from becoming effective until voters have the chance to consider the issue in November. The justices’ decisions typically become final after 30 days.
“An initiative to ban gay marriage has qualified for the Nov. 4 ballot. Its passage would overrule the court’s decision by amending the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman.”
Calif. court refuses to stay gay marriage ruling, by Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer, June 4, 2008
Seriously Californians, get registered, get with it and vote this gay hatin’ constitutional amendment down in November. Prop 22 slipped in because no one thought anyone would be crazy enough to vote for it. Hey, as Scotty said to Chekov on the bridge of the Enterprise, “Fool me once…” etc.
“1. Sense of humor. There is not one guy I know of that doesn’t appreciate a who girl laughs at his dumb jokes simply out of a sensitive humorous bone.When a woman laughs, there is always a beam of light that comes across a guy’s face, and if the laughter is, say from a woman across the room, it has the power to make a man jealous, wanting that laughter to be for him. Humor is child-like energy and is like a billboard mounted to a woman’s forehead that says “Open Heart!” Men feel it on a gut level, it’s in the nature of polarity to men and women. I’m not talking about faking a sense of humor, because that kind of inauthenticity will throw red flags. You can always tell a person who is trying to laugh to gain some sort of approval. I’m saying a woman sensitive to humor is a great find for a man.”
12 Things a Woman Does That Men Find Irresistible, Yintegrity, March 29, 2008
I really should get out more.
Do other cities do this?
“They are the homeless of the domestic animal world — colonies of feral cats that roam residential neighborhoods and lurk around office buildings and commercial garages, scavenging for food.
“Unlike other strays that might rub up against a leg hoping for a crumb or a head rub, these felines are so unaccustomed to human contact that they dart away when people approach. Feral cats cannot be turned into house pets. When they end up in municipal shelters, they have little hope of coming out alive.
“But one animal welfare group has figured out a way to save their lives and put them to work in Los Angeles. The Working Cats program of Voice for the Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal advocacy and rescue group, has placed feral cats in a handful of police stations with rodent problems, just as the group placed cats in the rat-plagued downtown flower district several years ago — to great effect.
“Six feral cats were recently installed as ratters in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division, and another group will be housed at the Central Division early in the new year.
“Their reputation as furtive and successful exterminators grew after feral cats were introduced to the parking lot of the Wilshire Division nearly six years ago. Rats had been burrowing into the equipment bags that bicycle officers stored in outside cages; inside the facility, mice were sometimes scurrying across people’s desks.
“‘Once we got the cats, problem solved,’ said Cmdr. Kirk Albanese, a captain at the Wilshire station at the time. ‘I was almost an immediate believer.’”
~snip~
“For more information on ‘working’ feral cats, go to http://www.vftafoundation.org/workingcats.htm.”
LAPD enlists feral cats for rat patrol. The felines have been introduced, to great effect, at several stations with rodent problems. Parker Center may get them too. By Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 29, 2007
God bless people who think up brilliant stuff like this. They make me think better of our own species. Why can’t there be more solutions like this? I ask you. Why?
(If the LAT article is behind the registration or paywall, you can click on this: Feral Cats Mousing for a Living in LA [pdf]. Sorry, LAT, this story is too cool not to be read and you can send me a C&D if you think different. Oh, so, while I’m at it, here’s something else Los Angeles, the county this time, is getting right: Los Angeles Outdoor Gyms in Molinia’s district [pdf]. Yay!)
“Each one of those cases is a person who had insurance and got sick. They filed for payments authorized by their coverage and Blue Shield said no and attempted to cancel their policies. These sick people then had to fight tooth and nail to get the payment to their doctors so they would not be liable for the bill. In over 200 of those cases they lost and the companies dropped them completely from coverage. Of course that means that they then have a pre-existing condition and thus would have a next to impossible time getting coverage from another company.
“It is a disgusting practice that is all about trying to squeeze out a few more dollars in profits. It is illegal and I am glad to see the state launching the investigation and moving to fine them. It sure would be nice if that dissuaded the companies from trying this in the first place, but I don’t hold out that much hope that it will.”
Blue Shield Illegally Canceling Policies, Working Californians, December 13, 2007
Journal of Bloglandia (ISSN1950-7645)
Journal of Women on Comics (ISSN1940-7637)
Please cross-post, thanks!
“Many lower back problems are caused by the very athleticism that modern sports demand. ‘The forces involved in sports nowadays are enormous,’ Higgins says. ‘What you see in some of these sports are very powerful athletes creating high levels of extension and compression of the spine.’”
Twist and Ouch, by Gretchen Reynolds, NYT, October 28, 2007 (via)
Hm, I managed to get a herniated disc in my lower back without being a sports nut. At least my doc spotted the symptoms and got me x-rayed so I know it’s a herniated disc and not just my own personal failing of being fat and sedentary. Some good exercises in this article, the same ones I got in physical therapy, which helped me learn to live in my permanently damaged body. Permanent damage = true age. Sigh. Oh well, beats being dead.
“We need organizations who aren’t afraid of what is politically possible and talk about was is morally right. Today the CNA placed a full-page ad in 10 Iowa papers arguing strongly for not-for-profit health care, Medicare for All, taking the example of Dick Cheney’s multiple heart problems, and noting that if he wasn’t receiving the finest in government-run health care, he’d be dead by now.”
Give It Up For The California Nurses Association, by David Dayen, Calitics, December 10, 2007
Whee! California Nurses rule so hard!
“Instead of fast food, it was fast flu shots Friday for hundreds of motorists converging on drive-through vaccination clinics at community colleges in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
“At Moorpark College, about 100 cars idled in the morning chill, snaking around orange traffic cones as drivers inched to the front of the line. Over the next four hours, nurses there administered more than 500 doses of flu vaccine. At College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, 1,076 people were vaccinated, said Deborah Davenport, a director of community services for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
“‘It’s free and I get to stay in my car,’ said Summer Healthcote, her 7-year-old son, Andrew, strapped into a booster seat in the back of a green Suburban at the Moorpark campus. ‘I couldn’t pass it up.’
“But public health officials said the one-day exercise wasn’t designed to cater to Southern California’s time-strapped, car-crazed culture. If the drive-through concept proves successful, they said, it could become the model for speedily inoculating entire cities in the event of a deadly pandemic or bioterrorism.”
Drive-through flu shots test ways to speedily deliver vaccines, LAT, November 17, 2007
This is pretty cool, they should always do this. Gee, why wait for a tularemia outbreak to use this system? In more mundane matters: here’s where you can find flu shots, though not of the drive through genus.
“Each year, American adults have, overall, a 1-in-1,743 chance of dying in an accident. That means that even if nothing else killed you—doing away with old age and disease—you would on average live to be 1,743 years old before a fatal accident. But you could do better. A 9-year-old child has much lower odds of accidental death, about 1 in 10,000. If we could keep everyone to this low rate (avoiding work and driving would probably help), we could typically live 10,000 years. About 37 percent of the population would do better yet, living on average to the ripe old age of 20,000, says James Vaupel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.”
If You Never Aged, How Long Would You Live? With a little luck, you could well make it to your 20,000th birthday, by Boonsri Dickinson, Discover, November 16, 2007
They have really gone over the edge at Max Planck now. On the other hand, the only thing I mind about being of a certain age is the wear and tear and not being able to bounce back from the flu or a bender like I could in my 20s. Ah well, I’d rather be this age and not drink as much.
But this would be a mighty fine start in the meantime:
“The OneCareNow Campaign supports Senate Bill 840(Kuehl) as the one healthcare reform proposal in California that will provide high quality healthcare for all while controlling costs.
“We reject AB 8 and any other junk insurance compromise between the Governor’s plan and the Assembly Speaker’s that doesn’t provide universal coverage and funnels most healthcare dollars through private health insurers, which are the primary obstacles to real healthcare reform.
“The public doesn’t want a last minute, back room rush job. A new poll found more than two-thirds of California voters — a margin of 68 percent to 25 percent — said they prefer ‘making sure we pass healthcare reform that gets it right and improves the system, and not take the risk of passing bad legislation.’ On August 11, the Great LA Healthcare Rally showed massive support for SB 840 as the healthcare solution for California. SB 840 has passed the California Senate and is now in the Assembly waiting for the Governor to learn why private health insurance companies have and will always fail to control healthcare costs.”
Rah!
Oh, by the way:
“Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic - see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them… An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.” Tony Benn
And all of this is via Loganotron on November 12, 2007.
My idol speaks:
“A disease is sweeping the Internet. It preys on the fat, the moody, the anti-social, the lazy, and those very people that once formed the core of Internet users. It can strike at any moment, but is ironically most likely to infect those that have been warned about the disease. This illness is rarely diagnosed willingly by medical professionals, but is so commonly self-diagnosed as to approach an epidemic.
“I am referring to Asperger’s Syndrome, the plague of the 21st century, but you can call it Internet Disease. Let’s turn to Merriam-Webster for the definition of the disease.”
~snip~
“The symptoms make a person with Asperger’s Syndrome sound like Vulcan’s biggest asshole, but the reality is much more depressing. Victims of Asperger’s are socially-crippled and crabby, often obese or horrifyingly skinny, through absolutely 100% no fault of their own. They are not responsible for their actions or behavior.
“To provide insight into the plight of Asperger’s sufferers I would like to transport you to the world of a 19 year old female suffering from Asperger’s. Her name is Zeph Mercurial. She explained her condition on our forums, so I will allow her to speak in her own words.”
Epidemic of Asperger’s Syndrome, by Zack “Geist Editor” Parsons, Something Awful, Friday, July 27, 2007
This is SO mean.
“But most important, I think, is the golden rule that all revolutions get stuck at some point. Every revolution contains within itself the pull towards its own demise. And usually this demise is symbolized by one person.
“Think of the French Revolution, which brought all kinds of new democratic ideas, but was corrupted by the advent of the dictator Napoleon. Napoleon brought the achievements of the Enlightenment to the rest of Europe yet ruled like an old-fashioned monarch, installing his family on thrones across Europe. The Russian Revolution was halted in the same way by Lenin’s violence and particulary by Stalin’s crazed powerlust.
“The Napoleon or Stalin of the sexual revolution was called Hugh Hefner. This Playboy magnate appeared to be a supporter of the counter movement. For example, he helped to sponsor the district court cases that eventually led to the famous American lawsuit Roe versus Wade. But he also signalled in the derailing of the sexual movement. Playboy magazine standardised sexuality on a gigantic scale. The women featured there were stripped down to the bare essentials in more ways than one. Like the famous playboy bunny, Hefner turned them into completely predictable images of sex. His enterprise made him incredibly rich and made sexuality incredibly boring.
“You might say that we are living in the hefnerist era now. The liberal achievements of the sexual revolution exist in name only. Its creativity and playfulness have been destroyed by huge industrial concerns like Playboy and other marketing companies that use sexuality and porn in a routine and commodified way. But this does not mean that we should return to the period before the sexual revolution. I think both anti-porn feminists and conservatives are wrong when they battle against the pornofication of society. The democratization of sex is a vast achievement which should not be reversed…. or restricted to ‘haute couture’.”
Sexing the Handbag, by Dylan van Rijsbergen, Sign and Sight, October 31, 2007 (via 3quarksdaily)
Yikes.
Makes me sick. So, in future, the hospitals will drive them up to Pasadena/Glendale/Burbank or out to the Valleys, or down to Long Beach/Commerce and out that way. I hate to say it, but this is a moral problem (I hate moral problems). However, the good news is that the solution is economic:
It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. It is time to extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants it. Especially those who need it. It’s past time to do the right thing and extend Medicare to anyone and everyone who wants or needs it.
Are we clear? Good.
“Anyemaqen Mountains, China — More than 3 miles above sea level in these jagged, wind-scoured mountains, there’s little doubt that global warming is endangering China’s future.
“The glaciers that ripple off the peaks of Anyemaqen, a mountain range in the western China province of Qinghai, are shrinking rapidly, endangering hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters flowing eastward through the Yellow River.
“With the rest of the country punished by record heat waves, floods and droughts this summer, it’s no wonder that Beijing, which has long viewed global warming as a problem that rich nations should solve, is waking up to the fact that China may be especially at risk.”
Warming of glaciers threatens millions in China, by Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer, August 1, 2007 (via KSJ Tracker)
So what happens when we start fighting over water instead of oil?
I am so sick of candidates and nominees for high office being okay with waterboarding.
Is anyone who’s ever been waterboarded going to say it’s okay? I doubt it.
Is anyone who’s almost drowned going to say waterboarding is okay? Again, I doubt it.
Are any of these candidates and nominees for high office going to offer to voluntarily be waterboarded and then say it’s okay? I really fucking doubt it.
Giuliani Leaves Door Open to Waterboarding, ABC News, October 25, 2007
That should cause it to be outlawed immediately.
Could my country please get some counseling? Or at least try to remember the Golden Rule? It’s really very simple if you think about it for 2 seconds.
Grrrrrrrr.
“I would like to believe that we are beyond sexism: that women do,in fact, get judged and treated exactly the way men do. But, it doesn’t happen. One of the ways this really hits me is how women are punished for ‘emoting’ in the workplace.
“I have a friend who is a psychiatrist. While she was in her residency, she had a real asshole as her chief resident. She is a very, very bright woman (with a Ph.D in Philosophy, specializing in Philosophy of Science and a MD). She is also likely to speak up when she finds reasoning or practices to be flawed. Because she had been dressed down multiple times when she expressed her reservations or criticisms, she held her tongue, yet her face showed what she was feeling. Her boss starting criticizing her display of ‘affect,’ which he said was not professional for a training psychiatrist. So, to deal with this situation, she did something quite interesting: she got botox so that she literally couldn’t show what she was feeling.”
Why Does a Reformed Republican Chick Need Prozac?, Mad Melancholic Feminista, July 21, 2005 (via Feminism 101)
It. Could. Work!
Couldn’t hurt. Most men either don’t care what a woman is thinking (and saying) or get it wrong, so we might as well save a little collagen and grief. Emoting in the workplace, for God’s sake.
Or so they tells me:
“Actually, the older woman carries just as heavy a load after 40/50/60 as she does when she is 20, her ‘load’ changes slightly. Would I have used the word necessity in that sentence? No. Perhaps I might have used the word ‘benefit.’”
Evolution Depends on Crones Crone Speaks, October 17, 2007
I think the benefit of being in my late forties is that I’m so much smarter than I was in my twenties, it’s all just so much easier to deal with. So, the load is probably just as heavy, I’m just managing it better. Being invisible is a mixed blessing though.
And then there’s Joe Bob:
“I’ve been thinking about this because of a recent New York Times report on an international conference of anthropologists and ethnographers who are puzzled by recent research showing that families with a resident maternal grandmother are healthier than families without one, even if everything else about the family is normal. In some societies, the survival of the family–actual life and death–is more often preserved by the presence of a grandmother than by, for example, a mere father.”
The Grandma Mafia, Joe Bob’s America, November 8, 2002
Ah, Joe Bob. Only you could write the words “mere father” with such aplomb.
I’ve been busy with other things so I’m late to the Tigra assault and JLA chamber of horrors pages party.
And DC is making money off these images, well, that’s commerce for ya. No one is forcing anyone to buy this stuff. As for me, I will be dropping all Marvel and DC titles except Jonah Hex and All-Star Batman and Robin. I know those titles aren’t exactly Sunday school lessons, but I have Jonah Hex issues to work out and ASBAR makes me laugh.* Otherwise I’m just tired of giving my money to two male-dominated corporations that hate me. My comic shop will have to make up the dough they’re losing on me in doll, sorry, action figure sales.
(Images via Journalista October 16 and 22, 2007. Thanks, Dirk…I think.)
*Why does everyone hate ASBAR? For me, whose very first exposure as an innocent child to Batman was the TV show, ASBAR is like the Star Trek Original Series Mirror Universe version of that show. I expect a bearded Spock and Uhura’s midriff any page now. This being the case, ASBAR hits me on levels I’m just beginning to understand. Too bad they didn’t have Black Canary in the TV show. Any suggestions on which 60s blond bombshell the producers could have gotten for her? I vote for Mamie Van Doren.
Update October 26, 2007: Laura Hudson weighs in on the subject. Well said, Laura.
“The ’stack them up like cordwood’ line comes from Mark Klaas, whose daughter Polly’s brutal murder ushered in the three strikes sentencing law, which is now rarely being used to capture the kind of violent offenders like the ones involved in her crime. 2/3 of all of the inmates at Solano as a result of the three strikes law struck out on a nonviolent offense. And these are precisely the inmates who are clogging the system. Every corrections officer interviewed agreed that tough sentencing laws like three strikes aren’t working. And even Mark Klaas, whose ‘cordwood’ line represented his earlier state of mind, now believes that we’re ‘not going to solve the crime problem by building more prisons.’ Only rehabilitation, treatment, and prevention can truly address this crisis. And here is where the California penal system comes up woefully short.
“While 85% of the population at Solano enters prison with either a prior or current substance abuse problem, only 10% will be able to enter the drug treatment and counseling program; there simply aren’t enough spaces. Only 12% engage in some kind of vocational training, acquiring skills that can potentially be put to good use on the outside. In fact, the best vocational training in California prisons these days is for crime itself. ‘This is a school where you can learn all kinds of crime,’ says one official, accounting for the nation’s highest recidivism rate. And so once their sentences expire, we send these ex-cons off into the world with $200 and a bus ticket, with no skills, no treatment, no job, in many cases no place to live, largely worse off than they were when they entered prison, and we’re surprised when they return?”
Breaking Point: Ted Koppel on the CA Prison Crisis, by: David Dayen, Calitics, October 9, 2007
As a gentleman said in the New Yorker earlier this year: “Years ago, you had to be a criminal to go to jail. Now all you have to be is a fuckup.”
Three Strikes isn’t working. Can we please get rid of it already? California’s prisons are evil and embarrassing. We’re a better State than this, really.
Geeze, it’s not rocket science.
“Employed, but underpaid and uninsured: Consider a waiter making $27,000 who is uninsured, either by choice or because his employer doesn’t provide insurance. If the governor has his way, that person could find himself having to buy insurance - everyone would have to carry insurance under Schwarzenegger’s plan - without a government subsidy. (Only people making less than $25,525 would qualify for government help under his plan, a threshold Democrats say is too low.)
“‘The Democratic health plan would put that person in a better spot: Either his employer would have to start offering insurance, or he could buy benefits through a state pool, paying no more than $1,350 a year out of pocket.’”
What the Health Care Plans Mean for Working Californians, Working Californians, September 27, 2007
No more than $1,350/year is still too much. It should be $0.00 or maybe, I dunno, $240/year, which is still a lot for waiters and other minimum wage type earners. Tips or no; Reagan’s 8% Waitress Tax laid waste to that.
You know, why don’t Republicans just admit they’d love it if they could just get half of everyone’s hard-earned pay to support their evil money-grubbing schemes and the slave society they’re trying so hard to create for some reason that’s a total mystery to me. Slaves! Indentured servants! Concubinage! Chaos! Endless war! No new taxes! There, I said it, and I feel so much better now.
MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE WHO WANTS IT NOW! MEDICARE NOW! MEDICARE NOW! MEDICARE NOW! MEDICARE NOW! MEDICARE NOW! MEDICARE NOW!
I guess I’m done.
“Wealth already provides and escape hatch from most disasters – it buys early-warming systems for tsunami-prone regions and stockpiles of Tamiflu for the next outbreak. It buys bottled water, generators, satellite phones, and rent-a-cops. During the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, the U.S. government initially tried to charge American citizens for the cost of their own evacuation, through it was eventually forced to back down. If we continue in this direction, the images of people stranded on New Orleans rooftops will not only have been a glimpse of America’s unresolved past of racial inequality but will also have foreshadowed a collective future of disaster apartheid, in which survival is determined primarily by one’s ability to pay.
“Perhaps part of the reason so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it. This may also partially explain why so many Bush supporters are Christian-end-timers. It’s not just that they need to believe there is an escape hatch from the world they are creating. It’s that the Rapture is a parable for what they are building down here on Earth – a system that invites destruction and disaster, then swoops in with private helicopters and airlifts them and their friends to divine safety.”
Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein, Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 315, No. 1889, October 2007 (sorry, no link yet, have to wait until it’s online, unless you can’t wait and buy a copy)
It’s that the Rapture is a parable for what they are building down here on Earth – a system that invites destruction and disaster…
So now that we know what these crazies do when they get power, wouldn’t it behoove us not to, y’know, give then any power? Or do what it takes to prevent them from taking it.
“Less than three months ago at platform hearings in Salt Lake City, I asked the Republican Party to lift the shroud of silence which has been draped over the issue of HIV and AIDS. I have come tonight to bring our silence to an end. I bear a message of challenge, not self-congratulation. I want your attention, not your applause.
“I would never have asked to be HIV positive, but I believe that in all things there is a purpose; and I stand before you and before the nation gladly. The reality of AIDS is brutally clear. Two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying. A million more are infected. Worldwide, forty million, sixty million, or a hundred million infections will be counted in the coming few years. But despite science and research, White House meetings, and congressional hearings, despite good intentions and bold initiatives, campaign slogans, and hopeful promises, it is — despite it all — the epidemic which is winning tonight.”
~snip~
“This is not a distant threat. It is a present danger. The rate of infection is increasing fastest among women and children. Largely unknown a decade ago, AIDS is the third leading killer of young adult Americans today. But it won’t be third for long, because unlike other diseases, this one travels. Adolescents don’t give each other cancer or heart disease because they believe they are in love, but HIV is different; and we have helped it along. We have killed each other with our ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence.”
A Whisper of AIDS, Mary Fisher, 1992 Republication National Convention Address, Online Speech Bank (text, audio and video [sorry about the pop-up, I guess they need the money])
Wow…sister. Thanks.
“Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in north suburban Libertyville. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gob-smacked. It’s as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’ ‘I don’t have an answer for that.’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Just pray for them.’”
~snip~
“A new public-policy group, the National Institute for Reproductive Health, wants to take this contradiction and make it the centerpiece of a national conversation, along with a slogan that stops people in their tracks: How much time should she do? If the U.S. Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. Some states, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal. But, boy, do the doctrinaire suddenly turn squirrelly at the prospect of throwing women in jail.”
~snip~
“They never connect the dots,’ says Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. But her organization urged voters to do just that in the last gubernatorial election, in which the Republican contender believed abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. ‘We wanted him to tell the women of Iowa exactly how much time he expected them to serve in jail if they had an abortion,’ June recalled.”
~snip~
“There are only two logical choices: Hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can’t countenance the first, you have to accept the second. You can’t have it both ways.”
What would penalty for abortion be?, by Anna Quindlen, Chicago Sun Times, August 8, 2007 (via Mr. Dan Kelly)
I love YouTube. Where else can you see stuff like this? Defendez le YouTube.com!
“ABORTION is a front, a shill issue, for those who are pushing a radical Evangelical Christian theocratic agenda. Those leading the charge against ABORTION are not interested in pragmatic policy options to that would bring about fewer abortions, they are interested in Christianizing American law, culture, and politics. Pragmatism is every bit as much an enemy to them as opposing ideology. It isn’t a question of helping women avoid unfortunate and undesired circumstances for them. ABORTION is the leading edge, the public face of their righteous crusade between absolute good and anyone who disagrees with them. They do not merely want to decrease the number of abortions, they want to make sure that unmarried people don’t have sex, they want to make sure that abortions are made illegal and punishable by law, they want their Dominionist worldview and the policies that they see as springing from it to be unassailably instantiated.
“Why use ABORTION for this? This requires understanding one of the most effective conservative rhetorical gambits of the last couple decades, what we can call the “cage and frame” strategy. Framing, as discussed by linguist George Lakoff, is the act of setting the parameters for discussion by choosing the language of the debate. What Lakoff shows is that words are not just “Hello, my name is” stickers that we put on things, they come with ways of seeing the world packed into them. Selecting certain words instead of others limits the discussion by putting certain topics on the table and others off the table. Both sides have done this in their choice of designators. ‘Pro-choice’ frames the issue in terms of liberty and who wants to oppose freedoms to choose? ‘Pro-life’ frames the issue in terms of the life or death of a fetus and who wants to be pro-death? The selection of the name is designed not only to designate which side one is on, but also to elevate (in a fallacious question-begging fashion) one part of the complex of inter-related moral issues in this incredibly difficult ethical question.
“But what we see is more than framing. We see another trick which I term ‘caging’ in which one takes a series of related issues that you do not want acted upon and then selects a small single issue to pull attention way from all the rest. Like magicians who will do something flamboyant and fascinating with their left hand to keep you from seeing what they are doing with their right hand, the idea is to make one insignificant issue the focus of all attention in order to make sure that all other related issues are ignored. As long as there is a raucous passionate debate around that issue and it is made to seem of paramount importance, then the assumption by most listeners is that a fair and open debate on all issues is taking place and no one will notice what you are doing with regard to the other issues.
“In this way, women’s rights have been caged by abortion. All the time, effort, and money that could be going into furthering women’s rights on a number of fronts are sucked into the abortion fight. Not only that, but how to cage the issue is determined by what issue is easiest to frame when let out of the cage. If conservatives chose to openly fight against voting rights or equal pay for equal work legislation, it would put them clearly on the side of immoral support of injustice and they would lose quickly and decisively. But by caging women’s rights and only letting abortion out of the cage, any possible advances on the women’s rights front are stopped in their tracks and pro-lifers can portray themselves as the defenders of families and innocent life, not the opponents of women’s rights.
“In the same way, civil rights issues have been caged with only affirmative action set outside the cage. We can bring the civil rights charge to a halt by focusing all attention only on hiring in a small set of cases. Again, this is made more effective when the caging is combined with framing — affirmative action is only to be addressed in terms of quotas. In this way, the advancement of civil rights legislation not only stops, but those stopping it do so by portraying themselves as opposing discrimination.
“Gay rights? Cage questions about hate crimes, workplace discrimination, housing discrimination,… only let out marriage. Then frame it in terms of “protecting the family.” Cage and frame.”
Why you can’t depoliticize abortion, Philosophers Playground, July 31, 2007
So we’re stuck, caged and framed, until… something.
“Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street’s assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street’s profit demands.
“Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. ‘This is not altruistic,’ he said. ‘This is good business.’”
Mr. Sinegal is a good man. When his time comes, and that should not be too soon, he’s going to the best part of heaven.
“Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco’s workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.
“‘He has been too benevolent,’ she said. ‘He’s right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden.’”
Ms. Kozloff is a monster and her way of thinking is everything that’s wrong in the world. She should rot in hell forever and ever and as soon as possible.
How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart, by Steven Greenhouse, NYT, July 17, (via Professor DeLovely, I mean DeLong)
In Los Angeles, Costco used to be Price Club and it’s always been a good place to shop. It’s the best $50/year I spend.
“We were in the ladies changing room, and I could see him eyeballing a somewhat Rubenesque lady who had just come out of the shower. Naked. He marches right up to her, and says in his loudest voice,
“‘Why are you SO FAT??’
“I of course wanted to die, but to her eternal credit this woman turned to my boy with great dignity and said ‘Because I eat too many little boys’ and swanked off. That sure shut him up.”
Contest Winner: Dubious Claim of Most Humiliating Child, One Good Thing, July 17, 2007
I could never be that cool. Fat women truly are the wave of the future.
“Q: What do the cigarette companies think of this?
“A: This bill was crafted with the full cooperation and support of Philip Morris (maker of Marlboro). Nonetheless, this has not prevented the supporters of this bill in the health community from claiming they are fighting big tobacco.
“That’s just mind boggling that the Cancer Society, the Heart Association, the AMA and … the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids can get away with this.
“Q: So why is it appealing to public health advocates and Philip Morris?
“A: This will satisfy the fixation of what I call natural born regulators, people who don’t like words such as light, ultra-light and low tar. And so there’s no question about it, the FDA will, in its infinite wisdom, ban the terms light, ultra-light, low-tar and ultra-low-tar because those don’t mean anything. All they do is create the false sense of safety on the part of consumers.
“Q: So why does Philip Morris support the bill?
“A: Another thing’s going to happen with this bill. There are going to be restrictions on marketing. And the most aggressive marketer of cigarettes today is R.J. Reynolds (maker of Winston, Doral, Camel and Kool cigarettes). They are trying very hard to compete with Marlboro.
“Philip Morris knows that this bill, which is bound to limit cigarette advertising, is going to, in effect, freeze people’s brands where they are.
“Q: So you end up with people who want to make cigarettes safer allied with a company that wants to sell more cigarettes?”
Expert Opinion: Dr. Alan Blum, director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and SocietyPlan for FDA to police tobacco ignites criticism, by Dave Parks, Birmingham News, July 16, 2007
Didn’t Philip Morris turn into Altira or something like that not so long ago? Are they back to being Philip Morris again? I’m just not paying enough attention.
WASHINGTON, July 12, 2007 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today announced a permanent prohibition on the slaughter of cattle that are unable to stand or walk (”downer” cattle) when presented for pre-slaughter inspection. The inability to stand or walk can be a clinical sign of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
FSIS Publishes Final Rule Prohibiting Processing of “Downer” Cattle, USDA, July 12, 2007 (via RebeccasPocket)
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