White House Again Creating Own Mgmt Structure

Rather than using existing tools. Idiots.

Intel Dump has some things to say about this 'war czar' business.

Stealing My Topics from Twisty Faster

Thanks, Twisty! Very intriguing comments thread over at I Blame The Patriarchy, last month:

She Said I Know What It's Like to be Dead. Read the comments. Read them with an eye to the gender of the author, if you can.

Done? Great. Here's the lowdown: Twisty proposed that non-explicitly-consensual sex be rape. Every time. (This would naturally necessitate some changes -- hopefully liberating ones -- on how women signal interest in sex. By, you know, saying so. Maybe a little green light, red light, card would do the trick.)

What's so interesting is, as I'm about halfway through the comments and expect more of the same shortly, that the men in the comments are talking about how unfair it would be to have some chica accuse them of rape, a couple years after the fact, while what the women are talking about is a fundamental change in views toward consensual sex. A conceptualization of a default 'no', rather than a default 'yes'.

And, feeling threatened by the whole idea (my diagnosis), but only able to quarrel and nitpick over the thought of what a 'no' two years after the fact might do to them, the men on the thread quarrel and nitpick this technical bit Twisty proposed that maybe isn't, IMO, such a great idea, which is an open-ended statute of limitations.

In so doing, they neatly circumvent any actual discussion -- at least on their parts -- of the fact that 'no' from a woman gets ignored all the time, and that imposing and enforcing a default 'no' is therefore a fantastic idea, if you want to actually reduce rape. We can and should move the onus off the woman, who currently gets put on trial as much or even more so than her accused rapist, and onto the actual defendant.[*]

Very interesting behavior to observe.

[*] Saying this, I am not advocating a shift of the burden of proof from the prosecution -- it's the state's job to prove the crime -- to the defendant, but I fully support the idea of an affirmative defense of "She specifically said yes," rather than the unspoken current affirmative defense of "she's a slut."

Is the Army Bleeding Out?

Brian Gellman of Intel Dump has a great post on the exodus of captains from the Army, and what it means for the ethical model captains serve as.

L.A. Times Calls for Withdrawal From Iraq

Bring Them Home

This newspaper reluctantly endorsed the U.S. troop surge as the last, best hope for stabilizing conditions so that the elected Iraqi government could assume full responsibility for its affairs. But we also warned that the troops should not be used to referee a civil war. That, regrettably, is what has happened.

I was reading some letter to the editor in the Metro (freebie paper) yesterday, asserting that we can't leave Iraq now that we've broken it. Here's the problem: we can't fix it. Yeah, we broke their country. We invaded, toppled their government, destroyed infrastructure, and we blew it from day one. We outsiders, we foreigners, cannot fix this.

So, I find the argument that we can't leave until we do fix it unpersuasive. How to fix it? Tell me, editorial-writer. How? And explain to me why we haven't been doing your 'how' by, now, because it's been *years*. Explain to me why this troop surge is supposed to make a difference, and explain to me why any Iraqi, anywhere, should ever trust an American to do anything but try and kill them.

"Brief History of Disbelief" getting buried

Are PBS Stations Burying "A Brief History of Disbelief?"

Odd, this complete lack of shock I'm feeling.

CBS shuts down online comments to Obama stories

CBS.com has to shut comments down on Obama stories.

Too many racist comments, huh? And CBS doesn't want to look as if they're effectively condoning them, by hosting them on a CBS web board. Hm. Hm, twice.

If you joke about how oppressed you feel about not being able to freely slur minorities (or women or gays) for entertainment’s sake without any impact, you can go ahead and do so to show how you’re sticking it to the PC Man. Look — Don Imus thinks that’s why he was hired — to stoke the fires of bigotry by pushing the race and misogyny envelope — otherwise he wouldn’t be suing CBS for $40 million. His attorney said that in Imus’s contract with CBS, the network specifically implored Imus to cover “extraordinary,” “irreverent” and, most important, “controversial” topics on his syndicated radio show, which was simulcast daily on MSNBC.

. . . .

If you are a New Plausible Deniability Racist and happen to foment racism, misogyny or homophobia among the sheeple in the process, that’s just a side bonus — and you can deny that you really meant what you said, or now say “that’s what I’m paid to do” as a defense.

David Niewart (Orcinus) gets it right, calling it the "new racism", involving,

staking out positions that, if not overtly racist, at least seek to resurrect some of the hoary mythology of the era of white supremacy. As with most of right-wing race rhetoric of the past twenty years, it's all done with a certain level of plausible deniability, couched in "jokes" or abstrations that let the speakers feign indignation when the racism is pointed out; the current trend is only slightly more overt in its racism, but the underlying sentiments aren't hard to read.

It's all about plausible deniability. It's all about the opposite of accountability.

People (trans. right-wing blowhards) like to bitch about "where America went wrong". I'll tell you where: the day any American isn't accountable -- isn't held accountable or doesn't hold themselves accountable -- for their words and deeds. That's where America "went wrong". But it's not past tense, friends and neighbors. Every day, every denial, is America going wrong, right now.

On the Front Lines of Climate Change

On the Front Lines of Climate Change

He doesn't know the term climate change, but he knows what he sees.

Even without television and newspapers, Shahidul can sense that something just isn't right about the weather. "It gets warmer every year, there are more storms and the monsoon doesn't come on time," he says. The water level in front of his house also rises a little every year. "When I moved here, we still had three fields in front of the house. Now there are only two," Shahidul goes on. "I'm afraid the water will take another piece away from me this year." As a precautionary measure, he had the platform for his little barn built half a meter higher. "You never know what will happen."

Kucinich Got Game

and? Supporting documents for his call for impeachment of Cheney.

"Tier 4" Law Schools and Regent University

It's annoying on a certain level to watch clips (d/l'd from CrooksandLiars.com) of Bill Maher slamming tier-4 law schools when talking about Regent University, and Jon Stewart talking about Regent University and "Jiffy Law" (that was a damn funny clip, though), because I attend a tier-4 law school. Maher, in particular, recently painted with a broad, and entirely unfair, brush.

Do I approve of an administration that values loyalty over skill, talent, or diligent service? No. (Does this mean every grad of Regent is a bad lawyer, b/c 150 of them are employed by the Bush Administration? Well, I don't actually *know* that, do I?)

There are nearly 200 law schools split up into these pesky 'tiers'. Tier 1&2 comprise the 'top 100' ABA-accredited schools in nation. (Do I know what the criteria are for a tier? No. This whole thing started thanks to Consumer Reports, or US News and World Report, or some other competitive idiot, however many years ago.) That's not counting the non-ABA-accredited law schools in the country.

That's not counting the rest of the law schools in the country.

Looking at the list, which I don't deign to link to, I see that I was offered a seat at a tier-2 law school, and multiple tier-3 and tier-4 law schools. I chose my school for various reasons, being completely oblivious to this tier business, thankfully. (I was more or less ready to leave California, I liked the strong commitment to public service of this school, the mix of interest areas -- international law and environmental law -- available here, and they offered me a full-tuition scholarship, as opposed to the rest, which only offered me half-tuition scholarships.)

I firmly believe that I attend one of the best law schools in the nation. Any of you reading this who've attended a big university -- you already know the difference between the researcher stuck teaching a class b/c he has to teach one class a year or some such, and doesn't give a damn about you, and the "real teachers". Just about every member of the faculty at my school is the real thing. They come to *teach*. These people are *dedicated*.

I can learn anything, anytime, anywhere. What matters isn't if you're -- and now it's my turn to paint with a broad brush -- a legacy student at Harvard or Yale, what matters is what you do with your education after you walk out the door.

So, Maher was not terribly amusing[*], essentially saying that all tier-4 schools suck. They don't. Pat Robertson founding what seems to be a Dominionist university, with a law school, and those graduates possibly getting preferential treatment b/c of their religion, and presumed perceptions regarding their loyalty to Bush, and worse, if those preconceptions are actually accurate? Very, very, bad. But not the same thing.

[*] Stewart kept it much more on RU.

I knew it was coming

I haven't been able to bear reading Riverbend for a long time now. Riverbend is leaving Iraq.

Pandemic of Lies

I had visited several times and there was something nagging at me. I could not work out what left me uniquely unsettled about the place. It was not the depressing environment; few prisons are inspirational. It was not the occasional intimidation. Eventually it came to me: I could not remember being lied to so often and so consistently. In Guantánamo, lying was a disease that had reached pandemic prpportions.

No Fairytales Allowed, by Clive Stafford Smith, attorney to 36 GTMO inmates.

Lines of Questioning for Gonzales

Over at Crooks and Liars, everyone should read the Five Lines of Questioning for Alberto Gonzales. Including Senators.

Here's a Ponderable

I read a particularly interesting comment made to Chris Clarke's "How Not To Be An Asshole: A Guide For Men" post at Pandagon, to wit,

It’s like those who are in a position of oppression, but do not understand it, have something missing inside. It is the sense of an organic, subjective relation to other human beings. Instead of this inside, the oppressor has the conditioned tendency to treat other people (considered to be below him) as mere objects to be used and abused....[read it all]

This combined with the shooting at Virginia Tech today to prompt a question on my part:

Is sociopathy the ultimate manifestation of patriarchy? Its apotheosis, or platonic ideal, so to speak?

A related question to ask might be: why are so many serial killers white men?

[Note, I am not suggesting that the Asian man who committed these murders at Va. Tech is a serial killer. Merely the pondering of violent crime, the hypervigilance so many women have to live under thanks to the patriarchy, and these events at Va. Tech, led to this question.]

Sudan Agrees to Darfur Peacekeepers

Sudan Agrees to Darfur Peacekeepers.

The four-year Darfur conflict between rebels and pro-government Arab militia has seen more than 200,000 deaths and at least 2.4 million displaced.

Does this mean we get to stop with the genocide, now?

Newsflash: Abstinence-Only Ed Doesn't Work

I know we're all overwhelmed with a sense of obviousness here, but note that, once again, the Bush Administration has decided to let us know this little factoid in the Friday Night News Dump, as usual for anything it doesn't really like.

I swear, if aliens contacted the earth and said "we'll give you everything you want or need to clean up this planet, achieve lasting peace, and colonize the solar system, but you have to fire that Bush guy," the Bush Administration would release the news on a Friday.

Anyway. Hey kids, guess what?! Abstinence-only education doesn't work! And we've got the report to prove it -- Impacts for Title V. Section 510, Abstinence Education Programs: Final Report, from Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Now, can we ship condoms that work to Africa, please? And actually support women's reproductive health in developing countries? Or do we still need to keep pretending that grownups don't have sex?