Great line of the day

Discussing the US Supreme Court decision to allow legislatures to outlaw abortion procedures even if women's lives are at stake, Digby points to this March, 2006 post from Mahablog about abortion rights:

. . . the anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions. Oh, they’re human in a scientific sense, but they aren’t people. They are archetypes who live in the heads of the anti-abortion righters — Careless Woman, Selfish Woman, Woman in a Vacuum. The same people who imagine embryos can think and feel emotions — and therefore deserve protection — must believe a pregnant woman is just a major appliance.
There are copious anecdotes from abortion providers who say that often the same people protesting outside the clinic one week are patients (or parents of patients) the next week. These people assume that their situations are unique and should be the one exception. They often want the abortion staff to know they aren’t like those other women who get abortions. This inspired the bitter joke that the legitimate reasons for abortion are “rape, incest, and me.” Such people recognize their own humanity (or their daughter’s), but those other women who get abortions are just archetypes who don’t deserve respect or considertion.
I’ve long believed that whether one is pro-choice or anti-choice does not depend on whether one thinks embryos are human beings. It depends on whether one recognizes that women are human beings. Not archetypes, but real, individual human beings. Including women who get abortions.

Emphasis mine.

I'm thinking of this song tonight

Feeling old?

I heard on the radio on the way to work -- Bobby Vinton is 72 years old today.
Sigh...

What war is like

Dave at The Galloping Beaver writes about the real, raw, painful experience of war:

The nightmares of past events come more often and with more clarity. And, in the middle of a conversation with people who know nothing of my history, I suddenly recall an event which sends my mind flying in a thousand different directions.
Back then, I used my weapon precisely as I was trained to do: automatically, surgically and as an extension of my arms. Often, I did not feel it kick into my shoulder or hear the metallic working of the action. Now, I can feel the trigger and the pressure against my index finger as I release the round that will kill the human in front of me. I can see the faces of mere boys who were given no choice but to die by my actions. In a particular instance, I replay an event which at the time I could not afford to second-guess. And I now wonder if the wounded young conscript laying in a fire-pit ahead of me was not reaching for his weapon but crossing himself in the style prescribed by his Catholic faith. I put two rounds into his chest before he could finish his act and I will never know whether he intended to kill me or whether he was simply asking for help from his God.
My mind randomly and with no warning suddenly erupts with one thought: “You are a killer.” It is something I have to fight back because when it happens I can see the edge of an abyss. It is a debilitating feeling that no matter what I have done in my life or what good I do, I will always be a killer; someone whose conscience was able to repress remorse for over two decades.

I commend Dave's bravery in telling the story of his war -- and hope that telling it will help reduce the stress.
I once read an article about people recovering in a burn unit of a hospital. Psychiatrists help them by visiting them each day and getting them to tell "the story" of their accident or experience. The theory is that telling it out loud helps them to integrate the experience and deal with it openly, which prevents the nightmares and the other symptoms of post-traumatic stress which burn victims apparently are particularly prone to.
I wonder if everyone who has experienced traumatic events would be better off to tell "the story", rather than let it eat away at them inside. Its hard to find someone to tell the story to -- families and friends are often too emotionally involved to just calmly listen without judgement or comment or reassurance, tending to say "don't think about it" when they can't really think about anything else.

Great line of the day

Posting at Eschaton, Thers suggests a reason why the liberal blogosphere is "reflexively derisive" to right-wingers:

It's because so many conservatives want to argue things like global warming is fake and that there were significant ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
These aren't arguments: they're conspiracy theories . . . such "arguments" are treated as conspiracy theories deserve to be treated: with derision and scorn. Taking them seriously only gives them and those who make them an undeserved and in fact dangerous legitimacy.

Emphasis mine.

Too bad

Its just too bad. I would love to have the summer Olympics in North America again, and Chicago is even in our same time zone. But at long as George Bush is president, the International Olympic Committee will never vote to award a US city the Olympics.
Just another measure of how popular the Bush administration is around the world...

Three more things on Imus

Three little-noted aspects of the Imus story, before it fades completely into last week's news:
First, as illustrated by this Americablog post, instead of the supposedly liberal Imus being defended by liberals, the liberal bloggers were some of the first voices criticizing what he said and pointing out that racism and sexism were long-standing problems on his show.
Second, in spite of that, it was not the bloggers who were organizing the sponsor boycott and show cancellation. From my reading of the liberal blogs, the general opinion was that while Imus SHOULD be fired, they didn't ever think he actually would be -- they thought Imus was too powerful and well-entrenched for such a thing would ever happen.
They thought the story would just degenerate into another "I know you are but what am I" talkfest blather where Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and rap musicians and Hilary Clinton end up on the receiving end because of what THEY said or didn't say or didn't say soon enough or said too soon or too quietly or too loudly or whatever, rather than focusing on what Imus said.
This time, it was the sponsors, and the CBS board, and the MSNBC employees who apparently stepped up to the plate and cut through all the BS and said "Enough! There's a limit and we've finally reached it!"
Third, the Imus firing sends a pretty clear message to the media. Listening on Friday morning to our own talk-radio host, I got the distinct impression that there was a cool breeze blowing on the back of his neck. Not that our guy is a shock-jock racist blowhard, but I think he had said to himself "If even Imus can get fired, then maybe I'd better make damned sure my brain is in gear before I open my mouth."

I just can't stop humming this, so join me please --

Seatbelt injuries

I'm seeing criticism of New Jersey governor Jon Corizine following his car accident that maybe he wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
Well, maybe he was wearing a belt and maybe not, but his injuries actually are consistent with what one would get in a car accident even with a seat belt or from the seat belt itself - see here, and here.
We have this idea that seatbelts prevent injury -- well, not completely. They prevent catastrophic, deadly injuries, but when your body is hurtling forward at 50 km per hour and hits the seat belt, your bones are going to break and that's all there is to it. Better your ribs hit the seatbelt than your head hits the windshield.
When I was in a car accident in February of 2006, a driver came through a red light and hit my right front fender when I was going through an intersection at about 40 or 50 km per hour. I was driving, so hanging onto the wheel did help to prevent some bouncing around, but I still had a mild concussion, and ended up with five or six rib fractures due to the seatbelt, my chest felt crushed due to the shoulder harness, and my shoulder and chest and pelvis were deeply bruised. (My car did not have an airbag.)
Reading up on this on the net, I found that these are all typical seat belt injuries.
Also, my knee hit the dash with enough force to tear the ligaments, damage the nerves, and give me a plateau fracture of the tibia. This is actually such a common injury in a car accident that this kind of knee injury is called a dashboard injury. If my knee had hit the dashboard with any greater force, or if my dashboard had been shaped differently, perhaps my femur would have broken too, like Corazine's did -- again, this is not an uncommon injury in a relatively high-energy car accident. My other foot was also pretty bruised when it whapped the underside of the dash, too.
All in all, it took me more than six months to recover, and my knee will never be the same.

One very good result of the US Attorney scandal

One result of the US Attorney scandal is that juries and judges will no longer find any of their prosecutions to be credible. And given this terrible story, that is a very good thing.
You will be utterly disgusted by this one -- in an effort to tarnish a Democratic governor and apparently also to save his own job, the Wisconsin US attorney charged a 55-year-old state employee with corruptly awarding a government contract to a Democratic firm. He got the jury to convict her -- apparently they found it very suspicious that she didn't admit her guilt -- and she spent four months in jail. At the end of February, the federal appeal court threw the case out -- the judges overturned the conviction and ordered her released on the very same day that they heard the oral arguments in the case, saying the evidence was "beyond thin".
So no one in Wisconsin will ever believe that prosecutor again.

OK, now for something completely different

Great idea, if they do it right this time

This savings plan for parents of disabled children is an excellent idea -- with one possible Catch-22: provincial welfare rules.

Parent Dave Lareau liked what he heard.
"The bottom line is that kids with disabilities, depending on their ability to work and earn an income, are going to be on welfare, which is way below the poverty line, so what kind of quality of life will they have?" he asked. "It's all about what we can do to augment that without losing the benefit of welfare and other things so all of the right factors are built into this."

The problem is whether provinces will be required to give someone welfare if they have money available to them in a Registered Disability Savings Plan. Apparently the March Budget only "suggests" that disabled people be able to receive both RDSP payments and provincial income support.
The Finance department's Expert Panel on Financial Security for Children with Severe Disabilities reported on this problem when it made the RDSP recommendation:

All of the provinces and territories impose a means test on the social assistance that is made available to persons with disabilities. All impose a limit on the assets that a person can have in order to qualify for social assistance payments. All also impose an income test in order to qualify for social assistance and, in most cases, the amount of income received by a person with disabilities reduces (usually on a dollar-for-dollar basis) the amount of social assistance payable. Each province and territory has its own limits and exceptions. However, since the proposed Registered Disability Savings Plan is a new plan, there is no provision made for its capital value to be exempt from the asset test or for Disability Savings Payments to be exempt from the income test. Without some such exemptions there will be no point in establishing a Disability Savings Plan for those most in need of it as the result would be no more than a transfer from the federal treasury to provincial and territorial treasuries. It is also important that other provincial programs such as prescription drug programs that are income tested not be reduced as a result of the receipt by a Beneficiary of Disability Savings Payments.

And I sure hope their follow-through on this promise turns out to be better than their follow-through on the "equalization" promise.

"Common securities regulator"?

Buried at the end of this story on ATM fees is this statement about what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is going to be talking about this week at the Group of Seven talks in Washington:

Flaherty said he will also raise the issue of mutual recognition and free trade in securities, as well as 'getting our house in order nationally' in Canada by moving towards a common securities regulator.

Does anyone know what this means? Is it more Fortess America/Customs Union stuff perhaps?

Iraq as Performance Art

Are they serious? It makes no sense as a war anymore, but has become a bizarre attempt at Performance Art -- with real blood as the medium.
RangerAgainstWar alerts us to the newest American tactic, phoney war:

U.S. tax dollars are building Iraqi businesses and boosting their economy, but instead of reaping any publicity benefits from the endeavors, U.S. officials stress that the effort will only work if the U.S. contribution is totally "invisible," this "given the hostility toward the U.S." (These Raids in Iraq Look Real, But They Aren't.) So part of what the U.S. forces are tasked with in this phony war on terror is staging phony raids in order to help those Iraqis ostensibly on our side to be made to be seen as though they are really phony U.S. enemies. Got it?
This is a make-work program from the Americans, who are hoping it will also "keep otherwise idle men from joining the insurgency." As well, the Iraqi component of this project stressed the importance of keeping the U.S. role secret.

Robert Fisk in the Independent describes the newest US technique for stabilizing Baghdad -- ghettos:

The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial . . . the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off. From these bases - in fortified buildings - US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these "gated communities" and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, "visitor" registration and restrictions on movement outside the "gated communities". Civilians may find themselves inside a "controlled population" prison . . .
. . . another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the "gated" neighbourhood project.
"Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able," he told The Independent. "They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the 'gated communities' to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.
"The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being 'protected'."
The ex-officer's fears for American helicopter crews were re-emphasised yesterday when a military Apache was shot down over central Baghdad . . .

Here's a family walking past where a carbomb killed six people. This is the kind of thing children in Iraq see every day. No wonder they're leaving if they can:

We have "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis" in the countries surrounding Iraq as 2.2 million Iraqis flee. The website Refugees International reports:

“Iraqis who are unable to flee the country are now in a queue, waiting their turn to die,” is how one Iraqi journalist summarizes conditions in Iraq today. While the US debates whether a civil war is raging in Iraq, thousands of Iraqis face the possibility of death every day all over the country.

A short story in this week's New Yorker contains this little-known fact about suicide bombers:

“Where there are suicide bombings. Maybe you don’t want to hear this.”
“I don’t know.”
“In those places where it happens, the survivors, the people nearby who are injured, sometimes, months later, they develop bumps, for lack of a better term, and it turns out this is caused by small fragments, tiny fragments of the suicide bomber’s body. The bomber is blown to bits, literally bits and pieces, and fragments of flesh and bone come flying outward with such force and velocity that they get wedged, they get fixed in the body of anyone who’s in striking range. Do you believe it? A student is sitting in a café. She survives the attack. Then, months later, they find these little, like, pellets of flesh, human flesh that got driven into her skin. They call this organic shrapnel.”
He tweezered another splinter of glass out of Keith’s face.
“This is something I don’t think you have,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bush keeps giving the same speech over and over, even CNN can't stand it anymore and cuts away . . .
Yeats had it right, after all:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . .

Those were the days?

So, Howard, when exactly was that golden age of yesteryear, those good ole days when it was perfectly OK for a talk-show host to call black female athletes "nappy-headed hos"?
Ha, ha, ha. Can't you girls take a joke?
Nope. Not any more.
Newsweek editor Howard Fineman expressed his own longing for those happy, innocent days of yore when he talked to Don Imus about what an intolerant world we live in today:

FINEMAN: You know, the form of humor that you do here is risky, and sometimes it runs off the rails . . . it's a different time, Imus. You know, it's different than it was even a few years ago, politically. I mean, we may, you know -- and the environment, politically, has changed. And some of the stuff that you used to do, you probably can't do anymore.
IMUS: No, you can't. I mean --
FINEMAN: You just can't. Because the times have changed . . . you know, things have changed. And the kind of -- some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can't do anymore. And that's just the way it is.

Over at First Draft, Athenae calls bullshit:

People like this really do feel put-upon that they can't give in to their basest instincts. They really feel like they've been somehow reduced because they're not allowed to reduce others. What Fineman is basically saying is that left to his own devices, he'd be happy to mock black women for being black and being women. Left to his own devices, he'd be happy to use snotty code language to put other human beings in their places. Left to his own devices, he'd be a total fucking ignorant jackoff. And it's outside pressure that is keeping him from being so . . . If only we lived back in the good old days. Had Fineman been around back then, no doubt, he'd be much more comfortable, freed of the burden to control himself so strictly.
Free to be the asshole he apparently wants to be.

I've been hearing this kind of "he's too old to change" crap for the last 40 years, and I'm tired of it.
There is not a man alive today who has any excuse whatsoever.
I used to go along with it in the 70s, and even into the 80s.
But guys -- and I'm speaking to guys like Fineman and Imus -- you've had 40 years to get with the program.
Men who were in kindergarden during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in grade school when The Feminine Mystique was published are now getting Seniors Discounts.
So they've had ample time stop thinking about people as "nappy-headed hos".

UPDATE: Digby talks about why Imus still gets celebrity journalist guests -- because he helps sell their books:

. . . When you sell your personal integrity for money to a racist scumbag like Don Imus, you have to expect that people are not going to treat you with a lot of respect.
Don Imus has been behaving badly and apologizing for it for many, many years. I expect he will continue to do so once he's finished with his two week vacation. And all of these writers will once again make pilgrimages to his show and pledge fealty to him in order to sell books. Because, unlike those great basketball players he maligned so casually --- they really are whores.