Revisionist History Alert

Yes there are people in America who really think Sarah Palin was our first female VP nominee. Unbelievable, but true. I guess when you live in a bubble that's about to be expected.

Pittie Party

Some of you have asked for an update on the pibble puppy who found us last week. In a nutshell: It’s puppy madness!

We’ve named him Riley and he is fitting in nicely with the menagerie. The vet checked him out yesterday and said he’s a little bit underweight but generally in good shape, save yeast and bacterial infections in his ears.

He’s about 6 months old and like most puppies his age, he's a little play monster! He and Chaka really go at it ... a little too much, I sometimes think.

Puppies are something I’ve studiously avoided. They are a lot of work and I mean a LOT of work. It’s the kind of thing where I need to clear my schedule for six months before I can even think of taking on a puppy. So I have to say this unexpected arrival has been a bit stressful. However, Riley is a real sweetheart. We’re teaching him to walk on a leash without dislocating my shoulder or dragging me down the street ... it’s slow but he’s learning. And we’re teaching him to exert a little self-control, for example not barging through doors as soon as they open. I must say he’s doing a little bit better in that regard.

Riley’s favorite thing is to lie on his bed right in front of the fire. He’s a little heat-seeking puppy monster, perhaps because he’s a tad underweight. It’s really cute when he snores at night.

While Riley is fitting right in and gets along great with the other dogs and cats, we are still not committed to keeping him. I've reached out to local Pittie rescues in the hopes of finding him a permanent home. With two dogs and 8 cats I have to think we're at our carrying capacity.

Are you my Mommy?

Time For Us Women To Cut You Boys Off

I am so ready to nip shit like this in the bud:

Dr. Hal C. Lawrence III, vice president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said contraceptives fit any reasonable definition of preventive health care because they averted unintended pregnancies and allowed women to control the timing, number and spacing of births. This, in turn, improves maternal and child health by reducing infant mortality, complications of pregnancy and even birth defects, said Dr. Lawrence, who is in charge of the group’s practice guidelines.

But the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and some conservative groups, including the Family Research Council, say birth control is not a preventive service in the usual sense of the term.

“Pregnancy is not a disease to be prevented, nor is fertility a pathological condition,” said Deirdre A. McQuade, a spokeswoman for the bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat. “So birth control is not preventive care, and it should not be mandated.”

About one-half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended.

Wow, and right on the heels of the whole “forcible rape” outrage, too. Assholes.

I will never understand why the people screaming the loudest about how awful abortion is are the same people putting up roadblocks to women trying to access birth control. What the hell is wrong with you people?

And don’t even get me started on the whole tortured “pregnancy is not a disease to be prevented” bullshit. Who says “preventive care” applies only to disease?

Last week I got into an argument with someone over abortion coverage in insurance policies. He said he didn’t understand why he should pay more because women are “irresponsible.” Because an unwanted pregnancy is always the woman’s fault! Isn’t that neat how that works? Heads you win, tails we lose.

Look fellas, I’m sorry you lack the plumbing that would enable you to get pregnant, gestate and give birth and all that. I’ve long suspected your inability to create life in the same way we ladies do has been a source of equal amounts fascination and disgust on your parts for thousands of years. Grow the fuck up already.

You know, I can’t imagine what it’s like to have my reproductive organs flying around loose in the breeze where any predator, fungus or hunting accident could come along and snip it all off, making me evolutionarily irrelevant. That’s a hard burden to bear, a not-so-subtle reminder of how biologically dispensable you guys really are. There are always more males out there willing to spread their seed; it’s the female of the species who carries the burden of the species’ survival. We’re the ones who not only bear the young but care for them as well.

This isn’t me talking feminist claptrap, this is basic evolutionary biology: the bird that’s going to get snapped up at the feeder is the bright red highly visible male cardinal, not the drab brown female blessed with a natural protective camouflage. She’s more important in the grand scheme, which is why she’s been given this protection. God I know that chaps y’all’s ass big time.

It’s the battle of the sexes, played out over thousands of years. Men are bigger and stronger and take down a mammoth but for all your bravado it’s we women who keep the species going. And you’re just dying to control that, too.

Well guess what: you can’t. And you won’t. The earliest cave women knew which plants and herbs and tinctures and infusions prevented pregnancy and induced miscarriage. It’s in the archeological record. Women have been doing this for thousands of years. Do you seriously think you can stop what women have been doing forever? You won’t outlaw abortion, you’ll just drive women to desperate, unsafe, archaic means of doing what they’ve always done. And keeping women from accessing birth control is only making more unwanted pregnancies, not fewer of them.

I repeat: We’re the ones who not only bear the young but care for them as well. We know what’s best for us. And we will act accordingly.

I’m thinking this battle needs another ancient solution. A little nationwide Lysistrata action, perhaps. I’m tired of being dicked around by you assholes. Really, I am. And while plenty of men out there are believers in women’s reproductive choice and women’s access to birth control, I’m thinking maybe some of you guys just aren’t fighting hard enough on our behalf.

I think it’s time to cut you off until you guys recognize that we women will not be pushed around, that “small government” does not mean government small enough to fit inside my womb, that women can be trusted to make the right decisions for the human race because dammit that’s what we’ve been doing for thousands of years anyway.

[UPDATE]:

Oh for God's sake. This was totally the wrong day for me to learn we have a state breastfeeding law. Words fail me.

Jesus get over your squeamishness, people. What is the deal?

Time To Play Glenn Beck Off?

I don’t think this from the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol is a random piece of conservative opinion:

But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

Bill Kristol is one of those intellectually dishonest neocons of whom I’ve said, repeatedly, that he’s been wrong about everything since forever. I happen to think if Bill Kristol had an original thought it would die of loneliness, by which I mean, he doesn’t come up with these ideas by himself. I think some serious seeds are being planted within the Republican Party to shove Beck out the door.

Why? Well, I have long suspected Glenn Beck would become a liability for conservatives, sooner rather than later. He was a very useful tool in rallying the partisan base for the midterms, but a presidential election requires an appeal to more mainstream voters. That requires a less divisive approach and in that regard, Beck is a liability.

Last week I saw this item about Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who has a 7% stake in NewsCorp. Al-Waleed bin Talal is the billionaire Saudi financier who is nephew to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I guess he’s been able to overlook all of the Muslim-bashing Beck and other FOX News folks have been engaged in all these years. But now it appears he’s getting a little nervous about his investment. In the U.K. a Murdoch-owned British tabloid is embroiled in a major phone-hacking scandal which took down the Prime Minister’s director of communications and threatens a major deal to acquire BSkyB; Stateside, Beck’s increasingly unhinged rantings offend American rabbis and tarnish the NewsCorp brand:

Those familiar with bin Talal, who has given tens of millions of dollars to charities seeking to bridge gaps between western and Islamic communities, say he will have been dismayed by any whiff of controversy threatening his business interests.

"He is an incredibly intelligent man and deeply honourable; you can only speculate about what he must be thinking now," said an acquaintance.

Coming at a time when News Corp wants regulatory approval to take over British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, both the phone-hacking scandal and the row with the rabbis are damaging not only to the company's reputation but its bottom line.

[...]

Worryingly for Murdoch, who is used to his investors taking a back seat, the prince is a far from passive backer. As a sizable investor in bombed-out banking giant Citigroup, bin Talal has been vocal in calling for its management to improve the firm's fortunes, warning its chief executive last year that the "honeymoon was over".

I have to think that Beck is far too big a liability for both Republicans’ political aspirations and Murdoch’s business aspirations to hang around much longer. It will be interesting to see if I’m right.

I also find it curious that the U.S. media has done so little coverage of Rupert Murdoch’s UK woes, considering what a navel-gazing bunch our American media is. Anderson Cooper gets bonked on the head and it’s headline news from coast to coast. And you know darn well if MSNBC were in this kind of trouble, FOX would be all over it.

Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if Beck’s fortunes took a sudden turn south. And when that happens, I’m sure liberals will get the blame -- some cockamamie story will be concocted to allow conservatives to continue to demonize the left and keep the anger and rancor alive.

(h/t DougJ at Balloon Juice.)

This Year’s Reefer Madness

Hey parents there’s this really nasty drug on the streets that is gonna make your kids think they can fly and man you’d better be on the alert before the entire senior class goes flying off the gym roof. For real!

Thing is, no one seems to no what “White Lightning” is. It seems it’s different things in different places. Here it is in Middle Tennessee:

Police said the crime was fueled by an over the counter drug called “White Lightning,” which is sold as an insect repellent.  Detectives said it's basically a legal form of an addictive narcotic.

"They call it like a fake cocaine,” said Detective Lisa House.  “But what this is, is actually, they sell it in convenience stores.”

The alleged burglar Dustin Pearson was caught loitering less than a quarter mile away from the scene of the crime.  Detectives said his behavior was extremely abnormal.

"It kind of makes him speak in tongues and do off the wall things,” House said.  “He made statements that he had been up 72 hours."

“White Lightning” is available online and in certain stores over the counter.  It's legal in the state of Tennessee, and detectives said parents should be on the lookout.

Here it is in Boise Idaho:

Bath Salts: Deadly Designer Drug Hits Boise Streets

Ivory Snow. Red Dove. Vanilla Sky Bliss. White Lightning. Hurricane Charlie. They're brand names of America's latest designer drug: Bath salts. It's legal and potentially deadly.

"Give the drug-dealers credit," said Lynn Hightower, spokeswoman for the Boise police. "They've done their homework. They're doing their jobs."

Dealers are pushing product and the law can't touch them. Boise Police has been following this stuff for years. But it's just now hitting Treasure Valley Streets.

Users are going to the hospital, hallucinating, resorting to violence, even becoming suicidal. Boise Police received two 911-calls Sunday morning about people having bad trips.

"They were just freaking out," Hightower said, "acting crazy."

Well which is? Insect repellant or bath salts? I mean damn, I’m old enough to remember when White Lightning was code for moonshine.

Georgia says it’s bath salts, and they warn:

"One time you use this, you could fall dead right where you a standing and that is the danger we worry about in these kinds of products," Dr. Gaylord Lopez, the Director of the Georgia Poison Control center said.

I’m sorry, I guess I shouldn’t laugh, but the hyperbole associated with America’s war on drugs is just silly.

Seems like my entire life there’s been some kind of drug scare that is sure to ruin our children. When I was a kid it was the great Angel Dust scare. Oh, and parsley: apparently kids were eating massive quantities of it to get high. I don’t know anyone who did that, but that’s what the newspapers said we were doing.

Now, thanks to the internet, we have a new one of these silly scares every week. The most hilarious one to me is the famous nutmeg scare. I mean seriously, who thinks this shit is for real?

After 30 years of this you’d think parents would wake up and realize they are being played.

So Glad We Gave Them $12 Billion

JP Morgan was apparently not just too big to fail, it appears they were too big to warn American regulators about crook Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. But authorities in the UK were much luckier:

The UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) was warned about Bernard Madoff in October 2008, two months before the fraudster confessed that his investment empire was a sham, according to a lawsuit unsealed in New York.

The allegation was made in a suit filed against JP Morgan, one of Madoff's banks, on behalf of the fraudster's victims.

According to the suit, filed by the court-appointed trustee Irving Picard, executives at JP Morgan allegedly told Soca that they were concerned about "investment performance achieved by its [Madoff's business] funds which is so consistently and significantly ahead of its peers, year-on-year, even in the prevailing market conditions, as to appear too good to be true – meaning that it probably is".

Wow, that’s nice. Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, their reporting on the same lawsuit looks a little different:

Senior executives at JPMorgan Chase expressed serious doubts about the legitimacy of Bernard L. Madoff’s investment business more than 18 months before his Ponzi scheme collapsed but continued to do business with him, according to internal bank documents made public in a lawsuit on Thursday.

On June 15, 2007, an evidently high-level risk management officer for Chase’s investment bank sent a lunchtime e-mail to colleagues to report that another bank executive “just told me that there is a well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a Ponzi scheme.”

I find this interesting. Both stories are extremely damaging, but the New York Times makes no mention of SOCA and the tip British authorities received. Curious.

I’m also curious why JP Morgan executives warned British law enforcement about Madoff, yet said nothing to American regulators or law enforcement. Remember: the lid was blown off Madoff’s scheme when his sons came forward -- it was Madoff’s children who turned him in to the FBI. Yet all this time JP Morgan knew about the fraud, and some bank employees even privately warned their own clients. Even worse, bank executives tipped off the British authorities. But Americans were kept in the dark. Thousands of clients lost close to $65 billion -- many of them philanthropic funds. That's money which would have gone into our communities. JP Morgan said nothing.

Why?

According to The Guardian:

The suit is damning of JP Morgan's alleged role in the scandal. It claims that Soca was informed by JP Morgan "only in an effort to protect its own investments" and the bank did nothing further to stop the fraud even though it had informed the authorities.

And these are the assholes we give $12 billion to? Hey, fuck you, you anti-American, taxpayer-fleecing, selfish dicks. Too big to fail, my ass.

I wonder if there is some difference between the two country’s regulatory laws which made Britain the recipient of this information and America not. I guess it's not polite to ask such things.

American Trash Redux

Wow. Last week I wrote a post called “American Trash” where I said our culture does not value people.

And one week later I see this amazing TED talk connecting our throw-away consumer society to the way our culture devalues people. This Van Jones talk just blew me away. DO watch the whole thing:

That Job-Creating Wine In Grocery Stores Bill

What the heck, proponents of Tennessee’s wine-in-grocery-stores effort might as well take a cue from House Republicans in Washington and call whatever bill they get the “Creating Jobs For Tennesseans By Selling Wine In Grocery Stores Act.” Because that is what the folks behind this effort at Red White And Food say it will do:

Opening the wine market would create 1,597 to 3,513 new jobs, according to a new economic impact study released today. The same study found that 104 to 597 liquor store jobs would be at risk.

You can read the economic impact study here. Let me add in the interest of full disclosure: the study was conducted by Stonebridge Research of St. Helena, California, which of course is in Napa Valley: the heart of wine country. I find it funny that Stonebridge Research is located on Zinfandel Lane, and of course no one should be shocked to learn they service the wine industry.

It actually might be interesting to see what a more impartial research group has to say on the matter. But regardless, I tend to think economic impact studies are like surveys: they say whatever the person paying for them wants them to say.

That said, it’s logical selling wine in grocery stores would create a few jobs -- Kroger and the like would need to hire more stock people, wholesalers might need to hire more folks to handle the grocery market, etc. And I’m also dubious over claims that selling wine in grocery stores will hurt jobs in liquor stores.

In states like California and Florida which sell wine in grocery stores, they still have liquor stores on every street corner, too. What ends up happening is that most grocery stores sell primarily low price point wines. Wine stores specialize in imported varieties, hard to find wines, higher-priced vintages and the like. And, of course, liquor. There’s enough to go around for everyone.

What really interested me in this economic impact study were their findings about wine sales and gender:

Qualitative and survey research as well as survey research has repeatedly found that:

• Women and older Americans are more likely to consume wine, by a significant margin, while men and younger consumers favor beer and spirits;

• Women tend to associate wine with food;

• More than 50% of the wine sold in the U.S. is purchased by women as part of regular grocery shopping and meal planning;

• Women generally find it uncomfortable to shop in conventional liquor stores, particularly traditional stores focused on beer and spirits.

Yeah that seems about right. As a woman whose day is filled with running errands around town, meal planning, etc., let me say: it sure would be nice if the men in the state legislature could make my life a little easier! For real, y’all! Why do I have to make two stops to cook my dang dinner? Picking up a bottle of wine at the grocery store would be one less stop I have to make (Hey, I wonder if wine in grocery stores would alleviate traffic problems?)

Then again, we’re picky wine drinkers at the Beale house. I’d probably still have to shop at the wine store because no way will Kroger carry our favorite Valpolicella. But that’s just us.

Anyway, near as I can tell it will be a wash on the jobs front. I don’t see liquor stores going out of business and I don’t see a massive influx of wine industries into Tennessee, either. What I do see is the end to a cumbersome, clumsy, antiquated, anti-consumer law that only a small number of people who benefit from the status quo want to keep.

I thought we were all about the free hand of the market, unfettered and gloriously free FREE flying around and sprinkling everything with capitalistic fairy dust? How are our existing wine laws anything close to that?

How does preventing liquor stores from selling corkscrews and artisan cheeses and chocolates accomplish that? How does making busy moms with 20 minutes to do the grocery shopping before picking up the kids from soccer practice accomplish that? Why put up roadblocks to consumers?

Shouldn’t we make it easier for people to buy stuff they want to buy -- especially something taxed as much as wine is?

Ignorance Is Bliss

Yeah, it’s a Rasmussen poll, but still, I have every reason to think it’s an accurate illustration of American ignorance:

Voters Underestimate How Much U.S. Spends on Defense

Voters are fairly evenly divided as to whether the federal government spends too much or too little on national defense, but most also appear to dramatically underestimate how much is actually spent.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 27% of Likely Voters say the United States does not spend enough money on the military and national security. Thirty-two percent (32%) say America spends too much on defense, while a plurality (37%) thinks the nation spends about the right amount. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

But only 25% of voters believe the United States should always spend at least three times as much on defense as any other nation. Forty percent (40%) do not think the country needs to spend this much, while 35% are not sure. Interestingly, if the government were to actually spend only three times as much as any other nation, it would imply a significant cut in U.S. defense spending.

For fiscal year 2011, the total budget for defense is estimated to be around $719 billion. That does not include the cost of veterans’ care, which totals another $124 billion. By comparison, no other nation in the world spends more than $110 billion on defense. Earlier polling showed that just 58% recognize that the United States spends more on defense than any other nation in the world.

Underlying voters’ opinions on how much the United States spends on defense is the fact that many don’t know where most of the government’s money already goes. Just 40% can correctly identify that most federal spending goes towards national defense, Social Security and Medicare. Roughly the same number (38%) believes this statement to be false, while another 22% are not sure.

Considering how much of our national discourse these days is devoted to issues like our budget and budget deficit, you’d think people would know a little something about what we spend our money on.

I think Democrats and progressive groups need to devote a little more time and effort to voter education. Maybe some "The More You Know"-type PSAs or something. I don’t know, it just seems like American ignorance on a variety of topics seems to work in the Republicans’ favor, time and again.

And I have to say: this woeful ignorance of the American electorate depresses me. What the hell, America? How do we make this shit sexy so people get a fucking clue? "Real Housewives of the Congressional Budget Office"?

Housekeeping

Several people this week asked why I no longer allow Anonymous Users to comment on the blog. The reason is comment spam: literally the same day Blogger started its new spam filtering process, I was inundated with comment spam. It was truly "coincidental." I'd always had a handful of spam comments before but this is something else entirely: we're talking 30 or 40 a day. This uptick in volume was very strange seeing as how it coincided with Blogger's new spam filtering service but what do I know; I always suspected companies like Google and AOL are in cahoots with the spammers. Blogger gives me this blog for free so I wouldn't be shocked to learn somewhere down the food chain they're making money off of us.

*** Adjusts tinfoil hat. ***

Anyway, last night I switched back to allowing Anonymous Users before going to bed and I woke up this morning to 10 spam comments. So it appears they found me again. Sorry. I'm changing back. I just don't have time to troll through dozens of spam comments a day.

I understand registering with Google or OpenID is a hassle and undesirable to some folks. I already have a Google account via Blogger so I really can't appreciate why its an ordeal but I trust you when you tell me you'll get inundated with e-mail spam. Believe me, I trust you on this one! I guess the spammers have won.

I don't understand spam. It seems so pointless to me. Why does anyone think this is a good way to advertise their product? You really think pissing people off is a great sales pitch? Of course, spammers aren't selling a product they are trolling for hits, but still: I thought the whole point of a hit is to get a page view and ideally a sale. I don't see it working that way.

I recently heard of the guy behind Dan Hates Spam. Daniel Balsam is a lawyer who now makes a very comfortable living suing spammers. He lives entirely off of the pre-trial settlements and judgments. I'm told this is how Fred Phelps and his merry hatemongers make their living, too: filing First Amendment lawsuits and living off the judgments. I prefer Daniel Balsam's ploy: spammers are truly the scum of the earth.

Maybe some day I'll change from Blogger to WordPress but no one has told me that this service is any better.