Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Giving Women Freedom

by digby

NOW did another one of its interesting shows on the South Dakota abortion ban last friday; it’s now available on the website if you missed it. They went deep into the forced pregnancy movement in South Dakota and once again, I was struck by the profound dishonesty of many of its leaders. You will see spin and gibberish that even Karen Hughes would be ashamed of:

HINOJOSA:
MEET LESLEE UNRUH…SHE FOUNDED THE ALPHA CENTER IN 1984 BUT MOST PEOPLE NOW KNOW HER AS ONE OF THE MOST POTENT PRO-LIFE ACTIVISTS IN THE STATE…

UNRUH HAD AN ABORTION HERSELF IN THE 1970’S. AND WHILE SOME MIGHT THINK THAT BANNING ABORTION IS AN ATTACK ON WOMEN’S FREEDOM, UNRUH SAYS SHE WANTS TO BAN ABORTION PRECISELY TO PROTECT WOMEN’S FREEDOM.

UNRUH:
This freedom, sexual freedom is costing women and their lives. Where’s the sexual freedom? There is none. Because those of us who have suffered through the abortion, we’re not gonna be silent anymore. We’re gonna speak up and we’re gonna tell the truth. Because abortion hurts women. Silent no more.

[…]

UNRUH:
I’ve been that woman. There is no freedom after an abortion. You carry an empty crib in your heart forever. There’s no freedom.

HINOJOSA:
And so, when you hear people saying, “Someone like Leslie is trying to actually take away women’s rights and taking away their freedoms–“

UNRUH:
I’m giving women freedom. We are giving back the women what they really want. This is true feminism.

This woman is “giving” women back their freedom by taking away their right to abortion. She’s smiling, upbeat, cheerful and sunny — the all-American gal. And to me, she seems downright otherworldly. I don’t know what she’s talking about. She’s babbling incoherently.

It turns out that Unruh is more interesting than your usual forced pregnancy zealot. She’s also the prime mover of the state’s abstinence only education movement. Freedom is having no sex at all.

And then there’s this:

HINOJOSA: LAST FRIDAY NIGHT, YOUNG GIRLS FROM AROUND SOUTH DAKOTA CAME TO SIOUX FALLS FOR A SPRING BALL. THIS ONE IS CALLED “THE PURITY BALL” IT’S A YEARLY EVENT RUN BY LESLEE UNRUH’S ABSTINENCE CLEARINGHOUSE.

THE IDEA IS THAT THESE YOUNG WOMEN COME WITH THEIR FATHERS. TO CELEBRATE THEIR SEXUAL PURITY.

UNRUH:We think that its important for fathers to the be the first ones to look into their daughters eyes and To tell her that her purity is special, and its ok to wait until marriage.

HINOJOSA:IT MIGHT HAVE ALL THE TRAPPINGS OF A REGULAR PROM… BUT THIS ONE ENDS A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY.

GIRLS RECITING PLEDGE:”I make a promise this day to God…

HINOJOSA:
THE YOUNG WOMEN HERE ALL MAKE A PROMISE TO THEIR FATHERS THAT THEY WONT’ HAVE SEX UNTIL THE DAY THEY GET MARRIED.

GIRLS RECITING PLEDGE:…to remain sexually pure…until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. … I know that God requires this of me.. that he loves me. and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.

You have to see it to believe it. They are all dressed up like prom goers, the dads in tuxes and the daughters in evening gowns looking all grown up. They dance, they laugh, they giggle. And then father and daughter stand up, holding each others hands, staring into each others’ eyes and the girls make these vows as if in a wedding ceremony.

As I watch it occurs to me that this is why they don’t have an exception for rape and incest. It’s one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.

You will notice that there’s no “mother-son” ceremony in which boys pledge to their mothers to stay pure until they give themselves as a gift to their wives. There is a Victorian impulse at work here that has nothing to do with fetuses. This is about women being autonomous, independent, sexual humans.

Here’s Unruh again. If you aren’t listening closely, the cadence of her speech makes it sound like she is perfectly reasonable. But she might as well be speaking in another language for all the sense it makes.

UNRUH:
I think there should be no abortions in my state.

HINOJOSA:
So to get to that point, you want to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

UNRUH:
Yes.

HINOJOSA:
And people might say, “Well, the way you prevent unwanted pregnancies is through contraception.”

UNRUH:
No. It’s wrong. We don’t need, we don’t have a shortage of condoms in this country. We should not be worshipping condoms. Let’s start just telling the truth.

HINOJOSA:
But when some people say that truth might be, Leslee, that by limiting the information, by limiting access to contraception, that you may– you may unintentionally be contributing to more unwanted pregnancies–

UNRUH:
No. I think it’s– by “limiting” is all spin. Let’s quit making people think that everybody can go out there and just as long as they have a condom, they’re safe. They’re not safe emotionally. They’re not safe physically. Let’s just start telling the truth.

She might start by trying to make a persuasive argument instead of blurting out non-sequitors about “freedom” and “truth” without ever explaining why this is so. She’s full of snappy slogans, but she never honestly says what’s on her mind.

I’ll let Lance Mannion do it for her:

Once upon time we were all good and well-behaved, if plagued by demons and temptations within. You know, back in the day, when lynching was a spectator sport, children were worked to death in factories and mineshafts, and employers thought nothing of hiring goons to beat and kill workers who dared strike for safer working conditions and decent pay.

Then came the Fall, and with it moral relativism, post-modernism, Freudianism, Marxism, feminism, birth control, Roe v. Wade, situation comedies that make dad into a buffoon, and black people who expect to live in our neighborhoods and send their kids to our schools…whoops, did we say that last one out loud? We meant entitlements, the nanny state, and the culture of dependence brought about by Welfare.

And the poor little wimmin just don’t know what’s good for ’em. Leslie Unruh’s gonna set them free.

Update: Here’s a piece from USA today that is surprising good. And important.

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“A Mean Sick Group Of People”

by digby

Crooks and Liars has a story up about Michelle Malkin posting phone numbers of college students who protested recruiters on the UCSC campus. Predictably, her readers are harrassing them, as she knew they would.

But that’s not surprising. It isn’t even partisan. Remember this?

Conservative CNN commentator Tucker Carlson’s snide humor backfired on him — and his wife.

While defending telemarketers during a segment on “Crossfire” last week, the bow-tied co-host was asked for his home phone number. Carlson gave out a number, but it was for the Washington bureau of Fox News, CNN’s bitter rival.

The bureau was deluged with calls. To get back at him, Fox posted Carlson’s unlisted home number on its Web site. After his wife was inundated with obscene calls, Carlson went to the Fox News bureau to complain. He was told the number would be taken off the Web site if he apologized on the air. He did, but that didn’t end the anger.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Carlson called Fox News “a mean, sick group of people.”

Fox spokeswoman Irena Briganti said Carlson got what he deserved. “CNN threw the first punch here. Correcting this mistake was good journalism.”

Why would Malkin be held to a higher standard than the highest levels of the corporate rightwing media? Handing out private phone numbers is GOP SOP. On the right they call this “good journalism.”

Update: Ezra pities Malkin. She is a sad case.

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He Blogs Too

by digby

Here’s an erudite, attractive liberal speaking intelligently on an array of complex issues for 45 minutes. Where’d he come from?

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At The Precipice

by digby

I find myself feeling a little bit depressed today. It’s not the spectre of war with Iran, although I admit that scares the hell out of me. It’s this:

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from two Chinese Muslims who were mistakenly captured as enemy combatants more than four years ago and are still being held at the U.S. prison in Cuba.

The men’s plight has posed a dilemma for the Bush administration and courts. Previously, a federal judge said the detention of the ethnic Uighurs in Guantanamo Bay is unlawful, but that there was nothing federal courts could do.

Lawyers for the two contend they should be released, something the Bush administration opposes, unless they can go to a country other than the United States.

A year ago, the U.S. military decided that Abu Bakker Qassim and A’Del Abdu al-Hakim are not “enemy combatants” as first suspected after their 2001 arrests in Pakistan. They were captured and shipped to Guantanamo Bay along with hundreds of other suspected terrorists.

The U.S. government has been unable to find a country willing to accept the two men, along with other Uighurs. They cannot be returned to China because they likely will be tortured or killed.

[…]

Lawyers for Qassim and al-Hakim filed a special appeal, asking justices to step in even while the case is pending before an appeals court. Arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are next month.

Justices declined, without comment, to hear the case.

Bush administration Supreme Court lawyer Paul Clement told justices that there were “substantial ongoing diplomatic efforts to transfer them to an appropriate country.”

Clement said that in the meantime, the men have had television, a stereo system, books and recreational opportunities: including soccer, volleyball and ping-pong.

The detainees’ lawyers painted a different picture, saying that hunger strikes and suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay are becoming more common and that the men are isolated.

“Guantanamo is at the precipice,” Boston lawyer Sabin Willett wrote in the appeal. “Only prompt intervention by this court to vindicate its own mandate can prevent the rule of law itself from being drowned in this intensifying whirlpool of desperation.”

I would say the US is at the precipice and the rule of law is breathing its last gasp. How can we have a system that operates this way and still call ourselves a country of laws? They are just making this stuff up as they go along.

Guantanamo is a vivid example of what happens when governments panic and make errors out of hubris, rage, greed and opportunism and refuse to right their wrongs after the fact. We have created a Kafka-esque nightmare that, unless we return to the rule of law very quickly, is going to be embedded in our system, ready to be exploited by any tyrannical figure who can trump up an emergency for political gain.

Don’t the Republicans see how dangerous this is? It isn’t a matter of partisanship. Any shallow reading of history shows that bad people can emerge from any movement, ideology, religion or party. That’s why we have the rule of law — so that our system doesn’t depend upon the good-will of whomever is holding the office.

The Talking Dog (who is also a talking attorney in NYC) has been interviewing various lawyers who defend Guantanamo inmates for some time now. He happens to have one up this morning featuring an attorney who represents a legal US immigrant Ali Al-Marri, who has been held in the same limbo as Jose Padilla for years. I’d never heard of him:

Jonathan Hafetz: Certainly, his case has received less publicity than Padilla, who is, of course, a citizen, whereas Al-Marri is a legal immigrant. The fact is, the government’s argument as a basis for holding him is the same as Padilla: that the entire United States is a battlefield in the administration’s “war on terror.” While the Hamdi case concerned a citizen engaged in hostilities on a foreign battlefield, thus far, the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on the legality of the government’s detaining a civilian arrested in the United States itself (and it avoided the opportunity to do so recently in Padilla’s appeal).

As to Ali’s case, the District Court Judge Floyd, the same judge who ruled in Padilla’s case, denied our motion for summary judgment but ruled the courthouse doors were open for Mr. al-Marri to challenge the government’s allegations. We are presently litigating Al-Marri’s entitlement to due process to challenge the government’s factual basis for those allegations, and demanding a hearing consistent with due process of law.

The Talking Dog: Is it not the case that this is a still-live case presenting virtually the identical issue as Padilla (which the Supreme Court just ducked)?

Jonathan Hafetz: Certainly, the issue is very much live, and presents a danger to us all insofar as the government is asserting the right to strip any one of us of all due process rights and constitutional protections. So yes, that is definitely still the case– Al-Marri’s immigration status as opposed to citizenship doesn’t change that.

He concludes with this:

Jonathan Hafetz: The United States of America, since its inception, has stood for the rule of law. The actions of our government associated with the war on terror– notably, the arbitrary deprivations of due process, in violation of the Constitution, laws and treaty obligations – have fundamentally jeopardized that. What has been done has undermined our standing in the world, and is not an effective use of our resources, either. We have been holding some men over 4 ½ years, without charge or trial or any notion of due process, and insist on our right to detain them for life, even though they have never been, and may never be, charged with crimes. The war on terror will doubtless present us with more challenges. One of those challenges should not be the sacrifice of the rule of law.

In my view, the very existence of these issues speaks to the fact that we are not in a war at all. If we were, we would be able to invoke the many laws that have been in effect for eons regarding warfare. This is something else. We need to figure out what it is, and act accordingly. Going down this road is going to destroy us much more quickly than bin Laden could have dreamed.

If you are interested in this topic, be sure to read all of the Talking Dog’s interviews with Guantanamo lawyers, linked at the bottom of his post. It may depress you, but you have to at least feel some gladness that there are lawyers out there willing to do this important work. After the government went after attorneys in the Stewart case, if would have been easy to walk away. They didn’t.

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The Object Of His Affection

by digby

Who wrote this?

It’s almost always a joy listening to Gingrich when he’s on a tear. And he’s almost always on a tear of some sort. I caught up with Newt as he wandered around New Hampshire last week, which is what people who think they’re running for President do. Please, God, no, you say. Not that angry guy again. “He’s probably carrying too much baggage to be President,” said Peter Bergin, a Republican state representative from Amherst, N.H. “But he sure is a terrific idea man. He needs to be part of the debate.”

Absolutely. We might even create a new federal position to accommodate him, sort of like party ideologist in the old Soviet Union, except that the U.S. job would be the opposite of what it was in the U.S.S.R. Instead of imposing orthodoxy, the party idea-ologist—ideology is so un-American—would propose unorthodoxy. Gingrich was certainly wild with ideas last week, flicking them off at warp speed, like a dog shaking himself clean after romping through a pond.

William Kristol? Byron York? Kate O’Beirne? Hindquarters?

Here’s a clue: His initials are JK and he’s the liberal columnist for TIME magazine.

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On The Table

by digby

John at Crooks and Liars caught Joe Klein in a perfect example of shallow, knee jerk, beltway conventional wisdom that has made him the object of ridicule among everybody who observes the punditocrisy.

He goes on about how the young people of Iran love us, blah, blah, blah, but then makes an emphatic point that we must not take nuclear weapons “off the table.” Apparently he doesn’t understand the difference between nuclear weapons being “on the table” in the event of an attack and nuclear weapons being “on the table” as part of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptively attacking anyone who looks at us sideways.

Pre-emptive nuclear war has never been on the table. We don’t want it on the table. It’s, as Stephanopolous exclaimed, “insane.” (The look on Klein’s face when Steph did that was priceless. It was obvious that he thought he was saying something that everybody but the fever swamps believes is the sober centrist position.)

Klein sounds like he’s repeating snippets of cocktail conversation he heard over the decades and just plugs in the one that sounds like it will make him appear to be the most serious. It’s ridiculous that he’s invited on all these shows when it’s clear that he is not following the current debate.

I find it simply mind-boggling that after the unbelievable intelligence manipulation and incompetence that led us into the Iraq anyone in this country is willing to trust George W. Bush to launch another “pre-emptive” war. What exactly would he have to do to make the beltway courtiers question his good intentions? Get a blow job?

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The Rite Of Spring

by digby

This is the big day in the Christendom. In fact, I’ve always thought it was a bit strange that Christmas gets so much attention when Easter is the really big Kahuna. (Far be it for me to suspect cynical capitalistic motives, but …)

Anyway, as readers of this blog know, I’m not religious. But I like the holidays I grew up with. And although I don’t go to church on Easter anymore, (and despite my dark speculating below) I always think of it as the beginning of the season of rebirth, new life, spring and all that jazz. When the day is a brilliantly sunny 65 degree confection (with the cat lazily eyeing hummingbirds in the garden even) it’s just inhuman not to feel gladness even if you are not a believer in the big Kahuna.

So, in that spirit, I offer you Matisse’s “The Dance” which I believe was painted in homage to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” a madly pagan ballet, but one that I think the human spirit of all creeds can appreciate.

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Are We There Yet?

by digby

Following up on my post from Friday highlighting Colonel Sam Gardiner’s statement on CNN that the US already has troops in iran, I see (via robelicit at kos) that Dennis Kucinich has sent a letter to the president asking if such reports are true. He says:

Dear President Bush:

Recently, it has been reported that U.S. troops are conducting military operations in Iran. If true, it appears that you have already made the decision to commit U.S. military forces to a unilateral conflict with Iran, even before direct or indirect negotiations with the government of Iran had been attempted, without UN support and without authorization from the U.S. Congress.

Last Thursday, Raw Story had some interesting nuggets about the pentagon using MEK (an official terrorist group) to do dirty work in Iran:

One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.

[…]

“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.

It is well known that MEK was given a strange dispensation, with some very odd ducks offering public support, one of whom was, of all people, that radical wierdo Tom Tancredo:

Washington, DC, May. 31, 2005 (UPI) — U.S. lawmakers and former military officers are backing Mujahedin-e Khalq, an Iranian opposition group, despite its inclusion on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations and its role in the killing and wounding of U.S. military personnel and civilians in the 1970s.

Supporters acknowledge the status of the group, once funded by deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, as well as its role in the killings of U.S. military personnel and civilians in the 1970s in Iran when it was allied with Ayatollah Khomeini, but say the MEK has shed its past activities and is a potential ally against the theocratic regime in Iran.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, responded in a written statement saying he supports the MEK because it is an “asset to U.S. intelligence” and “the most reliable source of information for the region.”

In recent years the MEK’s political branch, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has provided information about Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the Bush administration contends are being used to secretly make nuclear weapons.

Tancredo’s press secretary, Carlos Espinosa, said it is not “too unusual” for members of Congress to support a group listed as a foreign terrorist organization, citing Sen. Ted Kennedy’s support for the Irish Republican Army as an example.

“Are these guys saints? No.” Espinosa said. But, “if there’s a problem, it’s that the MEK is on the list.”

Read the whole article for the rundown on MEK if you are unfamiliar with them. I remember seeing Rep. Ileana Ross-Lehtinen making a public statement in favor of the group a year or so ago and wondered what in the hell was up with that.

So, what does it all mean? I don’t really know, of course. But, as I wrote earlier, I am intrigued by Sy Hersh’s article from last year, that the pentagon has created a new, clandestine service that has no obligation to report to the congress as the CIA does:

George W. Bush’s reelection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

[…]

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

[…]

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’ it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs” the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran.

Here’s what he wrote last week:

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

Today, Richard Clark and Steven Simon, former national security staffers say this:

So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.

All of this may be some sort of advanced kabuki sabre rattling, of course. But Hersh’s scenario from early 2005 sounds entirely plausible to me. I suspect that these actions have been ongoing since Bush was reelected. Remember his constant refrain about “using his political capital?” His reelection seemed to infuse him with even more grandiosity than he showed before. For instance, his first order of domestic business wasn’t to disband the department of education, a longtime conservative goal. He set out to destroy social security — long known to be the third rail of politics. He thought he was destined (by God?) to fundamentally change the nation and the world. His arrogance knew no bounds.

Within that framework, it is entirely believable to me that he could have ordered regime change in Iran more than a year ago. And it is almost certain that he could have authorized a new clandestine service in the DOD that is unanswerable to congress. The administration’s understanding of presidential power during “wartime” allows him to do anything he deems necessary to “protect” the country.

Again, this is tinfoil hat stuff, connecting some very vague dots. A few years ago I would have dismissed it as conspiracy mongering of the worst kind and consigned myself to spend a month digging through illuminati web-sites to cure me of the disease.

After what we have seen, however, I don’t think it’s far-fetched at all:

• The administration has asserted a theory of unlimited executive power in wartime.
• The secretary of defense is committed to creating and using a new and “modern” fighting force using all kinds of unconventional and untried means.
• The president believes he was chosen by God to be his vehicle for spreadin’ freedom.
• The power behind the throne is a devious, powermad greedhead who believes that military dominance is the only way America can stay on top.
• They all have a history of lying about their plans for war and believed that their reelection was a mandate to continue on the same path.

Here was Bush in his first press conference after winning the election:

And after hundreds of speeches and three debates and interviews and the whole process, where you keep basically saying the same thing over and over again, that when you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that’s what I intend to tell the Congress, that I made it clear what I intend to do as the President, now let’s work to — and the people made it clear what they wanted, now let’s work together.

And it’s one of the wonderful — it’s like earning capital. You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That’s what happened in the — after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I’ve earned capital in this election — and I’m going to spend it for what I told the people I’d spend it on, which is — you’ve heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.

The most polarizing president in US history, who assumed office through one vote on the Supreme court the first time and won the second time because of a dubious swing of about 70,000 votes in Ohio says it’s his style to spend the political capital he “earned” when “the people” endorsed all his views.

That’s the kind of guy who thinks he can start secret wars to transform the middle east through sheer force. A megalomaniac child in the hands of manipulative men.

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Ah, The Book Review Strikes Again

by tristero

Recently, the NY Times Book Review’s been bending over backwards to find good things to say about “intelligent design” creationism, and assigning an intellectual lightweight to misread and review Daniel Dennett. Here’s their latest attempt to solidify their reputation for blithering stupidity bordering on functional illiteracy. It’s Pamela Paul’s review of a collection of essays by Caitlin Flanagan on housewifery et, al (accompanied by a scrumptious picture of a 50’s American housewife holding a freshly-baked cake. )

Flanagan is one of them anti-feminist types, apparently. And the reviewer wants us to know that she, too, has contempt for all those foolish feminist excesses. Unfortunately, well… in the spirit of the 50’s, let’s make it a quiz, boys and girls!

Can YOU spot the fundamental error of logic in the reviewer’s – and Flanagan’s – reasoning in the excerpt below?

As it stands, sensitivities are so attuned to the slightest insult of any one of women’s myriad work-life choices that Flanagan’s simplest observations — for example, when a woman works something is lost — are taken as an indictment of working women. Yet any working mother can see the truth in such a statement: time spent working = less time with children = something lost. What’s appalling is that pointing this out raises such ire.

Sigh. I suppose it is too much to ask an editor to catch something like this. But really, there are people who can give Flanagan a fair review who are smart enough to avoid perpetuating her sloppy thinking. And yes, it’s true that, considering the United States has a rogue executive branch that is in the early stages of what very well may escalate into nuclear war – and very few in the msm are willing to say it out loud – this is thoroughly trivial.

But this failure to understand basic logic in an influential literary publication points, and starkly, to a public intellectual culture that is profoundly empty of serious thought and discussion. A public culture in which serious thought and discussion really has to fight to get heard through muddle-headed thinking like Paul’s and Flanagan’s (Not their subject, duh. Their reasoning about the subject. Duh.). No wonder no one’s discussing the imminence of a possible nuclear attack on Iran in the msm. They don’t have the tools to comprehend it.

ANSWER: I found the “work vs baby-rearing” construction a classic false dichotomy, especially as framed here by Flanagan and Paul. The way they put it, *any* time away from baby could be construed as a loss – talking on the phone, eating lunch, going to the bathroom – all of these are losses to the mother/baby relationship; work is simply more loss. This strikes me as ipso facto a ludicrously crude position, and indefensible. Is part-time work less loss but still unacceptable? How about an hour a day? The false dichotomy becomes even more apparent if one considers mothers beyond Flanagan’s and Paul’s personal cohort of white, middle-to-upper-middle-class women. Which is not to say that there is even much truth to such a dichotomy within their own cohort.

This leads us to the question, “Why construct such a dichotomy in the first place?” And there are very few answers that don’t revolve around making women feel guilty for abandoning their children for the hedonistic pleasure of being underpaid in the workforce. Thus, the structure of this false dichotomy is, by its very nature, sexist and oppressive.

I hasten to add that I don’t know much feminist theory – since I agree with feminism, I would prefer to spend my time trying to understand things I have trouble agreeing with, or can never agree with – and so have no idea if any feminist has actually made this argument. It simply seems like common-sense to me.

Some commentators noticed that Paul makes a telling unconscious error, conflating “mothers” with “women.” Indeed, that is the hidden assumption that lies behind the urge to advance this kind of false dichotomy.

Please note: I am not saying there are not very legitimate issues surrounding the issues of child-rearing and employment outside the house for mothers (and to a lesser extent, fathers). Of course there are, and they need to be discussed openly and with good faith all around. What I’m saying is that by framing these issues as a simplistic false dichotomy, Flanagan and Paul are indulging, whether they are aware of it or not, in a very nasty kind of guilt-tripping. It is not appalling to object to this worthless style of argumentation. Rather, it is moral as it is the first step towards finding a legitimate discourse that does not take as a given that women should feel guilty about the choices they make.

All Paths Return To The Clenis

by tristero

What I want to know is this: Can Bill Clinton prove he wasn’t in Dallas on November 22, 1963?

Think I’m kidding? If it’s evil, Clinton had a hand in it. Think about it. There was Clinton’s drug smuggling which led to Noelle Bush’s drug addiction. And Clinton cavorting with two disciples of Sappho at a dinner party caused poor Mary Cheney to think that maybe it’s ok to love someone who, chances are, will never adopt her dad’s hairstyle. Not to mention that Clinton’s gory familiar invented the internet, that swamp of filth. (And if you don’t think the internet is perverted, just ask Jeff Goldstein or any other upstanding Republican whose done the research into how appalling it is. They’ll send you a long list of sites they’ve compiled where men and dogs…shocking stuff.) And when Clinton admitted receiving fellatio from Monica Lewinsky, he sent a strong signal that it was ok for America to engage in a literal epidemic of oral sex, dooming thousands of hapless spermatoza to a horrible death, eaten away by stomach acids or left to wither and dry into an icky stain on a blue dress. Those are your children, America!

And now, this. Unforgivable. Iran today is all Clinton’s fault.

See what I mean? Suddenly, Clinton’s presence in Dallas ’63 doesn’t seem so far-fetched, now does it? And I’ll bet if we could examine all the records from Bay of Pigs, we’d learn that Slick Willie called up his pal Castro – ‘course they were buddies, still are, remember that Elian kid he made go back to Cuba? – and gave him all the details.

Pity poor George W. Bush. Six years after Clinton and he’s still wasting time cleaning up Bill’s mess. And people think BUSH makes mistakes? How could he? I’m serious, man. Bush doesn’t have time to make his own mistakes, what with trying to correct all of Clinton’s!