Visitors' civil comments encouraged.
Women's History Month Linkage
Our Friends
The State of Women
The Confluence - 33 min 45 sec ago
I’ve been looking around for things to share here that don’t make me want to scream. Since this is women’s history month, I thought I’d try to focus on a few articles that I’ve read on things that give me hope. One such article showed up today in my mailbox from the The Economist. I’ve already highlighted India once before when I talked about the Pink Sari Ladies. This article is titled “Indian women on the March” and reminds me of my days in the years we fought to pass the ERA. This one, however, got signed into law (changing their constitution) and didn’t stall despite some pretty upset men out in the Indian hinterlands.
YELLING dementedly, seven lawmakers mobbed the chairman of the Indian parliament’s upper house on March 8th and tore at the document, containing the women’s reservation bill, he was reading from. Yet the bill passed the next day, with the two-thirds majority needed to change India’s constitution. With broad political support, including from the Congress party that leads India’s coalition government and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the bill could soon clear the lower house and win the support it needs in at least 15 out of 28 state assemblies. The president would then sign it into law: imposing a 33% quota for women in India’s federal and state assemblies.
This would be momentous, especially for India’s half a billion, badly served women. Today’s Lok Sabha, or House of the People, as India’s lower chamber is known, contains 58 women, a record number, but fewer than 11% of the seats. By greatly boosting women’s membership of India’s legislatures, the proposed amendment, its supporters say, will also begin to make a dent in their more grievous suffering—in a country where female fetuses are often aborted, where wives are battered and women earn on average $1,200 a year, less than a third of the male average. A woman can take credit for this: Sonia Gandhi, Congress’s leader, who has pushed the long-mothballed bill against a furious band of dissenters—of a kind that persuaded previous BJP- and Congress-led governments not to touch it.
While Nancy Pelosi bargains away U.S. women’s right to choose so she can win one for the Gypper, Sonia Ghandi presses forward for the women of India. Yes, Sonia does come from that Ghandi family we know from India’s history. That would be the Nehru family. She is the dual chief of the 113 year old Indian National Congress and its Parliamentary party. She married in to the famous family in 1968. (She’s a 57 year old widow.) Her husband , Rajiv Ghandi, was the 7th prime minister of India serving from 1984-1989. He was assassinated in 1991. She spent a number of years in solitude before anger over the extremely slow investigation into her husband’s death and a number of her husband’s followers convinced her to enter into a public and political life. Sonia was born in Italy and she met her husband while studying at Cambridge. She is a naturalized Indian citizen. She was offered the Prime Minister position at his death, but refused that too. She was key in seeing that Economist Dr. Manmohan Singh took the post.
Oddly enough, one of the real concerns about the bill is that some male politicians may actually put their wives or daughters up for election to rule through them. Ghandi stood up to one such opponent who had pulled a similar trick to rule from prison. There also seem to be some class questions.
They already do—as Mrs Gandhi hinted at when facing down one of the bill’s main opponents, a former chief minister of northern Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, who, after being sent to prison, installed his wife to rule the state on his behalf. “Your wife has been chief minister. You have seven daughters. What’s their view on the bill?” Mrs Gandhi asked him.
Unconvinced, Mr Yadav, whose party was among the hooligans in parliament, withdrew its support from the government. So did another north-Indian, low-caste party, Samajwadi. Both parties say the reservation should be dedicated to low-caste women. They also fear it will benefit educated, high-caste women, who are more likely to stand for Congress or the BJP. If, as expected, a third opponent of the bill, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the pro-dalit ruler of northern Uttar Pradesh state, also forsakes the government, it would be reduced to a majority of two in the Lok Sabha. In the worst case, it might even fail to get the necessary support for the budget announced on February 26th, and fall.
Gandhi continually places near the top in Forbes most power women list as well as Time’s list of 100 most influential people. Sonia Gandhi believes that Indian women have a good future in politics in their own right (from today’s The Hindu).
Her words should inspire every woman interested in public office.
“I think we all have to think to be generous,” she said. “Women empowerment is after all a dream, a vision.”
India's ruling Congress party supporters celebrate outside party leader Sonia Gandhi's house after the Women's Reservation Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, March 9, 2010. India's upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for a historic bill that would reserve one-third of legislative seats for women, despite a boycott by socialist lawmakers. The bill now goes to the lower house, where it is likely to pass. (AP Photo) Pic
This could be a very important move in helping Indian women overcome some depressing statistics. Some of these are covered by Times On Line.
But progress has been slow on improving rights and living standards for ordinary women in a country where traditional attitudes prevail in most of the countryside, and among the urban poor.
The World Economic Forum ranked India 114th out of 134 countries in a 2009 report on global gender disparities, with India posting low scores on female life expectancy, health and education.
The UN ranked India 134th out of 182 countries last year for female literacy, the proportion of women in its Cabinet – 10 per cent – and its gender development index, which measures disparity between living standards for men and women.
Almost all of the countries ranked lower by the UN were in sub-Saharan Africa.
Quotas for women in parliament have already been introduced in several other Asian countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, as well as in Africa.
Filed under: Women's Rights Tagged: Sonia Ghandi, Women's History Month
Categories: Our Friends
Coffee Summits, not Coffee Parties
The Confluence - 7 hours 1 min ago
By now you’ve probably heard about the Coffee Party.
The Coffee Party: Drink more caffeine to be half as angry and twice as ineffectual as the Tea Party.
The Coffee Party bills itself as a spontaneous grassroots alternative to the tea party, one not tied to any hyper-partisan or corporate agenda. In actuality, it behaves more like an unofficial extension of the Obama permanent campaign. The only call to actual “action” seems to be for the Waiting-on-the-World-to-Change Generation to lament over lattes, sharing their exasperation at how the unwashed masses have been astroturfed to obstruct poor President Obama from carrying out his noble vision of bipartisan, pluralist kumbayah.
From CNN:
Meet these members of the Coffee Party Movement, an organically grown, freshly brewed push that’s marking its official kickoff Saturday. Across the country, even around the globe, they and other Americans in at least several hundred communities are expected to gather in coffeehouses to raise their mugs of java to something new.
They’re professionals, musicians and housewives. They’re frustrated liberal activists, disheartened conservatives and political newborns. They’re young and old, rich and poor, black, white and all shades of other.
Born on Facebook just six weeks ago, the group boasts more than 110,000 fans, as of Friday morning. The Coffee Party is billed by many as an answer to the Tea Party (more than 1,000 fewer fans), a year-old protest movement that’s steeped in fiscal conservatism and boiling-hot, anti-tax rhetoric.
This new group calls for civility, objects to obstructionism and demands that politicians be held accountable to the people who put them in office.
The New York Times ran an earlier fluff piece about the Coffee Party last week:
Eileen Cabiling, who founded the Los Angeles chapter, said she had campaigned for President Obama, but paid little attention to politics until the Tea Party convention and Mr. Obama’s State of the Union speech, where he rebuked Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike for their inability to move on legislation.
“I had withdrawn in campaign fatigue,” Ms. Cabiling said. “I was like, what happened?”
[...]
“This is about recognizing that the government represents us,” Ms. Cabiling said, “so we need to step to the plate and start having a voice and start acting like bosses.”
This sounds like 2008 all over again. In other words, they are the ones they have been brewing for.
Recognizing that “the government is us” is instructive, but somehow Ms. Cabiling’s comments remind me less of returning government to We-the-People and more of the creative classs self-indulgence that leads to declarations such as “Out with Bubbas, Up with Creatives.”
What seems to drive today’s progressives is where they perceive themselves in relation to the Bubbas. In Obama, the creative class saw an opportunity to be the bosses–many declaring in 2008 that for the first time they felt engaged in the political process. Once Obama won the election, their motivation was gone. They were now the bosses they had waited for, or so they thought. Politics became boring again, onto the next reality show. Obama’s lack of leadership and his continuation of Bush policies were not enough to get his supporters out of their “campaign fatigue.” It took the tea party’s opposition to Obama to get the Obama partisans to realize that they were not quite as in control of the situation as they thought they were. Now they want to “wake up and stand up” just enough to regain their perception of themselves as bosses. Demanding for accountability of our elected officials seems to be an afterthought.
Even if it is not a propaganda arm or a gimmick, the coffee party is a response to the Tea Party, and therein lies the problem.
In terms of where we as liberals need to be focusing our response, the Tea Party is neither here nor there.
Jumper Cables = Critical Thinking
The Tea Party isn’t the one who claimed to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare in 2003…
…then campaigned for a public option and against a mandate in 2008…
…only to assume the American presidency and reverse his already half-baked recipe into the ultimate shit sandwich–a mandate without a public option.
It wasn’t the Tea Party protests that brought the public option down, either. The public option has remained popular, if vaguely defined, among voters.
The Tea Party is beside the point.
Bill Clinton nailed it not too long ago when he was campaigning for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts:
You need to take that tea party label back. (Applause and cheers) The tea party–(Applause continues)–you know all this tea party protest, the whole idea behind it is that government is inherently corrupt and bad and confused, right–and, the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against government. That is not true–the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against abuse of power–taxation without representation, taking the autonomy away from the Massachusetts Bay Company and the local governments. You had a very vigorous government at the time of the Boston Tea Party. The people believed in it, they participated in it, and they thought the purpose of the government was to advance the common good. –Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton has a knack for getting to the heart of the matter. (Ironically, Martha Coakley lost because she was unable to fight the abuse of power within her own party.)
Neither the Tea Party nor the Coffee Party are responding to the root issue. The Tea Party is a vehicle for absorbing catch-all populist anger into the GOP brand. The coffee response to the tea party is likewise a vehicle for preserving the Obama brand. Neither “party” has a larger purpose other than keeping each side involved in an imaginary contest where each tribe wants to be the boss of the other tribe. When you take away the superficial rhetoric about the role of government on both sides, what remains are taunts that either you’re a socialist or you’re a teabagger. These faux movements exploit real voter backlash at Washington and serve to keep the electorate divided and busy bashing each other at the rank-and-file level rather than collectively pushing back on the oligarchy.
What is missing right now is a mobilized response not to each other but to abuse of power, specifically a response in the form of advocacy for the working/middle class. I’m often reminded of FDR’s economic bill of rights:
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security.
I’m also reminded of this clip from Meet the Press:
SEC’Y CLINTON: Well, I absolutely would look forward to having coffee. I’ve never met her.
[...]
But, you know, I’m ready to have a cup of coffee. Maybe I can make a case on some of the issues that we disagree on.
MR. GREGORY: So maybe there’s a summit meeting here.
Tea and Coffee parties are echo chambers.
What we really need are more coffee summits, so to speak, where competing ideas are put forward as to how we can turn FDR’s economic bill of rights into a reality.
Filed under: General Tagged: Coffee Party, Economic Bill of Rights, FDR, Tea Party
Categories: Our Friends
Sports: NHL, NASCAR To Punish Carl Edwards For Hit On Bruins' Marc Savard
The Onion - 10 hours 26 min ago
BOSTON—NASCAR and the National Hockey League announced Wednesday they would punish Sprint Cup driver Carl Edwards for hitting Boston center Marc Savard with his No. 99 Ford Fusion stock car late in the third period...
Categories: Our Friends
Lazy Saturday Morning News and Views
The Confluence - 10 hours 58 min ago
An Obot Brain on Koolaid
Good Morning Conflucians!
I noticed that we had an early morning visit from the latest “expert” on what PUMA was. Apparently Oliver had a little temper tantrum when he saw Dakinikat’s link to his obscure blog last night.
Oliver, on March 13, 2010 at 4:56 am Said:
If you actually read what I wrote you would see that I didn’t call Hamsher a PUMA. I said she ran a PUMA-style operation, aka “I’m not getting my own way, so screw everything.”
As if he would know anything about it. First our idea was hijacked by various other people we had never met, and now other people we have never met (Frankly, I’ve only vaguely heard of Oliver and have never read his blog before) are telling us what our idea was all about. Gee thanks so very much.
Well, here’s my judgment of you, Oliver, based on reading one post at your blog. You aren’t anything resembling liberal or “left” as long as you support the obscene joke of a “health care reform” bill that the White House and Congress are trying to push down our throats. People like you pushed Obama down our throats last year. Now we’re stuck with him, but we don’t have to like the torture, rendition, spying, misogyny, or the anti-abortion, anti-freedom policies of this monstrous oligarchical administration that you apparently support.
To put it bluntly, go fuck yourself, Oliver. We support “FDR-style” operations at The Confluence, and your beloved Obama administration isn’t an FDR-style operation by a long shot. For your information, PUMA was about the 2008 primary process, which ended long ago. We have moved on, but Obots like Oliver are still insulted because we supported a different candidate for the Democratic nomination and didn’t appreciate having that candidate’s votes tampered with.
In other news, Pope Benedict’s sexual abuse cover-up operation is getting some attention in the mainstream press. The New York Times has a story up: Church Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope:
A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.
Times Topics: Roman Catholic Church | Pope Benedict XVIThe archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.
People inside and outside of the Church are beginning to believe that the Pope would have had to know about what was happening in Germany. Irish Central is even asking if the Pope might have to step down.
Hillary Clinton in the News
From BBC News: Clinton rebukes Israel over East Jerusalem homes
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sharply rebuked Israel over its recent decision to build new settlements in East Jerusalem.
She told Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone that the move was “deeply negative” for US-Israeli relations.
The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Kim Ghattas, says it was a rare and sharp rebuke from Washington.
Israel’s announcement overshadowed a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden aimed at restarting peace talks.
Since then the Palestinians have indicated they will not return to the negotiating table unless the Israeli decision is revoked.
Christian Science Monitor: Hillary Clinton at UN: ‘Women’s progress is human progress’
In a speech Friday at the UN in New York, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton identified equality for the world’s women and girls as the central challenge that will determine the peace and progress of the 21st century.
She underscored the links between economic development, ending poverty, improving health, safeguarding the environment, and the continued enhancement of the status of women. “Women’s progress is human progress, and human progress is women’s progress,” she said.
Those words were clearly meant to echo Secretary Clinton’s own words 15 years ago when, as the US first lady, she told the World Conference on Women in Beijing: “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights.”
Clinton’s speech not only marked the anniversary of her 1995 Beijing speech, but also wrapped up events for International Women’s Day, which took place March 8. Those events included meetings of the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women.
Clinton says U.N. needs more women in top jobs
/ALeqM5jgG2VAedB0dFHmGwwdgGTQJVm_vQ”>Subjugation of women threatens US security: Clinton
Clinton Urges Women to Continue Building on Advancements
Thank you for standing up for women, Madame Secretary.
Interesting News and Views from the Blogosphere
Stateofdisbelief alerted me to this report at Alternet: The Most Powerful Destructive Corporate Business Club Most Americans Have Never Heard of
In total, the Economic Elite are made up of about 0.5% of the US population. At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations. Most Americans have never heard of the Business Roundtable. However, in my analysis, it is the most influential and powerful Economic Elite organization….
Here is a partial list of some of their lead members:
——-Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs
——-James Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
——-James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley
——-Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup, Inc.
——-Brian T. Moynihan, Bank of America
——-Brendan McDonagh, HSBC
——-Robert W. Selander, MasterCard Incorporated
——-Kenneth I. Chenault, American Express Company
——-Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation
——-Glenn A. Britt, Time Warner Cable Inc.
——-Philippe Dauman, Viacom, Inc.
——-Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric Company
——-Brian L. Roberts, Comcast Corporation
——-Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft Corporation
——-John T. Chambers, Cisco Systems, Inc.
——-Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T Inc.
——-Ivan G. Seidenberg, Verizon Communications
——-David G. DeWalt, McAfee, Inc.
——-Steven R. Loranger, ITT Corporation
——-Paul T. Hanrahan, AES Corporation, The
——-Riley P. Bechtel, Bechtel Group, Inc.
——-W. James McNerney , Boeing Company, The
——-Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon Mobil Corporation
——-Marvin E. Odum, Shell Oil Company
——-John S. Watson, Chevron Corporation
——-James J. Mulva, ConocoPhillips
——-John B. Hess, Hess Corporation
——-James E. Rogers Duke Energy Corporation
——-J. Larry Nichols, Devon Energy Corporation
——-Ronald A. Williams, Aetna Inc.
——-David Cordani, CIGNA
——-Jeffrey B. Kindler , Pfizer Inc.
——-Angela F. Braly, WellPoint, Inc.
——-John C. Lechleiter, Eli Lilly and Company
——-Edward B. Rust, Jr., State Farm
——-Andrew N. Liveris, Dow Chemical
——-James W. Owens, Caterpillar Inc.
——-Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont
——-Edward E. Whitacre Jr., General Motors Company
——-Michael T. Duke, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
You can read the entire report here: The Economic Elite vs. the People of the United State of America.
It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.
Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.
Sadly, there are still delusional, Koolaid-soaked bloggers like Oliver Willis who still believe they have some ability to influence our corrupt, bought-out government. Good luck to them.
At Truthdig, Reese Erlich explains why white people who fly planes into buildings or shoot people at the Pentagon are not “terrorists,” but people of Middle-Eastern extraction who shoot people are “terrorists.”
Also at Truthdig, Ruth Markus has a nice piece on the “Chief Whiner,” John Roberts.
At FDL, Scarecrow thinks Rachel Maddow might be starting to “get a clue” about who really killed the public option
At Raw Story, news of Glenn Beck’s pronouncement on Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA: The song is “anti-American” and “propaganda” that people must “wake up” from. Oh really? I’d rather wake up to it, I think.
What are you reading this lazy Saturday morning?
Have a wonderful day everyone!
Filed under: General
Categories: Our Friends
Racial Slur Development Not Keeping Pace With Mixed-Race Births, Nation's Bigots Report
The Onion - 12 hours 10 min ago
WASHINGTON—"The time has come for our ugly, intolerant rhetoric to step into the 21st century. Our disgusting, dehumanizing slurs simply must reflect the terrifying new global society we now live in," said American Racists and Bigots Council chairman Tom Branson.
Categories: Our Friends
Obama’s Folly
The Confluence - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 7:40pm
Have we figured out how many deadlines have now passed on the HCRA yet? We now have a canceled trip to Southeast Asia and the re-emergence of Michael Moore as Health Care advocate instead of true Koolaid believer. Evidently, he got tired of waiting for his pony. The Congressional Black Caucus is still patiently waiting for the jobs and economic development unicorn because we’re all caught in the HCRA vortex of political hell and POTUS doesn’t call them any more. They spoke in unison today to the tune of What Have you done for me Lately? POTUS sent them the answer via the fat white boy with the USA hockey shirt singing the tune of Thanks for the Memories. I guess he’ll call them when he needs them cuz Ya gotta have Friends! or is that Ya gotta have Faith?
Evidently, no one is talking to Stupak now from the Speaker’s or the whip’s offices but they’re trying to peel away some of the less obstinate fetus fetishists. All I’ve heard on NPR on the drive to work is that the Catholic Bishops still aren’t happy about the language in the senate bill and are on the phone to congress. I guess god must’ve put them on hold and the pope is too busy dealing with the pimps at the vatican.
Nancy’s completely pulled the public option off the table even though Dick Durbin says he’d Whip It up as much as possible should it go back where it belongs. FDL has the latest whip count and like John Boehner–who is showing up on every TV screen in America–FDL says the votes aren’t there. Boehner’s got that lean hungry look these days. I’m sure he’s got his wife out measuring for new curtains for that bigger office come December and hopes this fiasco is the Song that Never Ends.
This has to be the weirdest political drama going on outside of the latest episode of Survivor or a rerun of Jersey Shore. I’m waiting for Dr. Drew to show up to do an intervention. And they thought Hillary screwed up a national health care policy? These guys are professional fuck ups! It appears to be the ONE thing they do well!
Clusterfuck is an understatement.
The Progressives Neo-regressives are now saying that any one that isn’t in line with the current version of Health Insurance Hell just isn’t a real liberal. (Thanks Matt Y) One of the deluded Obots even called Jane Hamsher a PUMA because she wants the public option and won’t roll over and play dead liberal dawg.
Oliver, buy a clue, I know Jane Hamsher, I know Puma, Jane Hamsher is NO PUMA. (Under his definition, Michael Moore is a PUMA now.)
Then, there’s the parliamentarian call that says POTUS must sign the senate version and every one has to trust the senate to change it after it becomes law. Faux News repeatedly has the count and public support at the lower bounds of the head counts for both prompting Howell Raines to wonder if any one knows about journalism these days in a WAPO op ed. I just saw the latest ad from the Health Insurance Industry which says that despite record earnings and bonuses they own only 4% of the problem.
I’d say something about clowns and health care clown cars but I know I’d be in trouble around here big time for doing so. I’m looking for a better metaphor. Got one?
You can help me try to sort this out over a Pinot Grigio or change the subject. Believe me, some one needs to change the policy agenda to jobs and real financial reform before we all need to invest in seed banks and shot gun shells.
Filed under: Health, Health Care Reform, healthcare Tagged: prozac cocktail friday
Categories: Our Friends
Bandai Recalls Lady Gaga
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 2:32pm
News In Photos
Categories: Our Friends
Sports: 'She's Probably A Money-Hungry Liar,' Extremely Nervous Steelers Fans Report
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 2:00pm
PITTSBURGH—In the wake of sexual assault allegations made against Ben Roethlisberger by a Georgia college student, nervous Steelers fans across the nation speculated that the supposed victim was most likely a conniving harpy...
Categories: Our Friends
In Focus: Bishop Sick Of Local Church Scene
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 1:31pm
SACRAMENTO, CA—Bishop Robert K. Boland of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento announced Monday that, although he remains a devoted servant of God and the Catholic Church, he has become tired of the same old church scene.
Categories: Our Friends
Authorities Investigating Suicide Determine Victim Really Went For It
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 10:02am
HAVERFORD, PA—Officials investigating the tragic suicide of local man Thomas Ingraham told reporters Tuesday they have determined that the...
Categories: Our Friends
Friday Morning: My Dad
The Confluence - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 9:44am
West Fargo, ND in the 1930s
Good morning Conflucians.
It’s a sad day for me today. My father died suddenly yesterday afternoon. He would have been 88 in May. We aren’t sure what happened, just that he went outside by himself to putter around–something he wasn’t supposed to do, but he could never stop himself. He was the kind of person who always needed to be doing something. Dad had been falling down a lot for the past few years, and this time was the last time. I guess I always knew that eventually something like this would happen.
In some ways it’s better than a long, painful death from disease. I’m still pretty numb from the shock. Mainly, I keep staring off into space and sometimes I cry. I know it hasn’t really hit me yet. I knew it was coming, but I hoped that I would be able to be there when it happened. Now I just want to be there for my mom and celebrate my dad’s life with my family.
I’m getting my car checked out this afternoon, and I’ll probably leave for Indiana tomorrow or Sunday. My youngest sister is with my mom now, and my other younger sister will be there today. One of my brothers will be there today. My youngest brother, who lives here in the Boston area, is driving out with his family soon.
I wanted to share this with you, because I think of all of you as my friends. Please don’t be sad for me. My dad had a good life. He had a successful career as a college professor, and he touched many many students over the years. Some of them have even contacted him in the past few years to let him know how much his teaching meant to them. He and my mom raised five children and had a number of grandchildren and great grandchildren.
My dad was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1922. He lived through the dust bowl and Great Depression years, and I know his childhood wasn’t easy. His family struggled to make ends meet, and my dad sold papers and magazines as a boy to help out after his father lost his eyesight in a shooting accident. After high school, my dad went to college at North Dakota State–then it was North Dakota Aggie. He joined the army reserves to get help paying for college.
When dad was only 19, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and his regiment was called up and sent to the Pacific. The North Dakota 164th regiment trained in Louisiana and left the U.S. for Australia in March of 1942 and then on to New Caledonia where they became part of the Americal Division. In October, 1942, they landed on Guadalcanal where the Marines were stranded and almost out of food and ammunition.
Members of the 164th became known as “jungle fighters” in U.S. media, named for the terrain in which they fought. The infantry was also given the nickname “The 164th Marines” for their bitter fight against the Japanese in the Battle for Henderson Field and the Battle of the Matanikau on the island, and became the first U.S. Army unit to take offensive action during World War II.
During the first five days of the 164th’s landing at Guadalcanal, 117 men were killed. During the battle for Henderson Field, an estimated 1,700 Japanese were killed, while the 164th suffered 26 killed and 52 wounded. The 164th continued with other battles and patrols through February 1943, and the unit saw 147 men lose their lives. The regiment received the Navy’s Presidential Unit Citation.
Soldiers settling in after the Japanese retreated on Guadalcanal
I know Guadalcanal was very tough for my dad. He hardly talked about his service until the last few years. I know there was one battle in which he was the only survivor of his company.
The 164th left Guadalcanal and moved on to Bougainville, part of the Solomon Islands, where it served until November 1944. During World War II, the 164th spent nearly 600 days in combat and 325 men were killed in action, while 1,193 men were wounded in action.
After the war, dad went back to North Dakota Aggie on the G.I. Bill. That was where he met my mom, in a political science class. A few years ago my parents and I went back to North Dakota, and my dad showed me the classroom where he first met my mom. I saw the church where they were married, and we visited their childhood homes. I was born while my parents were living with his mom and dad in Fargo.
After getting degrees in English and economics, my dad went on to get his masters degree at North Dakota University in Grand Forks. Then we moved to Iowa for a year and then to Lawrence, Kansas, where my dad got his Ph.D. After a couple more moves, we settled in Muncie, Indiana, where my dad taught in the English Department at Ball State University. For a time he worked as Dean of the Honors Program, but he really preferred teaching to administrating.
Dad retired early, and was able to spend time thinking, reading and traveling with my mom. He was there for me when I decided to go back to school in the early ’90s. He lived long enough to know that I finally got my Ph.D.
I didn’t have an easy childhood either. My dad was often an angry man–I’m sure he was depressed at times. He was often very cruel when I was a child and through my teens. I left home when I was 19, and my other two sisters left around that age too. Back in the ’80s, I worked hard to deal with all my childhood stuff, and I was able to build a close relationship with my dad. I always stayed close with my mom. After all the work I did on myself, I was able to let go of resentments and understand that both of my parents also had difficult childhoods. I always knew they loved me, and that was very important.
In recent years, my family has been much closer than we were after we all left home. I’m so grateful that I was able to renew my relationships with my siblings and to spend time with my mom and dad. We will all get together next week, and talk about my dad and our memories of him.
I wanted to share this with you, and I hope you don’t mind. Please use this as an open news thread and post any stories that you are reading this morning. My dad loved to follow politics, and so does my mom, so I grew up hearing about it. Politics was something we could always talk about together.
Here are a few stories to get you started.
Bernie Sanders: Obama Has Tragically Lost The Youth, Antagonized Unions
Speaking at a progressive media summit, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called it a “tragic mistake” that the White House fruitlessly chased Republican votes on health care rather than take advantage of the ripe environment to pass legislation.
“What is very sad is we had hopes that [the] election was transformational in the sense of bringing people into the political process who have never been in it before,” Sanders said. “I tried very hard in Vermont to bring young people into the political process. It is very hard to do. Obama did it. But you know where those young people are now? They are not in the political process. They really aren’t. We have lost them. We have antagonized trade unionists. We have not done well with seniors. I don’t think we have done well with women. And I think that was a tragic mistake.”
NYT Caucus blog: Timing of Obama Indonesia Trip Questioned
Obama has now cancelled the trip, according to Politico.
Naked Capitalism: NY Fed Under Geithner Implicated in Lehman Accounting Fraud Allegation
Have a great Friday, everyone!
Filed under: General
Categories: Our Friends
Massa Insinuates He Was Forced Out
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 9:30am
After resigning amidst allegations of sexual harassment, former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) told Larry King and Glenn Beck that he was targeted by the...
Categories: Our Friends
Sports: 'What The Fuck Am I Going To Do With This?' Obama Says While Holding Alabama Jersey
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 9:02am
News In Photos
Categories: Our Friends
Sports: Stan Van Gundy Gives Players 'Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook' To Read During Road Trip
The Onion - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 9:00am
ORLANDO, FL—Continuing a tradition that stretches back to his early years with the Miami Heat, Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy routinely presents his players with classic barbecue cookbooks to inspire them and provide insights during road trips.
Categories: Our Friends
In Honor of Women’s History Month
The Confluence - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 10:42pm
Back in February I did a post about gender based violence and I mentioned prehistoric egalitarian societies that centered around life or earth based religions. I got some shit for it, which is perfectly okay. Usually if you’re not irritating someone then you’re not actually accomplishing anything.
In a post on Tuesday, Violet Socks had Artemis March write a guest post about an exhibit on prepatriarchal “Old Europe” in New York City in honor of Women’s History month. She explains:
To appreciate the enormity of what’s at stake here, I invite you to read Joan Marler’s summary of Gimbutas’ work discovering and reconstructing Old Europe (OE), and another about her interpretation of its demise and the prehistoric transition to patriarchy in Europe. Marler is executive director of the Institute of Archaeomythology, dedicated to developing interdisciplinary approaches to the study of prehistoric and present cultures.
The disappearing acts perpetrated through the OE exhibit are hardly unique. Another example is the archaeological team at a key Neolithic site in Asia Minor (Çatalhöyük). Marguerite Rigoglioso exposes the strategies and tactics through which they deny evidence of, and even the possibility of, prehistoric female deities and female authority, and try to marginalize and discredit Gimbutas and others who have the courage to name what they see rather than project a patriarchal pattern onto every prehistoric society.
Marler’s and Rigoglioso’s work helps to bring home an appreciation of the some of the layers and complexity of the struggle to reverse millennia of female invisibility and the intense political struggles over the all-important issues of patriarchal origins and its finite existence rather than its alleged innate nature. Male entitlement, sole male authority, and male control over women are not god-given or “how things are,” but integral to an historically finite, socially constructed type of socio-political system that’s been around for only a few thousand years.
Many who point to the probable existence of Egalitarianism prior to and during the early parts of the bronze age are accused of “Red Tent Feminism,” which isn’t even feminism, IMHO. A feminist believes in the social political and economic equality of men and women, not the social, political and economic superiority of one gender, be it male or female.
The truth is that the existence of such evidence that points to prehistoric cultures that were not patriarchal is not useful because it somehow validates the superiority of women over men or a “separate but equal” nonsense mentality. On the contrary, it is useful because it shows us that patriarchy is not just “the way things are.” It is useful because it validates patriarchy as being detrimental to the evolutionary progress of human beings, rather than beneficial.
As SOD has explained in many informative ways via her posts about social dominance, BMSD sexual fantasies aside, it is partnership between men and women that makes progress for humankind possible, not the dominion of one social group over another.
A lot of people have trouble believing that patriarchy isn’t the norm, and that doesn’t make them anti-feminist, it makes them observant. Patriarchy is ingrained into our psyches not only because it is currently the cultural norm, but because it is drilled into our heads by the media, the entertainment industry, and most of all by religion.
Christianity, by all accounts a fairly new religion, tells us through canonical scripture that man is inherently evil because he took the apple from the tree of knowledge from woman (and a serpent or dragon, which was a symbol of feminine divinity in prebiblical times) and therefore he is condemned unless he accepts the son of a male God who dies on the cross for the original sin in his nature perpetuated by woman and her seductive serpent as his savior and lord. As a narrative it gives us no other option than patriarchy, because not only is mankind evil because of women (after all, isn’t everything a woman’s fault?), GOD isn’t even a woman.
The Bible is the world’s number one best seller and is put forth as the absolute truth by many. Even as a very young child, I could never embrace or even wrap my head around that way of thinking because to me it made no sense. For one thing, it is fairly obvious that the Earth is not five thousand years old, and for another, it didn’t add up that man could be created first when women were the ones who had kids. That still does not make any sense to me and it never will. Hence part of the reason I only talk to my parents twice a year. But I digress.
Human nature is of course, imperfect. By pointing to evidence of prehistoric egalitarian civilizations, no one is saying that it isn’t. The people who lived in those cultures felt pain, sadness and anger. They mourned at the loss of loved ones and sometimes, they failed. Just like the rest of us. No one who recollects those times through archeological evidence recollects them for nostalgic purposes. But how does that saying go? A person who doesn’t know his past has no future. As Artemis explains:
As Mary Daly used to say, by distorting and disappearing our past, they have ravaged and purloined our present and our future. Disappearing acts have gone on for millennia, and they are going on right now, right in front of us. They can be blatant and concrete, as in the absence of women on our currency, our stamps, and the paucity of female statuary in our public life—a situation Lynette Long has recently taken on. They can be as elemental and profound as changing cosmological deities and their stories from female to male—a transition that the late Paula Gunn Allen tracked in numerous Native American traditions, and observed is still taking place. Disappearing acts can be far more devious, complex, and multi-layered as is the case with bringing these Old European artifacts forward.
As we go through Women’s History Month, it is important to remember that our history did not start with the suffragist movement. It did not start with Joan of Arc or Catherine the Great or Rosa Parks. As someone we know and love once said back in a speech in Beijing in 1995, Women’s rights are Human rights. And by extension Women’s history is human history.
Human history started way before any of us could remember it or write it down. And the knowledge that women might have and in fact probably made the very first doctors, priests, writers, artists, and yes, leaders is knowledge that should stay with us all through Women’s History Month. Because those nameless women and American Sheroes like Susan B Anthony and Shirley Chisholm and Margaret Chase Smith aren’t just our past. They are our future.
Filed under: feminism Tagged: National Women's History Month
Categories: Our Friends
Women Aviators of World War II Honored by Congress
Alegre's Corner Latest - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 9:32pm
During World War II the women of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) flew everything but combat missions, repaired planes, trained other pilots, ferried planes to their male counterparts who would fly them into battle, took great risk and even died for their country in the fight for freedom. They logged over 60 million miles in 78 different kinds of aircraft in the skies above the United States. They served without expectation of honor or recognition. They were never considered a part of the military and after the war they weren't even granted military benefits.
Thirty-eight of these 1,002 courageous women made the ultimate sacrifice and when they died, their families had to pay to have their body returned home to them. It wasn't until 1977 that the mighty WASPs were granted full veterans' status.
It's estimated that 300 WASPs are still alive and yesterday nearly two thirds of them attended a Congressional ceremony to honor their service, where they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal - the nation's highest civilian honor. These women are a part of The Greatest Generation and they paved the way for thousands of women who have gone on to do great things. It's only fitting that they receive the recognition they so richly deserve.
Hats off to the women of Congress who helped make yesterday's momentous event possible: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland; Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; and Representative Susan Davis, D-California.
Categories: Our Friends
[audio] Sea-Going Turtle Under Fire For Egg Abandonment
The Onion - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 8:30pm
Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland
Categories: Our Friends
Man On Internet Almost Falls Into World Of DIY Mustard Enthusiasts
The Onion - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 2:00pm
DES MOINES, IA—Only when Steve Gibson started getting enraged by mustard-related issues did he realize he had become entangled in a dense, thickening web of mustard obsession. "I saw my wife put French's mustard on a bologna sandwich and I just lost control," he said.
Categories: Our Friends
In Focus: Nation To Be Tested For Scoliosis Friday
The Onion - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 12:46pm
WASHINGTON, DC--In a mandatory, nationwide health initiative many Americans are dreading, all U.S. citizens will be tested for scoliosis Friday.
Categories: Our Friends