a grand day out

Thanks for all your good wishes, you guys. We had a lovely day.

Fenway Park has always been my favorite ballpark. It's really one of my favorite places, period. And although I watch or listen to a baseball game almost every day, because I no longer enjoy going to Yankee Stadium, I haven't actually attended a baseball game all season. I miss it! When I walk up those steps and see that brilliantly green grass, and that crazy green wall, I feel pure joy.

The weather was beautiful - hot, but not humid, and breezy - we had excellent seats behind the Red Sox dugout, and the Sox breezed to a win. To cap it off, Allan surprised me with this:

Cool, huh? (In case you can't read it, it says "The Red Sox wish a Happy 20th Anniversary to Allan Wood and Laura Kaminker".)

It's funny, I never thought that celebrating the day we met was unusual, but judging from yesterday's comments, I guess it is. As I've mentioned in other contexts, we don't celebrate any of the standard holidays. No Christmas, no Chanukah or Passover, and we barely acknowledge national holidays like Memorial Day and 4th of July - except by getting extra hours at work. We're completely areligious, so we haven't substituted any Pagan rituals, as I know some people do. Instead, we have the four Major Holidays of the Kaminker-Wood household: two birthdays, the anniversary of the day we met, and the anniversary of our domestic partnership. Something tells me we're about to add a fifth. You can guess what it is.

Now, with two days left until my final deadline, I will forego posting about the larger world, and selfishly concentrate on my own. Take care, all - see you soon.

the best day

"It was twenty years ago today..."

July 20, 1985, somewhere on West 22nd Street, a bored young New Yorker in a mini-skirt met a skinny, long-haired guy from Vermont.

We're celebrating the 20th anniversary of that great day by driving up to Boston for a baseball game. Here's to the next 20 years.

Hope you all have a wonderful day - see you tomorrow!

party of jellyfish

Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, writes two-minute commentaries for the magazine's daily radio show (which I think you can listen to here.)

His copy is always punchy, short and worth reading. Today it's called "Hillary on the Right": how the darling of the Democrats, and the most hated woman in America, wants to expand the empire, because she is a "strong proponent of a forceful American military presence abroad".

"Reframing" the abortion debate, increases in military spending - the Dems have got it all. They have finally figured out how to imitate the Republicans, but still be themselves: adopt all their policies, but not get elected anyway.

sounds

Cindy Sheehan wants to hear the sound of a nation waking up.

Sheehan is the mother of Spc Casey Austin Sheehan, killed in action in Iraq on April 4, 2004. She is the founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. Today in Common Dreams, Sheehan writes:

The saddest thing about the obscene sounds of violence is that they never should have been heard in the first place. From Maine to California, and from Baghdad to Falluja, these dirges were unnecessary. In my travels, and from hundreds of emails, phone calls, and cards and letters, I am discovering that people who formerly supported the invasion of Iraq are withdrawing their support. I even believe that many of our fellow citizens who still support the ignominy of Iraq are doing so because they are clinging to the deceptions so desperately, because they want the deceptions to so be the truth. It will be painful to come to terms with supporting the lies of this administration. It will be painful to know that wholesale killing of innocent people occurred because you and so many others believed the betrayals, but acknowledging the mistake is the first step to correcting it. And believe me, acknowledging the mistake is not as painful as hearing those devastating sounds.

Read "The Sounds Of Hope" here.

tick tick tick

This is it. My final deadline for the children's book I'm writing is Friday. I'm out of town on Wednesday, so that leaves four days.

I'm in good shape, but only if I bear down. So you'll understand if I'm mostly absent from comments this week.

border skirmish

We don't want your beef, but will you take our disgusting, polluted water?

Long-time wmtc readers may remember my friend Alan With One L, also known as The Handheld Evangelist, the man who turned me on to the joys of iPAQ. (Isn't she beautiful? I am still in love.)

Alan has alerted me to yet another US-Canada border war.

Canadians often get angry when the United States throws up barriers to their exports, such as cattle or softwood. But now Canada is desperate to block an unwanted American product. Officials are meeting their counterparts in Washington, DC, to try to stop the state of North Dakota from draining the polluted waters of Devil's Lake into their own Lake Winnipeg. Undeterred, the authorities of North Dakota plan to let the waters flow when a channel is completed later this month.

Devil's Lake lies about 160km (100 miles) south of the Canadian border. It has no natural outlet, shedding water solely through evaporation. But a recent series of wet years have swollen the lake to record levels, submerging 28,000 hectares (69,000 acres) of farmland and 300 homes. In 2003, the United States Army Corps of Engineers published a feasibility study for a $186m project (of which North Dakota would have paid $70m) to drain the lake into the Sheyenne river. This feeds into the Red river, which flows north across the border to Lake Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba.

Manitoba immediately objected. With no outlet, Devil's Lake has accumulated high concentrations of sulphates, arsenic, phosphorus and other pollutants. Canadians also worry that the outflow could bring invasive species, parasites and disease to Lake Winnipeg's C$25m ($20m) fishery industry.

Story from The Economist here.

By the way, the US ban on Canadian beef was just overturned. Which is not to say that beef for dirty water constitutes fair trade.

you've been holding out on me

"New York run by the Swiss."

So said actor Peter Ustinov, describing the city of Toronto. Why didn't anyone ever tell me this? New wmtc reader James finally alerted me to this quote.

To a New Yorker, this is a bizarre description. Nothing could be less New York than the stereotype of clean, efficient Switzerland. Which is not to say New York couldn't be improved by an injection of Swissness.

Googling the phrase, I found this New York Magazine note, which ran after the 2004 election. It's a semi-sarcastic look at which Canadian city disgusted Americans might move to. Let me know what you think of the caricatures.

Here's something seldom seen at wmtc: a little celebrity trash. From Zydeco Fish, I bring you Tom Cruise Is Nuts. I haven't the slightest idea what's going on with the whole Tom Cruise thing. I have read exactly one item relating to it, and that was Brooke Shield's New York Times Op-Ed. Anyone who speaks publicly about mental and emotional illness wins points in my book. But this Is Nuts website is really amusing. Don't miss the reader letters, that's the best part.

Plus, these are the same folks who brought us such internet classics as Exterminate Tom Delay, We Love Arnold, Where In The World Is Jesus, and the newest gem, Karl Rove Is Toast.

Enjoy!

$6.50

That's what this post will cost US readers. Canadians might pay a little more, but you won't be disappointed.

You must all run out right now and buy a copy of Harper's. The article is called "Mighty White of You - Racial Preferences Color America's Oldest Skulls and Bones," by Jack Hitt. It's about anthropology theories, the ridiculous (and constantly changing) social construct of race, how we perceive ourselves and our prehistoric ancestors, and above all, the persistence of racism - subtle but unmistakable - in every facet of our culture. It is fascinating and very entertaining. It's the kind of article that makes me grateful Sir Redsock still subscribes to Harper's.

Go. Buy. Read.

P.S. I just googled the "mighty white of you jack hitt" and found several other bloggers urging their readers to do the same - along with some highly offended junior anthropologists and white-power dudes. I promise you the story is worth $6.50, but if you'd rather send me postage, I'll send you a photocopy.

the survivors

Thanks to G, I read "A War of Disabilities" by Ronald Glasser, in the most recent issue of Harper's. (And thanks to Redsock, who had the magazine in one of his many piles of paper.)

I wanted to post large chunks of this great article, but it's only available in print. Imagine that. I did find this excellent post about it by corrente.

I take exception to the idea (in the above post) that being kept alive with serious disabilities is a "questionable blessing". It's better to be alive, period. But people with disabilities need medical care and other support services. Why do we doubt the US government will be providing these to the huge crop of people whose disabilities they caused?

For an idea of the article, visit corrente, it's an excellent blog. For more, please visit your favorite bookstore to pick up a copy of Harper's. There's a really cool story by Jack Hitt about how some amateur anthropologists want to imagine our prehistoric ancestors as white. Kennewick Man is in fact Jean Luc Picard.

the couch? really?

Someone has a blog about The Daily Show's new set. What's more, Blogger has chosen it as a Blog of Note.

supremes to women: you're on your own

On June 27, the Supreme Court once again turned back the clock on social progress. For some, this reversal will be fatal.

In the not-distant past, when the police were called to a home because of domestic violence, it was up to them whether or not they made an arrest. Traditionally, they did nothing.

Because domestic violence was perceived as a private, family matter, rather than the criminal behavior that it is, many women and children were killed by raging husbands, boyfriends and stepfathers. (Occasionally the genders are reversed, or both victim and abuser are the same gender. I'm using the most common scenario.)

The cause-and-effect link between police discretion and escalating violence or murder has been well documented.

Anti-domestic-violence activists have worked very hard, on the state and county level, to pass mandatory arrest laws. Mandatory arrest means that when the police are called to a domestic violence scene, someone is going to spend the night in jail. In some states, the law requires a pre-existing restraining order or an order of protection. Therefore, women have been urged to take that step against their assailants.

But restraining orders without mandatory arrest laws are worth less than the paper they're printed on. If calling the police results in "You play nice now, y'hear?" or "Hey, if he needs to teach his wife a lesson, that's his business," why would women ever call the police?

Mandatory arrest works on another level, too. By correctly classifying domestic violence as assault, it causes people to think about domestic violence in a different way. It's part of a profound shift in social attitudes that's occurred in the last 25 years.

The movement towards mandatory arrest has been a long road, traveled by thousands of activists across the country. It has educated people, it has changed attitudes, and it has saved lives.

Lest I be accused of being unfair to the police, please know that I'm not talking about all police officers, by any means. Attitudes towards domestic violence have changed tremendously (thanks to activists), and that includes police attitudes, too. Through special training, and through their own compassion and sense of justice, police officers all over the US have helped save the lives of women and children who were being brutalized. In fact, the police are often at the forefront of changes in a community. It's certainly true in New York City.

However, attitudinal changes happen slowly, and unevenly, and in some places, not at all. Police are human, they live in society, and their attitudes will reflect that. It stands to reason that some cops will cling to outdated assumptions about domestic violence. Mandatory arrest laws guard against that.

Now the Supreme Court has seen fit to turn back the clock. The story is no longer available online, so I'm copying the whole thing here.

Please read it. It's terrible, and important. Emphasis mine.

Justices rule police do not have a constitutional duty to protect someone

By Linda Greenhouse
New York Times

WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.

The theory of the lawsuit Ms. Gonzales filed in federal district court in Denver was that Colorado law had given her an enforceable right to protection by instructing the police, on the court order, that "you shall arrest" or issue a warrant for the arrest of a violator. She argued that the order gave her a "property interest" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment's due process guarantee, which prohibits the deprivation of property without due process.

The district court and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit dismissed the suit, but the full appeals court reinstated it and the town appealed. The Supreme Court's precedents made the appellate ruling a challenging one for Ms. Gonzales and her lawyers to sustain.

A 1989 decision, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, held that the failure by county social service workers to protect a young boy from a beating by his father did not breach any substantive constitutional duty. By framing her case as one of process rather than substance, Ms. Gonzales and her lawyers hoped to find a way around that precedent.

But the majority on Monday saw little difference between the earlier case and this one, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, No. 04-278. Ms. Gonzales did not have a "property interest" in enforcing the restraining order, Justice Scalia said, adding that "such a right would not, of course, resemble any traditional conception of property."

Although the protective order did mandate an arrest, or an arrest warrant, in so many words, Justice Scalia said, "a well-established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes."

But Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, in their dissenting opinion, said "it is clear that the elimination of police discretion was integral to Colorado and its fellow states' solution to the problem of underenforcement in domestic violence cases." Colorado was one of two dozen states that, in response to increased attention to the problem of domestic violence during the 1990's, made arrest mandatory for violating protective orders.

"The court fails to come to terms with the wave of domestic violence statutes that provides the crucial context for understanding Colorado's law," the dissenting justices said.

Organizations concerned with domestic violence had watched the case closely and expressed disappointment at the outcome. Fernando LaGuarda, counsel for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said in a statement that Congress and the states should now act to give greater protection.

In another ruling on Monday, the court rebuked the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, for having reopened a death penalty appeal, on the basis of newly discovered evidence, after the ruling had become final.

The 5-to-4 decision, Bell v. Thompson, No. 04-514, came in response to an appeal by the State of Tennessee after the Sixth Circuit removed a convicted murderer, Gregory Thompson, from the state's death row.

After his conviction and the failure of his appeals in state court, Mr. Thompson, with new lawyers, had gone to federal district court seeking a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that his initial lawyers had been constitutionally inadequate. The new lawyers obtained a consultation with a psychologist, who diagnosed Mr. Thompson as schizophrenic.

But the psychologist's report was not included in the file of the habeas corpus petition in district court, which denied the petition. It was not until the Sixth Circuit and then the Supreme Court had also denied his petition, making the case final, that the Sixth Circuit reopened the case, finding that the report was crucial evidence that should have been considered.

In overturning that ruling in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the majority said the appeals court had abused its discretion in an "extraordinary departure from standard appellate procedures." Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor joined the opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the majority had relied on rules to the exclusion of justice. Judges need a "degree of discretion, thereby providing oil for the rule-based gears," he said. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and David H. Souter joined the dissent.

If "well-established tradition" can trump law, what do we have?

fashionable fascists

A while back, I posted about a gay teen who had been abducted and detained by some fascists calling themselves Christians.

The New York Times has got a hold of the story - and they're running it in tomorrow's Style section. What is up with that? Do they think more gay people will see it in Style? Is Style a code-word for gay? Which means they think only gay people care about this? (Or only stylish people?)

Perhaps when Roe v. Wade is overturned, I'll read about it in the Home section. You know, where we ladies clip our recipes.

If I've jumped the gun - maybe this story has a fashion angle I'm not aware of - do let me know. Meanwhile, I'll let the Times know how I feel.

New York Times story here.

harry potter, eh

ALPF in absentia sent me this cool story. If you're planning on buying the new Harry Potter book, be sure to pick up a Canadian edition: it's printed on recycled paper, produced from non-old-growth forests.

What would Harry Potter do if Hogwarts forest were being destroyed? He'd act to save it, of course, and that's what his American fans are being urged to do by buying "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" — not in the United States but in Canada, where J.K. Rowling's latest book is printed entirely on recycled paper.

A coalition of conservation groups and Rowling herself have likened the mythical Hogwarts forest to old-growth trees used by paper suppliers around the world.

The author and the activists also have praised Raincoast Books, the publisher of Harry Potter books in Canada, for using paper that's recycled and certified as being free of pulp from ancient trees, generally defined as trees that are at least 150 years old.

Raincoast's printing of the book will save 28,000 trees — more than what would fill New York City's Central Park, activists say.

This is the second time around for Raincoast, which was the first publisher to use only recycled paper when the previous Harry Potter title came out in 2003. This time it's joined by a handful of other publishers around the world, but not the largest of them all: U.S.-based Scholastic.

Figures.

Americans can find the Canadian Harry Potter here and here.

muhammad ali et al

Here's a man after my own heart. Dave Zirin has written a book called What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. If you think it's an odd subject, you're not alone.

Then in 1996, a basketball player named Mahmoud Abdul Rauf refused to stand for the National Anthem. Rauf believed the flag to be "a symbol of oppression and tyranny," and was willing to suffer the consequences. His courage was stunning, but even more shocking was the howling cries for his head. When Rauf was suspended, some news reports resembled lynch mobs. But others likened him to Muhammad Ali, whose title was stripped for being a draft resistor during the Viet Nam war. This was a history I barely knew. As Rauf began to buckle under the tremendous pressure of right wing bombast, it became clear that our side needed a history of the resistance in US pro sports. To aid this effort, I started writing a column called Edge of Sports, and just completed my first book "What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States."

When some friends back home heard what I was writing, a Friar's Club Roast seemed to spontaneously generate. These guys seemed to magically morph into a gaggle of Henny Youngmans in baggy jeans. "Pro Sports and radical politics?" one budding Borscht Belter smirked. "That will make a helluva pamphlet!" Or "What's your next book, Dick Cheney's Diet Tips? John Ashcroft's Favorite Black History Moments?"

Everyone had a jibe. But my buddies are like Shaquille O'Neal's free throws: simply way off. The history of how social struggles have exploded onto the playing field is vibrant, thrilling and very real.

This stuff is worthy of my man Howard Zinn, and not only because their names sound alike. Zinn seeks to teach us the hidden history of people's movements that have challenged the system. Hidden, because those who usually write our history have a stake in preserving that system. Anyone who illuminates the acts of subversion, however obscure, that are always rising up, is doing good work.

Zirin wrote an essay about the book for Common Dreams. The book is here.

krugman sez

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

. . .

I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

Read it here.

the welcoming committee

An American requests I hurry out.

An anonymous Albertan would rather I stay.

If only I could introduce them to each other.

shame of united states

From this morning's New York Times:

Iraqi civilians and police officers died at a rate of more than 800 a month between August and May, according to figures released in June by the Interior Ministry. . . .

While the figures were not broken down month by month, it has been clear since the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari took over after the Jan. 30 election that the insurgency is taking an increasing toll, killing Iraqi civilians and security workers at a faster rate.

In June the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, told reporters that insurgents had killed about 12,000 Iraqis since the start of the American occupation - a figure officials have emphasized is approximate - an average monthly toll of about 500.

The issue of civilian deaths in Iraqi has been a delicate one, with some contending that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have deliberately avoided body counts to deprive their critics of a potent argument against the war. Estimates have ranged from the 12,000 offered by Mr. Jabr to as many as 100,000 in a widely reported study last year. The new figures are likely to add to that debate. [Story here.]

"A delicate issue?" Strange choice of words.

Back in the land of the free, the state of Missouri executed an innocent man. This happened ten years ago. Bob Herbert writes:

If Larry Griffin were being tried today for the murder of Quintin Moss, he would almost certainly be acquitted. The evidence is overwhelming that he did not kill Mr. Moss.

But Mr. Griffin is not being tried today. He has already been executed for the murder.

While significant, this development is not that much of a surprise to those who understand that human beings are fallible and that much of the criminal justice system in the United States is a crapshoot. Whether it is this case or some other, it is inevitable that we will learn of someone who has been executed for a crime that he or she did not commit.

Judges and juries are no less prone to mistakes than politicians, reporters, doctors, engineers or center fielders. Which is why the death penalty should be abolished. [Column here.]

These two items are closely related. They both illustrate the US's low regard for human life. Only some lives are cherished and protected, and even then, only when it's convenient. One would think the young American servicepeople would be valued more highly, and only sent to war when it was absolutely necessary. But then, one would be wrong.

Americans or "allies" killed by unknown terrorists? An abomination. Iraqis killed by either Iraqi or American terrorists? A delicate issue. And of course, people are most valuable before they are born.

joy of canada

Hockey's back! Almost.

From ALPF: it's cheaper to get sick in Canada.

The hospital cost of a coronary artery bypass procedure is nearly twice as high in the U.S. as it is in Canada. Yet despite the increased cost, there is no difference in outcome...

From Rob: Rosie O'Donnell says Canada rocks. The story is actually about gay tourism. Take that, USA: equality is good for business.

So if you're a gay hockey player with heart disease, you would definitely prefer Canada.

think outside the frame

Or, why "reframing" to appear more moral (by someone else's standards) will only only back us further into a corner.

Or, reason #62 of Why I Hate The Democrats.

I'm referring to the drive to "reframe" the debate on abortion. George Lakoff's ideas on how to present abortion in terms supposedly more palatable to the mythical center, though well meaning, are regressive and dangerous. If we fight on the other side's turf, with their language and their weapons, we can only lose.

As many of you know, I stand unapologetically on the militant end of the pro-choice spectrum. (Yes, I hate babies! Abort them all!) Abortions are a necessary medical procedure. In all societies, but especially in one without access to affordable, reliable contraception, many women will need an abortion at some point in their lifetimes.

I say "need" and not "choose". Yes, it is technically a choice, in the same sense that taking antiobiotics for strept throat is a choice, or using insulin is a choice when you have diabetes. Splitting hairs, everything is a choice. One could choose to refuse all modern medication, as some religions dictate. That's a choice, but most people don't exercise it. Unintended pregnancies, like strept throat, are a fact of life. Most women choose abortion in the sense that people choose antibiotics.

Women need abortion, just like they need reliable birth control, affordable prenatal care and child care. Not every woman will need all of these. I don't have children, so I don't need child care. Women who don't have sex don't need birth control. But these are all part of women's general reproductive needs.

Many women who need and choose abortion, by the way, are Christian conservatives who campaign for restrictive abortion laws and picket clinics. But that's another story.

The Democrats could stand up for American women. They could say, the government has no place making these intimate decisions for its citizens. Period. They could say, anyone who chooses not to have an abortion, that is their choice, but women must be free to choose abortion. Period. They could say, without access to safe, legal abortions, women die, and that is unacceptable.

The Democrats could stand up. They could walk proudly. Instead, the party of "reframing" runs alongside the conservative Christian agenda, panting and dehydrated, frantically trying to catch up. In sports, this is called running the other guy's race. It's what losers do.

Katha Pollitt addresses this in her recent column in The Nation.

In the wake of the 2004 election, Democrats have embarked on an orgy of what the linguist George Lakoff calls "reframing"--repositioning their policies linguistically to give them mass moral appeal. Prime candidate for a values makeover? Abortion, of course. It's as if the party, with its longstanding, if lukewarm, support for reproductive rights, were a family photo with Uncle Lou the molester right in the middle. Maybe if we cropped it to put him way off to the side? Or Photoshopped a big shadow onto his face? Or just decided to pretend he was nice Uncle Max?

In "The Foreign Language of Choice," posted on AlterNet, Lakoff writes that he doesn't like "choice"--too consumerist. In fact, he doesn't even like "abortion"--too negative. He wants to "reparse" abortion in four ways. Dems should talk about it as an aspect of personal freedom from government interference, and as the regrettable outcome of right-wing opposition to sex ed and contraception. They should reclaim "life" by talking about the fact that "the United States has the highest rate of infant mortality in the industrialized world," thanks to poverty and lack of healthcare, which are the fault of conservatives, "who have been killing babies--real babies...[who] have been born and who people want and love" and damaging their health through anti-environmental policies that put toxins in mother's milk. Finally, they should talk about the thousands of women each year who become pregnant from rape: "Should the federal government force a woman to bear the child of her rapist?"

George Lakoff is really smart and eager to help, so why does this way of talking about "medical operations to end a pregnancy" make me want to reparse myself to a desert island?

. . .

Perhaps I'm naive, but I keep thinking that reframing misses the point, which is to speak clearly from a moral center--precisely not to mince words and change the subject and turn the tables. I keep thinking that people are so disgusted by politics that the field is open for progressives who use plain language and stick to their guns and convey that they are real people, at home in their skin, and not a collection of blow-dried focus-grouped holograms.

. . .

Still, reframing proceeds apace. Hillary Clinton talks about abortion as sorrow, while calling on Republicans to join her in passing the Prevention First Act promoting contraception and, with Patty Murray, going after acting FDA head Lester Crawford for failing to make emergency contraception available over the counter. Howard Dean says he wants the "pro-life" vote, and before you know it anti-choice Democrats get the nod to run for the Senate...

. . .

There's a word that doesn't show up much in the new abortion frames: women. [Emphasis mine.] Maybe it doesn't poll well. "Reframing" abortion is actually a kind of deframing, a way of taking it out of its real-life context, which is the experience of women, their bodies, their healthcare, their struggles, the caring work our society expects them to do for free. Lynn Paltrow, the brilliant lawyer who runs National Advocates for Pregnant Women, thinks the way to win grassroots support for abortion rights is to connect it to the whole range of reproductive and maternal rights: the right to have a home birth, to refuse a Caesarean section, to know that a miscarriage or stillbirth--or simply taking a drink--will not land you in jail. The same ideology of fetal protection that anti-choicers wield against abortion is used against women with wanted pregnancies.

Please read the full column here.

And please remember, as always, this blog is not a forum for debate on abortion. If you want to discuss the immorality of abortion, please do so elsewhere. Thank you.

two steps forward

The hydro account (that's what you guys call it, right?) is now in our name. The house is actually ours as of August 1, so that's taken care of.

And Rogers is coming the day after we arrive. Since our home phone and internet connections both run off cable, it's important to do right away. Plus it's September - pennant race season.

Things are moving along!

off base

You may have heard that baseball and softball have been dropped from the Olympics, beginning with the 2012 Games. I was surprised by this, and disappointed, although more so about softball. The Olympics is a great stage for women's sports, and softball is a great women's game.

This morning I noticed an op-ed by former Commissioner of Major League Baseball Fay Vincent, and thought I might post it. Then I read this line...

We Americans have long endured being punished for our wealth and our might and this may be yet another example.

...and thought better of it. Any examples of this punishment, Mr. Vincent? Did someone snub you when you spoke overly loud English in Paris? Did you read a nasty letter to the editor in the Guardian? What a terrible punishment that must have been. My my, how the rich and powerful suffer.

Vincent asks Fearless Leader to intervene with the International Olympic Committee on baseball's behalf. I don't suppose he sees the irony in that. Don't get what you want? Pressure them! After all, we're the U-S-A! (But oh, the punishments we endure...)

Meanwhile, MLB plans to launch the World Baseball Classic, a round-robin tournament, in 2006. This sounds better than the Olympics, because it's all baseball! I don't love competitions between countries, and the inevitable flag-waving that follows. But it's great fun to see different styles of play, players you've never heard of, and to see international crowds get into the sport. And anyway, baseball = good, so more baseball = better.

All Star Game tonight. ¡Viva la Liga Americana!

is canada next?

Canada, are you building weapons of mass destruction? Are you harboring terrorists, perhaps? Are you sure?

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow visited Alberta's oilsands on Friday, highlighting the growing importance of the region as a supplier of energy to America.

Snow toured an oilsands plant and the booming city of Fort McMurray with Finance Minister Ralph Goodale before leaving for Calgary, where he met with Goodale and oil executives.

Canada is the leading foreign energy supplier to the U.S., with oil, gas and electricity sales worth more than $50 billion a year, Goodale said recently.

Story here, thanks to ALPF.

home run derby!

Every year I think I don't care about the All Star Game, then it comes around, and I'm psyched for the American League to win.

Home Run Derby, the day before the All Star Game, is just a good time. The new twist this year is the players representing the countries of their birth, a celebration of the international flavor of Major League Baseball.

I'll root for the Dominican Republic (first) and Canada, in that order.

going back

I'm very interested in what people to do to heal. I'm intrigued by people's private healing rituals, as well as public forums such as speak-outs. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Hearings fascinated me. (A good movie was made about them.)

I found this story very moving.

KONJEVIC POLJE, Bosnia and Herzegovina

About 500 Bosnian Muslim men set out on foot at 7:30 a.m. Sunday from this quiet farming village in eastern Bosnia on the third and final day of their re-enactment of the "march of death" a decade ago this week.

Bearing Bosnian and Bosnian-Muslim flags, the men completed their solemn retracing of the route taken by an estimated 15,000 Muslim men during the war in Bosnia. They had fled the town of Srebrenica in panic in July 1995, after lightly armed United Nations peacekeepers failed to protect them from advancing Serb forces. The Serbs killed more than 7,000 of the fleeing Muslims in ambushes and mass executions that war crime judges later declared genocide.

On Sunday, the column of Muslims marching through the woods here were again surrounded by hundreds of armed Serbs, but on this day the Serbs were police officers assigned to protect the marchers.

. . .

As the men made their way up dirt roads and mountain paths that, a decade ago, were filled with thousands of panicked Muslims, they spoke calmly. Ali Hodzic Naziv, the man who shook hands with the Serb policeman, said he was marching in memory of his two teenage sons, who disappeared somewhere in these forests.

Mr. Naziv, 53, a burly man who was evacuated from Srebrenica for medical treatment after he was shot in the left leg in 1993, was in pain after two days of walking. But he said it would make him feel better to see the route his sons, who stayed behind, took during their final hours.

"I have to hold on for my sons," he said as he struggled up a muddy path. "I will make it, if God lets me."

Amir Halicic, a wiry 20-year-old, said he was walking to understand what his father experienced when he successfully fled in 1995. He said his father told him he was too frightened to march, that he never wanted to walk through those forests again.

Mr. Halicic, 10 when Srebrenica fell, said he fled separately with his mother and grandfather. Two of them survived. "I didn't have a childhood," he said. "My grandfather was killed right in front of my eyes."

Near the front of the column was a tall, sunburned man who said he was returning to Srebrenica for the first time in 10 years. That man, Gary Kremer, had been a surgeon with the Dutch peacekeepers who were overwhelmed by Serb forces here in 1995. He said a Muslim he befriended during the war had invited him to march. Survivors from Srebrenica, who have bitterly complained that the Dutch did not do enough to protect them, seemed to treat him well.

Change was evident. When skull fragments were found at a spot where the column stopped to remember those killed in a large ambush, Muslim men came forward to photograph the remains with the cameras in their cellphones. Along most of the route, rebuilt homes and mosques, and newly planted fields, abound in what was a deserted no man's land of burned houses in 1995.

But the reality of what occurred here, and Bosnia's continuing struggles, sunk in as the march ended. The march stopped by a partially exhumed mass grave near Srebrenica. Staring down at exposed femurs, skulls and tibias, some of the exhausted marchers wept.

Events like these are often referred to as "closure," but that implies an end result. Healing is an ongoing process.

Nothing really to add, just some thoughts while looking at headlines this morning. And now to work.

backwards

A commenter seems to think we oppose military recruitment efforts because we oppose George Bush. He's got it all backwards.

We oppose this immoral, senseless war.

We oppose young people risking their lives, limbs and sanity in order to kill people who are not their enemies and have done them no harm.

We oppose young people having so few options that they're willing to kill and risk death for a shot at education and advancement.

We don't oppose the war because it's Bush's! We oppose the war. We would oppose any president who lied to the country in order to start a war for profit and distraction. We oppose this president because he did (among many other important reasons).

happy birthday wmtc

We move to canada is one year old today!

Let's see, what was happening in my life on July 11, 2004?

- Our immigration application had been in the queue for five weeks.

- I was spending my days and nights trying to elect John Kerry.

- The Yankees were seven games up in the AL East.

- I didn't know any of you great people.

Today:

- The Red Sox are two games up in the AL East.

- I am 50 days away from moving to Canada.

- We are renting a house in the exact location I wanted.

- I am part of this supportive community.

It's been a big year!

* * * *

Last year at this time:

- About 780 Americans, English, and don't forget Polands, were still alive.

- Some 10,000 Iraqis were still alive.

- Thousands of people still had two legs, two arms and functioning eyes, who are now adapting to life with a permanent disability.

Let's never forget what's at stake.

shame

Salman Rushdie speaks about human rights.

In honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.

Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. [Ed note: anti-violence groups working in Pakistan estimate the number of reported rapes to be much lower, possibly 10% of the total.] The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.

For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.

. . .

The "culture" of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can.

In Pakistan, the Supreme Court has taken one small but significant step in the matter of Mukhtar Mai; now it is for the police and politicians to start pursuing rapists instead of hounding their victims. As for India, at the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom. [Read the whole essay here.]

Rape is not a women's issue. It's a human issue.

Two good places to learn more about international women's human rights are Equality Now and MADRE. I especially appreciated MADRE's statement on the London bombings.

fan mail

Has anyone else gotten mail from this guy?

Both Redsock and I have received similarly charming emails from someone identifying himself as Joe Blow. However, neither of us replied with as much wit and gusto as Crabletta.

perspective

I'm loathe to praise the Poodle, who dragged his country into a useless and immoral war, and only a bit less reluctant to quote conservative columnist John Tierney again. But...

It was just so refreshing to watch people recover from hardship without the attendant flag-waving, patriotic songs and war-mongering that goes on here. I happened to catch Blair's post-G8 press conference on C-Span yesterday, and what can I tell you, I was impressed. John Tierney thought so, too.

Tony Blair was as eloquent as ever when he faced the press at the G-8 summit meeting yesterday, but what was most impressive was what he didn't say. After uttering three sentences of gratitude to the other leaders for their support after the London attacks, he dropped the subject of terror.

. . .

Television and print editors rushed to assign what is known in the business as the "Fear Stalks" story, as in, "We need a 'Fear Stalks Suburban Bus Riders.' " The commuters' alarm was shared by local experts. South Dakota's homeland security officials were reported to be "monitoring the situation closely."

I don't mean to minimize the bloodshed in London. I lived in New York in 2001 and later in Baghdad during months of car bombings. But I got the most useful lessons about terrorism when I moved to suburban Maryland just in time for the snipers to begin their famous spree near my home in 2002.

I could have written a "Fear Stalks" story about myself as I walked home from the subway the evening after the spree began. I was more tense than I had ever been in New York or Baghdad.

The assurances that the police were on the case meant nothing because there was obviously no way to stop one guy with a rifle from shooting me that evening.

That's the same situation we're in after the London attacks: it's clear that no one can stop terrorists from killing. Spending billions on airport security has simply diverted them to transit systems, and spending billions on transit systems could at best divert them somewhere else: stores, restaurants, sidewalks. Terrorists don't even need bombs. They could simply adopt the snipers' technique for spreading fear.

President Bush briefly admitted last summer to Matt Lauer that the war on terror couldn't ever be won, but he got so much criticism that he promptly backtracked. It was a textbook Washington gaffe: perfectly true but terribly inconvenient.

. . .

But I think that we'd be better off reconsidering our definition of victory in the war on terror. Calling it a war makes it sound like a national fight against a mighty enemy threatening our society... [Column here.]

This speaks to something Kyle mentioned in a comment yesterday. I wish more Americans would get hip to this. But of course, if they did, how would their government sell the war?

Gwynne Dyer, a writer from London - who I am now told is really Canadian! my goodness - had a similar perspective, though he was less impressed with Blair.

Tony Blair flew down from the G-8 summit in Scotland to be with Londoners in their time of trial, and you can hardly blame him. It's not that we needed him -- it was only four smallish bombs, and the emergency services were doing their job just fine -- but the tabloid newspapers would have crucified him if he hadn't shown up and looked sympathetic in public.

No doubt he was feeling sympathetic, too, but his words rang false. The accent was British, but the words were the sort that come from President Bush -- all about defending British values and the British way of life. He didn't mention God, so he's still British, but I'm pretty sure I even heard him use Bush's favorite words, "freedom" and "resolve." I'm also pretty certain that this cut very little ice with most Londoners .

This town has been dealing with bombs for a long time. German bombs during the Blitz in September-December 1940 killed 13,339 Londoners and seriously injured 17,939 more. In 1944 this city was the first in the world to be hit by pilotless cruise missiles (the V-1s or "buzz-bombs"), and later that year it was the first to be struck by long-range ballistic missiles (the V-2s).

During the whole of World War II, about 30,000 Londoners were killed by German bombs and three-quarters of a million lost their homes. Then, between 1971 and 2001, London was the target of 116 bombs set by various factions of the Irish Republican Army, although they only killed 50 people and injured around 1,000. And not once during all those bombs did people in London think that they were being attacked because of their values and their way of life.

It was clear to them that they were being attacked because of British policies abroad, or the policies of Britain's friends and allies.

. . .

I do recall thinking, however, that it was a good thing the bombs had gone off here, not in some American city. Even in London, terrorist bombs will be used by the Bush administration as an argument for locking people up, taking away civil liberties, even for invading some other country. One bomb in an American city, and it would have a free run down to 2008.

Whereas in London, it doesn't work like that.

Dyer's very good column is here.

what i'm watching: murderball

Murderball is a new movie to put on your "must see" list. It's about wheelchair rugby, a rough-and-tumble sport played by quadriplegics. That may sound like an oxymoron, but once you've seen wheelchair rugby, you'll understand the word quadriplegic in a different way.

I covered wheelchair rugby at the 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, and have interviewed rugby players for various wheelchair sports stories along the way. It's an irresistible sport - fast, aggressive, strategic. It also happens to be Canadian in origin. The Canuck quads who dreamt it up called in Murderball, hence the name of the movie.

The New York Times reviewed it yesterday, and some photos of the sport here, here and here.

blog of note

AndyM of funcentral is very funny. And very smart.

He brings us Doonesbury (and more), he knows how to spread Santorum, and, most importantly, he asks excellent questions.

I see by Andy's last question that he and Redsock would have a lot to talk about.

hypocrisy all around

Some of you may have missed yesterday's heated discussion.

LonePrimate fleshed out his position on his own blog.

B.W. Ventril, who used to live across the street from where the London bus blew up, shares his thoughts on Camus and London mayor Ken Livingston.

RobfromAlberta makes a simple statement of empathy.

G muses on the cycle of violence.

For me, there's no contradiction between loathing Bush's imperialist policies, and feeling deep sympathy for the victims in London and the people who love them. My heart breaks for the people of Falluja, and Tel Aviv, and Kabul, and London, and New York.

I see no reason why in condemning George Bush's actions, I must condone the actions of the bus bombers.

The people of Iraq and Afghanistan have every right to live in peace, and to live in whatever kind of society they choose.

The people of London have the same right.

I can easily imagine how the people of London feel today, because I've been there. I can well remember how I felt on September 11, 2001, and in the days and weeks thereafter. Yes, in Iraq every day is 9/11. I agree. But our anger over the senseless deaths in Iraq shouldn't numb us to London's pain. I see far too much of that from "our" side.

Why do we have to choose? Can't we stand in sympathy with all victims of violence? When your sister is blown to bits, what matters the political affiliations of her murderer? Does the murderer's claim to victimhood make your sister any less dead? If your sister lived in a country where her leaders were hell bent on senseless war, must she pay the ultimate price for their stupidity?

After 9/11, I was horrified by the war-talk that raged through the US. But I was equally horrified by the victim-blaming streaming from certain sectors of the left.

The people in the World Trade Center that morning had no more control over U.S. imperialism than the people who hijacked the planes. It's ridiculous to say "this will keep happening until we demand an end to US imperialism," or the like. The ordinary people killed by terror do not have the power to affect that change, and should not be made to suffer for it.

And what makes the terror-apologists so sure that it would end? This is part of the hypocrisy. By implying that the Islamist terrorists are merely reacting to Western policy, the apologists demean the very people they urge us to understand. Am I to believe that if only the US and Israel would leave them alone, the Islamic Fundamentalists would all be chanting peace prayers? Bullshit. People have their own agendas. Are we so arrogant to believe that the actions of all the world are only reactions to us? George Bush is a murderer - for sure. But there are other murderers in the world, with their own independent agendas.

The people on that London bus, the people in the World Trade Center, and the people of Falluja - none of them deserved it. It's all barbaric, it's all unjust, and it all must be condemned.

media hypocrisy

Today one of the New York tabloids sports a photograph of a bloodied victim of the London bombings with the screaming headline: "Barbarians".

I agree.

Tomorrow I'd like them to show a similarly bloodied victim of George Bush's bombings, with the same headline.

karl rove, traitor

Ted Rall has some interesting things to say about Karl Rove.

I'm linking to the Common Dreams version of Rall's piece, because I find Rall's blog a little difficult to deal with it. But there it is, for those interested.

Perhaps everyone knew this but me, as I don't follow these types of stories too well. Apparently Karl Rove was Time reporter Matthew Cooper's source. Rall asks:

Do Republicans have a shred of patriotism or loyalty to American legal principles left?

and

Do Democrats have the slightest spine left?

No, and no. Certainly not.

Rosa Brooks of the L.A. Times has something to say about Judith Miller. I don't care for Brooks calling Miller "competitive and heartless". That's totally irrelevant. I also find it sexist, as I can't imagine a male journalist being described this way. Aside from that, Brooks aptly reminds us

It was Miller, more than any other reporter, who helped the White House sell its WMD-in-Iraq hokum to the American public. Relying on the repeatedly discredited Ahmad Chalabi and her carefully cultivated administration contacts, Miller wrote story after story on the supposedly imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Brooks closes with this:

If a source with a clear political motivation passes along classified information that has no value for public debate but would endanger the career, and possibly the life, of a covert agent, is a journalist ethically permitted to "out" the no-good sneak? You bet. And if the knowledge that they can't always hide behind anonymity has a "chilling effect" on political hacks who are eager to manipulate the media in furtherance of their vested interests, that's OK with me.

But Miller still won't testify. Even though, ethically, there should be no obligation to go to jail to cover for a sleazeball.

It's possible (though not likely) that Miller is covering for a genuine whistle-blower who fears retaliation for fingering, gee, Karl Rove, for instance, as the real source of the leak.

But I have another theory. Miller's no fool; she understood the lesson of the Martha Stewart case: When you find yourself covered with mud, there's nothing like a brief stint in a minimum-security prison to restore your old luster.

Read the column here.

london

As a New Yorker, and someone who loves London, my heart goes out to Londoners this morning as they cope with the aftermath of the bombings. Ghastly things - both terrorist and otherwise - happen all over the globe every day. But bombings of public transportation are disquieting, to the say the least, to those of us who live in big cities.

I hope the UK's involvement in Iraq wasn't a preciptating factor. I also hope Blair doesn't use the attacks as an excuse for retaliatory bombing of innocent people, the way Bush would.

the new beds arrive

Buster seems to be pretty happy with his new mats.

Cody won't go near them yet. She's making sure he survives before she sets foot on them.

Now I understand why so many bloggers post nonsense like this. Once you have a digital camera, it's very tempting and strangely fun.

he'll think about it tomorrow

Did you guys see Fearless Leader in drag?

Hey, I'm pressed for time this morning, gotta find posts where I can. ALPF...?

more cool canadians

Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward, self-described "average Canadians," are following the activist maxim: each one, reach one.

Each night, over 40,000 children in rural Uganda walk as many as 12 kilometres to urban centres such as the town of Gulu, just to sleep in relative safety and to avoid abduction. Yet no one seems to notice.

That's where GuluWalk comes in.

For the entire month of July, Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward, the organizers of GuluWalk are walking 12.5 kilometres into downtown Toronto each night.

The pair, who refer to themselves as "average Canadians," spend the night on the street and then walk back home in the morning. And then they head to work.

The goal of the walk is twofold: to show support for the children and to get signatures on a petition asking the Canadian government to push the issue on the international stage.

You can read about their journey - or join them - through Gulu Walk. Star story here.

calling all canadian ex-pats

Canadians, this is war!

Canada's Ambassador Declares War on Fox News

Ambassador Frank McKenna has undertaken a public relations effort to reach the more than 1 million Canadians living in the United States, a group he calls the "Canadian diaspora."

McKenna says the effort is to boost support for Canada here, and to counter what he says is the "Fox factor," referring to the Fox News Channel, America's most popular cable news network, and its most highly rated show, "The O'Reilly Factor."

McKenna told the Toronto Star that he wants to arm Canadians with facts that will enable them to debate Americans and to lobby when Washington makes decisions that can hurt Canadians.

But most importantly, he says, Canadians in the U.S. should counteract Fox News, alleging that the network often spreads disinformation and creates a false picture of his homeland.

"We know we're a bit of prey for the Fox News type of shows," he told the Star.

The ambassador said he has sent out 6,000 pieces of literature to Canadians in his battle with Fox, and plans to mail to some 100,000 Canadians in the weeks ahead.

OK, it's not really war. But it is kind of funny. (Thanks to ALPF.)

essential reading

This is not a meme.

In an email conversation with David Cho, I mentioned something about the "top 10 or 20 most important American novels". David said he'd be interested in seeing my list of those. I've been mulling it over, and have come up with said list.

Now for the inevitable disclaimers. This is my own idiosyncratic list, so certain authors aren't on it. For example, there's no Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon, two important American writers who I simply cannot read. (Not for lack of trying.)

On the other hand, it's not a "Laura's favorite books" list. It's a list of 20 novels that are important to American literature and to an understanding of the American experience. It's only American, so there's no Dickens, no Joyce, no Orwell, no Dostoevsky. And it's only novels, so all the great American playwrights are left off, as well as my friend Walt Whitman.

So, from a former English major and a voracious reader and appreciator of literature: the Twenty Most Important American Novels. (In no particular order.)

1. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
3. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
4. Beloved - Toni Morrison
5. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
6. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
8. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
9. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
10. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
11. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
12. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
13. An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
14. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
15. U.S.A. Trilogy - John Dos Passos
16. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
17. Ironweed - William Kennedy
18. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
19. Native Son - Richard Wright
20. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth

Honorable Mentions (at David's suggestion, books that I considered but ultimately didn't put on my Top 20):
All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
The Good Earth - Pearl Buck
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut

Also-rans from authors already on the list:
Henderson the Rain King - Bellow
Tender Is the Night - Fitzgerald
Absalom Absalom - Faulkner
In Our Time - Hemingway

december 12, 2000

Another day of infamy.

Many of us have been angrily sputtering since Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, and not because of the likely politics of her successor. Although the timing was a surprise, O'Connor's retirement should not have come as a shock. She hinted at it when she installed Bush as president in 2000.

It's true that O'Connor was the deciding vote in many a welcome 5-4 decision. But she was also the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore, the poison tree from which so much evil fruit has sprung. (Pardon the overheated metaphor there, the analogy is still apt.)

Sheldon Drobny, one of the founders of Air America Radio, compares O'Connor's Bush v. Gore decision to the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg": Supreme Court Justice O'Connor: 'She Never Knew it Would Come to This'.

competitive advantage

I had seen this story reported in US newspapers. I didn't understand the Canadian significance - until Lone Primate sent the CBC link, and someone (I think ALPF) pointed this out:

The factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

What a sad commentary on the state of things in the US. People here are so used to blaming unions (i.e., paying people a living wage and offering them some modicum of job protection) for the absence of manufacturing jobs. This is an interesting bit of truth-telling.

who's walking where?

Danny Schechter writes about Live 8. I agree with him.

I know some wmtc readers are excited about the concerts (Hi G!). Let's not debate it. Each to her/his own. For my part, this is bread and circuses.

"The Limits of 'Live 8' and the G8 in Making Poverty History".

sandy

Fourth of July thoughts.


Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
- Bertrand Russell


Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. - George Bernard Shaw


You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free. - Clarence Darrow


If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
- Frederick Douglass


A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. - Edward Abbey

platitudes

Five things I wish I would never hear again:

1. Everything happens for a reason.

2. God doesn't give you more than you can bear.

3. Everything always works out for the best.

4. It was meant to be. (Only applied to events that make us happy.)

5. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

To all of the above, I reply: WHO SAYS? and HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW?

/rant

the blessings of canada

John Chuckman, in "Peace, Justice & Love in the Great White North" writes:

July 1 is Canada's national day, and although the country has its share of political problems, we have a great deal to celebrate.

We are not at war in Iraq, killing and maiming for no reason. We have conservatives in our politics, but we have no commentators spewing hate like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. We have no puffed-up imperialist ones like Thomas Friedman. We have no genuinely dangerous public figures like Tom Delay or Donald Rumsfeld. . . . I'd rather have a Prime Minister who sometimes dithers - although, as a pure politician, Mr. Martin has demonstrated breath-taking skill in outmaneuvering his opponents - than a President who seems capable of nothing but lying and crying about terror while terrorizing others.

Chuckman goes on to detail some of the simple reasoning behind same-sex marriage, and why Canadians should be proud of having established it.

I especially appreciate his historical perspective on the institution of marriage. I am so completely sick of the ignorant assertion that monogamous, heterosexual marriage has been around since the beginning of time. Most people repeating that bullshit probably don't know any better. But of course if you repeat something enough, it becomes true.

Only a few days before the national holiday, with the passing of Bill C-38, Canada became just the third country in the world, after Holland and Belgium, to expand human rights by giving gays the same right to marry as others. Any person aware of history and the gradual expansion of human rights over the last few centuries understands that this is something that will come eventually to all advanced countries (Spain became the fourth the next day), but it is nice to be in the forefront of progress and decency.

Contrary to the harsh uninformed preaching of fundamentalists mainly in the United States, the fully-formed modern idea of marriage only appears in the twentieth century. [Read more!]

. . .

There is simply no reason, other than blind prejudice, for gay people to be denied the rights, satisfactions, and responsibilities of modern marriage. Many may never consider marriage. That too is their right. What is wonderful is that Canada's legal acceptance of their equal status in marriage will gradually work to wear away any remnant of regarding gays as something corrupt or immoral. That is always how it is with social change: change occurs in notable events, almost little revolutions if you will, and gradually all of society alters its attitudes. A number of men, including preachers and newspaper editors, swore up and down, saying many ridiculous and embarrassing things, when women were given the right to vote in the early part of the twentieth century. It's not easy giving up privileges and prejudices.

I'm at risk of copying the entire essay, so just go here to read more.

Thanks to Allan, as always, for his diligent web-surfing on my behalf. I am off to ancient India and Pakistan. Where, by the way, people collected many husbands, wives, and lovers of various genders.

secrets

I found this at Blogger's Blogs of Note. I imagine some people would just laugh at these, but I found them very poignant. Don't miss the comments at the end.

Post Secret.

excuses

You've seen the logo, now play the game: Operation Yellow Elephant Bingo.

be a statistic

It's not a great survey, but if you've got some time on your hands...

stop using me as a reference

Click here for fun.

Thanks to Waiting For Dorothy, with whom I share an odd coincidence.

it's all good minus gordon lightfoot

Redsock just sent me this from Xymphora, one of his favorite blogs: in honor of Canada Day, Canada's Top 50 Essential Songs. Hey, as long as Joni's got a few on the list, the rest is gravy.

life during wartime

Three thoughts on war.

First, from our friend Lone Primate, who says to Bill O'Reilly: You first.

No excuses, Bill. You want the job done, volunteer. Put on the khaki and do your bit. Never mind "send" more troops... go fucking be more troops. Otherwise, to quote your favourite line, "SHUT... UP."

Yeah, baby, yeah!

Next, Paul Rogat Loeb, who wrote the book Crabletta recommended, shares some thoughts on dying for one's country.

It's tempting to assume that all the sacrifices of our soldiers are worthwhile. But mere courage guarantees no inherent moral rightness: German and Japanese soldiers fought bravely in World War II. The September 11 hijackers were willing to surrender their lives to murder 3,000 innocent people. . .

Unfortunately, those who initiated the Iraq war now use each additional American death to justify the need to stay. If we challenge this war, we're told we're being disloyal to the troops, undermining their resolve and disdaining their sacrifices. We heard this as well during Vietnam, after which the media rewrote the history of the antiwar movement to imply, through images like protestors spitting on soldiers, that those working to bring the troops home were their enemies.

By time the first Gulf War began, these images were omnipresent. Even young anti-war activists told me, "We won't spit on the soldiers this time." Yet when sociologists Jerry Starr and Richard Flacks, who worked extensively with Vietnam vets, tried to track down the story, they couldn't find a single incident of a vet who said he was actually spat upon. And when syndicated columnist Bob Greene invited responses on the subject in a column that reached 200 papers, he found only a handful.

The power of such useful myths for those who send our sons and daughters to war may erode as military families and veterans play an increasingly visible role in the current antiwar movement, though veterans and families played a key part in the Vietnam-era peace movement as well. Every time I've marched against this war, I've ended up next to someone carrying a picture of a relative in uniform, a son or brother, husband, nephew, or niece, often someone facing the involuntary servitude of being unable to leave the military long after his or her original service term had expired. But unless we can convince our fellow citizens to separate the lives of the soldiers from the policies that place them in harm's way, they'll continue to be held hostage to the choices of leaders who are insulated from the human costs.

So let's remember the debt we owe to those who have died for freedom as well as those who risk and sacrifice in the name of protecting us all. But not all wartime deaths advance human dignity, and not all sacrifices are worthwhile.

Lastly, I recently tried to write about sacrifice - who makes it and who doesn't. I had a hard time explaining what I was thinking. Chuck Collins, co-author, with Bill Gates, Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, fleshed it out for me.

Read his "Millionaires and War" published today on Common Dreams. Who ever heard of tax cuts during wartime? How dare these people talk about sacrifice!

Last summer, as the death toll for American troops was passing 1,000, the administration was fighting hard to give corporate donors an additional $140 billion in tax breaks.

Now, the Senate is preparing to vote on repealing the estate tax, a tax that is only paid by multi-millionaires and billionaires, fewer that 1.5 percent of estates each year.

If there ever was a time to limit tax breaks for multi-millionaires, this should be it. The cost of our military involvements is growing, and we need to make additional investments to protect homeland security. Meanwhile, our budget surplus has disappeared, shifting from a 2001 estimate of $5.6 trillion in the black to $5.2 trillion in the red today.

Bush has asked for and gotten close to $200 billion in emergency war funds, and it is rumored he will ask for more. Where is this money to come from?

None of this has deterred Congress from its relentless march to repeal the estate tax this year. Repeal would cost almost $1 trillion over two decades. Giving such a tax break to wealthy heirs would only shift the burden of paying for security onto the rest of us.

It is unprecedented in U.S. history to pass tax cuts for the wealthy in a time of war.

Collins concludes, "There is only one word for advocating such an inequality of sacrifice: shame!" Please read more here.

what's at stake

About an hour after Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation was announced, emails started flooding in, asking "Are You Angry About O'Connor?" and shouting "Save Roe!" I feel sad and frustrated, because Roe is going. The pre-scripted dance of confirmation hearings won't save it.

If you've been reading wmtc, you know I believe that Roe has been practically irrelevant for a long time, and our friends the Democrats did precious little about it. And, militant defender of reproductive freedom though I am, I know that so much more than Roe is on the line. This is a real turning point for the US.

Amid the copious amount of ink being spilled about the Supreme Court vacancy, here are two of the best and most useful pieces I've seen. (Naturally there are zillions more I didn't see.) Unsurprisingly, both are by writers from The Nation.

First, John Nichols reminds us that there is much more at stake that liberal vs. conversative.

With O'Connor's exit, the court will move in one of two directions. No, not right or left. With O'Connor out, the court will either go backward or forward.

If President Bush nominates and the Senate confirms an activist soulmate for Scalia and Thomas, the court will not simply become more conservative.

It will move back toward the days before Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower used their nominations in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s to wrench the judicial branch out of a dark and undistinguished past. Those selections made the Supreme Court a functional branch of government, rather than an obstructionist defender of an often corrupt old order.

People for the American Way President Ralph Neas put it best when he said Friday, "A Scalia-Thomas majority would not only reverse more than seven decades of Supreme Court legal precedents, but could also return us to a situation America faced in the first third of the 20th Century, when progressive legislation, like child labor laws, was adopted by Congress and signed by the President, but repeatedly rejected on constitutional grounds by the Supreme Court."

Neas understands his history well. The contemporary image of the Supreme Court as a defender of civil liberties and civil rights, and an ally of progress, is one that developed over the course of the 20th century. It was not always so. And there are no guarantees that it will remain so.

As such, this is not merely a battle over a court vacancy, nor even over the balance on the bench.

If the court moves backward to the bad old days, so too will the nation.

At the end of the essay, there's a list, compiled by People for the American Way, of 5-4 rulings in which Sandra Day O'Connor was the decisive vote.

1.) Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) affirmed the right of state colleges and universities to use affirmative action in their admissions policies to increase educational opportunities for minorities and promote racial diversity on campus.

2.) Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004) said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.

3.) Rush Prudential HMO, Inc. v. Moran (2002) upheld state laws giving people the right to a second doctor's opinion if their HMOs tried to deny them treatment.

4.) Hunt v. Cromartie (2001) affirmed the right of state legislators to take race into account to secure minority voting rights in redistricting.

5.) Tennessee v. Lane (2004) upheld the constitutionality of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and required that courtrooms be physically accessible to the disabled.

6.) Hibbs v. Winn (2004) subjected discriminatory and unconstitutional state tax laws to review by the federal judiciary.

7.) Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) told the government it could not indefinitely detain an immigrant who was under final order of removal even if no other country would accept that person.

8.) Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (2001) affirmed that civil rights laws apply to associations regulating interscholastic sports.

9.) Lee v. Weisman (1992) continued the tradition of government neutrality toward religion, finding that government-sponsored prayer is unacceptable at graduations and other public school events.

10.) Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington (2003) maintained a key source of funding for legal assistance for the poor.

11.) Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia (1996) said key anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act apply to political conventions that choose party candidates.

12.) Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001) upheld laws that limit political party expenditures that are coordinated with a candidate and seek to evade campaign contribution limits.

14.) McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003) upheld most of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, including its ban on political parties' use of unlimited soft money contributions.

15.) Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) overturned a state ban on so-called partial birth abortion.

16.) McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky (2005) upheld the principle of government neutrality towards religion and ruled unconstitutional Ten Commandments displays in several courthouses.

Very serious. Very scary.

On his own website, Nation Washington editor David Corn has some advice for the Democrats. He feels they ought to be careful about their use of the E-word:

Once more--from a political perspective--Democrats and progressives ought to think carefully about how and when they use the charge of extremism. They can only cry "wolf" so many times--even if Bush unleashes a pack of wolverines.

Corn concludes: "All in all, this fight is Bush's to lose" and cautions Democrats and progressives to "devise a damn smart and sophisticated campaign of opposition designed for more than the vacancy of the moment". This doesn't leave me very hopeful.

two people

Nick and Mason, an American couple emigrating to Toronto just a few steps behind us, are just back from visiting Toronto during Pride week. You might like to read about their experience.

It's so amazing to me that I will actually know people in my new city. We already have three friends in the area - terrific people that I first met online, then met in person while we were up there. Plus there's you guys, our Canadian information network and cheering section. And before long Nick and Mason will be there, too. I believe this is called community. Way cool.

sacrifice

The number of affluent individuals and married couples who paid no federal income taxes jumped more than 15 percent in 2002, to 5,650, new government data showed yesterday.

The chances of having a large income but not paying taxes on any of it are growing, according to the data, issued in the Internal Revenue Service's annual report to Congress on well-to-do Americans who live tax free. About one in every 436 high-income Americans paid no taxes in 2002, up from one in 531 in 2001 and one in 1,010 in 2000.

Over all, the top 2 percent of earners, the 2.5 million filers with income of $200,000 or more, paid almost 27 cents in taxes for each dollar of income they reported in 2002, other I.R.S. data showed. This group accounted for 53.5 percent of the income tax paid by all Americans.

Among that high-income group, however, almost 83,000, or one in 33, paid less than a dime in taxes for every dollar of income. An additional 79,000 paid less than 15 cents. The average for all Americans was 13 cents.

Article here.

same shit, different war

Time warp. It's 1967. The government is spying on peace activists. No wait, it's 1957. They're spying on civil rights activists. Nope, it's 1917, they're spying on war resisters. (Did ya know there was a peace movement in 1917? Did you know a presidential candidate when to jail for it?)

Well, it's 2005, and they still haven't stopped us. But not for lack of trying. From Common Dreams, an editorial in the Sacramento Bee:

Groups with names such as Raging Grannies, Gold Star Families for Peace and CodePink may not sound very threatening to our national security. Yet last month a special intelligence unit of the California National Guard was quietly tracking these groups as they prepped for an anti-war protest in front of the Capitol.

As the San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday, the California National Guard has established an "Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion" program. It's a legacy of Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres, the Guard leader who was forced to retire this month. The unit's purpose, according to the Guard, is to monitor, analyze and distribute information on potential terrorist threats.

Leaders of the California National Guard say the unit doesn't collect information on U.S. citizens. Maybe not, but it came dangerously close to crossing that line, if not charging across it, at the Mother's Day rally last month.

That's the rainy day when a few dozen Californians, including families of soldiers killed in the Iraq war, attended a rally outside the state Capitol. Three days beforehand, an aide in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office had alerted the California National Guard to the coming protest, according to the Mercury News.

The Guard sprung into action.

Read it here.

say no. say it loudly.

It's time for our weekly dose of Krugman.

A majority of Americans now realize that President Bush deliberately misled the nation to promote a war in Iraq. But Mr. Bush's speech on Tuesday contained a chilling message: America has been taken hostage by his martial dreams. According to Mr. Bush, the nation now has no choice except to keep fighting the war he wanted to fight.

Never mind that Iraq posed no threat before we invaded. Now it's a "central front in the war on terror," Mr. Bush says, quoting Osama bin Laden as an authority. And since a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would, Mr. Bush claims, be a victory for Al Qaeda, Americans have to support this war - and that means supporting him. After all, you wage war with the president you have, not the president you want.

But America doesn't have to let itself be taken hostage. The country missed the chance to say no before this war started, but it can still say no to Mr. Bush's open-ended commitment, and demand a timetable for getting out.

I know that this argument will be hard to sell. Despite everything that has happened, many Americans still want to believe that this war can and should be seen through to victory. But it's time to face up to three realities. First, the war is helping, not hurting, the terrorists. Second, the kind of clear victory the hawks promised is no longer possible, if it ever was. Third, a time limit on our commitment will do more good than harm.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans will gather in the nation's capital to say no Saturday, September 24. Join them. Say no. Say no loudly and say it often. Say no in such great numbers that we cannot be ignored.

happy canada day!

Fortunately for my pride, ALPF left a comment late yesterday. Otherwise I might not have known it was Canada Day. That wouldn't do for this budding new Canadian, would it?

My soon-to-be-neighbor (20 minutes up the QEW) sent these links, where we can take a Canada quiz and learn more about Canadian history.

So what do Canadians do for Canada Day? Anything?