Powerline breaks the Daou Cycle!
—Well, a third of it does, anyway. It’s a New Year, people. Be careful out there.
Where there’s soot-stained, coughing firefighters, there’s usually a fire...
Republicans! Conservatives! If yours is truly the best of all possible ways, closest to the American soul, favored by security moms and securities dads alike across our fruited plains, destined to eclipse us outmoded liberals and rule with a firm but benevolent hand all the rest of our days, then why on earth do you find yourselves lying and cheating and stealing whenever a ballot box is involved?
And then: cue the useful idiots. God, but it’s a wonder we can get anything done around here at all.
Shame.
It’s one of the things we’re trying to get at, with our koans and our agitprop: to shame the ruling powers when we have no power of our own. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) has something he really ought to feel ashamed of. He is, after all, a doctor, and in July of 1998, he said this:
[In] an interview after [Coburn]’s panel appearance, he conceded the issue of caring for a terminally ill patient brings with it complex questions and is not always simple. For example, under certain circumstances when there is no hope of recovery, he said physicians should have the option of withholding nutrients and water from a dying patient. Coburn said he has done that in the past. “If somebody does not want a feeding tube, I won’t put a feeding tube down,” he said.
Perfectly in keeping with morality and ethics as we understood them in 1998, but at that point Michael Schiavo had only just given up his heart-breaking quest to rehabilitate Terri Schiavo. In 2005, in this ghastly season of the martyr, things are a wee bit different:
Among them was Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and a family practice doctor, who said in an interview, “I don’t think you have to examine her. All you have to do is look at her on TV. Any doctor with any conscience can look at her and know that she does not have a terminal disease and know that she has some function.”
The other doctor in the Senate, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), disagrees slightly with Coburn’s newfound understanding of the moral and ethical landscape. Terri Schiavo must be examined. (He has yet to wholly abandon his Hippocratic oath, it seems.) —Luckily, examining her is simplicity itself: all you have to do is look at her, on TV, as a doctor with any conscience:
In a speech last week on the Senate floor, Frist said that “speaking more as a physician than as a U.S. senator,” he believed there was “insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state.”
Frist—who as a surgeon performed more than 150 heart and lung transplants—said his conclusion was based on a review of footage of the brain-damaged Florida woman whose parents are seeking to reconnect her feeding tube.
Now, I realize it may seem silly to speak about shame in an age when pundits have no qualms about accusing a sitting judge of plotting murder solely because they disagree with his interpretation of the law and a notedly lousy con artist is called with a straight face to give his own shameless diagnosis, but darn it, we’ve got to try. Let’s follow Michael Bassik’s suggestion and help Dr. Frist launch his post-Senate career as the world’s only video-consulting physician!
Are you sick? Injured? Worried about a medical problem, but can’t afford a physician? Well, worry no longer! Because Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, doesn’t even need to see you to make a diagnosis and prescribe care.
Bassik says, “Take a digital picture or video of your medical problem—tennis elbow, acne, runny nose, hemorrhoids, or whatever ails you—and send it to the doctor in charge of the US Senate and your health care.”
And here’s the Flickr archive thus far. Upload and tag your own. —Hell, it’s cheaper than universal health care.
Bumrush the MSM.
Sic, of course. —Digby says:
By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient’s family’s wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother’s wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.
Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.
Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo’s care thus far.
Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo’s because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.
And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.
Those who don’t read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is “stepping in to save Terry Schiavo” mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.
Do what you can about it. Copy this and paste it into the TO field of an email message:
360@cnn.com, 48hours@cbsnews.com, am@cnn.com, Colmes@foxnews.com, comments@foxnews.com, crossfire@cnn.com, dateline@nbc.com, daybreak@cnn.com, earlyshow@cbs.com, evening@cbsnews.com, Foxreport@foxnews.com, insidepolitics@cnn.com, inthemoney@cnn.com, live@cnn.com, livefrom@cnn.com, newsnight@cnn.com, nightline@abcnews.com, nightly@nbc.com, rrhodes@airamericaradio.com, today@nbc.com, wam@cnn.com, wolf@cnn.com, world@msnbc.com, wsj.ltrs@wsj.com, letters@nytimes.com, public@nytimes.com, netaudr@abc.com
Add what you can to the list. Show them the pieces of the story they aren’t telling the rest of the country. Ask them to do their jobs.
You are getting agitated again.
Some questions:
Why did you let Sun Hudson die? Why are you drastically cutting Medicaid even though it insures that more families must face the horrific consequences of George W. Bush’s Texas Futile Care Law? Why are you encouraging others to threaten the lives of Michael Schiavo and Judge George Greer? Why do you persist in this hideous farce, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the country wants you to sit down, shut up, and stop showboating on the back of someone else’s pain?
The only answer that makes any sense at all:
Because Terry Schiavo’s case lets us weaken states’ rights and spit on the constitution.
Babykillers.
Oh, do let’s ignore nuance on this one. —Go here, to Tom DeLay’s “Majority Leader” webpage—since folks who don’t live in the 22nd can’t email him from his own page without some chicanery.
Fill out the contact information as you like.
In the comments box, write this:
Why did you let Sun Hudson die?
Pass it on.
The baby wore a cute blue outfit with a teddy bear covering his bottom. The 17-pound, nearly 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open, his mother said, and smacked his lips. Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at Texas Children’s Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died . . . Sun’s death marks the first time a US judge has allowed a hospital to discontinue an infant’s life-sustaining care against a parent’s wishes, according to bioethical experts.
—“Baby dies after hospital removes breathing tube,”
Houston Chronicle, 16 March 2005
It is now one o’clock on the East Coast, the time preordained by a Florida state judge to allow for denial of food and water to Terri Schiavo. This act of barbarism can be, and must be, prevented. The Senate has before it the Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act of 2005. This bill is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, they have chosen to adjourn rather than pass it.
Those senators responsible for blocking the bill yesterday afternoon, Senators Boxer, Wyden, and Levin, have put Mrs. Schiavo’s life at risk to prove a point—an unprecedented profile in cowardice. The American people are not interested in squabbles between Republicans and Democrats, or between the House and Senate. They care, and we care, about saving Terri Schiavo’s life.
—“Terri Schiavo is Alive—This Fight Is Not Over;
House Continues to Work to Save Terri Schiavo,”
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland), 18 March 2005
ABC News obtained talking points circulated among Senate Republicans explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them, that it is an important moral issue and the “pro-life base will be excited,” and that it is a “great political issue—this is a tough issue for Democrats.”
—“Republicans Seek to Take Schiavo Battle to Supreme Court;
Husband Calls It a ‘Mockery’,” ABC News, 19 March 2005
Pretty good.
Roy posted a link to a searching analysis of the Cedar Revolution in pictures, by Michael Totten and his Swaggering Commenteers:
What you see is the difference b between pure hearts and evil ones. The smile on an evil face can never be as refreshing ad one one a good face. Evil betrays itself for all to see.
...coercive people are almost always mean, angry, repressive, and they think it’s all for the greater good…
Look at the faces in each group…A picture tells a thousand stories.
One group looks happy and free,
*******while the other,*********
with their faces covered, looks dark and violent, (why?)...
It almost looks like Men and Elves vs. Orcs from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, doesn’t it? Too bad that in many ways it is. Let’s hope the outcome is the same, albeit with a lot less bloodshed.
...I’ll go out on a limb and say the Syrian thugs look a heckuva lot like the anarchist punks who riot in the streets of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, all the way down to the flag-burning and masks.
And I’ll allow as how we can get a wee bit pissed-off up here in Little Beirut when cops pepper-spray infants—a patch, perhaps, on the complex political dynamics currently being played out in Lebanon, but a wise if intemperate person once said something to the effect that unhappiness is relative, and depends solely on one’s circumstances. But that aside, there’s a wee bit of a problem with this pretty-good, ugly-evil analysis that’s au courant. Think a moment, I’m sure you’ll get it…
What a refreshing smile. So happy and free. Beatific, even. No anarchist punk, he.
A former Nazi who fled to South America and became the charismatic leader of a religious sect has been arrested in Argentina on charges of child abuse and torture.
Paul Schaefer, 83, was seized in the town of Tortuguitas, 18 miles west of Buenos Aires, along with six people described as his security team, Argentine police said.
He has been hiding for eight years, ever since a warrant for his arrest on paedophile charges was issued in Chile in August 1996.
Fish in a barrel, but what are you gonna do? And it’s not like Totten really believes that pretty is good, good pretty, and that’s all on earth ye need to know. Right? It’s just, y’know, he’s saying whatever pops into his pretty little head that he thinks might help his cause. One of the strengths of the blogosphere, that soapbox extemporizing. Along with the, the whaddayacallit. Self-correcting thingummy. That.
Oh, and conspiracy-mongering. That, too. An easy thing to fall into, you gaze for long enough into a pretty, pretty smile like Schaefer’s.
Your spasm of activism.
By way of the Hellcat, here’s Patridiot Watch on the Democratic Party’s usurious credit card:
Just a week after handing the Republicans and credit card companies a big win by restricting people’s rights to enter into bankruptcy, the Democrats’ web site continues to offer a credit card with rates that rise to 29.99 percent.
Annual percentage rate (APR) for purchases: 0% for the first 3 monthly billing periods that your account is open (“Introductory Period”). After that, 9.99% to 23.99% [snip]
Default APR: Up to the Prime Rate** plus 24.74% or up to 29.99%, whichever is greater, and may vary (see explanation below***)
The Hellcat has an excellent rant on just how soul-destroying the bankruptcy bill is. Read that and then try to keep your temper in check as you go give the Party whatfor. Everybody inside the Beltway thinks nobody outside the Beltway is paying any attention at all to something so dry as bankruptcy deformation, so it’s safe for them to whore it up for some extra cash, but they’ve gone far too far with this one: if it passes the House (which it probably will) and Bush signs it (which he will, he will), then Capital One will be coming after your kneecaps as well as your wallet. Remind the Democrats that the outrage they’re hearing right now over a pissant-stupid offer is nothing compared to what they’re gonna be hearing in a couple of years; remind them that Senator Joe Biden (D-MBNA) will never be president, now; let them know that we are paying attention, and more of us every day.
And then: the Decembrist has the graduate-level coursework. Let him lay out what PAYGO is, and why it’s so important, and why once again those inside think us outside don’t care, and then pick up the phone and call your Senators and tell them that you do. Bonus round: you can score a point against Bolton, too, if you like. Again, Mark Schmitt explains.
Up is down; black is white; y’all is fucked.
Two grandpas and their granddaughters joined President Bush on Thursday in making his case that Social Security was on wobbly footing and private investment accounts would help provide a safety net for future retirees.
From the AP by way of Joshua Micah Marshall. —I’d say something about how easy it is for the emperor to hide his flop sweat when he isn’t wearing clothes in the first place, but what does it matter? Win or lose, we’ll all be paying it out to MBNA anyway.
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day—
Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s right about that threat to poliblogging that might not even really be a threat: Nathan Newman has the best take:
The FEC is making noises to limit the speech of blogs in the name of campaign finance reform. Josh worries that this “would mean the end of what this site and so many others on the right and left do.”
Only if we follow the rules. I won’t. Free speech is worth fighting for and the best way to do it is to refuse to be silent. There are a lot of bloggers out there and that’s a lot of people to throw in jail if they all pledge to defy the rules.
I think most campaign finance rules restricting contributions are worthless and lead to idiotic proposals like this one. This is a good place for the insanity to stop. The more bloggers who pledge to defy the FEC, the less likely they are to move forward.
I’m down with that. If we take this sort of naked moonshit lying down, then the Medium Lobster will have won:
Certainly the excesses of the blogosphere will now be held in place, but how can there be true campaign reform when the spoken word goes unchecked? Every day, millions of Americans make unchecked and unregulated political contributions by making political endorsements on sophisticated verbal logs—or “verblogs,” if you will—comprised of billions of currently untracked sound waves transmitted through the atmosphere. Until these words are properly tracked, counted, and restricted by the FEC according to the arbitrary limits of McCain-Feingold, American democracy will forever remain a prisoner of Big Speech.
“My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Iran forever. We begin bombing in three months.”
Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has “signed off” on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the US manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
—Mark Jensen , “Scott Ritter Says US Plans June Attack on Iran,
‘Cooked’ Jan. 30 Iraqi Election Results”
Off. Off. Off!
Off. Off. Off. Off. Off.
I wish to God we lived in another world, where Jeanne d’Orleans could take my breath away by saying something, anything other than this:
Italian politicians are furious that their government may have been involved with torture, and a prosecutor, Armando Spataro, has opened an investigation into the charges.
That’s what is supposed to happen. Decent people get angry when they find out their country is consorting with thugs. They demand answers. I’d almost forgotten that.
We almost all of us have, haven’t we? —We are all bad apples, now.
In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case. The Afghan guards—paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit—dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said. As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature. By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death. After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic—“hypothermia” was listed as the cause of death—the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive’s family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial. He is on no one’s registry of captives, not even as a “ghost detainee,” the term for CIA captives held in military prisons but not registered on the books, they said. “He just disappeared from the face of the earth,” said one U.S. government official with knowledge of the case.
The CIA case officer, meanwhile, has been promoted, two of the officials said, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the matter. The case is under investigation by the CIA inspector general.
How many more names await the chance to become a ghost? How many more causes of death are yet to be ginned up? How many more families will never be notified?
New Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under pressure while he awaited his confirmation hearings late last year, repudiated a controversial August 2002 memo that CIA officials carefully solicited from the Justice Department for legal authorization on renditions and the agency’s treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Today the CIA has dozens of detainees it doesn’t know how to dispose of without legal procedures. “Where’s the off button?” says one retired CIA official. “They asked the White House for direction on how to dispose of these detainees back when they asked for [interrogation] guidance. The answer was, ‘We’ll worry about that later.’ Now we don’t know what to do with these guys. People keep saying, ‘We’re not going to shoot them’.”
Professor John Yoo, one of the banal engineers of this monstrous machine of split-haired technicalities and unnumbered flights and false-flag kidnappings, thinks we all had our chance to press that off button, and chose not to:
He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”
If I believed for a moment that were true, Professor Yoo—that we had had last year a full and frank exchange of views, seen clearly what had been set in motion, and had soberly decided our safety could only be secured at such an appalling price—then I would write this whole damned country off off off. But the arc of the universe is long, and your name will be broken on it; your legacy will be that of a moral footnote: what not to do. What not to be.
Of course, moral outrage is nothing more than a laughable beginning:
Amnesty International, the international human rights organization, noted that the Bush administration has turned over prisoners arrested in the battle against terrorism to the same countries it cites in the report for torturing prisoners.
We must turn it off. All of it. And then start down the long hard road of making what amends we can.
(My goodness, were there that many bad apples? Is it possible there were that many bad apples in the whole country?)
My song is love unknown.
Here’s an unexpected tragedy of the commons:
The biggest single contributor to last fall’s Measure 36 campaign was an obscure east Portland company previously unknown in political circles.
That company, Christian Copyright Licensing International, contributed $410,000 ($200,000 of it in loans), nearly 20 percent of the $2.2 million raised by the Defense of Marriage Coalition. (The next-biggest backer was the national Christian group Focus on the Family.)
It’s part of Willamette Week’s rather dispiriting look at the infighting and fallout of same-sex marriage in Multnomah County, one year later. We do learn that anti–same-sex–marriage activist Tim Nashif, “a longtime Republican organizer” and CEO of Gateway Communications, “which makes its income by printing materials for political campaigns,” wants “reciprocal partnerships” in Oregon that would be “open to any two people not allowed to marry”:
“If it’s a question of people not being able to get benefits, let’s open benefits to anyone barred from marriage,” Nashif says.
And on the one hand, sure: I mean, it’s up to him if he wants to destroy marriage as he thinks he knows it within a generation, but so long as the benefits appertaining thereunto are available to all and sundry, regardless of race, creed, color, or sexual orientation, I’m down with that. What’s he gonna do, smack Chloe and Olivia on the wrist whenever they slip and talk about their marriage with their friends and family? I’m sorry, Bob and Ted—that’s a fifty-dollar fine for not using the sanctioned terminology for your relationship. —On the other hand, I smell a bait-and-switch: after all, Vermont anti-marriage activists want to replace that state’s civil unions with “reciprocal partnerships.” Some scrutiny of the fine print is called for.
Still, there’s something about a Christian ASCAP being such a big mover and shaker in the THOU SHALT NOT movement that tickles the husk of my funnybone. I mean, I don’t know that they’ve moved into the full-on protection racket aspect of the biz yet, calling up random churches and leaning on them for licensing fees, are you sure you’re covered? You’d better buy one, just to be sure, you know?
- Photocopying. The Church Copyright License does not convey the right to photocopy or duplicate any choral sheet music (octavos), cantatas, musicals, keyboard arrangements, vocal solos, or instrumental works.
- Copy Report. As a license holder, you will be selected to report your song copying activity once every 2-½ years. At that time you will receive a letter of notification along with a Copy Report booklet. The Copy Report will provide information about the length of the report period, and instructions on how to complete it. Your completed Copy Report is a vital element of the Church Copyright License, as it allows us to accurately process and distribute royalties to songwriters and copyright owners.
- Congregational Single Songsheet (CSS). A CSS is a single song, which is found in a compilation of songs intended for congregational use (i.e., a hymnal or chorus book). These songs can be copied into bulletins, congregational songbooks, congregational songsheets, or placed on a slide or transparency. However, the above activity only applies if the song is covered under the Authorized List, and only if the purpose is to assist the congregation in singing. This is the only photocopying allowed under the Church Copyright License.
- Copyright Notice. The Copyright Information you will find for each song needs to be placed on each copy you make, along with your CCLI License Number. If you are unable to display the copyright notice on a slide or transparency, because of lack of space, you may place the information on the frame.
- Recording Services. One of the rights granted to you with the Church Copyright License is the right to record your worship service. This right includes recording your meditations, preludes, postludes, interludes, fanfares, handbell, vocal and instrumental specials. Please be sure to report these when it is your time to report on the Copy Report.
- Rehearsal Tapes. If you would like to make rehearsal tapes for the purpose of having your choir or orchestra learn the music, you must contact the Copyright Administrator directly for this activity. There are no exceptions regarding this issue.
Seems to me it might be better to make a joyful noise in the public domain. More fitting, somehow, too.
My song is love unknown,
my Savior’s love to me,
love to the loveless shown
that they might lovely be.
Why (those currently in charge of the) Republicans are evil.
This is related to what I believe is the Republican strategy to break any positive connection between citizens and government. The appointment of “Constitution in Exile” judges and the stripping of government of all revenues is part of the strategy. Even the horrendous Medicare prescription drug bill fits this strategy, in my theory, because in its arbitrariness, its cost, its “donut hole” where coverage is needed most, it will, when fully phased in, create only anger and frustration, not the positive associations that people have with a reliable, sensible insurance program like Medicare or Social Security. It is an “anti-entitlement,” the opposite of the guaranteed protections that entitlements can offer.
The positive theory that accounts will make people excited, entrepreneurial, wealth-accumulating owners, and thus Republicans, expresses one idea about human nature. The negative, anti-government theory embodies another: that people, unless desperate, will not rise up to demand what they don’t have and have never known. Here it’s useful to remember that Karl Rove’s historical parallel is the 36 years of Republican dominance from the McKinley election in 1996 to Hoover’s defeat. That was a brutal period in American economic life. Government offered nothing in the way of benefits for workers, minimal widows’ pensions, no aid for children, monetary policies that were cruel to farmers and regulatory laissez-faire that was cruel to workers. And yet, year in and year out, people took it, without question. It was the natural order of things. Only the greatest economic collapse in our history forced change. People generally don’t demand what they don’t have. When Social Security is gone, it will not come back, no matter how badly the accounts do. And people will not respond to its absence by becoming Democrats and demanding the restoration of an economic safety net for seniors. Rather, they will forget it ever existed and vote Republican, confirmed in their belief that government doesn’t do a damn thing for anyone.
—Mark Schmitt, the Decembrist
It is one thing to be mindful of the power of government; to use it carefully, perhaps sparingly, but to use it, realizing there are certain things that enrich us all that only collective action can accomplish.
It’s another to reject the power of government as water from a poisoned well—to say that nothing or almost nothing we do collectively is ever worth the price we all must ultimately pay. (Whether one says so adamantly or ruefully is really a matter of personal style.)
But to take the levers of that power yourself and do what you can to twist them, distort them, to cheapen and coarsen the lives of the people around you, to deliberately make us all worse off so that more and more will abandon the idea of collective agency and the common good? To poison the well yourself, merely so we’ll someday say that you were right?
(And so you might cadge a greasy buck or two. Or two trillion.)
When standards are outlawed, only outlaws will have standards.
Kelli Davis, 18, had her senior class photo taken in a tuxedo top and bow-tie outfit provided for boys rather than the gown-like drape and pearls provided for girls. The school’s principal decided it could not appear in the yearbook because she didn’t follow the dress code.
Kelli, a straight-A student with no discipline problems, is a lesbian. She said she was uncomfortable to have her chest exposed in the photo.
“Because that’s me, you know. That represents me. The drape does not,” Davis said. “They’re not accepting me. That’s the whole reason we’re here.”
Here’s the photo of Kelli Davis that so mightily offended:
Clay School Superintendent David Owens denies it’s about her sexual orientation, just about a student not following the rules.
“There’s a dress code to follow—a dress code expected for senior pictures in the yearbook, and she chose not to follow them. It’s just that simple,” Owens said.
Here’s a prom dress “made by a Texas company that has advertised it successfully in teen magazines like YM and Seventeen.” While not an accurate depiction of the senior girls’ drape, it’s presumably closer to the æsthetic that Owens finds simply acceptable and Davis finds unacceptably uncomfortable:
Others applauded [Principal Sam] Ward’s decision, including Karen Gordon, who said, “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds.”
All I have to say to that is damn. If your authority is compromised by a girl in a tux, you’re in a bad, bad way.
(Mad props to yearbook editor Keri Sewell, by the way, who was fired for refusing to remove the photo.)
Tooting my own horn.
Just for a moment, honest, and then I’ll put it away. —See, Atrios links to a report over at There is No Crisis which shows our favorite propagandistas, USA Next, were until recently nothing more than a spam farm that harvested the mailing addresses of guillible donors and plowed any funds raised thereby back into the charitable endeavor of raising funds. “Is the privatization scheme just a junk mail operation?” asks the headline.
Why, yes. Yes, it is. I’d like it noted, for the record, that this humble blog, not usually known for its policy prognostications, nailed this particular pelt to the wall back in December.
No, the ultimate argument against mandatory private retirement accounts is this: do you have any idea how much more junk mail you’ll be getting? From multinational financial corporations and fly-by-night penny-stock–pimping quasi-firms? Lurid brochures and badly written come-ons, envelopes tricked up to look like overnight deliveries with that stupid handwriting font misspelling your name in the corner, Kipp, I thought you would appreciate a look at this, Mr. J.K. Manly, you could be making thirteen percent, Ms. Beezel Lee, have you thought about your retirement account? Dire red-inked envelopes with bold block letters RE: YOUR RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS IMPORTANT OPEN IMMEDIATELY, anonymous cheap white envelopes hoping to sneak past your first brute-force Bayesian filter, your own goddamn bank shoving ten-page slick-papered prospectuses financed by your ATM fees through your mail slot every week or so, just because they can.
Spread the word, if you’re so inclined.
