A public service announcement.
Thanks to Ampersand, I now know the Mo Movie Measure isn’t really the Mo Movie Measure. If anything, it’s the Liz Wallace Movie Measure.
The measure? Works like this: think of a movie that meets the following criteria—
- It has to have at least two women in it.
- Who talk to each other during the course of the movie.
- About something besides a man.
I’ll let you cogitate for a bit. —Comes from a Dykes to Watch Out For strip that’s so old skool Mo wasn’t even in the cast yet, which is why it isn’t the Mo Movie Measure. When Bechdel did the strip back in 1985, the last movie she could think of that passed was Alien.
(Only I don’t remember calling it the Mo Movie Measure myself. I always remember it being referred to as Bechdel’s Rule, or the Dykes to Watch Out For Rule, which is more correct, though it doesn’t address Liz Wallace’s displacement. But what can I say? Alliteration is against her. The Mo Movie Measure is just so darned catchy!)
“Not comfortable.”
The Democrats have chosen Tim Kaine, the newly elected Democratic governor of Virgina, to rebut President Bush’s State of the Union address. Presumably, selecting a Marine who’s tough enough to tell his Swift Boaters where to shove it would demonstrate the Democrats are weak on national security; Kaine, after all, unlike a solid majority of America, supports the war in Iraq.
Tim Kaine is also against same-sex marriage. He’s even against civil unions. Unlike a majority of America.
Virginia’s House of Delegates just passed House Joint Resolution No. 41 by a margin of 73 to 22. House Joint Resolution No. 41 proposes to amend Article I of the commonwealth’s constitution, its Bill of Rights, by adding Section 15-A. Section 15-A would read as follows:
Section 15-A. Marriage.
That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.
This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.
Governor Kaine has stated he’s “not comfortable” with the breadth of this amendment’s language. He’ll sign it, should Virginia’s Senate approve likewise, turning it over to a commonwealth-wide referendum on whether it should be pasted into the constitution. But he won’t be comfortable when he does it.
One should, perhaps, ask him—and the commonwealth’s Senate—how comfortable they are with the idea that this amendment could strip unmarried couples throughout the state of basic domestic violence protections. Ohio’s similar amendment has been causing confusion on just that score.
One should, perhaps, ask him—and the strutting 73 members of the House who ignored their colleague’s stirring denunciation—how comfortable they are with the idea that this amendment will strip property from people like Sam Beaumont because of a legal technicality.
One should ask him, and the commonwealth’s voters, how comfortable they are with the idea that this amendment will ensure that people like Laurel Hester will never see justice in Virginia.
Look: I have some appreciation of the political realities. Tim Kaine isn’t in a comfortable place right now. His legislature’s in the hands of power-mad, scapegoat-hungry radicals. Shooting down a resolution that passed with a 73 – 22 margin is suicidally stupid for a rookie governor who just barely won a hard-fought campaign, and Democrats everywhere owe him for a breath of hope this past November. And there’s many a slip yet betwixt this poisonous cup and lip: the Senate could be compelled by vociferous national outrage to reject its cameral compadre’s bigotry. If it ends up as a referendum, that vociferous national outrage, along with some very public boycotts, might could motivate enough decent human beings (and shame enough bigots) to shoot it down before it’s scribbled permanently in the margins. Kaine could even step in to water it down to a less horribly divisive and discriminatory measure, though what a weak thing that would be to call victory. —So, yes: there’s no reason to believe his refusal to sign would do any good, and enough to believe it would actively harm, to allow as how one might sympathize with how not comfortable he is.
Doesn’t mean we have to be comfortable with him speaking for us this year. Doesn’t mean we have to be comfortable with the folks that think we should.
...his power will be broken, the panoply of his office scattered, his house razed...
Oh, hey. I’d forgotten all about what Tom DeLay said when the tsunami hit.
This woman’s word.
Go on. Guess.
Well aren’t we peppy today.
“Mokona-Ondo de Pupupu-no-pu (Puu’ing to the Mokona-Ondo),” the Magic Knight Rayearth soundtrack; “Walkabout,” the Sugarcubes; “Do Re Mi,” Ken and the New Incredibles; “Bonanza,” the Books; “Panic,” the Smiths; “Clarissima,” Jocelyn Montgomery; “The King and Queen of America,” Eurythmics; “I,” Pizzicato Five; “Train Song,” Holly Cole Trio; “Stacks,” Pulp.
A fitter and generally a more effectual punishment.
We were at a restaurant somewhere in Shaker Heights and laughing over this absurd remark or that when he leaned back in his chair and jumped the conversational tracks. “I’ve got one,” he said, an evil glint in his eye. “How does every joke about black people begin?”
Which pretty much stopped the laughter dead. Thing was, see, he wasn’t known for this sort of joke. At all. Thing is, though, how well do you ever really know someone? —Final scheme, and all that.
“Okay,” said someone, after a bit too long. “How?”
And he rested his elbows on the table, looked ostentatiously over his left shoulder, ostentatiously over his right, and then leaned forward, mouth open as if he were about to speak.
We got it.
Would that some guardians of our discourse had the shrunken, shriveled enlightenment of the butts of that particular joke.
Lay down the mony upon the nail, and the business is done.
Oh, even-the-liberal-Kevin-Drum.
First, at the very least, trust but verify; it’s a long way from “ABC News has learned that Pakistani officials now believe” to the blithe assertion that “we did get one of al Qæda’s big fish in the attack on Damadola last week.” Remember: never assume, for if you do, you make an ass out of you and me.
But.
Even if one were to grant the shockingly naïve assumptions available, each in their particulars, you’ve got the question wrong, all wrong: it is not up to us to tell you whether the death of a 52-year-old master bomb-maker and the disruption of an “apparent terror summit” are worth the deaths of 18 genuinely innocent bystanders. The question on the table is and always has been: how many genuinely innocent bystanders must die before you say enough? Would twenty make you uncomfortable? How about fifty? Maybe if they weren’t “genuinely” innocent? If ironclad proof of each of those assumptions were, somehow, available, would you go as high as a hundred bystanders, wedding guests, in-laws, kids? Were it possible to claim on the nightly news that Midhat Mursi and Khalid Habib and Abdul Rehman al Magrabi would convene no more terror summits, and Ayman al-Zawahiri now slept with “his eyes wide open,” “wondering who handed him up,” would it be worth your death?
War is wrong. It may sometimes be necessary, or at best unavoidable, but it is wrong. It makes monsters of us: soldiers, pundits, commenteers all.
Strike me pink!
Were I a better comics blogger (which I’m not, no more’n I’m a poliblogger), you wouldn’t have had to have waited for me to read Sara’s LiveJournal in order to find this Comics Reporter link to news of a staggeringly monumental nature:
Give it up for the last honest libertarian.
Thanks to Jim Henley, you’ll never have to hear another ticking time-bomb scenario ever ever again.
Still a uniter, not a divider.
You learn a lot whenever you visit wood s lot; today, I learned I agree with the John Birch Society.
NORRIS: Generals Edwin Walker and Clyde Watts both attacked MAD; calling it Communistic. FACT magazine made it out that you counter-attacked the John Birch Society, in the article “MAD Interviews A ‘John Birch Society’ Policeman” from MAD #97, September 1965, because of the Generals’ statements. Was this true?
FELDSTEIN: No! Anti-Communist panic… Red-baiting… and the Cold War with Russia was going on at that time, reaching a peak… and like every other era, including today!... contained serious, frightening reactionary organizations and movements in support of those causes that were beginning to infringe upon our basic Constitutional Liberties and Freedoms. The John Birch Society was one of the more infamous and outstanding of those organizations… and invited, no, begged for a biting, critical, MAD satirical treatment… hence the article, “MAD Interviews a ‘John Birch Society Policeman’”... an extreme point of departure that stressed how the “John Birch Society” thinking… in the hands of a Law Enforcement Officer… could be devastating and dangerous to our Civil Liberties, etc.
Don’t waste good iron for nails, or good men for soldiers.
Ten thousand years of human history was as nothing to us when taking the steps to safeguard it might have interfered with the safety of our troops, or inconvenienced our operational parameters.
But embarrass a Republican donor, like David H. Brooks? Whose DHB Industries manufactures Point Blank Armor? Which is insufficiently supplied to our troops through a 500 million dollar contract? Whose product failures are at the heart of a leaked, top-secret study that found 80% of our dead troops might have survived with adequate armor? Whose main competitor, Dragon Skin, is favored by nine of the generals currently serving in Afghanistan? Embarrass the likes of a man who can hire and fire the likes of Aerosmith and 50 Cent for his daughter’s bat mitzvah by working with your parents to scrape together the $6,000 you need for the safer, better, non-issue stuff?
Well. Fuck you, soldier. The order has come down from on high: drop the non-issue armor, or your family will lose your death benefits. Fuck your safety; fuck your people; fuck the op. Some things in this world are more important than your brief life, rounded by a sleep.
Now that I’m up with 2.12—
—or 2.2.2, or whatever the cool kids are calling it, anyway, from the talented mind at 
stutefish: your moment of Battlestar Zen—
Why does America hate America?
On the one hand, 52% of America supports impeachment of the president, assuming he wiretapped American citizens without judicial approval (which he did, has been doing since he took office, and intends to keep right on doing, dammit); on the other, Jonah Goldberg and his ilk see no problem at all with a complete abrogation of constitutional rights—assuming the abrogatee is a drug dealer, or a terrorist, or related to a drug dealer, or a terrorist, or could conceivably have dealt drugs or terror at some point, or, y’know, looks like they might have, or is just, heck, evil, because we all know evil when we see it, so long as it isn’t him, or anyone he gives a fuck about, he’s cool, so what the hell is your problem, you liberal no-goodnik?
Ceci n’est pas une prom dress.
Yes, that’s a real prom dress. No, it’s not on backwards. Here’s a photo from its native environment:
It bubbled up into the froth of the Zeitgeist about a year ago; you can read more about it in this Wizbang! thread, or this thread over at Go Fug Yourself, and one might find a diverting yet instructive ten minutes or so in comparing the tones and tenors of the two. (One might also find a diverting yet distractive ten minutes or so in perusing the catalog, if only to appreciate the way the bridal models are each paired with a tastefully naked hunk.)
Now, the reason I posted the picture back then was bubbling next to it in the froth: the story of Kelli Davis, who wanted to wear a tuxedo top for her high school senior picture, and not the drape-and-pearls the girls were supposed to wear; “She said she was uncomfortable to have her chest exposed in the photo,” as one news report put it. (And those who find the juxtaposition of the two a tad hyperbolic—
—are invited to ponder the designer’s koan: “He openly admitted that he would die before he let his own daughter out of the house like that, but said that ‘prom styles are very sexy’ these days and ‘girls want to look sexy like their favorite celebrities.’”)
Anyway: tough, said the principal, who banned the photo. Tough, said Clay School Superintendent David Owens, who went on to say, “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.”
Apparently, the use of tasers in schools is also just that simple; corporal punishment, however, not so much, because “We’re living in a sue-happy society these days.” —Kelli Davis threatened to sue, by the way, and even if she didn’t get her senior picture, Clay County girls from here on out can wear the tux, and boys the drape; the settlement reached mandates the school board “change its senior portrait policy, add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy for both students and teachers, distribute a copy of the new non-discrimination policy to all secondary school students, provide annual non-discrimination training that includes sexual orientation to all faculty and staff, and provide diversity training that includes sexual orientation to all junior high and high school students in the district.” —Which is maybe why a Clay County high school subsequently banned a student editorial called “Homosexuality is Not a Choice.” (Aw, cut ’em some slack. Rome wasn’t unbuilt in a day.)
As to why I’m bringing this up a year later? Beyond the fleeting pleasures of follow-up (and schadenfreude)? —Go to Google, bring up the image search, enter “prom dress.” You’ll see something like this:
Which is maybe why since I restarted the stat counter hereabouts, I’ve discovered that searches for “prom dress” constitute forty freaking percent of my traffic.
Anybody know how to unjuice Google?
It takes a heap of licks to strike a nail in the dark.
From Michael Schwartz at Mother Jones to Body and Soul to me to you:
Here is the Times account of what happened in the small town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad, on January 3, based on interviews with various unidentified “American officials”:
A pilotless reconnaissance aircraft detected three men planting a roadside bomb about 9 p.m. The men “dug a hole following the common pattern of roadside bomb emplacement,” the military said in a statement. “The individuals were assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces, and the location of the three men was relayed to close air support pilots.”
The men were tracked from the road site to a building nearby, which was then bombed with “precision guided munitions,” the military said. The statement did not say whether a roadside bomb was later found at the site. An additional military statement said Navy F-14’s had “strafed the target with 100 cannon rounds” and dropped one bomb.
Crucial to this report is the phrase “precision guided munitions,” an affirmation that US forces used technology less likely than older munitions to accidentally hit the wrong target. It is this precision that allows us to glimpse the callous brutality of American military strategy in Iraq.
The target was a “building nearby,” identified by a drone aircraft as an enemy hiding place. According to eyewitness reports given to the Washington Post, the attack effectively demolished the building, and damaged six surrounding buildings. While in a perfect world, the surrounding buildings would have been unharmed, the reported amount of human damage in them (two people injured) suggests that, in this case at least, the claims of “precision” were at least fairly accurate.
The problem arises with what happened inside the targeted building, a house inhabited by a large Iraqi family. Piecing together the testimony of local residents, the Times reporter concluded that fourteen members of the family were in the house at the time of the attack and nine were killed. The Washington Post, which reported twelve killed, offered a chilling description of the scene:
“The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping. A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house.”
Because in this case—unlike in so many others in which American air power utilizes “precisely guided munitions”—there was on-the-spot reporting for an American newspaper, the US military command was required to explain these casualties. Without conceding that the deaths actually occurred, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, director of the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad, commented: “We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves.”
Notice that Lt. Col. Johnson (while not admitting that civilians had actually died) did assert US policy: If suspected guerrillas use any building as a refuge, a full-scale attack on that structure is justified, even if the insurgents attempt to use civilians to “shield themselves.” These are, in other words, essential US rules of engagement. The attack should be “precise” only in the sense that planes and/or helicopter gunships should seek as best they can to avoid demolishing surrounding structures. Put another way, it is more important to stop the insurgents than protect the innocent.
And notice that the military, single-mindedly determined to kill or capture the insurgents, cannot stop to allow for the evacuation of civilians either. Any delay might let the insurgents escape, either disguised as civilians or through windows, backdoors, cellars, or any of the other obvious escape routes urban guerrillas might take. Any attack must be quickly organized and—if possible—unexpected.
update— And then I wake up to this:
Pakistan on Saturday condemned a purported CIA airstrike on a border village that officials said unsuccessfully targeted al-Qaida’s second-in-command, and said it was protesting to the U.S. Embassy over the attack that killed at least 17 people.
Thousands of local tribesmen, chanting “God is Great,” demonstrated against the attack, claiming the victims were local villagers without terrorist links and had never hosted Ayman al-Zawahri.
Two senior Pakistani officials told The Associated Press that the CIA acted on incorrect information in launching the attack early Friday in the northwestern village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.
Citing unidentified American intelligence officials, U.S. news networks reported that CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike because al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant, was thought to be at a compound in the village or about to arrive.
“Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official with direct knowledge of Pakistan’s investigations into the attack.
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