Excuse me: they want to drill for oilin a lake that supplies at least two major cities with drinking water?!! To say nothing of many smaller cities and towns! What the hell is Engler THINKING? And how is it that Michigan controls this decision for a body of water that borders not only four other states, but where the levels are dictated by a treaty with Canada?
@ 01:46 PM CST [Link]
The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior
On June 28, Surgeon General David Satcher unveiled science-based strategies which he said represent an effort to find "common ground" upon which the nation could work to promote sexual health and responsible sexual behavior.
Curiously, you can only find this report if you look at the way the Surgeon General's site is organized and make a guess as to where it is. It's not currently linked to either the what's new page or the Surgeon General's Reports page.
Bush II Fraudulency was not amused by this report; supposedly "Bush strongly objected to portions of Satcher's report and had little confidence in him." Although, of course, he doesn't really know what's in it: Bush did not read Satcher's full report himself but was briefed on it, [Administration Spokesbeing Ari] Fleischer added. I can understand that he can't read everything that comes out of the government -- it produces an awesome amount of information, to be sure -- but you think he'd want to actually read major policy documents being issued during his reign.
@ 01:01 PM CST [Link]
When recently asked to define his administration’s central mission, the president’s instant answer was “tax relief.” With that brief response, W flouted three of the most fundamental attributes of leadership: the ability to identify a compelling vision of a greater future; a gift for inspiring people to transcend their own interests; and the courage to not merely reflect current opinion but to challenge and shape it. [...] Or consider the searing intellectual depth of the advice Bush says he offered Russian President Vladimir Putin during their recent summit: “It’s negative to think about blowing each other up. That’s not a positive thought ... That’s a thought when people were enemies with each other.” Are these the pronouncements of a man maturing into the Leader of the Free World or a guy who’s been watching way too much Barney? [...] Consistently incoherent and, as he reminded us in his commencement address at Yale, proudly uneducated, Bush appears oddly unfamiliar with the system he now purports to lead and stunningly unaware of the world beyond our borders -- except, perhaps, for Vincente Fox’s rumpus room. [...]
Hmm. Somehow, the thought of Bush II Fraudulency running around singing "I love you, you love me..." just gives me the cold shudders. (But I do enjoy watching her shred him, yes I do.)
In the meantime, The Shrubster left piles of leadership on our national lawn by allowing the Secret Service to expel someone from the White House when they'd come to attend a meeting to which they were specifically invited, and by demonstrating his determination to rehabilitate Bush I Incompetency's administration as he appointed an Iran-Contra convict to his staff. Granted that the Shrub apologized for the first incident. Granted that Abrams was pardoned by Bush I. Nonetheless, the incidents keep piling up to indicate an administration with a signal lack of focus or control of itself. (I mean, really. Wouldn't you think that someone would say, "Yes, Mr President, we realize that he's respected. We realize that he was pardoned. Nonetheless, with an administration only six months old that's already taking a public shellacking over its lack of ethical behavior, perhaps appointing someone who pled guilty to lying to Congress is not the best move you could make.")
@ 12:47 PM CST [Link]
But are weepy recrimination and shut-up-don't-talk-about-it really the only alternatives white people have when talk turns to black history? Isn't there some middle ground of simple human compassion? Because I've got to tell you: While the one extreme makes me squirm, the other just hacks me off. It's tiresome to hear people deny truth that, in any other context, they would consider obvious. Namely, that we are all shaped by history. All challenged by it, ennobled by it, lifted and stained by it. That yesterday informs today. [...] The point is not that black people bear no responsibility for their own salvation. To the contrary, we bear ultimate responsibility. Nor is that obligation one we have always met. ...
@ 12:39 PM CST [Link]
"I don't think anyone intended it to be this way, but if you were trying to design a system to incarcerate as many African-American and Latino men as possible, I don't think you could have designed a better system," said state Rep. Michael Lawlor, co-chairman of the Connecticut Legislature's Judiciary Committee.
No, I don't suppose you could have.
@ 12:34 PM CST [Link]
I'm thinking that you don't often find a bear in the sewer, really. (Well, OK, the sewage treatment plant, but still ...)
@ 12:29 PM CST [Link]
"Look, I live where I want to live. I live in Oregon, so I don't have to play the L.A. game anymore, and that's cool enough for me. The older I get, the less I want people telling me what to do. It's amazing."
Isn't it, though? Now all I need is a career where I can make that philosophy work. Maybe if I get a chin transplant .....
@ 11:01 AM CST [Link]
"During my 14 wasted years on death row, I always hoped that my nightmare would count for something," Graham said. "That's why I'm here today." Graham, who was convicted and later exonerated in the 1986 slayings of an elderly Louisiana couple, told lawmakers that his attorneys had little criminal trial experience and that one was only months out of law school. Last December, after attorneys working for free took up his cause and proved that key witnesses lied and prosecutors withheld evidence, the case was dismissed. Graham walked out of prison without enough money to buy a bus ticket back to Virginia.
"Someone on trial for his life deserves a fair trial and a competent defense attorney," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), committee chairman and the bill's chief sponsor. "We're talking about the ultimate penalty that can be imposed." [...] But Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. testified that the current system of appeals is designed to protect innocent defendants and that it works. He said the changes would further delay justice for families who lose loved ones to violent crimes. "It would lengthen and complicate an already Byzantine system . . . and harm the real innocents in this process," Pryor said. "If your concern is to protect the innocent from being executed, then you need not worry; it is not occurring."
I see. So somehow, it's more important that families who have lost loved ones receive "justice" by making sure someone is executed than it is to make sure that the person who actually committed the crime is executed. Mr Pryor would rather risk having the state execute the wrong person as long as it occurs in a somewhat timely fashion. What a very lovely person he is.
@ 10:45 AM CST [Link]
Pssst! Hey, kid ... Wanna design your own browser?
@ 02:47 PM CST [Link]
My goodness. An agreement on an approach, and it only took them 20 years to reach it. Let's see on those particulars, there ....
For the first option, we'll offer "just say no! to sex" abstinence programs, because, after all, if you're not having sex, you're not getting AIDS, and everybody knows that the Youth of America can be counted on not to have sex, right? And on that second item, well, if you've got a prevention program telling people not to have sex, then you don't need to do much with treatment, right, because nobody will be getting the disease! And we'll empower women to have control over their sexuality by encouraging them to stay home and virginal until marriage, after which they need merely stay home and obey their lord and master ... I mean, "husband", of course. And if we do all that, we won't need to involve people with HIV/AIDS in doing messy things like building programs that work, because all the people currently with the disease will die off, and there won't be any new cases, right?
Right?
Looking outside the US, it's hard to see how the section on women's rights can be implemented in countries with even stronger traditions of restricting women than the US has. How does this work in countries which, for example, think that raping lesbians back into heterosexuality is a valid treatment? (Note that the Muslim and Caribbean countries objected strenuously to mentioning the "vulnerable groups".) What rights over their sexuality do women have in such places?
And, of course, the final kicker is that compliance is completely voluntary for all signatories. Which means that this is a declaration of principle and nothing more ... and barely that.
@ 02:46 PM CST [Link]
So our choices are now between police harassment and "de-policing". Good grief.
@ 12:53 PM CST [Link]
For all the outcry over harassment of gays after the murder of college student Matthew Shepard in 1998, anti-gay insults are still the slang of choice among children and teenagers, according to teachers, counselors and youths. Some say the insults are increasing in school classrooms and hallways -- among children as young as 8 or 9 -- partly because gay youths and their supporters have become more visible. [...] Anti-gay language often first appears on elementary school playgrounds. "Kids at our school say, 'That kid is sooo gay,' '' said Julia Pernick, a classmate of Emmett's in fourth grade at Chevy Chase Elementary. "They think it means stupid or unusual or strange.'' [...] "Kids sign their yearbooks'' with anti-gay insults. [...] Gay students also don't feel they can count on adults for help. According to several surveys, four out of five gay students say they don't know one supportive adult at school. "Teachers are aware they may offend someone if they speak about homosexuality in anything other than negative terms,'' said Deborah Roffman, who teaches sex education in the Baltimore and Washington areas. "They don't know how to cross that street safely, so they don't even step off the curb.''
Ah. Progress.
@ 12:18 PM CST [Link]
OK, here's the thing: I understand why poor black parents are demanding vouchers and school choice. If I had a kid, I can imagine that I might want to yank them out of the Chicago public schools, many of which are not the best; if I had a kid in an inner city New York City school, I'd be desperate to get them out, if only to stop them from assuming that the police state is the norm. (It might be misguided, but nobody should grow up that way.) The fact that students who use vouchers to get into private schools are very successful shouldn't be a surprise; you get smaller classes, more attention -- really, the only surprise would be if they somehow did much much worse than before. But one of the stated points for voucher proponents is that having to compete for students forces public schools to improve. And frankly, I don't see how that can be. The only way public schools can improve is to reduce class size, build and repair school physical facilities, attract better and more competent teachers, allow and encourage innovative methods of teaching ... and only the last can possibly be done without increasing money spent on schools and the public education system, sometimes quite drastic increases.
Yet vouchers themselves bleed money from the state. Additionally, the ultimate school choice isn't the parents' about where their child goes; the choice rests with the private school as to whether or not they take the student. The private school's response when they decline to accept some students, quite reasonably, is twofold: first, students who have been in low-performing private schools are simply not ready or able to cope with the demands of the private school; second, they can only take so many people, ready or not, before sheer numbers begin to compromise the quality of the education for all.
The other aspect of vouchers as school choice is that, quite frequently, there isn't any. For example, in my general neighborhood, one of the yup-and-coming neighborhoods in Chicago, there is, I believe, really only one private school of any stripe, and it's a charter school, the Octavio Paz Charter School, which sits inside Our Lady of Precious Blood Catholic Church. (There's Ignatius College Prep nearby, to be sure, but it is, in fact, what the name implies, a rigorous and demanding college prep school and not a general high school; if you've been in a low performing public school and shift to Ignatius, you're likely to have a very hard time making the transition.) This highlights the choices, or lack thereof, confronting people: it's quite likely to be a Catholic parochial school, since they're the only organization in the country besides the state that has ever made that sort of systematic educational outreach effort, or nothing at all. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial above notes and this case in Ohio highlights, vouchers for religious schools seem, in some cases, to be operating as direct subsidies to religion more than as simple tuition aid, dragging Church/State separation issues into the mix.
I've no idea what the solution to the problem is. It's quite easy to say "Improve the public schools!" but the fact is, we seem to lack the political will to do so. It's easier to simply desert the schools and leave them to those who have no choice. (What we're going to do when we run out of relatively altruistic teachers willing to teach in dilapidated cesspits of buildings, I'm sure I don't know. Given the declining numbers of people going into teaching, however, I expect we'll find out in a decade or two.) And it's easy for me to sit on the outside and pick when I've no direct stake in the outcome -- no kids and no likelihood of any. (And, as I said, the plain fact is that at the moment, at least, I do have the fiscal flexibility that would allow me to either move to the 'burbs or to keep my kid out of the public schools in the first place.)
@ 12:09 PM CST [Link]
Lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and transgender people all over the world suffer persecution and violence simply for being who they are. They are tortured or ill-treated by state officials to extract confessions of “deviance”, and raped to “cure” them of it. They are attacked in their homes and communities to punish and intimidate them because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
@ 03:10 PM CST [Link]
North Dakotans can't move their state to warmer climes, but some hope a proposal to change its name will alter many people's frosty image of the state. The Greater North Dakota Association, the state's chamber of commerce, is backing a proposal to cut the state's name to "Dakota." Supporters insist the plan would help alter the state's image as a frigid, treeless prairie. [...] Some state officials worry the plan would subject North Dakota to national ridicule - which is what happened in 1989, the last time a name change was proposed.
Oh, yeah, that'll be effective, won't it? Knocking the word "north" out of the name of the state would immediately make me think that it was hilly and warm, right? That whole thing about being on the Canadian border and having winters that start early and end late would just be knocked right out of my head.
@ 01:50 PM CST [Link]
Oh, please. Does the Council of Europe really think that Bush II Fraudulency gives a good goddamn what they think? He doesn't give a good goddamn what we think.
I would imagine that the only way they could get his attention is if they agitate for the US not to get one of the seats that comes open next year on the UN Human Rights Council. And even then, it wouldn't bother him much. (Congress would be apoplectic, but then, that's what they do.)
@ 01:37 PM CST [Link]
So apparently the trick is to beall the geek that you can be ... and then some.
However, anyone throwing Java, Perl and Linux at me when I was on a cruise would deserve what they'd get. It wouldn't be pretty -- that's all I'm sayin'.
@ 12:53 PM CST [Link]
Huh. The Court says that immigrants actually have constitutional rights. Imagine! What a concept! (That said, good luck to them in actually exercising these rights. I mean, let's get real; in order to get a waiver granted, immigrants will have to appeal to Ashcroft, of all people. Do we really think that someone who's as anti-minority, pro-law-as-hammer as Ashcroft is would ever grant a waiver to someone who's been found or pled guilty to any crime, anywhere, ever? No, we most certainly do NOT. There's a wall to bang your head against if ever I've seen one.)
@ 02:53 PM CST [Link]
I hope this works. I don't think it will -- private institutions both cannot and will not pay for as much inpatient care as indigent patients may need. But maybe the restructuring they've done will make their system work.
@ 02:12 PM CST [Link]
Be gay if you want. I could care less. However, I have an issue. [...] You may be a homo who identifies with women more than you do men, even though you steadfastly retain your penis and date guys, but trust me when I tell you that YOU ARE NOT A GIRL. [...] Get used to it, because I've had my fill of men pretending to be women. MUST YOU HAVE EVERYTHING?! [...] For all the grief it causes us, the period is humbling, dammit, and I wish to God all you testosteroney "girls" could just once reap the benefits of the relief that follows a rather tumultuous battle with PMS.
Um ... no. No, thank you. Had bladder cramps once. Every woman I knew at the time said that she had worse than that every month. I can live without THAT, thank you very much.
That said ... I've never entirely understood the whole "girl" thing, either. Not once. I mean, it's always puzzled me that someone would identify with someone they don't generally want to be (or touch in an intimate way, for that matter) in quite that way, just because they shtup people with pointing dinguses.
@ 01:05 PM CST [Link]
Just imagine Bush II Fraudulency and maybe Karl Rove, sitting around, congratulating themselves on getting this tax cut through a shockingly docile congress. And they wonder, every now and again, what are these "poor folk" that they hear about every so often?...
What else do the poorest folk do?
They must have a system or two!
They obviously outshine us
At turning tears to mirth,
And tricks a royal highness
Is minus
From birth.
When all the doldrums begin,
What keeps each of them in his spin?
They have some tribal sorc'ry
You haven't mentioned yet.
Oh, what do poorest folk do
To forget?
@ 11:19 AM CST [Link]
On the night of Monday, Aug. 28, 2000, Lincoln Police Officer Kevin Harty severely beat Jesse Ousley, alleges the claim filed by Ousley's lawyer, Robert J. Caron, of Providence. The boy, then a 17-year-old who weighed about 115 pounds, was taken to the hospital for treatment of his injuries.
"Clearly the motivation behind his attack was because he is gay," Caron said in an interview yesterday, adding, "When the officer attacking him is using [the words] 'fag' and 'faggot,' it's pretty clear."
To serve and protect, indeed.
@ 10:57 AM CST [Link]
You know, I'd imagine that the directors felt thoroughly conflicted about this award. At least, one hopes so. Mind, I think they did the right thing, and it doesn't hurt to acknowledge the costs and difficulty of doing the right thing.
But still ... eww. Slimy.
@ 10:53 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!