Comedian Jokes About Whiteness

Stupendous.



(h/t stuff white people do)

Forgotten Mothers

This is the most important thing I've read in a while.

Shakesville: Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers' Choice for Women

I'm the birth mother of an adopted child, vehemently pro-choice, non-Christian, very unsuited to motherhood, and after over a decade, have got some things to tell the world about adoption. It's been stewing since I heard about the recent rash of pre-abortion ultrasound legislation. While I am touched that so many men in such various states are so deeply worried about women possibly being all sad from having an abortion, I wish to point out to these compassionately bleeding hearts that the alternatives are not exactly without their own emotional consequences.

Keep in mind, this is from over a decade ago, and maybe things have changed - but I did four quick searches and found one site that says it's for birthmothers, and it turns out, it's to show them how easy it is to find a good family for your baby. It's a placement site; they don't care about anything but babies. I didn't find a single one for birthmothers who have already given up their kids. I'm sure they're out there. Somewhere. No need to go google for a half hour just to find me one site, okay. If you do, you've proved my point.

Read this. The whole thing.

I've made the observation before that anti-choice and pro-adoption people I have met seldom actually adopt any children of their own. They give birth to their own children, and want to force other women to give birth to theirs. But they don't adopt those children they're requiring be born. Not that I've seen. This is a problem for me, because hypocrisy is a problem for me.

But even I was only thinking about the babies, perhaps because that's the way anti-choicers have framed the discussion. Perhaps because mentioning women's wellbeing has no impact on people who are doing their best to erase women from the equation entirely except as vessels for babies more sacred than they are. Whatever the reason... I've been playing by the anti-choicers' rules, rules that state that there's no reason to mention the women making these choices (unless it's to blame them, which I don't do). They want us to forget that these women are real.

And I've been letting them succeed.

So, here's to talking about the mothers, and not just women who are facing an abortion. What about the women who give up babies for adoption? Who is thinking of them? Who is thinking of their needs as individuals, as humans, as women? Who the hell really cares about them?

I haven't been doing a good job of taking them into account when these things get discussed. I'm going to try and do a better job. This was linked to me by naamah-darling, and she commented with the following:

Adoption is painted as this thing that is supposed to be easier than abortion because it is more "right." It's painted as an emotionally weightless act, something that is easy, that doesn't leave marks, that holds no hidden barb or sting. And that simply isn't true.

I've lambasted anti-choicers before because as a whole, they do not care about children once they are born. I am ashamed to say that until I read that brave, anonymous woman's essay, it had never occurred to me that nobody cares about the birth mothers, either, once they've had their baby. It never occurred to me that there would not be a safety net there, ready to help women who have given up their children for adoption.

There are post-abortion counseling services, both pro-choice and pro-life, though the religious certainly has a leg up on the secular. There are support groups for women suffering from post-partum depression. There are infant loss support groups. But who stands for the women who let their children go? As if making the "right" choice and giving birth instead of aborting is enough to make the adoption process painless or without consequence.

It never occurred to me that adoption might be more psychologically damaging, on the whole, than abortion, and that by and large, nobody fucking cares.

And that about says it. I think I owe a lot of women an apology, and I've never even spoken to them.

Ladies, I'm sorry for being part of the problem. I'll try and do better.

Go Gov. Richardson!

New Mexico governor abolishes capital punishment.

Richardson said he has long believed — and still does — that the death penalty was a "just punishment" in rare cases for the worst crimes. But he said he decided to sign the repeal legislation because of flaws in how the death penalty was applied.

"More than 130 death row inmates have been exonerated in the past 10 years in this country, including four New Mexicans — a fact I cannot ignore," he said.

"Even with advances in DNA and other forensic evidence technologies, we can't be 100 percent sure that only the truly guilty are convicted of capital crimes."

Thanks to all of you guys who replied to the poll I was spreading around.

For the love of--

You know what? I refuse to be careful of who's around when I mention my issues with Pope Benedict-the-whatever going to Sub-Saharan Africa and telling people there that they shouldn't use condoms. If you're offended by the fact that I'm offended that the Catholic Church's leader thinks Africans are better off dead thanks to AIDS (and orphaning their children, let's not forget) than using nasty sinful condoms that "encourage fornication," I don't know what to tell you.

I do wonder why you're bothered more by me than by the Pope. If I said that I was bothered by the stupid and evil bullshit going on in Brazil, would you bitch at me for my insensitivity? Or would you bitch at a church that kicks out a doctor who aborted a potentially-deadly pregnancy for a nine-year-old rape victim, but not the grown man who molested her?

Seriously. If you absolutely must get righteously angry about something, choose your fucking battles. Why don't you go after the ones who are actually hurting people?

I can't help but think that every time a Christian talks about how they're such a maligned group in America, they're talking about shit like this. Being forced to hear about the people their religious leaders are hurting. They see no difference between hearing these nasty truths and being fed to lions (or, in the case of modern Pagans, losing custody of their kids for practicing the wrong religion).

Christians need to not bring the persecution attitude to me ever ever again. There was a time when I could be nice about it. I think we're past that now.

Death Penalty Ban in New Mexico

So, in New Mexico, there's a death penalty discussion going on.

The fact that the death penalty system is one of the most glaring and most tragic examples of institutionalized racism around wasn't enough to get people talking about getting rid of it. The fact that it reduces reporting of sex crimes by discouraging molestation victims from turning in criminals, and provides an incentive to rapists to kill their victims isn't enough to bother too many folk. No, the problem is that it's expensive!

Many of the costs are built into the system and cannot be changed. They include the costs of specially trained defense lawyers, mental health and mitigation experts, and a longer course of appeals. And there are the many added costs of housing death row prisoners.

"As long as you have a death penalty system, you'll have regular expenses. And those expenses aren't getting cheaper," Dieter said. "There's a maintenance cost to the death penalty."

Death penalty cases can have an outsized effect in smaller counties, which tend to have smaller budgets. There, a case can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars -- close to $1 million if the issues are particularly complicated -- and force officials to cut programs to fund the prosecution.

So... merely having the option of the death penalty is a drain on other programs that aren't oriented toward killing people. But the death penalty is seldom even used! So it's not even good for killing people. So it's a ridiculous and farcical miscarriage of justice at worst, and a waste of money at best.

Sounds great!

The governor of New Mexico is considering whether he's going to sign or veto a death penalty ban that's going to come across his desk. Evidently in previous years he'd have vetoed it flat-out, but now he's looking for an idea of public opinion. There's a poll at The Albuquerque Journal right now, and unfortunately the people who believe Richardson should not sign the ban are winning.

I know that I haven't historically made a big issue out of the death penalty in the past, but this really is important. To recap! Capital punishment is a grossly-racist establishment overall, disproportionately condemning non-whites. Capital punishment doesn't help victims because it doesn't act as a deterrent. What it does do is harm the victims of many crimes of exploitation (such as child rape) for the sake of feeding a need to punish--even at the expense of those victimized. And it's expensive as hell, for a program that doesn't do what it's intended to do (provide a deterrent to violent crime).

It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Instead it does all this other terrible shit. Encourage Gov. Richardson to sign the death penalty ban in his state. The legislature already passed it, so please tell him not to negate their work. There's some analysis suggesting that Gov. Richardson might listen. Let's just vote to be safe.

Thanks for your time, and hopefully we can get some work done here.

-Ashley

"Leave me alone!!" "Wherever you go, everyone's connected."

Communities!

So, for a while now I've been sort of searching for an online roleplaying community that fits my needs, and the answer so far has been to spread myself rather thinly across many boards.

First, there was RPGWorldWorld, which is very much the anchor of my internet wanderings. It's where I started, and despite its slow activity and general lack of focus on play-by-post roleplaying, I think this one would hurt the most if it died. It was home, even if I eventually had to strike out elsewhere.

So then there was Hidden Realms, a very active forum with one of the tightest and most consistent fantasy settings I've seen. The writing is great, which generally makes it worth it to deal with one of the more corrupt staff establishments I've had the misfortune of being stuck with. To their credit, some of the staffers realize there are problems, and they have my gratitude and my sympathy that they're still being represented by a powermongering schemer and a couple of that person's flunkies. IC the place is great. OOC? Don't even bother.

An even more glaring example of the above is The Gungan Council, to which I will not even link. It is the only board that I have straight-up left due to the abusive behavior of several staffers combined with the enabling behavior of those who still have consciences left. Mind-blowingly active, but the OOC community is so foul that I am literally confused and offended at the very idea of participating there ever again.

After leaving TGC, I joined Chaos Theory. Eventually I became a staffer there, and helped keep our postcount up and some kind of a flow of new members through frequent activity drops. This forum is a high-maintenance girl, and a real pain in the ass to keep active. But she's my baby, and I still think she's got the potential to be the best Star Wars roleplaying forum around (if we could just break a few bad habits and convince a few more users to come where they'll be treated better).

And then! Yes, and then. I joined The Jedi Praxeum (not linkable because all the urls I have for it are dead). Chaos Theory was wearing me out, and I wanted to take a vacation someplace where I didn't feel under so much pressure to keep the place alive. Unfortunately, the hardline conservative member base and the irrelevance of all plots that did not glorify the site owner and his characters made me feel like this wasn't the place for me either.

Realizing that OOC community was extremely important to me, I started looking for places to discuss some of the things that matter most to me. Religion, politics, etc. I joined MysticWicks, a Pagan community so immense that I can spend most of my time in a single subforum and never feel a lack for things to talk about.

During the 2008 American Presidential Election, I also joined VQTE. It's a political community that's still getting on its feet, but it has an extremely attentive admin, which I've learned makes all the difference in the world. I post here partly because the place has a great atmosphere so far, and partly because I know how hard the admin is working, and I want him to know he's not doing it alone.

Then a player I met through TGC and occasionally still speak with through Chaos Theory linked me to another board. Empyrean Fates has that great gritty urban scifi/fantasy vibe that everybody loves, and an approval process to ensure that nobody has to write with half-assed undeveloped characters. The main admin seems chill as fuck, and the rules show a sense of self-reflective humor that I find refreshing and encouraging.

But you've seen how many boards I'm on. Whether I actually have time for this place as long as I am holding on to RPGWW, working to improve HR's political climate, sustaining CT with what sometimes seems like duct tape and sheer force of will, as well as participating on a religious and a political board, as well as being a very active blogger... I think I may have a full plate.

But we'll see. Next time I need a vacation, I may pop over to EF. I already have some ideas of cool things I could do there. All I lack is the will to table some other projects for my own sanity, so that I can recover some of the mana I've been spending all over the damn internet.

Merit and Motivation

The next time someone tells you that poor people don't deserve help because the real problem is that they don't work hard enough to deserve food, health care, and homes, remember how many of them are being deliberately obstructed.

I know that we like to act in America like our culture is a perfect meritocracy, that rich people earned their money and poor people earned their poverty. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that Americans don't need help from the government; they just need to stop being so lazy. They don't need a hand; they need a slap across the face to wake them up and get them moving.

The worst part is, I've heard this from poor people. They don't even know they're being lied to, so they go right ahead and hate themselves because the people who benefit from their poverty tell them they deserve to be hated.

No longer the polarizing, racially tinged political issue it was when Ronald Reagan attacked "welfare queens," the welfare system today is dying a quiet death, neatly chronicled in the pages of academic and policy journals, largely unnoticed by the rest of us. Yet its demise carries significant implications. Among the most serious: the rise of what academics call the "disconnected," people who live well below the poverty line and are neither working nor receiving cash benefits like Social Security disability or tanf. Estimates put this group at roughly 2 million women caring for 4 million children, many dealing with a host of challenges from mental illness to domestic violence. "We don't really know how they survive," says Blank. (...)

In 2006, the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence conducted a survey to figure out why so many women were suddenly failing to get tanf benefits. They discovered that caseworkers were actively talking women out of applying, often using inaccurate information. (Lying to applicants to deny them benefits is a violation of federal law, but the 1996 welfare reform legislation largely stripped the Department of Health and Human Services of its power to punish states for doing it. Meanwhile, county officials have tried to head off lawyers who might take up the issue by pressing applicants to sign waivers saying they voluntarily turned down benefits.) Allison Smith, the economic justice coordinator at the coalition, says the group has gotten reports of caseworkers telling tanf applicants they have to be surgically sterilized before they can apply. Disabled women have been told they can't apply because they can't meet the work requirement. Others have been warned that the state could take their children if they get benefits. (...)

Even as it blocks potential applicants, Georgia is also pushing current tanf recipients off the rolls at a rapid clip. Sandy Bamford runs a federally funded family literacy program in Albany where single mothers can get their geds. tanf allows recipients to attend school, but Bamford says officials routinely tell her clients otherwise: In a single month, one caseworker informed three of her students (incorrectly) that because they had turned 20, they could no longer receive benefits while completing their degrees. One was about to become the first in her family to graduate from high school. She quit and took a job as a dishwasher. Students as young as 16 have been told they must go to work full time or lose benefits. The employee who threatened to drop the students, says Bamford, became "caseworker of the month" for getting so many people off tanf.

So the next time you hear someone--or yourself--grousing about what a problem those useless lazy criminal poor people are... just remember that you probably don't have a safety net anymore, either. And all it takes is one stroke of bad luck before people start lying to you, too. You'd just better hope that someone is around to help you who cares a whole hell of a lot more than they're told to. Or at least someone who'll help you out in exchange for sexual favors which, as it turns out, many unemployed are still not willing to give. Think of the edge you'll have!

The tanf office once sent a client of hers to see a local government official about a job. The official told her he'd be glad to help out if she'd have sex with him. The woman filed a police report, but the man was never prosecuted. (...)

As for people like Clark who can't seem to get and keep a full-time job, Walker responds simply, "Can't? Won't."

Clearly the problem is with their work ethic. If single moms wanted jobs, they'd spread their legs for whomever they could in order to get an interview. Whatever it takes to compete, right? It's all fair, right?

It's not your fault, right? What are you supposed to do about it?

(h/t Feministe)

Please, Mister Norris. Please, sit down.

First, the entry I saw.

Talk of "Revolution" and Texas. Someone please tell Chuck Norris to stop doing anything, please. Or I'm sending Mr. T to show him what's what.

Anyway. Once you're done laughing at that, a more serious question. Do states still have the right to secede? Did they ever in the first place? If they don't have the right to secede--if that is, as President Lincoln seemed to feel, a treasonous endeavor--should there be consequences for statements like this if there really is a system of revolutionary cells waiting for a word from Chuck Norris?

Yeah, I know. There's that laughing again. But once you can breathe, what do you think about this?

Repost! Important things ahead!

Send Your Comments on the “Conscience” Rule to HHS

from Feministe by Cara

I recently wrote that President Obama was planning to overturn Bush’s last minute HHS “conscience” rule that prevents health care providers from “discriminating” against all levels of anti-choice employees who literally refuse to do their jobs, and is intended to not only restrict access to abortion, but also birth control and reproductive health care in general.

Well he’s gone and begun the process to do exactly that. The 30 day comment period for the public to send in their thoughts on the proposed change opened earlier this week. Which means that just like it was important for you to send in your opposition to the rule when Bush proposed it, it’s important to send in your support for its repeal now. Not because we have reason to believe that Obama will back out of his promise, but because pro-choice causes, women’s health, and access to services needs all of the public support that they can get.

Click here to send your comments to the Department of Health and Human Services. And then, make sure to spread the word and ensure that all of your friends do the same!

The Cost of Racism

Great essay from ResistRacism.com.

In a second instance, I had taken a neighbor’s daughter to the park. She is the same color as I am. While we were there, she was playing with a little white girl who offered the information that she was four years old. I could not see any parent or caretaker with her. We were there for about an hour and a half. Nobody was watching the little girl. And I knew what I should have done–I should have taken her to the authorities and reported that she had been left alone in a public park for an extended period of time.

But I didn’t.

When we left, the little girl began to follow. And then I became really distraught. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I couldn’t stay. I knew what I should do. But once again I felt an extreme awareness of being a person of color with a white child. I told the little girl she should stay in the park. She continued to tag along. And then a white woman approached from the opposite direction.

When she saw us, she became furious. “GET AWAY FROM THOSE PEOPLE!” she screamed at the little girl.

So it was okay to leave a small child unattended in a public park as long as “those people” were not around. (...)

I realized that in both situations, I was afraid of doing the right thing because I was afraid my actions would be misinterpreted. I should note that they have been misinterpreted in the past, and it is this history that affects my actions today. Was it reasonable to be afraid of my neighbor? Was it reasonable to be so tentative with his children? And what about the little girl in the park?

This made me so sad to read. But I thought it was important, so I linked it here, even if I know it's probably kind of a downer for your respective blogrolls. Still important.

Heinlein

Okay. So I've read Stranger in a Strange Land and I'm reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress currently. I love Heinlein because of the way he writes innocence. He annoys me by completely failing to write credible women. He's pretty heteronormative overall, really, but given the time in which he lived I can kind of overlook that.

But really, friends-list. Have you guys read a Heinlein book that had a single female character who could think? Seems to me that every time the woman (and for a good long while in these two books there's really just one) in the story is there to be the one who needs an explanation so that Heinlein's pet character (generally an awesome character, too, but definitely the author's self-insert--*cough*Jubal Harshaw*cough*) can explain to the pretty woman what sound and excellent plan the adults have come up with to save crafty men and lovable female dolts alike.

Women are always the last to know, and they seem to be present as a means for the men in the novel to prove how awesome they are. If Heinlein just wrote them like guys he'd be straight-on, because his male characters are still engaging for me.

Has anyone else noticed this? Heinlein's utter failure to grok women? Or is this not a general trend with him? I might just have picked two books that are giving me the wrong idea, but it seems like a hell of a coincidence.

"The inclusion of Hindu deities by non born Hindu's."

Someone on a board I frequent asked this question.

I ask this question because I feel a bit of a interest in some Hindu deities. Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, etc.

However, I'm under the impression that it is pretty explicit in Hinduism that there is no conversion. That your born into it, not invited in, etc. There is a purification type ceremonies for those that converted to Islam/Christianity as an effort to get back to come back to their born faith, but there is no conversion process.

However, does this prohibit the worship of deities? Is that considered innapropriate??

My reservations when it comes to add-mixing with Hinduism are that it's a really colonialist thing to do, appropriating bits and pieces of someone else's religion, chucking the original embedded meanings, and creating your own out of symbols that (to Hindus) probably didn't actually mean anything to you to begin with.

It's not merely that it's difficult to convert. It's also not merely a matter of "being a poser is bad, mmkay." It's a matter of having enough respect for a nation and a culture that has had its ownership of itself taken away by British colonialism, and is still working hard to get that power back. I would feel like I was shoving them backward in that struggle by appropriating their religion without paying extreme care to respect for the original cultural context.

A good example: There are a lot of Western Kali-worshippers who don't really actually care how Indians revere Kali. They may know one or two stories about her that sounded kinda cool, and she's sorta dark and scary which is how they feel sometimes, but Kali will be nice to them so it's not like they'll really have to deal with her wreaking havoc on their lives. Right? I mean, their Kali isn't at all like that scary indiscriminately-destroying goddess of violent transformation. Their Kali is theirs.

But this is disrespectful to the culture in which it came, the role that Kali plays within that culture, and if you believe that the gods are literally and actually real, it's disrespectful to Kali (since it entails uprooting her from her context, ignoring who she is, and telling her she needs to start being someone else).

It's possible to do this respectfully, and I have finally found some who do. But it's something to be very very careful about. Indians and Hindus have spent long enough in history being told that their culture, history, and traditions do not rightly belong to them. It's important for cultural outsiders not to participate in that by claiming what is theirs for ourselves.

More responses to this are at the thread here.

Cherry-Picking/Orthodoxy.

A question came up on a forum I frequent.

Is it Wrong to stray from specified guidlines within a path? Will doing so tarnish a given practice? Will doing so show disrespect to those that have "done the work"? Should we adhere to the rules? Conversely, does holding onto the traditions from maybe thousands of years in the past keep us from moving forward? Should we take what we like, what is of use, and discard the rest?

Here's what I think. This is an easier question to answer with religions like Islam that have a core statement of faith. If you believe that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet, that's all you have to believe. The other Pillars of Faith are all about action. So whatever else you believe, that one statement is your criterion. As I understand it, if you're on board with that, you're on board with Islam. If not, you're not.

Religions like Hinduism, Wicca, etc. are much trickier. A hard statement of faith like that--while extremely useful from a perspective of creating and sustaining a cultural identity for the group--is difficult precisely because excluding what is "not us" from what is "us" is contrary to what many Pagans want to see happening. Which basically means that developing any kind of coherent cultural identity within the group is contrary to what many Pagans want to see happening.

Christianity is somewhere in the middle. There are certainly statements of faith ("Jesus Christ is the son of the One True God and he died to redeem us from sin" or the like), but because there are so many definitions with their own interest in developing a unique core identity (which means they allow and exclude beliefs or believers based on criteria of their own in order to keep a coherent definition of their group)... there is a lot of fuzziness there. For example, multiple schools of thought about the nature of Christ.

There are the Nestorians, who feel that Jesus the man and Christ the son of God are effectively two different essences, even though they're centered around one guy and one name. Catholics are obviously not down with this (since whether the Virgin Mary was mother to just the human nature of Jesus or whether she birthed the whole kit and caboodle is kind of an important disputing point for them).

What I'm saying with all of this is that there are a lot of Muslims who meet the clearly-defined criteria set out by Islam, and are therefore justifiably defined as Muslim. There are Muslims who fit culturally but may not believe in the Shahadah. Islam has an easier time defining one as Muslim and one not than traditions like the various Pagan groups.

My personal feeling is that traditional groups are including and excluding certain beliefs out of a desire to maintain a cohesive identity. They basically just want to be able to know who they are. This isn't important to some Pagan groups, but out of respect to the ones that do place a priority on it, I wouldn't claim their name unless I fit their definitions. For groups that don't care who claims their name, sometimes I will when I'm intersecting with them.

So for me it's not about needing to define myself "correctly." It's about defining myself in a way that is respectful to the groups I may or may not be a part of depending on how much of a priority they place on being cohesive and how important it is to them to know who they are as a group.

So for me, it's not about an "Old Guard" needing to control their followers. It's about a group controlling their own identity, and if I respect them I'll let them do that for themselves if they need it. I won't take away their power to know who they are by clinging on to the group and muddling things up if the truth is that I'm actually something different from them.

That felt like a long ramble, but I hope I sort of got around to the point in there somewhere.

For other answers to this question, see the thread here.

Entertaining twist with the US economic crisis

This is for folk like me who've maintained their sense of dark humor as the US tries to pick itself up during a huge economic downturn. The stimulus bill did pass, and it did so largely on the strength of one party's influence in Congress (both in the House and Senate). A few Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it in the Senate, but mainly the minority party had no interest in the project because they wanted to concentrate solely and completely on tax cuts, viewing infrastructure projects, state aid, and health care investments to be a waste of time.

Unfortunately, the bill was seriously curtailed before passage as an effort to court Republican support that they declined to give even after having many of their demands met. For a good breakdown of the winners and losers in the final version of the bill, check here. For those folk out there who want to know what the stimulus actually does, I would check that link. It'll give you a good place to start to look up the worth of the individual projects.

The humorous part? Legislators voting against the stimulus and then immediately turning around and bragging to their constituents about all the money coming to their states to help them out.

The final vote on the $787 billion measure broke down exactly as expected.

What's more, it was legislation the minority party wanted nothing to do with. Three Senate Republicans broke ranks, while zero House Republicans backed the plan. That, in and of itself, isn't especially surprising -- there were philosophical differences, coupled with strategic considerations, alongside a desire to embarrass the president.

What is at least a little surprising, though, is seeing some of the same Republicans who rejected the package issue press releases touting the spending measures in their districts. (...)

In Mica's press release about the stimulus package, for example, he not only applauded the spending for his district, he neglected to mention altogether that he opposed the bill. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who also issued a press release claiming "victory" for an Alaskan contracting program in the bill, also failed to mention that he voted against the measure that he's so excited about.

They're not the only Republicans who are suddenly deeply interested in obligating the federal government to help keep their states afloat. Governors--both Republican and Democrat--had been pushing for the stimulus package to get passed. I know that the list in this article isn't comprehensive, because my own governor is not mentioned and--despite his apparent unwillingness to bail out anybody below him--seems positively thrilled to receive money coming down from the federal level.

In the states, meanwhile, many Republican governors are practicing a pragmatic — their Congressional counterparts would say less-principled — conservatism.

Governors, unlike members of Congress, have to balance their budgets each year. And that requires compromise with state legislators, including Democrats, as well as more openness to the occasional state tax increase and to deficit-spending from Washington. (...)

The National Governors Association sent a bipartisan letter of support to Congressional leaders of both parties, signed by its Democratic chairman, Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Douglas, its Republican vice chairman. “The combination of funds for Medicaid, education and other essential services is critical for governors as they work to manage the downturn in their states and improve government for the long term,” it said.

Mr. Crist even campaigned last week with Mr. Obama in Florida for the recovery package.

“Whether it’s teachers or people on road crews helping our infrastructure, those in the health care arena as it might relate to Medicaid, all of these areas are important, all of them can produce jobs,” Mr. Crist said, adding, “Regardless of what your party is, Republican or Democrat, it really doesn’t matter. We have a duty and an obligation to the people who elected us, no matter what our position happens to be, to work together to get through this thing.”

Summary: Republicans in the legislature were under all kinds of pressure to ignore the needs of state and local governments, and even to ignore the requests (demands?) of governors from their own party. So they voted against the stimulus bill, but as a compromise they took good news back home that help was on the way (possibly in the hopes that their constituents won't notice their legislators were willing to let them hang for the sake of pleasing guys like this one, who evidently run the Republican Party now.

That's your update. I just have to laugh at this, because the alternative is to go right the hell out of my mind with indignation.

Pro- and Anti-

The most common way to frame the discussion of abortion is in terms of "pro-choice" versus "pro-life," obviously implying that one cannot value both a woman's autonomy and "life," whatever that means.

I've never liked this way of framing things. Most pro-choice people are also pro-life, but not all pro-life people are pro-choice. The conflict here is over choice. The question here is not "is life good" but "is it good for a woman to choose for herself whether to have an abortion." So the argument is more properly framed as "pro-choice" versus "anti-choice."

But not on BeliefNet, evidently.

After my first post in the abortion discussion forum, I received a warning. My tone was fine, and all I did was point out that--contrary to the OP's rant--there was indeed an anti-choice ticket (since using laws set down by Alaska's legislature doesn't actually say anything about the head of its executive) in addition to the pro-choice ticket.

This violates the rules, the post was deleted by justme333, and I was warned. I sent an email to the mod, and here is the text of it:

I noticed that I was just warned and had a post removed because I did not frame the abortion debate using the terms you prefer.

"Finally, the only terms allowed in the description of positions for this board are Pro-Life and Pro-Choice."

Do you understand why there are many people who object to framing this issue in terms of one side which is in favor of "life" and one which is not? There is a very good reason why I do not describe the anti-choice position as "pro-life," most notably that it is not my life they are protecting.

I find it hard to believe you would not be aware of this issue of terms and why it is important, so I suppose the real question is why you object to this terminology so strongly that you will not even let anybody post using it. It is not offensive, it is not inaccurate. It is, in fact, a well-established and well-accepted way of framing the issue, which scholars in these matters use for a very good reason.

Except, evidently, on your board. Why?

I don't anticipate getting a satisfactory answer. The only reason anybody objects to the terms I'm using is that they resent the loss of a moral high ground they never earned, that of being the side that values "life."

But who knows. Perhaps I'll be surprised. Doubt it though.

I still find it amusing that everywhere I go on the internet, I get into trouble because someone higher up doesn't like the substance of my views, and has no interest in the reasoning behind them. This is a particular problem when I'm forcing a mirror on someone that shows them the way I see them... and they don't like what they see. Rather than give my views a moment to be entertained and evaluated, they just do their damndest to shut me up.

Ah well. This is the internet.

A rare personal entry!

She's going to change the world...
She's going to change the world...
But she can't change me.

My partner has commented in the past that I have an odd approach to religion, even my own. I view it as a cultural system in which I either want to participate or not. If I gain from it as a person, it's good. If I do not, then I have no use for it and will leave it to the people who can gain.

But what this means is that while I can throw myself into a practice wholeheartedly, throwing myself into the beliefs is somewhat of a trickier proposition. This is simplified by the fact that I don't care about how a religion answers questions of science or fact. I don't care if a holy book says that the world was created in six days or whether an even more ancient oral tradition posits a planet on the back of a turtle (on the back of a turtle on the back of another turtle...). That stuff isn't for religion, and if I make it about answering questions for which we simply have not figured out the facts... well, I'm missing all the stuff it does that matters (and is actually interesting).

Some people reading are aware that I'm a member of a Wiccan circle. We play pretty fast and loose with dogma in my circle, and that was essential to me feeling comfortable there. We draw from many different traditions so that we can attempt to learn or accomplish something new. Thankfully other my circle-mates are also aware of the colonialist implications of picking buffet-style from other religions as well, so there's a lot of respect there and I don't have to smack anyone with various bits of miscellaneous scholarly discourse.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that we negotiate lots of different traditions by acknowledging that different things work for different people. The real question here for many folk (Pagans in particular, though anyone in an interfaith social group will face it eventually) is why.

To some people, all gods are real. Some of these believe that we make them real by creating or coalesce those divine power forces using our own personal power of will. Some of these believe that there is simply one massive pool of divine energy that everybody draws from in the way that best fulfills their needs.

To some people, only some gods are real. They have to be "real" gods, preferably ancient. After all, a religion that sprang up two thousand years ago carries a lot more weight than a religion that sprang up five years ago, or six months (even if a religion scholar would see little functional difference aside from age).

To other people, no gods are real. Religion is best experienced through allegory and metaphor, as a meditative practice that allows for access to multiple perspectives, opportunity to answer questions that many individuals just wouldn't think to ask.

I am personally somewhere between a monist (it's all the same, just with different faces on the divine to break It down into smaller, easily-digestible pieces) and an atheist. How the fuck do I manage that? By not fucking caring whether the facts are verifiably true, instead worrying about the processes. Do the processes of the religion do for me what I'm setting them up to do? Yes? Good! I win at religion!

I don't think this necessarily makes me an agnostic. I'm not ambivalent or indecisive, which is what "agnostic" implies to me. I genuinely do not give a damn at this phase in my life whether god is blue or brown or has four arms or two or a beard or exists at all. For many people the idea of a deity watching over or supporting them is helpful, and is a useful avenue for personal growth. Personally, no answer to that question is useful to me.

If scientists proved tomorrow that there is no divine force, deity, whatever, I'd be stunned that they'd figured out a way to test it... but I wouldn't throw out religion. At least not my religion. I don't fucking care if there's a god/dess, and I don't really tend to petition anything outside myself in the way that many magick-users and praying Christians (though there's not actually any difference if you ask a non-Christian). So why do I care whether someone answers?

Same if they proved there was a divine force, I think. Again, what the hell did they do to prove that one, but... meh. I still reserve the right to disagree with or even ignore a deity if I choose. Free will is awesome, and if I'm not letting a deity tell me what to do... does it matter whether they're shouting their divine heads off without me listening? It's still the same world it was yesterday, and my life would still be my own.

It's not indecision. It's unconcern. It makes no nevermind to me one way or the other. I just plain do not care.

I do care whether I am absorbing a code of ethics and customs that I believe to be useful and beneficial in my life. If I find out conclusively tomorrow that there is or isn't a deity out there, the world will still be the same place it was today, and what works will still be the same as it was today.

This means that I can accept and cherish lots and lots of religious traditions without fretting over whether telling beads really wins Catholics brownie points with God, or whether my menstrual cycle is a cosmic metaphor, or whether I'll be born again after I die. I am doing what I need to do to make my life work, and I assume everyone else is as well.

I think that perhaps someday I might make a useful sort of spiritual-leader-type-person, simply because I'm good at making use of what I've got and seeing the good in what we have. I ask decent questions, and think a little ahead. I could be useful to other people who are just looking for a set of customs and perspectives to fit them better than the one to which they were likely born and raised.

But there are problems. I can't just run out and become a priestess. For one, does anyone really want to talk to a priestess who doesn't care whether the divine force we're all here to revere actually exists? For another thing, I don't know what it would do to my relationship with my partner. I've already had to face the possibility that because I practice a religion, he won't be able to commit to having me in his life. If I became a religious leader of some variety... it might be more of a strain than our relationship can take. While I know he would never demand that I give up any aspiration or dream for his sake, I do have to consider what sacrifices I might be making. Whether they'll be worth it in the end.

I'm still looking. I have a better idea of what I am, and I'm taking steps to get a better handle on that. The question of where I am can come later, but I'll have to chew on it eventually. I don't know how that will resolve, but I foresee emerging a new person. I have to trust myself and assume I will come out of it better. I always seem to do that, and damn it I can do it again.

power of the corpse

Read a news article today. I am hesitant to link to the original page, for reasons that you'll understand if you've read this entry of mine. It has a picture of a dead man.

Here is the printer-friendly page.

DETROIT -- This city has not always been a gentle place, but a series of events over the past few, frigid days causes one to wonder how cold the collective heart has grown.

It starts with a phone call made by a man who said his friend found a dead body in the elevator shaft of an abandoned building on the city's west side.

"He's encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks," the caller phoned to tell this reporter.

"Why didn't your friend call the police?"

"He was trespassing and didn't want to get in trouble," the caller replied. As it happens, the caller's friend is an urban explorer who gets thrills rummaging through and photographing the ruins of Detroit. It turns out that this explorer last week was playing hockey with a group of other explorers on the frozen waters that had collected in the basement of the building. None of the men called the police, the explorer said. They, in fact, continued their hockey game.

Before calling the police, this reporter went to check on the tip, skeptical of a hoax. Sure enough, in the well of the cargo elevator, two feet jutted out above the ice. Closer inspection revealed that the rest of the body was encased in 2-3 feet of ice, the body prostrate, suspended into the ice like a porpoising walrus.

The hem of a beige jacket could be made out, as could the cuffs of blue jeans. The socks were relatively clean and white. The left shoe was worn at the heel but carried fresh laces. Adding to the macabre and incongruous scene was a pillow that gently propped up the left foot of the corpse. It looked almost peaceful.

What happened to this person, one wonders? Murder in Motown is a definite possibility. Perhaps it was death by alcoholic stupor. Perhaps the person was crawling around in the elevator shaft trying to retrieve some metal that he could sell at a scrap yard. In any event, there the person was. Stone-cold dead.

I think that the reporter, Charlie LeDuff by name, covered this in as sensitive and tasteful a manner as could be hoped. He used it as an opportunity to discuss Detroit's homeless, and the ability of the city to continue functioning unphased no matter what happens to them. If you're homeless, damned near anything can happen to you--anything--and even people who supposedly share your situation will be too busy with their own struggles to worry much about you. LeDuff did an excellent job with that, and I think that including a picture of those feet above a plane of ice that you know hides the rest of a man is part of hammering in that we only care because we don't see, or can pretend we don't see.

But I still have issues with the use of images of the dead. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please check out the entry I linked before. Read it here; this'll make more sense if you do. I think that there I explained it as well as I am likely to do.

Here is my question. Do you feel that, considering a debt that comes with viewing images of the dead, that LeDuff has paid his debt? Or has he just used this homeless man's corpse and his suffering to make a political point of his own? Is he taking up the unnamed corpse's cause, or pursuing his own and using the power created by the stranger's death to fuel his own cause?

And here's the really disturbing question for me. Completely aside from considerations of LeDuff's debt and the repayment thereof, what about me? I've seen this image, and I've been touched by the emotional energy of a man's death. I owe him something, but as I discussed in that previous entry... you cannot always know just what it is you owe the dead. By helping people in Indiana get foodstamps and Medicaid, am I helping to repay a man whose death was caused by disregard? Or is that not what's required at all?

Now that the emotional/spiritual energy created by this man's suffering and this man's death is part of the emotional/spiritual energy of my life, what do I owe him for grokking his death in that way? By observing and considering his death in such a way that it has become part of me and my life (something which cannot be avoided now that the photo of his corpse has been reflected in my eyes), I have taken something from him and made it part of myself.

How can I repay it? I don't know what he wants. You can basically never know what the dead want.

What do you think?

Who's Running the Republican Party?

It's exactly who you think.

Blog Rundown!

Stuff I've been reading.

United States "lapsing Into Paganism." I, for one, welcome our new Pagan pervert overlords.

Public opinion on US war prisoner policies: it's not what you think. Should we keep Guantanamo open? Is torture okay? Are we doing it? Should we investigate our leaders for war crimes if we decide that we're doing it?

Russia drops their missile plans because Americans aren't being idiots anymore.

US President adopted into Crow tribe. An older article, but one I just found. Very cool!

Dear White People. An essay that had me pondering for a good few hours.

Being "colour blind" is NOT a solution. Another very good one.

Pres. Obama's Executive Orders

I know that there are people on my F-list who are interested in American politics (whether they live here or not), but don't necessarily know where to look for things like this. So! Here's a rundown of what President Obama has started (at least the most thorough one I've seen, since a lot of places are still too arguing over the Chief Justice garbling the oath, and whether family planning resources help low-income families).

Executive Order Watch

Executive orders from the office of the new President are trickling in at a faster pace now. Here's the rundown so far:

• Guantanamo Bay must be closed down within a year. Nothing is clear yet about what exactly the government plans to do with the detainees, whose trials have been suspended. Along with Guantanamo, the CIA has been ordered to shut down their overseas network of covert prisons where they've kept suspects in secret custody for months or years. Another order Obama signed created a task force to figure out what to do next.
• The U.S. Army Field Manual is now the official standard for interrogation for all U.S. personnel; it prohibits waterboarding as well as threats, coercion, and physical abuse. A pretty tight restriction on anything approaching torture, but a source of the Washington Post suggests that there may be revisions to that manual in store, which would re-expand what is allowed.
• Along with requesting that military judges suspend the trials of the Guantanamo detainees, another order suspended the trial of Ali al-Marri, who is accused of being an al-Qaeda agent and is being held indefinitely as an "enemy combatant." His status and fate remains uncertain as well.
• All White House officials who makes more than $100k is getting a pay freeze.
• Executive branch employees are prohibited from taking any gifts from lobbyists. (It's hard but not impossible, sadly, to believe that this wasn't a rule before. I haven't been able to find out if it was or not.)
• Hiring, firing, and other employment practices in the executive branch must now be made based on qualifications, competence, and experience, as opposed to political connections. (This is thought by some to be a repudiation of how former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez fired a bunch of prosecutors who weren't faithfully doing everything Republicans told them to.)
• New executive branch appointees may not take part in any matter related to any employer or client that they've worked with during the last two years, or work on any issue area or in any department of government that they lobbied during the last two years. This is intended to stop "revolving door" cronyism, of course, and may affect a lot of Obama's staff. UPDATE: In fact, it looks like the administration may already have to seek a waiver from this rule for William Lynn, nominated to be Deputy Secretary of Defense, because Lynn was a vice-president and Raytheon and now would be involved in budgeting and acquisitions. DOH way to make a rule and break it, in the military-industrial complex no less.
• Similarly, executive branch employees who leave government service are now prohibited from lobbying the executive branch for two years after they leave or the rest of the Obama administration, whichever is longer.
• Other officials besides the President *cough*CHENEY*cough* can no longer claim executive privilege to keep executive-branch documents sealed. Bush gave that power to former Presidents and Vice-Presidents as well… oops, can't seal your old records any more! Now, if even the President wants to exercise that power, the act must still be reviewed for constitutionality by the Attorney General and the White House counsel.
• Obama has ordered new guidelines to be developed for government communication and the Freedom of Information Act to implement principles of openness, transparency, and participatory government.

Sounds good to me so far, although I expect the "up in the air" status of Guantanamo detainees is unlikely to make anyone happy, especially the right wing. Still, for now it means no more hidden prison networks, no more waterboarding, and slightly fewer possibilities for secrecy and cronyism. (...)

UPDATE: According to California NOW the Department of Health & Human Services has confirmed that they have yet to develop guidelines for implementing the "conscience rule" that would allow health care providers to refuse service if they didn't like it. Because Obama's team issued an order halting any implementation of last-minute Bush directives until they can be reviewed, it looks like that rule will not be going forward. I can't imagine the Obama administration would review it and let it continue.

Sources: here and here and here.