Department of Duh: Crazy People Edition

Adherence to Maintenance-Phase Antidepressant Medication:

Conclusions: Patients given maintenance anti depressants vary widely in adherence. This variation is primarily explained by the balance between their perceptions of need and harmfulness of antidepressant medication, in that adherence is lowest when perceived harm exceeds perceived need, and highest when perceived need exceeds perceived harm.

Wow. I totally would never have guessed that. Cross-reference to "Department of Unnecessary Research."

And a McMansion on every acre...

Anti-Sprawl Laws, Property Rights Collide in Oregon (washingtonpost.com):

"If you are going to restrict what someone can do with his land, then you have to pay for it," said Dale Riddle, vice president for legal affairs at Seneca Jones Timber Co., an Oregon firm that was the largest donor to the campaign for Measure 37.

Thanks to Oregon's new law, anti-sprawl legislation has lost political momentum across the country, according to Harvey Jacobs, a professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin. "It has really excited the property-rights movement and suggests to its supporters that they can challenge smart-growth laws everywhere," he said.

I certainly WILL blame Wal-Mart

Robert Reich has an Op-Ed today in NYT called "Don't Blame Wal-Mart" He argues that it's not Wal-Mart's fault we want cheap goods. True enough. But it IS Wal-Mart's fault for providing the cheap goods by gross and pervasive violations of labor law. The regulations are already there; it would be nice if the government would enforce them, but surely we can blame a company that violates labor laws for doing so, whether or not the government has the resources or interest in pursuing them for it.

Reich asks "But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins?" Um, Wal-Mart is not being punished for its own sins, much less for ours. And since when is seeking the lowest price a sin? It's capitalism, baby, and it's why the dogma of 'pure capitalism' is as awful as that other evil dogma we vanquished last century.

Reich is right to blame us, as citizens, for not debating how new regulations might force prices of goods to "reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens". That debate is one we're not likely to have during the current reality show "Crony Capitalism Gone Wild". But that's no excuse for letting Wal-Mart off the hook for ignoring the regulations we've already got. Responsible companies, at the very least, follow the law.

Of course, why should we expect corporations to follow the law when our government doesn't, and doesn't believe it has to. It's a funny kind of rule-of-law that seems only to apply to individuals acting as individuals, and then only selectively, to certain types of individuals.

Controlling the Girls: Part II

NYT weighs in with an editorial on the alarming behavior of the Kansas AG:

Kansans deserve a full explanation of this gross intrusion into medical confidences that are supposed to be carefully protected by law. But Mr. Kline, a fervid anti-abortion campaigner throughout his career as a Republican politician, would not answer reporters' questions about his investigation. "Clinics should not act to protect the secrecy of the predator," he insisted in a statement, offering a blanket smear in lieu of a proper explanation.

See my previous post on this. And can I say just how sick I am of the right-wing scaremongering about sexual predators, kidnappers, stranger-danger, internet pedophiles, etc. You can't be against going after child molesters, can you?

Why not? Certain archbishops were, and no doubt still are. Though they feel justified denying communion to politicians who commit the sin of praying while liberal. I'm not, however, Catholic, so I won't comment further on things I know so little about.

But this obscene child molestation fear-mongering just drives me crazy. Children are molested. In great numbers. But it's not even a plausible excuse to subpoena the medical records of women who had late-term abortions. It's just a warning to those of us who complain about it: You will be attacked.

Like I said yesterday, that the attacks on critics do not consist of physical violence does not make them less effective as a means of control. Ask Foucault. Or just ask the girls.

Bob Herbert Dares to Keep Talking About the Torture

It's Called Torture:

"As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?

Thank you, Mr. Herbert, sir.

And to everyone out there who says "But you can't think of emigrating! America is the greatest country on earth!" I reply "I don't want to be a torturer. Do you?" And if you don't, then perhaps you'd better take a long look in the mirror. Because you are.

Why Not Move To Canada?

Not Far Enough Away:

OTTAWA -- The United States will decide when to fire missiles over Canadian airspace whether Canada likes it or not, says America's ambassador. The blunt warning from Paul Cellucci came minutes after Prime Minister Paul Martin announced yesterday that he will not sign on to the controversial U.S. missile defence program.

"We will deploy. We will defend North America," Cellucci said.

"We simply cannot understand why Canada would, in effect, give up its sovereignty -- its seat at the table -- to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming toward Canada."

The warning was no slip of the tongue -- Cellucci repeated several times that Canada's decision had handed over some of its sovereignty to the U.S.

Heh? Canada disagrees with the U.S., and so it has given up some of its sovereignty?

Fascism and Violence

So, as I quoted in a previous post, Orcinus argues that Our Dear Leader is not actually a fascist, but a crony capitalist who encourages proto-fascism in the populace for political gain, believing that the dark forces thus awakened can nevertheless be contained. This isn't quite as dangerous, he thinks, as an actually fascist leadership.

Orcinus is right to point out that the problem is not simply or even primarily this administration, but their base. And that problem will not go away, even if we wrest some power from the Republicans in 2006 or 2008. But I wouldn't let the administration off the hook so easily as that. If Orcinus is right that the administration is not itself fascist, it's still true that neither their means (inflaming fascist passions) nor their ends (the destruction of the state's restraints on untrammeled capitalist exploitation) are noble, in which case, I may not call them fascist, but I can certainly call them evil.

I'm also not convinced (and clearly I'm talking out of my ass here, because Orcinus knows way more about fascism than I do, he having written essays about it, and me only having read them, but perhaps the other half of biscuit can add his thoughts, as he knows way more about actual historical fascism than I do) that it's wrong to call the administration fascist. Orcinus seems mostly to make the distinction that the administration does not openly endorse violence against its critics, and the open use of violence he believes is a necessary component of fascism. Max says that it's true that the historical fascisms he knows about did openly endorse violence against their enemies.

But why should we expect all fascism to conform in all respects to historical examples? If fascism can silence its critics without resort to the open endorsement of violence, then why wouldn't it? Not to harp constantly, as we all do these days, on Orwell, but was Winston held in line primarily by fear of violence to his person, or by something else?

And does not the widespread use of torture against the Enemy constitute an endorsement of violence? Orcinus approvingly quotes an essay by a conservative writer, Scott McConnell, on the torture. McConnell writes:

But the Bush administration still seems more embarrassed than proud of its most authoritarian aspects. Gonzales takes some pains to present himself as an opponent of torture; hypocrisy in this realm is perhaps preferable to open contempt for international law and the Bill of Rights.

And Orcinus says, again, that this is precisely the difference between real fascists and the administration: that the administration hypocritically decries its own actions. It "knows" that torture is wrong.

I don't think it does. It knows that the word 'torture' denotes something which people consider to be wrong; and so to get around having to endorse something people believe to be wrong, it simply drains the word of all its meaning. Gonzales can honestly claim to be against torture, and also to honestly claim to have no opinion whatsoever on what torture actually is. And also to claim that, even though he is against torture, the president does have the right to order it, although he wouldn't, and never has. But since he won't presume to say what torture is, then how can he say whether or not the president has ordered it?

This is not hypocrisy, but doublethink, which is far more dangerous.

My point is that the skillful use of doublethink can obviate the need for the explicit endorsement of violence as a political tool. Should we let Our Dear Leader off the hook because he has found a more subtle means of stifling dissent?

Or perhaps I can explain it another way: the explicit endorsement of violence against one's enemies is a masculine approach to control. Ask any woman if there are other ways of terrifying your enemies into submission, and watch her shudder as she remembers what has been done to her by, or what she has done to, other women. Wouldn't it be amusing if the 21st century brand of fascism, while celebrating rampant masculinity, actually consolidated its power through the use of traditionally feminine means of control? We will be a nation of cowboys, headed by a cowboy, and in fact controlled by a snide cadre of nasty pumpkin-headed people who use rumors, innuendo, and the silent treatment to keep us all in line. Ah, to live perpetually in seventh grade, terrorized by Heathers.

Florida girl's senior photo pulled from yearbook

because she wore a tux instead of pearls. Student yearbook editor fired for not complying with teacher's order to remove the photo.More evidence of how much my home state sucks ass. Oh, and also gets more and more fascist every day.

Orcinus on Fascism (Yes, Again...)

What else did you expect him to write about?

What all of them [paleocons who have written recently about Republican party fascism] miss, importantly, is the role of movement leaders -- particularly Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove, and the neocons -- in encouraging these proto-fascist traits. There is no evidence that they're doing so because they themselves are actually proto-fascists; rather, I think it remains clear that these people are pro-corporate crony capitalists, and the evidence strongly suggests that they're indulging this style of politics for the sake of shoring up their numbers and securing their political base. The strongest evidence for this is the ongoing minuet the Bush administration dances with the neo-Confederate faction that now rules the South.

In other words, "movement conservatives" are being molded into a mindset that increasingly resembles classic fascism, but it's being done by leaders who mostly find this mindset convenient and readily manipulable. Unfortunately, the history of fascism is such that the arrogant corporatist belief that they contain these forces is not well grounded.

What's important to understand is the real dynamic: A growing populist "movement" is being encouraged increasingly to adopt attitudes that, taken together, become increasingly fascist. Greater numbers of individuals are being conditioned to think alike, and more importantly, to accept an increasingly vicious response to dissent. This does not mean that genuine fascism has arrived as a real political force in America; but it does mean the groundwork is being created for just such a nightmare, by irresponsible politicians tapping into terrible forces beyond their ability to control.

If even "paleo-conservatives" can see this, there's hope of stopping it. But I think we need to begin with a clear understanding of who, what, and why the fascists are.

The latent fascists who are the biggest problem right now are not Republican leaders. It is their oxyconned, Foxcized, Freeped-out, fanatic army of followers, comprising ordinary people, who pose the long-term problem. Drawing them back from the abyss is the real challenge that confronts us.

This is why we are unconvinced when people say "it's just another four yours" to us. It's not just 'the administration'. It's the Åmerican people. We're not any worse than other people, really, it's just that conditions are ripe. Increasing inequality (courtesy of the crony capitalists), environmental stress, war, plague (Bird Flu. It's the New Black Death![tm]) -- will these things push us closer to fascism, you think? Or will they result in a fabulous Age of Aquarius, with peace, love, and happiness for all? We Report. You Decide.

Digby On The Culture War

here:

Wherever resentment resides in the human character it can find a home in the Republican Party. This anger and frustration stems from a long nurtured sense of cultural besiegement, which they are finding can never be dealt with through the attainment of power alone. They seek approval.

My father-in-law was saying much the same thing over dinner last night. ("They know we despise them, and that we are right to do so.")

But how, then, can this fight be won? We will not give approval; they will accept nothing less.

via Apostropher

Christian dating service from Sean Hannity. Too, too funny to pass up.

Here.

New War Scheduled For June

just as Network TV goes into summer reruns: "In its drive to stop Iran gaining any ability to make nuclear weapons, the United States is ready to give European allies only until June to cajole Tehran before Washington seeks U.N. sanctions, U.S. diplomatic documents show."

Didn't Scott Ritter say recently that we planned to bomb Iran in June?

Bird Flu PR

from the BBC: "Doctors say a 21-year-old man was admitted to hospital in Hanoi suffering from fever, respiratory problems, and liver failure."

Bird Flu. It's the New Black Death.

Controlling the Girls

Atrios has a post about the Kansas AG's subpoena of abortion records.

People ask me "Why do you care, Amy? You're a member of the elite. You'll always be able to get an abortion if you want one -- which you don't, cause you're married and already have a kid, and isn't it about time you had another one anyway? Hah, we were right, your marriage must be on the rocks cuz your kid sleeps in your bed with you. You and Jennifer Aniston think you're more important than your ovaries, don't you?

Now that we're reading In These Times

here's an interesting piece by Slavoj Žižek on authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and the American crusade. Amy usually finds Žižek to be a little "yeah, so?" but I almost always enjoy him.

Exit Polls

A Corrupted Election: Despite what you may have heard, the exit polls were right -- In These Times

American: Stupid, or Just Victims of an Excellent Disinformation Campaign?

We Report, You Decide.

New Harris Poll on Iraq, 9/11, Al Qaeda and Weapons of Mass Destruction: What the Public Believes Now:

64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda (up slightly from 62% in November).

61 percent believe that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to U.S. security (down slightly from 63% in November).

More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:

47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).

44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).

36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

Another interesting finding is that only 46 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors, a fact which most reports now support.

One for the Biscuit Compendium of Pessimism

Friedman today: "When a country lives on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed energy, it is just begging the markets to discipline it in their own way at their own time. As I said, usually the markets do it in an orderly way - except when they don't."

Note: UPDATED. I paid Tom Friedman a huge compliment by reading his column half-awake and mistaking it for a Krugman column. I have corrected the misattribution.

Bird Flu Way Better than Britain's Much-Touted "Superbug"

The BBC reports that Britain'sNHS superbug death rate doubles. However, Reuters reports that "The World Health Organization's Asia chief, Shigeru Omi, said on Wednesday the world was in the "gravest possible danger" of a pandemic. A top U.S. disease expert said this week the killer virus was the world's number one health threat." But, says the article, the world is not investing enough to prevent its spread in Asia, and poor farmers pay little attention to admonitions not to sell their sick poultry and spread the disease even further. "Governments needed to work harder to inform farmers about the risks of bird flu and persuade them to make sensible decisions," says one expert on the problem. And boy oh boy, that's good news for Avian Influenza, Ltd., because, after all, it's easy to convince people to make sensible decisions for the good of the broader community. Especially when they can save all that trouble and just burn some witches instead.

This Message Brought to You By The Paid Advertising Campaign of Avian Influenza, Ltd.

Bird Flu. It's the new Black Death.

Lie of the Day: Iraq Election was Victory for Women's Liberation

Jim Hoagland at WaPo complains that feminists should be "shouting from the rooftops" about Iraq's election results and what they mean for the "liberation" of Iraqi women.

Um. Ask Riverbend what she thinks about that.

Western feminists are not shouting from the rooftops about the election in Iraq because it was not a victory for women's liberation, but a victory for those who want to turn the country into Iran.

But why bother about reality when you can instead write a column that takes down "feminists" for being anti-American and doctrinaire in their opposition to war, praise President Bush for his revolutionary approach to middle east politics, mislead the brainless American public about the actual result of the Iraqi elections, and make those 'security moms' feel good about their "W stands for Women" bumper stickers?

Germans refuse to participate in Bush "Town Hall" Travesty

Bush in Germany: With a Hush and a Whisper, Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Max's #1 Reason for Considering NZ

The idea of our beautiful son someday dying in an idiot-led war.
The CSMonitor asks about the Draft

We have other reasons (which we keep meaning to post about, but we're too busy actually getting ready to visit NZ to do so), and I don't think that fears of the draft are #1 on my personal list, although they're certainly nothing to sneeze at.

And They Found It On Craig's List

TPM notes a Craig's List posting purporting to be from the Social Security Administration looking for people to participate in a focus group on the "privatization or partial privatization of Social Security". The posting has been purged from Craig's List since its discovery.

Loose Links

Note: Swiping posting title "Loose Links" from our friend RJ at The Daily Blague.

Salon on Gannongate.

Orcinus gets a letter from a guy who blames some obnoxious Jewish kids in college for driving him to be a Nazi.

Digby links to Riverbend's blogging the transformation of her country into an Iran-modeled Islamofascist state. Digby comments

It grows more and more likely that the right, who wholeheartedly supported the war and are currently supporting the political handling of the occupation, deposed a totalitarian dictator to install a repressive fundamentalist theocracy in its place. I fail to see how that advances the cause of our country or western civilization. Indeed, it is a betrayal of everything we stand for.

Republican Senators request critics membership lists and tax records

Every time I read yet another denial that we are about to go to war with Iran, I get more anxious. It's like when I was getting an EEG, and I told the tech I was worried I had MS or a brain tumor. Oh, it's not a tumor, she said. This failed to reassure. Then, of course, I grew more anxious, and felt worse, and was helpfully told to just calm down. After a few weeks of this fun, they told me there was nothing neurologically wrong with me, but that I really should see a shrink for my hysteria.

Brainless, Vicious, Hatemongering, Creationist Lawyers Are Blog of Year

Ross Douthat is Bitter About Harvard

I've been meaning to post for a while now about Ross Douthat's Atlantic piece about how Harvard let him down so much. However, I keep not wanting to actually read the damn thing, since Brad DeLong's discussion of it made it sound so icky I haven't been able to find the stomach for it yet. Oh, and it's also subscribers-only, so I'd have to track down a print magazine. Like I have time for that.

So it's not nice for me to say mean things about this article I haven't read. Anyway, Ross is probably just going through the typical post-Harvard letdown. "Oh fuck, what am I going to do now? I've go this fancy degree around my neck, all my classmates are already published, and I still feel like I'm faking it and don't know anything about anything." Not that I'm projecting or anything. Don't worry, Ross, all that fades. After a while you realize that it was not Harvard's job to educate you, but Harvard's job to take your money and give you a degree. If, surrounded by smart people and given suggestions of interesting books to read and think about, you actually get some education, that's gravy. But trust me, you won't know whether you learned anything until several years after you've graduated. It's called perspective. I may not have much of it yet, but I've got more than you do, bucko.

I learned neither more nor less at Harvard than I learned before or since my time there. Which is to say, I learned a lot, but not enough, and that I realize I have a lot of learning yet to do, and that, although my education was once plausibly someone else's responsibility in addition to my own, it no longer is. Nobody else now cares, or in truth ever really cared that I learn from this life. Harvard taught me that, and it's not, after all, such a small thing to know.

Larry Summers, and the Myth of the 80-hour/week White Collar Worker

This tedious saga just keeps going on, and on. I can't keep up. But here's Bitch, Phd with what should be an obvious statement about the ridiculousness of the 80-hour work week.

My mother-in-law once asked me how people who worked got anything, you know, done in their lives. "They do it on company time." I said. 80 hours is the magic number that we, white-collar America, have settled on as the top end of the "career-oriented professional" reasonable hours of work per week. It's ridiculous, both because it is so insane, and so obviously inflated. Professionals have discretion over how they use their time at work.TThey are paying their bills online, they are squeezing minutes off their lunch breaks, they are ordering stuff from Amazon, they are reading blogs, they are writing blogs, and they are IM'ing their spouses about what to have for dinner.

There are people in America working 80-hour weeks, for real, who can't even take bathroom breaks on the clock. They're not doing it to get ahead. They're doing it to stay afloat. You'll find them at Wal-Mart. Or emptying your trashcan when you've stayed late at work to finish some project you procrastinated on by looking stuff up on Wikipedia.

Women and Blogging

Oh, for chrissakes. Three months ago there was some big debate on, what, Crooked Timber?, asking where all the women bloggers were. And lots of women bloggers came by and said "geez, do we have to have this debate every three months?" And now here's Kevin Drum, wondering where all the chick bloggers are. Again.

B-ooo-rrrring. Can we focus again on the torture and stuff? Oh, and the fascists?

Nick Kristof is so adorable

He actually thinks Americans, if shown the right pictures, and told the right facts, will give a shit about genocide. He forgets that we've put torturers in charge of enforcing the law. Nevertheless, we should all write our Senators, etc. to request that they pull their heads out of the bogus social security 'debate' long enough to focus again on the torture, the genocide, the terrorists, and the dead people.

The trouble with centrists...

New Donkey is shocked at survey results showing that,in a hypothetical presidential race, George W. Bush trounces George Washington 62%-28% among Republicans (and what happened to the other 10% -- were they afraid the poll was some kind of loyalty test?):

Depending on what happens during Bush's second term, he is almost certain to go down in history as a president comparable to William McKinley at best (the symbol and vehicle for a political realignment he did little or nothing to cause) or Warren G. Harding at worst (the amiable front-man for a feeding frenzy of corruption and national irresponsibility).

The problem with guys like Kilgore is that they are far, far too generous to Bush and refuse to recognize the actually revolutionary character of this administration. For which I hold Bush responsible.

Plagues

Disclosure: The Biscuit Report has been retained by Avian Influenza, Ltd, to help it with its campaign "Bird Flu: It's the New Black Death." It is in fulfillment of that business relationship that I recommend this link about the coming bird flu pandemic.

Fascist eliminationist rhetoric

Stumbled across some appalling fascist T-shirts at www.thoseshirts.com (copy/paste the link; i'm paranoid), chock full of fascistic eliminationist rhetoric against us liberals, the French, environmentalists, etc. Some of the luminaries of the fascist blogosphere, like Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin are proudly featured wearing their dreck.

There's a "Freedom World Tour" t-shirt at http://www.thoseshirts.com/tour.html. Nice stuff.

Fucking yikes.

TPM on the new "Retired People Turned On By Men in Tuxes, Not Hot Military Studs" ads

here.

Michelle Goldberg Goes to CPAC

and ooh boy, is it a barrel of fascists...

The Next Big Thing

BBC NEWS | Health | Bird flu cases 'underestimated'

Bird Flu: It's the New Black Death!

And an extra helping of torture, too...

Krugman says the Social Security sale is going so badly Bush is likely to switch to, say, a Syria or Iran sale any day now. Wag-the-Dog Protection: But, he says, "Mr. Bush's critics are falling into an unnecessary trap if they focus only on domestic policies, and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart."

Not only is he not keeping us safe, he's not keeping us safe by resorting to utterly immoral policies. Torture, torture, torture. Or are we not allowed to talk about that anymore, now that Gonzo and the CIA are ready with their Gulfstream to jet us away to exotic locales for bondage fun?

Who needs Hitler Youth when you've got competitive sports?

Doctors See a Big Rise in
Injuries for Young Athletes:

In interviews with more than two dozen sports-medicine doctors and researchers, one factor was repeatedly cited as the prime cause for the outbreak in overuse injuries among young athletes: specialization in one sport at an early age and the year-round, almost manic, training for it that often follows.

'It's not enough that they play on a school team, two travel teams and go to four camps for their sport in the summer,' said Dr. Eric Small, who has a family sports-medicine practice in Westchester County. 'They have private instructors for that one sport that they see twice a week. Then their parents get them out to practice in the backyard at night.'

Excesses

Digby thinks the line "We're just trying to keep the Republicans from going too far!" is a good one for the Dems in Congress to use.

"Yes, it was always the excesses that we wished to oppose, rather than the whole program, the whole spirit that produced the first steps, A, B, C, and D, out of which the excesses were bound to come. it is so much easier to 'oppose the excesses,' about which one can, of course, do nothing, than it is to oppose the whole spirit, about which one can do something every day." So quoth Milton Mayer. See my New Year's Resolutions for more Mayer

In any case, the country has already gone through A, B, C, D, and excesses, so it's a bit late to be claiming to try to prevent the Republicans from going too far.

Grow Your Own...

I haven't looked at my newsreader in three days. I've been busy planning three gardens (ordering seeds, plotting paths, trying to find room for 38 tomato seedlings arriving May 15..) and getting ready for our trip to New Zealand. So, loyal readers, I apologize for my lack of posts in recent days. I will now attempt a marathon read-and-post session. Do not expect Pulitzer material, I'm just trying to catch up.
Orcinus on Fascist Hatemongering toward Liberals

Digby on new Bush tapes:

This man who pretends to feel such empathy for gays is the same man who ran on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, told James Byrd's family to take a hike, signed off on 150 plus executions without looking up from his gameboy and now claims that the constitution gives him the total power to order torture and execution in the name of the War On Terror.

This goes beyond hypocrisy. It's downright pathological. The Republican coalition consists of a racists, homophobes, dupes and the rich selfish bastards who tell them whatever they want to hear in order to get elected. I hope their religion is real because if it is they are all going to spend eternity in the ninth circle of hell.

What to do with the digital video camera your parents got you so you could send them video of their grandchild: Use it to document your kid's participation in anti-war activism to support his future Conscientious Objector claim.

More soon...

Happiness in Marriage

There was a bizarre and annoying "Valentine-themed" op-ed in yesterday's Times, somehow accusing "attachment parenting" of causing divorce. I am not a fan of Valentine-themed anything, and it's amazing to me how pundits will try to blame divorce rates and bad marriages on the darnedest things:

With the widespread acceptance of "attachment parenting" - family beds, long-term breast feeding and all the rest - the physical boundaries between parents and children have worn away. Marital romance has dried up. Real intimacy has gone the way of bottle-feeding and playpens. In fact, the whole ideal of marriage as a union of soul mates, friends and lovers that's as essential to a happy family life as, say, unconditional love for the children, has taken a direct hit. And in its place has come the reality of a utilitarian relationship dedicated to staying afloat financially and child-rearing of a sort we tend to associate with frontier marriages, arranged marriages, marriages of convenience - marriages far removed, in time and place, from our lives, our parents' lives and even our grandparents' lives.

The Wikipedia entry on attachment parenting is a bit of a caricature of it -- describing a parenting style in its maximal forms and with all the other cultural choices that are more-or-less associated with it. I would lean more toward the minimal description: raising your children secure in the knowledge that too much love won't hurt them. Lots of parents who "do attachment parenting" are anxious, rigid, and obsessive about the rules they follow, about what they must do for their kids, about, generally, doing everything right. So, for that matter, are lots of other parents. There are all kinds of 'systems' out there, and they do make parents crazy. Lots of families involved in "attachment parenting" end up with a rigid division of labor in which the mother is basically completely responsible for the kids and must be incredibly available to them, and the father is busy at work all the time. So, too, do lots of families who don't "attachment parent". Parental anxiety and preoccupation with their kids is real, and no doubt it does put a real strain on some marriages, but my own observations (anecdotal of course, but I didn't see any hard citations in Ms. Warner's essay, either) lead me to believe that parents become preoccupied with their kids because their marriages aren't so great to begin with, not vice-versa. If a husband works 80-hour weeks and the wife is busy with kiddie activities all the time, or if both work all the time and spend their little spare time in a "quality" way with the kids, then yeah, I'll bet the marriage is going to suffer. And it'll suffer whether the toddlers are still nursing and sleeping in the parents' bed.

Our kid sleeps in our bed. And he's going to be two soon, and he's still nursing. We can't imagine going on a vacation without him. We parent this way not because we think we have to, but because we like it, and it works for us. We laugh when people ask us "But if he's in your bed, how do you have sex?" People who have to ask this are neither especially imaginative nor realistic about how much parents of very young children feel like fucking at 11 pm at night, regardless of where their kid is sleeping. There are other times and places to screw, and we manage just fine, thanks. As for including our kid in most of the stuff we do (um, not talking about sex anymore people, okay!), we do that because, amazingly, we like to hang out with him. We don't plan our lives around doing things we think would be good or fun for him. We just include him in what we're already doing anyway. Last weekend we took him with us to Cambridge to go look at some chairs we were buying from a Portuguese couple who were returning home ("What," I said to them facetiously, "you don't want to stick around here?" "Amazingly,no" they said.). We bought the chairs. We gave the man some money, and he helped us fit the chairs into our car. The kid has not yet stopped talking about this transaction. "Man." he says, pointing at the chairs. "Money." "Car.""Many." "Daddy" And we nod: "Yes, we bought the chairs from the man. We gave him money, and he helped daddy put the chairs in the car. There are six of them." If we spent our weekend days sitting around with other parents waiting for our kids to be done with their playdates, or music classes, or whatever, perhaps we'd feel resentful and like we don't get enough time to ourselves.

We certainly appreciate the time that we do get to spend alone with one another. But that time is not what makes our marriage a "union of soul mates, friends and lovers". I'm not exactly sure what does. Luck, I suspect. Perhaps I sound awfully maudlin myself, but I never expected such happiness in marriage. I never expected marriage at all. Max and I were lucky to meet one another, and luckier still to recognize a good thing when we had it, to continue to recognize this good thing we have together. Our love for our child is not, as Ms. Warner would have it, "sucking the emotional life out of our marriage." On the contrary, it enlarges it. I am sorry for those who have had a different experience with marriage and children. But I don't think that Ms. Warner's unbelievably silly advice will help them. She suggests that such couples "leave work early and go on a date with your grown-up Valentine." Because, if your marriage is sexless, loveless, and utilitarian, obviously, a fancy dinner out in a restaurant where everyone else is also dutifully involved in romantic consumption is definitely going to save it. The best that can be said about such advice is that it is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Valentine's Day, for which we have nothing but scorn.

Idiot anti-urbanists

Arrgh, I was turned onto this neocon mealy-brain Joel Kotkin by James Howard Kunstler. The insufferable George Will quotes him in one of his recent WaPO bits. Money quote:

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Joel Kotkin, author of the forthcoming book "The City: A Global History," distinguishes between America's "aspirational" cities and "Euro-American" cities. The former -- e.g., Atlanta; Boise, Idaho; Charlotte; Fort Myers and Orlando, Fla.; Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Phoenix; and Salt Lake City -- are thriving. The latter -- e.g., Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco -- are experiencing social fragmentation as government's clients fight over dwindling scarce resources, and many of these cities are losing population, often to the aspirational cities.

Yaaaaack.

Scarce resources? Let's talk water and oil. Which of these cities consume proportionally massively higher quantities of both per capita? The "Old Europe" cities, if you will, or the throwaway pseudocities of the Sunbelt? (And for water: None of the "old" cities except for San Francisco has a serious water supply problem to begin with, while nearly all of the "new" cities do.)

And does anybody moving to, say, Phoenix, ever cite more compelling reasons than "I can afford a 3-car garage there" or "it's a good place to raise kids"? The latter being specious and, in my opinion, wrong.

Anyway, read Kunstler. He often needs a copy editor (as do his books; is his editor asleep at the switch?) for minor factual and spelling errors, but his arguments are right on and very provocative.

NOW for some torture...

Also via Brad DeLong, a letter in which someone points out that John Yoo, infamous auhor of torture members, actually told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker that the 2004 election was a referendum on the U.S. policy of torture. Letter points out, then, that Yoo actually said the equivalent of "A vote for Bush in 2004 was a vote for torture."

Do people who voted for Bush in 2004 understand that? And which is worse: that they voted for him knowing they were supporting torture, or that they voted for him believing otherwise? Perhaps there's no longer any difference.

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again : and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself."

Ah, the essence of doublethink...

Amusing and Not Particularly Political: No Torture Involved, I promise

Brad DeLong has two funny posts this morning A Conversation About Infectious Disease at the Dermatologist's and A Conversation About Homework.

Prostitution

Digby discusses the Jeff Gannon story here. Gannon, you may recall, is the 'reporter' who called the Democrats "divorced from reality" during a question at a recent Bush press conference, after which he was discovered to be using an alias. Oh, and also a male prostitute. No, really.

Now, I continue not to have problems with gay men, prostitution, S&M, etc. Nor do I think anything will actually come of this story, other than some further sniping at liberal bloggers for being allegedly homophobic for even suggesting it might be relevant that someone with White House press credentials is at the same time a working prostitute. I have absolutely no hopes that anything discovered about this administration will bring them down. This story is just one more illustration of the extent to which these people believe, and so far, correctly, that they are untouchable. Torture, yeah, we do it. You got a problem with that? Oh, gay prostitutes writing anti-gay screeds for Republican-financed 'news sites'? Whatever. Oh, we paid members of the media to say nice stuff about us. So? WMDs never found -- what, you think Muslims don't deserve freedom and democracy?

They lie, and they are caught in their lies, and everything blows over, and they just don't care. They erode public confidence in the media so that most people have no idea what's true anymore anyway, and they say and do whatever they feel like.

No big story is going to save us, people. Even one involving gay sex for sale.

Torture Tales

Australian citizen tortured in U.S. custody

Sunday Special: Fascist Church-based Military Recruiting

Max was not surprised by this photo essay (you must click through to the pictures...). I would be less disturbed by it if the guy who attended the event hadn't sounded so shocked by it himself, because that means that, even if it's not an entirely new phenomenon, it's now spreading to populations it hadn't previously touched.

(This link came via Bellatrys at Nothing New Under The Sun.)

well, we're citizens, so we must be safe, right?

Here's a U.S. Citizen (born and raised) held by the Saudis at U.S. request since June 2003, charged with no crime by either government. His parents are challenging his detention in a U.S. court, and the government wants the court to decide if their son can be held indefinitely based on evidence it is willing to show only to the judge:

The U.S. government asked a judge yesterday to dismiss a Falls Church couple's challenge of their son's imprisonment based on reasons and evidence that would be kept secret from the family and the public.

Justice Department lawyer Ori Levi, while acknowledging that such a ruling would be unprecedented, told the judge "there's very little risk" that Ahmed Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen detained in a Saudi prison for 20 months, has been wrongly deprived of his freedom.

Oh well, that's okay then. If the government says so, it must be true. right? Right?

Wal-Mart and Department of Labor, Together At Last

The U.S. Department of Labor recently signed an agreement with Wal-Mart to notify them 15 days in advance of any investigation they intend to make on labor violations, to allow Wal-Mart ample time to correct the problem. Oh, and they fined Wal-Mart $130K for breaking child labor laws -- for example, allowing minor employees to operate chainsaws. Also,

Several federal employees voiced concern about a Jan. 10 e-mail message sent by the director of the Little Rock, Ark., office for the Labor Department's wage and hour division after the settlement was reached, that said, "Wage & Hour will not open an investigation of Wal-Mart without first notifying Wal-Mart's main office and allowing them an opportunity to look at the alleged violations and, if valid, correct the problem."

Incidentally, this article is an excellent example of the perils of only reading the headlines. The headline says "Wal-Mart agrees to Pay Fine In Child Labor Cases" but the article is about the fine, the fact that the settlement with DOL was reached a month ago but not disclosed to the public, and, most especially, that the agreement includes provisions that several federal employees have complained are there to allow Wal-Mart to continue violating labor laws.

Hullaballoo on John Yoo

Or, Digby Does Depressing

Dear Readers: Who Are You?

You don't have to say, of course -- we're not the Department of Homeland Security. Just curious. Writing a small blog with small-blog traffic can be lonely and futile-seeming, and a list of IP addresses isn't as fun as knowing something about the people who read us. And yes, we do have a few readers, we get site stats.

We don't want your names or photos of you in your underwear. Just, you know, a general outline. "Senior Administration Official who wishes to remain anonymous," for example.

Frank Rich's "Bathosphere"

Very nice distillation by Frank Rich on the bizzare maudlin sentimentalia ruling today's culture in today's NYT:

What really makes these critics hate "Million Dollar Baby" is not its supposedly radical politics - which are nonexistent - but its lack of sentimentality. It is, indeed, no "Rocky," and in our America that departure from the norm is itself a form of cultural radicalism. Always a sentimental country, we're now living fulltime in the bathosphere. Our 24/7 news culture sees even a human disaster like the tsunami in Asia as a chance for inspirational uplift, for "incredible stories of lives saved in near-miraculous fashion," to quote NBC's Brian Williams.

I love his term "bathosphere."