Remember that story I posted the other day about how the South Carolina legislature is in favor of stiffer punishments for cock fighting than spousal abuse? Well, I think I found out why. Apparently domestic violence is hilarious (via Matt Yglesias):

In recent years, South Carolina has either led the nation or ranked in the top six in the rate of women killed by men.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, would have increased the penalties for domestic violence offenders and required judges to complete annual training in domestic violence issues.

Advocates said they had offered amendments to remove sections that committee members had objected to, such as one that expanded the definition of ?physical cruelty,? a grounds for divorce.

But the amendments never got introduced. Instead, advocates said, committee members joked about the title of the bill and then tabled it with little discussion.

According to a tape of the meeting obtained by The State newspaper, Altman asked why the bill?s title ? ?Protect Our Women in Every Relationship (POWER)? ? just mentioned protecting women. Harrison suggested making the bill the ?Protecting Our People in Every Relationship? Act, or ?POPER.?

A voice on the tape can be heard pronouncing it ?Pop her.? Another voice then says, ?Pop her again,? followed by laughter.

Cobb-Hunter and victims advocates didn?t think it was funny.

I hate to be the kinda guy who responds to violence with violence, but somebody really needs to slap these guys around a bit. Maybe then they’d understand why it’s not funny to “pop her”.

Arianna Huffington, I’m a big fan of your work and I came this close to voting for you, so please take this as constructive criticism when I say “please stop trying to be funny” :

[T]he majority leader’s ethical rap sheet is longer than the list of prepubescent boys who have shared Michael Jackson’s bed

Not only are Michael Jackson jokes hackneyed, but throwing nod to a child rape scandal in the middle of an article about Tom DeLay is a lot more distressing than insightful.

I really want the new Superman movie to be great, so I’m hoping this is just a bad photo and not an indication that the movie’s going to suck :

Though I’ve got some nitpicky fanboy problems with the costume design¹, I’m going to withhold judgment for now. After all, it’s nearly impossible to wear a Superman costume without looking like a dork. Even the late, great Christopher Reeve looked goofy in some of the early publicity stills. Compared with some of the awful changes that have been made to the costumes in other superhero movies², this one isn’t that big a deal.

The bigger concern for me is whether or not Bryan Singer is able to pull off a Superman movie. He did a great job with the X-Men movies, but that’s easy compared to the difficulties that a new Superman movie would pose. Superman doesn’t have the angst of Batman or the complicated relationships of Spider-Man, he’s just an all-American boy scout in tights. In the hands of the right screenwriter and director, there are plenty of interesting ways to approach the character, but unfortunately most people think Superman is bland and uninteresting. I won’t bore you with my ideas on how to make a good Superman movie, but lemme just say that if they fall into the trap of trying to make Superman “cool”, this movie will suck.

^{1 : The “S” insignia is a little too “badass” for my tastes, the darker cape looks kinda dumb, the shorts seem like they’re deliberately cut low to show off this dude’s six-pack, and the curl in his hair looks like it was glued in place.}

2 : When George Clooney played Batman, the suit was made of rubber, tinted purple, and had nipples.

This has been mentioned on other blogs, but it really is a remarkable oversight on the part of Time magazine. In their recent story on Ann Coulter, the magazine ran this photo¹ as an example of liberal shrillness or something :

The funny thing is that the poster in question is from the obvious parody group Communists for Kerry. The URL at the top is a dead giveaway, or would have been a dead giveaway if it had actually showed up in the magazine itself. Here’s a shitty cameraphone picture of how the photo appeared in print :



That’s an awfully convenient bit of cropping, huh?

^{1 : To Time‘s credit, they replaced the earlier caption with one that’s still inaccurate, but much closer to the truth.}

For those who haven’t been following it, all week Ezra Klein has been following the healthcare systems of other countries and comparing them to our own. So far he’s done France, England, Canada, and Germany.¹ In today’s installment he links to a survey of per capita health spending that shows how bloated an unwieldy our system is. To make the point even more obvious, here’s a graph of the survey’s findings :

^{(click on the image for a larger version)}

That’s right, we spend more than twice as much as most of our friends, yet we cover a much lower percentage of our people and have a higher rates of illness and death for preventable diseases. Something this shameful should be a scandal, yet even acknowledging these obvious facts is considered anti-American in some circles. Like I’ve said before, sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence….

^{1 : SPOILER ALERT : They all have better healthcare than the United States.}

I’ve been waffling back and forth lately on the concept of senate filibusters. Though I think they’re anti-senate in nature, I think the current extremism of the GOP leadership calls for a “fight fire with fire” approach. Today’s Slate has two great articles on either side of the filibuster debate, but Timothy Noah’s great anti-filibuster piece actually changed my mind (again). This is the line that did it :

[T]he filibuster is fundamentally a “conservative instrument,” because it’s usually liberals who want the government to do things and conservatives who want it not to do things.

So why do I support the filibuster again? Because the traditional liberal/conservative dichotomy doesn’t work anymore.

Since 1994′s “Contract on America” (if not earlier), conservatives seen the government more as a tool that can be used to further their agendas. They’re smart enough to realize that voters want their representatives to do something, so the idea that conservatives generally want the government to not do things died once the Gingrich posse strolled into Washington. Sure, deregulation¹ was a big part of their plans, but the truth about the GOP majority’s goals of blocking progressive reform was generally hidden by their proactive legislative agenda.

But even if you grant that the Republicans during the Clinton years were dedicated to shrinking the size of the government, it all changed once Bush was “elected” in 2000. The GOP that wanted to “starve the beast” a few years ago has decided to overfeed the beast and hope it has a heart attack. Most Republicans don’t even bother pretending that they want to shrink the size of the government, now that they know they can get away with exploding the size of our deficit and giving away billions of dollars to their most enthusiastic supporters. As a result, many real conservatives have backed away from what Andrew Sullivan calls “Bush’s nanny-state, expensive, big government conservatism”.

Which leads us back to what the Democrats should do. Personally, I think the filibuster is an awful rule that cripples the legislature at the whims of the minority. At the same time though, the Republican party has shamelessly used the filibuster to block reforms that we take for granted these days. While I think the political pendulum is bound to swing back in our direction soon, the fewer messes we have to clean up once that day comes, the better.

So when it comes to filibustering judicial nominees, tax “reform”, or the dismantling of social security, I say “go for it”. But be careful how you use this parliamentary roadblock. Just as the Republicans found success in actively pursuing their legislative goals, the Democrats should be very careful to avoid being labeled obstructionists. If the public thinks the Democrats are more interested in stopping the Republicans than in passing their own agenda, then it’ll be a loooonnnng time before we’re back in charge.

^{1 : I prefer the term “decriminalization”, since that’s essentially what deregulation is; changing the laws to encourage behavior that we’d previously decided should be illegal.}

Forgive me for being insensitive to other religions here, but the people who worship various stains, bits of food, or other random occurrences that sorta, kinda, not really look like Jesus or the Virgin Mary are complete morons. Here’s Mary’s latest guest starring role, this time as a stain on a highway underpass :

To the true believers out there, this might seem like a profound act of piety. When I look at it, however, I just see a bunch of fools worshiping a giant vagina.



Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s noticed this….

Atrios is right. This is the kind of f’n lunacy you can only find on Fox News :

On Tuesday’s show you heard FOX News’ Rita Cosby talking about the quite shocking claims made by a group of victims’ families that Iraq was at the bottom of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City.
. . .
The whole thing stinks of Iraq. Ramzi Yousef, an Iraqi agent that was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and his associates were allegedly talking to Terry Nichols (search) in 1994 about how to build a fertilizer bomb.

So now the question: So if there is all this evidence, why has the U.S. government ignored it?
. . .
The answer is Tim McVeigh (search) and the U.S. government were each doing their part to hide the real players. Government prosecutors said there was no “John Doe No. 2″ even though dozens of people saw him. McVeigh insisted all the way to the grave that he acted alone, when everybody including his lawyer knew he was lying.

If McVeigh were just the grunt ? mixing the chemicals, driving the truck, setting the timer, and running off ? guilty though he might be, if the bombing was a plot by a foreign government, his lawyer would have had a chance at the sentencing hearing to argue that others were more responsible and McVeigh should not be executed.

The fear that the McVeigh execution might have been an error ? and a mistaken execution ? could put the federal death penalty itself in jeopardy. The fear of losing the federal death penalty could explain why the U.S. government does not appear to be anxious to act on evidence it has that Iraq may have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.

I still find it hard to believe that this X-files horseshit is being peddled by the #1 cable news network. To think that the media has sunk to this level, it’s a wonder that we can’t just solve our energy problems by hooking up a generator to the corpses of real newsmen who must be spinning in their graves.

To add to this, the “whole thing stinks of Iraq” theory is hilariously at odds with the more prominent conspiracy theory that John Doe #2 is reported Osama Bin Laden¹ aide Jose Padilla :

If you ignore the fact that the two pictures above have differently-shaped eyes, noses, cheeks, lips, and chins, the resemblance in uncanny.

Maybe in right-wing loony land, the correlation between the two half-baked conspiracy theories makes sense. After all, if these are the same guys who can’t tell the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan, can we really expect them to notice through their blood-tinted glasses that all the innuendo and meaningless speculation in the world won’t take this stain off the reputation of the militant elements of the extreme right. The reason they’re willing to entertain the notion that our current foreign enemies are behind domestic terrorism is because the Oklahoma City bombing represents the violent nadir of anti-government conservatism and stands as a reminder that we should always be weary of extremists at home.

^{1 : Yes, that is the same Osama Bin Laden who referred to Saddam Hussein as a socialist infidel.}

Which one is more important to you? Personally, I think women are more important than chickens, but they’ve got different ideas in South Carolina (via MetaFilter) :

The State House took up two pieces of legislation this week aimed at protecting two different groups. Up for debate was cracking down on gamecock fighting and protecting victims of domestic violence .

A bill protecting cocks passed through the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. John Graham Altman (R-Dist. 119-Charleston) was in favor of the gamecock bill, “I was all for that. Cockfighting reminds me of the Roman circus, coliseum.”

A bill advocates say would protect victims against batterers was tabled, killing it for the year. Rep. Altman is on the committee that looked at the domestic violence bill, “I think this bill is probably drafted out of an abundance of ignorance.”

Both cockfighting and domestic violence are currently misdemeanor crimes, punishable by 30 days in jail. If the bill passes, cockfighting will become a felony, punishable by five years in jail. Domestic violence crimes will remain a misdemeanor.

Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D-Dist. 66-Orangeburg) says of the two bills, “What we have said by the actions of the Judiciary Committee is we aren’t going to create a felony if you beat your wife, partner. But now, if you’ve got some cockfighting going on, whoa! Wait a minute.”

Wait a minute, indeed.

Well, I’ve finally broken down and decided to start running blogads. The main reasons for this are :

I want to change hosts and upgrade my MovableType installation. Both of these cost a few bucks and I’d like to see if I can get this site to pay for itself.

The advertising on other sites hasn’t been distracting. The ads I’ve seen have been, for the most part, targeted well enough that they can actually provide some value to the end user.

BlogAds allows customers to adjust the CSS for the adstrip. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure the advertising doesn’t screw up the way the site looks.

If you’re interested in seeing your ad on this site, email me.

While driving earlier today, I saw the following bumper sticker :

Which means if you want to solve the above formula to determine the value of a single nail, you’d get this :



Then again, it’s been about ten years since I’ve taken any math classes or gone to Sunday school, so I could be wrong about this one.

It’s funny that the one things I keep seeing again and again on the blogs, newspapers, TV, and radio is that the appointment of a “rigid archconservative” to the papacy isn’t that big a deal since Ratzinger is really old. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been living in Bushworld for the past few years, but the “he can’t do that much damage” line doesn’t work on me anymore.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI have interesting histories in regards to the Third Reich. Here’s how the last Pope spent the war :

All that was interrupted by the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which devastated the country and left an indelible impression on nineteen-year-old Karol Wojtyla. A priest later described how Wojtyla arrived at the cathedral when the first German bombs started to fall and served Mass amid the howl of sirens and the blasts of explosions.

With official schools closed during the German occupation, he helped set up an underground university and the clandestine ?Rhapsodic Theater,? which met in members? apartments.
. . .
What delayed his entry to the priesthood was his great passion for literature, philosophy and drama ? but the war helped change that, too.

He started noticing that some of his friends had disappeared, killed in war or seized in the night by Nazi troops. It haunted him.

?Any day I could have been picked up on the street, at the factory or at the stone quarry and sent to a concentration camp. Sometimes I asked myself: ?So many people at my age were losing their lives, why not me??? he wrote on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination.

He gradually came to feel that he was spared for a higher reason, part of a divine plan to bring something good out of wartime Poland.

And here’s what the current Pope was doing at the same time (via Billmon):

In 1937 Ratzinger?s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the F?hrer?s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.

He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. ?Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,? concluded John Allen, his biographer.

Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp.

Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot ? adding that his gun was not even loaded ? because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.

He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile.

Not that I’m trying to say that “Ratso” is/was a Nazi. Like with Sen. Byrd’s involvement with the KKK, I think the past is important as far as it informs the present. I don’t know enough about Ratzinger to say whether or not he shares the hateful views of the Nazis, but considering the despotic nature of the Nazi regime, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That said, for all the cries of “resistance would have been futile”, I’d be willing to bet that the penalty for a Pole setting up an underground anti-Nazi group would have been much more extreme than for a German who decides to avoid work that contributes to the war effort. Pope Ratso was a coward in comparison to John Paul II then and I can only assume that his papacy will be equally weak and gutless in comparison. Considering all the other reasons to dislike Benedict XVI, I just hope his tenure is brief.

Go read this post now. It’s appalling to think that Time magazine would mark the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing with a promotional appearance by a writer who notoriously joked about the murders of 168 people. If you’re as appalled as I am, I suggest emailing the editors and letting them know what you think.

Ten years ago today, I sat in my dorm room in stunned silence, glued to the television. Being less than an hour away from Oklahoma City, my shock was mixed with the fear that some friends or family might have been trapped in the rubble. The mix of emotions is tough to describe, but after 9/11, you all know exactly how I felt.

And like 9/11, my memories of that day are a tough to organize jumble. Everyone immediately started pointing fingers at Arabs (including the inevitable redneck vigilante who beat up the first brown person he could find). Connie Chung, part of the first wave of media personalities who flew in to save the day, was criticized in the local media for months afterward for her on- and off-camera patronizing of upset Okies. A co-worker responded to the outpouring of grief for the people who died in the building with anger because she felt her neighbor who had been killed was across the street was being left out. It was the only day that I could walk around that small town with my dyed-green hair without being stared at or called a “queer” behind my back. It’s strange to think how much an event like that can amplify some prejudices and destroy others, while simultaneously bringing people together and driving them apart.

In the aftermath of that attack as well as the 9/11 attacks, it became fashionable to proudly declare that “we will never forget”. Well, guess what? We forgot.

Wow. A European Pope….the Lord sure works in predictable ways, huh?

Seriously though, for those who were kinda hoping the next Pope would be more liberal-minded when it came to contraception and the role of women in the church, here’s a sobering look at the most powerful man on Earth :

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the dean of the College of Cardinals, made a last public appearance at a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica before entering the conclave to vote on the successor to John Paul II. In his homily, the Cardinal who served the Church as the guardian of doctrine for 24 years, warned the Cardinals that the Catholic Church must not become prey to modern moral relativism or ideological trends. Continuing a theme Ratzinger has been developing in books, articles and interviews over the last few years, he warned again of the advance of anti-Catholic secularism both outside and within the Catholic Church.

He said, ?A dictatorship of relativism is being formed, one that recognizes nothing as definitive and that has as its measure only the self and its desires.?

The ‘Pro-Eligendo Romano Pontefice’ (to elect Roman pontiff) Mass is traditionally celebrated just before the Cardinal electors go into seclusion. Cardinal Ratzinger, who has been labeled by the secular media as a ?rigid archconservative? for his unyielding defence of Catholic religious assertions, said in his homily that the Church must not be subject to the changing winds of ideological fashion. He said, ?Having a clear faith, according to the Creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism.?
. . .
In Catholic teaching, Liberalism was a movement that arose in theological circles in the wake of the French Revolution and its teachings were condemned as heretical by a succession of popes. By the beginning of the 20th century, it had coalesced into the heresy known as Modernism which was suppressed by Pope Pius X. After the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960?s, however, the dormant liberal heresies in the Church reappeared, especially in Europe and North America.

With the Catholic church booming in in Latin America and Africa, I’d think a pontiff that hails from outside the Vatican’s backyard would be a natural fit. Maybe after this Pope dies, the next choice won’t belie the church’s increasing ethnic diversity. If I was a Catholic living those outside of Europe, I’d probably feel feel pretty dejected right now.

UPDATE : Kevin Drum links to this additional bad news :

He wrote a letter of advice to U.S. bishops on denying communion to politicians who support abortion rights, which some observers viewed as a slam at senate presidential candidate John F. Kerry. He publicly cautioned Europe against admitting Turkey to the European Union and wrote a letter to bishops around the world justifying that stand on the grounds that the continent is essentially Christian in nature. In another letter to bishops worldwide, he decried a sort of feminism that makes women “adversaries” of men.
. . .
He is a lightning rod for church liberals who see the hierarchy as reactionary. Ratzinger was active in stamping out liberation theology, with its emphasis on grass-roots activism to fight poverty and its association with Marxist movements.

He once called homosexuality a tendency toward “intrinsic moral evil” and dismissed the uproar over priestly pedophilia in the United States as a “planned campaign” against the church.

Dude, this new Pope sucks.