It’s Friday the Fourteenth, and you know what that means! Football playoffs this weekend!!!
Here’s that “fierce advocate” for LGBT rights in action:
DOJ Files DOMA Defense in First Circuit Cases
Today, the Department of Justice filed its defense of the Defense of Marriage Act in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in a single filing for both Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. United States. This past July, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that Section Three of DOMA — which sets a federal definition for “marriage” and spouse” — is unconstitutional.
The government announced in October 2010 that it planned to appeal the rulings.
DADT only affected a minority of gays and lesbians. DOMA affects them all. All Obama had to do was nothing and it was gone.
Speaking of DADT:
Back to the future on DADT with Tim PawlentyFormer Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) just grabbed the gold star for pandering to the conservative base of the Republican Party in his quest for the 2012 presidential nomination. In an interview with Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, an anti-gay group that rails against the so-called homosexual agenda, he said he would reinstate don’t ask don’t tell (DADT).
If the court ruling that DADT is unconstitutional had been left in place, DADT could not be revived.
Strategery:
Dems settle on branding for GOP repeal effort: “The Patient’s Rights Repeal Act”
At a House Dem leadership meeting last week, Dem leaders decided that this is the phrase they will officially use to brand the House GOP’s push to repeal health reform, aides tell me.
With House Republicans set to press forward with repeal next week, the idea behind the Dem talking point is to emphasize what repeal would take away from you — and to position the plight of the patient in the center of this battle.
Dems are gearing up for a major campaign against repeal, in hopes that it will give them another crack at selling the American public on the law by highlighting its most popular provisions and arguing that repeal would do away with them.
“We don’t need better policies, we need better branding!“
A turd by any other name still smells like shit.
Give until it hurts:
WikiLeaks gives $15,000 for accused leaker defense: group
WikiLeaks has contributed $15,100 to help defend a junior U.S. soldier accused of leaking to it hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables and other secret documents, a support group said on Thursday.The website’s contribution would help pay lawyers representing U.S. Army Specialist Bradley Manning, a former intelligence analyst suspected of obtaining the classified video of a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters employees, and downloading more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents.
“This donation from WikiLeaks is vital to our efforts to ensure Bradley receives a fair, open trial,” Mike Gogulski, a founder of the Bradley Manning Defense Network, said in a statement.
The WikiLeaks contribution brings total donations for Manning’s defense to over $100,000, the group said.
WikiLeaks took in over $2 million dollars last year.
This one is for Riverdaughter:
Predisposition for Religion Can Spread Quickly
Religiously observant people have more children than other people do, according to demographic studies. Assuming there’s a genetic predisposition for religion, this means the religion gene could spread relatively quickly throughout a population. Research using new mathematical models demonstrates just how quickly this could happen.A religious group that makes up only 0.5 percent of a population could make up 50 percent within 10 generations, according to one of the models.
Maybe she can start working on a cure before it’s too late.
The No Pants! Subway Ride: Video of the 10th Annual Event
The unfazed reactions of the other passengers tells you a lot about New York City.
If you’re hoping for grandkids this is bad news:
Young people crave self-esteem more than sex
Young people crave boosts to their self-esteem more than sex and money, according to a new study.
Researchers from Ohio State University and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York found that college students rated receiving compliments, or doing well on a test, above such pleasurable activities such as sex, receiving a paycheck, seeing a friend, or eating their favorite food.
Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University, said the findings should raise red flags about the role of self-esteem in society.
“It wouldn’t be correct to say that the study participants were addicted to self-esteem,” said Bushman, who headed the research team. “But they were closer to being addicted to self-esteem than they were to being addicted to any other activity we studied.”
Youth is wasted on the young.
Stop the presses!
UC Merced scientist helps in discovery of new jellyfish
Scientists at UC Merced and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab discovered a new family of jellyfish floating around the Gulf of Mexico.
The discovery of ‘Drymonema larsoni,’ otherwise known as the “Pink Meanie,” represents the first “true jellyfish” found since 1921.
I always wondered how a jellyfish would taste with peanut butter.
Drunk French Air Traveler Reinforces Terrible Stereotype About French Citizens
In what will only enforce the belief that some French citizens are saddled with an insufferable insouciance, federal air marshals had to subdue an intoxicated man flying to New York from Nice when he repeatedly shoved a female flight attendant who caught him smoking in the plane’s bathroom.
After being handcuffed, suspect Franck Lebrun announced, “I’m French, fuck you!”
I know what you’re thinking and no, we’re not related.
Today in History:
1990 “Simpsons” premiered on Fox-TV
1978 Sex Pistols’ final concert
1914 Henry Ford introduces assembly line, for T-Fords
1784 Revolutionary War ends; Congress ratifies Treaty of Paris
Famous Birthdays:
1960 Eric Alterman
1952 Sydney Biddle Barrows
1948 T-Bone Burnett
1919 Andy Rooney
1892 Martin Niemoller
Famous Deaths:
2009 Ricardo Montalban
1977 Peter Finch
1957 Humphrey Bogart
1898 Lewis Carroll
Opening today:
Filed under: General
Re: the pantless subway riders — that one guy with a huge whole in the back of his tighty-whiteys went and sat down on the seat — that is just gross & wrong. Another girl cheated by wearing tights under her panties. Otherwise, pretty funny.
Re: the Y-Gen’s need for self-esteem — of course they value receiving compliments more than sex because (1) they don’t ever have sex and (2) their helicopter parents raised them like baby veals, complimenting every poop, fart & burp they ever produced and gave trophies to all the kids in the league regardless of performance. This country has raised a generation of entitled, bratty, sociopaths.
I thought I was the only one around here who never sleeps.
Insomnia — it happens to the best of us.
You can sleep when you’re dead.
This is on my bucket list:
the saloon, Mugs Away, is just down the hill from me… it’s a fun place… I think I should start hanging out down there.
Cool, we can all meet at your house.
“All he had to do was nothing” – this is a repeat of what he did “for” DADT – there were 3 appeals, plus urging Senate to drop the DADT vote in favor of START.
When I mentioned that on FB in response to someone asking me to “stand with Obama” on his great accomplishment, I was told “well, it’s done. You can bitch all you want”
I plan to bitch a lot.
I’ll even moan a little too.
Joe Moneybags Newsletter:
Daley has the Turdblossom seal of approval, which tells you all you need to know.
That is funny. I’m sure there was dom perignon shooting of the collective financial industries nose when they heard that one .
Lol
I’m a Pisces now? Ophiuchus? WTF?
IBSP
Salon must be seriously FUBAR if Glenzilla has to bleg for money.
This is actually a post at Salon by Kid Pareene (formerly of Gawker)
Wow, some people really excel at mindless hate. What is the point of that video except to imply she should stop breathing because it annoys him?
Funny someone has SO much time on their hands. The breathing amplified like that sounds like something from a late night movie while the image doesn’t fit. Weird.
Gives the boys in the basement one more thing to watch when they are alone – I guess.
Ew! please pass the brain bleach!
Hilarious. I think it’s kinda sexy.
Somebody thought the reflections in her glasses were a teleprompter. Any other theories?
Not true! That is according to astronomers, not astrologers.
“The stars are markers that drift, but our main points of reference are not directly the stars. They are the equinoxes (both spring and vernal) and the solstices which altogether make the four cardinal points of the zodiac which in turn determine the signs. The stars help us locate those points which define the SIGNS of the Zodiac which remain constant in relation to the equinox point. The CONSTELLATIONS do move about and we take that into consideration when locating planets.”
That’s why you can be an Aries (Sun Sign) with your Moon in Pisces, etc.
Also, the the Babylonians discarded the sign of Ophiuchus for purposes of the zodiac two millennia ago.
Full post here (Updates at bottom have the money quotes):
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2011/01/new_zodiac_sign_dates_dont_swi.html
All I know is — I was born an Aries & I’m dying an Aries because no way am I giving up being the first (and best) sign of the zodiac to be a Pisces.
Frank Lebrun: fuck you, I’m French!
Angienc: fuck YOU, I’m an Aries!
roflmao!
I don’t think I would give up being Scorpio to be a Virgo either.
HONK!
Hey, nobody (and I mean NOBODY) complains about we Virgos and our notable attention to detail when it comes to sex, or balancing the checkbook, or cooking a good meal–but everyone wants to poke fun at us anyhow. It just ain’t right, I tell you.
As a fellow Aries, I’m with you on that one.
me too! who wants to be a fish when you can be a RAM!
So the line should be:
the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars…it’s in the equinoxes.
I always thought there was something a little fishy about the clown, lol.
{{groan}}
That’s why the Indian astrologers, who are very good on the subject don’t use Sidereal for their calculations of the signs. Because of the wobble of the Earth, the West astrologers are way off by using the Tropical zodiac system.
It’s nothing new. Ask an Indian astrologer what your sign is, and that astrologer will confirm that the sign you thought you had, was wrong.
Oops! One “not” too many. I screwed up. The Indian astrologers use Sidereal, and the West uses Tropical. Sidereal is correct and takes into account the wobble of the Earth. Tropical can be way off.
Talking about bumper stickers in the previous thread, I just saw a good one:
“ANGRY? Need a WEAPON?
Pray the rosary!”
(ObDisclaimer: I know, religion is the institutionalization of many evils, but)
for someone who happens to be religious, the rosary can be very calming. Something about moving the beads through your hands while repeating prayers can be meditative. And it’s focused on a maternal divine image, which is all too rare.
I’m not catholic, but my mother was (she converted later in life, after dabbling in several eastern and other religions). She often postulated that the peace she found in the old liturgies was similar to meditative mantras. The structure and repetition she found freeing, not restrictive – a means of un-hooking the mind from the hamster wheel of conscious striving.
It doesn’t do it for me, but I can understand how repetitive prayers or liturgies function similar to other meditative practices.
I have always felt that saying the rosary was very much like other meditative devices, mantras, chants, etc.
unfortunately I have no patience for meditation.
LOL.
I often feel that simply working with my hands is very calming.
I’ve long thought that repetition tradition is a form of OCD behavior.
I’m definitely more OCD than ADD…still not religious. Though I have at times found myself intrigued by the elaborate Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church rituals. More interesting than the self help sermons I was used to seeing in Protestant services growing up.
I’m a cradle catholic who lost faith but definitely the rituals are a whole sensory experience and also very fascinating in a historical sense.
Gah. It’s as if we’ve raised a generation of pitiful self-esteem junkies. And feeding that habit is way more important than putting actual food on the table. No wonder they fell for the smooth talker who made them feel like the beautiful and superior and enlightened people, instead of the one who might fix the economy and actually get us some jobs.
Yeah, but sooner or later they all learn through the school of hard knocks.
… and get us some sex.
They must have confined the study to rich virgins to get those results.
more than sex? Houston we have a problem!
As one who has simply stopped reading comments to newspaper articles – too much bile – I welcome this approach – besides paying €2.90 a month for access:
From the article this great story:
About Piano the content payment system for newspapers, TV stations and online services in Central Europe. (Beware! They use the word – gulp – Target!)
The “Sarah is finished” edition of the DUdies
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/dudies-for-januari-11-14/
Yes. Morning Joe today—discussing and insisting that “Sarah Palin’s career is oooover!”
GAWD
as IF..
Isn’t that what they discuss every morning?
Mary, WHY IN GOD’S NAME DO YOU WATCH MEDIA POLITICOS???
Dont you have better things to do with your time than sit in and listen to someone else’s spin? If you are watching cable news personalities on either side, you are wasting your time. Disconnect from them, Mary. Remove the IV. You will never get the unbiased truth from any of them, PARTICULARLY anyone on the right of center, which includes just about all of them.
Commentary on what one of them said and how the other guy reacted is pointless and reminds me very much of dailykos back when we all thought they had the answers.
Their whole business is spin. That’s it. There is no useful information there. It’s all propaganda 24/7. Seriously, get the monkey off your back.
And that goes for anyone else watching that drivel no matter what the political persuasion. They all have their focus group tested thought stopping words and team cheers. You are better off not watching them. Let them speak to themselves. The sooner the ad revenue dries up and they disPpear from the airwaves, the better. It can’t happen too soon. As Jon Stewart once said to Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, they are ruining America.
Banish them from your tv. There are better sources of news and you won’t miss anything except some idiot trying to tell you how and what to think.
Their whole business is spin. That’s it. There is no useful information there. It’s all propaganda 24/7
ITA! There is some real news on some of the market/wall street business channels but even those you have to know enough to filter out the spin & marketing and definitely the polemics (regulations=evil etc).
The aaawww picture of the day: the Danish Crownprince and -princess with their newborn twins.
And in other news from abroad: Obama’s handling of the shooting in Tucson is reportedly deemed aaawwwsome by an “almost unanimous US media”!
So very aawwsome because he chose not to make the memorial service political I’ve also read. First of all, you don’t choose your demeanor for a memorial service. You attend to pay solemn respect to those you have lost. Second, the service did end up looking like an Obama political rally.
Not so fast. Those who would criticize had to wait.
AP: Some question pep rally atmosphere at Obama speech
Awww…..what a sweet picture!
IOZ Religion Nuance a take on Obama’s speech
h/t vastleft
There seems to be an interesting thing happening I just thought about. All the noise, still going on, even louder than before, is that it’s all Palin’s fault. Palin’s fault, Republican’s fault, the words you use, the symbols you use, etc., etc They’re going soooo over the top, that in contrast it’s making the Republican tired meme about personal responsibility seem reasonable. So instead of having a conversation about mental illness and infrastructure needed to help and to possibly prevent such things, the backlash of all the over the top will end up being moving to the right again and saying personal responsibility is more sensible.
Just a thought. What do you think?
Not to mention the problem of unfettered access to assault weapons and ammunition.
I’m still sort of isolated. Haven’t had much exposure to the noise machines on either side.
But I love the words fro Robert Frosts poem, choose something like a star
“So when at times the crowd is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star to stay our minds on
And be stayed”
It’s sad that people can’t figure this out for themselves without someone telling them how to think.
We did choose something like a star, but also very grounded: Hillary
Speaking of personal responsibility, I think it’s time for the right to take responsibility for the policies they insist we live by:
No gun control? Expect more tragedies
No help for the mentally ill? Expect more unstable people to be roaming the streets where guns are available.
No limit to how much right wing rhetoric goes out in the airwaves without opposing views? Expect that the right wing will demonize without restraint anyone they don’t like.
No access to abortion? Expect young women to die or become sterilized. This one is a no brainer. We already know what happened before.
No retirement or pensions? Expect a whole lot of poor people after they have worked and paid taxes all of their lives. This is a great way to add more recipients to welfare.
No taxes to pay for public schools and colleges? Expect a generation of undereducated and underemployed people with lots of anger and time on their hands. Oh, and access to lots of guns.
This is what they wanted. They bought up as many megaphones as possible and drowned out as many dissenting voices as they could find.
Welcome to right wing America! Don’t like it? Stop listening to the media gasbags.
Pretty simple.
If a gasbag blusters in the woods, does he make any noise?
The Democrats are attempting to cover up their blunder by repeating the lie. It’s read meat for the Yellow Dogs. Because if those voters saw how the Democratic leadership used a tragedy to make political points, to bury a possible candidate, they would lose those voters.
I am completely proteined out.
Does that mean what I think it means?
I have no idea what you’re thinking and frankly, I am afraid to go there.
To me, it means that I have reached my saturation limit of new things to learn. Now, I have to sit down and process it all otherwise it will not be retained.
Good thing it is Friday – are you done today?
Yes. Love the west coast but I miss the kid.
I think we should blame everything on the French…and Elvis
I work with French people. Better friends you will not find. They just take their time getting to know you.
I don’t know what the problem is with Lebrun. Probably he thinks that the French stereotype precedes him and we’ll let him get away with bad behavior. “oh, you’re FRENCH. Well, alright then. We had no idea. Line on the left, one cross each”.
it was meant as a joke.
IBSP
“IBSP”? I’ve been sharpening pencils?
I Blame Sarah Palin
ok, I will add her in as well. I am running out of room for xbox games though.
If you were expecting an apology you better sit down while you’re waiting.
LOL.
Remember those blow-up toys that were weighted at the bottom so that when you hit them, they just popped back up? (Ours was a clown.)
Is that the sounds of gasbags heads exploding I hear?
So that’s what I was smelling …
You may have since this controversial piece from Amy Chua in WSJ last week called Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. Seems she wasn’t really being snarky, and there’s been a firestorm of debate on facebook about the piece. She talks about coddling in the West versus discipline in the East…she writes about it crudely. One of the more entertaining rebuttals to her piece has been from Quentin Hardy here. Worth the full read.
The whole rebuttal is so funny.
Then I went and read Chua’s article and are you serious that she wasn’t being snarky? Oh my.
Yup. It looks like she did have some snark in there.
ah – I think it is an excerpt from her book where she starts out as a “tiger mom” and mellows by the end.
Well if they are so damn superior why does China have to copy everyone else’s intellectual property and then not as well? Why does excellence leave the equation then?
I admire the parenting and outcome of the Asian families I know.
That said, I think that inventiveness is the product of laziness and challenging common knowledge. Parenting in the tradition where parents make all decisions and kids have few choices may not contribute adults who are able to challenge the way things have always been or try to find an easy way to get something done.
Probably somebody more famous than me actually owns this quote, but I have often said “Laziness is the mother of invention”, sadly, I am too lazy to find out if I have ripped off the quote.
LOL.
I admire them as well and was being a bit snarky myself over cheap Chinese products. But I agree with what you said.
There does seem to be something lost in all of that.
Growing up in the bay area I was lucky to have a lot of Asian friends of all nationalities. My parents were more strict so it was a similar upbringing. But it was always fun to see the family structures, often with grandparents at home, and the food was amazing. And just like with us, there was the nice grandparents and the mean ones.
Well, except for the fact the mean grandmother farted in my other friend’s face. Walked over from the kitchen to where she was sitting, turned around, bent slightly, and let one rip.
Haven’t really seen that out of any other grandparents.
From what I hear, Chinese kids are under a lot of pressure to perform and physical punishment is not unheard of for failing to do your homework.
They spend their Saturday’s at Chinese school and take math during the summer. There’s no let up. Yes, they are very good at getting everything done and doing it well. But they can get bent out of shape by kids who come by their smarts naturally.
Teachers LOVE them because they are diligent and obedient. Therefore, diligence and obedience are frequently rewarded over cumulative knowledge and out of the box thinking.
It would be nice to have both.
Growing up in a shame-based culture I have to say it’s a high price to pay for excellence. Ugh.
One other thing: I like some pressure on kids to excel but the amount of homework piled on kids these days is excessive even by my standards. There seems to be a major project due in some classes every single week. Every essay seems to be high stakes and requires more research than I even did in college. It’s not healthy, especially when kids are pulling all nighters in 9th grade. And teachers don’t seem to be aware of how much they are piling on because Chinese kids never complain. They just do it even if they’re half dead zombies. I don’t know how they are managing to do quality work under these circumstances but for my kid, who is in classes that ar overwhelmingly Asian, it has been crazy. And this is a kid who doesn’t really struggle to do work. She writes good essays without a lot of effort. It’s not the degree of difficulty that is disturbing. It is the sheer volume of work. One of her teachers thinks nothing of assigning an essay the night before it’s due and one which requires significant amounts of reading. Brooke only has one other class that is difficult. She gets everything else done in a jiffy. Her English class is the other heavy duty class because it is with Stanford’s OHS. But even that class is easy compared to her social studies class in her regular high school where the assignments are voluminous and relentless. I keep asking myself if the amount if the outcome is proportional to the amount of work assigned. It doesn’t add up from what I can see. There’s literally no time to digest the information before another major chunk of work is assigned to sweep it all away.
But the Chinese kids will just keep churning it out until they all drop. From what Brooke says, they are all at their breaking point.
At the beginning all children learn by rote, the alphabet, the math tables, etc. The question is at what point should a child leave that method. Most other school systems keep the rote much longer than those in the U.S., with better results for most. Most of those who question, are not intelligent enough to question the right theories. Hence in the U.S. people question the theory of evolution. My method for those would be: learn the stuff and stfu.
This is not rote. We are talking essay after essay after major PowerPoint presentation after reading 50 pages of text in one night every frisking week.
For one class. I have never seen anything like it even in my hardest class in college, which consisted of reading about nine scientific papers and answering a dozen short essay questions. The difference is that I had a whole week to do that assignment. For Brooke, it’s like that during five days of the week on top of everything else she has to do. I don’t know how many times this year I have found her still writing her essay at 6 am having not gone to bed all night.
But like I said, when you have a lot of Asian kids in your class, they never complain even if they are dangerously deprived of sleep. Brooke is so worn out from this one class that she cries spontaneously over nothing. It’s hard to see how anyone benefits from this. The teacher is incredibly picky about stupid things like whether some of her answers are typed while others are handwritten. And for some reason, they all have to be printed out. She can’t just mail them to him like she can mail her assignments to her teacher at stanford.
What she has learned is that she absolutely hates social studies.
Sounds like bad teaching.
rd, it’s a shame that Brooke’s teachers have become obstacles. Long ago I was a teacher for a short while and what you are describing are petty requirements that don’t make sense and have more to do with the teachers’ authoritarian issues.
********************************************************
Amy Chua’s “memoir” reminded me of an article I read in “The New Yorker ” last week. Even though she is an American-Chinese mother rearing two daughters, the article I’ll link to offers only an abstract of the mental health of Chinese people and I will expand that with a quote from the magazine itself. I’m angry at the way Penquin is promoting this book for these parenting methods are punishing and abusive. American children need more discipline and expectations, but not by these methods and at this cost.
An article in the British journal, “The Lancet”, published last year, estimated (debated by scientists as too high) …”nearly one in five adults in China has a mental disorder, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a figure that put China in the ranks of the most mentally ill countries in the world.” Not in dispute: “Suicide is the leading cause of death among young people. Only one in twenty Chinese people with a mental disorder has ever seen a professional about it.” The link to the abstract is here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_osnos
The sad fact is that America also has a high rate of suicides among young people and deplorable or non-existing mental health access.
Ha! I love that article. My mom is definitely a Tiger Mom — no sleep overs, if I brought home a “B” it was the end of the world, hours & hours of piano lessons, and when I gained the “Freshman 15″ in college I was told point blank “Hey fatty, put down that doughnut.” LMAO.
It really isn’t as bad as people seem to think & I think she did a much better job then the helicopter parents are doing today who are raising their kids to think they are the Aga Khan based on nothing but their own egos.
Too funny! My mom was sort of, um, absent. If I wanted a sleepover, go skating, see a movie, play sports, do scouts – better plan it! Mom would say things like “Let me know how you will get there and when you will be home.” – or – if I was lucky, “I will be in that area tonight, so I could pick you and your friends up when you’re done.”
I’m sure my friend’s parents thought a 10 year old cruise director was a little excessive… but hey – we went skating every Friday!
Sadly, homework wasn’t on my radar, so it didn’t get done too often. Good thing I didn’t go to school these days – they have homework for Kindergarten.
I think this particular essay by the author was chosen exactly for the firestorm it would bring, her book is coming out very soon and it will certainly generate interest in what would probably otherwise be looked at as just another “how to parent” book.
Here is the author’s responses yesterday to some of the feedback:
http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/01/13/the-tiger-mother-responds-to-readers/?mod=WSJ_article_related
For some reason this older post on Dr Grumpy made me laugh so hard I almost had to call 911.
http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/dear.html
I’m glad Wikileaks has even $15,000 to donate, since Paypal, BOA, a Swiss bank, etc froze their accounts.
>>Religiously observant people have more children than other people do
Yes, but a lot of their children turn away from religion, so it’s not an exponential growth. In fact, religious observance in the U.S. has been declining, especially among young people.
http://pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com