Et Tu, Brute?

The WaPo had so much going on this morning I barely knew where to start. Lil Scotty Mclelland's article had 812 975 comments when I looked at it and I'm willing to bet that lots of **##'s got removed. A quick impression of the article reminds me of the story of Aron Ralston, the climber who cut off his own arm with a pocketknife to survive. Somebody's figured out there were war crimes and is doing their best to avoid being charged with one while at the same time trying to provide imaginary cover for those left behind. And Katrina was a costly blunder. No kidding.

While still smiling More... at the image of Lil Scotty realizing he had been had and hoping that he has a loyal security detail, I moved on to the right whining about how MSNBC is too left leaning and how they don't like Lil John McCain as much as they like Lil Obama, knowing full well that they had to turn their attention somewhere as soon as they got rid of Lil Hillary. Now that was a hatchet job, with several people wielding the hatchets. Sort of like the stories on John Edwards haircut. Designed to do nothing to further policy or decent political discussions and quite a lot to do with making sure that the candidate they were in love with had no viable competition. After enduring all these years of Fox News I have little to no sympathy for people who whine about the press.

But the Meyerson article, oh Mr. Meyerson, you raised my blood pressure so high, the first thing that I did was reach for my Fosinopril. Let me state first that Hillary was neither my first or second choice in the California primary, but neither one of them were still running, but their names were still on the ballot by the time it was our turn to vote. So, as is usual out here in California, we had to pick the lesser of two evils and it wasn't Obama. Sigh, I'm really tired non-choices like that. Anyway, back to your article.

Hillary's campaign ruined democracy and feminism? Are you serious?Blow it out your ass. Oops, I see you already did. The Democratic Party (they're in the Constitution where?) had no right to exclude the votes of the people of Florida and Michigan, no matter what time frame they held their election in, because they are citizens of the United States and deserve to have their votes counted. Period. And if Obama had won those states he wouldn't want those delegates seated? Get real.

The hypocrisy of anyone talking about Indiana's photo ID requirement in order to vote and then disregarding the votes of thousands of people in two other states is mind boggling. Not quite as mind boggling as accusing women of ruining democracy while you briefly mention the rampant sexism in the united campaign against Hillary and then you attack her supporters for complaining about it, but it's darned close. From start to finish, this race hasn't been about policy issues, it's been about hair, clothes and makeup. Throw in a little bowling and a shot of whiskey (if I was her I would have been so grateful to have had an excuse for a drink since the press hounded her almost as much as they do Paris or Britney neither one of which are anywhere near the same intelligence or contributions to society) with the guys and you have a campaign.

I'm a feminist because I'm a woman. I consider myself the equal of any man under normal circumstances. And the abnormal ones would be so abnormal that whatever sex you are will be one of the last things on your mind. While I may not be able to heave boulders due to brute strength (is that needed anymore?), I am quite capable of using a lever and gravity to accomplish the same task. The odds are that a man invented the hammer, the javelin and the sword, but a woman invented the wheel, pulley, lever and pivot. You develop what you need to survive. Or conquer, as the case may be.

Now that we're supposedly in the 21st century, the skills needed to survive are quite different since we don't have anything left to conquer except each other. And what a shame that is. Nowadays this can be done way too efficiently and requires no brute strength (and judging by reduced requirements to join the military, a minimum of intelligence) at all. Just because one is tall, short, white, brown, black, blue eyed, brown eyed, male, female, rich, poor, right handed, left handed, religious or nonreligious, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindi, Muslim, skinny, fat, young or old does not automatically infer competency, incompetency, superiority, stupidity or a tendency towards evil. To say that the women who support Clinton and want the delegates seated is to make a mockery of both democracy and feminism while showing a complete disregard for the people of the two states not being represented and a whopping display of misogyny because women are being so vocal about how their candidate got marginalized, all under the cloak of rules instead of common sense and compassion. But those are traits that come to people who think and who have spent more than enough time clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder to recognize when someone is stamping on their fingers and trying to make them fall off into nonexistence.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way we are ever going to have fair elections in this country is if we have a national primary, followed by the national elections thirty days later. Between television, radio and the internet people will have plenty of opportunity to explore their candidate and the press will have less of an opportunity to choose our candidates for us.

And that's what most of the press and Mr. Meyerson are really afraid of.

3Bs and Debsweb.

Santeria! The Horror! The Horror!

A New York City school principal is under investigation for having a Santeria ritual performed in the school.

Education officials are pushing to fire [Principal Martiza] Tamayo, a 17-year veteran of city schools who earned $133,998 last year.

There are complications and some accusations of other inappropriate behavior. It's important to note, though, that there are always other accusations. School boards are generally too savvy too just come out and say "We don't like your religion so go away." It's like union-busting; they do it by writing you up for other offenses—offenses that would make no difference to your employment if you weren't union.

Newsday reports Tamayo will be fired.

The New York Daily News, which doesn't give a shit about appearing unbiased, refers to "bizarre Santeria ceremonies," "peculiar events," and "creepy warnings." The article admits that no students were in the building during the ceremony, which was intended to "calm students down."

Though there were no children in the building and no witnesses to the ritual itself, staff members told investigators the fourth floor smelled of incense and was "really smoky." School sources said chicken blood had to be cleaned off the floors.

Later that week, [Assistant Principal Melody] Crooks-Simpson agreed to participate in one of the rituals and heeded Tamayo's creepy warning: "Wear white. If there's anything evil, it won't get on you."

Crooks-Simpson sat in a conference room as Fonte "took two puffs from a brown cigar," spoke in another language and read tarot cards, according to yesterday's report.

Another language! Horrors!

Now watch the tip-toeing:

The problem wasn't that Tamayo was performing bizarre religious rituals but that she was coercing her staff to participate, [special commissioner of investigation for city schools Richard] Condon said.

"Had she hired a priest to sprinkle holy water on the building, and she coerced the assistant principal into paying for it and attending it, I would have a problem with it," Condon said.

Of course he would! But Newsday wouldn't call it "bizarre," would they?

It is, of course, possible that there is misconduct here. There are allegations of coercion, of misuse of funds, of transporting students without parental permission. But would these allegations come out if it wasn't in conjuction with gawking at the creepy religion practiced by the creepy brown people? I think not. It's all very well for an investigator to say he'd have a problem with an equivalent Catholic ceremony: Would such a ceremony be reported to him? Would teachers be horrified and frightened?

Santeria is the go-to religion if you want to prove how nasty Pagans are. Chicken blood! My stars and garters! (And seriously, he who is without dead chicken may cast the first tofu burger.) Tarot cards! Foreign language! Headdresses! (Don't Catholics use those?)

Christians who have been fighting for the right to pray in school need to understand that other people have that right as well. Because, y'know, America, First Amendment, like that.

(Cross-posted with all appropriate ceremony)

"Christians" Heckle Hindu Chaplain

I know their mamas are proud. Well, maybe their mothers would be proud; mine would have had harsh words for me if I acted like such a disrespectful asshole in public.

The demonstrators began interrupting as soon as Hindu priest Rajan Zed began his prayer, the first to be offered in the US Senate by a person of his faith. One shouted, "Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight." Sadly, the Lord Jesus did not smack them upside their heads, but they were removed from the Senate chamber and arrested.

Some astute commenters over at Steve M.'s place (starting with Tom) checked out these "average citizens" and discovered that they are connected to other wingnut causes. Later news accounts confirmed that they were associated with Operation Save America (no, I'm not linking), whose leaders, I'm sure, are quite proud of their minions.

Said minions better hope they make bail so they can get to Birmingham in time to harass patients at the local women's clinic and commemorate the anniversary of the sentencing of their hero Eric Rudolph, who bombed the clinic in 1998, killing an off-duty police officer and maiming my next door neighbor's cousin. I'm sure they'd hate to miss another opportunity to act like jerks and get their names in the newspaper.

Cross-posted at Birmingham Blues.

Colson's "Religious Muster" doesn't pass religious muster

The "On Faith" blog used the July 4th Pagan rally as a jumping off point to invite essays for and against the issue of allowing Pagan chaplaincy (Pagans have been blocked repeatedly from military chaplaincy, as Wild Hunt has been documenting).

So here's the wacky contribution by Chuck Colson (because I always take my religious advice from Watergate co-conspirators). Now, normally I wouldn't take this seriously. And in fact, I don't. But it's really so loopy that I can't resist fisking the thing.

It is debatable whether paganism is a religion, per say.

Always an excellent move to have a spelling error in your first sentence. Lends credibility.

Chucky, Paganism is not "a" religion, it is a group of religions. In fact, Chuck seems to know this when he says "Wiccans or pagans generally" in his very next paragraph, implying that he understands that Wicca, a specific religion, is a subset of Paganism (which he refuses to capitalize), which is more of an umbrella term. "Christianity" is also not "a" religion, it is an umbrella comprising such widely diverse groups as the Greek Orthodox Church and the Shakers.

It is generally defined as a pre-Christian state

By whom? This definition isn't used by The Free Dictionary, or by Merriam-Webster, or by Webster's/Dictionary.com, or by American Heritage. In fact, I think Chucky made it up.

It takes a wide variety of forms—all the way from relatively benign New Age-style nature worship, to pantheism, to witchcraft, and even human sacrifice.

Can I just say, holy shit?

The Moral Of The Story

Moral waivers or is that morality wavering? Either way, we no longer have the moral high ground, as if we ever did, and the body count of innocents (military and civilians) continues to increase. And no, I don't think this was the reason they hid this report. They didn't want the public to have the information, it might have made the election results worse than they already were for the warmongers.

Though Bargewell completed his secret report in June 2006, it has not been publicly released because of ongoing criminal investigations of three Marines on murder allegations and four Marine officers who allegedly failed to look into the case. Bargewell's report, now unclassified, focuses on the reporting of the incident and the training and command climate within the Marine Corps leadership; it does not address the actual incident in detail.

The officer in charge, Lt. Kallop is getting immunity to testify against his troops. Exactly when are the so-called superiors going to take responsibility for any of the tragedies in this debacle? From Abu Ghraib to Pat Tillman to Abeer Hamza to Haditha, the only ones who pay are the troops and the civilians. What's up with that?

When we were stationed in Germany, we lived on the economy (off base) and most of the troops referred to the German citizens as Herbies (after the original Love Bug, not the Lindsey Lohan remake!). It wasn't nice, it wasn't polite, but we were generally respectful of the people and obeyed their laws and customs, of which the beer drinking was very popular for some reason and speeding along the autobahn just rocked, usually when a BMW or Mercedes blew past my Gremlin.

Things are different now, we treat the Iraqis like they are interlopers in their own country. We force them to identify themselves, to stop their cars on a dime or be shot, we burst into their homes unannounced, shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe. Meanwhile, back here in the States, we have no empathy for those who are injured or killed. As people rush to help the Virgina Tech survivors, we act like this is the biggest tragedy in the world. A tragedy that is suffered daily by the Iraqi and Afghanis (remember them?) and we expect them to pick up their lives and go on as if nothing has happened. Until the next time, which can be in just a few minutes, hours or days.

There is a whole generation of children who are growing up knowing nothing but war and suicide bombers, not unlike the Palestinians and the Lebanese, except that we are the perpetrators of the Iraq war. We started it and we are incapable of finishing it. We are responsible for every innocent man, woman and child who have been, and will continue to be, maimed and killed by our actions. And our inactions.

It is no longer possible to convince the world that we are right, because we aren't. We can drop all the Number Twos we want, the smell of this debacle will never improve. Nobody believes us anymore, we don't even believe our own government and we certainly don't believe their reports.

The only moral to this story seems to be to do unto others what you think they are going to do to you, but do it first and leave no survivors. And people are wondering why our kids feel so disenfranchised and react with violence.

Crossposted at Debsweb.

A Girl And Her Dog

Hello there, my name is Deb, and Tom graciously extended an invitation to join this community of great bloggers, wonderful ideas and cool comment. So, I thought I would start with something that is near to my heart but I'm not foaming at the mouth with rage. Yet.

My pug is the love of my life. Shai Shai is my best friend and companion and even though she's my baby, she is not my child. She is an individual personality all by her little compact self and seldom has difficulty conveying her wants, needs or desires. She is manipulative, cute and adorable, while at the same time, uncomplicated. Chances are that she will never change. I like that. If someone deliberately harmed her, it would hurt me beyond belief.

Quite a few pet owners feel the same way. When you have made a true commitment to another being, be it a significant other, child or pet, your heart and soul are changed in deep and sometimes profound ways. Some people have pets because it occupies their time, they always had pets or some other superficial excuse. These are the same people, that when they move or it becomes inconvenient in any way, will dispose of the animal any way possible. From having the animal put to sleep, to giving it away, to simply abandoning it. There are those who train their animals to be vicious or they ignore and abuse them. I don't count them as being real pets, more like innocent substitutes for misplaced aggression and rage.

After Katrina, people were concerned about the pets of New Orleans and many people opened their hearts and homes to the animal refugees. Americans that didn't care about the people who were suffering, were willing to risk life and limb to save the animals. And that's sort of okay because those animals deserved to be saved. They shouldn't have been left at home to ride out the storm in the first place. How stupid do you have to be to leave a living, breathing animal when you have been given the order to evacuate? If it's dangerous for you, it is even more dangerous for them.

Retailers have been quick to jump on the animal bandwagon. From the rhinestone collars (yes, she had one) to designer clothing (a coat to keep her warm, she's black and doesn't have a double coat) to pet food and everything in between (Doggles), something is for sale. And it's almost always expensive. What people won't do for themselves, they might do for their animals.

This is one of the reasons why the pet food recall is so bad. People don't expect their animals to be suffering and dying from the food that they're being fed. The commercials make it look like you are doing the best for your pet and now it turns out that with every meal, people have been accidentally killing their best friends and companions one loving mouthful after the next. Which makes this LA Times story's timing so interesting. What is my dog's life worth? Quite a bit actually.

Would I expect to be compensated for my dog if she was harmed by a manufacturer or my neighbor? You bet I would. And handsomely. Even if you got your dog from the pound (I didn't, she cost me a thousand), there are vet bills, toys, and the ever popular food. Some people pay for obedience training and other courses for their pets. There is time, love and energy that has been devoted to these little bundles of joy and amusement. The unconditional love they give in return is almost priceless. Almost.

This pet food recall is a horrible situation for all involved, but it reflects a deeper problem with the food system. Filler not food, which goes a long way toward expanding the waistline. As ingredients are imported from other countries, we no longer have any idea what we are eating, macrobiotics and health food people will be most affected by this latest wrinkle.

An old rule of thumb for me used to be; if it couldn't be pronounced, it didn't need to be eaten. If it isn't recognizable as a vitamin or mineral, it didn't need to be eaten. If it involved some torturous process to make it digestible, it didn't need to be eaten. The same goes for my dog. How about you?

Crossposted at Debsweb.

Update: Added a link.

The Tempest Smith Foundation

While in Michigan, I learned about the Tempest Smith Foundation.

Tempest Smith was twelve years old when she committed suicide. Her diary indicates that her despair arose from the bullying and harrassment she endured from classmates because she was Pagan. She was a shy girl who dressed in Goth clothing and identified as Wiccan.

Her mother, Denessa Smith, formed TSF to promote religious tolerance and education. Its main activities are speaking engagements, awareness activities (like Tie-Dye for Tolerance) and distribution of literature, as well as interfacing with other charitable organizations.

The Smith family is from Michigan, and Tempest's suicide rocked the local Pagan community. Everyone at ConVocation seemed deeply touched by Tempest's tragic death, and there was a great deal of activity and fundraising for TSF at the event. At the end of ConVocation, TSF was named the official charity of ConVocation.

But that's not what I want to tell you about.

The entire time I was in Michigan, I kept myself distant from the whole TSF thing. I looked at it and thought, 'These people all know each other, and this is for them. I don't know anything about this.' And y'know, that seemed reasonable. I travel all over the U.S. and the world, and every local Pagan community has their thing, and I'm an outsider. So stay an outsider, that's cool, that's fine.

Until the last day.

As I was exiting closing ritual, Denessa Smith grabbed me and handed me squares for the quilts that they make (to use as visual reminders in the tolerance events) and asked me to bring them home, decorate them however I liked, and mail them back to her. "Take two", she said.

(I was really stuck. She had me by the arm. And called me "My Lady.")

And I said, "Okay, I'll give one to my son. He's a teenager..."

Sobs.

Huge. Fucking. Wracking. Sobs.

I was 100% blindsided by this. I had zero emotion about Tempest Smith until I had all the emotion in my body. And with Denessa and I hugging and me still crying I realized that all my stuff about being distant and an outsider and not a part of this charity had nothing to do with anything except my need to stay away from mothers of dead children, from the notion of the hint of the possibility that a mother could lose her teenage child.

So. Yes. Arthur and I will be making quilt squares together.

Oh, and you can donate or get literature.

(Cross-posted for maximum message distribution.)