29 December 2010
Vacation blogging
Light blogging. The kiddo's off school for the week, money's too tight to go out of town, and we're re-arranging furniture.
28 December 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, -- note, this week we're downstairs again -- where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Is it New Year's Day yet?
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Is it New Year's Day yet?
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
25 December 2010
Real Christmas spirit from the Kinks
In recognition of Christmas, my continued underemployment, and the Senate's ratification of the START treaty, video from a Kinks performance for West German television:
Give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one
He's got lots of mouths to feed --
But if you've got one I'll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street
Give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one
He's got lots of mouths to feed --
But if you've got one I'll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street
24 December 2010
21 December 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, -- note, this week we're downstairs -- where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Another year, another round of buying gifts for friends and family who already have everything they need and the disposable income to get just about anything else they want. Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Another year, another round of buying gifts for friends and family who already have everything they need and the disposable income to get just about anything else they want. Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
18 December 2010
The reports of the death of the American streetcar are greatly exagerrated
CNN article about the pros and cons of streetcars begs a huge question in its headline ("Can streetcars save America's cities?" assumes that America's cities are all dying or in decline), and omits any mention of Philadelphia, where multiple trolley lines began operating in the 1890s, and where the system has been running its subway-surface lines continuously since the tunnel between City Hall and West Philadelphia was completed in 1906. The Victorian rowhouses that comprise much of West Philly were constructed in this era, when the neighborhoods were built up as some of the first "bedroom communities" in the U.S. Now they're federally recognized as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District.
Dig an interesting annotated history of the 34 trolley at the website of Studio 34, a yoga and wellness center on the Baltimore Avenue line.
Of course, many of Philadelphia's streetcars have been replaced by buses since the olden days -- the #23 bus is a huge example: though its rails are still in the pavement and its catenary wire is still overhead, the trolley route was was changed to bus service in 1992. But then again, SEPTA put "heritage" streetcars back on Girard Avenue's route 15 in 2005, after they'd given it the Route 23 treatment.
Philadelphia's subway-surface lines provide one of the easiest, quickest routes to get from Center City to multiple points in West Philadelphia: the hospitals (CHOP, UPenn, the VA, Presbyterian, and Penn's veterinary hospital), movie houses, Penn/Drexel/USciences, Clark Park, and any number of interesting restaurants, cafés, and gastropubs. Go a little farther out and you can get to Bartram's Garden; a few historic cemeteries; drug territories patrolled by thugs on ATVs; and Darby, birthplace of W.C. Fields. And that's not even mentioning the interurban lines: the 101 and 102 trolleys serving the towns of Media and Sharon Hill, and the 100 light rail serving Norristown. These vehicles carry tens of thousands of people around southeastern Pennsylvania daily (PDF). While a lot of Philadelphia's streetcar service was replaced long ago by diesel and now hybrid-diesel buses, I think it's a significant omission to leave out Philly's heavily used trolleys in a national news article about streetcars.
Dig an interesting annotated history of the 34 trolley at the website of Studio 34, a yoga and wellness center on the Baltimore Avenue line.
Of course, many of Philadelphia's streetcars have been replaced by buses since the olden days -- the #23 bus is a huge example: though its rails are still in the pavement and its catenary wire is still overhead, the trolley route was was changed to bus service in 1992. But then again, SEPTA put "heritage" streetcars back on Girard Avenue's route 15 in 2005, after they'd given it the Route 23 treatment.
Philadelphia's subway-surface lines provide one of the easiest, quickest routes to get from Center City to multiple points in West Philadelphia: the hospitals (CHOP, UPenn, the VA, Presbyterian, and Penn's veterinary hospital), movie houses, Penn/Drexel/USciences, Clark Park, and any number of interesting restaurants, cafés, and gastropubs. Go a little farther out and you can get to Bartram's Garden; a few historic cemeteries; drug territories patrolled by thugs on ATVs; and Darby, birthplace of W.C. Fields. And that's not even mentioning the interurban lines: the 101 and 102 trolleys serving the towns of Media and Sharon Hill, and the 100 light rail serving Norristown. These vehicles carry tens of thousands of people around southeastern Pennsylvania daily (PDF). While a lot of Philadelphia's streetcar service was replaced long ago by diesel and now hybrid-diesel buses, I think it's a significant omission to leave out Philly's heavily used trolleys in a national news article about streetcars.
Kenz serial killer's latest victim was on the street because she had no health insurance
From today's Daily News, regarding the Kensington serial killer's latest victim, Casey Mahoney, focuses on how it's "eerie" that Mahoney (like everybody else on social networking websites) filled out a quiz recently that asked, among other things, how she'd prefer to die. But there's another, far more important and "eerie" fact buried in the article:
In another article, a 30-year-old local man is quoted, addressing the police theory that the strangler is a customer who contracted HIV from a prostitute and is exacting revenge:
Mahoney graduated from high school in North Carolina, according to her MySpace page, and previously lived in New York City. She first came to Philadelphia to attend a drug-rehab clinic, Mahoney's mother-in-law told CBS3 yesterday, but she was forced to leave because of a lack of insurance. She went home to enter another clinic, but left after just a week and returned to Philadelphia this week[.]Mahoney leaves behind a toddler. If drug-control enforcement money were focused on the right things -- treatment, vocational rehabilitation, and work placement, as well as investigating and prosecuting reported sex crimes and violence on the Ave, rather than serially arresting and imprisoning the women -- then Mahoney's toddler might still have a mom today.
In another article, a 30-year-old local man is quoted, addressing the police theory that the strangler is a customer who contracted HIV from a prostitute and is exacting revenge:
He got burnt. Do you know what that means? It means he was with a hooker and she gave him a disease. [ ... ] He's going after as many white hookers as he can. Put yourself in his shoes, do you blame him?How many other residents have this attitude? How many cops?
14 December 2010
Capital One's "terroristic debt collection" lawsuit
Pennsylvania civil procedure requires fact pleading, which is more detailed than the minimal notice pleading you need for most federal civil cases. So here's what you get when you pit a Philadelphia lawyer versus Capital One credit cards in a lawsuit for violation of various provisions of the Pennsylvania Fair Credit Extension Uniformity Act (73 P.S. § 2270.1 et seq.) and Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (73 P.S. §§ 201-1 – 201-9.2):
26. Apparently believing that Plaintiff, her then-counsel and debt collection in general to be some sort of fanciful and humorous endeavor, Defendant sent its next letter dated August 25, 2009, giving Plaintiff the shock of her life.(PDF, and all emphasis as in original.) Plaintiff apparently was, indeed, behind in her credit card payments. So Capital One sued -- for that $286 million -- but then never showed up to court. Her attorney calls it "terroristic debt collection," and I hope they get punitive damages, too.
27. Defendant's letter dated August 25, 2009 indicated a balance and demanded payment of TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-SIX MILLION, SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS ($286,651,237.00) on the Capital One account ending in 3345!! A true and correct copy of the August 25, 2009 letter is attached hereto as Exhibit "F".
[ ... ]
34. Capital One's advertising slogan "what's in your wallet?" is promoted across the media, including television, radio and internet, [trumpeting] the value of its product.
35. Capital One apparently wanted to know not only [what] was in Plaintiff's wallet, but intended to empty her wallet as well.
36. Capital One never placed $286,651,237.00 in Plaintiff's wallet, pocketbook or, bank account.
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Julian Assange's OkCupid profile.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Julian Assange's OkCupid profile.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
13 December 2010
Fattah will vote to continue the Bush tax cuts for billionaires
Chaka Fattah, R-Pa., believes in trickle-down fairies and will be voting for the tax breaks for billionaires (fattah.house.gov).
10 December 2010
My law firm is not seeking interns
A few days ago I got e-mail from someone who'd found my profile on a dating site I used to frequent. My profile indicates that I'm a second-career attorney currently building a two-person practice here in Philadelphia. This guy stumbled across my profile, said he was thinking of going to law school, and (1) wanted to hear my opinion about it, and (2) wondered if my firm was interested in taking on an intern.
I told him not to go to law school, for a lot of reasons, many if not all of which Above the Law touched upon a couple of days later in their discussion about the University of Delaware's preliminary plans for starting up a new law school down there in Newark. But before I answered the internship question, I looked at the guy's profile. In it, he indicated that he is currently in law school. I switched back to the message window and clicked "send" without addressing the question about an internship, and here's why.
1 - My firm is not looking for an intern, paid or otherwise.
2 - Even if my firm were looking for an intern, I wouldn't hire a candidate who approached me via a dating website rather than a networking website.
3 - Even if my firm were looking for an intern that we were willing to hire based on an inquiry via a dating website, we wouldn't hire someone who says in e-mail that he's considering going to law school, but who says in his profile that he is currently a law student. Though I bet checking his references would be good for a few giggles.
I told him not to go to law school, for a lot of reasons, many if not all of which Above the Law touched upon a couple of days later in their discussion about the University of Delaware's preliminary plans for starting up a new law school down there in Newark. But before I answered the internship question, I looked at the guy's profile. In it, he indicated that he is currently in law school. I switched back to the message window and clicked "send" without addressing the question about an internship, and here's why.
1 - My firm is not looking for an intern, paid or otherwise.
2 - Even if my firm were looking for an intern, I wouldn't hire a candidate who approached me via a dating website rather than a networking website.
3 - Even if my firm were looking for an intern that we were willing to hire based on an inquiry via a dating website, we wouldn't hire someone who says in e-mail that he's considering going to law school, but who says in his profile that he is currently a law student. Though I bet checking his references would be good for a few giggles.
Hate crime numbers are down in Mississippi . . .
. . . when the figures are voluntarily self-reported by law enforcement (WLBT-TV). The ACLU says they'd like to see the state legislature require hate crime identification training as well as mandatory data gathering and reporting. As it is, ACLU and a professor at the nearby law school figure the police are categorizing hate crimes as merely assaults and property crimes.
09 December 2010
Jeff Deeney takes a colleague and a camera to the Ave
While the Philly P.D. have been twiddling their thumbs about women in Kensington getting picked off for months by a serial killer, and while other journalists in the city get their stories from police news conferences and data they can gather over the Internet, Jeff Deeney took a Newsweek Daily Beast colleague with a video camera over to the Ave to talk to the actual people who live and work around there. See the results: a woman talks about how the police don't act on reports of rape when the complainant is a drug-sick prostitute; a former addict gives a sightseeing tour of an area where people go to shoot up or die; and a mother of two describes fear and loathing under the El.
Somebody's "criminally negligent," but it ain't the parents
The Raw Story is having a field day with the unfortunate choice of words by conservative editor and pundit Kate O'Beirne of the National Review, who says,
By contrast, in 2009, the Department of Defense spent about $4.4 billion per month on the war in Afghanistan (PDF).
My point, and I do have one, is two-fold. One, obviously, reimbursing a school to the tune of $1.50 per hot breakfast served is not a very large expense. A program that costs, on a yearly basis, less than the cost of waging war for three weeks is not something the elimination of which will do much to reduce the federal deficit. And of course it's penny-wise, pound-foolish to make nutrition even harder to obtain for kids who are at-risk socioeconomically and academically in the first place, when it's well known that the better a kid eats, the better she'll do in school (click to page 2). So advocating for the end of federally funded free and reduced-fee lunches is just stupid on two levels: the savings wouldn't amount to anything significant, and it would create further academic and disciplinary problems among disadvantaged kids and the teachers and the other students around them.
My second point, though, is that, um, to tell the truth, I don't 100% disagree with O'Beirne's point -- very, very badly expressed -- that parents should give their kids breakfast, and it's not that hard. Now, I don't think it's "criminal" or "negligent." Rather, I think it's a lack of good old-fashioned home economics education. Because you know what, a breakfast of oatmeal and a banana is cheap and nutritious. Bananas are regularly 69 cents a pound and a paperboard canister of generic old-fashioned oats can be had for about $4.00. I don't mean a box of packets of pre-sweetened, flavored, instant oats; or a tin can of imported Irish oats; or a sack of organic, gluten-free, hippie-friendly oats; or paper cups of express-instant oatmeal. I mean a paperboard can of store-brand, non-instant, old-fashioned oats.
So if bananas are 69 cents per pound, and one banana weighs about a quarter pound; and if you use 1/2 cup of oatmeal from a $4.00 canister that holds about 7 cups of oatmeal; then you have a breakfast that costs about 18 cents plus 29 cents, or less than 50 cents per kid. Plus the cost of water and cooking energy, which is not completely negligible, but which adds at most a nickel to the calculus.
It's not the world's best breakfast. A growing kid wants and needs more than a half-cup (before cooking) of oatmeal and a single banana; most kids need some protein, like milk or yogurt or an egg or something, or else they'll get hungry long before lunchtime. But if you don't have much money, this is a cheap way to get calories and nutrition into a kid in the morning.
A destitute household may not have a microwave oven. But very, very few households are so desperate that they have no stove, whether gas or electric, or no electric at all for a crockpot (you can get a new one for $15) or a plug-in electric kettle (they start at about $15). I'm not saying that households that desperate don't exist in the U.S.; I'm saying that this kind of household needs more than a blog post on home economics.
And, no, I don't live in a blasted-out neighborhood in North Philadelphia, or an out-of-the-way hamlet in Appalachia with no jobs, tax base, or public services. We have heat in the winter and A/C in the summer; my daughter has her own room and her own bed; and I have the education and the skills to fill my pantry with cheap, nutritious foods acquired in bulk when they go on sale. I have a reliable safety net with my friends and family, and my ex-husband hasn't missed a support payment yet. So I can be accused of having a huge blind spot to the realities of feeding the kids when there is zero, and I mean zero, money in the house, and it's another week before the assistance check arrives. But I hope I'm not in the same place as the law professor who told me, when I was passed over for summer funding for a public-interest internship, that she knew where I was coming from because, she explained, she had briefly been a social worker in New York City. (I confess I lost my temper and asked her less than tactfully if she would like to tell my daughter that we'd be having spaghetti again for dinner that night, and probably for the rest of the summer as well.)
But in the end, calling parents "criminally negligent" doesn't help the debate. Ad hominem attacks deflect from the real point, which I presume -- but can't be sure because her comment was so stupid and inflammatory -- for O'Beirne was federal fiscal responsibility. And I want to stand by my real point that you can feed your family cheaply and nutritiously, if you educate yourself, avoid convenience and junk foods, and equip your kitchen with some basic tools. But when rich people call poor people "criminally negligent," people like The Raw Story get their panties in a twist about the wrong problem. It isn't rich people hating poor people. That is a problem, but it's not going to go away when websites fan the class-war flames by posting unflattering photos and quotes from Rush Limbaugh. The important problem is that statistic up there, which is, holy crap, over 11 million children in the U.S. use the school breakfast program. That is more than 1 in 10 American kids (Census.gov). And let me tell you, that's not just "urban" kids or immigrant "anchor babies."
You know what, I'll bite anyway. Kate O'Beirne, on what insane planet do you live where it is "criminally negligent" to make sure your children get fed? When your fridge is empty, when it takes two buses and a trolley to get to a decent supermarket, when your child's father hasn't made a support payment in years, and when it's another ten days to your loan disbursement or your paycheck or your TANF or SSI check, how do you feed your kids? If you're smart and lucky like me, your kid gets spaghetti for dinner every day for half a month, because I stocked up last time the generic spaghetti went on super discount, and I live in a home where I got the big cabinet in the marital property split and I don't have to worry about break-ins. But if I'd sent my daughter to get free breakfast from the city that summer, that would have made me a "criminally negligent" parent? What an abhorrent opinion. It's another case of poor people being damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Anyway, the rich people kind of got what they wanted. According to the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 pays for expanded access to the USDA breakfast program by cutting food stamp benefits by $59 per month. That's a lot of oatmeal and bananas.
My question is what poor excuse for a parent can't rustle up a bowl of cereal and a banana? I just don't get why millions of school children qualify for school breakfasts unless we have a major wide spread problem with child neglect. If that's how many parents are incapable of pulling together a bowl of cereal and a banana, then we have problems that are way bigger than -- that problem can't be solved with a school breakfast, because we have parents who are just [...] criminally negligent with respect to raising children.O'Beirne is referring to the USDA's school breakfast program, which reimburses schools in cash for serving breakfasts to kids in need. Kids can get a free or reduced-price breakfast depending on where their family's income level lies on the federally-defined poverty scale. In fiscal 2009, of the 11.1 million kids who participated in the federal school breakfast program every day, 9.1 million got their breakfast for free or for a reduced price. The program cost $2.9 billion in 2009 (PDF).
By contrast, in 2009, the Department of Defense spent about $4.4 billion per month on the war in Afghanistan (PDF).
My point, and I do have one, is two-fold. One, obviously, reimbursing a school to the tune of $1.50 per hot breakfast served is not a very large expense. A program that costs, on a yearly basis, less than the cost of waging war for three weeks is not something the elimination of which will do much to reduce the federal deficit. And of course it's penny-wise, pound-foolish to make nutrition even harder to obtain for kids who are at-risk socioeconomically and academically in the first place, when it's well known that the better a kid eats, the better she'll do in school (click to page 2). So advocating for the end of federally funded free and reduced-fee lunches is just stupid on two levels: the savings wouldn't amount to anything significant, and it would create further academic and disciplinary problems among disadvantaged kids and the teachers and the other students around them.
My second point, though, is that, um, to tell the truth, I don't 100% disagree with O'Beirne's point -- very, very badly expressed -- that parents should give their kids breakfast, and it's not that hard. Now, I don't think it's "criminal" or "negligent." Rather, I think it's a lack of good old-fashioned home economics education. Because you know what, a breakfast of oatmeal and a banana is cheap and nutritious. Bananas are regularly 69 cents a pound and a paperboard canister of generic old-fashioned oats can be had for about $4.00. I don't mean a box of packets of pre-sweetened, flavored, instant oats; or a tin can of imported Irish oats; or a sack of organic, gluten-free, hippie-friendly oats; or paper cups of express-instant oatmeal. I mean a paperboard can of store-brand, non-instant, old-fashioned oats.
So if bananas are 69 cents per pound, and one banana weighs about a quarter pound; and if you use 1/2 cup of oatmeal from a $4.00 canister that holds about 7 cups of oatmeal; then you have a breakfast that costs about 18 cents plus 29 cents, or less than 50 cents per kid. Plus the cost of water and cooking energy, which is not completely negligible, but which adds at most a nickel to the calculus.
It's not the world's best breakfast. A growing kid wants and needs more than a half-cup (before cooking) of oatmeal and a single banana; most kids need some protein, like milk or yogurt or an egg or something, or else they'll get hungry long before lunchtime. But if you don't have much money, this is a cheap way to get calories and nutrition into a kid in the morning.
A destitute household may not have a microwave oven. But very, very few households are so desperate that they have no stove, whether gas or electric, or no electric at all for a crockpot (you can get a new one for $15) or a plug-in electric kettle (they start at about $15). I'm not saying that households that desperate don't exist in the U.S.; I'm saying that this kind of household needs more than a blog post on home economics.
And, no, I don't live in a blasted-out neighborhood in North Philadelphia, or an out-of-the-way hamlet in Appalachia with no jobs, tax base, or public services. We have heat in the winter and A/C in the summer; my daughter has her own room and her own bed; and I have the education and the skills to fill my pantry with cheap, nutritious foods acquired in bulk when they go on sale. I have a reliable safety net with my friends and family, and my ex-husband hasn't missed a support payment yet. So I can be accused of having a huge blind spot to the realities of feeding the kids when there is zero, and I mean zero, money in the house, and it's another week before the assistance check arrives. But I hope I'm not in the same place as the law professor who told me, when I was passed over for summer funding for a public-interest internship, that she knew where I was coming from because, she explained, she had briefly been a social worker in New York City. (I confess I lost my temper and asked her less than tactfully if she would like to tell my daughter that we'd be having spaghetti again for dinner that night, and probably for the rest of the summer as well.)
But in the end, calling parents "criminally negligent" doesn't help the debate. Ad hominem attacks deflect from the real point, which I presume -- but can't be sure because her comment was so stupid and inflammatory -- for O'Beirne was federal fiscal responsibility. And I want to stand by my real point that you can feed your family cheaply and nutritiously, if you educate yourself, avoid convenience and junk foods, and equip your kitchen with some basic tools. But when rich people call poor people "criminally negligent," people like The Raw Story get their panties in a twist about the wrong problem. It isn't rich people hating poor people. That is a problem, but it's not going to go away when websites fan the class-war flames by posting unflattering photos and quotes from Rush Limbaugh. The important problem is that statistic up there, which is, holy crap, over 11 million children in the U.S. use the school breakfast program. That is more than 1 in 10 American kids (Census.gov). And let me tell you, that's not just "urban" kids or immigrant "anchor babies."
You know what, I'll bite anyway. Kate O'Beirne, on what insane planet do you live where it is "criminally negligent" to make sure your children get fed? When your fridge is empty, when it takes two buses and a trolley to get to a decent supermarket, when your child's father hasn't made a support payment in years, and when it's another ten days to your loan disbursement or your paycheck or your TANF or SSI check, how do you feed your kids? If you're smart and lucky like me, your kid gets spaghetti for dinner every day for half a month, because I stocked up last time the generic spaghetti went on super discount, and I live in a home where I got the big cabinet in the marital property split and I don't have to worry about break-ins. But if I'd sent my daughter to get free breakfast from the city that summer, that would have made me a "criminally negligent" parent? What an abhorrent opinion. It's another case of poor people being damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Anyway, the rich people kind of got what they wanted. According to the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 pays for expanded access to the USDA breakfast program by cutting food stamp benefits by $59 per month. That's a lot of oatmeal and bananas.
07 December 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Three murders and three non-fatal sexual assaults means we've got a serial killer here in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Be safe out there!
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Three murders and three non-fatal sexual assaults means we've got a serial killer here in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Be safe out there!
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
06 December 2010
Honestly, I can't care about the tax cut debate
Blah, blah, blah, Bush tax cuts for millionaires, blah blah.
I'm still severely underemployed and my dad keeps sending me want ads for opening-level secretarial jobs in the Delaware courts. By which I mean to say, I would care about tax cuts if it looked as though I'd have any taxable income by the end of the year!
So go ahead, Congress. Keep the millionaire's tax cuts, continue repeating trickle-down nonsense, reinstate the jobless benefits extension, blow the deficit to incomprehensible proportions, and starve the middle class until there's no middle class left. Maybe we need Hoovervilles again. But I can't care any more.
I'm still severely underemployed and my dad keeps sending me want ads for opening-level secretarial jobs in the Delaware courts. By which I mean to say, I would care about tax cuts if it looked as though I'd have any taxable income by the end of the year!
So go ahead, Congress. Keep the millionaire's tax cuts, continue repeating trickle-down nonsense, reinstate the jobless benefits extension, blow the deficit to incomprehensible proportions, and starve the middle class until there's no middle class left. Maybe we need Hoovervilles again. But I can't care any more.
01 December 2010
Kensington Strangler still not found
Jeff Deeney was on the radio yesterday discussing the still active serial woman-killer in Kensington. After at least 4 recent strangulations -- 2 fatal -- there has not yet been an arrest. A couple of weeks ago, Jeff summarized the reason why:
The city of Philadelphia’s moralistic approach to prostitution that essentially condones sexual violence as a reasonable outcome for a fallen woman to suffer is total fucking bullshit. Better approaches to dealing with prostitution shouldn’t require a serial killer bringing a national spotlight on it in order to have real action after years of status quo.
30 November 2010
"A perfect market requires perfect information"
[Forbes:] What do you think WikiLeaks mean for business? How do businesses need to adjust to a world where WikiLeaks exists?The leak I'm waiting for is, what's in it all for Julian Assange? I mean, if you think he's doing this out of the goodness of his heart, I have a bridge to sell you. Who's paying him?
[Julian Assange:] WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this. I think about the case in China where milk powder companies started cutting the protein in milk powder with plastics. That happened at a number of separate manufacturers.
Let’s say you want to run a good company. It’s nice to have an ethical workplace. Your employees are much less likely to screw you over if they’re not screwing other people over.
Then one company starts cutting their milk powder with melamine, and becomes more profitable. You can follow suit, or slowly go bankrupt and the one that’s cutting its milk powder will take you over. That’s the worst of all possible outcomes.
The other possibility is that the first one to cut its milk powder is exposed. Then you don’t have to cut your milk powder. There’s a threat of regulation that produces self-regulation.
It just means that it’s easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more effected negatively by leaks than honest businesses. That’s the whole idea. In the struggle between open and honest companies and dishonest and closed companies, we’re creating a tremendous reputational tax on the unethical companies.
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Thanksgiving ain't over until the fat lady has finished all the pie in the fridge.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Thanksgiving ain't over until the fat lady has finished all the pie in the fridge.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
24 November 2010
State lawmaker in Minnesota totes gun around closed Planned Parenthood office, offers a disturbing excuse
A Republican state representative in Minnesota was briefly detained after a curious exchange in the parking lot of a Planned Parenthood on Tuesday 16 November. Thomas Hackbarth drove into the lot, placed a fully loaded gun in his waistband, got out of his truck, and walked around the back of the building. A security guard saw the gun and called police, who arrived as Hackbarth was about to drive away. Hackbarth, who has a CCP, is listed as co-author of a concern-troll bill about "coerced abortions" that adds paperwork and notification procedures for women seeking abortions, a bill that mandates piss tests for welfare recipients, and a "Tenther" bill. He says it was mere coincidence that the parking lot he ended up in was one for a Planned Parenthood. Rather, he explains, he was only looking for somebody he met online:
And it's not that big of a parking lot.
I dug a little more and found that that the Highland Park clinic is the only Planned Parenthood in Minnesota that performs abortions; the others offer healthcare and counseling but can give only abortion referrals. When the general goal of most anti-choice legislation is to regulate abortions out of existence by making them more and more cumbersome and expensive to obtain, it's hard for me to believe that a lawmaker as anti-choice as Hackbarth doesn't know the location of the last remaining Planned Parenthood performing abortions in his own state.
But, OK, let's buy it and see where it gets us. Maybe he really didn't know that it was a Planned Parenthood, the only one in Minnesota offering abortions; maybe the floodlight was out and the streetlights didn't reach the sign. It's not his neighborhood, and really he spends more time co-authoring bills about hunting, casinos, and alcohol than about abortion. Did you dig his excuse for going out with his fully-loaded gun in his belt? He was stalking a woman who declined a second date with him.
Hackbarth said he had coffee with the woman on Nov. 15, and asked her to dinner the next night but she told him she couldn't because of a commitment she had with a female friend in Highland Park. Hackbarth said he felt that she might have been seeing a man instead, so he parked his car and walked around the block looking for her car. [ ... ] "I didn't even know it was Planned Parenthood," [Hackbarth] said.Well, a little bit of googlemapping and a streetview shows that the clinic has the standard "Planned Parenthood" logo clearly attached to the front of the building there. It was night, but the daytime streetview shows a floodlight there next to the security cameras.
And it's not that big of a parking lot.
I dug a little more and found that that the Highland Park clinic is the only Planned Parenthood in Minnesota that performs abortions; the others offer healthcare and counseling but can give only abortion referrals. When the general goal of most anti-choice legislation is to regulate abortions out of existence by making them more and more cumbersome and expensive to obtain, it's hard for me to believe that a lawmaker as anti-choice as Hackbarth doesn't know the location of the last remaining Planned Parenthood performing abortions in his own state.
But, OK, let's buy it and see where it gets us. Maybe he really didn't know that it was a Planned Parenthood, the only one in Minnesota offering abortions; maybe the floodlight was out and the streetlights didn't reach the sign. It's not his neighborhood, and really he spends more time co-authoring bills about hunting, casinos, and alcohol than about abortion. Did you dig his excuse for going out with his fully-loaded gun in his belt? He was stalking a woman who declined a second date with him.
"I was not a jealous boyfriend," said [protested too much?] Hackbarth, who is in the process of divorcing his wife of 25 years. "I was just trying to check up on her. It's totally a misunderstanding."He stopped in the empty parking lot of a closed, full-service Planned Parenthood clinic to "check up on" someone who told him no, thanks to a relationship. This is not a "misunderstanding"; this is a pretty damn clear case of stalking, and I'm glad that the woman spotted Hackbarth's creepiness before she accepted a dinner date with him.
23 November 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Though "[t]here has never been an explosive found on a flight from one U.S. city to another" according to one TSA administrator (CNN), undertrained federal security staff from coast to coast have been feeling up children, accidentally spilling ostomy bags, and forcing show-and-tells of breast prostheses, all in the name of anti-terrorism security. Are you planning to travel by air for Thanksgiving? Will you participate in National Opt-Out Day's statement against the backscatter x-rays and TSA gropers? And is that a naked picture of my ex-husband on National Opt-Out Day's homepage?
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Though "[t]here has never been an explosive found on a flight from one U.S. city to another" according to one TSA administrator (CNN), undertrained federal security staff from coast to coast have been feeling up children, accidentally spilling ostomy bags, and forcing show-and-tells of breast prostheses, all in the name of anti-terrorism security. Are you planning to travel by air for Thanksgiving? Will you participate in National Opt-Out Day's statement against the backscatter x-rays and TSA gropers? And is that a naked picture of my ex-husband on National Opt-Out Day's homepage?
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
19 November 2010
When abortions are illegal, women will still get abortions (Thailand edition)
Thai police say they have found the remains of more than 2,000 foetuses, thought to be from illegal abortions, hidden at a Buddhist temple in Bangkok.(BBC.) Thailand's anti-abortion law restricts the procedure to women and girls who are victims of incest, or whose pregnancies endanger their health. (Note that Senator-elect Toomey, R-Pa., wants an even stricter anti-abortion law than Thailand's.) When one clinic had to close because the provider moved (MSNBC), there was still enough demand for abortion services that a non-doctor stepped in. Abortion in the first two trimesters -- and especially in the first few weeks -- is, really, a straightforward procedure. But it's still safest in a regulated medical clinic, with trained and licensed professionals at hand, and with emergency facilities within easy reach. In Thailand, though,
[w]ealthy women can get abortions in safe facilities but the vast majority of Thai women wanting an abortion use clinics which could put their health and safety at great risk, [the BBC's] correspondent says.When abortions are illegal or hard to obtain, women will still get abortions. They just get ones in less than ideal conditions (or outright dangerous, unsanitary conditions), or they have higher-risk abortions because they've had to delay the procedure until later in the pregnancy, or they delay treatment for complications for fear of legal consequences.
But they still get abortions, and you get horrific situations like this one.
18 November 2010
Three pieces of bad news for women this week
It's been an unhappy week in women's news at the Glomarization homestead.
First, though the lame-duck Senate had nothing to lose, they killed the Paycheck Fairness Act anyway. It wouldn't have made anything newly illegal, but it would have uncapped punitive and compensatory damages against employers who were proven to engage in sex-based wage discrimination, and it would have limited the number ofexcuses legal defenses an employer could use in a lawsuit. When I say "uncapped compensatory damages," that means just what it sounds like it means: if you prove that you were underpaid because of sex discrimination on account of you're a woman, you may not necessarily win back all the pay that you were otherwise rightfully owed, because there's a cap on compensatory damages. Never mind that there should or should not be a cap on extra, punitive awards over and above the actual deficit in what you were owed -- but as the law is, you can't always get even what the employer should have been fairly writing on your paycheck. This bill would have fixed that unfairness in the damages equation. Here's some context: there have been equal pay laws in place in England since 1970 and France since 1972, but here in the U.S. all the real or imaginary extensions to the deadline to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment expired in 1982, three-state strategy notwithstanding.
Second, there's a serial woman-killer on the loose in Kensington. Over on Phawker, Jeff Deeney calls a spade a spade and says that the police are letting the women have their just deserts for getting addicted and then streetwalking to pay for it. And if that isn't a reasonable social solution to the problem, then what is? Oh, yeah: drug addiction prevention and treatment, equal pay for equal work, and, you know, investigating and prosecuting sex crimes, no matter who the victims are.
And finally, in South Africa, the kind of thing that's at the bottom of the slippery slope of societal devaluing of women. At the top, paying women less than men for doing the same work; in the middle, not bothering to go after the rapists and killers of prostitutes; at the bottom: criminal charges of underage sex against a 15-year-old girl who was gang-raped at school (BBC). This is the one where the boys spiked her drink and then other kids videoed the attack with their mobile phones. Within hours, the video was on sale on the Internet, but only after the teachers had had a chance to view it and laugh at it.
Is it Friday yet? Is it time for armed all-women rebellion yet?
First, though the lame-duck Senate had nothing to lose, they killed the Paycheck Fairness Act anyway. It wouldn't have made anything newly illegal, but it would have uncapped punitive and compensatory damages against employers who were proven to engage in sex-based wage discrimination, and it would have limited the number of
Second, there's a serial woman-killer on the loose in Kensington. Over on Phawker, Jeff Deeney calls a spade a spade and says that the police are letting the women have their just deserts for getting addicted and then streetwalking to pay for it. And if that isn't a reasonable social solution to the problem, then what is? Oh, yeah: drug addiction prevention and treatment, equal pay for equal work, and, you know, investigating and prosecuting sex crimes, no matter who the victims are.
And finally, in South Africa, the kind of thing that's at the bottom of the slippery slope of societal devaluing of women. At the top, paying women less than men for doing the same work; in the middle, not bothering to go after the rapists and killers of prostitutes; at the bottom: criminal charges of underage sex against a 15-year-old girl who was gang-raped at school (BBC). This is the one where the boys spiked her drink and then other kids videoed the attack with their mobile phones. Within hours, the video was on sale on the Internet, but only after the teachers had had a chance to view it and laugh at it.
Is it Friday yet? Is it time for armed all-women rebellion yet?
Police slow to respond to possible serial killer of women in Philly
There is unanimous agreement among the women working the [Kensington Avenue prostitutes'] stroll that the police feel that sexual violence is simply an occupational hazard that women who choose this way of life should cope with on their own. That a serial killer would view the stroll as fertile territory for finding easy kills among disposable women, to them, only seems a logical outcome of the long standing unwritten police policies that condone the violence against them.Jeff Deeney at The Newsweek Daily Beast on how the police have been slow to react to an apparent serial killer in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, because he targets prostitutes.
Anyway, here's a composite sketch of the suspect:
Is that an iPod?
16 November 2010
Friday jukebox (early): Paul Simon
If the terrorists and shoe bombers and air cargo package bombers aren't using little kids as mules, then why is the TSA insisting on molesting children before letting them board ordinary commercial flights home from Disney World with their parents?
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops moderating away from the pope?
In what looks to me like a rejection of the trend by some super-conservative Catholic priests to refuse Communion to pro-choice politicians and even threaten to excommunicate them, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has elected a relative liberal to be their president (MSNBC). The vote rejected the candidacy of bishop Gerald Kicanas, who had called for dialogue between extreme conservatives and less-extreme conservatives, so perhaps the election represents a sense of impatience with wasting time trying to find a middle ground with intolerant people who are more likely than not to reject the possibility of a middle ground in the first place. The Conference's new president is Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. While he's no radical leftist, he has drawn the line against both denying Communion (a trend in Canada, too) and warning congregations that voting for a pro-choice candidate is tantamount to committing a mortal sin.
Dolan's position puts him out of line with Pope Benedict, who has said that excommunicating pro-choice politicians is the right thing to do under canon law. Is the Conference rejecting the pope's ultra-conservatism? Maybe the Vatican's utter failure to deal with its international pedophile ring? In a country where Catholic schools are closing left and right for lack of enrollment, and the dying populations of nuns and priests are not being replaced by new recruits, they sure do need to do something to keep believers in the fold.
Dolan's position puts him out of line with Pope Benedict, who has said that excommunicating pro-choice politicians is the right thing to do under canon law. Is the Conference rejecting the pope's ultra-conservatism? Maybe the Vatican's utter failure to deal with its international pedophile ring? In a country where Catholic schools are closing left and right for lack of enrollment, and the dying populations of nuns and priests are not being replaced by new recruits, they sure do need to do something to keep believers in the fold.
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: The Newsweek Daily Beast Company -- I'm sorry, who's trying to boost their credibility here? I guess at this point Newsweek, which lost some $30 million in 2009 alone, just has nothing left to lose.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: The Newsweek Daily Beast Company -- I'm sorry, who's trying to boost their credibility here? I guess at this point Newsweek, which lost some $30 million in 2009 alone, just has nothing left to lose.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
15 November 2010
Monday art house: Joe Boruchow
Paper cut-out artist Joe Boruchow has a new show up at the Bean Café, 615 South Street in Philadelphia:
Works include a portrait of Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar; a portrait of Ron Castille, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania's supreme court; and political commentary on tea party activists and pedophiles in the Catholic Church.
Works include a portrait of Philadelphia artist Isaiah Zagar; a portrait of Ron Castille, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania's supreme court; and political commentary on tea party activists and pedophiles in the Catholic Church.
12 November 2010
Text about modifying the mortgage interest deduction, from the proposal itself
It's on page 26 of the 50-page PDF from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform:
Now, I do know one or two homeowners who have used their house like an ATM, and who refinanced over and over again, or took out HELOC after HELOC. For international vacations, or so they didn't have to look hard for a new job, or to finance a new-car habit. This is not only unwise, but it's also pretty scammy and makes the rest of us look bad, and when those types' banks are bailed out you get right-wing bumper stickers that say "HONK IF I'M PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE."
In conclusion: Ha-ha, Senator Gregg's website has an animated moose in silhouette walking across the top of the page. Er, I mean, let's focus on proposals to cut Medicare and Medicaid and to raise the retirement age, and not worry so much about this small line item in the Commission's first draft.
Option 2: Wyden-Gregg Style ReformI'm kinda OK with this idea, except that I don't like including home equity loans. For better or worse, in my anecdotal experience home equity lines of credit are how a few friends and family bridge-financed some expenses that were emergencies, or at least turned out to be higher than they'd planned. The circumstances involved expenses like college tuition that they'd saved money for since the kid was a toddler, but which rose out of proportion to the inflation rate during the kid's last couple of years in high school; or home repairs that weren't adequately covered by insurance; or a cross-country move when they were house-rich but cash-poor. They found that they could get more cash with a HELOC than with a personal line of credit from a bank. Not that these strategies were necessarily the wisest way to go, but when you need money you need money, and the rates were better and the limit higher than their credit cards.
[ . . . ]Limit mortgage deduction to exclude 2nd residences, home equity loans, and mortgages over $500,000
Now, I do know one or two homeowners who have used their house like an ATM, and who refinanced over and over again, or took out HELOC after HELOC. For international vacations, or so they didn't have to look hard for a new job, or to finance a new-car habit. This is not only unwise, but it's also pretty scammy and makes the rest of us look bad, and when those types' banks are bailed out you get right-wing bumper stickers that say "HONK IF I'M PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE."
In conclusion: Ha-ha, Senator Gregg's website has an animated moose in silhouette walking across the top of the page. Er, I mean, let's focus on proposals to cut Medicare and Medicaid and to raise the retirement age, and not worry so much about this small line item in the Commission's first draft.
What is the actual proposal about eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction?
I'm still looking for a primary source, but here's what a NASDAQ analyst says about the proposed change to the mortgage interest tax deduction:
The [National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] specifically proposes to exclude mortgage-interest deductions for second homes, home-equity loans and mortgages over $500,000.So . . . not a complete elimination, but a rollback that affects primarily wealthy homeowners. Might be time for your best Emily Litella at this point.
Why I avoid buying stuff from China
Tilapia fish has been everywhere in restaurants and fish markets (or the fish section of your supermarket) recently. It's inexpensive; it's so bland that it takes on whatever flavors accompany it in a dish without adding a fishy flavor itself; and, while it doesn't provide the omega-3 fatty acids that cold-water ocean fish contain, it's a relatively low-fat and low-calorie food.
And just about all of it is produced in China, so I won't eat it. China doesn't care about the quality or safety of what it exports to the U.S., as long as it's getting good, hard dollars in exchange. Examples? Well, tainted Chinese-made drywall for one. If there have been 3000 formal complaints registered, I imagine there are tens of thousands of homes that are actually affected. The manufacturers clearly didn't care about poisoning American homes when they sold the drywall or donated it for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.
But it's not just products for grownups. We've had recall after recall of lead-laced children's toys that were made in China. There's no concern here for what chemicals and poisons American children may ingest, or absorb through their skin. Hope you don't think it's just a disregard for foreign children, though. Remember the tainted baby formula scandal and tragedy? The manufacturers put melanine powder into the formula to stretch it -- much as I'll be putting pasta and beans into some soup tonight to make my leftovers last another day -- and then officials jailed the whistleblower. Three manufacturers were sentenced to death, this is true. But my point is that they let their profit motive do something that sickened tens of thousands of children, not just abstractly foreign children thousands of miles away but potentially the children living right next door, and you'd better believe that when the official records note that "at least six" kids died, it must actually have been hundreds.
This kind of behavior is something that American capitalists outgrew with the New Deal. And by "outgrew" of course I mean "were dragged, kicking and screaming and with a threat to pack the Supreme Court with supporters of the new administrative state."
As for Chinese politics? Coercive suppression of Falun Gong followers, bloody suppression of the protestors at Tiananmen Square, imprisonment of political prisoners, slavery conditions in factories, the absolute absence of a social safety net, whatever. I mean, don't get me wrong; I'm not a denier of, or a moral relativist about, or an apologist about human rights violations in China. What I mean is, all that aside, you can't trust products from China anyway, no matter what your opinion is about social issues in China. It's capitalism gone crazy. Pure, unregulated capitalism, the likes of which we haven't seen in the U.S. since 1937, only with solid-state technology and the Internet instead of vacuum tubes and telegraphs. And a world population approaching 7 billion.
So fuck low prices. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I'll go ahead and pay a few dollars more for housewares, clothes, tools, building materials, office supplies, and so on, if it means that I won't be poisoning myself with every use. I buy a lot of things I need at thrift stores and charity shops, which has a double advantage now: low prices, and a selection of stuff made in North America or western Europe, made back in the olden days when America used to have factories. Realistically, Chinese products are unavoidable -- the vast majority of electronics and their components, any reasonably priced clothing, etc. -- and having a product assembled or "finished" in one country often means it was mostly made in China anyway. So I try my best, much as I try all the local shops in my neighborhood or the KMart in Center City before I resign myself to making the trek to South Philly's Walmart, which I otherwise try to avoid unless I have a dire, dire need for something I can't find nearby.
For political, worker justice, and environmental reasons, and because so much of their merchandise is made in China.
And just about all of it is produced in China, so I won't eat it. China doesn't care about the quality or safety of what it exports to the U.S., as long as it's getting good, hard dollars in exchange. Examples? Well, tainted Chinese-made drywall for one. If there have been 3000 formal complaints registered, I imagine there are tens of thousands of homes that are actually affected. The manufacturers clearly didn't care about poisoning American homes when they sold the drywall or donated it for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.
But it's not just products for grownups. We've had recall after recall of lead-laced children's toys that were made in China. There's no concern here for what chemicals and poisons American children may ingest, or absorb through their skin. Hope you don't think it's just a disregard for foreign children, though. Remember the tainted baby formula scandal and tragedy? The manufacturers put melanine powder into the formula to stretch it -- much as I'll be putting pasta and beans into some soup tonight to make my leftovers last another day -- and then officials jailed the whistleblower. Three manufacturers were sentenced to death, this is true. But my point is that they let their profit motive do something that sickened tens of thousands of children, not just abstractly foreign children thousands of miles away but potentially the children living right next door, and you'd better believe that when the official records note that "at least six" kids died, it must actually have been hundreds.
This kind of behavior is something that American capitalists outgrew with the New Deal. And by "outgrew" of course I mean "were dragged, kicking and screaming and with a threat to pack the Supreme Court with supporters of the new administrative state."
As for Chinese politics? Coercive suppression of Falun Gong followers, bloody suppression of the protestors at Tiananmen Square, imprisonment of political prisoners, slavery conditions in factories, the absolute absence of a social safety net, whatever. I mean, don't get me wrong; I'm not a denier of, or a moral relativist about, or an apologist about human rights violations in China. What I mean is, all that aside, you can't trust products from China anyway, no matter what your opinion is about social issues in China. It's capitalism gone crazy. Pure, unregulated capitalism, the likes of which we haven't seen in the U.S. since 1937, only with solid-state technology and the Internet instead of vacuum tubes and telegraphs. And a world population approaching 7 billion.
So fuck low prices. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I'll go ahead and pay a few dollars more for housewares, clothes, tools, building materials, office supplies, and so on, if it means that I won't be poisoning myself with every use. I buy a lot of things I need at thrift stores and charity shops, which has a double advantage now: low prices, and a selection of stuff made in North America or western Europe, made back in the olden days when America used to have factories. Realistically, Chinese products are unavoidable -- the vast majority of electronics and their components, any reasonably priced clothing, etc. -- and having a product assembled or "finished" in one country often means it was mostly made in China anyway. So I try my best, much as I try all the local shops in my neighborhood or the KMart in Center City before I resign myself to making the trek to South Philly's Walmart, which I otherwise try to avoid unless I have a dire, dire need for something I can't find nearby.
For political, worker justice, and environmental reasons, and because so much of their merchandise is made in China.
11 November 2010
Opening soon: two new clinics in the U.S. for late-term abortions
Hot diggity damn, LeRoy Carhart, one of two abortion providers in the U.S. who still performs late-term abortions, has announced that he will be opening two new clinics, one near D.C. and one in Iowa (WashPost). The clinic near D.C. will open in December and will be easily accessible by Metro. The D.C. area is just a hop, skip, and a jump by air from just about anywhere in the lower 48, even Nebraska, where Dr. Carhart has been legislated out of providing late-term care.
Women choose late-term abortions for a lot of reasons. Most commonly the reasons are something like intrauterine fetal death or fetal abnormalities that are not survivable after birth (like mermaid syndrome or anencephaly), diagnosed late in the pregnancy due to errors, delayed prenatal care, or ordinary errors by the imaging technologist. In these cases, terminating the pregnancy is safer than enduring childbirth, whether a vaginal delivery or a C-section. (In fact, the maternal mortality rate for elective abortion is lower than that for childbirth. See Abortion Surveillance -- United States, 2003 and World Health Organization.) Other reasons for a late-term abortion generally involve deadly pregnancy complications, such as extreme pregnancy hypertension, heart conditions, or incompatibility with cancer treatments -- conditions where the mother has a high or near-certain risk of perishing if she attempts to continue the pregnancy. And again, frequently these conditions are diagnosed late in the pregnancy, or they appear late and unexpectedly.
Some women choose late-term abortions because they live in one of the 88% of all counties in the U.S. with no provider at all, or their state laws imposed a waiting period, or they had trouble raising the funds. These kinds of obstacles can delay a woman's access to prenatal care and counseling and thus push the pregnancy to a later term -- which makes the abortion riskier (though still safer than childbirth), more complex, and more expensive.
About a million abortions are performed in the U.S. every year. About 10,000 are performed after 21 weeks (CDC). Anti-choice zealots like Senator-elect Toomey (R-Pa.) would have you believe that all these women are terminating their pregnancies on a whim; they're selfish; they're having abortions for birth control; they're duped by abortion providers who want their money. But nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that very, very few of these women want a late-term abortion. The circumstances are usually, at best, imposed on them by legal obstacles, and at worst, life-threateningly dangerous or tragic.
Late-term abortions should be safe, legal, and available on demand. Abortion is healthcare and when women cannot control this part of their healthcare they do not have full control over their destiny. Dr. Carhart is doing American women a great service, and I'm heartened to know that once that clinic is open near D.C. I'll be that much physically closer to a late-term abortion service if I should ever need it.
Women choose late-term abortions for a lot of reasons. Most commonly the reasons are something like intrauterine fetal death or fetal abnormalities that are not survivable after birth (like mermaid syndrome or anencephaly), diagnosed late in the pregnancy due to errors, delayed prenatal care, or ordinary errors by the imaging technologist. In these cases, terminating the pregnancy is safer than enduring childbirth, whether a vaginal delivery or a C-section. (In fact, the maternal mortality rate for elective abortion is lower than that for childbirth. See Abortion Surveillance -- United States, 2003 and World Health Organization.) Other reasons for a late-term abortion generally involve deadly pregnancy complications, such as extreme pregnancy hypertension, heart conditions, or incompatibility with cancer treatments -- conditions where the mother has a high or near-certain risk of perishing if she attempts to continue the pregnancy. And again, frequently these conditions are diagnosed late in the pregnancy, or they appear late and unexpectedly.
Some women choose late-term abortions because they live in one of the 88% of all counties in the U.S. with no provider at all, or their state laws imposed a waiting period, or they had trouble raising the funds. These kinds of obstacles can delay a woman's access to prenatal care and counseling and thus push the pregnancy to a later term -- which makes the abortion riskier (though still safer than childbirth), more complex, and more expensive.
About a million abortions are performed in the U.S. every year. About 10,000 are performed after 21 weeks (CDC). Anti-choice zealots like Senator-elect Toomey (R-Pa.) would have you believe that all these women are terminating their pregnancies on a whim; they're selfish; they're having abortions for birth control; they're duped by abortion providers who want their money. But nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that very, very few of these women want a late-term abortion. The circumstances are usually, at best, imposed on them by legal obstacles, and at worst, life-threateningly dangerous or tragic.
Late-term abortions should be safe, legal, and available on demand. Abortion is healthcare and when women cannot control this part of their healthcare they do not have full control over their destiny. Dr. Carhart is doing American women a great service, and I'm heartened to know that once that clinic is open near D.C. I'll be that much physically closer to a late-term abortion service if I should ever need it.
Why I don't have cable TV
Hard-hitting, incisive, important commentary here at Glomarization Central today. Cable TV!
Subscribers are fleeing cable television in droves. But because cable providers appear to have given up on the theory of supply and demand, rates are still going up. Around these parts, basic cable plus internet starts at about $150 per month after a promotional period.
I have two reasons why I don't have cable TV, other than the obvious problem of price. One, my local providers don't offer CBC, CTV, or Radio-Canada. Two, you can't get à la carte service.
See, no Canadian channels means no Hockey Night in Canada, no extensive French-language programming, no non-U.S. news analysis, no comedies that aren't Two And a Half Men, and no Don McKellar. And also we're stuck with NBC or their Windows-only website for Olympics coverage.
But that's almost OK. I can catch up on a lot of Canadian TV and movies by scouring the local independent film screenings -- few and far between though they are -- or dig deep into Netflix/Hulu/iTunes, or look for Olympics stuff on the BBC website. The bigger issue for me is that you can't pick and choose what channels you want to have.
Say I want to make a fruit salad. I figure I'd like today's salad to include an orange, some grapes, a kiwifruit, a banana, and a cantaloupe. I go to a grocery store, and at the store I can buy an orange, some grapes, a kiwifruit, a banana, and a cantaloupe. The store doesn't restrict me to a choice between the "preferred fruit salad combo" (pears, pineapples, mangoes, and maraschino cherries) versus the "premier plus triple XF fruit salad bundle" (yellow and ruby grapefruit, navel and valencia oranges, three varieties of apple, and a lime), neither of which packages includes the exact combination of fruit that I want.
Or say I want to paint a few rooms in my house. I want a green livingroom, a red bedroom, and a yellow kitchen. So I go to the paint store and buy a gallon each of green, red, and yellow paint. The paint store doesn't require me to buy a bundle of six cans of paints (green, red, yellow, as well as blue, white, and orange) -- or worse, two bundles with even more unwanted colors -- just so I can get my green, red, and yellow. And the one paint store in town is owned by the only grocery store in town.
But this kind of coercive bundling by a limited number of companies is exactly what happens with cable TV. Maybe all the TV I want is Animal Planet, Showtime, and Fox Soccer Plus. Animal Planet is part of basic cable, which includes a hundred other channels I don't want; Showtime is a channel you can get only with another cost-added bundle; and Fox Soccer Plus is available with one of the two local cable providers, but not the other. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you'd have to be one seriously naïve cat to believe that the TV media giants don't discuss this kind of thing between themselves every once in a while.
Call a spade a spade: this isn't merely coercive bundling; it's called tying, and in any industry other than cable TV it's unacceptable, if not outright illegal under the Clayton Act. Though apparently the Ninth Circuit disagrees with me, I'm still not going to get cable TV until I can pick and choose my channels. I want my Hockey Night in Canada!
Subscribers are fleeing cable television in droves. But because cable providers appear to have given up on the theory of supply and demand, rates are still going up. Around these parts, basic cable plus internet starts at about $150 per month after a promotional period.
I have two reasons why I don't have cable TV, other than the obvious problem of price. One, my local providers don't offer CBC, CTV, or Radio-Canada. Two, you can't get à la carte service.
See, no Canadian channels means no Hockey Night in Canada, no extensive French-language programming, no non-U.S. news analysis, no comedies that aren't Two And a Half Men, and no Don McKellar. And also we're stuck with NBC or their Windows-only website for Olympics coverage.
But that's almost OK. I can catch up on a lot of Canadian TV and movies by scouring the local independent film screenings -- few and far between though they are -- or dig deep into Netflix/Hulu/iTunes, or look for Olympics stuff on the BBC website. The bigger issue for me is that you can't pick and choose what channels you want to have.
Say I want to make a fruit salad. I figure I'd like today's salad to include an orange, some grapes, a kiwifruit, a banana, and a cantaloupe. I go to a grocery store, and at the store I can buy an orange, some grapes, a kiwifruit, a banana, and a cantaloupe. The store doesn't restrict me to a choice between the "preferred fruit salad combo" (pears, pineapples, mangoes, and maraschino cherries) versus the "premier plus triple XF fruit salad bundle" (yellow and ruby grapefruit, navel and valencia oranges, three varieties of apple, and a lime), neither of which packages includes the exact combination of fruit that I want.
Or say I want to paint a few rooms in my house. I want a green livingroom, a red bedroom, and a yellow kitchen. So I go to the paint store and buy a gallon each of green, red, and yellow paint. The paint store doesn't require me to buy a bundle of six cans of paints (green, red, yellow, as well as blue, white, and orange) -- or worse, two bundles with even more unwanted colors -- just so I can get my green, red, and yellow. And the one paint store in town is owned by the only grocery store in town.
But this kind of coercive bundling by a limited number of companies is exactly what happens with cable TV. Maybe all the TV I want is Animal Planet, Showtime, and Fox Soccer Plus. Animal Planet is part of basic cable, which includes a hundred other channels I don't want; Showtime is a channel you can get only with another cost-added bundle; and Fox Soccer Plus is available with one of the two local cable providers, but not the other. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you'd have to be one seriously naïve cat to believe that the TV media giants don't discuss this kind of thing between themselves every once in a while.
Call a spade a spade: this isn't merely coercive bundling; it's called tying, and in any industry other than cable TV it's unacceptable, if not outright illegal under the Clayton Act. Though apparently the Ninth Circuit disagrees with me, I'm still not going to get cable TV until I can pick and choose my channels. I want my Hockey Night in Canada!
10 November 2010
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has no health insurance
[I]n the first quarter of 2010, an estimated 59.1 million people had no health insurance for at least part of the year[.](MSNBC.) In other words, nearly 1 in 5 Americans has no health insurance. And it's not just the sorely impoverished; about half of the uninsured live well above the federal poverty level.
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has no health insurance.
And it's not just the healthy, either; more than 40% of the uninsured have a chronic disease such as asthma, hypertension, or diabetes.
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has no health insurance.
The Republican response? Kill health insurance reform by chipping away at it, piece by piece. Block funding for programs, close low-income clinics, and roll back consumer protection progress until they've achieved what Representative Eric Cantor (R-Va.) calls "full repeal."
What does Rep. Cantor consider "full repeal"? Nearly 2 in 5 Americans with no health insurance? Half of all Americans? I don't mean to be disingenuous; I know he means that he wants everyone to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and fund their own personal medical savings accounts (whether ordinary savings accounts or money-market accounts or accounts with funds invested in the stock market). That kind of account is a great idea if you have (1) seed money to begin with; and (2) generally good health, so that you can earn money by working and you don't need a lot of expensive healthcare anyway.
It's all very rich coming from someone with a gold-plated federal employee health plan. Has Rep. Cantor opted out of his federal benefits program? Has he put his money where his mouth is?
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans has no health insurance.
Let's see those ranks swell with elected Republicans who campaigned on destroying health insurance reform.
Election redux: welcome to bloody red Pennsylvania
So it's come to pass, now that the election is done and gone, that Pennsylvania is a red state. Here at Glomarization's homestead, that means one thing (well, of course it means a lot of things, but it means one huge thing in this household): we've gotta start seriously looking out for the right of women in Pennsylvania, and in the rest of the nation, to choose abortion when they want it.
Reproductive healthcare is healthcare. It's a subcategory of healthcare; it's not an entity on its own, like personal finance, or housecleaning, or anything else you'd hire a service provider for. Health insurance companies may say, essentially, that your teeth and eyes aren't part of your body, by not providing dental and optical coverage with their insurance policies; but they can't say the same thing about your uterus and ovaries. This is because reproductive healthcare is not a separate, carved-out part of women's health and bodies. It is fundamentally part of their daily lives. For the vast majority of women between the ages of about 15 and 45 -- or for about a third or half of their lifetime -- every single month there is an uncertainty. Am I pregnant, or did I dodge the bullet again this month? (Or the other side of the coin: did we manage to get pregnant this time, or will we be trying again?) Did I replace the spare pad in my purse after I used the last one a few weeks ago? Will I get a good roll of the dice when I schedule my week down the shore next year, or will I end up sitting on the sand in a pair of shorts? Why did I have to get my driver's license photo (or work ID, or school portrait) taken this week, when I have blemishes all over my chin from PMS?
Or less universal, but still very frequent, questions: How many days of work will I miss this month because of my debilitating cramps? Will I need another D & C for the fibroids that keep coming back? Why doesn't my state insurance commissioner require my health insurance provider to cover my pills? And is that a stroke I feel coming on from taking the Pill and smoking this cigarette at the same time?
I'm listing this stuff lightheartedly, but questions, concerns, and thoughts related to our reproductive healthcare are frequently on our minds, to one degree or another. For some of us, these thoughts are constantly on our minds. Why? Because our reproductive health and our overall health are so intimately intertwined that they are really the one and the same thing.
Republican extremist Senator-elect Pat Toomey would imprison doctors who perform abortions (video). At least he's somewhat intellectually honest: if abortion is murder, then abortion doctors are criminals. But you can't have an abortion without a woman who gets it, so she must therefore be an accomplice to the "crime" and should be in prison, too -- if you're being fully intellectually honest. And let's be clear: that would be a million American women per year.
A woman who cannot choose what to do about her reproductive health -- which is not an aspect of our overall health, but is integral to our overall health -- is not in full control of her destiny. When an American Senator would imprison women for obtaining healthcare, one million of them every year or a third of all American women over the course of their childbearing years, we have a problem in this country.
Reproductive healthcare is healthcare. It's a subcategory of healthcare; it's not an entity on its own, like personal finance, or housecleaning, or anything else you'd hire a service provider for. Health insurance companies may say, essentially, that your teeth and eyes aren't part of your body, by not providing dental and optical coverage with their insurance policies; but they can't say the same thing about your uterus and ovaries. This is because reproductive healthcare is not a separate, carved-out part of women's health and bodies. It is fundamentally part of their daily lives. For the vast majority of women between the ages of about 15 and 45 -- or for about a third or half of their lifetime -- every single month there is an uncertainty. Am I pregnant, or did I dodge the bullet again this month? (Or the other side of the coin: did we manage to get pregnant this time, or will we be trying again?) Did I replace the spare pad in my purse after I used the last one a few weeks ago? Will I get a good roll of the dice when I schedule my week down the shore next year, or will I end up sitting on the sand in a pair of shorts? Why did I have to get my driver's license photo (or work ID, or school portrait) taken this week, when I have blemishes all over my chin from PMS?
Or less universal, but still very frequent, questions: How many days of work will I miss this month because of my debilitating cramps? Will I need another D & C for the fibroids that keep coming back? Why doesn't my state insurance commissioner require my health insurance provider to cover my pills? And is that a stroke I feel coming on from taking the Pill and smoking this cigarette at the same time?
I'm listing this stuff lightheartedly, but questions, concerns, and thoughts related to our reproductive healthcare are frequently on our minds, to one degree or another. For some of us, these thoughts are constantly on our minds. Why? Because our reproductive health and our overall health are so intimately intertwined that they are really the one and the same thing.
Republican extremist Senator-elect Pat Toomey would imprison doctors who perform abortions (video). At least he's somewhat intellectually honest: if abortion is murder, then abortion doctors are criminals. But you can't have an abortion without a woman who gets it, so she must therefore be an accomplice to the "crime" and should be in prison, too -- if you're being fully intellectually honest. And let's be clear: that would be a million American women per year.
A woman who cannot choose what to do about her reproductive health -- which is not an aspect of our overall health, but is integral to our overall health -- is not in full control of her destiny. When an American Senator would imprison women for obtaining healthcare, one million of them every year or a third of all American women over the course of their childbearing years, we have a problem in this country.
09 November 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Fewer than 12 hours after the new South Street bridge opened to vehicle traffic on Saturday, the police arrested a trio of knuckleheads, spraypaint cans in hand, who (allegedly) wanted to be the first to tag the shiny new structure. In other words . . . folks in University City and West Philly are back to having an E-Z route into Center City for Drinking Liberally: the 40 bus travels on Spruce Street through the University of Pennsylvania campus, crosses the Schuylkill River on the new bridge, and then continues eastbound on South Street. Get off at 15th Street and you're just 3 blocks south of José Pistola's. Bonus! The new bridge doesn't rattle at all and doesn't drop chunks of concrete into the river, the way the old one did.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Fewer than 12 hours after the new South Street bridge opened to vehicle traffic on Saturday, the police arrested a trio of knuckleheads, spraypaint cans in hand, who (allegedly) wanted to be the first to tag the shiny new structure. In other words . . . folks in University City and West Philly are back to having an E-Z route into Center City for Drinking Liberally: the 40 bus travels on Spruce Street through the University of Pennsylvania campus, crosses the Schuylkill River on the new bridge, and then continues eastbound on South Street. Get off at 15th Street and you're just 3 blocks south of José Pistola's. Bonus! The new bridge doesn't rattle at all and doesn't drop chunks of concrete into the river, the way the old one did.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
04 November 2010
When boys dress like girls
A five-year-old boy dressed up as Daphne from the Scooby-Doo cartoons, and a crew of moms from his kindergarten gave his mom a hard time. Mom fought back in a blog post that's been making the rounds:
But you know what? I love my big gay friend Stu, and I always will! Here's to you, Stu!
Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.Ah, now that brings back memories! Memories of me and my BFF Stu when we were kids, playing superheroes and fighting over who got to play Wonder Woman, or playing Donny and Marie and fighting over who got to play Marie. And Stu never turned out -- oh, wait. No, hmm. Actually, as a matter of fact, Stu did turn out to be queer as a three-dollar bill. And he's in show business now.
But you know what? I love my big gay friend Stu, and I always will! Here's to you, Stu!
02 November 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: We've resolved our dispute with Christine O'Donnell, so our election night party is back on schedule. We're co-hosting a returns-watching party with the Philadelphia chapters of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Constitution Society. The party won't end until the races are called, so come on down any time after 6:00 or after the Pennsylvania polls close at 8:00.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: We've resolved our dispute with Christine O'Donnell, so our election night party is back on schedule. We're co-hosting a returns-watching party with the Philadelphia chapters of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Constitution Society. The party won't end until the races are called, so come on down any time after 6:00 or after the Pennsylvania polls close at 8:00.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
29 October 2010
Friday jukebox: Winwood 'n' Clapton
I found an in-concert version by Blind Faith from 1969, but it looked like cell phone video of a half-demagnetized VHS tape. So here's Steve Winwood performing it with Eric Clapton:
26 October 2010
GOP in Colorado: soon to be a minor party?
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! State laws deliberately designed to disempower far-left political parties [1] by de-funding them when they don't get "enough" party registrants or votes in an election may turn around and bite the GOP in the ass. In Colorado, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is polling below 10%, the minimum threshold for major party status in that state (in Pennsylvania, by remarkable contrast, it's 2% of votes, but 15% of registrations, see 25 P.S. §§ 2831, 2872.2). If Maes can't scrape together enough votes, then the GOP candidate for governor in 2014 will be listed below the fold, so to speak: rather than sitting in a guaranteed #1 or #2 spot at the top of the list, the candidate's name will be mixed up randomly with the Greens, the American Constitution Party, the Independent Reform Party, and the Libertarians, while the Democratic candidate will sit secure in spot #1 at the top.
First Citizens United resulted in kazillions of dollars going to fringe candidates, and now this. Yay, reactionary conservatism!
[1] Pennsylvania's small-party restriction law, for example, was originally enacted in 1937 -- backlash against the New Deal.
First Citizens United resulted in kazillions of dollars going to fringe candidates, and now this. Yay, reactionary conservatism!
[1] Pennsylvania's small-party restriction law, for example, was originally enacted in 1937 -- backlash against the New Deal.
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Democracy in Kentucky, where a woman from MoveOn, seeking to give Rand Paul a satirical award for taking so many donations from large corporations, was attacked and stomped by Paul's supporters, in a move that Mr. Paul calls "incredibly unfortunate," and which I call criminal.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Democracy in Kentucky, where a woman from MoveOn, seeking to give Rand Paul a satirical award for taking so many donations from large corporations, was attacked and stomped by Paul's supporters, in a move that Mr. Paul calls "incredibly unfortunate," and which I call criminal.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
20 October 2010
"Spiritual parrots"
"Whooping," CNN tells me, "is a celebratory style of black preaching that pastors typically use to close a sermon. Some church scholars compare it to opera; it's that moment the sermon segues into song." Here's what one scholar says about white pastors who whoop:
White pastors can't be truly, deeply, and honestly spiritual? They shouldn't be allowed to use a traditionally black style of preaching? Turn that sentiment around and you have the same crap that the Daughters of the American Revolution said about Marian Anderson -- not to be too heavy-handed about it, but really. Here, Rev. Clayborn, have a "spiritual parrot":
The converse of Rev. Clayborn's statement would be hard to bring up in polite conversation. It's too bad that the CNN article didn't address it.
Edited to add: Leontyne Price's "O mio babbino caro" kicks Maria Callas's right in the ass.
[Rev. Patrick] Clayborn, the [assistant] homiletics professor [at Methodist Theological School] in Ohio, says the fuel for the whoop grows out of the black perspective, the experience of being among "the least, the last and lost."Wow! Did you catch his meaning? When white pastors try to preach in the black tradition, it's a pale imitation of the real thing.
"When I see a white preacher do it, it feels like they went and learned it, just like a parrot can imitate the human voice," he says. "They're like spiritual parrots."
White pastors can't be truly, deeply, and honestly spiritual? They shouldn't be allowed to use a traditionally black style of preaching? Turn that sentiment around and you have the same crap that the Daughters of the American Revolution said about Marian Anderson -- not to be too heavy-handed about it, but really. Here, Rev. Clayborn, have a "spiritual parrot":
The converse of Rev. Clayborn's statement would be hard to bring up in polite conversation. It's too bad that the CNN article didn't address it.
Edited to add: Leontyne Price's "O mio babbino caro" kicks Maria Callas's right in the ass.
Ginny Thomas to Anita Hill: apologize and give us "some full explanation"
I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.What on earth led Ginny Thomas to leave this message on Anita Hill's voicemail? Why now?
Even Prof. Hill thought it was so bizarre that it must be a prank, so she reported it to her school's security office rather than take it at face value.
From here it looks like nothing more than a stunt to seek more donations and support for Liberty Central.
19 October 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: I'm still stunned, so to speak, about Dunta Robinson's egregiously vicious hit on DeSean Jackson in the second quarter this past Sunday. A personal foul on Robinson wasn't enough. Fifteen-yard penalty after Jackson was lying twitching on the ground after a deliberate, aimed hit to the chin? Are you kidding me? Dude should be fined thirty or fifty grand and be suspended, without pay, for a few weeks.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: I'm still stunned, so to speak, about Dunta Robinson's egregiously vicious hit on DeSean Jackson in the second quarter this past Sunday. A personal foul on Robinson wasn't enough. Fifteen-yard penalty after Jackson was lying twitching on the ground after a deliberate, aimed hit to the chin? Are you kidding me? Dude should be fined thirty or fifty grand and be suspended, without pay, for a few weeks.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
15 October 2010
Cablevision vs. Fox TV
From today's Variety newsfeed (registration req'd but free):
Well, OK, maybe for that baseball game tomorrow night.
Cablevision and Fox execs are huddling at News Corp. headquarters in Gotham today in an eleventh-hour attempt to hammer out a deal that would prevent Fox's New York and Philadelphia stations from going dark for Cablevision's 3 million subscribers at midnight tonight.And this would be a problem . . . how?
Well, OK, maybe for that baseball game tomorrow night.
12 October 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: There's a Philadelphia film festival happening, with an unnavigable website, a ticket purchasing system that burdens the user with printing out their own tickets, and an uninspiring roster of films chosen by an all-male, all-white crew of programmers. The film festival here used to be a full-contact sport for me, and it just breaks my heart that the offerings are so limited this year. Sometimes I feel as though I'm just counting the days until I can move back to a city with reasonable weather and a real film festival.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: There's a Philadelphia film festival happening, with an unnavigable website, a ticket purchasing system that burdens the user with printing out their own tickets, and an uninspiring roster of films chosen by an all-male, all-white crew of programmers. The film festival here used to be a full-contact sport for me, and it just breaks my heart that the offerings are so limited this year. Sometimes I feel as though I'm just counting the days until I can move back to a city with reasonable weather and a real film festival.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
09 October 2010
Cautionary tale about proofreading e-mail addresses in Gmail
So in my professional life I have an e-mail address that is, analogically, glomarmailbox at gmail.com (which is an e-mail address that I'm making up for the purposes of this post and which, as far as I know, doesn't exist). I went with this scheme for a few reasons: my first name is not unusual, but it's often misspelled; my last name, standing alone, was already taken; and any combination of firstname, lastname, and middle initial would include potentially confusingly placed letter l's, which look like numeral 1's in too many fonts. But my reasons for choosing that scheme are completely irrelevant to the anecdote here.
If you try to send e-mail to me at that address and put a dot between glomar and mailbox -- that is, glomar.mailbox -- then Gmail, in its infinite (and increasingly creepy) wisdom, will helpfully send the e-mail right to glomarmailbox. I say "increasingly creepy" because I didn't actually ever sign up for that username with the dot in it. Gmail just figured it out.
Now, in another country on another continent, there's an individual who uses the e-mail address glomars.mailbox at gmail.com, as in, "possessive Glomar without the apostrophe, dot, mailbox." This is not very surprising, because remember that "Glomar" here, my last name, is not a terribly unusual name, and in fact it's a relatively ordinary first name, too, in English-speaking countries. So what happens when a sender misspells my Gmail username?
Here's what Gmail does. It doesn't magically figure out that the username with the dot and without the dot are eerily similar, and it doesn't apply some freakish AI to see the syllable breaks. And in fact, it's not "creepy" at all, but rather it's that they've hit upon a good way to avoid disputes, typos, and a lot of administrative grief. What happens is that, when you choose some username, Gmail both (1) ignores any dots you put into it when you select it, and then (2) ignores any dots the e-mail sender puts into it when they're addressing e-mail to you. That is, you could put a dot anywhere in glomarmailbox and it would get to me. You could even send mail to g.l...o.m.a.r..m.a.i.l.b.o.x and it would get to me.
But you can't send it to glomarsmailbox, with that s in there, or to any dot-containing variation thereof. If you do, it'll go to this other person in another country on another continent.
And when one half of a married couple that glomarsmailbox was arranging a three-way with sent e-mail to glomar.mailbox instead of to glomars.mailbox, I was hit with a complete series of ten or twelve days' worth of e-mail outlining exactly what each party was into, how much E they like to use, and where and when they figured they could next get together.
There are two lessons here. First, just hit the "reply" button and don't type in e-mail addresses if you don't have to. And second, clean up your e-mail replies after every few back-and-forth exchanges! Select all those pages and pages of text at the bottom and delete them. If the sender here had done so, I would only have seen what looked like a "coffee was nice, let's see a movie on Friday, xoxo" message.
If you try to send e-mail to me at that address and put a dot between glomar and mailbox -- that is, glomar.mailbox -- then Gmail, in its infinite (and increasingly creepy) wisdom, will helpfully send the e-mail right to glomarmailbox. I say "increasingly creepy" because I didn't actually ever sign up for that username with the dot in it. Gmail just figured it out.
Now, in another country on another continent, there's an individual who uses the e-mail address glomars.mailbox at gmail.com, as in, "possessive Glomar without the apostrophe, dot, mailbox." This is not very surprising, because remember that "Glomar" here, my last name, is not a terribly unusual name, and in fact it's a relatively ordinary first name, too, in English-speaking countries. So what happens when a sender misspells my Gmail username?
Here's what Gmail does. It doesn't magically figure out that the username with the dot and without the dot are eerily similar, and it doesn't apply some freakish AI to see the syllable breaks. And in fact, it's not "creepy" at all, but rather it's that they've hit upon a good way to avoid disputes, typos, and a lot of administrative grief. What happens is that, when you choose some username, Gmail both (1) ignores any dots you put into it when you select it, and then (2) ignores any dots the e-mail sender puts into it when they're addressing e-mail to you. That is, you could put a dot anywhere in glomarmailbox and it would get to me. You could even send mail to g.l...o.m.a.r..m.a.i.l.b.o.x and it would get to me.
But you can't send it to glomarsmailbox, with that s in there, or to any dot-containing variation thereof. If you do, it'll go to this other person in another country on another continent.
And when one half of a married couple that glomarsmailbox was arranging a three-way with sent e-mail to glomar.mailbox instead of to glomars.mailbox, I was hit with a complete series of ten or twelve days' worth of e-mail outlining exactly what each party was into, how much E they like to use, and where and when they figured they could next get together.
There are two lessons here. First, just hit the "reply" button and don't type in e-mail addresses if you don't have to. And second, clean up your e-mail replies after every few back-and-forth exchanges! Select all those pages and pages of text at the bottom and delete them. If the sender here had done so, I would only have seen what looked like a "coffee was nice, let's see a movie on Friday, xoxo" message.
08 October 2010
Friday jukebox: The Bangles
. . . in which the Bangles take a perfectly fine hippie poem by Simon & Garfunkel and turn it into an ode to blow, with a video that's arguably better than the movie in which the song featured:
Hang on to your hopes my friend
That's an easy thing to say
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Hang on to your hopes my friend
That's an easy thing to say
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
07 October 2010
$4 fortune: 07 October 2010
Your mentality is alert, practical and analytical.
Last time I went to the coffeeshop, I noticed that my bagel cost 25¢ more than it used to (alert).
This rise in cost brought my bill from $3.50 to $3.75. Whether I pay with four singles or a five-dollar-bill, I have only one quarter in coin change to put in the tip jar after I've paid for my coffee and bagel -- though I see a lot of paper in the tip jar, I just can't bring myself to tip a whole dollar on such a small transaction, but even cheap-ass me understands that 50¢ going into the jar looks and sounds better than 25¢. So I figured that today I could bring a five-dollar bill and ask for $1.25 all in quarters as change, or I could make sure I have a spare quarter in my pocket when I left the house (analytical).
I decided that bringing a spare quarter on my own would be simpler for the barista and would help use up the change in my wallet, so I did so (practical).
But I'm still going to keep tagging these entries as "$4 fortunes," even though they're $4.25 now.
Last time I went to the coffeeshop, I noticed that my bagel cost 25¢ more than it used to (alert).
This rise in cost brought my bill from $3.50 to $3.75. Whether I pay with four singles or a five-dollar-bill, I have only one quarter in coin change to put in the tip jar after I've paid for my coffee and bagel -- though I see a lot of paper in the tip jar, I just can't bring myself to tip a whole dollar on such a small transaction, but even cheap-ass me understands that 50¢ going into the jar looks and sounds better than 25¢. So I figured that today I could bring a five-dollar bill and ask for $1.25 all in quarters as change, or I could make sure I have a spare quarter in my pocket when I left the house (analytical).
I decided that bringing a spare quarter on my own would be simpler for the barista and would help use up the change in my wallet, so I did so (practical).
But I'm still going to keep tagging these entries as "$4 fortunes," even though they're $4.25 now.
06 October 2010
Three interviews later, life goes on
Another day, another "Well, I guess if I'd gotten the job, I would have had a call by now." Three weeks, three interviews, zero call-backs.
Yesterday I e-mailed a client from early in the summer who still has some retainer money sitting there in my IOLTA account. I reminded him that I could simply cut a check for him to return his remaining unused cash, or he could ask me to do some work for him. No answer! (And I'd felt bad for procrastinating on the task for a couple of weeks, because they tell us that the number one complaint clients have about their lawyers is lack of communication.) No wonder attorneys get in trouble for mishandling client funds: I could buy groceries for three months [1] with that money, but apparently my client couldn't care less about it.
At least the weather's nice. I have a few spare zone 3 regional rail tickets kicking around. I should gopanhandle get lunch out on the Main Line somewheres.
[1] Or, you know, a pair of shoes.
Yesterday I e-mailed a client from early in the summer who still has some retainer money sitting there in my IOLTA account. I reminded him that I could simply cut a check for him to return his remaining unused cash, or he could ask me to do some work for him. No answer! (And I'd felt bad for procrastinating on the task for a couple of weeks, because they tell us that the number one complaint clients have about their lawyers is lack of communication.) No wonder attorneys get in trouble for mishandling client funds: I could buy groceries for three months [1] with that money, but apparently my client couldn't care less about it.
At least the weather's nice. I have a few spare zone 3 regional rail tickets kicking around. I should go
[1] Or, you know, a pair of shoes.
05 October 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: R.I.P. Stephen J. Cannell, creator of a good number of our childhood and adolescent memories, I suspect.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: R.I.P. Stephen J. Cannell, creator of a good number of our childhood and adolescent memories, I suspect.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
01 October 2010
Making money while giving the music itself away for free
As an IP attorney, I've been trying to counsel my musician clients that they need to give their music away for free -- their copyright be damned, because it's simply unenforceable at this point -- and make money off of value-added merch instead. Today, I came across another arrow for my quiver of arguments:
It's hard for musicians -- perhaps especially the geezers and the ones closer to my age -- to give up the dream of seeing dozens of their cellophane-wrapped jewel-cased CDs, set out in sharp rows in a record store. Employee pick of the week! Billboard Hot 100! And when was the last time they gave a Grammy to an album that wasn't distributed by a major label? (How about "never.")
Well, too bad, so sad. The world moves on. What, as a musician, do you want? Now, of course you want millions of dollars, or at least you'd like to be able to quit your day job. (Note that the only two musicians I've ever known to quit their day jobs and make music full-time ended up with scurvy. No lie. Scurvy.) But a good second-best is to simply have your music heard by the largest number of people possible, and to have them pay you what they can, when they can.
Option 1: Value-added merch, Nina Paley-style. Signed CDs, limited-edition posters, special-event t-shirts. Or think outside the box, and offer things like "The band will make you dinner for 8 for $400!" or "Attend 5 hours of our next recording session for $300!"
Option 2: tongodeon, a long-time Internet acquaintance of mine, pointed out the other day that there's a relatively new scheme going on nowadays: the idea of "pledging" for new music. That is, pay your favorite artist some small amount of money so that you will be the first on your block to get their newest recording or the final mastering of their new record:
And both options cut out the predatory middleman labels by funneling money directly from consumers to producers. I mean, what are labels for? Or rather, were? Pressing vinyl records, the industrial equipment for which an artist wouldn't have, and shipping records to stores, the logistics of which an artist would not be in the business of. And payola. With digital recording, the Internet, and bulk CD repro services that cost about a buck per CD, labels aren't needed. Right now artists can almost literally seize the means of production -- if one can't seize electrons, one can at least seize a sharpie for autographing CDs -- and kick the record company pig-dogs to the curb.
Best Buy (BBY) said it will cut back on shelf space for DVDs and CDs this holiday season.Musicians: burn your CDs and try to sell them, but just accept into your heart that your music will be ripped and exchanged without your license and played on iPods around the world. There's nothing that you can do to prevent it. Lawsuits are expensive to prosecute, and the offenders are, as we lawyers like to say, judgment-proof. So use illegal downloads and sharing to your advantage: allow it to happen, with your blessing even, and see it as cutting out the label's middleman. You weren't going to make money until your fourth record (if then), and the big-box stores that aren't closing are staying open by doing things like very specifically not selling music CDs any more.
The entertainment software market has been in decline for years, and so has the space Best Buy has allocated for compact discs and digital video discs. The space for CDs and DVDs is going to get even smaller this fall.
"We’ll have another store reset before the holidays, which will include an increase in the space for higher-growth and, in the aggregate, higher-margin categories, like Best Buy Mobile, e-readers and gaming, with a heavy emphasis on new gaming platforms and pre-owned game titles," Best Buy Chief Executive Brian Dunn said in a conference call with analysts Tuesday. "This will be enabled by our reorganization of the DVD and CD sections. The CD section in particular will shrink in space allotment."
It's hard for musicians -- perhaps especially the geezers and the ones closer to my age -- to give up the dream of seeing dozens of their cellophane-wrapped jewel-cased CDs, set out in sharp rows in a record store. Employee pick of the week! Billboard Hot 100! And when was the last time they gave a Grammy to an album that wasn't distributed by a major label? (How about "never.")
Well, too bad, so sad. The world moves on. What, as a musician, do you want? Now, of course you want millions of dollars, or at least you'd like to be able to quit your day job. (Note that the only two musicians I've ever known to quit their day jobs and make music full-time ended up with scurvy. No lie. Scurvy.) But a good second-best is to simply have your music heard by the largest number of people possible, and to have them pay you what they can, when they can.
Option 1: Value-added merch, Nina Paley-style. Signed CDs, limited-edition posters, special-event t-shirts. Or think outside the box, and offer things like "The band will make you dinner for 8 for $400!" or "Attend 5 hours of our next recording session for $300!"
Option 2: tongodeon, a long-time Internet acquaintance of mine, pointed out the other day that there's a relatively new scheme going on nowadays: the idea of "pledging" for new music. That is, pay your favorite artist some small amount of money so that you will be the first on your block to get their newest recording or the final mastering of their new record:
PledgeMusic offers you the opportunity to fund your favourite band or solo artist's new album. In effect, you as the fan become the record label the band or solo artist is recording for. You help fund their record and if they don't reach their pledge target you won't get charged a cent.PledgeMusic takes an administration fee, and some percentage goes to charity. I like this idea, because, if the consumer's goal is to be the first to get a new record, it incentivizes paying for music rather than getting it for free, which presumably one has to wait for. And it also includes options for value-added merch, which I think is a solid, proven way for bands to quickly and cheaply raise some cash.
In exchange for your early involvement, you will get the music the moment the recording and mastering is finished. Additionally, if you wish to contribute a little bit more, PledgeMusic artists also offer you a range of incentives, ranging from signed merchandise to special events with the band members and in some cases personal involvement in the release process. These are specified by the artist and vary for each project.
And both options cut out the predatory middleman labels by funneling money directly from consumers to producers. I mean, what are labels for? Or rather, were? Pressing vinyl records, the industrial equipment for which an artist wouldn't have, and shipping records to stores, the logistics of which an artist would not be in the business of. And payola. With digital recording, the Internet, and bulk CD repro services that cost about a buck per CD, labels aren't needed. Right now artists can almost literally seize the means of production -- if one can't seize electrons, one can at least seize a sharpie for autographing CDs -- and kick the record company pig-dogs to the curb.
Electing judges is "nuts"! Amirite?
Honestly, do we need a better argument against electing judges at all three levels here in Pennsylvania, and for some system of merit selection in the judiciary instead?
Seriously, the joke here isn't that he's the Magisterial District Judge for Intercourse, Penna. (though Intercourse, Penna., is always funny). The joke here is that we live in a state where this guy was elected and has been re-elected so many times that he's been on the bench for 19 years.
Apropos of nothing, I followed some bouncing links off the county court's website and found Lancaster County's government FAQ page. The first FAQ: "How can you obtain a concealed weapon permit?" Maybe Judge Stoltzfus is lucky that he's only getting slapped with a maximum fine of $300.
[Judge Isaac Stoltzfus] is facing a disorderly conduct charge for allegedly approaching women near the state Capitol and handing them acorns he had hollowed out and stuffed with condoms[.]Via the smoking gun. Judge Stoltzfus is a Magisterial District Judge, like a Philadelphia Municipal Court judge, only for counties with smaller populations. With a name like "Stoltzfus," you know it's Lancaster County; with conduct like what he's accused of, you know he's a Republican.
Seriously, the joke here isn't that he's the Magisterial District Judge for Intercourse, Penna. (though Intercourse, Penna., is always funny). The joke here is that we live in a state where this guy was elected and has been re-elected so many times that he's been on the bench for 19 years.
Apropos of nothing, I followed some bouncing links off the county court's website and found Lancaster County's government FAQ page. The first FAQ: "How can you obtain a concealed weapon permit?" Maybe Judge Stoltzfus is lucky that he's only getting slapped with a maximum fine of $300.
28 September 2010
Driberally tonight
Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Happy 10th anniversary today to American availability of mifepristone plus misoprostol, the abortion pill! About 1 in 3 American women will have an abortion during their childbearing years; about a million abortions are performed in the U.S. every year; and about 15% of all American abortions are accomplished with mifepristone. Not only do you probably know (or: drink beer with, share a home with, work with, sleep with, send your kids to school to be taught by, sit in church next to) a woman who's had an abortion, but also there's a good chance she used the abortion pill to terminate her pregnancy.
And now Glomarization's friendly regular reminder: when abortions are illegal, or at least devilishly hard to come by, women will still get abortions. If they're candidates for a medical abortion but they can't get the safe two-drug combination, they will often try using Cytotec -- misoprostol -- on its own. It's not as effective as the two-drug combination, and if you think that off-label Cytotec use is only a South and Central American thing that doesn't happen in the U.S., you'd be mistaken.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
This week's topic: Happy 10th anniversary today to American availability of mifepristone plus misoprostol, the abortion pill! About 1 in 3 American women will have an abortion during their childbearing years; about a million abortions are performed in the U.S. every year; and about 15% of all American abortions are accomplished with mifepristone. Not only do you probably know (or: drink beer with, share a home with, work with, sleep with, send your kids to school to be taught by, sit in church next to) a woman who's had an abortion, but also there's a good chance she used the abortion pill to terminate her pregnancy.
And now Glomarization's friendly regular reminder: when abortions are illegal, or at least devilishly hard to come by, women will still get abortions. If they're candidates for a medical abortion but they can't get the safe two-drug combination, they will often try using Cytotec -- misoprostol -- on its own. It's not as effective as the two-drug combination, and if you think that off-label Cytotec use is only a South and Central American thing that doesn't happen in the U.S., you'd be mistaken.
"Come for the beer, stay for the check"
24 September 2010
Philly AIDS Thrift anniversary + mega donation party Friday through Sunday
You know what really chaps my hide? (OK, to be honest, a lot of things chap my hide. But this is a big one.) People throwing out clothes in the trash. I mean, there's a lot of thoughtless waste in the world, in the U.S., and in my largely upper-class neighborhood in particular -- every trash day you see all kinds of indicia of first-world overconsumption, like new carpets that were ripped out and replaced with newer carpets, recyclables mixed in with trash, take-out containers spilled on the sidewalk.
And worst of all, bags and boxes and sometimes mere piles of clothing. Often clothing that's only a few seasons old and was clearly bought new at designer shops in town. Today, I found a box that held about $200 worth of Lucky Brand Dungarees jeans; J. Crew handbags, shorts, and tops; Zara trousers; and Banana Republic sportswear. (Also some city sports league t-shirts with the family name printed across the back. Way to protect your privacy! Now I can make an educated guess at the G---- family's income level, and not just based on the house the box was in front of.) All boxed up and ready for the landfill. Not for families in need, or a battered women's shelter, or a halfway house, or even a consignment store, but for the landfill.
My point, and I do have one, is that Philly AIDS Thrift is celebrating their fifth birthday this weekend. And they have more than that to celebrate: over the past five years, they've donated over $200,000 in cash to area AIDS relief organizations. They've done it by taking in boxes of clothing, housewares, furniture, and other items that people would otherwise landfill, and re-selling it for pennies on the dollar. And since they're a non-profit, you can get a tax deduction receipt for anything saleable that you donate.
To really celebrate the anniversary and the $200,000 milestone, they're having special sales and refreshments all weekend, as well as a party tonight in the "Pair o' Dice" furniture warehouse across the street from the main store. Free food! Free music! All weekend!
Philly AIDS Thrift
And worst of all, bags and boxes and sometimes mere piles of clothing. Often clothing that's only a few seasons old and was clearly bought new at designer shops in town. Today, I found a box that held about $200 worth of Lucky Brand Dungarees jeans; J. Crew handbags, shorts, and tops; Zara trousers; and Banana Republic sportswear. (Also some city sports league t-shirts with the family name printed across the back. Way to protect your privacy! Now I can make an educated guess at the G---- family's income level, and not just based on the house the box was in front of.) All boxed up and ready for the landfill. Not for families in need, or a battered women's shelter, or a halfway house, or even a consignment store, but for the landfill.
My point, and I do have one, is that Philly AIDS Thrift is celebrating their fifth birthday this weekend. And they have more than that to celebrate: over the past five years, they've donated over $200,000 in cash to area AIDS relief organizations. They've done it by taking in boxes of clothing, housewares, furniture, and other items that people would otherwise landfill, and re-selling it for pennies on the dollar. And since they're a non-profit, you can get a tax deduction receipt for anything saleable that you donate.
To really celebrate the anniversary and the $200,000 milestone, they're having special sales and refreshments all weekend, as well as a party tonight in the "Pair o' Dice" furniture warehouse across the street from the main store. Free food! Free music! All weekend!
Philly AIDS Thrift
514 Bainbridge St
Philadelphia PA 19147
Shop - Donate - Volunteer
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