Plan Wheeeee!

This is all right.


via Bitch PhD, by way of BloggingBaby

He needed a new Wu-name anyway

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, tore into Dick Cheney in recent interviews with AP and BBC. CBS News has this money-quote:

Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

Wilkerson only gave himself two real choices, in that moron and idiot are nearly synonyms. Still, Nefarious Bastard is an improvement over Top-Heavy Hookjaw, no matter what the Wu-Name Generator says.

It's not just about nomenclature, though. Wilkerson presses beyond the ad hominem in his talk with BBC, equating prisoner abuse with terrorism:

[...] Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.

Asked by the BBC's Today if Mr Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: "It's an interesting question."

"Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror," he added.

"And I would suspect, for whatever it's worth, it's an international crime as well."

The transcript of the BBC interview is here. For the record, Wilkerson's Wu-name is Tha Winged Cow, at least until one of you thinks up something better.

What was it like having an iguana for ten years?

Pretty much like this.*

I was going to say that I like rabbits better, but Easter Beagle pulled a similar move on Rocketboy a few days ago. And I thought Monty Python was kidding with the attack rabbit in their "Holy Grail."

*Sandy Kiraly has more iguana fun here.

It's the quiet ones you've got to watch out for

Ann asked me what I'd heard about Christian Reconstructionists. Answer: Nothing. My first thought was, Reconstruction's been over for a while now. Those people need new calendars.

Then I read her posts and John Sugg's Mother Jones article and ran through a few Google links. I tell you what. Sugg lays out the jaw-dropping specifics of the Christian Reconstructionist plan to quietly replace America's democracy with their own brand of law and order:

The Old Testament—with its 600 or so Mosaic laws—is the inflexible guide for the society DeMar and other Reconstructionists envision. Government posts would be reserved for the righteous, as long as they are male. There would be thousands of executions a year, with stoning a preferred method because it would turn the deaths into “community projects,” as movement theologian North has noted. Sinners in line for the death penalty would include women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses). DeMar told me that among Reconstructionists he is considered something of a liberal, because he’d execute gays only if they were caught indulging in sodomy. “I’m happy to just drive them back into the closet,” he said. (MoJo)

Such a plan begs the question of who would be left to govern after all the "community projects" were done. But never mind. Apparently there'll be plenty of unstoned hominids to go around, probably because these same folks who are so eager to stone each other as a bonding exercise are also against abortion. Which may be why they say slavery is okay, as long as it's done Bible-style.

Religious Tolerance has this to say about the CR soldiers:

At that time that this essay was originally written, this was the only religious movement in North America of which we were aware which advocates genocide for followers of minority religions and non-conforming members of their own religion. (emphasis mine)

They are hungry for political power, but what politician would give these people the time of day?

George W. Bush has called Reconstruction-influenced theoretician Marvin Olasky “compassionate conservatism’s leading thinker,” and Olasky served as one of the president’s key advisers on the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives... Deposed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, though his office won'’t comment on his religious views, governs with what he calls a '“biblical worldview' -- —one of Reconstruction'’s signature phrases. And, for conspiracy buffs, two heavy contributors to the Chalcedon Foundation --— Reconstruction'’s main think tank -- —are Howard Ahmanson and Nelson Bunker Hunt, both of whose families played key roles in financing electronic voting machine manufacturer Election Systems & Software. (MoJo)

Which forces me to abandon my questioning stance in my last post.

Sugg makes the point in his Mother Jones piece that this movement has flown under the radar for years, citing a dearth of media coverage. I'm not the only person who'd never heard of these folks. Had you?

You know what they say about sunlight being the best disinfectant. I think Jesus wants you for a sunbeam.

Really. Worst. Ever?

Each day brings hot, fresh doublespeak and backtracking from the White House and environs. And the mounting criticism isn't coming just from lefties and Dems. Ex-Bush supporters are catching on to this administration's shortcomings and growing disillusioned. You know full well what to expect if you google 'worst president ever.' It's everywhere.

I'm no Bush fan. I never thought he had the intellectual chops to lead the country. But when I see 'worst president ever,' it gives me pause. There's a hyperbolic quality to it, like news reports on the "storm of the century" every few years. Things are going badly now, but does our close perspective cloud our assessment of the president? Is Bush really worse than Nixon, say, or Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson?

I've read several commentaries on WPE, but I don't have a firm opinion on the subject. Do you? Who do you think is or was the worst United States president ever, and why?

True, especially the useless part

You are DNA. You're a smart person, and you appear
incredibly complex to people who don't know
you. You're incomparably full of information,
and most of it is useless.


Which Biological Molecule Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

h/t: The Countess

Small victories

For those of us eating our landscapes for freedom, and for those of you living this thrill vicariously, here'’s the update.

The first freeze last week zapped a bed of pole and yellow wax beans. The basil froze, too, which broke every heart in the household, especially Easter Beagle'’s. The squash might have frozen if it hadn'’t died already. I blame overwatering.

Cold snap survivors: beets, radishes, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, collards, cabbage and various herbs. The dandelions, feral in the grass, are re-emerging to become salad garnish and rabbit snacks.

I love my fledgling garden but I don'’t sweat the lost cucurbits or frozen beans. The privilege of my attitude was driven home by the intro letter on my new sponsorship sister with Women for Women International. J is about my age, a Rwandan widow raising her own children plus war orphans for a total of seven. She grows food, but not enough, for her family. My hobby garden is just that, a hobby based on my principles. Hers is a necessity at the mercy of nature and luck, the letter makes clear:

Unfortunately, J has lost family members due to the lack of resources caused by war and its devastating effects.

People she loved starved to death or died for lack of medicine or clean water. It'’s right there in her face, and she knows it could happen to her or her children if she'’s not careful and lucky. When people talk about the stress of soccer-practice schedules and work/life balance, I bite my tongue. They have work. They have a life. They have money to spend on children'’s sports.

What greater stress could there be than wondering daily if you can keep your children alive? Will the vegetables grow? If you harvest enough to store, how will you keep the pests out? If the crop fails, who will barter with you? What if their gardens fail, too?

I'’ve written about saving truck-fuel pollution, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and (hopefully, soon) growing a surplus to donate to the local food bank. Add another benefit to the victory garden project: Any money I save on produce is money freed up for hunger programs or other social improvements. Every sweet, homegrown tomato is like fifty cents I can share with someone who needs it while I savor salsa cruda on angelhair pasta.

You don'’t have to garden to achieve these ends, although it helps. Buy what local produce you can and try to cut down on wasted food. Even if you can'’t have a victory garden, you can still have a victory fridge.

A sublime shopping experience

Why didn't I think of this years ago? On the day after Thanksgiving, the most-hyped retail-shopping day of the year and the day when everyone is grazing heaps of leftovers, that's the day to go to the grocery store.

Mil gracias

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I count my readers and fellow bloggers among my blessings this year, along with homemade birthday cake (yes, I'm a turkey baby -- some years), family, homegrown vegetables, the First Amendment, and unexpected slurpy elbow licks from Dogzilla while I'm blogging. Have a good one.

Escape from heat island

Something for which to be grateful this Thanksgiving week: trees.

I love watching the van's thermometer drop five degrees when I leave the highway concretescape and zip into my oak- and elm-shaded neighborhood. Our last neighborhood was ex-pastureland plugged with small "trash trees" so we are especially appreciative of this newfound oasis.

Apparently, it's not enough for some people. The city utility is trying to get the sun off the streets, to reduce the heat-island effect that causes everything to wilt, fry, and start the a/c that much faster during our toasty summers. Workers visited our 'hood this week, marking sites where shade trees would help and offering property owners a choice of four types of native tree to be delivered this winter if only we'll agree to put them in the ground and keep them alive.

I had my reply card filled out and in the mailbox within ten minutes. You know I'm big on energy independence, and this is another way to sneak up on it:

A recent study found that planting shade trees could reduce the need for power plants. Data from California shows that 50 million shade trees planted in strategic, energy-saving locations could eliminate the need for seven 100-megawatt power plants. (TreeLink)

NeighborWoods and TreeFolks are the groups working on it in our area, but there are groups doing the same work all over the country and the rest of the world. I for one am thankful for that.

Awww, look who's one year old!

Robert's blog bark/bite hit the anniversary mark yesterday, and to celebrate he's got his greatest hits here. Politics, patriarchy, parenting, potty words -- it's all there. If you enjoy delightfully rigorous fisking of insane notions and the status quo, bark/bite is your blog.

Ay, Perrito

While we're celebrating milestones, Perrito is now a hearty, 45-pound six-month old. He can walk on-lead without eating his leash and he sits like a champion. As you can see, he is happiest demolishing rawhide bones and plotting for that glorious day in the offing when he outweighs Dogzilla and can have all the rawhides for himself.

I learned yesterday that the small scabby area on his back that we'd thought was from horseplay with Dogzilla is actually demodectic mange. Caramba. I'd ignorantly assumed mange was a disease of filth and neglect. Turns out there's an assortment of manges, and this kind has an autoimmune component. The vet thinks P's neuter surgery last month may have been enough of a stressor to spark this outbreak.

With luck, a month or two of treatment will clear it up. If not, I'll just knit him a tiny toupee made from yarn spun from his own molted fur. I swear I will. Look at that face.

Better than phlegm

Every city needs a site like this, a place to document and shame hostile morons who hassle women on the street.

Because my children and short hair render me mercifully invisible, I don't catch crap in public the way I did when I was younger. Back then, there were no camera-cellphones, no blogs, and I am short and used to be extremely scrawny. So I developed my own passive-aggressive strategy to ward off sidewalk jerks who thought I should hear their assessments of and suggestions for my person:

• keep moving
• pretend I didn't hear the catcaller
• hawk up the largest phlegm gob possible
  
• spit it onto the ground, still ignoring harasser

Worked like a freaking charm. I still cherish those long-ago yelps of revulsion. Shameless and gross, to be sure, but the only way I had at the time to say, "Thanks for leering." I figured it also made me a less attractive target for further harassment.

But taking your aggressor's photo, I think, could be a more effective strategy. More sanitary, too.

For your weekend reading pleasure

Yes, it's Saturday already. If you aren't already checking out Natalie's Friday Femmes Fatales each week, you might want to start. Each week she spotlights ten posts (including, this week, me!) and she's got an archive of more than 300 items.

My own blogging will be light over the next week. Hombre is off for the holiday and we'll be making a number of improvements to Rancho Mother. I'm also planning a big uptick in family time. This morning I found a dirt-crusted green army man waving a tiny grenade over my keyboard. It's not exactly a horse's head in the bed, but I get the message all the same.

Friday Darwin blogging

Anything that combines Darwin's work with live iguanas is something I might -- just might -- have to burn jet fuel to see firsthand. As I've written before, I think Darwin rocks. And I'm not alone.

When I have more time I'll write about my decade in the company of a green iguana named Emmett. For now I offer this fact to savor this weekend: Male green iguanas have two penises. Yep, one for each side, since they mate in a twisted fashion. I always thought it was funny to see their gear described as "hemipenises" in the literature. I'm sure it's technically correct, but it seemed like sour grapes to me.

Ant, 1; Coca-Cola, 0

It's early, it's cold, and the children are circling like wolves hungry for storytime. I offer this bit of inspiration as we hunker down against the first freeze of the year.

All of the fun with none of the carnies

Sour Duck kicks off the third Carnival of Feminists today. This looks to be the biggest carnival yet. Check it out, I say, and not just because Twisty and I are included. I'll be reading from the carnival list for a while.

Update: One of my favorite Dru posts is there, too.

Brand X-mas

Here's the tree I cooed about recently:

For those of you just arriving, Hombre and I decided to try the Hundred-Dollar Holiday idea this year to cut down on the crap buildup in our home and to focus more on fun.

The status of Brand X-mas expenditures is this:

• $17.50 on aforementioned tree
• $30 on a kit for Rocketboy -- something he's been asking for all year that there's no way we could make or find used
• $0 spent on hats and scarves I handknit for my niece and nephew because the yarn was surplus from other projects.
  

For Hurricanehead I thought of sewing an elaborate snap, zipper, lace-up and button book. It would be quiet, fun and easy to pick up -- not a zillion pieces. I could do a nice one for nothing with materials from my stash. But what kind of mother takes pleasure in making her child something from scraps when she could afford to go toy shopping? A selfish bitch who puts her principles ahead of her child's happiness.

I had my guilt-releasing epiphany in the hammock. The boys had been outside for hours and showed no interest in coming in. They were plastered with dust and mud so that was fine with me, but I wanted to keep an eye on them.

It was easy. Rocketboy made mud balls and threw them at the mower shed. Hurricanehead jammed every yard tool we own into the soil. They dug in the mud and they egged on Dogzilla when she joined in and kicked clods all over us. They played with dirt longer than I'd ever seen them play with any of their toys, ever, and they did it without fighting because scarcity was not an issue. I realized that when dirt is bliss, everything else is gravy.

Context is important, of course. No one wants a stocking full of topsoil on Christmas morn. But the boys don't need the Beeping Plastic Crap Playset either. They won't check the price tag or care where we got it. Eventually they'll run back out into the yard for some real fun. Soap, though, might be the best stocking stuffer of all.

But what about socialization?

Because I homeschool the boys, the occasional Nosey Parker asks me the question above. I hate it. I don't collar parents of public-school students and grill them about their choice. Jeez.

Also, consider the peer-oriented culture that prevails in public schools (of which I am a graduate). I'm not talking about sex and drinking, either. I'm talking about stupidity uber alles.

To wit: About 150 students and adults affiliated with one of the richer, more privileged public high schools in the Austin area just got busted for operating a regularly scheduled fight club in the crown jewel of Austin's city parks:

Police learned of the fight club last week from a parent whose child had been injured in a fight. Another tip came from a hospital where a participant was treated for injuries.

Investigators soon found a Web site, now deactivated, called www.westlakefightclub.com, which had a schedule of bouts, listed names of the promoters and fighters, and contained videos of previous bouts.

In one video of a fight between two girls, Creasey said, officers saw evidence that one combatant had broken the other's nose.

The truly amazing part of the story is not that a bunch of idle rich kids chose to entertain themselves with ritual violence. It's that they didn't understand why the police would get involved. I mean, don't herds get to make their own rules? Duh!

Amanda has a nice race-and-class oriented take here. Read it and you'll know why homeschoolers call socialization "the 'S' word."

Target feels unfairly targeted

Like a woman whose prescription goes unfilled. Americablog links to the missive Target sent to Joseph Hughes today. Guess how they're justifying their discriminatory Plan B policy now?

Dear Target Guest

In our ongoing effort to provide great service to our guests, Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members' sincerely held religious beliefs. [emphasis mine]

In the rare event that a pharmacist's beliefs conflict with filling a guest's prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, our policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest's prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy.

The emergency contraceptive Plan B is the only medication for which this policy applies. Under no circumstances can the pharmacist prevent the prescription from being filled, make discourteous or judgmental remarks, or discuss his or her religious beliefs with the guest.

Target abides by all state and local laws and, in the event that other laws conflict with our policy, we follow the law.

We're surprised and disappointed by Planned Parenthood's negative campaign. We've been talking with Planned Parenthood to clarify our policy and reinforce our commitment to ensuring that our guests' prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. Our policy is similar to that of many other retailers and follows the recommendations of the American Pharmacists Association. That's why it's unclear why Target is being singled out.

We're committed to meeting the needs of our female guests and will continue to deliver upon that commitment.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

Under no circumstances can the pharmacist prevent the prescription from being filled, make discourteous or judgmental remarks, or discuss his or her religious beliefs with the guest.

Love that. It's okay to discriminate if God tells you to. Just don't talk about it while you're doing it, because that would be rude.

Joseph's response is here. Americablog has further analysis here.

I never received a response at all to my email and I haven't been back to Target since. It turns out the regional grocery chain I'm now matronizing(!) has better choices and is cheaper to boot.

And here's an odd vignette for you. Rocketboy asked last month why we don't shop at Target anymore. I told him I won't give them any more money because they let some of their employees discriminate against women.

Today he was pretending to be a cat/dog hybrid on a job hunt and announced that he'd found a job at Barnes and Noble. When I congratulated him on his first job, he said, "It's not my first job. I worked at Target before but I quit when they said workers could refuse to help people."

Clear enough for ya?

Armand at Bloodless Coup links to this little Washington Times gem, quoting from Sam Alito's application to work for Edwin Meese back in the day. [Bolds are mine.]:

"It has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly," he wrote.

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

A leading Republican involved in the nomination process insisted that this does not prove Judge Alito, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, will overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that made abortion a constitutional right.

"No, it proves no such thing," said the Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "In fact, if you look at some of the quotes of his former law clerks, they don't believe that he'll overturn Roe v. Wade."

Can't blame the Repub for going anonymous. I wouldn't want my name attached to a pile of bullshit that big, either.

P.S. Am I the only person who thinks of Ella Fitzgerald singing "Perdido" whenever I hear the name "Alito"? There's a parody lyric in there, I just know it.

Music lessons

New readers may be surprised to learn that I homeschool my kids. Here's why. As part of this adventure, I've read a lot about how learning happens, the best conditions for it and other oddments of educational theory, all of which boil down to the fact that children learn because it's what they are designed to do, and they learn best when something is interesting to them.

It's embarrassing to admit that I forgot all this in regard to Rocketboy's piano lessons, but I did, and it nearly cost him his love of playing. So here is my cautionary tale.

Rboy has experimented with music from infancy. My brother gave him a big Casio keyboard years ago and it was a favorite toy until we replaced it with a real, live piano last year. There's nothing like waking up to the sound of odd but lovely music of your "experimenting" six-year-old.

Along with the piano, we got a piano teacher for Rboy, someone he knows and admires. He was thrilled, and they had a mutual admiration society going as he began working his way through the piano primer. Hombre and I were delighted. Certain of our relations were happy that now he would learn to play 'real' music.

Only my dad was cool to the idea. A professional musician since age 17 and a survivor of mandatory piano instruction that began at age 4, he said it was more important that Rboy have fun playing than that he stress out over lessons.

"But, Dad," I said, "he's having fun. He's not stressed at all."

"Is he doing any ear training?"

"Well, no. She wants him to learn to read music."

"Hmmmmph."

You'll guess where this is going: Rboy struggled without success to read music, and his teacher, while well-meaning, got hung up on it. I didn't think it had much to do with actual playing, but apparently it did. Over the next few months, lessons became a weekly exercise in repackaging something he clearly was not ready for. Something else was different, too, but I couldn't articulate it.

A couple of months ago, Rboy talked me into getting him guitar lessons. His baby sitter plays, and it piqued his interest. I signed him up, thinking ignorantly that it would help him with his music-reading problem. It didn't, because guitar music isn't written the same way as piano music. But it did help because it handed me a clue.

Rboy took to experimenting with his guitar almost constantly. One day I watched him watching TV while noodling around and I realized that apart from mandatory practice, he never went near the piano anymore. It wasn't a source of joy and creativity. It was a big, expensive millstone. I hate it when my dad is right.

After talking to Hombre and our sitter, who plays piano very well and who was also troubled by the falloff in Rboy's playing, we hatched a plan. Put away the theory books, cancel the formal lessons, and let our sitter play with him when she's here. Even his regular piano teacher agreed when I told her it was time for a break.

"Just let him play," she said.

After two weeks of the new piano regime, he's learning "Heart and Soul" by ear and teaching it to Hombre and me. He plays it for fun and creates variations on it. He's happy. We're happy. He's playing.

Makes sense to me

Stat of the week from Think Progress:

Percentage of citizens surveyed who think their country is headed in the right direction:

Iraqis (surveyed early October): 47%

Americans (surveyed early November): 26%

Another reason Fox is evil

The network is giving the old heave-slow to the only television show I watch, Arrested Development:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a move that will likely spell the end of a TV show that critics love but never drew big audiences, the Fox network said on Friday it pulled offbeat comedy "Arrested Development" from its schedule for the rest of the month...

Removing a struggling show during sweeps, while falling short of outright cancellation, is usually a sure sign a network has given up hope on a series.

Fox has also cut the number of episodes ordered from 22 to 13. Ouch. How can a show fail in which Charlize Theron, playing a mentally retarded preschool teacher, sends up a scene from 'Pretty Woman'? And now where will I get my senior-citizen-marijuana/anal-sex double entendres?

Veteran's Day

Hello to my longtime readers and all the folks cruising over from Twisty's place, Pandagon and points beyond. I'm delighted to have people reading and discussing my Not a baby-machine post. I'm relieved as well. I put off writing the thing for a long while for fear I would seem like a whiner and a poor sport, telling tales out of the delivery room. Instead, I seem to have hit a nerve.

It's not just me. Y'all have generously shared your stories, and it's important to hear about pregnancy in its many forms from women who've been there. This is crucial in a society where most of us don't see a birth firsthand until it's our own turn and don't hear of others' miscarriages until we have one ourselves. As prenatal care and infection control have made pregnancy safer than it was for our mothers and grandmothers, the outright sense of risk is not as strong. Drape over that unfamiliar but safe-seeming rite a blanket of marketing -- formula, furniture, gadgets ad infinitum -- and it's easy for the uninitiated to see gestation as a consumer ritual instead of a mammalian process.

We operate under the illusion that most of the time, pregnancy proceeds without a hitch. In fact, many if not a majority of pregnancies fail early on. Of those that make it past the starting gate, most go well enough to produce a live birth of a usually healthy baby. But all pregnancies have physical and emotional effects on women: from depression to strokes to pregnancy-triggered autoimmune disorders. In the developing world, pregnancy is much more dangerous. But here, most of us operate sans clue along with our partners and policymakers. This is not good.

Compare this to the way we view military veterans. I'm not talking about the way we spend public money to care for veterans. They get the shaft along with the rest of the hoi polloi. I'm talking about the parades, the memorials, the acknowledgement that these people made decisions and assumed lethal risks not only for their own reasons but also to the presumed benefit of our society.

Most of all, I'm talking about the respect we accord veterans. We may not agree with the wars, but we honor the vets' personal mettle just the same. We celebrate it. Think about the ballads, movies, and books about veterans. We civilians rely on these stories to show us what combat is like. What's the corollary for pregnancy? Mother's Day doesn't count. It's all about hearts and flowers, and I know a surprising number of moms who get squat from their families and don't raise hell about it. I'm not talking about guidebooks written by doctors or scolds, but honest firsthand narratives.

My high school compatriots and I read Catch-22, All Quiet on the Western Front, and other novels and poems about war in school, giving potential soldiers and the rest of us a clue as to what they'd be getting into. Potential parents got diddly. Did you read anything in school about pregnancy outside of sex ed materials? Who is the Ernie Pyle of the birthing suite? What's the gestational equivalent of Saving Private Ryan?

I'm being only a little tongue-in-cheek. Pregnancy, that modern, clockwork shopping spree, is seen as a low-risk endeavor when in fact some women are bedridden for months, develop (as my mother did) life-threatening postpartum infections, or suffer violence at the hands of their partners. Pregnancy termination carries its own set of risks and fallout, but we don't talk much about that either. When the choice to gestate or not to gestate looks like a risk-free exercise of power, some people that assume women wield their power capriciously. As if we were non-combat-hardened leaders throwing troops into a hellhole without adequate support or planning to satisfy our personal whims. As if our own lives were not at stake.

Why don't we talk about it more? Pregnancy is kinda gross. Some readers found my post pushed their 'squeam' buttons. Darlins, you have no idea what I spared you. I could tell you something about dried seaweed that would scare you to death. And that's the problem: We spare everyone the details because they're messy and sometimes frightening.

I don't advocate collaring a swollen, exhausted woman in the stroller department or a nervous teenager in a clinic and listing all the weird things that could happen to her. She doesn't want or need to hear it then. I damn sure didn't when I was pregnant.

But every woman should know at least some of that stuff before she gets pregnant. So should every man. That goes double for anyone who sets agendas and makes policy. We can't expect people to understand what it's like if we don't tell them.

Bloody mary morning

This morning I'm trying to mollify a cranky, confused toddler. He doesn't seem to know what he wants and he's throwing fits because we can't figure it out either. He's not especially verbal to begin with and his anger reduces him to grunts and shrieks, making it even harder to help him. He won't listen to reason, won't follow the rules and petulantly refuses my efforts to soothe him. I can't decide if he's truly out of it and getting sick or if he's just exploring his power to affect others in a peevish, desultory way.

I figure if I handle this right, not only can I get rid of my cluster headache, I can also become White House Chief of Staff.

God may forgive you, but I won't

And Jesus may love you, but I don't.*


I'm so proud of my home state. Only three out of every four voters aligned themselves with the KKK on the issue of constitutionally banning same-sex marriage. My chivalrous fellow Texans have thrown the cloak of their Christian ethics into the mud to protect my marriage.

I've already explained what the real threats are to my blessed union, and gay marriage is already illegal in Texas anyway. So it's hard to imagine what was to be gained by voting yes on Prop 2 except the chance to show the state's collective ass to the world and to savor the little frisson of power that comes from using one's hatred to screw others.

But there is plenty to be lost. Before the election, Emily Pyle of the Texas Observer explained the effects of Prop 2 on Texas same-sex couples:

Since 2003, Texas law has prohibited the state from recognizing marriage or marriage-like relationships between same-sex partners. But gay couples have evolved elaborate networks of legal documents giving themselves and their families some measure of security. These documents cannot offer the full protections of marriage, and are open to challenge by nosy officials and disapproving families. Still, they are better than nothing.

According to the House joint resolution that put the amendment on the ballot, its legislative intent is to allow same-sex couples to continue to "“appoint guardians and arrange rights relating to hospital visitation, property, and the entitlement to proceeds of life insurance."” But even these narrow exceptions are not guaranteed. None of this language is included in the amendment itself; Texas judges are not obligated to consider legislative intent in interpreting constitutional law.

"“Everything is at risk,"” says Anne Wynne, Austin family law attorney and founder of the Atticus Circle, a group that advocates for the legal rights of gay couples and their families. "“All the documents and contracts that gay couples have put together to protect themselves could come into question. The courts could say, '‘Whoops, looks like you'’re trying to get married. That'’s against the law.'"”

Second-parent adoptions that give gay parents equal legal responsibility for their children could be nullified, as could the powers of attorney that allow same-sex couples to make medical and financial decisions on one another'’s behalf. Public employers such as state agencies and state-run universities may not be able to offer domestic partner benefits to their employees. Wynne speculates that even private employers and insurance companies might deny benefits to same-sex couples, if they thought such action was necessary to comply with state law.

The people who voted for this amendment may have thought they were just voting against June nuptials for two men in tuxes, but they were voting to dismantle lives. Nice going, Friendship State. Just remember that even if you are a tacky bigot, Jesus loves you.

*I saw Iris DeMent do this song live many years ago and it stuck with me. What can I say? You'll have to scroll way down for the lyrics.

If you must fall out of your hospital bed

try to land on your nurse. My great-aunt L did just that last week, wedging the two of them between the bed and the wall. L said it took them three or four minutes to get off the floor because they kept cracking each other up while they struggled to right themselves. That's the kind of attitude I want (although with better balance) when I'm 95 and sick.

Janet knows best

Now that I've read Robert's post tying together my uterine keening, Twisty's short and sweet explication of men's reproductive rights and his own analysis of the real dynamic motivating the push for "equal" repro rights for men, I can't get Ms. Jackson's 'Control' out of my head. Because control is the name of the game here:

Here's a little gedankenexperiment to illustrate. Should a man have any say about what happens to an embryo that is growing not in his body, but in someone else's? The MRA lobby says yes. But what if it were a case of surrogate motherhood? What if Mr. and Mrs. Smith hired Ms. Jones to incubate and bear a child begun, in a test tube, with Mr. Smith's sperm and Mrs. Smith's egg? What if three weeks into the pregnancy, Ms. Jones realizes that she has made a horrible mistake, and she wants an abortion toot sweet.

Does anyone really think that Mr. Smith--or Mrs. Smith, for that matter--has any right to tell Ms. Jones, "No, you may not terminate your pregnancy. That's my genetic material in there, and I get to say what happens to it. Your going to have this baby, and I'm going to compel you to do so by force of law!"

Breach of contract? Sure. Civil suit for emotional distress and even financial damages? Fine by me. Compulsory pregnancy enforced by state troopers? Ummm, no.

And that's because the Father's Rights folk are making the patriarchal assumption that just because a man's genetic material is busily working its magic in his wife's or girlfriend's uterus then he somehow gets to exert control over it. When the conditions (a heterosexual relationship between biological father and biological mother) that engender the assumption that men get to exert control over their domestic partners is removed and it's reduced to a business agreement, then it becomes a lot more clear. [emphasis mine]

And there you have it. It's not really so much about pregnancy or the right to life as it is the right to keep the upper hand in a relationship. A clue: if you need the force of law to maintain dominance over another person in a private relationship, that relationship has already failed. It's all over but the shoutin'. Just as no law can make pregnancy an easily controlled or predictable condition, no law can make a woman respect a partner bent on keeping control at all costs. All such laws can do is ruin lives.

Do the math

The dreaded Klan rally to support Prop 2 turned out the way it should in a free society: fourteen Klan members protested by three thousand thinking people:

At the 40-minute rally, the Klan showed its support for a proposed Texas constitutional amendment banning gay marriage that is on Tuesday's ballot.

"We're asking Texans to vote for Proposition No. 2," Klan chaplain Steven Edwards told the crowds through loudspeakers set up on the plaza. "Not because the Ku Klux Klan supports it but because God supports it."

I, too, was surprised to learn that a hate group has a chaplain. Also that God follows Texas politics and communicates his endorsements through a group whose purpose is to undercut the message of his only son. If re-banning gay marriage is that important to the almighty, why doesn't he just amend the state constitution directly, maybe with some smoke and lightning, rather than leave it to a citizenry that apparently didn't get the memo? Oh, wait. I think I know.

I picked up a sample ballot last week and finished researching the propositions pdq, because for my money, it rates a straight-ticket no vote (scroll down past the Travis Co. propositions). Amending the state constitution should not be the way to change interest-rate rules, settle individual land disputes, or tackle any other issue the lege is too chicken or ashamed to push through in session. It's cynical crap, which displeases the Lord.

The election is Wednesday Tuesday (I caught hell from the Lord on that one). If you're in Texas, you know what to do.

Now for a few bad puns

Hoppy Friday, everyone. This little guy showed up on our front porch recently. I would have posed him on the doormat but I was afraid he'd ribbit with his little claws.

(I toad you they would be bad puns and I wasn't amphibian, was I?)

 

Not a baby-machine

Long ago I promised a rant about how a mechanistic view of women's bodies and reproduction misinforms attempts to legislate control of women. At the time I was writing about a Virginia legislator who wanted to force women to call the cops if they had a miscarriage while not under a doctor's care. But the rolling shitstorm of pharmacy zealots, other ridiculous bills and Alito's track record has me thinking about women as baby-machines again. This phrase from the Virginia debacle, carried over from an earlier bill, stuck in my craw:

If a fetal death occurs in a moving conveyance, a fetal death report shall be filed in the registration district in which the fetus was first removed from such conveyance.

When I first read it, I thought, fetal death usually occurs in the mother's body. Why does the conveyance matter? If you lose a pregnancy while rolling down the hall in your office chair or going over your fields in your combine harvester, the state needs to know?

This requirement, my friends, is a flashing red light signaling ignorance. It's based on the notion that pregnant women are simple machines that pop out babies. If the pregnancy ends, the machine must surely just spit out the failed product, right? Won't you smell a fan belt burning or something? You're up in your hot-air balloon, your pregnancy fails, it'll be over in a matter of minutes, all nice and neat and ready for the police report?

No. A woman will not automatically know if her pregnancy is over just because she starts bleeding on the bus. Bleeding might go on for hours before the pregnancy ends. Bleeding might go on for hours before the pregnancy continues. Some women seem to have their period while pregnant. The pregnancy might end with no symptoms at all, making removing the fetus from its death car challenging at best. Sometimes just getting it out of the woman is a nightmare. It depends.

It's easy to regulate machines, and if you don't think there's a large segment of the population that -- consciously or not -- sees women, especially pregnant women, this way, ask around. Talk to the expectant father who can't believe that his wife will pass blood and amniotic fluid and shit during delivery instead of just a clean pink baby, the father of two who is surprised to learn that tampons don't go in the urethra, the legislator who presumes to mark the