FIRST DRAFT

Shorter Press: We Have Nothing to Do With this Story Everyone is Talking About

Pick which of these statements "rings truer," because that is the standard by which we measure truth: 

Hard as it may be, then, set aside your own politics and ask yourself which of these Monday statements rings truer:

"The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow. ... And suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story. There's no 'there' there."

— President Barack Obama, dismissing congressional scrutiny of his and his subordinates' statements about Benghazi as a "political circus"

"Americans should take notice that top Obama administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don't have to answer to anyone." 

— House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa

For now, many among us would take Option 2. With each of these troubling disclosures, the Obama administration finds itself reacting to appearances of overreach, of arrogance, of determination to dodge its embarrassments rather than to take ownership of them.

I wonder why the Obama administration finds itself reacting to these things. Could it be because people are asking them to react? This is the kind of passive-voiced, "a firestorm of controversy is swirling" commentary that makes me crazy, because it cites the appearance of a thing as evidence that the thing itself exists. And in doing so, reinforces that appearance, conflates it with evidence, and elevates "stuff we kind of think already" to actual fact. You want to make an issue out of something? THEN MAKE AN ISSUE OUT OF IT. Knock off the fashion coverage. I know that's the only part of this that interests anybody, but come on. 

Am I happy about the AP phone records sitch. Hell. No. Not okay. The administration should be "on the defensive" about that. But here's the thing, even there: The administration "being on the defensive" isn't the story. What is this, the NFL? The story is what was done and who did it, not how the Obama White House is starting to "seem:"

Taken together, though, these controversies project a less flattering image of truth-shading, hubris and intrusion. In the week of humiliating disclosures that started with last Wednesday's congressional hearing on Benghazi, Americans haven't seen the administration exhibit ... one shred of humility:

Ah. So it's about what words they use. The image they project. The proper pantomime of humility. The theater of the thing. If the administration would just be sufficiently servile, people wouldn't have died and none of this would be an issue anymore. If they'd just all hold their pickle forks the right way, I mean, honestly, how hard is that? 

The easiest way for the president and his White House to further that rising suspicion — we emphasize that it's thus far unproven — is to demonstrate three things to his newly energized foes and to his friends who didn't expect this sort of conduct: that his subordinates will end their egregious stonewalling on Benghazi, will pursue the IRS scandal as high as it goes and will demand full disclosure of whether his Justice Department scrupulously followed the law in its pursuit of journalists' phone records.

We don't know if any of what Obama's critics are saying is true (on the IRS and Benghazi it's demonstrably not and has been proved not to be for some damn time) but the president needs to act like it is, to demonstrate, once again, the proper attitude to us. The president needs to concede every point, to prove that there are no points here, and maybe flog himself in the Rose Garden. You've got people screaming THIS HASN'T BEEN INVESTIGATED! and when you show them the records of the investigations they just keep yelling it, I mean, you tell me what can be done here in exactly 20 minutes that will solve the problem of every single person in America not knowing every detail of what happened. Should Obama go to everybody's house and read the paper to them? 

Maybe that would clear up how he "seems." 

A. 

 

Friday Ferretblogging: Morning Treat Edition

How do we get a Bucky, a chicken-Riot, and an itty-bitty Claire up and about? Tell them there's a treat in the other room: 

A. 

Love Wins

Just look at these faces. 

Look at the joy on their faces. Look at what the future looks like. Look at what happens when you keep pushing forward. Look at that song of joy sung upwards to the sky and try not to feel a little lighter in your socks. 

I keep saying in response to the "save traditional marriage" morons that full marriage equality will do nothing to affect anyone in a straight relationship, but you know what? That's not true. Love and freedom anywhere is an affirmation of love and freedom everywhere, and the glorious noise of victory that came from northward this week was a reinforcement of everyone's desire to become more than they are today. 

I can't begin to imagine what this means for those couples who've been waiting to get married, for those who want to know that marriage is a possibility for them someday if they choose, but I know to me it means the world is a little wider, and a lot less dark, and for that, I'm grateful. 

Come on, Illinois. Get your shit together. 

A. 

Your Wednesday SHARK

Joe Biden is like my favorite thing about this administration right now.

A. 

Fuck Yeah, Minnesota!

If you know me, you know what it cost me to say that just now: 

While legislation legalizing same-sex marriage remains stalled in the Illinois House and Gov. Pat Quinn calls for the House to vote on the bill before the spring legislative session ends, Minnesota today became the 12th state in the union to pass a marriage equality bill.

The Minnesota Senate approved the bill by a 37-30 vote, four days after the House passed the bill on a 75-59 vote. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said he would sign the bill into law Tuesday evening.

Credit where it's due, and let's send those save-the-dates out now so that we can all make our summer plans. 

A. 

People Want News

David Carr, in a masterpiece of scorn and fury: 

The industry tried chasing clicks for a while to win back fleeing advertisers, decided it was a fool’s errand and is now turning to customers for revenue. But in order to charge people for news, you have to prosecute journalism.

The belief that historic monopolies will hold together just on the basis of inertia has proved to be wrong. Newspapers that have cut their operations beyond usefulness or quit delivering a daily print presence have suffered. The audience has to be earned every day.

You cannot give people less, and expect them not to notice, not anymore and not for almost two decades now. And I would welcome this newfound sensibility with a parade of hookers handing out balloons and blow if a) it hadn't taken a brutal decade of layoffs and bankruptcies to get here and b) I didn't think most newspaper owners won't do the same thing again at the first sign of a new idea. What this really was about was laziness and avarice, and I see no sign of that going away.

It's all so unnecessary. More people are reading online? Screw it, let's put everything online and fire a bunch of folks and stop delivering the damn paper. Plenty of poeple still read the paper, though, and pay for the paper. Why not have everything online and have a paper? I will never understand why people act like you have to pick. Granted, you can't make one reporter do 99 things, but as a business, why not have a great web site and a great paper and great mobile and great video? Why does one thing have to suffer for something else to succeed? 

And why would you ever, ever, ever make your product harder for your customer to understand? 

The company endlessly complicated what had been a simple proposition that has worked since the newspaper’s founding in 1837: deliver a printed bundle of its best efforts every day for a fixed price. The new distribution plan is hard to explain, but I will do my best.

On Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, a broadsheet called The Times-Picayune will be available for home delivery and on the newsstands for 75 cents. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, a tabloid called TPStreet will be available only on newsstands for 75 cents.

In addition, a special electronic edition of TPStreet will be available to the three-day subscribers of the home-delivered newspaper. On Saturdays, there will be early print editions of the Sunday Times-Picayune with some breaking news and some Sunday content.

There’s more, but you get the idea — or not. It’s an array of products, frequencies and approaches that is difficult to explain, much less market.

What the CHRIST. People know what flailing looks like, and this is it, and ain't nobody wants to be at a party that isn't the cool party anymore. Plus, and I've learned this in my offline life over the past 15 years, if you need a second sentence to explain your thing, it's already over. By the time you take a breath and go into part two, people have already moved on.

Not a lot of things are true about newspapers that are true about all businesses but this is: Customers aren't complicated. They don't want to hear your explanations and they certainly don't want to hear your whining. They want to hear that you have a service that will make their lives better, that will be given to them in a manner that requires a minimum amout of work on their part. That's all there is. As Carr puts it: 

The much ballyhooed unmaking of daily newspapering seems to be unmaking itself, and there’s a reason for that. Most newspapers have hung onto the ancient practice of embedding prose on a page and throwing it in people’s yards because that’s where the money and the customers are for the time being.

Shocking. If only someone had seen that coming. 

A. 

Never Quite Awake: Game of Thrones Thread

So you're Sansa Stark, and you've just been promised to marry a lion. 

A Masterpiece of the False Equivalence Genre

Take it away, NYT: 

Nominees at all levels of Washington’s bureaucracy — 117 of them in all, including cabinet secretaries, judges and members of obscure oversight boards — are facing delays. Just last week, the Senate confirmed David Medine, the president’s choice to lead the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The time between his nomination and confirmation was 510 days. Every Republican voted no.

The shrinking number of senators from both parties who are willing to cross the aisle and the growing appeal of adding a “no” vote on a presidential nominee to a political résumé have contributed to the slowdown.

BOTH SIDES BOTH SIDES BOTH SIDES DO IT! 

This doesn't even make sense. Precisely how are Democrats supposed to cross the aisle and vote for a Democratic president's nominees? Are Democrats supposed to vote for Republican ... what, Obamacare repeals, in order to prove to Republicans that they're willing to cross the aisle, so that Republicans can cross the aisle on other things, because common courtesy is binding right now, and doing something nice and generous for others totally means the other person will always and forever do something nice for you, because that's how that always works.

Bending over backwards to make sure nobody gets upset at a story that seems to place blame on anyone produces a story that blames everyone, and therefore the reader gets the impression that this is all just a big impossible mess with no solution because everybody in Washington is such an intractible asshole. Therefore the reader assumes that there are no solutions, except maybe to not elect assholes, but that is hard because everyone is an asshole. 

The implicit message in a story like this, to the readers, is DON'T GET UP FROM YOUR CHAIR. Don't bother. Both parties are equally bad in this. Everyone's complicit. There's nothing you can do. Don't look at this and say, hmm, if only one party wasn't filibustering the nominees of another party's elected president. Both sides need to cross the aisle, even if Democrats are already on the side they need to be on to do what they said they were going to do. Don't look at this and see a solution, which is to really reform the filibuster, quit electing immature and egomaniacal douchebags, and properly call out nonsense as it's seen. Don't look at this and see answers. Everything's hopeless. Don't bother. 

A. 

Ferrets Do Not Enjoy a 5K

Thank you to the 2,000 people who emailed this to me last week: 

Dogs and humans receive a pleasurable chemical reward for running, but this quirk of brain chemistry that makes both dogs and humans love running is not universal among mammals. Ferrets, for example, derive no such benefit. The scientists who conducted the study concluded that chemical changes from running and subsequent effects on the brain help endurance-running species enjoy running. The brains of dogs and humans are primed to like endurance running, which may have provided the evolutionary mechanism necessary for us to develop such skill at it.

This study shows that dogs and humans, unlike ferrets, achieve the runner's high. A friend of mine who hates running believes the study also suggests that she is part ferret, but scientific evidence to support this claim remains elusive.

I've often wondered if Bucky would like to go on a run with me, but given his usual reaction to a walk (LEMME GO LEMME GO LEMME GO I NEED TO BE FREEEEES!) I think it's gonna be a while before he accompanies me on my rounds. Here he is last winter, too much of a little princess to touch the wet ground with his paws: 

A. 

Elspeth Reeve Wins the Internet

For writing this, about the horrible link-bait PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ US story in Time magazine about how All Kids Today are horrible: 

Millennials are the "ME ME ME GENERATION," writes Joel Stein for the cover of Time magazine, which is apparently a marked departure from the Baby Boomers, who were the plain old "Me Generation" (one me, no caps) and who created the "Me Decade" in the 1970s, and who coined the phrase, "But enough about me…what do you think about me?" in the 1980s when they were raising the next narcissists, Generation X. Sometimes you get the sense that these magazines' cultural writers have very little experience with the entire American culture, and prefer to make their grand analyses based on what people they know in the gentrified parts of cities like New York and Los Angeles were talking about at brunch last weekend. The type of young person that magazine writers come across most frequently are magazine interns. Because the media industry is high-status, but, at least early on, very low pay in a very expensive city, it attracts a lot of rich kids. Entitled, arrogant, spoiled, preening — those are the alleged signature traits of Millennials, as diagnosed by countless magazine writers. Those traits curiously align perfectly with the signature traits of a rich kid. Have you seen your intern on Rich Kids of Instagram? If so, he or she is probably not the best guide to crafting the composite personality of a generation that fought three wars for you. 

Maybe this is me remembering how enraging it was to have everything I said discounted because I was young (and a girl, but it was my age old men cited more often in not listening to me), and to be told constantly how much more I would understand when I got older. By which they usually meant I'd become more conservative (no), more interested in talking about things like how Kids Today suck (nay) and more inclined to "settle down" in some giant house somewhere in the country (we will never be able to sell this condo).

It made me want to hit things. It certainly didn't make me want to listen to anything else THEY had to say. This generational-warefare stuff is damaging, to all of us, because it cuts us off from one another, makes us unwilling to learn, and it lets older folks off the hook from having to continue to be great. It tells kids that they're only as good as we say they are, instead of as good as they can be by the standards they invent, which are the only standards that will exist for them. It lets us make the conversation about what the younger generation is doing for us, and compared to us, rather than talk about what we're doing now right now right fucking now today. 

As if we don't have any work to do anymore, and can just hand the whole world off and then bitch about how the next generation is caring for it. 

A. 

*Sean Bean Voice* STUPID IS COMING

Oh NOES, something we've never seen before, Republicans being bags of dogshit: 

WASHINGTON — As the administration struggles to put in place the final, complex piece of President Obama’s signature health care law, an endeavor on a scale not seen since Medicare’s creation nearly a half-century ago, Democrats are worried that major snags will be exploited by Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.

If only there was something you could do about it instead of worrying in the pages of the goddamn Times and announcing to everyone that you're so, so, so very worried that those meanie Republicans are going to blame you for how awful Obamacare is going to be. I'm sure yelling WE ARE SO DOOMED YOU GUYS AIEEEE is going to give people all the conflidence in the world. 

For the third time, Republicans are trying to make the law perhaps the biggest issue of the elections, and are preparing to exploit every problem that arises. After many unsuccessful efforts to repeal the law, the Republican-led House plans another vote soon. And Republican governors or legislatures in many states are balking at participating, leaving Washington responsible for the marketplaces.

I swear to Aqua Buddha, do any of these people go to school? Read that paragraph. "Republicans have been screaming about this for three elections, during which absolutely no one gave a fuck, and they have repeatedly failed to do anything but whine about the law to the 27 percent of people who already agree with them." That's exactly what it would have said if we were being honest here, instead of getting nice and cozy inside John Boehner's colon. 

Democrats are worried about 2014 — a president’s party typically loses seats in midterm years — and some have gone public with concerns about the pace of carrying out the law. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told an interviewer last week that he agreed with a recent comment by Senator Max Baucus of Montana, a Democratic architect of the law, who said “a train wreck” could occur this fall if preparations fell short.

Both of your PR staffs should be put in the stocks and pelted with rotten fish. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? "This thing we're responsible for, it's gonna suck llama dong, I tell you what." Do any of them listen to themselves? Or do they just think that since they don't, nobody does? 

When Republicans announce a thing, like, say, a huge unwinnable expensive war that turns out to be bullshit, they first get together and distribute pictures of every single member of their caucus performing unnatural acts with cacti and guinea pigs. They do this just to make clear what the consequences will be for those congressmen and their succulents and household pets should anybody trip over his own dick in front of a live mike. That is the ONLY explanation I can think of for the unshakeable message discipline, even in crazyville, that these people practice.

Meanwhile here we are, positively stepping on each other to be the first to talk about how it's all gonna go to shit at any second and we'll get blamed and it's not our fault and the president didn't do enough and why Baby Cthulhu why? 

The latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, released last week, showed that Americans remain split on the law, although four in 10 are unaware that Mr. Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act is indeed a law.

So 40 percent of America can't find this thing with a flashlight and both hands, but it's gonna be the Republicans' signature issue in 2014? 

Okay. 

Without the participation of that generally healthy young population, insurance premiums for everyone else would increase — threatening support for a law already short of it.

And yet it is a law, and Republicans continue to be unable to repeal it, so ... why am I supposed to be screaming in terror again? 

A. 

Fuck Yeah Delaware!

*parties*

There are at least 11 states now contending for my coveted tourism dollars this year. I mean dollar. Coveted tourism dollar. 

A. 

I Wanna Kill Bad Guys

Hey, you nitwits, the recruiting office is over there.

No. 20 looks like Reagan to me, though all the heat was about the Obama-looking target. As for No. 11, I'm not sure what Louis CK did to these people but this seems like something of an overreaction. 

Okay, you want to shoot zombies, those are hard to find in the wild, but this is the one that pisses me off: 

This is sort of like those guys that hunt animals in basically cages, because they want to feel like the world's biggest swinging dick without actually doing anything remotely dangerous (or BORING, which deer-hunting is, if you subscribe to the theory that "hunting" means sitting in a tree over a salt lick with a 24-pack of Bud Light waiting for Bambi to wander by). 

You wanted a shot at Osama bin Laden? Should have done a zillion push-ups a day and held your breath for two hours and whatever the hell else you have to do to get into the Navy SEALs. You want to go kill dictators, take a crack at some baddie who's oppressing his people in Africa or some shit? Blackwater is hiring and given the things their people get up to, they ain't real picky. Think taking potshots at Hitler of the Week is the best thing in the world? 

YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO THAT. 

Of course, you have to get your ass out of the lounge chair and use your gun more than once every six weeks when you're showing off. You have to train, and work, and maybe you're not suited for the infantry given your strenuous workout routine of shoving Cheetos in your facehole. Maybe you're suited for pushing pencils in an office, just like you do now, and you'll spend your whole tour of duty not taking out Idi Amin but peeling potatoes in some shithole town in Kentucky, because if you really were such a death-dealing badass you'd be that already. 

Schmucks. 

A. 

Gender, Religion, and Other Things Nobody's Got Right

Echidne on that survey of Muslims worldwide that was making heads explode in wingerstan last week: 

If an overall conclusion appears from the report, it might be that the different areas are not identical with each other and that what seems to influence the findings is the actual history of a particular country:  If that history is one of something fairly close to Islamic theocracy, then the results tend to be more conservative.  On the other hand, if a particular country has had a more secular democracy or a period of non-Islamic laws, the results tend to be less conservative.  Thus, the European countries included in the report largely come across as more progressive, whereas the least progressive countries include the Sub-Saharan countries in Africa and the Islamic Countries of the Middle East.

Shockingly, people are not animals, and are influenced by more than one factor at once. Last week everybody was losing they damn minds about SHARIAH LAW and how many Muslims think women should be stoned to death for looking at a man the wrong way and what have you, all the stuff, as Echidne points out, worries comfortable non-Muslim America more than it does anyone else: 

When I was reading it I wondered how the included questions were determined.  Pretty much all of them are about concerns the "rest of the world" has about Islam, and most of them are "trigger" questions:  the sorts of questions we in the West often read about in the context of Islam.   But questions about, say, the education of girls or the chances of women to work outside the home or to serve as judges or to travel alone etc. were not included.

As if the one has nothing to do with the other. As if the more people educate themselves, the more we all learn, the more we don't realize we're the same. As if we haven't seen this play out over and over and over. As if we've got it all down pat by now and are just waiting for these people to catch up. 

A. 

The Leap: Game of Thrones Thread

God's not supposed to talk back. That's kind of the point.

This Is Exactly the Problem

YOU DON'T HAVE TO GIVE A SHIT WHAT SOMEBODY IN POWER TELLS YOU: 

“I regret any error that ever got into the paper, but from where I sat, there was a total congruence — everything was coalescing around one message,” he said, noting that The Times was far from alone in its reporting. “I was suspicious, and perhaps I should have been more aggressive in pursuing that suspicion.”

Yes, you should have, given that being suspicious of what people in power say is YOUR ENTIRE GODDAMN JOB. You are not there for anything else. It's one thing to report the message that government officials are putting out. It's another to act like that message makes you helpless to say anything about it. God, what a morally bankrupt, cowardly little asshole. "Ooh, this guy said a thing, from a very big podium, which made it hard for me to open my mouth and use words to ask questions, because of magic and sorcery." What in the fuck were you, oh great editor of the New York Times, afraid of? 

And what COULD you have been afraid of that would have been worse than helping to prop up a war that left hundreds of thousands of people dead AND TURNED OUT TO BE BULLSHIT? 

A. 

Everybody Remember Ari Fleischer?

He's still a douchebag! I know you're all relieved: 

The events sparked a debate on CNN last night, prompting former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to defend his former boss’s decision to open Gitmo to begin with. “We have it because these people did not even follow the law of war, let alone the rule of war,” he said, adding, “These people didn’t even wear a military uniform. They engaged in battle against America as terrorists, a violation of the laws of war. That’s why Guantanamo got invented.”

But most legal experts say detention practices at Gitmo violate international law.

“This country fought Adolf Hitler. And I don’t really believe that Osama bin Laden and his group are worse or more dangerous than Adolf Hitler,” CNN legal expert Jeffery Toobin countered Fleischer, adding, “We managed to defeat Adolf Hitler by following the rule of law.”

Backed in a corner, Fleischer then went a bit off the rail:

FLEISCHER: They [the Germans] followed the law of war. They wore uniforms and they fought us on battlefields. These people are fundamentally, totally by design different. And they need to be treated in a different extrajudicial system.

How does not wearing a uniform make Gitmo okay? And even if you buy that okay, these people are special supervillains who need a special prison that is not in America, how does it then follow that that prison needs to treat them inhumanely? 

A. 

Friday Ferretblogging

It's still chilly here, and Claire likes to pretend it's not time to wake up in the morning so she can stay warm and cozy and asleep. 

A. 

I Have Personally Touched Gays So I Can Call Them Sinners

This Broussard guy:

I’m saying all that to say that if I can play basketball with a homosexual, just about anyone can.

I’ve played in several rec leagues with LZ Granderson, who is an openly gay writer at ESPN The Magazine.

I consider LZ a friend. I’ve gone out to lunch with him, talked music, sports, politics and lots of other things with him. I greet him with a handshake and a hug, just like I greet lots of other guys.

By the way, LZ can ball. In a league in New York City that features several former college players, we both made the All-Star team. He was kind of like our Shawn Marion minus the dunks (though he claims he can still slam!) and I was like our Gilbert Arenas (high game of 39, thank you).

Anyway, when we play in our rec league games, I give him high fives and hugs. Same with one of his friends who is on the team and also gay.

SEE! I touched them! The openly gays! I touched them with my hands! Hugged them! Our pecs touched. Our nipples engaged one another's. I felt his well-developed shoulders and the warmth of his skin on mine. This tactile experience did not magically make me not a tool and a douchebag, which proves that in America opinions are not transmitted by skin-to-skin contact, and that proves that it's okay that I think being gay is a sin. My friends dig it when I hug them, and am honest with them about how they're going to hell! It's all good. 

I'm asking: Has there ever been a column by The Gay Friends saying "I have bigot friends, and we agree to disagree because that's America, man?" Because I feel like until we start reading that all the time, even the most loving encounters get rendered into this thing where somebody is emotional scenery for My Journey To Enlightenment, Or Not, In This Specific Case. I mean, so long as The Gay Friends are good with their asshole pals, who am I to interfere, but we never hear from The Gays Some Bro Does Not Mind Touching, and I feel like that's on purpose. 

This whole thing is goddamn stupid. I can tell you all about Gay Fellows I Have Cuddled or Girls I Have Kissed While Watching Firefly Together or what have you, but if I get up in the morning and I talk about how I don't think they deserve the same rights as anyone else under the law, if I say that in my considered opinion they are not as glorious to God as any other human being, how does my once having held a lesbian's hand excuse those opinions? How does it affect them at all, come to think of it? I'm a bigot because I hold bigoted opinions, not because I have or lack proximity to homosexuals. 

I think a lot of the problem is that we, straight people we, have come to define homophobia, bigotry, as the Worst Case Scenario. As the Westboro Baptist Church, and as long as you don't rise to that level you're okay. As long as you don't stand outside your gay neighbor's house with a FAG SIN poster, you're not "homophobic," so you can't be doing or saying anything objectionable or wrong. As if this stuff isn't all about degrees, and about recognizing when something's not about you. 

As if all this is, all anything is, is a chance to show off your private stable of beliefs and then declare on behalf of those affected by them that everything is cool, because as you walked off the basketball court you said, "Good game," and you looked them right in their very gay eyeballs when you did it. 

A. 

An Armed Revolution Led by Somebody Else

Oh please. This isn't going to be scary. You know why not? Because Idol is on, that's why. If all these people really were capable of being roused to action any one of a hundred things would have roused them by now. We heard this about Obama's election and heard it again about health care and I'm sure at the headquarters of the post-apocalyptic wishf-fulfillment society that is the RNC these days they're muttering it under their breath all day long, but absolutely nothing is going to get people out of their recliners.

(I have lots of thoughts about fanboy disaster culture at the moment, about how some people just want shit to go down because they've never pictured themselves as the guy eating rats in the alley instead of the guy leading the new feudal society from a ball pit full of hookers, and this kind of thing is no exception.)

I love my fellow old white people, I really, really do, but we lazy as fuck. We may watch a show, multiple shows, hundreds of movies by now, about the earth caving in, and I may make jokes about provisioning for the zombie apocalypse and learning to drive stick just as a precaution, but the kind of stones it takes to actually rebuild a society? If we had that, we'd rebuild THE ONE WE HAVE NOW. Forget Republicans: Do I think a revolution may be called for at some point? Have you met me? Of course I do. I always think it's time to burn down the board. I think a revolution may be called for yesterday, and that is when things are, on average, pretty okay and I have a frozen pizza in my belly. 

But let me tell you something, whenever somebody brings up this armed revolution crap, they don't ever mean THEM. They mean somebody else should lead the armed revolution, some other guy whose parade they could cheer at. The danger isn't that 44 percent of Republicans believe this shit. The danger is in the one guy who believes it, and doesn't wait for somebody else to get it done. 

A. 

Kitty Week Purring

This is the cargo hold of George the Wonder Prius, stuffed with cans of cat food and litter and fuzzy mice and a huge fluffy pet bed so soft I wanted one in human size for me, and warming pads for sick/injured/very young kitties, all delivered to Feral Fixers this evening. 

More stuff is going to them off their registry, because it was hard to find in stores (though all the electric blankets/throws are on sale right now). In case you missed it the president of the organization posted in one of the Kitty Week threads a thank you to everyone who contributed: 

WOW! You guys are great! Since this event I have had so much exposure to new people and social media! The world of blogs is a fabulous place! The cats and volunteers of Feral Fixers appreciate your good thoughts and well wishes and your donations! See our facebook for updates - with everyone's help we are doing okay! While no one wants to go thru this, there are silver linings and good people! Tammy Feral Fixers President

You guys kick ass. Way to go. 

A. 

Well, First They Should Sell Some Bling

I mean, really, quit cashing those government checks: 

“I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it,” Del. Ray Canterbury (R-Greenbrier) said during floor debate. “If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they may not learn to diagram a sentence, but they’ll learn a more important lesson.”

Which will be that their government and their community think they are scum, and should be exempted from child labor laws, and are to blame for their parents' misfortunes. I can't think of a more appropriate lesson for children than that. 

I swear whenever these Republican knobs start yobbing off about how poor people just need to learn to work hard, I think YOU FIRST ASSHOLE. I doubt any of them have ever hauled anything heavier than a double scotch, but boy are they eager to stand watch with a whip while the little children pick in the fields and scrub in the hallways.

Make them earn it. In your life, man, what have you ever earned? 

A. 

Rise Up Again: Game of Thrones Thread

How many times can you get back up?

Always one more.

Tom Brokaw, the Country Turns its Lonely Eyes to You

This was just a bridge too far: 

Veteran newsman Tom Brokaw said that the White House Correspondents' Dinner officially jumped the shark when troubled actress Lindsay Lohan attended the annual event. 

“The breaking point for me was Lindsay Lohan,” Brokaw told Politico in a story published Friday. “She became a big star at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Give me a break.”

Lohan was a guest of Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren at the 2012 dinner. 

Really? Lindsay Lohan. That was too much for you? Not the presidents joking about drone attacks or weapons of mass destruction, not all of you acting like you deserved some kind of cookie for showing up and pointing a camera or a recorder in the president's direction? It was Lindsay Lohan.

I can see that, actually. For like 40 years our capitol press has only been able to get het up about shit that matters not at all. I can see where an actress with a visible drug problem (as opposed to probably 2/3 of the audience's who-knows-what issues) who's easy to make fun of because she has no power whatsoever compared to Oh So Sober and Serious You is just the absolute height of what you consider gauche. 

But hey, maybe it's not all about the actress: 

Following last year's event, the former anchor of NBC Nightly News criticized the soiree, saying it “separates the press from the people that they’re supposed to serve, symbolically.”

It must have hurt you to be there in years past: 

You know what, seriously, the bitching about this event gets worse every year. I mean, go or don't go, but don't talk about how you're really too good to go and how, even though you've been sucking down free drinks for years, it's getting old and tired and it's not the cool party anymore and now it's just actresses you don't like. It's not designed to change anything, it's just designed to point out how superior you are. To Lindsay Lohan. Because that's hard to do these days, poor kid. 

A. 

Friday Ferretblogging: Thank You Edition

This snuggle is from Bucky for all you did for his feline friends: 

A. 

This Blog is So Great I Need a Cigarette: Kitty Week Concludes!

You all. YOU ALL. I said $300 for the kitties and you were all like "eh, okay, fine, but let's make it $500 and let's send notes of support and let's get our friends to chip in off the wish list because you may think we're great but actually we are so much better than you think we are and we do this EVERY DAMN TIME, like pay attention, lady." 

You raised $547 for the kitties. In four days. Because when the world's caving in you put your hands to good use. I'm so proud to know you all. 

I've got a message in to the Feral Fixers crew to find out what their greatest need is right now, and whatever that is, they'll have that taken care of. You guys are the absolute best. Way to redeem one of the worst weeks in recorded history by making kitties happy. Thank you thank you thank you thank you! 

A. 

Kitty Week: Homestretch

So I set a new goal, and you guys get us to within $75 of THAT. That's right, we're now at $425 for the kitties! You guys are the best blog ever. 

Let's get this done. Push us over the top today. Five hundred bucks for these kittens to roll around in like Scrooge McDuck.

They're so tiny. They need a warm place to sleep and somebody to take care of them if they get sick. They need litter, and towels, and electric blankets, and food to fill their tiny, teeny, little fuzzy bellies. 

I know we can get there. DOOO EEEET. 

A. 

Kitty Week, Day Three

Did you smash the goal I'd set for the whole WEEK in just two days? Why yes. Yes you did. We're up to $320 for the kitties! 

But they're kitties. No matter how much love and adoration you give them, they want:

So participate in Kitty Week! Let's see if we can make it $500! 

A. 

The Enemy

This is the stupidest part of a very, very stupid week: 

After saying emphatically that trying Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a federal civilian court is the only option because the 19-year-old bombing suspect is a U.S. citizen, White House press secretary Jay Carney on Monday added that President Barack Obama's inner-circle has his back on the decision.

"The entire national security team is in agreement on this approach," Carney said during a press briefing, after noting that it's a "matter that's decided by the Department of Justice."

Republicans, notably Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ), have argued that Tsarnaev should be treated as an enemy combatant. 

WHY? God Almighty, why? If he's an enemy combatant, then there's an enemy, which I guess in this case would be Chechnya, another shitless place for us to kick the shit out of? Except a) they're American so we bomb ourselves now? and b) Russia probably is jonesing for something to do and so us blowing up stuff on their continent is not going to be taken well. 

I do not GET this. We already have a system to deal with enemy combatants who are US citizens who do stupid shit, and it's called the justice system, because they're called CRIMINALS. Not everybody who does something heinous gets a special name, even if the news has seen fit to give them a theme song. 

A. 

Kitty Week DAY TWO

Look at this wee fuzzy kitty. So soft, so warm, so adorable. 

Don't you want that kitty to have a cozy electric blanket if it's cold and a clean litterbox to ignore and a safe place to sleep at night?

Yeah, you know you do. So participate in kitty week, and make the sweet kitty happy. 

A. 

Roll the Flood Back: First Draft Kitty Week!

So last week was the worst week ever, and in addition to the bombings in Boston, the ricin, the gun control fail, the West, Texas explosion, the manhunt and its conclusion, and various politicians' using their pieholes to talk, the Chicago suburbs flooded. As in, six feet of water in people's basements, parts of EXPRESSWAYS closed, stranded/drowned cars in sinkholes, etc. 

Among the flooding victims was Feral Fixers, a cat shelter and spay-neuter-release program in Lombard. Their cats are all safe, but this shelter lost everything: 

Let's do this and get out of this miserable slump. Let's raise some money for the kitties. Feral Fixers needs: 

• Towels
• Blankets
• 6” paper plates
• Canned cat food
• Paper towels
• Newspaper
• Kitty Litter (Special Kitty Cat Litter is preferred)
• New Electric Heating Blankets
• Scotch tape, "Sharpie" permanent Markers and Copier paper
• Furry Toy Mice (for cats in Foster)
• "Silent Auction" items for our fundraisers
• Orijen dry cat food
• Gift Cards (Jewel, Dominick’s, Menards, Home Depot, Pet Supplies Plus, Walmart, gas station)

Hit the tip jar up and put "kitties" or "kitty week" in the comments field. 

I figure, if we can get to $300 by week's end, Mr. A and I will go on a shopping spree Friday night and deliver a CARLOAD of everything they need to the Elmhurst PetCo where they're taking donations. 

You can also donate to them directly here, or buy from their Wal-Mart registry here. 

Let's do something to make this neverending misery stop. Let's make things for the kitties better. 

A. 

Harm No Child: Game of Thrones Thread

He was never a Stark.

Friday Ferretblogging

Bucky and Riot in their Octopus sleeping spot are 1,000 percent done with this week and so am I. 

A. 

Why The Mommy Wars are Bullshit

Until we fix this, it's pointless for women to keep shaming each other over who works and who doesn't, because these are barely choices at all: 

A 2007 survey by the National Institute of Child Health Development deemed the majority of operations to be “fair” or “poor”—only 10 percent provided high-quality care. Experts recommend a ratio of one caregiver for every three infants between six and 18 months, but just one-third of children are in settings that meet that standard. Depending on the state, some providers may need only minimal or no training in safety, health, or child development. And because child care is so poorly paid, it doesn’t attract the highly skilled. In 2011, the median annual salary for a child care worker was $19,430, less than a parking lot attendant or a janitor. Marcy Whitebook, the director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California–Berkeley, told me, “We’ve got decades of research, and it suggests most child care and early childhood education in this country is mediocre at best.”

At the same time, day care is a bruising financial burden for many families—more expensive than rent in 22 states. In the priciest, Massachusetts, it costs an average family $15,000 a year to place an infant full-time in a licensed center. In California, the cost is equivalent to 40 percent of the median income for a single mother.

Only minimal assistance is available to offset these expenses. The very poorest families receive a tax credit worth up to $1,050 a year per child. Some low-income families can also get subsidies or vouchers, but in most states the waiting lists for them are long. And so many parents put their kids in whatever they can find and whatever they can afford, hoping it will be good enough.

A. 

Fuck Everything Forever Today

I just ate half a bag of chocolate chips I AM NOT EVEN SORRY. 

Lyndon Johnson called, and he said he left his everything at your mom's, so when you get done hawking $20 blowjobs out of the back of his Buick, do you think you could swing by and bring him his pants? 

Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (AK), Max Baucus (MT), Mark Begich (AK) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND)voted against the amendment. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) also voted against the amendment so that Democrats could bring the bill up again.

And okay, in a just world we wouldn't need those four fucksticks anyway given the backwards-ass human shitstains they act like whenever things get rough, but let me ask, don't the four of you and you, Harry, get sick of getting your lunch money taken and your homework torn up and your dog kicked all the fucking time forever? I mean doesn't it get old? 

Don't you ever get tired of being owned? Even Joe Biden is embarrassed for you: 

And he spends his days trying not to make lewd remarks to the national women's lacrosse championship team and waxing his Corvette. Joe Biden, who once felt up a biker chick in a diner in full view of 3,000 cameras BECAUSE, he'd rather not be subjected to your behavior anymore. That's how low you've sunk. 

McCain, Toomey, Kirk and Collins joined the Democrats in voting yes, though McCain made sure not to come out for it until after there was no point anyway. Obama has to be used to that by now. 

I feel like we keep hitting peak crazy and THINGS KEEP GETTING CRAZIER. 

A. 

Fuck Yeah New Zealand!

Listen as New Zealand approves marriage equality, and then everybody in the room starts singing a love song. If the shouts of joy that start at :50 don't give you chills, I don't even want to know you. 

A. 

'I don't have evidence to back that up'

Susan Collins, a US GODDAMN SENATOR, everybody: 

… “Whenever we have an attack like this it’s difficult not to think that it’s somehow involved in Islamic extremism,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, until recently a top member of the Homeland Security committee and still a prime mover on security bills. “I don’t have evidence to back that up. That’s just based on previous attacks.”

Nah, you're just talkin'. Just kinda spitballing. Brainstorming. Throwing stuff at the wall. You know. To reporters. In a public statement. Which, every statement you make is a public statement because YOU'RE IN CONGRESS. Shut your damn mouth. STOP TALKING. It is not that hard. That thing you stuff your cake in? CLOSE IT. 

It is amazing to me, just amazing sometimes, how baseline stupid a lot of these people are. I'm not talking about the deliberately dim, venal sickos like Inhofe, or the repulsive bigots like Sessions or Chambliss. I'm talking about we elect people to Congress, grown-ass men and women, who then tweet pictures of their dicks around and say things about ongoing law enforcement investigations that they have no idea if they are right or not. They start sentences with "Well, fuck if we really know, Biff, but ..." and then CONTINUE TO SPEAK. 

(People like this are God's gift to reporters, and you hope they NEVER learn.)

I think all members of Congress should have someone who is specifically tasked with following them around and hitting them with a yardstick the minute they open their mouths or touch Facebook or Twitter. A week or so of that, they'll develop a healthy respect for the value of discretion. 

A. 

How We Tell Stories Now

Adrian Holovaty, who founded the late, much-lamented EveryBlock: 

 Clearly there's a template somewhere with a default title "Boston.com viral video page," and the URLs are hard-coded to include "viral_page". And let's keep some perspective: overall, what's important here is the news event itself, not the details of how one particular CMS titled a video.

And I don't mean to berate Boston.com. As somebody who used to work for news sites, I have been in their shoes. There are many, many more important things for a news organization to do in this situation -- vet new information, feverishly post updates and, well, keep the site up and running under huge traffic levels! And to their credit, after I posted a snarky tweet about it, a few Boston.com folks responded within minutes, saying they were migrating videos to YouTube and didn't have much control over their software.

But I'm writing this because I think there's an important lesson here for makers of Web products. That lesson is: tools will be repurposed, and they should be designed with that in mind.

Whoever designed this video gallery system (sounds like it might've been a vendor) was too narrow-minded. Judging by the URL and default page title, it was meant to be a clearinghouse for viral videos, but it ended up being used forall types of videos. They ought to have designed for broad use, not specific use.

Emphasis mine.

When a story isn't about kittens or a squash that looks like Nixon, there are layers and layers of extra stuff you have to do now, and the best time to think and plan is not, shall we say, when the earth is caving in. When something happens and you don't or can't respond appropriately, you wind up with some kind of totally preventable communications emergency sapping your staff's energy at a time when they're running on fumes anyway. 

Think about removing the ads from your news videos about the event, so that when (as I did yesterday) people are watching the various live feeds trying to get information about people being dead or injured, they're not delayed by commercials for furniture polish. 

Think about the witty error page that pops up when your server's overloaded or is otherwise tits-up. Is that what you want to see when you're frantically looking for news about your loved ones? I get you want to be cute and smart-assy since that's how the Internet works, and ordinarily, bravo, but is there a way to change it when a major breaking news event breaks you? If not, can one be designed? 

Think about turning off your automated tweets, at least for the first few hours of a major national event. This applies to news orgs but also to, you know, everyone. People can read about your band, your store, your company's new HR policy, your local award, tomorrow. It's disconcerting in the extreme to read a hundred tweets about Boston and then, in the middle of it, "HERE'S SOME MEDIOCRE SHIT YOU COULD BUY." "Here's our reporter's charming story about the world's oldest stamp collector." 

Think about not reading random Twitter feeds on the air. That's not a substitute for reporting. It is not that hard to send someone out into the street with a camera to interview people and I guarantee you ten of the people farthest away from the event talking about nothing will make you look more intelligent and sound more informed than reading "tweets from @bootylicious26." This also applies to quoting what people say on Facebook. Twitter and Facebook are useful tools. They are not the job. 

And mostly this applies to live national broadcasters, but: THINK ABOUT SHUTTING UP. If you're going to start a sentence with "we don't know any details yet" then please, don't continue to speak. It would be better to show footage from the scene in silence. Just tell people what you do know. Full stop. Couching and hedging and such don't cover your ass if you're going to then interview a panel of people who think a crisis was engineered by Barack Obama and the ghost of Tim McVeigh working together to overthrow the Illuminati. 

Most people think you can't plan for breaking news, but you can. You can, should and have to think about this sort of thing before the hellmouth opens up and you're scrambling to find your socks. 

A. 

I Am Not a Marathoner

I don't run marathons. 

I have friends who do, and their names were the first ones I plugged into the marathon site after explosions turned the finish line into a crime scene. None of them were running in Boston today, but they run, and the first picture I saw was of a man with his legs blown off, and all I could think was that that man is a runner. 

Running's weird. It's strange and hypnotic and cultish; I used to joke to a runner friend that she was just telling me all the work would feel good eventually and really nobody wanted to admit that the emperor had no clothes and this sucked. I think it's because it's solitary. It's just you and the road, you and the treadmill, you and your playlist. You against yourself: Your time, your pace. You can run in a group but make no mistake: YOU are the runner. Eventually it all pinpoints to you, your body, the song in your head or the sound of the street, and the pounding of your feet on the pavement. 

Here's what I felt when I ran three miles outside for the first time: Like I was going to fucking die, first of all. Like I could lie down in the pile of leaves under that tree there and never finish the route, and be happy with that decision. Like my left hamstring and my right lung were going to mutiny. Like this was going to hurt like a motherfucker tomorrow. Like this was the dumbest idea I'd ever had. 

And like I was the only person on the face of the earth. Like I was the last person left, just me, and the only sound on earth was the sound of my harsh breathing, and one block more. One block more. One block more. Always another step forward, always a little bit farther than I thought I could go, always just a second longer. One more hill. One more song on the list. One more, one more, one more. Until I was rounding the corner and could see my building, and knew I was home. 

Someone turned home for those runners into smoke and screams and carnage and fear. Those people were runners and the finish line is home and someone took that away. Dozens of them are wounded, badly. That man, with his legs blown off, that man was a runner. I don't know what running meant to him but I know what it means to me. 

It means solace. It means accomplishment. It means I can do what I used to tell myself I couldn't do, and it means I can do anything I want to do, and it means I'm enough, me and the pavement and my shoes and my playlist, we're enough to get something done. It means I'm okay, and someone stole that today. 

Lindham said he and other runners were halted on the course as police tried to determine what was going on.

“It became apparent that this was something big. They started yelling at us to get the hell off the course,” Lindham said. “Then we saw other runners coming in our direction, yelling things, and they were obviously very scared.”

Lisa Vasallo, 45, of Dedham, was in the tunnel leading to the final stretch when police stopped runners. They waited for word that is was safe to continue, and then heard the news that there had been explosions. Residents from the houses along the route brought out food and water for the runners.

“My first thought was my children,” said Vasallo, breaking into tears. “I knew they were at the finish line.” She was later reunited with them.

I followed Twitter for hours this afternoon and read most of what I could get my hands on, like everybody else. I donated and posted and retweeted and then I did the only thing I could think of. I went for a run. 

A. 

Rhaegar Fought Nobly: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers within. 

'Unlucky ones have to be collected in bits and pieces'

Those of you who remember Riverbend from the early days of the Iraq war will want to read this. 

A. 

Friday Ferretblogging

Chicken-Riot got a clean bill of health at the vet this morning. He's put on almost half a pound and other than his pancreatic cancer, which is under control, he's doing good. 

A. 

This Cocksucker Inhofe

Which is, of course, an insult to any individuals who suck cock: 

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that the gun control debate doesn't have anything to do with the families of the Newtown, Conn., shooting victims, and that the only reason those families think it does is because President Barack Obama told them it did. [...]

"See, I think it's so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn't," Inhofe said.

By "these families," Inhofe was referring to 11 family members of victims killed during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. Inhofe believes, and is willing to argue publicly to reporters, that efforts to prevent gun violence have nothing "to do with them."

As the Huffington Post report added, when someone suggested the families of Newtown victims actually believe the gun debate pertains to them, Inhofe responded, "Well, that's because they've been told that by the president."

Right. Because they wouldn't otherwise come to the conclusion that having FAMILY MEMBERS SHOT means they get to talk at the grown-ups' table. They wouldn't otherwise believe they had any right to stand next to a fucking bologna pony like you, who's been smoking the government hog as a US GODDAMN SENATOR for years and forever, and speak about their experiences. 

Of course, those experiences all just amount to have people close to them killed, which is not the same or as valid as, say, taking every inch of Wayne LaPierre's .357 as deep as they possibly could, for the second amendment. So I can see where you'd get confused. 

Let me clear it up for you: Here in the United States of Not Yours, anybody gets to have a say about anything and the way I know that's true is that a bunch of people apparently said they want you to be a senator. If we were making people qualify for discussions of any kind, that would be the first sign we'd gone off the rails. So people whose children have been shot get to say things about guns, and that's the deal you make, and can we please get somebody to read the Constitution to this dillhole? Like can we bring Richard Lugar out of retirement to do it? Nothing to DO WITH THEM? I mean are you kidding me? 

A. 

Stop Having Asses, Girls, They are Distracting

Ugh, this again: 

You'll have to pardon me for thinking here (after all, I'm just a girl, what do I know?), but wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to sit the boys down for a talk and tell them to cool it? Not only would it save the parents of every girl in the district from having to revamp their kids' wardrobes, but it would prepare the boys for what will happen when they walk out into a dress code-free world where women walk around flaunting bare ankles and even, gulp, showing their knees!

I don't have a son; I have a daughter. In my house, she's being taught to wear clothing that makes her feel comfortable and is "classy," but that's as far as we will go. We aren't going to teach her that she needs to change herself to keep boys in line because, frankly, that's not her job.

Granted, I think skinny jeans are hell inventions, but that's just because I'm OLD AS FUCK, and cannot wear them. Are we done with this trend yet? I mean, can we please? This trend, and the 5-inch platforms, and the way every fucking dress lacks sleeves? IT'S COLD OUT EIGHT MONTHS OF THE YEAR I NEED SLEEVES.

(I'm not saying girls should cover up, I'm saying I want to cover up, and find it difficult because we are in a short, tight, slutty place in fashion right now and when you're poking 40 with as short a stick as I am it's either boobs OR legs, not both.)

But it is not in any way my job to wear anything so as to make men behave a certain way. Men are going to behave the way they're going to behave. My wearing a burkha isn't going to make somebody who's about to be a creep stop creeping. Instead of putting your daughters in convents maybe teach your sons that girls are people. 

A. 

Childless Women Lack Essential Humanity

Boy, do I ever love it when they just come right out and say it. Oh, and fuck your sympathy, you condescending bitchmonster: 

I mean, seriously, what is this paragraph even trying to say beyond “please don’t fire me Mr. ‘Femail is a Great Name for a ‘Lifestyles’ section’, I can pimp breeding for white women harder if you want!”

But, more than all the things we want, we actually need our children; they complete us as women, they are our light and our love and our legacy.

Because without that ability to spawn actual human beings with their uteruses (well, about 49 or so % of the time anyways), women would be the useless malfunctioning fleshlights Patriarchal society treats them as, amirite?

We feel desperately sorry for those who yearn for children they cannot have; the unwilling barren, if you will.

Translation: The last time I tried to argue that childless women were soulless abominations, I got my ass deep-roasted in flames from barren conservative women, so this time I’m trying to throw this belated shield up in the hopes of making it more clear that “childless” is just an attempted dog whistle for “those young feministy types that actually want to be treated like full people in the workplace and society” that makes “curtain-twitching patriarchy defender” sound like something halfway appealing in contrast.

How the CHRIST would this nosy skank know if someone is "unwillingly barren" or not? She'd have to ask, I suppose, and in that wheedling busybody tone you get to know so well when you run into one of these members of the mommy cult bent on ferreting out exactly what kind of horrible tragedy you're having so she can cluck over it with her friends at the next fucking meeting of the Club of Maternal Superiority. I swear to God, I try not to be bitter at people who have children but BITCHES LIKE THIS DO NOT MAKE IT EASY.  

The entire thing is just an excuse to hate on young women, using "childless" as a synonym for young. All the disparaging comments about how young women go out and party and come in to work hungover (and let's not get started on how her only concept of work is Intertrode or something), and are shallow, and don't value their co-workers or their jobs the way TRUE WOMEN who have given birth do ... it's not even so much hateful from a childless perspective as it is hateful from the perspective of someone who still identifies with a generation that is constantly getting told it is shallow and trivial and fuck you, basically, you don't know anybody's life. 

Because anybody who doesn't have children just wants to party all day and all night. Anybody without children has no responsibilities at all, and certainly no family of her own. She has no cares at all and can be as selfish as she pleases! For as much as this woman seems to value the workplace, she might try meeting some people in it. She might discover that the young woman who has no children volunteers for two charities and takes care of an aging parent, instead of partying all night. God forbid anybody younger than 40 lay any claim to being a grown-up, after all. You're not REALLY an adult until you've given birth. 

Look. I get you've got to come up with reasons why you and only you are superior to all other ladies in the office. Otherwise you're just living on merit like everybody else, fighting your way through the fucking minefield that is modern work life with men and women, trying to succeed. If you're not inherently more worthy, how on earth are you expected to survive? 

But my understanding of your psychological coping mechanisms ends when you declare that I lack the essential humanity of the virtuous Madonna. Fuck that shit and the diaper bag it carried in with it. 

A. 

Bigots are the New Gays

Jesus Elvis Roosevelt Christ: 

Last week, the cover of Time magazine showed two women kissing and a headline that read: "Gay Marriage Already Won." With the Supreme Court case on gay marriage at hand in Washington -- a final decision isn't expected until summer -- many feel that the legalization of marriage for gays is inevitable.

Only the Deep South states, including Tennessee, remain opposed. In 2012, 59.4 percent of Georgia residents said they wouldn't be in favor of legalizing gay marriage, according to a Landmark Communications/Rosetta Stone poll.

Yet even in Tennessee, where more people are opposed to gay marriage than any other state in the South -- 62 percent -- according to Middle Tennessee State University polling, many are reluctant to express their qualms with others.

"If you say you are not for it, [people] say you hate gays or it's a hate crime," said Meghann Parry, 20, a sophomore at UTC.

People say it's a hate crime? Really? Who exactly charged you with said hate crime? Because in recent memory laws on the books made it a crime to have certain types of sex, so if these things are exactly equivalent it's important that we be clear here.

The church has turned off way too many people with harsh words about homosexuality. A Christian should be morally opposed to homosexual acts without condemning a person, many pastors say.

"We have to be compassionate," said Gary Jared, senior pastor at Stuart Heights Baptist Church. "The misunderstanding is that if you don't agree with someone's lifestyle that you hate them or are scared of them."

Right. You should love them and not be afraid of them when you tell them you disagree with their "lifestyle." There has to be a nicer way to tell somebody they're going to hell. This is all just about your tone of voice. 

David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, said he is also finding this in the Tennessee Legislature.

"They support a view of sexual intimacy within the confines of marriage, but just like the general public from which they come, they are often intimidated and uncomfortable expressing that for fear that they will be disliked or voted out of office or called pejorative names," Fowler said.

Or murdered. Murdered, even, for "expressing" themselves. Hanged, shot, beat to death, herded into concentration camps, hounded from jobs and housing, with no legal recourse and no appeal to public sympathy. What would THAT be like? It's difficult to imagine. If only there was some group to which a comparison could be made. 

You know what pisses me off about these self-martyring drama whores? There are actual places in the world where Christians are in fact persecuted, where they're verbally and physically threatened, where they're unwelcome. That genuine persecution usually ranks lower than "people look at me funny when I talk about buttsex" on the list of stuff American Christians are concerned about. The endless confusion of "universal approval of my innermost thoughts no matter how stupid" and "tolerance" drives me up a goddamn tree. You really want Christians to be freer to express their faith? Start working in China, goddamn it. 

And if you want to oppose marriage equality and dislike the "gay lifestyle" and generally act like the 1950s called and they want you to come home, you can still in fact do that all you want. You'll just run into fewer and fewer like-minded people. It's okay, though. There will always be groups in which you'll find yourself welcome, no matter how small those groups are.

But you want to be at the cool party, and you're upset that you can't be at the cool party and still be so uncool. Well, guess what? It's time to learn to deal. You don't get to have everything. Welcome to the United States of the rest of us. 

A. 

Under This Skin: Game of Thrones Thread

I love this filthy little chicken-rat like she is my own child. 

There Is No Bargaining

Josh: 

This isn’t only about President Obama’s negotiating acumen. In conversations with the president’s key advisors and the President himself over the last three years one point that has always come out to me very clearly is that the President really believes in the importance of the Grand Bargain. He thinks it’s an important goal purely on its own terms. That’s something I don’t think a lot of his diehard supporters fully grasp. He thinks it’s important in longrange fiscal terms (and there’s some reality to that). But he always believes it’s important for the country and even for the Democratic party to have a big global agreement that settles the big fiscal policy for a generation and let’s the country get on to other issues — social and cultural issues, the environment, building the economy etc.

There's no incentive for Republicans to settle. There is not, and never has been, any incentive for Republicans to solve problems politically. It's not what they do. They don't get elected to solve problems. They don't get elected to lower taxes. They don't even really get elected to cut spending. They get elected because liberals suck, full stop. And as long as they can still make the argument that liberals suck, they don't need to do anything else. 

So, I mean, go ahead and make them all kinds of offers. Go ahead and demonstrate your good faith, Mr. President. It's the 240th time you've done this, but this time surely it'll work. 

A. 

Friday Ferretblogging: NOM

We've been feeding Claire gushy foods to try to fatten her up after her brief illness. She doesn't like it, so half the time Riot winds up mowing down the rest of it while she runs off to find some shoes or something else she's not supposed to be gnawing on. 

A. 

'Stop Hitting Them, Maybe'

These people aren't ideological right-wingers so much as they're ideological bullies, and their only real loyalty is to whoever is kicking the kid who's already down: 

"He's very intense," Hannity said in a segment with conservative commentator Michelle Malkin. "And I'm watching this, and I'm thinking, alright, I don't like it. He kicked one player there. But on the other hand, you now what, I kind of like old-fashioned discipline, on the other hand. I mean, have we become that politically incorrect? These are adults. They don't want to play for that team, they can leave."

Malkin seemed to agree, saying that "sports is a rough world."

Hannity added that Rice was trying to discipline the players and draw out the team's best performance. 

"But I can understand, stop hitting them, maybe," Hannity said. "But I like the intensity, I like the drive. I like that he's pushing those kids and that he runs a tight ship. Maybe, maybe we need a little more discipline in society, and maybe we don't have to be a bunch of wimps for the rest of our lives. My father hit me with a belt, I turned out okay. Except for the minds of liberals."

Actually, you didn't turn out okay. You turned out somebody who needs to belittle the abuse of others in order to feel better about your own experience. You turned out somebody who worships power and authority and brutality, and who has spent the past decade enthusiastically leg-humping war criminals because standing next to them made you feel a little less like the kid who got whipped with a belt. 

A.