I’m making a list of who’s going up against the wall in the revolution

Top of the list: bankers. Did you know this?

Both bankers and their once free-spending wives are suddenly becoming familiar with the art of thriftiness.

That’s part of some money-saving tips for bankers, which is full of rage-inducing suggestions. They aren’t applicable to you or me, for instance, because among them are such jewels as “sell the second home” (I haven’t paid off the first yet! Also, yes I know I’m privileged to be able to afford just the one), fly coach class (yeah, I almost always do), have the wife do the ironing (really, the sexism in this article alone is grounds to start the revolt), take cheaper skiing trips, and here, my very favorite:

The more money you have in your pocket, the more you will want to spend it. “Stop carrying a wedge of cash around with you,” said the ex-Goldman banker. “It reduces the temptation to tip people so much.”

Screw the people poorer than you are!

Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!

Ah, remember the good old days back in 2003 when every right wing blog in the country was proudly reciting that phrase? There was Dean Esmay, and Instapundit, and I recall that even James Lileks was flaunting it on the sidebar to his web page. We had invaded Iraq, and we were victorious, and the cute adorable Iraqis loved America and were asking for all the things we loved in their charming broken English.

It made me wanna puke. It was patronizing colonialism all over again, with every chickenhawk proudly patting themselves on the back for a ‘victory’ gained in bloodshed and destruction.

They aren’t saying it so much any more.

It’s ten years later. The invasion failed to bring democracy or whisky to Iraq, and no, it certainly wasn’t sexy. It was damned expensive: almost 4500 US dead and 32,000 wounded, and so many dead Iraqi civilians, on the order of hundreds of thousands, that every time the topic comes up the right-wingers still start squealing that all the numbers are wrong, no matter what they are.

Eventually, the U.S. spent $60 billion to rebuild Iraq and the special inspector general estimated in its report that at least $8 billion of it might have been wasted. The Pentagon estimates that the long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq cost $728 billion.

It makes me sick every time I consider it, so just go read Charles Pierce’s commentary on the war.

This is the one event on which the country’s chronic historical amnesia cannot be allowed to bring itself into play. The country was lied into a war by a raft of criminals, greedheads, and geopolitical fantasts. These latter were enabled by a cowardly political opposition and a largely supine elite press. Hans Blix was right. Paul Wolfowitz was wrong. Robert Fisk was right. David Frum was wrong. The McClatchy guys were right. The late Tim Russert was wrong. Eric Shinseki was right, and Anthony Zinni was right, and Joe Wilson was right, and George Packer, Michael O’Hanlon, and Richard Perle were all wrong. George H.W. Bush was right (in 1989) and his useless son was stupid and wrong. There is no absolution available to any of the people who helped the country down into this epic political and military disaster no matter how lachrymose their apologies or how slick their arguments.

George W. Bush should spend the rest of his days dogged by regiments of wounded veterans. Richard Cheney should be afflicted at all hours by the howls of widows and of mothers who have lost sons and daughters. Colin Powell — and his pal, MSNBC star Lawrence Wilkerson — should shut the hell up about how sorry they are and go off to a monastery somewhere to do penance for what they didn’t have the balls to try and stop. This catastrophe killed more actual people than it killed the careers of the people who planned it and cheered it on. We should all be ashamed. And we’re not.

None of the people who perpetrated this long national nightmare have ever suffered any consequences for it. They still idle languidly in wealth and respect, drawing encomiums and hefty speaking fees from the extremist think tanks that all also promoted the war. George Bush paints pictures of dogs that he cheerily signs with his presidential number. Meanwhile, Bradley Manning is tortured for their sins.

Every one of those goddamned pro-war media pundits ought to be rounded up and stuffed in Manning’s cell, while he is released. The establishment politicians — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice — who lied us into this destructive debacle deserve worse, and it makes me question the wisdom of our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, because every day they should be doused in buckets of blood and forced to walk a gauntlet of war widows throwing offal at them. Monsters, every one.

Democracy. Whisky. Sexy. That phrase should fill us with shame.

The difference between us and them

Liberals and conservatives…let’s first consider what we agree on. Rape is bad, mmm-k? It should be stopped, it would be an uncompromised good if the rates declined. We’re on the same wavelength there.

But now we turn to how to fix the problem, and look what happens. The liberal’s eye focuses on the perpetrator, and they suggest we ought to educate them and modify the culture that enables rape to persist. The conservative focuses on the women, and regards the liberal as crazy for not thinking that the victims need to be fixed.

Here’s a beautiful example: Zerlina Maxwell meets Sean Hannity.

And then read how conservative media responded. Read the comments, or go to the youtube video and read the comments there (no, on second thought, don’t.) They all think Maxwell is moronic, insane, stupid, ridiculous.

I think she’s right.

As is typical, the conservatives have this unimaginative, short-sighted view of what it means to tell someone rape is wrong. They’re all imagining a woman confronted by an attacker who then solemnly tells them that they’re committing an illegal act, and expecting them to simply stop. But that’s not what she’s talking about at all.

We live in a culture where boys grow up to be privileged, entitled little shits who think women are pleasure objects for their benefit. Let’s start there and change that. Let’s say that frat boy antics are not OK. Let’s tell media to wake up and notice that women are autonomous human beings, not convenient plot points and MacGuffins. Let’s wake up and realize that valuing women only for the size of their breasts and the youthfulness of their skin is dehumanizing. She’s talking about taking on the difficult task of changing cultural attitudes.

And perhaps we could also have a little more respect for men, too. Most men are as capable of empathy as most women; if we stopped enabling the promotion of facile juvenile behavior as manly, maybe we’d see more responsibility from would-be rapists than someone like Sean Hannity proposing that women need guns to keep him from assaulting them. That’s a surrender of responsibility. That’s a declaration that men are too selfish and stupid to maintain civilized social behavior without the threat of gunfire to keep them in check.

Seriously, Hannity and you other gun-worshippers. Stop belittling my sex so much.

I had a brilliant idea!

I was inspired by this cartoon:

scaliatoles

I have a better plan: appoint Scalia to the papacy. It’s win-win all around: you know it’s what Scalia really wants, it gets a fanatical kook out of the judiciary, and it gives the cardinals exactly the kind of regressive ideologue they really want. His only failing is that I don’t think he has a history of sexually abusing children, but that’s only a rough guideline, not a requirement for the job.

Any of my readers good buds with some high ranking Catholic nabob so they can drop a hint in their ear? I don’t think any of the Catholic bigwigs read this blog, so I’d hate to have such a perfect idea fail to be implemented simply because they didn’t hear about it.

What is wrong with Republicans?

I really don’t get it. You’d think they’d learn after getting burned on the facts, but no, Republicans seem to have a need to engage their mouths to say something stupid about human biology all the time. The latest example: California Republican Celeste Greig declares that rape pregnancies are rare.

Granted, the percentage of pregnancies due to rape is small because it’s an act of violence, because the body is traumatized. I don’t know what percentage of pregnancies are due to the violence of rape. Because of the trauma the body goes through, I don’t know what percentage of pregnancy results from the act.

The weirdest thing about that comment is the context. She was talking about Todd Akin’s idiotic remarks about ‘legitimate rape’, and saying that he ought to have backed down and apologized. So she’s really saying, “He shouldn’t have said that, but hey, he was right anyway”?

The article goes on to explain what Greig didn’t know: that it’s biology, sperm meets egg, and that most studies show the frequency of pregnancy from sex acts consensual or non-consensual is roughly equal (with one outlier study showing the frequency of pregnancy after rape is greater than after consensual sex…probably because of reduced opportunities for contraception).

Me and my warlike ways

I’ve always wanted to trigger an international incident, and I guess I got my wish: I unleashed the Horde on Canada. Last week I brought to your attention a poll on abortion by a conservative Canadian MP. You all rushed in and surprised him by bringing in a strongly pro-choice position; he has since rallied the Canadian religious right (or more likely, tweaked a few numbers in the polling software) to produce a lead for the side wanting a complete ban on abortion.

You know the phrase “complete ban on abortion” is impractical, dishonest, and totalitarian, and can only be achieved over the bodies of dead women, right?

Anyway, it’s written up now by Windsor Star columnist Anne Jarvis. The Canadian government doesn’t want to debate abortion at all, and most Canadians are quite content with the current liberal legislation on reproductive rights. What this is is a game by conservatives to gin up the impression that there’s a serious argument being held among the electorate, rather than that there are a few authoritarian cranks lobbying for new laws to oppress women.

It’s what they all do. It’s exactly like the creationists saying we need to argue the strengths and weaknesses of evolution, when no, we do not: the matter has been settled, and only kooks are arguing against the right idea.

Can you handle two polls in a day?

Here’s another one. A few Australian political leaders are taking a cue from the Americans and following a piecemeal approach to destroy abortion rights. You know how this works: the majority of the population favors those rights (and gay rights, and marijuana decriminialization, and so many other reasonable positions), so the haters get into office and start nibbling around the edges. They start choking off funding here and there, they throw money at propaganda, they make it increasingly difficult to get a basic medical procedure, and before you know it, abortion doctors are marginalized, people who get abortions are treated as pariahs, and public opinion starts to shift, because ignorance is a fairly potent lobbying group.

So the Australians have been doing the same thing. At least some people are noticing and beginning to speak up.

Should abortion laws be tightened using federal government legislation as flagged by Senator John Madigan?

Yes 43%

No 54%

Not sure 3%

There was one other little bit that I wanted to comment on.

On Wednesday, Senator Madigan will introduce a motion in the Senate aimed at stopping the public funding of abortions that are used purely to select boys or girls.

He told my colleague Lenore Taylor that he had ”seen data that abortion on the basis of gender selection is happening overseas and that means it is likely to be happening here”.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but if we’re going to be consistent and regard fetuses as undeserving of the rights of full adult humans, and if we’re going to respect the woman’s right to choose her own reproductive future, we can’t be in the business of telling women what good reasons they’re allowed to use. Elective abortions to select the sex of their child are perfectly reasonable, rational decisions. They should be allowed, and we shouldn’t be horrified if women elect to do them.

There is a problem that many people devalue girls so much that they could skew the sex ratio. But that’s a completely different issue — the institutionalizing of patriarchal values — and it isn’t addressed by dictating the choices women may make with their own bodies.

I also find it ironic that it is the same people who unthinkingly promote those patriarchal values who are horrified that they lead to women opting to abort more female fetuses. I’m not impressed that you insist on the right of girls to be brought to term so you can treat them as disposable once they reach reproductive age.