Pols to watch

Feingold scores a home run in a discussion of Iraq.

Fourth, he used a chessboard metaphor to explain that the fight against Al Qaeda is taking place in dozens of countries around the world. Therefore, what the President is advocating, according to Feingold, is that we fight only in "one square" and not on the whole board.

Read the whole thing for some other plain speaking that hits all the right reality notes. Forget comparisons with Kerry: this looks hearteningly like plain ol' leadership.

Quote of the day

Visual edition.
This applies in many realms...

It's sad what passes for bold and clear-sighted these days

Like, um, do your job and take some responsibility along the way.
eesh. Well, at least somebody's saying it.

Balance at home (installment the next)

Bitch Ph.D. has a post today responding to the article that I previously discussed here, which concerns the presence of an expectational "glass ceiling" for women in their home-life. She focuses on the prescriptions that the original article gave for avoiding this trap by making explicit choices about your own financial power and the sort of person you decide to marry -- Bitch thinks that the notion that marrying a liberal/feminist man is enough is misguided, and she goes further on some points that ring true to me. This one in particular, woke me up:

To begin with, don't, for god's sake, change your name when you marry. What are the arguments for changing your name? "It's easier?" "It will make us more a family?" "It will be better for the children?" Do you not realize that already, even before your marriage begins, you are conceding that making things "easy," making the two of you "a family," worrying about "the children" is your job, not his? If having the same last name makes such a big difference to the two of you, let him change his damn name.

We like to think that the politicization of this choice is sort of a remnant of the past, that it doesn't mean much that more women now choose to take their husband's last name (as I learned from Maureen Dowd's earlier screed) But I never thought about the self-training that goes on when a woman accepts the notion that unity is hers to create or prohibit. Perhaps terribly obvious to everyone else, but very striking to me this morning.

(She has a number of other suggestions too, which some will find excessively strident, but which I think are wise and telling -- if we can't trust the previous generation to have raised competent human beings of both genders, then there may be some need for us to "train" one another in some of the deficient realms, and to consciously structure our lives to offset the inequities. If you realize that, then you can decide how to handle things. If you just accept your fate, both partners are at the mercy of the least prepared.)

The myth of the choosy unemployed bloke

Greg Saunders, also writing at This Modern World, takes on the "jobs Americans won't do" tagline, pointing out that the missing words are "for this little pay."

What people like the George W. Bush don’t understand is that capitalism is not a one-way street. When the demand for workers is high and the supply of laborers is low, the rational solution would be for employers to raise wages, increase benefits, or both to ensure that supply catches up to demand. But that would mean actually spending more money, and we can’t have that.

We don't need to make it easier for immigrants to get such jobs (although there's plenty of room for handling immigrant issues much better), but make it harder for businesses to run on a model that depends on sub-subsistance wages. I'd like to see some conservative pundit run with that angle.

Tom Tomorrow lays down the snark

Over at This Modern World, Tom raises an eyebrow over some recent idiotic op-ed pieces at the NYTimes. The "paper of record" doesn't seem too worried about its grounding in facts these days, and Tom has the links to do the job for them. Most satisfying...

Public relations snafu

Looks like the leaked news of onetime Administration plans to bomb press outlet Al Jazeera (see here), which made a small splash here and then quickly sank out of view, has created huge waves around other parts of the world. Upyernoz has the story, which ranges from ongoing European coverage to attempts by Al Jazeera to connect the dots and to put public faces on their [nervous] staffers. In particular, take a look at this sobering poster over at the blog called (also soberingly) Don't Bomb Us. Yes, we continue to set a shining example to inspire the huddled masses...

Brain-drain getting worse

Looks like the Bush administration can't attract economists to the nation's top economic advisory and planning posts. I guess the word's gotten around that intellectuals don't get much respect from the White House, but it's gotten pretty bad when the prestige and connections don't offset the professional frustration anymore...

(via Echidne)

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while

And at the same time, it captures the magical attraction of cats. Perhaps it will explain the popularity of cat-blogging to the uninitiated...

Funny Cat Clips

(via Bitch, Ph.D.)

The forgotten art of accepting responsibility

One guy reminds us what it looks like. Ok, he's a crook, but he's not trying to pretend otherwise, and I think many of us could hear echoes here of grandparents and others of a seemingly lost generation that believed its own stories of honor and personal responsibility. A flash of sympathy amidst the schadenfreude...

Musings spurred by the change of seasons

The dry weed photo posted with the quote below, and many of the nature close-ups used here from time to time, are borrowed from Paula's House of Toast, a ruminative blog that often does through photography what I might hope to do with a successful haiku (or perhaps journal of haiku). Her post from yesterday is a fantastic musing on the coming of the cold season and on thoughts and expectations for the coming few weeks (and for all periods of expectation):

Broadmoor

A wander that is likely to appeal particularly to readers with a bit of a spiritual bent . . .

Quote of the day (belated holiday edition)

The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything."

- Albert Schweitzer

(via whiskey river)

What was that about the party of values?

The corruption probes continue to spread among federal GOP legislators, as the sinking ships Abramoff and DeLay suck everything nearby into their giant drainward-headed vortex. Don't miss this state-by-state scorecard of the scandals.

Update: Of course, the biggest confession so far is now the head of the House defense Appropriations subcommittee, taking bribes for contracts, um, during a war...
(via Atrios)

Never say we don't cover all topics here

Philadelphia Will Do offers the public service tip that laptop use can adversely affect male fertility by increasing scrotal temperature [today's Phrase of the Day]. Let's just say that the temperature change is way more than that achieved by the vaunted switch from briefs to boxers... The scientists who performed the current study intend to follow up by looking for long-term affects of repeated laptop use -- let's hope they don't find any, or an entire generation might just get wiped.

Everybody joining the chorus

In case all of these voices weren't enough, now it appears that most of the officers on the ground think it's time for a pull-out from occupation of Iraq. A striking report included in that link is that young officers are being asked to make up foreign policy on the fly, with little or no guidance. Not a recipe for instilling confidence in the local population!

Goodbye, Mr. Miyagi!

Pat Morita died on Friday. It should be noted that in real life he spoke with no accent whatsoever. He also had the unfortunate distinction of having been interred during World War II. Here's the Wikipedia entry on him, and there's a short obituary at the NYTimes.

(via XOverboard)

Chipper Monday news

Because the holidays in the US bring nothing but more unpleasant developments in Iraq. Top cheer-bringers?

1. Apparently human rights abuses are now worse than under Saddam,
   
2. independent contractors are shooting up civilians with little discretion, apparently under the impression that they are playing Doom (even keeping souvenir film of the fun).

But you can see why we'd be shamed if we pulled out...

While you were eating turkey

Two bits of absurdity around the nation:

• Michael Brown, spectacular ball-dropper after Katrina. Where is he now? Starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm. You can't make this stuff up...
  
  
• Samuel Alito, nominee for Supreme Court Justice, appears to have been protesting the presence of women at Princeton long after even Bill Frist wondered about this group's motives. What is it with these conservatives and their fear of women?

Wednesday/Thanksgiving kittens

(Just so nobody gets too starved for spotty cats over the holidays)



See you all on Monday!


Previous appearances of Pixel and Pasha:
cones, forms of love, lounging, more games, P&P wrestling, catspage

Oppression from unexpected quarters

An interesting (if somewhat galling) article at the American Prospect argues that the continuing gap between men and women in elite positions (despite their even levels at college, e.g.) reflects not so much a glass ceiling in employment as a glass ceiling at home -- that relationship expectations (their partners' and their own), and particularly those relating to marriage and child-rearing roles, continue to put demands on women that put them at a nearly insurmountable disadvantage in their careers.

Conservatives contend that the dropouts prove that feminism “failed” because it was too radical, because women didn’t want what feminism had to offer. In fact, if half or more of feminism’s heirs (85 percent of the women in my Times sample), are not working seriously, it’s because feminism wasn’t radical enough: It changed the workplace but it didn’t change men, and, more importantly, it didn’t fundamentally change how women related to men.

By framing feminism as not about power (and its gendered distribution) but about *choice*, the movement did nothing to address the fundamental expectations of home life, with the result that the "work" and "family" option tracks look much as they did 40 years ago.

Here’s the feminist moral analysis that choice avoided: The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, “A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.”

You may or may not agree with the author's prescriptions, but it's hard not to see much truth in her analysis. Worth finding the time to read it all (isn't there a holiday coming?)...

(via Salon's "Broadsheet")