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Snow Day!

View from our kitchen window showing our roses, piled with snow.

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posted by christina at Monday, March 02, 2009

Abuse of women reaches a new low

Today's Lesson: How about a little psych testing before handing out police badges to troglodytes?

Warning: This post contains disturbing facts. Reader discretion is advised.

Usually while traveling, I watch foreign CNN channels or BBC World, and every once in a while, at home, I like to catch BBC America's news show, just to gauge the foreign perspective on U.S. events. Occasionally, these news shows present news that is not aired on the U.S.brand of CNN, or HNN, or MSNBC, etc.

For example, last November, a Seattle cop beat a 15-year-old girl senseless in a holding cell. The video was just released on Friday, and aired on BBC America's World News show on Sunday, March 1. According to the BBC show and the online Seattle PI, Washington state Deputy Paul Schene (31), pled not guilty to fourth-degree assault, claiming the amount of force used against the girl was not excessive.

(Lest you think this troubled child was a vicious criminal, note that she and her friend were arrested on suspicion of car theft. The car she allegedly stole belongs to her parents. Some online sources are claiming she provoked Seattle Deputy Paul Schene, a man twice her age and size. BBC news shows two angles, one in the hall, one in the cell. In both you can see her "provoking" Deputy Paul Schene by kicking off her shoes in his general direction. Deputy Paul Schene claims he needed medical treatment for a blood bruise on his shin, which could as easily--perhaps more easily--have resulted from Deputy Schene hitting his own shin against the metal toilet in the cell when he attacks the girl.)

Here we have a man in his prime acting like a typical caveman against a girl barely past girlhood. Clan of the Cave Bear didn't show such abuse against girls. In the video you clearly can see Deputy Paul Schene kick her into the cell (landing a full-on kick to her midsection), push her against the wall, land at least three punches to her head, and drag her to the floor (and later back up from it) by her hair. By the third punch to her head, she appears unconcious on the floor. Most shocking is the tacit approval offered by the other officer, who stayed in the hall while the girl was attacked in her cell. By Deputy Paul Schene. Of Auburn, in Washington state. Phone unpublished.

I just can't get over how little we've advanced in this world. Are there still men who have so much fear of women that they feel the need to pummel them? Drag them around by the hair? Stand by while others pummel a child?

Where is the oversight? This isn't the first time the King County Sherrif's office has been accused of excessive force. It's happened three times in as many years. Deputy Schene was viciously attacked by (and subsequently put 11 bullets in) a perp a few years ago. I'm thinking PTSD? Maybe some additional psych reviews -- not to mention sensitivity training -- is in order in this backwater.

And where is the media, the fourth estate, the free press whose role is to protect by whistle-blowing? The Seattle papers and the BBC have carried the story and the video, which was just posted to YouTube 2 hours ago, and a few other sources are hopping on the story. Why isn't this all over the 24-hour "news" channels? Why are women's issues pushed back while CNN loops a story about restaurants? How can women expect 21st-Century treatment when the media generally ignores such a sensational story?

At any rate, I hope Deputy Schene enjoys a long, eventful stay in the prison system, and (to paraphrase Homer Simpson on Krusty's release from jail) that "I sincerely hope the stories I've heard about prison are all true."
posted by christina at Sunday, March 01, 2009

Make love, not panic

News - A Step Beyond: Don't panic!
I heard about this on Olbermann last night. I find it amusing that France Telecom (who once gave Jon a cap with their logo), flubbed things so badly, and predict that Strasbourg, France will have a baby-boom 9 months from yesterday.
posted by christina at Thursday, February 19, 2009

Obama Saves John Q Taxpayer $60K

Today's Lesson: Some things stay the same.

I heard that Obama plans to keep the rug that so many people mentioned last week during that photo op. When Bill Clinton admired the rug during that photo op, Jon Stewart (and most other late night hosts) made fun of it, and wondered exactly how often Clinton and the divine Miss L admired the old rug. Turns out that each President (or, more likely, the First Lady) designs a rug with the Presidential Seal, using the budget granted for redecorating (for Dubya, $100,ooo). What a relief, because of course Bush wanted a new rug. Usually, I think the rug goes to the Presidential library at the end of the term (WikiPedia asserts without support, and I see no other reference to the disposition of Oval Office rugs). But Obama plans to keep Bush's $60,ooo+ rug.

It's a relief to know that Obama is not going to waste any time (or tax money) on spare essentials. His clear message: the Oval Office is plenty well-decorated, and he's ready to hit the ground running. That this particular ground is already covered by a tasteful and apparently quite admirable rug is just a bonus. Under the rug is a new floor which Dubya also replaced. Wonder how much that cost us.

Perhaps Obama knows just how important it is to Bush, and he's keeping it just 'cause he can. Bush apparently has gone on for years about this rug, uses it as a symbol in his speeches, and loves to regale reporters and visitors with how bright he was to delegate the job to Laura. He's fixated, some say. (To me, Bush's rug looks a lot like Reagan's.)

In Obama's move to keep the rug, he tells us plainly: What the Bush's charged to America, they must leave behind as the basis for the next four -- or eight -- years. The Oval Office rug has come to symbolize the Bush legacy on which Obama will stand, literally and figuratively.

I do hope that Obama will spare a moment to choose a different painting. He has the entire Smithsonian collection to choose from, in addition to the White House Museum collection. I'm sure any museum in the country would be happy to lend him any other painting.
posted by christina at Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Bush's Rorschach Test

Today's Lesson: Art imitates life, and life, being divinely inspired, returns the favor.

Slate recently ran several columns about the logistics of the First Family's move into the White House next week, including one story on redecorating. In it, they write:

For the Oval Office, George W. Bush chose a painting called A Charge To Keep. He often tells visitors that it depicts Methodist circuit riders—missionaries who spread the Good Word across the Alleghenies in the 19^th century. It actually depicts a horse thief fleeing a mob.

How appropriate.
posted by christina at Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Now that the Hillary is no longer Senator from NY, do we really need another Hillary?

Really?

Apparently, according to NBC Nightly News, political savvy consists of hiring the right publicist and talking to Al Sharpton, who said of Caroline Kennedy that "She ... would use her celebrity to really go into the trenches and work, and I think that has earned a lot of respect... and credibility."

You know what it hasn't earned? Actual experience. Do I need to link to my anti-Hillary-because-she-lacks-experience blogs again, do I? Because I will if I have to.

I'd rather see Fran Drescher up there. At least she dresses better.
posted by christina at Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Palin's Odds

Today's Lesson: Who is more likely to elect a woman?

I've been bothered by how well McCain is doing in the polls. I don't care that he's losing, nor am I particularly desirous of his being squashed like a bug -- a reasonable November trouncing will do.

Nonetheless, I'm amazed at how many people have decided not to vote for the candidate who obviously has the judgment, intellect, education, and diplomatic attitude to carry off the job.

I know a lot of people wanted a woman to be nominated for highest office, but I argued long and hard against nominating just any woman -- it had to be a good candidate, and Hillary was not the best choice regardless of her gender. (It'd be nice to get to the point where gender was as unlikely a topic as race during an election, but here we are.)

Now McCain has proposed a highly unlikely VP choice, a former beauty-pageant contestant, a candidate with merely two year's experience as Governor of Alaska, and currently under investigation at that. Keeping in mind that McCain's 72 today, and knowing that his last 6 years' medical history ran to 3000 pages, how good of a choice can the Republican ticket be?

The Republicans are hedging their bets, simultaneously pulling their presidential candidate from the same "good old boy network" as always, yet dangling the possibility of the first woman vice president (or president, if the 72-year-old McCain kicks it.)

Now, I know a woman who voted for Hillary because she "had to." For her, there was no choice but to vote for the female candidate, and I assume there are a few women who would jump party lines to vote for Palin as an affirmative action. However, in looking at the numbers, I have to think fewer Republicans are likely to vote for a woman than the Democrats are.

Looking at the highest offices in the U.S., (Governors, Senators, and Representatives) currently serving, it's obvious that the Democrats are more likely to elect women.

Female Governors: 3 R, 4 D
Senators: 5R, 11D
Representatives: 22R, 57D

Out of the 102 women serving in high office, 72 are Democrats! No wonder the DNC had so many women to showcase at the convention.

The Republicans only have 30 in this group. This means 71% of elected women in US Government's highest offices are Democrats. Based on the proportions of each party in these seats (313 Dems and 268 Reps), 23% of elected Dems are women, and only 11% of Republicans are.

Dems are more than twice as likely to succeed in placing women in high office. Most of those votes come from Dems and Independents. Not Republicans.

Nominating Palin does not even serve as an historic first. Hillary was the first woman to seriously contest the presidential race. The Republicans are 24 years behind the times; Dems nominated Geraldine Ferraro 6 presidential elections ago, or two years after McCain started his Congressional career.

Do the Republicans truly think that women will be snowed by this obvious (and delayed) pander, abandon liberal ideals and switch their vote to Republican on the basis of gender alone? Do they not realize that is exactly the type of gender-bias we have been fighting since 1920? They probably do realize that more women vote than men. And I have to think there are as many sexists as racists among male voters. So how exactly does nominating an inexperienced beauty queen and former fisher"man" help the Republicans?

(It doesn't.)

This blatant attempt to get the female vote won't work, because women realize that Republicans have never done much for them. They've been too busy doing it for themselves.
posted by christina at Friday, August 29, 2008