:: How Ignorant Is He?

Mike Huckabee is so ignorant there may be no need
for the writer's strike to end.

I just want to make sure you see all of Mike Huckabee's evolving responses to the Bhutto assassination. I laughed really, really hard. I think you will too. The New York Times has a decent summary:

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Mr. Huckabee’s comments on the situation in Pakistan were not the first time he has been caught unprepared on foreign policy matters. Early this month, after the release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Mr. Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the report, even though it had been widely reported in the news for more than 30 hours.

Read more!

:: Juno

So have any of you seen Juno yet? I'm dying to discuss it with some like-minded souls. I went to see it with my mother, which was interesting in itself. And then my father said later on that he hadn't wanted to see it because he didn't like the premise, i.e. a pregnant 16-year-old. To which I responded that there are about 750,000 teen pregnancies each year in the U.S. so it's not like one movie makes that more or less a reality. (This also seems strange seeing as I work on precisely this issue, but I guess it's okay because I work on the prevention aspect, and of course, prevention always works...)

I don't have to go on about the fact that there are barely any pop culture examples where women actually make the choice to have an abortion. And while I will give the movie props for the fact that she at least goes to an abortion clinic, it was not a great portrayal. (Plus, to be technical, the movie takes place in Minnesota, and they make reference to having to involve your parents at one clinic but not another, which doesn't make sense unless she's going to another state without a parental notification law like Minnesota has. Also, Minnesota has a 24-hour waiting period law, and they make it seem like she just went to the clinic and could have had the abortion immediately and been on her way, and it wouldn't have been that easy.) Even without all the technicalities, they did make it seem like you can just pop in for an abortion after school and be home for dinner, and it is a little bit more complicated than that. I could almost understand if you were a concerned state legislator watching this that you would think there need to be some more procedures in place to make sure women are making informed choices when she barely got past the waiting room. That being said, I also could see how being 16 and alone in that waiting room might be enough to make you decide against the whole thing without having had any more information than she had at that moment. And as my mother said, she did make her own choice even if she didn't have all the information and support that I wish she would have had.

Overall, though, the movie did a good job at showing why adoption is not the be all and end all solution to the problem of unintended teen pregnancies - it's complicated and messy and has lots of unintended consequences that spill out all over the place in ways that 16-year-olds can't foresee. And the movie does a great job of portraying that messiness. I won't give away too much of the plot, but I also felt an enormous amount of empathy for the prospective adoptive couple and how much they were so dependent on the whims of this 16-year-old to give them the thing they want most of all because of their inability to conceive on their own. But they are also lucky because they have the resources to actually be able to do something about their situation. (I am forever haunted by this story I read in the Washington Post magazine several years ago about infertile couples who don't have the resources to invest in adoption and infertility treatments and how few options are available to them for having children, although I guess becoming a foster parent is always one option.)

In the end, reproduction can be quite complicated when it doesn't take place within certain boundaries, and the movie portrays the messiness and complexity quite well. While I may quibble with certain parts of the movie, this larger point remains true. And it's definitely thought-provoking - I've been thinking about it for hours, and I hope it's generating discussion among people seeing it about some issues that often times people would rather not discuss. But we love to discuss thing so I'd love to hear your thoughts if you've seen it. And if you haven't, I recommend it because I want to talk about it with someone... Read more!

:: Girl Power

Why we say women don't vote -
and why we may not want to talk about it

There is another great post by Margie Omero at www.pollster.com. “Why Women (Are Assumed to) Fail to Vote" looks back at a number of media stories that claim (a) women are less likely to vote than men, and (b) the reason they vote less is gender-specific.

Of course we know by now that women are more likely to vote than men, and that this gap increases in each subsequent presidential election - a fact that makes me do a happy dance if I think no one is watching.

Omero doesn’t suggest reasons why the media likes this storyline, and writes “It's unclear to me why it helps women to suggest they are uniquely challenged by voting.” I have great respect for her restraint: a less scrupulous writer could have indulged in any number of unfounded hypotheses.

I, however, am a stranger to concepts like restraint and scruples, and thus will offer a hypothesis of my own. (And sorry, Buffy, Ladybec, and Zippy - I'm going to give the drawn-out version of a story you know quite well, just in case someone other than us four are paying attention. Unlikely, I know, but possible).

We all know that there are 501(c)(3) organizations and foundations with charitable, social missions who see, clear as day, that the lions-share of Republican elected officials hurt the most vulnerable members of society. They spend a lot of their resources trying to mend the damage caused by the GOP after the fact. Obviously they know that it is ethically preferable as well as more efficient to prevent the damage from occurring in the first place – and the most expedient way to do that is to prevent these sociopaths from being elected in the first place.

However, we also know that partisan electoral involvement is proscribed for 501(c)(3)s and foundations. This leaves a lot of caring, thinking people with a conundrum: they are charged with improving the lives of the most vulnerable, but prevented by law from using one of the most expedient strategies to do so.

What to do? Well, 501(c)(3)s and foundations are permitted to engage in a very, very limited range of election related activities designed to increase voter participation. Encouraging the participation of traditionally underrepresented groups such as minorities and women fits within those parameters.

We also know that minority and women voters tend to oppose candidates who model themselves after the God of the Old Testament. But you don’t need to say that. Instead, you just need to make the case that women are under-performing and that it’s in the general social interest to promote the engagement of this traditionally disenfranchised group in the political process. Thus, the impetus is created for the storyline that women don’t vote as often as men for a range of gender-specific reasons.

There. I've spilled the beans. Beans: everywhere.

Of course, when it comes to media coverage, this storyline depends on the reporter’s perception that women lag behind men in all things – education, income, and so on. The reality is changing, but not all of us are keeping up. Some of us have lost the thread.

My question is: do we want reporters who easily lose the thread when it comes to gender filing more stories on women voters – or are we better off just keeping on keeping on, until the day comes when America wakes up to find that women hold more top leadership positions, earn more and are better educated than men? I mean, do we really want to tip our hand this soon?

I jest, of course. Really, I just don’t want to read any more Robin Givhan-esque style-section pieces on the new woman voter. I don’t want to hear any more Chris Matthews tirades about which candidate women should be voting for. And I sure has hell don’t want to hear about any more cocktail / yoga / Pilates parties designed to lure giggly gals into the twisted labyrinth known as voter education. Please, anything but that. Read more!

:: I Don't <3 Huckabee

I just don't feel I can point out often enough what a yahoo Huckabee is. But today, the lovely and talented Ann Telnaes did my job for me!

And please, can someone please explain and real, substantive difference between Hilary and Obama, besides style? Anyone? Buffy?

P.S. You are not allowed to use universal (or nearly) health care as an example. Read more!

:: Damnation Through Praise

As a fervent Hillary supporter, my heart sunk when I saw the title of David Brooks' New York Times column this morning: The Obama-Clinton Issue. God, no, I thought. I am just not equipped to handle a Brooks pro-Hillary column.

Luckily I could breathe a sigh of relief - the column is actually pro-Obama. But just as I feared would be the case for Hillary, Brooks' words are a classic example of the "with friends like these" principle. While I think Obama's campaign rhetoric leaves him open to this kind of, um, love letter, this is too much - the campaign version of cruel-and-unusual punishment.

Brooks praises Obama for his consistent, pensive, docile demeanor:

But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them… This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.

Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. […] He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.

Oy. Brooks, short version: I'm for Obama because he seems unlikely to push back hard against conservatives.

As usual, I don't agree. I think Obama would push back hard against a number of conservative demands. Whether or not he has the ability to do so effectively - and more effectively than any other candidate - is in question.

Brooks, a compulsive science-molester, adds a note of wackiness to the procedings with one of his weird analogies:

The presidency is a bacterium.

It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country.

Okay, big guy. Keep hitting that 'nog.

Happily, the column ends with a short, simple sentence that makes sense of it all:

"Bob Herbert is off today."

Read more!

:: Lost and Found

Some recommended reading…
There are two fascinating items at http://www.pollster.com/ about the preferences and performance of female voters. The first is “Anxious About ‘Single Anxious Women.’” Here’s the topic sentence:

It's almost official. Single women are poised to be the "Security Mom" or "Soccer mom" of the 2008 election. They even have their own easy to remember moniker: the "Single Anxious Female." At first blush, it seems like a good thing for women. A woman top-tier candidate, a focus on women's issues and women's voters - it must be a good thing, right?

It alludes to a stumper of a forced-choice question: do we want more coverage of women’s issues, knowing that the coverage will play to outrageous stereotypes – or, given the numbskull pundits we have to deal with, should we consider the less said, the better?

The second item is “The Gender Gap in Turnout is Likely to Widen.”

[With] women across marital status groups voting at a higher rate than men, this gender gap in turnout has existed for years, and is poised to widen further.

Not only does this article have charts, beautiful charts, but it is also the best news I’ve read in a long, long time.

These items bring me back to a much-discussed article in Salon called “So Long, White Boy.” It discusses the gender gap in a less rigorous way, but does articulate an interesting question: should the Democratic party give up on targeting white independent male voters? This topic is also discussed in "HuffPost Forum: Should the Dems Love White Guys, or Dump Them"

The idea, in sum, is that black male voters are solidly in the base; a good chunk of white male labor voters are in the base; white gay, jewish, enviro and/or committed progressive male voters are in the base – so does the party really need to waste time trying to persuade the remaining male voters (straight, white, Christian or atheist men for whom progressive issues are not salient)?

I think of these guys as Howard Stern voters. They are conceivably, and temptingly, persuadable. They self-identify as rebels, iconoclasts, mavericks or libertarians, though they think "civil liberties" boils down to their right to gamble, listen to Howard Stern and consume as much porn as they can manage. They hate conservative evangelical candidates, for the evangelicals are the enemy of gambling and Howard Stern and porn. And the enemy of our enemy is our friend, no?

No. For one thing, they love macho foreign policy and posturing in general (Dennis Miller and Bill Maher are their patron saints; Rudy would be their ideal candidate if not for that Times Square thing) and they will never let go of the notion that the GOP is the party of kicking ass and taking names. The Dems could distance themselves from "mommy" issues, keep feminists and gays at arm's length, bray about the rich screwing the working man and stomp their feet about being pro-gun and pro-NASCAR all they want, but these guys will always see the Dems as the catcher to the GOP's pitcher.

Besides, theirs is the politics of selfishness, and it is fundamentally incompatible with the New Deal / Great Society spirit that animates the Democratic party’s progressive agenda. We’re much better off trying to persuade an ever-larger share of female independent and Republican voters with choice, health care and the environment– a goal that can be accomplished without stooping to the buffoonery of macho chickenhawks who live in a cocoon padded by sports, misogyny and sycophantic media.

Moving right along, the National Conference of State Legislators devotes a section of its website to the analysis of electoral system issues, including proposals to move to a national popular vote, districting reform, the initiative process (with database of initiatives by state) and so on. Talk about feeling like a kid in a candy shop.

A very interesting article in the LA Times captures the complexity of the debate surrounding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and TB and GAVI. It has the unfortunate title “The Unintended Victims of Gates’ Generosity”but don’t let that stop you. It’s filled with interesting facts related to evidence-based benchmarking of success, the interconnectedness of causes of mortality, and the pros and cons of different types of aid. One interesting quote:

Pregnancy-related deaths often have been the highest in nations where most aid has gone to treat AIDS, TB and malaria, said Dr. Francis Omaswa, special advisor for human resources at the WHO. "People find it easier to talk about AIDS, about malaria."

To end on a positive note, this is from National Journal's Hotline "On Call" blog:

Hillary Clinton took to the streets of Manchester Saturday,seeking to seal the deal with some local voters during the last weekend before the holiday season. She found a mostly supportive group of voters, as well as a few rambunctious canines.

En route between homes, Clinton stopped to greet the Roukey family, who was enjoying a walk with their brand new dog, Samantha. "I get to meet Samantha on the very first day!" Clinton said as the excited pooch jumped up to greet her.

"Samantha, I will be a good president for dogs," she told the animal.

Read more!

:: Former Head of Feminist Organization Admits Life is More Important Than Privacy

Why, people?

Why must we offer bad soundbites like so much leftover Halloween candy?

"Let's face it: Weigh the moral scales of privacy against life and there is no contest."

Well, read the column. Yes, the human rights argument is valuable and effective elsewhere around the world. Unfortunately the last time Americans cared about "human rights" as defined by international norms was... was... when was that, exactly? Last time I checked, we're still the country happy to take a long, leisurely piss on the Geneva Convention if Jack Bauer thinks its a good idea. Besides, you get into "whose human rights?" and all that.

The next person who knocks privacy (aka "the right for you to keep your goddamn hands to yourself") and Roe in my presence is going to get a special knock of their own.

Just sayin'. Read more!