Your Morning Music (?)

The Eighties were that sort of musical time; that is to say, there is a reason people treat it like a joke. Still, among all that overstylized noise, many have their favorites, and for some reason we’ll try to justify them as better than some other polymerized sonic candy from the period. Well, that and I really miss saxophones in pop music.

My mind makes up ideas that I forget too fast. How do I know when it begins? No one can tell me what could be the best. Hey, that’s one thing I’d never miss. I look around and try it out; I don’t know which way to go. Today I’m coming. Today I’m leaving, too. And tomorrow it’s gonna be all over. Maybe I’ll stick around; couldn’t bother, yesterday. Today, I need a love that never ends. You drive your car too fast; you’re just traveling around. I haven’t seen much of this world. No one can tell me who the greatest is. Hey, that’s one thing I’d never miss, ’cause I really know so well what will be the best for me. Today I’m coming. Today I’m leaving, too. And tomorrow it’s gonna be all over. Maybe I’ll stick around; couldn’t bother yesterday. Today I need a love that never ends.

―Nena, “?” (1982)

A Bugsplanation

There is, of course, the obvious question: Do you really want to know?

Setting that aside, it ought to be easy enough to recall an issue from the War of the Sexes, the question of what would happen if men were pregnant. Nor does it seem extraordinary to suggest that, for the most part, the answer usually orbits propositions about how men can’t deal with pain, or couldn’t endure forty weeks of the daily trials of pregnancy.

We ought not contest that.

Nonetheless, wonderful neighbors who happen to be female, it is time for the mansplanation, or, in this case, the bugsplanation, courtesy of our dude Adam.

Oh, come on, baby. You need this. I know you want to. You know it’s worth it. Just the click. I wouldn’t ever hurt you. You know that. And I promise it won’t c― … er … ah … right.

Adam! Adam! he’s our man! If he can’t man-splain, no one can!

(Oh, come on, dude, you knew that one would come, and quickly.)

____________________

Image note: Detail of Bug Martini by Adam Huber, 27 January 2016.

The Conservative Lesson

A question arises: Is self-harm ever funny?

Certes, there are complications to the question; obviously, it is harder to justify self-harm if one also hurts others along the way, but here we’re not talking about going on a slashing spree amid a cutting habit. This one falls more under inspiring terrorists while wrecking your life for the sake of your own stupid masculinity.

Never mind.

Yesterday morning, via USA Today:

The videos show Planned Parenthood’s senior leadership partaking in a widespread and organized violation of state and federal laws forbidding partial-birth abortions and profiteering from the sale of fetal organs and tissues, which is why multiple state and federal investigations, including a select committee in Congress, continue to investigate Planned Parenthood’s abortion practice and financial interests in harvesting body parts. Contrary to the liberal shibboleth that the videos were “edited” (by which they mean to insinuate, “doctored”), the Center for Medical Progress has been far more transparent than any major news network in making the unedited conversations available to the public, and forensic analysis verifies their utility as evidence.

David Daleiden penned an op-ed in defense of his Center for Medical Progress, which is perhaps more familiar as the right-wing operation that doctored up some videos that succeeded in causing a ruckus. Congress held hearings, then slated some more because the first round was such a disaster. A terrorist murdered three people, wounded several more. Eleven states have investigated the infamous claims against Planned Parenthood, and all eleven have cleared the organization. In Texas, officials even convened a grand jury.

So Daleiden decided to … what? Pitch his case one last time? Rub it in? Set up for his victory lap?

That was Monday morning. A few hours later, Daleiden and co-conspirator Sandra Merritt got the news:

A Houston jury investigating alleged misconduct by Planned Parenthood declined to charge the women’s health provider, announcing instead felony charges for the leaders of the anti-abortion organization that targeted Planned Parenthood with it’s widely debunked series of “sting” videos in 2015.

The grand jury said they did not find evidence of illegal activity on the part of Planned Parenthood after reviewing the covert videos meant to misleadingly implicate the women’s health provider in the illegal trafficking of fetal tissue ....

.... David Daleiden, the 26-year old president of The Center for Medical Progress, and Sandra Merritt, founder and CEO of the fake tissue procurement company created to misleadingly gain entry into abortion clinics, were indicted for “tampering with a governmental record,” while Daleiden received an additional indictment for “the purchase and sale of human organs.” The first charge is a second degree felony and the second is a Class A misdemeanor. As the Houston Chronicle notes, a second-degree felony carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison.

(Tesfaye)

They did this to themselves.

Coffee

And then there is coffee.

Adda Bjarnadóttir considers the obvious question, and, yes, those of us who count coffee among staples ought to check in every once in a while:

You can expect to get around 95 mg of caffeine from an average cup of coffee.

However, this amount varies between different coffee drinks, and can range from almost zero to over 500 mg.

Responsible Gun Ownership (#Benghazi!)

Ángel González of the Seattle Times landed the unfortunate duty of penning the article:

Dane Gallion, 29, told officers he took the gun to Regal Cinemas 14 at the Landing on Thursday night because he was “concerned about recent mass shootings in public places,” according to a police account in a probable-cause statement released Saturday.

That same anxiety prompted him to keep the gun unholstered in his waistband, the statement says.

This is one of those. Gravity. Downhill. Abyss of stupidity. Really, it only gets worse.

Republican Governance (Aborted)

This is pretty straightforward:

• In 2013, North Dakota Republicans passed into law a heartbeat abortion bill, which would have set the termination cutoff around six weeks.

• The law never went into effect, and was struck in federal court in April, 2014.

• In July, 2015 a federal appeals court affirmed that ruling; the North Dakota anti-abortion law that never went into effect remained struck.

• Today the Supreme Court said no to the Peace Garden (Roughrider? Flickertail?) State’s last appeal; the law remains dead.

This is the only catch: This was how it was supposed to go.

Republicans knew the law wouldn’t survive; Gov. Jack Dalrymple even said so when he signed the bill into law: “Although the likelihood of this measure surviving a court challenge remains in question, this bill is nevertheless a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade”. Apparently, the governor thought viability was an open question, which would of course be the reason Judge Daniel L. Hovland wrote, in the April, 2014 decision, that, “a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before viability has been recognized by the United States Supreme Court for more than forty years”, reminded that the highest court in the land “has clearly determined the dispositive issue presented in this lawsuit”, and even found himself explaining to North Dakota, “This court is not free to impose its own view of the law”.

So here’s the thing: When Republicans tell you government doesn’t work, what they mean is that government in their own hands does not work.

No, really, just think about it for a minute. (1) Pass a harsh bill that stands well outside accepted norms; (2) argue the new law is a “legitimate attempt” to “discover the boundaries”; (3) pretend in court the boundaries are unclear and need to be discovered; (4) get reminded quite the opposite; (5) appeal to the Supreme Court; (6) see your appeal denied.

This, according to Gov. Dalrymple, was apparently the plan.

No, really, think about the logic here: The Court says we can only go this far. But they didn’t explicitly say we couldn’t go farther. You might as well fault the speed limit signs for every possible velocity they do not explicitly reject: “It only says, ‘Speed Limit 55’; it doesn’t explicitly say, ‘Thou shalt not drive ninety miles per hour’!”

When Republicans tell us government does not work, it would behoove us to attend the threat.

____________________

Alter, Charlotte. “North Dakota’s Strict Abortion Ban Overturned”. Time. 22 July 2015.

Hassan, Carma and Dana Ford. “Judge overturns North Dakota law banning most abortions”. CNN. 17 April 2014.

Williams, Pete. “US Supreme Court rejects plea to revive North Dakota abortion ban”. msnbc. 25 January 2016.

My Superstition (Anti-Prophet)

This is a personal superstition:

Aside from the obvious, it’s worth noting that when governors go to New Hampshire to headline fundraisers, it often means they’re thinking about raising their visibility ahead of a national campaign. Bevin’s entire career in public office has only lasted a couple of months; is he already eyeing some kind of promotion?

Every once in a while a paragraph like this comes up, or some similar circumstance. One reads or hears something, and, you know, just … oh, come on.

And while it is easy enough to knock Steve Benen for sounding histrionic partisan alarms early, the truth of the matter is that I also scoffed, nearly three years ago, at the proposition of Ben Carson running for president.

Unsettling

“Most girls do not really understand how horny guys are, how much stronger guys are, how guys will rationalise what they do.”

―Anonymous

Be as horrified as you feel appropriate:

It is, of course, uncommon for people, mostly men, who take advantage of passed out roommates or routinely anally rape their wives to come out and give a no-holds-barred account of what they know to be a horrific act.

So when a reddit thread began in 2012 asking perpetrator of sexual assault to tell “their side of the story” — attracting more than a thousand responses — researchers pounced on the opportunity.

It’s the first time the viral social media site has been used as the basis for an academic study, and the results are as fascinating as they are disturbing.

The result, to the one, is about as morbid as we might expect; to the other, neither is it unfamiliar. This is what a rapist says:

The same respondent, who admitted to raping a woman while “extremely horny”, even after she “realised what was happening and tried to clamp her legs shut”, disturbingly describes how he plans to educate his own daughter about the dangers of men’s uncontrollable sexuality.

“When my daughter is old enough, I’m going to have a very frank conversation on male-female relations of the sort that I do not think most girls get,” he wrote.

“Most girls do not really understand how horny guys are, how much stronger guys are, how guys will rationalise what they do.”

And it is not, by any measure, unfamiliar. Chicken or egg; art and life. Liz Burke notes that researchers “found the motivations the responses illustrated were consistent with what is commonly described as ‘rape culture'”; we ought not be surprised. The rapist is, after all, the living manifestation of rape culture.

Unsurprising, to be certain, but how can that familiarity not be unsettling?

____________________

Burke, Liz. “Victim-blaming, hormones and objectification: Reddit-based study reveals why men rape”. News.com.au. 22 January 2016.

A Moment Unto Itself

This is a moment in American history.

True enough, one can take that in various contexts; it is certainly a moment in American history, but is it significant? To wit, maybe you missed the chyron because you were in the bathroom. Or, you know, were just watching something else. That you watched a game show or answered the call is certainly a matter of, and moment in, American history, but it doesn’t really mean a whole lot unless you suffer a stroke as a result.

Or, you know. Something. I don’t know.

The msnbc chyron really says―

55-year-old protester under tarp with gun preparing for altercation

―and it seems that ought to count for something.

And that really is a fifty-five year old man with some manner of grudge against society sitting under a tarp, holding a gun, waiting for someone to try to arrest him.

It seems significant. The question of meaning, however, gapes.

____________________

Image note: “55-year-old protester under tarp with gun preparing for altercation” ― Tony Dokopouil of msnbc reports from Princeton, Oregon, where armed insurgents have occupied a federal wildlife reserve, 5 January 2016. Detail of frame from The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.

O’Donnell, Lawrence. “Oregon insurgents testing law enforcement”. The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. msnbc. 5 January 2016.