Women – Page 25 – Prog Gold

I Cannot Believe I Did Not Notice That.

Published on March 31, 20073 Comments

I’ve only just noticed that since we moved to WordPress, the authorship tags are gone from the posts. Everything I’ve ever posted on this blog now looks as though Martin wrote it (his name being on the front page) but the ratio of my posts to his is 80-odd percent to 15 or so. I write most of this blog and it looks as though it’s entirely Martin.

Now I’m all for togetherness and I may be pseudonymous and semi-anonymous, but that ain’t right.

Seems to me we have a problem here; thanks to WordPress we’ve become all too typical of so many partnerships – the woman does all the hard slog and the man gets all the credit.

The question is, how do we fix it? We have a huge 5 year post archive, most of which hasn’t even been recategorised yet. Erk….

In the meantime I’ll tag my posts myself.

Palau

It’s Quarter To Three, There’s No-One In The Place…

Published on March 29, 20072 Comments

Oh dear, talk about tired and emotional…

This latest self-produced video of cultural criticism (“Pop Idol! Yay! Me! Yay! Wine! Yay!”) by Ann Althouse was again kindly brought to our attention by twinkly Uncle Tbogg and if we’re very lucky it may just have a chilling effect on Althouse’s long-dreamt-about career as a media pundit.

We can only hope.

It would be hilarious if it weren’t so very sad.

She’s so Vain…. She Probably Thinks This Post Is About Her

Published on March 27, 20076 Comments

Surprise, surprise. It is.

Tbogg, as have so many other bloggers who loathe the self-obsessed Wisconsin law lecturer, has the video up of the video head to head between Ann Althouse and progressive writer Garance Franke-Ruta, in which Ann Althouse comes over as the vindictive, vain and bullying Queen Bee type she is by going off on an ad-feminam rant halfway through, much to the consternation of Franke-Ruta.

See it for yourself:

I mean jeez, Franke-Ruta only mentioned Jessica Valenti’s breasts because pressed by Althouse for a reason why the progressive blogs loathed her so much. A full-on mauling seemed a little excessive. As Franke-Ruta comments on her own blog:

But I do want to provide some additional background to my use of the phrase “Jessica Valenti breast controversy,” which was neither intended to provoke nor chosen out of a a soup of total ignorance. In preparation for our BHTV encounter and to get a sense of Ann Althouse, since we’d never met and I mainly knew her through her New York Times columns, which I enjoyed, and the occasional persual of the cultural criticism on her blog, I watched her previous BHTV episdode with Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith. It included a segment where Althouse and Smith went into some detail discussing various blogospheric breast controversies, including how one AutoAdmit commenter calling himself “Hitler Hitler Hitler” had said of Althouse that she had a “decent rack.” In that earlier episode, Althouse and Smith talked openly about blogospheric breast commentary, much of which I agree is incredibly juvenile and stupid, with amusement and good humor and suggestions that laughing off criticism is the best response. Althouse said (forward to 4:30): “They constantly talk about me and connect me to the subject of breasts. They constantly portray me as someone who, um, is opposed to the fact that women have breasts…Which is, I guess, sort of funny.” She didn’t seem particularly thin-skinned about the issue.

On looking at that bit of video again Althouse’s unjustified attack on seems just a little too fortuitous to me, a little too preplanned. Althouse didn’t come unprepared – you can see that, it looks as though she’d even done her hair and makeup for the occasion – and that was an ambush, in my opinion.

What’s sad is that athough she was in the right, nevertheless I don’t think Franke-Ruta came over particularly well at all, as talented or as capable as she may be off-screen. (Though I do find it hard to believe she’s over 30. Is it me or are police officers and polciy wonks getting younger these days?).

Head to head video debate is obviously not her metier, though I’m told she regularly appears on televiison as representing the progressive point of view. I don’t wish to be cruel, but is she really the best talking head we can put up against Althouse, who should be easily defeated in open debate given the paucity of her political positions and the mendacity of her arguments?

Franke-Ruta was easily perplexed and derailed by that fabricated and theatrical (but then real as she started to enjoy it) bit of business by Althouse; she immediately gave ground by apologising (what the hell for?), and then kept on doing it. She was totally nonplussed.

Even allowing for the element of surprise, if Franke-Ruta’d only had a little gumption Althouse would’ve been totally deflated, because right and logic were patently on her side, not Althouse’s. But as it was, even if Athouse did lose it for a while and come across as more than a little crazy, she still did what she meant to do and kept to her own agenda the whole time – ie the evil that is progressive bloggers.

Althouse and her mouthbreathing fans’re now chalking that one up as a win over the progressive blogosphere. Technically they’re right, Althouse’s temper tantrum notwithstanding. And that stinks.

US Military Lawyer: Bush’s Military Commissions Are Kangaroo Courts

Published on March 26, 20071 Comment

Yes, Virginia, there’s still some decent Americans left. Step forward US Air Force Reserve officer and military lawyer Lt, Cl. Yvonne Bradley, JAG.

Bradley is in London to research the defence of her assigned defendant, Ethiopian Binyan Muhammed, about to undergo US ‘justice’ at a Bush/Gonzales military commssion in Guantanamo Bay.

Everything we see, read and hear at the moment is rehearsed, rehashed or re-spun: it’s all stuff we know already. No one speaks off the cuff any more. So it was startling and heartening to to hear what Bradley had to say on the subject on Today Programme this morning.

[Sorry, the clip’s available only until tomorrow morning SFAIK].

This isn’t an official transcript but my own, so any errors are mine and the ellipses occur where the interviewer makes a statement or goes off to some other interviewee.

BBC: Introduction of Lt Col Bradley, brief outline of history of military commissions.

YB: I cannot compare when I stand outside the Old Bailey and consider military commissions… here I see fairness and due process..justice. In Guanatanamo none of those things will exist. There is no way, I’m convinced, that anyone would recieve a fair trial under the current rules, the current procedures…that they are all designed for one thing – to assure the government a conviction.

BBC:You think the result is already predetermined and no matter what the defence the result will be “Guilty, Guilty, Guilty”?

YB: No matter what brilliant defence anyone can present with in the commissions will result in one thing and I think you put it beautifully – guilty. guilty. guilty. I have to call it the way it is, it’s a kangaroo court.

BBC: Given your major misgivings why are you taking part in these military commissions? Should’nt you be washing your hands of them and saying “I’m having nothing to do with it”?

YB: Part of the system is having defence attorneys who will advocate for their client. In cases of this nature, which may be more political, this may take place outside the courtroom.

BBC: interviewer cuts to US officials Thomas L Hemingway and John Bellinger and Amnesty Intl re military commissions act and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ‘confession’

YB: I am totally convinced that in 15, 20, 40 years from now we’ll look back on these trials the same way as we look back on the McCarthy era, the same way we look back on Japanese internment, the way we look back at some of the great injustices that happen and say “What did we do, what were we thinking’?

This an an open acknowledgement by serving US military that these military commissions are political show trials and that JAG lawyers are prepared to enter the political arena to fight them. Chalk up another first for Bushco, bringing military lawyers in civilian politics.

But as it turns out what Bradley said wasn’t quite off the cuff. She’sspoken out from the outset and all the way through the process not only putting her military career in jeopardy but risking military discipline herself by continuing to speak out against their illegality even during the hearings themselves:

The issues regarding legal representation then took a surprising turn. Maj. Bradley told the commission that due to an ethical conflict, she could not proceed as Muhammad’s detailed military counsel without violating the rules of the Pennsylvania Bar (where she is licensed to practice). She did not explain what the ethical issue was, but it was clear from the proceedings that counsel and Col. Kohlmann had discussed it in a private meeting and through other communications. Col. Kohlmann ordered Maj. Bradley to fulfill her duty to zealously represent her client and told her that if she disobeyed his order, she did so at her “own peril.”

Now, there have been at least two other military commissions cases in which the Presiding Officer has had to order military defense counsel to represent his/her client: in the case of al Bahlul and yesterday in Omar Ahmed Khadr’s case. In each, in the end and under protest, military lawyers did participate in the proceedings – in some fashion – on their client’s behalf. But today, Maj. Bradley did not. Instead, when Col. Kohlmann asked her to begin voir dire – in which counsel question the Presiding Officer to ascertain potential bias – Maj. Bradley stood and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. It is hard for me to convey on the page the impact of Maj. Bradley’s decision not to participate in the proceedings against her client, despite Col. Kohlmann’s direct order.

Col. Kohlmann then told Maj. Bradley that if she had no questions, he would find that her client waived his rights to voir dire. Maj. Bradley responded that she wasn’t saying yes or no to voir dire, but that she couldn’t move forward as counsel given the ethical conflict she faced in this case. And so it went on:

Now that’s what I call a decent lawyer and a decent human being. If only there were more.

Diversionary Tactics

Published on March 22, 20075 Comments

Oooh, ooh, go get the lawn chairs and the chips and dip! There’s one of those old queen/new queen fights to the death going on over in the hateosphere.

Those were the days, my friend...

Sskeletal former neofascist pinup Ann Coulter and her up and coming anchor-baby rival Michelle Malkin are conducting the fight by proxy,the proxy being the once-powerful Matt Drudge.

As both women are unpricipled and hateful it’s all very catty and entertaining and is no doubt pushing up their hits. But, as is usual with wingnuts, at bottom it’s all about the money.

After Coulter’s ‘faggot’ comment at CPAC Malkin saw her rival wounded and attacked her without delay; not just because Republicans eat their own but because,as Malkin’s popularity with the provisional psychopathic wing of the Republican party is rising in contrast to Coulter’s, she’s also taking over Coulter’s syndicated column slots. That of course means more moolah for Michelle and husband/amanuensis Jesse and to fund Michelle’s vanity projects like the lame Hot Air vlog.

There’s more at stake here for both than just high-school bitchery:

Two More Papers Drop Ann Coulter Today: They Explain Why

By Dave Astor

Published: March 09, 2007 12:10 PM ET updated 1:30 PM ET

NEW YORK The Sanford (N.C.) Herald has become at least the sixth newspaper this week to drop Ann Coulter’s syndicated column following her March 2 remark concerning Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards that included the term “faggot.”

The DeKalb Daily Chronicle in Illinois, a Lee Enterprises paper, then became #7. That paper explained on its Web site today that it took issue with her syndicate, Universal, saying it had no intention of dropping Coulter because her offensive remark did not appear in a column. “That’s a lot like the Chronicle saying, ‘She didn’t say it in one of the columns we ran, so it isn’t our problem.’ Wrong. It is our problem, and not dealing with it is a cop-out,” the newspaper declared.

“So yesterday we called Universal Press Syndicate and ‘fired’ Coulter. What she said was wrong and hurtful and stepped way beyond the line of human decency, much less political commentary.”

[…]

Other papers dropping the conservative Coulter this week were the Lancaster (Pa.) New Era; The Oakland Press of Pontiac, Mich.; The Mountain Press of Sevierville, Tenn.; The Times of Shreveport, La.; and The American Press in Lake Charles, La.

Read whole story

A trumped-up public spat with Coulter is just what Malkin needs to finally step up to the throne of Bitch Queen of All Wingnuttia while there’s still a bit of money in it. Malkiin’s real advantage in this fight is her horde of smitten inadequates who’ll pile on the email pressure with their local papers.

The problem for Coulter is that that she’s playing by rightwing rules, and rigjhtwing rules say that once you get old and ugly then it’s curtains for you, sweetie. Nobody loves a harpy when she’s forty. The still youngish and attractive (if she keeps very still and doesn’t say anything) Malkin knows this; indeed her whole career is built on it. So Coulter’s bound to lose this one, and then there’s her prosecution for voter fraud…. With her star so precipitously on the wane’ she could almost be the Gloria Swanson of wingnuttery. You could almost feel sorry for Coulter.

Not.

To don my tinfoil hat fr a moment, I wonder if this isn’t about the hidden hand of the market as much as the hidden hand of Republican online psyops. What’s really interesting is how all this blew up just about the time Attorneygate was getting hot, nicely diverting away any wingnuts who might’ve been tempted to actually focus on what’s happening in Washington.

They know damned well that their supporters, given the choice between egging on a bit of brunette-on-blonde bitchslappery or facing their own accountability for having elected a bunch of crooks, would choose the former, no contest.

This leads me also to wonder about this big White House email dump that so many bloggers are poring over. Might this not also be a diversion? While the left is handily bogged down documenting the atrocities at the White House and Justice department and the right enthralled by fighting totty, what’s quietly being planned for Iran?