Majikthise

My Salon article: Why I wouldn't blog for John Edwards

Most of you don't know this, but I declined to blog for John Edwards before Amanda and Shakes were hired. You can read the whole story at Salon.

Sunday Sermonette: Oliver Willis

Oliver Willis:

Imagine if you will, a substantial group of regular churchgoing Christians. They are active in their community, they believe in God and Heaven and Hell. Their entire life is about living up to the Word of God, and when they vote that belief is a driving moral force in how their ballot is cast. These Christians are vital to their party, if they stayed home on election day there's no way the party could win.

Surely these people are part of the "values voters" so often courted by the GOP.

Did I mention that they're black. Because, you see, they're Democrats. They are also the religious left nobody seems to talk about when things flare up in discussions about "the religious left" (And yes, the idea of these mythical Democrats who persecute the religious that nobody can ever name stinks to high heaven).

Read Oliver's whole post on black churches and the religious left.

I'm so sick of hearing people complain about how secular Democrats are driving religious people away from the party with our constant believer-hating invective. a) It's not happening. I'm probably one of the more outspoken atheists you'll meet, but I'm not out evangelizing and even if I were, I wouldn't expect anyone but the rankest crazies interpret my attempts to spread the truth as I understand it to be an attack, as opposed to a little friendly competition. b) Whenever political strategists and pundits fantasize wistfully about the wonderful religious left we'd have if it weren't for anti-clerical maniacs like me, they're ignoring the fact that there's already a a vibrant powerful religious left in this country that's already working side by side with us secular Dems.

Delta Zeta "sorority": No fat chicks

The Delta Zeta sorority chapter at DePauw University has a reputation for recruiting smart women from diverse backgrounds, especially students who excel in math and science.

When the national chapter heard that some psych students at the university were stereotyping the sisters as "socially awkward," the swung into action, evicting all but the skinny pretty white girls:

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit. [NYT]

You really have to read the whole article to get a sense of how egregiously and unambiguously Delta Zeta culled the "undesirables" from the sorority house.

The NYT article gives the impression that the DePauw chapter was a vibrant and supportive community that wasn't prepared to kiss the asses of the national reps:

Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.

A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.

“They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs,” she said. “It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, ‘This calls for a little joke.’ ”

Ms. Holloway put on a wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door and skipped around singing, “Ooooh! Delta Zeta!” and other chants.

The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, “was like I’d run over her puppy with my car.”

The national representatives announced their decisions in the form letters, delivered on Dec. 2, which said that Delta Zeta intended to increase membership to 95 by the 2009 anniversary, and that it would recruit using a “core group of women.” [NYT]

Good for these young women for standing up for themselves. Delta Zeta didn't deserve them.

Say what?

Goliath, originally uploaded by chrissie2003.

Ann of Feministing reports that a Maryland legislator is proposing a ban on truck nuts:

To some truckers, they are manly expressions of rural chic. But Myers, who says his Western Maryland district is brimming with giant fakes on the roadways, calls them vulgar and immoral -- and filed legislation this week to outlaw them.

"People are making a joke out of it," Myers said yesterday. "But I think it's a pretty serious problem. You have body parts hanging from the hitches of cars. We've crossed a line."

His bill would prohibit motorists from displaying anything resembling or depicting "anatomically correct" or "less than completely and opaquely covered" human or animal genitals, human buttocks or female breasts. The offense would carry a penalty.

A hunter could still throw a freshly killed and uncovered deer in the back of his pickup, though, because the deer's body parts would be real, Myers said.

It almost makes that proposed ban on spinning rims seem reasonable by comparison.

On deadline

clock, originally uploaded by Andrew Mason.

Today's FlickrFind.

"How We Die" author Nuland disses Anna Nicole Smith

Newsweek is giving the public play-by-play commentary on the decomposition of Anna Nicole Smith's body. I'm not kidding.

The thing that bothers me is that one of my favorite authors gave such an uncharacteristically catty and hypocritical quote:

What’s your view of how this case has been handled?
There should have been a very quick decision by the judge as to embalming and as to where she should have been buried. Every so often I see a bit of this so-called hearing and I am embarrassed that people should engage in this public indignity and inhumanity. I think we are seeing the worst manifestations of our culture and at the time of death, the dead deserve the best manifestations of our humanity. What we have created is a media circus with no dignity whatsoever. This woman chose to have precious little dignity in her life, but the least we could do to a fellow human being is to have sufficient compassion to provide for her some dignity in death. [Emphasis added.]

Sherwin Nuland is professor of surgery who teaches bioethics at Yale as well as a prolific author of popular works on medicine and the medical humanities. I highly recommend the book that got him the Newsweek interview, How We Die.

Nuland is one of my favorite writers, in part because his work evinces genuine compassion. I'm disappointed that he would take a swipe at any recently deceased person, especially while criticizing others' disrespect in the same breath.

I hate chimpanzees

touched for the very first time, originally uploaded by Tino's dad.

I've never understood why people are charmed by chimpanzees. I find them repulsive--it seems like they've got all the bad characteristics of humans and none of the good ones.

Like obnoxious people, they've got rights. I'm all for leaving them alone in their natural habitat and protecting them from the even more rapacious obnoxious humans who would do them harm. But I really don't understand what makes them suitable subjects for heartwarming family movies.

I mean chimps even hunt bush babies with spears, according to the the New Scientist.

His terrible swift sword

Big Sword, originally uploaded by grodyslimeball.

A Wisconsin man is in legal trouble after he charged into a neighbor's apartment with a cavalry sword after hearing screams emanating from above.

OCONOMOWOC, Wis. (AP) -- A man says he broke into an apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought he heard a woman being raped, but the sound actually was from a pornographic movie his upstairs neighbor was watching.

"Now I feel stupid," said James Van Iveren, who has been charged in the case. "This really is nothing, nothing but a mistake."

Iveren says he intended to conceal his sword, a family heirloom, from his male upstairs neighbor:

"I intended to hold it behind my back and knock. But I froze and instead, what happened happened," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Contesting his neighbor's account, Van Iveren said he didn't look anywhere in the apartment except the front room, and that he never threatened the neighbor with the sword.

"I had the sword extended. But that was all," he said.

Sometimes I think my dream job is to cover the Weird News beat for the Associated Press.

Not zombie, moonbat

Doktor A - "Crepuscular" Custom Icebat, originally uploaded by masao626.

Today's FlickrFind.

Inspired by a comment by Joel D. Addison, who takes exception to my statements about the aesthetic supremacy of Johnny Cash's cover of If I Give My Soul over Billy Joe Shaver's original.

Mr. Addison writes:

Billy Joe Shaver is an American Icon. You're a zombie peon who is in no position to interpret his, or anyone else's, statements about faith.

US has "shock and awe" plan for Iran

We were warned, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

The United States has a contingency plan to attack Iran that goes beyond attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and includes most of Iran's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned:

US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure, the BBC has learned.

It is understood that any such attack - if ordered - would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.

The US insists it is not planning to attack, and is trying to persuade Tehran to stop uranium enrichment.

The UN has urged Iran to stop the programme or face economic sanctions.

But diplomatic sources have told the BBC that as a fallback plan, senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran.

That list includes Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Facilities at Isfahan, Arak and Bushehr are also on the target list, the sources say. [BBC]

It's not surprising that a contingency plan exists for such as strike. In fact, it would be surprising if the Bush administration hadn't formulated a plan, given how determined it is to leave the military option on the table. (Well, with this crew, you never know. They like spontaneity in their military conquests.)

What's alarming is how big an attack the US is planning. They're not envisioning an Osirak-style surgical strike against Iran's nuclear program. The plan is to go after most of Iran's military infrastructure. Shock and awe all over again.

Also disconcerting are the circumstances under which the plan would be "triggered:"

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran. [BBC]

On the bright side, the fact that we haven't attacked Iran yet is a tacit admission that the US has no proof that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

It's probably only a matter of time before America suffers a huge number of casualties in a single attack. We're putting more troops in harm's way, and the insurgents are becoming more sophisticated.

Over at Global Guerillas, folks are speculating that the US could be one mass casualty away from defunding the war all together. The Bush administration is acutely aware of that possibility.

The public is sick of empty platitudes about staying the course. If the unthinkable happens, I predict that the Bush administration will use American losses as an excuse to scale up the war and go after the "real culprits" in Iran who are allegedly ruining America's occupation.

The administration has been trying to gin up a case against Iran for weeks, but so far reasonable people have the upper hand. The administration lacks proof and credibility. My fear is that the debate will become clouded by emotion and jingoism. If that happens, people may lose sight of niceties of evidence and lash out at the target the administration is setting up for them: Iran.

Residual anger over 9/11 propelled the US to invade Iraq with on the basis of shoddily fraudulent evidence. If the unthinkable happens in Iraq, I hope the American public won't allow their grief to be exploited again.

[The photo is a picture of journalist Sy Hersh, who has been warning about the Neocons' designs on Iran for years.]