What I’m Reading, July 3, 2014

Posted on July 3, 2014 by wellsdc

Dear Neocons: Why we’re not Sending Combat Troops to Iraq no matter how much you Pout, Scott Corey Informed Comment, June 27, 2014

Self-limited commitment gives US power the flexibility to craft actions to fit real world needs. It finally tears the US out of the isolationism/empire dilemma that our most troublesome friends have exploited all to long, and all too well.

***

If we can get moderation and negotiation, we should not miss the chance. If we cannot, we should keep the flexibility to tilt as we see fit, depending on the context, for as long as we are able to sustain our options. Now is the time to work for the best, be prepared for the worst, and ignore the advocates of impulsive war.

In the Deaths of 3 Israeli Teens, Likud Policies are also Implicated, Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 1, 2014 Continue reading →

If You Have Some Free Time and Want to Feel Some Feels….

Posted on July 3, 2014 by wellsdc

Wikipedia has a collection of famous dog stories that are certain to get the feels going—the section on “faithful dogs” in particular. Here are a few highlights (text is quoted directly from Wikipedia, links are from footnotes):

Hachikō, an Akita who became a symbol of loyalty in Japan, is now honored by a statue in Tokyo. Hachikō is famous for his loyalty to his long dead master Hidesaburō Ueno, by returning to the train station and waiting for his return, every day for the next nine years during the time the train was scheduled to arrive.

jpvargas [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)], via Flickr

Greyfriars Bobby, a Skye Terrier in Edinburgh, Scotland, was loyal to his master long after his master’s death in 1858. Until Bobby’s death 14 years later, he reportedly spent every night at his master’s grave. A statue in memorial of Greyfriars Bobby was erected near the graveyard.

By Michael Reeve [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Capitán, a German Shepherd Dog, ran away from his home in central Argentina, after the death of his owner Miguel Guzmán in 2006. About a week later, Guzmán’s family found Capitán standing guard at Guzmán’s grave after finding the cemetery on his own. When brought home, Capitán again ran away back to the grave of his former owner. As of 2012, he continues to stand vigil over his owner’s grave and receives provisions from the cemetery staff so he does not need to leave.
Hawkeye, a Labrador retriever, stayed by the coffin of his owner, Jon Tumilson, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 6 August 2011 when the CH-47 Chinook he was riding on was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Constantine, German Shepherd Dog aka Kostya or Faithful Kostya, in the mid-1990s in Togliatti, Russia – a family died in a car crash during the summer of 1995, leaving the dog as the only survivor. A German Shepherd Dog, named Constantine by the locals, kept coming to the same spot for the next 7 years braving freezing winters and hot summers. The Monument of Devotion – a bronze statue honouring the dog’s loyalty was placed on that spot in 2003 by the city authorities .

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Yup, the saddest animation moment ever created, from Futurama‘s “Jurassic Bark.”

Photo credits: Hachikō photo by jpvargas [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr; Greyfriars Bobby photo by Michael Reeve [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Still a Nation of Pants-Piddlers

Posted on July 2, 2014 by wellsdc

Years ago, I wrote about how certain factions in this country were trying to turn us into a nation of pants-piddlers, fearful of some of the very things that makes America what it supposedly is. I’m sorry to say that, as the case of Ahmed Abu Khatallah demonstrates, nothing much has changed.

While the suspected mastermind of the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi is now on U.S. soil, the political fallout related to his prosecution may just be beginning.

The criminal complaint against Ahmed Abu Khatallah was filed nearly a year ago, and he was nabbed two weeks ago in eastern Libya. He appeared in a federal court in Washington on Saturday – much to some Republicans’ chagrin.

© Berkeley Breathed, via thecomicstrips.com

They’re afraid to entrust this guy—or any other alleged terrorist—to the criminal justice system of what they so often claim is the greatest country in the world. It’s a great country, I guess, for only so long as they control the narrative and the outcome.

Over at Booman Tribune, BooMan laments the cowardice shown by so many of our leaders:

I’m not a rah-rah macho kind of guy, but I do expect my government to demonstrate some testicular fortitude. It embarrasses me when American elected officials act scared of anything, even when it is in some way understandable. This country is known for its can-do attitude, and I like that.

***

On most political issues, I disagree with the Republicans because I have different values than them. But when it comes to folks who are afraid to hold trials for terrorists, it’s much more personal. I feel like these people are destroying my country’s reputation. They’re cowards. They’re cowards and they’re the face of my country. I have a really hard time abiding that. I don’t want anyone else in the world to see or even know that some of my countrymen are this pathetic because it shames me.

***

I want these people to shut up not because I care about whatever political points I think they might be scoring but simply because I am ashamed of them. I am ashamed that they are Americans.

What I’m Reading, July 1, 2014

Posted on July 1, 2014 by wellsdc

“For Me, Not For Thee”, jurassicpork, Brilliant at Breakfast, June 28, 2014

I guess free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment isn’t good enough. You have to be able to lay your hands on these women, scream in their faces what murderers they are and to strip them of their last vestige of dignity, safety and privacy (which is what Roe vs Wade was all about) and to even threaten their lives in their insane quest for the sanctity of life. Of course, they pushed before the court a sweet-looking grandmotherly type who bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t spread like milk and honey her message of love.

Sex, Gender, and the Familiar Fight Over Religious Exemptions, Katherine Franke, interviewed by Nina Martin, ProPublica, March 12, 2014 Continue reading →

“License to Kill” Isn’t Actually a Thing

Posted on July 1, 2014 by wellsdc

Well, it’s sort of a thing, but not the way they portray it in the movies.

Apparently Blackwater’s people don’t know that, though.

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

Cats Ruin Everything

Posted on July 1, 2014 by wellsdc

Cats just do their thing, without regard to what their humans might be doing—and then we have to stop whatever we’re doing to cater to their needs.

I’m referring, of course, to this, which is somewhat NSFW, so I won’t embed it here. It offers a chuckle, though, in a crass sort of way.

What I’m Reading, June 30, 2014

Posted on June 30, 2014 by wellsdc

“God’s Not Dead”: A Preview, Robert Geroux, Commonweal, June 17, 2014 (h/t Ed Brayton)

I have a theory about contemporary conservatism generally, and the religious right more specifically. They’ve studied the post-68 playbook of the center-left. They’ve appropriated the language of civil rights, the student movement and identity politics and turned it in a new direction: targeting “religious discrimination,” cultural indifference and even aggression (the “War on Christmas”), and so on. Both then and now, many of these battles took place on college campuses. Kevin Sorbo’s arrogant professor is surely a distortion, but the persona is meant to resonate with conservative viewers, especially young people who have been told repeatedly that the secular classroom is the place where faith commitments are deconstructed and stripped-away, often painfully. In God’s Not Dead this myth becomes hyperbole: no philosophy professor requires – on the first day no less! – the disavowal of God. What the distortion discloses however is the cynical belief that the role of authority in the pursuit of knowledge and even wisdom is nothing more than a sham, a mere power trip, intellectual combat for its own sake. According to these terms, the young man in question doesn’t really belong in a Philosophy class, since he already has all the wisdom he needs.

What Makes a Slut? Apparently, Just Being a Woman, Jessica Valenti, The Guardian, via AlterNet, June 23, 2014 Continue reading →

Bodily Autonomy

Posted on June 30, 2014 by wellsdc

THIS:

There’s a concept called bodily autonomy. It’s generally considered a human right. Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. It’s why you can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs. Even if you’re dead. Even if you’d save or improve 20 lives. It’s why someone can’t touch you, have sex with you,or use your body in any way without your continuous consent. A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a person’s continuous consent. If they deny or withdraw consent, the pregnant person has a right to remove them from that moment. A fetus is equal in this regard because if I need someone else’s body parts to live, they also can legally deny me their use. By saying a fetus has a right to someone’s body parts until it’s born, despite the pregnant person’s wishes, you’re doing two things. 1) Granting a fetus more rights to other people’s bodies than any born person. 2) Awarding a pregnant person less right’s to their body than a corpse.

Click to embiggen.

I’m not here to start an argument. I am here, however, to ask how you expect a fetus to exercise its rights if a woman doesn’t allow it to happen. Your statement doesn’t make any sense. What can the child do for itself at that point?

There’s a concept called bodily autonomy. It’s generally considered a human right. Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. It’s why you can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs. Even if you’re dead. Even if you’d save or improve 20 lives. It’s why someone can’t touch you, have sex with you,or use your body in any way without your continuous consent.

A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a person’s continuous consent. If they deny or withdraw consent, the pregnant person has a right to remove them from that moment. A fetus is equal in this regard because if I need someone else’s body parts to live, they also can legally deny me their use.

By saying a fetus has a right to someone’s body parts until it’s born, despite the pregnant person’s wishes, you’re doing two things.

1) Granting a fetus more rights to other people’s bodies than any born person.
2) Awarding a pregnant person less right’s to their body than a corpse.

(Original post)

(See also)

Monday Morning Cute: Jurassic Pug

Posted on June 30, 2014 by wellsdc

Imgur user cookiearthquake apparently got drunk and bought this online for their pug:

I bought the exact same costume for Zeta, albeit probably in a larger size, while completely sober.

I’ll try to get some pictures of Zeta the Triceraterrier up soon.

Cryptic Philosopher

Blerping Blumpstr min Brinwaq Blerfzit

What I’m Reading, July 3, 2014

If You Have Some Free Time and Want to Feel Some Feels….

Still a Nation of Pants-Piddlers

What I’m Reading, July 1, 2014

“License to Kill” Isn’t Actually a Thing

Cats Ruin Everything

What I’m Reading, June 30, 2014

Bodily Autonomy

Monday Morning Cute: Jurassic Pug