Burning down the cloth house. Have you a shred of a chance of realizing all that you know in your heart are your dreams withheld, stifled, lost? And does this loss, what you have already lost and what will come, does it resonate anywhere? Or do your struggles as women rise and disappear like waves in the ocean, what does one woman matter, in a world you know is Wrong. Misguided, stupid to the core. Could you do better with one little finger than the men you refuse to call, anymore, leaders. And don’t you have to live with the terrible obviousness. Your perfect skill to find the moral balance midst conflict. Isn’t it all a big pissing contest, no more than gang behavior … and aren’t you, as a woman, with your maternal, familial skills, aren’t you the hope of the world?

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Bitch Ph.D.: “Why do we take the institutional status quo as authoritative, as normative even, and NOT take basic facts of human biology as authoritative and normative?”

Read the rest of this entry »

AP – Wichita, Kan. The man accused of shooting a Kansas abortion provider to death as he handed out programs at a Sunday church service … said he appreciates the prayers said for him and his family in the wake of his arrest. “I haven’t been convicted of anything, and I am being treated as a criminal …”

“I want people to stop and think: It is not anti-government; it is anti-corrupt government … He said he was concerned about how the media attention was affecting his family … particularly his elderly mother.

“I appreciate your prayers,” said Roeder

How nice. How awful damn …

Wait, didn’t somebody die? At your hand? Killed?

Is there no end to pathological narcissism?

Whatever. Jesus loves you. Maybe.

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I’m blogging one Salon article, here, but as you surely already know, these exact heartfelt remarks are all over the web, which means (unless Rove and his web operatives have been busier than I think) they are all over the America that goes to the Safeway, eats crap food and likes it, and works their collective ass off in order that the rich shall get richer.

The blue-collar life is for shit, it is physical labor connected to pay in a way most people reading this cannot or prefer not to imagine. In other words, the most vulnerable of lives.

Vulnerable in so many ways … And to a man, or woman, resistant to the kind of knowledge that might inspire them to at least attempt kick over the traces like workers and workers before them.

Oh rue the day the Marxist critique departed American life. Read the rest of this entry »

. . . as a former C.I.A. Middle East specialist, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said on ‘Meet the Press,’ U.S. democracy in 1900 didn’t pllet women vote. If Iraqi democracy resembled that, ‘we’d all be thrilled,’ he said. ‘I mean, women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy.

Bite me.

Please. Bite me.

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In seeking an answer, Ms. Nussbaum draws on another body of philosophical work: Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia, a term often translated as ‘happiness,’ though she prefers ‘flourishing.’ Eudaimonia is less a matter of being in a good mood than living a complete, well-rounded life. Social arrangements are just – when they allow individuals the greatest liberty and opportunity to develop the full range of their abilities. That, in turn, means that it should be possible to work out a conception of what all people must have to flourish. In “Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach,” Ms. Nussbaum presents a list of 10 ‘Central Human Functional Capabilities,’ influenced by her years of collaboration with Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate in economics. Literacy, liberty of conscience, and the right of political participation belong on the list, as does physical integrity (‘having one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign’).

Not bloody likely. Turn on the TV. Then turn it off again. Thanks. Except The Sopranos. Then you can watch.

Link: Martha Nussbaum

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