The Automatik

I just saw this article on Yahoo! News. Granted, their articles are pretty vapid, but this one is repugnant.

Don’t like Tiger? A few reasons to explain why
By TIM DAHLBERG, AP Sports Columnist Apr 9, 4:21 am EDT

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP)—The bookies make him an odds-on favorite like no other, mostly because Tiger Woods is unlike any other. He tees off Thursday on mended knee in pursuit of a fifth Masters title, secure once again with his place in the game and looking as dominant as ever.

His will to win is extraordinary. His fellow players defer to his greatness.

And there’s nothing in golf better than seeing Woods have a putt on Sunday to win.

But there are those who enjoy watching Zach Johnson put on a green jacket, or maybe even harbor secret thoughts of Greg Norman finally burying his demons. Still others want nothing more than to see Phil Mickelson smiling on the 18th green once again.

Not many, maybe, because it can be lonely pulling against arguably the greatest player ever. Family and friends might not understand.

But there are reasons:

You can read the rest of the article here.

Some of the “reasons” are staggeringly obvious, such as “He’s Too Perfect.”

Swedish model wife, check. Two cute kids, check. Florida mansion and private jet, check. At a time most of America is struggling, couldn’t Woods throw us a bone and show us he shares our pain by blowing a four-shot lead on the back nine Sunday to lose the Masters?

What Dahlberg really means is, “How dare a black man have a Swedish wife? And be richer and more talented than the white guy who that white woman MIGHT HAVE chosen were Tiger Woods not around?”
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I watched Bill Maher on The Daily Show last night.

You know, I was with him with the whole “religion is crazy” bit, especially when he compared the ridiculousness of Scientology with Christianity, but here’s where things started to derail for me.

Clips of Bill Maher on last night’s episode. (I can’t view these because I’m in Canada so hopefully they’ll show up for you.)

1. Referring to Barack Obama as “our boy.” Now, I know he meant “our candidate” or “our voice” or “the guy we like,” but referring to an African American as “boy” EVEN IF YOU DON’T MEAN IT “that way” is not cool. Not acceptable. Not going to cut it.

2. The reference to “witch doctors” and Sarah Palin. Granted, I understand that Maher hates all religions equally (ahem!), but usage of the term “witch doctor” in such a pejorative context just smacks of, oh, I don’t know. . . at best, imperialism and at worst, racism.

3. Then he quite literally made my stomach turn when he made a comment about how if McCain and Palin get into the White House we might have a guy in there “with a bone through his nose.”
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I was just tipped off by a friend on the Internet to this article from Cristina Page on an alleged proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to define contraception as abortion.

(Note: For some background on why contraception might be considered abortion, please see my May 7 piece called “Women Are Soldiers In The Misogyny Army.” )

I worked with HHS for eight years and spent a lot of time reading and interpreting regulations, so I wanted to see the source data for this article. It was not linked in Ms. Page’s post, so I did some digging.

A Google search for “HHS Contraception Abortion” yielded several pages of results, most of which were boilerplated from Ms. Page’s article.

However, this one, from Reproductive Health Reality Check, provides a link to a PDF of the leaked HHS document. Here is the linked PDF.

Please note that this document doesn’t have a title or a designated section in the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations). It also bears the text “Draft” and “This is a confidential, deliberative, pre-decisional document and does not necessarily affect current policy efforts or plans. For official use only.”

So what is the Code of Federal Regulations anyway?

From the United States Laws and Legislation Guide:

What’s the difference between the U.S. Code and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)?

As you’ve discovered, a few words are used in several different publications. However, with respect to legal issues, “code” refers to a set of currently valid law or regulations arranged by subject. The U.S. Code contains laws - what you’re supposed to do - and the CFR contains regulations - how you’re supposed to do it.

Every regulation in the CFR has to have an “enabling statute” or “statutory authority”. Despite the way it might seem sometimes, agencies cannot just create regulations because they feel like it - there must be a law in force that requires the regulation. That law is the enabling statute. Only after an enabling statute has been created can a regulation be developed.

Therefore, the U.S. Code and the CFR represent different kinds of law and different stages in the legislative process, with the U.S. Code preceeding the CFR.

Please note that because this proposal document does not have any USC or CFR sections listed in it, it means it is in its infancy (pardon the pun) and may not even ever come to light.

According to this article in the New York Times, this proposal circulated in HHS on Monday July 15.

Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for the department, declined to discuss the draft. “We don’t normally comment on whether we are considering changes in regulations,” she said.

Despite the fact that this is NOT official legislation at this time, I feel that it is very important to keep an eye on this. Unfortunately, without a designated section in the USC or CFR, there isn’t a way to find it.

However, if you ever want to look things up on the CFR, you can go here: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/CFR/INDEX.HTML

Title 45 CFR, Public Welfare can be found here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/cfrassemble.cgi?title=200745 It covers the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) General Administration, as you can see.

The “Church Amendments” referred to in the PDF of the proposal are at 42 USC (United States Code) 300a - 7. The USC page is here:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/

I found this Cornell Law Site by Googling “42 USC 300a.”

Here you can see that it’s actually Title 42, Chapter 6A, Subchapter VII, which can be found on the USC page here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title42/chapter6a_subchapterviii_.html

Hopefully this will be helpful in looking up this data when monitoring this proposed document.

In the meantime, please contact your insurance providers and health care providers to let them know how you feel about this.

Planned Parenthood is also on the case. If you go to their site, you can see more about this proposal and how to express your feelings on it.

“Please people, take down
your American Flags if
a Hurricane is coming!”

This is a long article, but I urge you to read the entire thing. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and according to AlterNet. . .

. . . he gave this gave this keynote address on Wednesday, May 28, in Furman University’s Younts Conference Center. The address was part of protests by faculty and students over the South Carolina college’s decision to invite George W. Bush to give the May 31 commencement address.

When it was announced in May that Bush would deliver the commencement address, 222 students and faculty signed and posted on the school’s Web site a statement titled “We Object.” The statement cites the war in Iraq and the administration’s “obstructing progress on reducing greenhouse gases while favoring billions in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies that are earning record profits.”

This address does not just cover the war in Iraq, environmental issues, or oil companies, but also. . .

. . . the dark and turbulent world of globalization where there are only masters and serfs, where the American dream will be no more than that—a dream, where those who work hard for a living can no longer earn a decent wage to sustain themselves or their families, whether in sweatshops in China or the decaying rust belt of Ohio, where democratic dissent is condemned as treason and ruthlessly silenced.

Please note that Mr. Hedges does not absolve the Democratic party from his accusations, but does find that the Republican party has committed particularly egregious sins at the hands of President Bush.

I used to live in a country called America. It was not a perfect country, God knows, especially if you were African American or Native American or of Japanese descent in World War II, or poor or gay or a woman or an immigrant, but it was a country I loved and honored. This country gave me hope that it could be better. It paid its workers wages that were envied around the world. It made sure these workers, thanks to labor unions and champions of the working class in the Democratic Party and the press, had health benefits and pensions. It offered good public education. It honored basic democratic values and held in regard the rule of law, including international law and respect for human rights. It had social programs from Head Start to welfare to Social Security to take care of the weakest among us, the mentally ill, the elderly and the destitute. It had a system of government that, however flawed, was dedicated to protecting the interests of its citizens. It offered the possibility of democratic change. It had a media that was diverse and endowed with the integrity to give a voice to all segments of society, including those beyond our borders, to impart to us unpleasant truths, to challenge the powerful, to explain ourselves to ourselves.

Read the rest at AlterNet.org.

Today’s Yahoo! Canada headline:

Dos and Don’ts of Summer Office Wardrobe

If your boss gazes at your cleavage, it’s a problem with your boss, NOT your cleavage. Once again, it’s OUR fault for having breasts which tempt men into sin.

And lest you think I’m overreacting, the opening paragraph of this article is directed solely at women and their clothing.
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I moved into a new place about a week ago so things around here have been a bit of a mess.

That is the excuse I am giving as to why I didn’t find out about this amazing event until today.

The ignorance in this would be laughable if it weren’t so staggering.

Let’s be clear: these people aren’t protesting against RU-486, also known as “the morning after pill” or chemically-induced abortions.

They are protesting against birth control pills because they kill babies. So what is it that birth control pills do exactly?
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Thanks to Resist Racism for posting this video.

It is powerful stuff. The whole thing is fantastic, but it gets really good around 5:30 and then gets even better. Stay for the end; it’s a whopper.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON RESIST RACISM.

While the Internet is a great way to obtain fast access to a massive amount of information, it’s also a way to obtain access to a lot of ignorant, offensive, bigoted, and disgusting drivel. And those are just the comments on message boards.

Everyone has received forwarded emails which warn against the evils of cancer-causing underarm deodorant or sob stories about poor children suffering from diseases who need your help. These are readily and easily debunked by websites like Snopes.

But some of these forwards are more insidious and dangerous than mere urban legends. Those of us who know better than to believe everything we read delete them quickly and try to forget about them.

Yet we still continue to receive them. So rather than just ignoring them, I thought I’d go through one that came across my inbox recently and discuss exactly why it is insidious, dangerous, and wrong. Please note that I am including many words in this piece that are of an offensive, inflammatory nature. I do this not for shock value or because I like these words, but to show you the original email text in order to explain exactly what it is that I am addressing.
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From This Pop Life:

“The Oppression Olympics” refers to the idea that somehow, you can deny someone their suffering in order to posit your own. People who play the Oppression Olympics get so hung up on their own entitlement to being the Chosen Ones of Fucked Up History that they’re defensive that anyone else would try to lay claim to that legacy, even in what is clearly a show of solidarity.

Or as someone on the LiveJournal community Debunking White put it: “the I’m-oppressed-so-you-can’t-be game.”

Graphic by Bint Alshamsa from her blog
Click on the graphic for a larger version.

Forget the Beijing Olympics and tune in instead to this year’s Democratic Presidential Nomination Badwill Games.

Gloria Steinem, in a recent debate with Melissa Harris-Lacewell, said the following:

“I think one learns a lot from parallels, and so it would be interesting to try to project what would have happened to Barack Obama in his life if he had been a female human being.”

But in her now-infamous New York Times Op-Ed piece she said that, “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House.” She went on to ask why “the sex barrier [is] not taken as seriously as the racial one.” Steinem claims that she is “trying not to choose between race and gender.”

Here’s the thing, Ms. Steinem: you don’t have to.
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