Some of these links are ancient history in blogworld as I collected many of them before the Katrina disaster that still occupies our minds. Nonetheless, food for thought.
Feminism
Feministing has an update on the crazy, spiky anti-rape device in South Africa.
Binky at Bloodless Coup talks about her overwhelmingly positive experiences with Planned Parenthood during her years before private insurance.
Chris is writin’ love songs to Teh Feminists.
Or Are You Happy to See Me? An essay on strip clubs by a young man that probably deserves greater commentary.
Amanda writes on gender-separated classrooms and pedagogy. The comments quickly turn into commentary about gender, and various studies on ADD/ADHD, gender, discipline and medication.
At Raising WEG, Jody writes a wonderfully thoughtful post on having divorced parents and how it has affected her adult life and her parenting.
Happiness and Parenting at Half-Changed World. The author has also started volunteering as a CASA! Which reminds me I need to get in a class to renew my certification.
Pepper writes on the lack of women’s Constitutional rights in Iraq. James Wolcott comments as well.
Ilyka is angry and rightfully so. But should she quit that blog, she will start getting emails from me, goddammit.
Politics: Katrina
At This Is Not Over (fabulous web design by the way), Miss Alli takes a look at the Congressional Research Service’s findings about the response to Katrina and finds them quite telling.
Liza writes on her own hurricane experiences.
Gas prices. Plus cats. See also: Oil Shockwaves.
I finally know why conservatives hates me so much: Katrina was caused by single mothers.
Existence of poor people a surprise, sez Bush. Also: the 3rd World in America.
I am terribly pleased we now have an idea of what Trent Lott’s new front porch will look like.
Why did we donate? Welcome to the new DIY government.
Politics: John Roberts
The Heretik has a round-up on Roberts of his own. Unrelatedly, The Heretik also thinks DSL and the Broad Band would make a great band name. I agree.
Roberts Ain’t So Bad? I had an inclination to think the same, but then I remembered the life appointment, his past briefs, Feminists For Life, and those beady, beady eyes. That’s what I get for napping through the hearings.
Le Mew (with apologies to Shakespeare’s Sister) has several illuminating posts on reproductive rights laws. See Abortion and Federalism, Precedents and Rehnquist’s Webster Gambit, for example, and the less-related but informative The Rehnquist Legacy IIB: How the Memo Matters.
What would a radical Roberts court look like?
Pissed Off Patricia has a few questions for Roberts. So does John Tierney:
If Roe v. Wade were a tree, what kind of tree would it be?
When you were a clerk at the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger was disliked for his pretentiousness. What nickname did the clerks have for him? Burger King?
Does President Bush have a nickname for you yet?
Media Girl looks at the litmus test for so-called liberals. Read, Kos, read.
Politics: Other
At ZMag, the author asks, Are we slipping backwards?
Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too narrow concept of social responsibiity, attachment to fictions and false values…, too great an attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism…
From The Mind of the South (1940); its author was the Carolinian journalist W.J. Cash.
Shakespeare’s Sister writes on her hopes and concerns for rebuilding Gary, Indiana.
Jesse has an apt idea for a memorial that might appeal to Michelle Malkin. See other appropriate suggestions in the comments.
Twisty Faster has an idea for handling those in the White House. I can relate.
Dorcasina writes on various experiences regarding race and class in relation to a highly recommended book.
Contemporary comparisons to the Jimmy Carter presidency.
Terrence dissects notions of race, superiority and inferiority. In an old post, Sydney is very tired of white people.
Life
Because Ethan and I have set up bird feeders all around the house to better watch the brown and yellow finches, I felt the disappointment when Shelley’s finches got displaced.
The Drunken Lagomorph sez, “It’s the Arkansas way!” This one had me chortling for hours.
Entertainment
The 1950s pinup lives again at the Toronto Film Festival. “Notorious Bettie Page” is a movie I have to see.
And if you have a low-grade sense of humor like me, you might really like the Ultimate Fart Soundboard.
Hello–I like your blog, but can someone explain why the link to Feministing is blocked at my office as “pornography?” Do corporations really consider strong women discussing their sexuality and feelings to be “porn?” Sad.
Some filters automatically block certain language, be it cursing or sexual in nature. We wrote a few companies to get manually removed from those lists.
Sometimes you can trick the filters by continuously refreshing until they load. Worth a try.
“‘…Cause you’re every Lauren in the world to meeeee…”
“If Roe v. Wade were a tree, what kind of tree would it be?”
An apple tree, that provides something that a lot of people find useful or important (apples/reproductive choice), except the next-door neighbors hate it, and they often complain about it (especially when you go out to pick an apple), and sometimes they reach over the fence and attack it with pruners, and once or twice they’ve tried to chop it down, but if they’re really hungry they seem to have no qualms about helping themselves to an apple or three. ‘Cause their circumstances are different, or something. They can have apples, ’cause they’re not like other apple-eating sluts who just go around getting hungry all the time.
I’d like to blogwhore our first legitimate Preemptive Karma troll:
http://www.preemptivekarma.com/archives/2005/09/this_type_of_wh.html
I feel so grown up now.
What kind of tree would it be?
I dunno, but I just heard a witness during the Roberts hearings saying that, while he thought Roe was wrongly decided to begin with, should not and would not be overturned, because not only has it been firmly implanted and now has branches, but it has begun to “exfoliate.”
Pretty sure he meant foliate, but he also used the word “ramified”, so who the hell knows.
I’ve always thought Lou Boyle and the Filters would be a good one, too.
Getting Angry
I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege in general and race in particular lately, so when Lauren recommended some reading, Sydney’s post was particularly striking. I’d expect a blog entry entitled “I’ve Had Enough! aka Sometimes, I fucking can’t…