The Volokh Conspiracy (via Politico) points us to the arguments that a recent pay raise for SoS makes Hillary’s appointment unconstitutional.

He acts as if this boys-will-be-boys turn-a-blind-eye reaction is only on these trivial details of Constitutional eligibility (McCain was born in the Canal Zone, Obama’s mother gave birth in Canada after hiking through the Andes with Shining Path guerrillas, blah blah blah). But it’s the nudge-nudge-wink-wink given to matters like suspending habeas corpus, pretending we don’t know countries we remand to will torture, allowing American citizens to be treated as “foreign combatants” and the like that make this more than a slightly clever noblesse oblige.

However the matter ends up hoisted by its own gender petard - the Founding Fathers presumably never assumed any Founding Mothers might be so presumptious as to vie for power, so the Article in question states, “during the Time for which he was elected”. Hillary may proceed without further ado, in converse to Lloyd Bentsen to whom this question last referred.

It might be a good time for young girls to start leafing through the various statutes, Articles and Bill of Rights to see what mischief they can get away with due to some major oversights in grammatical construction. Inseparate but unequal may just be the lay of the law after all. And the new fashion for the 2000’s.

Talked to Dad on Turkey Day, thought I’d see what he thought of the current situation, and to my surprise he spurted out, “I’m glad Obama’s in charge”. Well, some background - Dad’s rather Conservative Republican. Voted for Nixon once (couldn’t do it the 2nd time). Liked Reagan and the last I remember was defending Cheney quite a lot. Though stopped giving to Republicans when he saw the debts mounting and when they couldn’t stop the “no new taxes” mantra even in the face of a huge school shortfall. Suffice it to say Dad’s a bit of an ideologue but not a complete ideologue. And though Dad still voted McCain, his heart wasn’t in it, as he notes.

And while this is an anecdote, not a statistical survey, at least it’s something that says at least Obama’s veer to the right (or consistent driving to the right, depending on perspective) isn’t without some benefit. Because I’m largely inclined to believe that any sop tossed to the right is greeted with scorn and ridicule and just as an opening for another attack. But perhaps there are some fence-sitters out there who really do care about some economic and moral principles, who aren’t just delirious Rush fans looking at Democrats only as traitors and terrorists.

Now of course I’ll be happier when I see Gitmo closed, our troops heading out of Iraq, and something of a stabilized economy. I suppose there’s more I could ask for, but I never was into the hope and change stuff, just a return to normal mediocrity and mild outrage and I’ll be happy.

And Dad’ll probably be happy not having to listen to this.

With 1 week left before the Martin-Chambliss runoff in Georgia and just a few percentage points separating the two candidates, you’d think there’d be some incentive for the President-elect to make the 2 1/2 hour flight to Atlanta to give Martin some support. You’d think the chance of an extra vote in the Senate would be worth a photo-op. My guess is Obama either doesn’t want to look partisan in time of a meltdown and/or doesn’t want to own a defeat if Martin can’t pull from behind. Or maybe for some reason he thinks he wouldn’t help.

I’m counting on a long 8 years feeling puzzled. Or maybe I’ll figure it out somewhere down the road. But no time soon.

Update: Oh, too late, Sarah Palin’s showing up on Monday to campaign, and it seems everyone thinks Obama has more important things to do than help Martin. Considering he doesn’t take office for 2 more months, I figured he could spare 8 hours for a quick appearance, but that’s just my inner child speaking. (Counting 2 hours flight time each way plus whatever slack and speaking time)

I felt daring and took my 2 daughters to see “Night at the Museum” today - we never go to these popular type movies in theaters, but it was their birthday and something different felt in order, and the movie turned out much funnier than the trailers made it out to be, and the trip through history was much more diverse than the prequels showed.

Except.

There were 3 females in the whole movie. One was the ex who’s found a geeky but stable new boyfriend. One is the to-be-squeeze, an attractive museum guide who seems unable to resist the cliched advances of a loser night watchman despite a pretty pathetic verbal exchange. And then there’s Sacajawea, whose main claim to fame seems to be as an object of desire for a wax Teddy Roosevelt (the better-than-he’s-been-in-a-decade Robin Williams). Oh, and Sacajawea’s main lines seem to be “I can’t hear you, there’s soundproof glass between us!” Quite the historic figure she cuts - a rather unique minimalist take on one of the most famous translaters of all time.

Yes, in a movie that traipses through history with a sympathetic Attila the Hun, a resurrected Akhmenrah, western railroad workers and a rather hip Octavius behind the wheel of a dune buggy, we can only summon up a single famous woman with no dialogue in the context of being TR’s girlfriend (she even melts TR’s wax torso back together for him, what a gal).

Oh, did I mention that besides Stiller & Williams, they manage to find some other serious actors like Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Owen Wilson, and the quite familiar if not household name Bill Cobbs?

When I tried to explain this phenomenon to my young girls, I got to thinking about Bechdel’s Rule, named for a woman whose friend never went to a movie unless it a) has at least two women who b) talk to each other about c) something besides a man.

Or as Jennifer Kesler explains, Bechdel’s Rule is a test a good scriptwriter should always fail. And that’s in enlightened “liberal” Hollywood. I suppose because as long as Hollywood wants to make money, movies with white male leads who aren’t bitterly clinging to guns and religion sell better than chick flicks? (Hmmm, is there a version of this rule that sums up the political landscape?)

In any case, we’ll have to fill in our daughters’ image of women in history from a different source than Hollywood. One of my favorites is Lise Meitner, a physicist who wasn’t allowed work in a Berlin lab so she came in for free anyway and discovered nuclear fission in the process (but got left out of the Nobel Prize for the sake of the dudes). And her compatriot, Hanna Reitsch, perhaps the greatest test pilot ever and winner of the Iron Cross. I’m thinking of a filmscript I could write. Where they get together and talk. About the war, about Meitner’s exile as a Jew, about Reitsch’s first tests of the helicopter and the V-1. And most of all about their completely opposite takes on their most important career and personal and moral decision - in Hanna’s case to stand by, in Lise’s case to work against. A man. Adolf. The Great Dictator.

Think it’ll fly or bomb?

The blogging software refused to take all my changes to Chinese Checkers, so here’s a new post to follow up.

I wanted to say that I should have titled yesterday’s post “We’re All Marxists Now”, but more accurate would be, “We’re All 1930’s Keynesians Now”. I’m reminded of all of Ataturk’s dam building projects, the huge Kruschev block houses - just pour concrete and stir. Mao had The Great Leap Forward where every peasant was making his/her own pig iron in the back yard (millions died in the ensuing famine). Pol Pot had “Return to Year Zero” - everyone out of the cities, back to the fields and rice paddies - full employment, manual labor at its finest. Yes, we can race towards the bottom of the pit or pyramid, every American manning a shake machine or a maquiladora worker or out busting our backs on a road crew.

Think for one about currency velocity - how money turns over. Money for construction is slow money, and let’s just say if this is the only level of jobs we’re capable of growing, we should be ashamed.

Now take an example of Amazon.com. 16,000 workers, estimated revenue for the year $17 billion, profit of roughly $500 million - almost $30K profit per worker - much of it on growing exports, based on extremely fast transactions - money in seconds, product in a few days. How efficient is it to push growth on a company like Amazon vs. pouring concrete? How easy is it to export our concrete business? How easy is it to increase productivity of an Amazon employee vs. a concrete pourer? How easy is it to grow Amazon’s business model? (They’re now doing probably as much electronics as the books they started with). Note that Amazon has introduced the Kindel for convenient downloadable portable reading - what kind of increased efficiency effect will that have on the rest of our & the world’s economy? Compare that to whatever minimal multiplicative effects from construction?

Now apply the same principles to Google and eBay and Microsoft and Cisco and the myriad of small, efficient, guerrilla startups. What are the effects of our pharmaceutical developments on world health? (Not just slow development - distribution, affordable availability). The steel in our cars is not the most interesting part - it’s the increased electronics sophistication, the composite materials, improved fuel system designs, battery technology. (Many of our huge steel mills of yesteryear can be efficiently replaced by localized flexible minimills such as hot roll mills.) Certainly we need physical infrastructure, but let’s not worship it like the throwback days of early civil engineering, building the Hoover Dam and Empire State Building. There will be no breakthrough technologies coming out of added road construction.

We also risk another misstep like we had with ethanol - big windfalls to corn farmers with a distortion of our food prices and destructive effects on arable land - if we just throw money at alternative energy, not to mention the slow pace of introducing new energy approaches (look at the turtle-like pace for CFL bulbs and the high premium to pay for them) . In short, it’s probably not the prime candidate for quick stimulus cash to provide high velocity job-affecting returns, unless there are promising near-market products to roll out.

Rather than low-tech industries like concrete-pouring highways and construction of new schools, low-footprint virtualized service areas like software and finance are much more flexible, innovation pays off handsomely, results can be exported and replicated elsewhere, and the benefits roll out in a number of ways, such help improving sales, greater efficiency in functions like searching and assisting consumers, and lowered costs and time.

And one of the dirty little secrets of our current educational system is that like the library before it, the resources of schools are more and more affordable and accessible at home, with teaching methodologies changing as well. I recall a time when school books were basically rented for the year (don’t write in the margins!!!). Now with a $400 computer, on-line resources and lesson plans, books for $15-20 (used for less), and additional inexpensive teaching tools, the educational portion of our schools revolves around the face time with teachers, their skills, as well as how conducive the environment is to learning. Will we keep pouring money into the school system of the 1800’s Great Plains, or actually address “No Child Left Behind” in a meaningful 2009 fashion?

Economics has changed as much as the world has changed in terms of technology and organization and distribution of resources. Marx and Malthus would be amazed, and it seems so would we. Catch up.

Over 70 years ago in the middle of the Great Depression, my grandfather - a quite successful businessman in hard times - packed the family in a car, drove to Florida, and bought some farm land. Being very clever with his hands and no stranger to hard work, he knew if worse came to worse he could survive off the fat of the land. The exile didn’t last long before he was back in business again, but the point had been brought home, what it takes to survive.

In 2008 if I said I was heading to Florida to buy farm land, you’d look at me like I was crazy. And I pretty well would be. His was a 1930’s strategy for survival, a very good one, but not a strategy that has aged well. There would be no place to sell the extra produce for much money to pay for staples such as gas, additional groceries, toilet paper, insurance, taxes, et al. That world is quite gone.

I thought of that today when I ran across Obama’s new weekly speech, that we were going to start a program rebuilding highways and bridges, schools, and of course invest in new energy. (“New energy” is for example what we’ve been calling solar power for the last 35 years. It’s a kind of outdated term somewhate related to “New Wave” and “New Age”, two other dinosaurs from the 70’s). I have a hat tip I learned from the Japanese before I turn serious - how about we cover 1/3 of the US with concrete over the next 4 years? It would be roughly equivalent to what the Japanese tried to do in the 1990’s, would use up incredible amounts of energy in the process, would no doubt put quite a few people to work in menial tasks, and would be completely ineffective in spurring growth in a modern economy.

Our we could call China.

Read more »

I’m waiting for the due criticism of Mark Begich who not only didn’t major in communications, he doesn’t even have a degree. Main qualification for office? His father was a Congressman who died with the House majority leader some 36 years ago. Plus he married the former chair of Alaska’s Democratic Party. So come on let’s hear some screams of “bimbo Begich”. “Dynasty”. Still checking on whether he ever entered a beauty contest.

Not much time to post, but there’s some discussion of where Eric Holder would be on restoring the reputation of the Department of Justice. There’s been much written on the Marc Rich pardon - poorly handled, but a pardon with terms draconian enough that Rich never accepted it.

But there’s more worrisome stuff. Holder was rather supportive of the Administration’s views in the days following 9/11, that detainees and American citizens could be held indefinitely without trial “as long as the war was on” - which of course means forever. Holder does not seem worried about the lack of due process in Guantanamo or that the prisoners have any rights at all. Obama has decided on leaving a couple of primary architects of extraordinary rendition in place as well as Gates (formerly “Iraq 4-evuh”) in place, while Holder seems rather wobbly on some of the biggest justice concerns of the last 8 years.

Where would he stand on politicization of Justice? We don’t need or want a continuation of the Bush policy just in Democratic skin. We need an independent, non-political justice department.

Anyway, skim through the OpenLeft article including the interesting comments section and click on through to Glen Greenwald as well. (For example:

Contrary to what several commenters have suggested, it seems clear that Holder — in the 2002 interview — was not merely arguing that Guantanamo detainees should be denied “prisoner of war” status. He was arguing, explicitly, that they were entitled to no Geneva protections of any kind (as he put it: “they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention”). See here and here for further elaboration.

I think Gonzales put to rest forever that hiring an ethnic minority as AG will bring some sensitivity to human rights. Let’s read the fine print on the new candidate.

From a response that grew too long:

The problem I’ve found is I don’t think anyone around here knows what netroots is, who Digby is, what Howard Dean has done with 50 states, how much Rahm supported the Blue Dogs and warned people not to ever ever ever mention Iraq. So oddly they think Rahm is both bold and progressive.

But the lesson is not to abandon Netroots. It’s to push them and only them. Stoller and Bowers over at OpenLeft are excellent with focused money. For New York, they came up with a way to give money for Obama via a progressive org - to signal, “this is progressive money, not just generic money”. How to do your own spot ads for the candidate you approve of.

Because they don’t care about you. They don’t understand you. At least most of them. 42-13? For fuck’s sakes, we’re back to the right-wing thing that you’d have to sodomize toddlers while shooting mortar shells into old folks’s homes to get a reprimand.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane:

In the Senate, during the three-and-a-half years that Senator Obama has been a member, he has not reached across party lines to get accomplish anything significant, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party to get something done.

So what did Lieberman do, but reach across for a handjob to support everything illegal the government was doing. Mr. Lieberman, I don’t vote Democrat to elect a Republican. If they want to earn my vote, they can go through the necessary steps to earn my respect.

Let me contrast Barack Obama’s record to the record of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups, worked with Republicans, and got some important things done, like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget.

And let me contrast the Democrats who sucked up to George Bush with the Republicans in 1996 who fought Clinton every step of the way. Well I admire Gingrich more than Pelosi or Reid, I can tell you that, even though I agree with probably none of his opinions.

But here, let Joe dig his little shithole deeper:

And I was there, so I can tell you, when others were silent about the war in Iraq, John McCain had the guts and the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq. You know… (APPLAUSE) … when others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, which would have been a disaster for the USA, when colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield…

No, you asshole, others weren’t silent. They were speaking out against the stupidity of the war and how it was being conducted and how its supposed goals were completely in denial of the facts on the ground, but Republicans were shutting down any dissent as “unpatriotic”?

Do you remember your buddy John McCain walking through a market on a sick photo op with flak jacket, 100 soldier escort and helicopters flying overhead to show how safe it was for the common man?

Do you remember that disgraceful time in September 2007 when the Congress felt it appropriate to condemn a private citizens’ group that used its own money in a newspaper to protest a General’s conduct of the war? Only 79 Congresspeople and 25 Senators had the courage to stand up to that abomination, all of them Democrats except for 1 Independent that wasn’t Joe Lieberman. That abomination that says American citizens cannot question the flaws of humans running war. Let me tell you about that.

A few days ago the Nation published new info on the Vietnam War, how one group in the push for higher and higher body counts lost complete sight of the purpose fo the war, and committed atrocity after atrocity against civilians in Vietnam. A My Lai a Month. Fucking fancy that. 35 years after the war ends, 4 years after the Swift Boating of John “Winter Soldier” Kerry for not being patriotic enough, we get confirmation that Kerry was indeed right, that free fire zones on civilians were the rule not the exception.

Lieberman wants to extend the myth and the horror of blind allegiance to war and soldiers, that any attempt to cut the war off is an act of betrayal rather than good common sense review. You specifically stated this at the convention:

… when others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, which would have been a disaster for the USA, when colleagues like Barack Obama were voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield…

Mr. Lieberman, I wish Mr. Obama had done so in those stark of terms, but for someone who came to power in the 60’s with the arbitrary foreign political decisions of a few trumping any oversight from the Congress - you should simply know better, that it is not the Constitutional right of the Executive Branch to simply dismiss the chaotic oversight of the Congressional, but that that chaotic oversight was specifically what was prescribed in the Constitution. To support the President’s extra-Constitutional actions is simply being a traitor to the Constitution, however you want to spice it up. You were wrong, but unfortunately we’re only likely to hear smug self-absorbed pronouncements from you hear on out. Congrats, you have won on the most self-defeating point possible - you’ve shown that the American people and their representatives can be complete suckers, can completely abandon their citizen duties and responsibilities. Constitution? Just a piece of paper. Joe knows better, despite all obvious goings on the last year.

Mr. Obama, a friend of mine told me quite bluntly 25 years ago - if you give respect to everyone, you give respect to no one. People earn respect, and if you give it out free gratis, you do a disservice. Mr. Lieberman deserved to lose. I certainly don’t wish treating him the way Republicans have treated us over the year, but to come to the table of mutual respect requires some effort from the other side as well. Pardons without pre-conditions sounds way too chummy. Let’s give one to the American people for a change.

Oh yeah, forget to mention, the tell all is you, and the pot being boiled is your life.

Not sure how this didn't surface yet on TPM, but apparently the most privacy invading vetting ever (in this country at least) is taking place now - For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All. Anyone in your family own a gun? What are your aliases on the internet? Have a copy of every resumé you've sent out in the last 10 years? Every activity you've been paid for? What organizations you belonged to? Net worth statements for all loans? All businesses your spouse has been involved with? Any possibly embarrassing associations by family? Any information that might be embarrassing to you, your family or the President-Elect? Description of your most controversial moments during your career?

Well, I can certainly understand Hillary not wanting to be vetted unless they were serious. As for me, I figure I'll finish writing my tome of controversial moments somewhere around the end of Obama's 2nd term, and I sure hope someone with a sense of humor shows up to review Desi's blogs. But at least I'm spared one area of grilling - I never knew nor served on a board with William Ayers. Hmmm, I guess that snarky comment alone might have sunk my application. As Sarah Palin would say, "C'est la vie".

For those in the Prop 8 doldrums - very interesting development in the fight against AIDS came out in on Nov. 7 - what seems to be a successful gene therapy transplant of AIDS immune bone marrow appears to have cleared a patient of all AIDS symptoms after 600 days.

Oddly enough, the German doctor is not an AIDS specialist, and the treatment was for leukemia, but he took the chance that perhaps a transplant from the 1% of people with an AIDS immune gene would work.

While bone marrow transplants aren’t exactly the simplest procedure to provide, compared to the alternative it’s certainly good news. Here’s hoping it’s not a fluke.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html

PS - also, a new 50-state strategy for gay rights.

Stomping on my own post since it’s rather unseemly to write multiple Hillary posts - see the original below.

Alright, I hate to break it to you folks, but a 69-year-old woman is not going to be running for President in 2016.

There are so many reasons to make this an absurd longshot - that there would be no other interesting rising stars in the next 8 years, that Hillary will still be seen as having fresh enough ideas, that the Democrats will have successfully weathered the next 8 years to be in top position, that the public won’t be tired of a Democratic Administration already, that her health will hold up for that kind of 2 year campaigning starting at 67, that she’ll still have the needed endurance and enthusiasm at that point.

Hillary could have potentially been a candidate in 2012 had a Republican won. That one is gone, and there’s no way should could run in 2012 without alienating half the party as a conniving traitor, unless Obama turns out to be an unmitigated disaster (which wouldn’t say much for his Clintonite staff, and wouldn’t put Hillary in very good position to face someone like Jindal).

So just give it up. If Americans show reluctance to elect women, they show much much more reluctance to elect old people (especially on the Democratic side), so the combination is simply poison. Save your bets for something more sure, say Earth being hit by a Moon-sized asteroid or the United States being bought by China. And when you’re posting comments about Hillary, just leave that one off the table until the Enquirer verifies Elvis is really coming back. (He’d make a great VP for her, don’t you think?)

But a progression that is interesting and could fit nicely would be a possible future stint at the UN as Secretary-General. I’ve heard Bill advocated for the position before, but it never seemed quite right. But if Hillary pulls off a good job at State, why not? There’s no ridiculous campaigning to do, no big issue with age, would fit her style. And it’d be a first for the world, a precedent that didn’t have to be set at national level. Plus, after the current Secretary-General, we need a bit of excitement.

In any case, you read it here first (unless some bastard thought of it before me). Tell me what you think.

I’m getting the feeling from discussions going round these last 2 weeks is that many people view discrimination towards gays is basically about getting married and the inconvenience of having to stay in the closet.

And if losing your job and profession because you were outed was the only repercussion, I guess I would rank that as less severe than death and slavery. But only as a matter of proportions. Because losing your livelihood, your ability to work, is indeed a form of slavery. The Communists used this all the time - forcing intellectuals into back-breaking menial jobs to grind them down over the years (or simply as a slightly slower way to murder, as the Gulags offered).

And I think many of us know that Oscar Wilde spent a few years in jail for being gay, which had the result of ruining his health and sending him to an early grave. Of course he’s not the only gay to be imprisoned, and arbitrary extra-legal punishments by mob rule have been the norm for millenia. [I had a friend who suprised me by telling me about a gay guy who came onto him, and how he viciously beat the guy up and threw him in a dumpster. I never talked to him again, but I’m still amazed he would brag about such a thing.]

But the origins of the Pink Triangle bring greater shame. Not only did the Nazis round up gays, castrating some and sending others to jails and concentration camps (it’s hard to get the numbers right - only recently did Deutsche Welle up the estimates to 55,000 killed, while other estimates have from 20-40,000 dying at Auschwitz alone). But they were also abused by their fellow campmates, not just their guards. And then after the war they weren’t even eligible for reparations because they were still illegal “sodomites”, some sent back to jail for crimes brought up by the Nazis. Of course other gays had the good sense to flee in front of the Nazi onslaught when from a publicly gay population of over a million (Berlin was a flourishing cultural city of gays and Jews, a la Cabaret), some 100,000 ended up on Gestapo lists.

Just as it also took Gypsies 50 years to get full acceptance as victims of the Nazi holocaust, belated acknowledgement for gays has been slow in coming, and for most people the fate of the gay community in Germany and Poland remains just another unknown historical blind spot.

1) Fairly common in world politics to shuffle your enemies into the foreign sphere to keep them out of the more important domestic sphere. They may not be enemies at this point, but I wouldn’t call them completely rehabilitated trusting friends.

2) I’ve never felt that Hillary would get more power in the Senate from her candidacy, despite obviously a lot of voter support out there. A lot of Senators lined up against her, and I don’t think that will transform into political power come 2009.

3) Obama wants it his own way in the Senate. He’s not going to turn to Hillary over and over to do it “Obama-a-la-Clinton”, so he’ll find someone else to be rubber stamp and enforcer on his take of things. And there’s a good chance that Obama will get his back up more with Hillary’s pushback than others’.

4) Hillary’s a policy wonk and issues-motivated, which is why she wouldn’t make a Supreme Court Justice. Heading out on the world stage she can push her poverty, women’s rights and other initiatives as it segues right into meaningful work she and Bill have always done.

5) Hillary’s got street cred on military issues through her work on Armed Services, knows Gates well, etc. Her roll in smoothing a withdrawal from Iraq could be invaluable.

6) The foreign stage is a good place for a superstar, especially at a time when we need to mend one whole lot of bridges and take on some tough problems. Sending a known face allows us to hit the ground running, “Ready on Day One” so to speak.

Caveat: I don’t know how the Middle East sees her in context with her staunch support for Israel. Bill certainly gave Arafat prime time in his presidency, but the final deal still has a bitter taste as too slanted to the Israelis. But my guess is that everyone will be happy to have some chance of progress after 8 years of treating Muslims like crap.

PS: Too bad Larry Summers got axed from Treasury consideration just because of the Harvard women’s issues flare-up. I always thought he got a bum deal - he was at a Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce Conference trying to address why the lack of female participation might exist, in order to counteract it - in an academic studied fashion. The whole outrage seems way too PC to me, and the students supported him staying 3:1 at the end, and it was almost completely Liberal Arts faculty that had a beef with him (Harvard is more than Liberal Arts). But that people are bringing this up will ineveitably doom him.

Okay, this won't be a surprise to some of the more observant, but to a few who say called me a cunt and suggested my repeated postings on feminist topics were only driven by identity politics and my genital makeup (would that be L'Oreal or only Avon?), this may come as a bit of a surprise.

I'm a man. Not gay or a trannie (though God knows I've tried - I actually look - or looked - quite hot in a good fish-net dress, and have been chased through the streets of New Orleans by frat boys assuming too much from my purple tights - but I digress). Simply heterosexual male. Okay, scratch the "simply" if you like.

It's been odd here at how much I can talk about hockey and thrash music and engage in banter and expressions and topics that I would assume to be decidedly male, but because I champion some female issues, I've been shrouded in gender ambiguity. Well, I've always loved androgyny, from Bowie to Cure to Marilyn Manson, so bring it on, but still it strikes me as peculiar and a little too easy.

And I'm continually amazed by the attitudes I see around me. I wasn't raised among feminists like in the story I'll point to. I didn't have a seriously impressionistic childhood like Quinn. I simply made a few observations and reacted in what I thought was a rational manner. In college I met a very cute petite blond, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Her father had worked in the auto  business in Detroit for umpteen years, and she could strip down and rebuild an engine in about 2 hours. "Now that's clever", I thought to myself, "you don't need a beard or a beer belly to do that job after all". And that was it.

In one of my jobs I noticed all the big decisions were made on smoke breaks, so decided I better learn to smoke or pretend real good. And came to realize there weren't any women on these breaks either. "Funny, I wonder if that's how most companies work?" I thought. Well, not quite - it's also how politics and clubs work too.  And that was it.

I remember a female journalist who was a chatterbox, couldn't stop talking, quite wearing. And then one catastrophe happened, an earthquake, and she was the one who walked up to the police line, slipped under the tape, got into the sites and got the story. And after that I realized she was the one who got to work early and left very late. Even a week after her 2nd childbirth. And then she was fired. Some important guy that no one liked, who did little, and who only caused trouble wanted her slot. And that was it.

So it's rather odd to me that it would be unusual to look at the world and pick out patterns and notice imbalances and unfairness and to comment on it. If I look at the bailout or mortgage crisis, I look at who it affects, note where new black homeowners might be more affected, the poor in another, businesses in another. I put together a montage of impressions. And if that montage starts to show female qualities, would it be normal to lose interest, to dismiss it, to put it away, to say it's just a  "chick thing"? There have been studies of imbalances in schools, where girls were encouraged away from math, for example, and now it looks like the imbalance has swung more to bias against boys, including their energy and less focus. Should one side of the pendulum interest me more than the other?

I watch kids play with toys - some with blocks and cars, some with dolls and paints. Both are chattering away creating a variety of patterns, excited about their play. Should I find one more interesting than the other, or ignore that their choices of play toys differ significantly?

So it's rather odd to me that there's this assumption that a man wouldn't naturally want to identify with female issues, that straights couldn't have a natural interest in gays as people and a culture, that a white couldn't live in a black world without running into any obvious walls or requiring some heavy training to understand "the black experience".

If someone's beating someone in the street, is it normal to say, "oh, it's only a gay, just a gypsy, just a black, just a woman"?

A few weeks ago I mentioned the horrid war in the Congo - brutal, massive, and never-ending, but somehow overshadowed by the smaller (but not unimportant) events in Sudan. I noted the prominence of rape in the ethos there, to which one of my stalkers labelled my attitude, "ONLY WOMEN MATTER". Which I don't think was my specific point, but yes, there are occasions when what is happening to women matters more than what is happening to any other group. If it were happening to an ethnic group, we would call it "genocide" and be horrified. But if it happens to women, we call it "war" and take it in stride. Or at least some of us.

So I thank Zuzu at Shakesville for bringing up a speech by  Stephen Lewis (a Canuck, Quinn, you must have the most sensitive hockey players in the world up there) on the Millenium Goals. Should I say "failure of the Millenium Goals" (thanks, George). In which he mentioned the recent reporting of Eve Ensler - author of "The Vagina Monologues" - on entrenched rape in the Congo and expanded these to the reality of war and other typical behavior everywhere - that it always has a "sexicide" (my term) component, and this kind of inevitable lunacy towards half of the human race just can't continue while expecting significant progress anywhere else. If half the blacks were tortured somewhere, we'd scream bloody murder, if half of Christians were traumatized and marginalized we'd be withholding aid and contemplating invasion, even in Muslim Kosovo when presented with behavior a 10th as despicable we organized bombing raids and a takeover by the UN. But for the women of the Congo to be pawns in a sick game of rape and work slavery we simply pass by as Africa being Africa.

I'll let Stephen speak for a few sentences and then click on through for the rest (scroll down for the transcript).

I live in a feminist family, I love it. I believe to the end of my days that the feminist analysis of the exercise of male power is probably the most insightful analysis to explain much of what is wrong with much of this difficult world. And I must say that the more I've had the privilege of working in the international community, the more I have come to the conclusion that the struggle for gender equality is the single most important struggle on the planet. You cannot continue to marginalize 52% of the world's population and ever expect to achieve a degree of social justice and equity: it's just not possible.

And when you look at the damage that is done to the women, particularly of the developing world, through so many perverse realities whether it's international sexual trafficking or female genital mutilation or child brides or honor killings or an absence of inheritance rights or an absence of property rights or an absence or laws against rape and sexual violence or an absence of microcredit to give women some sense of economic autonomy or a lack of political representation - whatever the panoply of injustice, discrimination and stigma visited on women it seems to have no end, and it so profoundly compromises their existence.

And what has happened through the developing world latterly in many parts and which is so unsettling, unnerving, so profoundly compromising are the patterns of physical and sexual violence. The World Health Organization just did a quite astonishing study. It interviewed twenty-five thousand women in fourteen countries about physical and sexual violence. It found that the lowest levels of violence were in Japan at 14%, and the highest levels were in rural Ethiopia at 71%. And when they looked at the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada they found interim levels of 30-35%. So they saw that this was a pattern so deeply entrenched, whether it's marital rape or sexual violence from intimate partners or domestic abuse, these patterns are overwhelmingly entrenched.......... (transcript + audio).

And while people complain about "Identity Politics", identity politics makes a lot of sense when your identity is being erased and marginalized. Our identity is not just as individuals, but as an aggregate of different profiles we belong to. And if any of those profiles gets wiped out, we lose part of our identity as well. Just like those backwoods of my childhood that I can't go back to, or the bustling Jewish-enabled cultural boom of 1920's Berlin, it's erased from the human experience, from human possibility.

So here's hoping that over the coming years these obvious issues will stop being a chick thing, a black thing, a gay thing, a Muslim thing, a Christian thng, a white thing - and simply start being a human thing.