Category: Unmitigated Horror
Current (male) workers are not-good and exceptions can be made for (good) female workers.
From the transcript:
ROMNEY: We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I’m going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they’re going to be anxious to hire women.
Let’s start with that First clause: “We’re going to have to have employers in the new economy…”
Logical inference: In the current economy, we don’t have employers, or we have employers but they are going away.
Second clause: in the economy I’m going to bring to play…
Logical inference: The economy is a ball, and Rich Mitt has the best ball, and he’ll let you play with it… if you make him head of the kickball team.
Third clause: [employers] that are going to be so anxious to get good workers…
(His use of “anxious” is troubling. Anxious can be viewed as ambivalent, hesitant, or wary. So I’m going to presume he means excited or enthusiastic.)
Logical inference: The new employers in our new economy will be sick of the current economy’s workers… who are not good. American workers right now ARE TO BLAME FOR THE ECONOMY.
Fourth clause: [employers] are going to be anxious to hire women.
(again, let’s ignore the ready connotation that employers are going to be ambivalent to hire women.)
Logical inference: Balancing anxious employers, good workers, and women, he’s either saying that the employers are so desperate that they’ll even consider hiring women, or that current workers who are to blame for the economy are all men, and no good. Either way, he’s got good workers on one side of the statement and women workers on the other. Women can be good workers, but they sound like the exception.
This is not good. What’s worse is what he said about women in the workplace right before this:
CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?
ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.
A great start!
Well said, Governor. Your record on this is sound.
Unless you read this article from The Boston Phoenix written by David S. Bernstein:
What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
Mitt’s version:
ROMNEY: I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.
Sure, he can take credit. Fine. The facts don’t matter. But then he makes it so much worse:
Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort. But number two, because I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.
She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.
His anecdote is fine and in fact it makes him look like a considerate employer. EXCEPT THAT this is exactly what we don’t want in leadership. Women are not an exception. He implies that you don’t NEED women in the workforce. He implies that hiring women comes with an additional risk. This is 1950s sexist glad-handing at its worst. And he said this last night, in 2012.
Working crazy hours should be a decision made by each employee, male or female. He’s peppering this answer about pay equity for women with an anecdote of someone who should not have been the effing chief of staff for a governor. She wants to be home at 5pm? She should be a baker. I DON’T GET HOME AT 5pm, and I don’t do shht at my job.
Here’s old Grandad Romney making room for women even though they have funny schedules and kids and needs that men don’t have. Even though he implied above that the current (mostly male) workforce is people by not-good (male) workers.
Today in Absolute, De-mitigated Horror – Update
Why the Long Face?
I was shopping for Scott. You know, for his birthday.
I’m saving this one for Christmas.
But that led me to.. well..
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have discovered the single best Amazon user-submitted-photo gallery ever made.
The product is a horse mask.
The gallery is amazing. At time of publication there were 312 photos. Here are just a few.
A History of Failed Apocalypses
What is the plural of Apocalypse? Turns out, Apocalypses. Turns out.
Check out this wonderful infographic (at what point is it just a comic strip?) of failed and future Ends of the World.
The Apocalypse Isn’t Happening Anytime Soon [Infographic] | WebProNews.
(Found via The United States of Armageddon, source of all your End Times News)
Mommy, Where do the Mutants Come From?
Alex Wellerstein’s “NUKEMAP” has been floating around the internet (NPR, JoeMyGod) and I have to say that I’m absolutely terrified by it.
Put a nuke wherever you like, and see what the results might be. Try not to scream and weep from the unmitigated Cold-War-esque horror that subsequently engulfs you.
No wonder our parent’s generation was so warped. Have any of you seen the old nuclear attack readiness videos?
Anyway. Go play with the NUKEMAP
Senator Mark Kirk on the National Defense Authorization Act
He sent me, and many others, this form letter just now. My two cents: It seems reckless to pass a bill with so many abhorrently unconstitutional provisions, relying on a line-item veto to “fix it in post.”
Read and decide for yourself:
Dear Mr. Cox:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the detainee provisions in the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. I appreciate learning your thoughts on this important matter and welcome the opportunity to respond.
Since enactment of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the role of the U.S. military in enforcing our domestic laws inside the United States has been very limited. During the week of November 28, the Senate considered S.1867, the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. This legislation includes sections specifically authorizing our military to arrest and detain anyone, including U.S. citizens inside America, who the President suspects may be connected to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
In my view, American citizens inside this country have inalienable Constitutional rights that can only be removed by a civilian jury of your peers. Others argue that America is a “battlefield” where the President should have the power to order our military to seize U.S. citizens in this country on a suspicion that they may back terror.
Under the Declaration of Independence, Americans were promised rights against the State that were “inalienable”, i.e. no future President or Congress could ever take them away.
Under our Constitution, your rights are defined:
– You are promised that the trial of “all crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury”.
– You cannot “be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court”.
– Under the Fourth Amendment, you are “secure in [your] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”. This right “shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause”.
– Under the Fifth Amendment, you cannot be “held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury”.
– Under the Sixth Amendment, you have a right to a “speedy trail”.
– Under the 14th Amendment, “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”.
In my view, the Senate bill violates your basic rights, guaranteed to you by our Constitution. Rather than forcing the state to prove your guilt by a unanimous vote of a jury “beyond the shadow of a doubt”, this law allows you only one petition to a civilian court under a writ of habeas corpus, then allowing a military court to hold U.S. citizens by only a “preponderance of the evidence”.
The last time Congress enacted a law allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens was during the McCarthy era. Passed over President Truman’s veto in 1950, the “Emergency Detention Act” authorized indefinite detention of Americans likely to commit espionage or sabotage. Fortunately, this authority was never used and President Nixon signed the repeal of this law in 1971. His repeal stated that “no citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress”.
The detention authority of the Senate bill would roll back decades of protections for U.S. citizens. While the U.S. military has and should keep the power to detain or even attack Americans serving in foreign armies or terrorist organizations overseas (like Anwar al Awlaki who fought the U.S. from a terrorist base in Yemen), the U.S. military should not be authorized to arrest and detain U.S. citizens based on activity conducted in the United States. That is the mission of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, state and local law enforcement. Americans who are arrested should never lose their constitutional rights until they are convicted in a civilian court by a jury of their peers.
In the Senate, I voted for three amendments that strike or limit the scope of these provisions. Amendment 1107, introduced by Senator Mark Udall (D-CO), would have struck Sections 1031 and 1032, but it was defeated by a vote of 38 to 60. I also supported Senator Diane Feinstein’s (D-CA) amendment 1125 that would have eliminated the military’s power to arrest and detain U.S. citizens inside America. This amendment was defeated by a vote of 45 to 55. In the end, the Senate adopted another amendment offered by Senator Feinstein, stating that this bill does not expand authority to apprehend and detain U.S. citizens in the United States – a thin cover for our basic rights.
President Obama said that he would veto this legislation if it contains overly broad powers for the U.S. military to arrest U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. He is right on this issue and I will support his veto on this question.
The remainder of this long piece of legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act, is beneficial for the country. The bill provides a pay increase for Americans in uniform. It fully funds special operations forces across the world. It also helps clean up troubled and wasteful defense construction and procurement programs. The bill also contains the Menendez-Kirk amendment, passed by a vote of 100-0, to impose crippling sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran in an effort to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Therefore, I voted to move the bill forward to a House-Senate conference, secure in knowing that the President will be able to strike the provisions I outlined on our rights while advancing the provisions I outlined just above.
Thank you for taking the time to contact me on this issue. Please feel free to contact me at (312) 886-3506 or online athttp://kirk.senate.gov if you have any questions or concerns before Congress or the federal government. It is an honor to serve you in the Senate.
Very truly yours,
Mark Kirk
U.S. Senate
Today in (potential) Absolute, Unmitigated Horror
Uh.
Inside a Dutch medical facility is a potentially devastating weapon that could kill millions: A genetically modified version of the H5N1 bird flu, engineered to be easily transmitted among ferrets. And the researchers who figured out how to do it would like to share their work with the world.
