An Economic Interpretation of Quagmire

There's a great piece at Tom Dispatch by Michael Schwartz, which ties the ongoing violence and despair in Iraq to the efforts of the neocons in the Coalition Provisional Authority to administer "shock therapy" privatization to the Iraqi economy in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

I think this is an important part of the equation, although I don't think it's the whole story. For one thing, a low-level ethinic/religious conflict has been raging in Iraq since at least 1991, and this account, like the neocons', does not recognize that the ethnic and sectarian divides in Iraq are real. But the impact of the catastrophe that was the short lived CPA should not be forgotten. In addition to the wrongheaded economic policy administered by neophyte idealists straight out of think tank land, we should also remember the crippling corruption that characterized the CPA's efforts at "reconstruction" - most funds appropriated for this purpose were simply stolen, handed over to multinationals for work which was never done, or are otherwise unaccounted for to this day.

But for all its limitations, it's still a great piece that will enhance your understanding of what's really going on. Here it is. Go check it out.

I heart Adam Felber

Today he describes how he won the war on terror. That's all, kids. You can go home now.

"The most effective response to Roe is not to pretend that it does not exist."

More fallout on the South Dakota abortion ban, with some unexpected arguments on both sides:

The National Review argues that the recent SD legislation is actually misguided in the fight to take Roe down. (The title quote is from that article, entitled "Costly Gestures".)

Meanwhile, the DCeiver argues that the best thing PP could do is not present a legal challenge to the SD ban. DCeiver makes a persuasive argument, though in the final analysis I disagree. (See quote above.)

Bitch. Ph.D points out that the NYTimes.com is letting men frame the abortion debate, particularly when they're skeptical/dismissive of choice issues. Perhaps I should be spending more time on the LATimes.com instead.

And leading the category of "strange and outrageous", the Kaiser Daily RH notes that Amazon.com has finally removed the search engine feature that asks, "Did you mean 'adoption'?" when users enter a search for "abortion". First, thanks to them for presenting a bias-less search. Second, why was that "correction" there in the first place?

Ugh: Why money matters in this city

I'm a big, big fan of Eric Zorn's weblog, opinionated though he may be, and every time I take a few weeks off from it I find I've missed things that should be required reading for every member of my fair city. This week it's about how being rich can get you more polite treatment while they're manhunting you. No kidding. I was talking with my awesome spouse about if and why Americans perceive Chicago as qualitatively different, and we had a great discussion over what we were and what we may become. Do you think, reading this, that in other parts of the country people would read this and say, "Egh, Chicago."? Or would they perceive that this could be their town, too?

For (and about) the girls

All of you counting on me to bring you the latest SD news? I ain't got it. There is no March for Women's Lives this year, at least not that I know about. Those of you who are praying folk, please remember that keeping Stevens on this earth and motivated to adjudicate is our highest priority. Meanwhile, Wampum educates us on what the lack of a health exception means in real life. Go read; it's quick.

I've been spending time in high schools (did you know that class there begins at 8 am??) and have been pleasantly surprised to find that this year, all my students can read English. It must be because of that terrific reading material they've got nowadays. Naomi Wolf reviews, in this NYTimes article, an example of recent young adult fiction, and how it glamorizes the materialism and self-absorption* we generally claim to abhor about adult media culture. Be very afraid.

Neither here nor there: this article, "Silent Struggle", presents a new resource-competition theory of pregnancy as it relates specifically to pre-eclampsia. When I have more energy, perhaps I will get cool and find the real science article. Til then, it's secondary sources for you!
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*I love that I, too, can rail about self-absorption while posting to my third blog tonight. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week.

Pam files this under "Republicans," "bad ideas"

Via Pam at Pandagon: the National Republican Senatorial Committee is sending out a fraudulent-sounding "survey" and money grab. To read a first-hand account and see copies of the "survey", check out BlueNC. Even the opt-out option is a scam:

Your Survey is REGISTERED IN YOUR NAME ONLY and MUST BE ACCOUNTED FOR upon completion of this project. If you decide not to represent your local voting district in this important Republican Senate Leadership Survey - please RETURN THE SURVEY DOCUMENT - AT ONCE - IN THE ENVELOPE PROVIDED.
...
No. I do not wish to particiapte in the Survey, nor do I wish to make a donation to help the Republican Party. I am returning my Survey Document, along with a contribution of $11 to help cover the cost of tabulating and redistributing my Survey.

This is built to look like a governmental document. (Which might be confusing, because the government also wants your money. Try to keep up.) How many checks for $11 do you think they have so far received?

Women's work

Shall I mention that this is International Women's Day and also the day when the fem-libs Blog Against Sexism? Oh, I guess I did. Here are my highlights so far: Twisty provides a great roundup, and manages to editorialize without too many four-letter words. (I love her blog every day, though the understandable rage and sailor-iffic swearing is sometimes a shock to one's system.) WBEZ had a paid dedication this morning on the way to work from a guy named Paul to "all women everywhere" in honor of this day. I got a little misty-eyed. Damn hormones. This was quickly followed by a "Morning Edition" report on the effort in NH to change child support structures to reduce payments for non-custodial parents who spend lots of time with their children. This report made me cry for real, because although it seems sensible on its face, it continues to reduce time with children to an economic formula, where time spent per hour is supposed to cost (or earn) a certain amount of money. Women know, of course, that time spent with children costs money, but I've never heard women clamoring for billable hours. The idea of tracking visit time and applying it to a "total child cost" makes me heartsick. Children are people, not a project or an investment. And you have to spend money on them, because they are family and sometimes you have to spend resources to take care of people you care about. The basic argument of this re-structuring is that it would be terrible if some non-custodial parent "overpaid" and provided too much money or too much time with his kid (yes, they're mostly male parents we're talking about). Can you EVER spend too much time with a young kid? If parents purchase quality stuff for their kids instead of cheap bare-minimum clothes from Wal-Mart, is that a bad thing? And if YOU decide to buy a nice bicycle for your kid, does that mean you should get to take it out of the child support check? Absolutely not. Parenting to the minimum acceptable standard is what too many folks are doing already, and I don't want to see NH write into the law that if you pay $X you don't have to spend time with your kid, or if you spend X time you don't have to pay additionally for him. It just doesn't work like that.

Everyone needs to go watch the progress of Ema at The Well-Timed Period, as she spots incorrect info at the National Institute of Health about the morning-after birth control pill, calls them on it, and receives the response that "this is handled by another company, we'll have to talk to them and check it out." It's nice that they replied to her, but lame that they would post information from an outside agency without doing any fact-checking first. Aren't they supposed to be, like, health experts or something?

That's all for now, as I must go educate more young minds on the mystery of the menstrual cycle. A woman's work is never done.

Seriously, Folks . . .

"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could it be a good thing?" Keeping all that tension and stress pent up inside is bad for your blood pressure and crippling for you emotional life. Just let it out folks! Nothing like a good old fashioned civil war to release those tensions and find an outlet for your pent-up feeling of aggression and hate.

Gotta love Fox News. Seriously, ya gotta. Or else.

ETA: I'm making this loony screenshot into a contest over at my blog, just because it made my day. Submit your responses as comments, and you too could win a prize and get drunk!