Palabris

Freedom

Good, now we can all breathe easier, safe in the knowledge that freedom is properly oriented.

In a related note, one of my fave Bill Maher bits is "new rules." How about this, Bill: NEW RULE. If somebody says that something is really interesting, it never is. And if somebody says that something is a symbol of freedom, it's always a sign that freedom has somewhere - if not there itself, right under your nose - been negated.

Names and Regimes of Gender

Good news in New York: gender is performative.

Bad news: You need a doctor or therapist to prove it.

Curious standard: you must have changed your name (NY Times), which is, apparently part of what it means to "live your adopted gender for at least two years."

But who arbitrates the gendering of names?

Theater of the Obvious

Sometimes - too often, in fact - the obvious to be re-remembered: the crimes that Saddam Hussein was today sentenced to death for committing were committed with the full and enthusiastic support of the Reagan administration. The image above is our very own Rumsfeld with Hussein in the '80s. He was, at that time as today, doing a "fantastic job."

Update: Just in; a must read by Robert Fisk.

"Obsessively tolerant" EU

New York Times hyperbole/lie alert:

It began in Poland, where the conservative Law and Justice Party won elections last year. The twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, now president and prime minister respectively, have alienated much of the obsessively tolerant European Union with their conservative Roman Catholic, antihomosexual attitudes and talk of Poland assuming its rightful place on the Continent�s political map. (Velvet to Fringe in Post-Soviet Central Europe, Nov 1)

I'm sure we could undermine this claim with about, oh, fifty obvious examples..

Bene-dict-ion

Pope Benny saying he is "sorry" for the "reaction" to his comments is about as much of an apology as a wife-beater saying he's sorry that the beatings hurt.

Pluto

Some bigots have suggested that expanding the number of planets to twelve would have been akin to establishing some kind of "no snowball left behind" program. I for one, am happy that Pluto has been demoted, since I don't believe in social promotion for far-off celestial objects. Anything less would be the soft-bigotry of low expectations.

If Pluto wants so much to be a planet, it's going to have to earn it, and pull itself up by its sub-planetary bootstraps.

Perelman

"I would prefer not to."

Gay translators

In the Global War on Terror, you're either with "us," or your with "them" That is, unless you're gay, in which case you can just stay home.

Nothing to read here, we're busy making war