links for 2009-07-07
July 7, 2009-
If those people who dislike Sarah Palin did so for her unfancy education and humble background—if this was really about "class"—they should positively adore the New Haven, Connecticut-born, Andover-, Yale- and Harvard-educated scion of one of America's most powerful families. But I think it's safe to say that those Palin-bashers in question were also no big fans of George Walker Bush.
-
about 10,000 child refugees – mostly Jewish – who were sent without their parents out of Austria, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia to foster families and hostels in Britain.
-
Perspective-flip of the Chick Tracts. Ace.
-
There is nothing like science for giving that objective, white-coat flavoured legitimacy to your prejudices, so it must have been a great day for Telegraph readers when they came across the headline: "Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists."
-
I wonder if Mail writers, particularly headline writers, ever ask themselves if this kind of thing is, y'know, okay? Taking a report, ignoring the conclusion, pulling out irrelevant statistics from it and slapping them in the headline in a misleading way, to back up the very fucking prejudices the report says are without foundation. Indeed, the Mail's article acknowledges all this, and includes many of the facts and opinions which form the basis of the BBC article. It just changes the headline and sticks a wildly context-free, scaremongering figure at the start. The best part of all this is that papers do this kind of thing and then have the sheer audacity to criticise politicians for using 'spin'.
-
All that’s happening here is that the government has issued a standardised set of approved useless facts that people should know, but can only enforce them on some people.
-
In its attempt to justify the violation of basic religious and cultural freedoms, France has vehemently responded to criticism explaining that it is for the state’s security. From what exactly? A type of dress worn by a ridiculously small minority of women? It’s interesting to note that at the time of the 2004 ban, the number of women wearing it was small in proportion to the total Muslim population. But in both cases the hysteria that the headscarf and burqa has whipped up would suggest that it is worn by millions striving to dominate French society.
-
A forum on global poverty and intervention [Paul Collier; Stephen D. Krasner; William Easterly; Larry Diamond; Edward Miguel; Mike McGovern; Nancy Birdsall]
-
During the past decade, however, the real battleground over Roe v Wade has been at the level of individual states. Elizabeth Nash of the pro-choice thinktank the Guttmacher Institute says access to abortion has been progressively whittled down under a constant barrage of legal challenges. Some 400 or more anti-abortion bills are put before state legislatures every year, of which 30 on average succeed.
The outcome is that women are now required to undergo waiting periods before terminating a pregnancy. They must be given information about their foetus that is often patently designed to act as a deterrent. In some states, women are told of a link between abortion and breast cancer, though such a link has never been proved. Other states emphasise the pain felt by foetuses.
-
It's quite correct that there's nothing actually magical about Democrats have 60 senators. It does not mean they will shatter every filibuster or succeed in all their priorities. It does not mean they can pass pass single-payer health reform or cap carbon emissions at a quiet belch. But I think Terry Samuel goes rather too far in dampening expectations here:
