You are currently browsing the daily archive for January 11, 2008.
Check out this CNN article about sexual predators’ use of cell phones to prey on minors. Note that all three photos are of accused women. The article isn’t specific to women, so I have to wonder why the photos focus on women who for whatever reason represent a small fraction of defendants convicted of sexual crimes against minors.
Okay, so a beautiful 26-year-old female P.E. teacher has sex with a 14-year-old boy. Clearly lines have to be drawn and minors protected. I’m not saying she shouldn’t be prosecuted, and if convicted, punished.
But, this could get me into trouble here, for those of you who are heterosexual men – think back to age 14. Wouldn’t any of you have given your right arm for an opportunity to have sex with a beautiful 26-year-old woman? And if you had, do you think you would have been harmed by the event? I’m not saying it’s reasonable, but at the visceral anti-logical level it feels worse to me when a man does it. This visceral sexism, and make no mistake, I am suffering from visceral sexism – could it have a rational basis?
Maybe, just maybe, it’s influenced by the difference in sexuality of the violators. Maybe the women perpetrators tend to care more about their victims than their male counterparts. It seems that most of the female perps in the news are teachers and have relationships with the boys beyond merely sex. And maybe that’s even worse for the victim, but maybe it’s not. The feelings, however genuine, are not an excuse, but maybe a mitigation.
Okay, so is there a rational basis for a less negative visceral response to news of female perpetrators, or is my inner horny 14-year-old boy clouding my judgment?
From the SHARE Center website (I keep misplacing the press statement):
For five years Southern Humboldt citizens have been seeking to buy our historic Garberville school on Sprowel Creek Road to house an arts, recreation, education, and community hospitality center serving people of all ages.
This Mission style building, most recently known as the Osprey School, was designed by noted Eureka architect Franklin Thompson Georgeson in 1939 and was the first earthquake-safe school in northern California. An evolving group of Southern Humboldt citizens has devised a plan to save this fine building for public benefit by developing much-needed housing in the old playing fields behind the school. But what sort of housing should this be? We will be creating a new neighborhood in the heart of Garberville, and we invite you to look over the options we have researched and developed so far and improve them with your thoughts and desires. Our explorations are a basis for discussion, not an end product. Please help us to make our plans, and our community, better. And above all, PLEASE state clearly your desire to save the school building for community use, under public ownership, forever.
We have scheduled three meetings in Garberville in mid-January to introduce and discuss plans for the evolving heart of Garberville:
· Thursday, January 17, Noon, at the Teen Center in the old school building on Sprowel Creek Road.
· Thursday, January 17, 6:00 p.m. at the Teen Center.
· Sunday, January 20, at 3:00 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church on Maple Lane.
If you can’t come to the meetings, it’s important to express your desires to the school board, which will make its final decision soon. Send letters to:
Southern Humboldt Unified School District Board
President Barbara Lindsay, President, SHUSD
PO Box 129
Garberville, CA 95542
email: buzzarb@hughes.net….and to newspapers!
The photo of the view out my office window comes from the site.
By the way, I haven’t really looked closely at the proposal, but it seems worth supporting. I would prefer anything to a gas station or a fast food restaurant, ideas which have been tossed around in the past.
They messed up in New Hampshire, and they don’t know what to do about Nevada.
Larry Harris, a principal with Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, one of two national firms that conduct polling for Nevada media on occasion, acknowledged the difficulty. “It requires a lot more energy than somebody pulling a lever in a secret ballot,” he said.Nevada’s highly transient and increasingly diverse population is another complication for pollsters. New Hampshire and Iowa are on the opposite end of that spectrum, with nearly all-white populations and relatively static population numbers.
“It’s very difficult to know who to sample, in terms of likely voters,” said Glen Bolger, a respected Republican pollster who has conducted surveys in Nevada.
The Pew Research Center, a respected public policy foundation, regards the circumstances here as so foreboding that it opted to leave Nevada out of its pre-election poll in December.
“It’s an ascending chain of difficulty: general elections, primaries and caucuses,” said Scott Keeter, Pew’s director of survey research. “Caucuses burn up a lot of resources (for pollsters), and we thought our resources could be put to better use elsewhere.”
Nevada’s last poll was taken a month ago by Mason-Dixon, which says it will survey voters again before the caucus. (In the most recent poll, Clinton led in the single digits.) Infrequent polling is a problem, said Susan Pinkus, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll.
“My concern is that you really don’t know what’s going on in your state,” she said. “Everybody’s flying under the radar there. So much is predicated on speculation.”
Wimps!
Update January 14: Somebody found some balls. If accurate it points to an Edwards resurgence. Call me skeptical.
From Garth Epling:
These are the un-certified results of the Mateel Board of Directors Election.
557 ballots were mailed to members
16 ballots were not tallied, for the reasons noted:
7 ballots were returned to the Mateel by the postal service.
1 ballot was disqualified for lateness.
8 ballots were disqualified for lack of the ballot security indicator. (4 of these was full sized, and four had the tops cut off. (The committee noted that in future elections there could be a note to the voter that ballots must not be cut.)
247 ballots were returned timely to Lamport Legal Documents, and were tallied.
The top three vote getters were:
Bob Stern 169
Michael De Leon 154
Al Ceraulo 122
The board will certify the election results at it’s next regularly scheduled board meeting.
Because they dared to schedule their primary before Super Tuesday, Michigan’s Democratic Party delegates will, barring a court injuction, not be seated at the convention. And in solidarity with the DNC, neither Obama nor Edwards are on the ballot. Clinton will run against Kucinich and Gravel, if she bothers. So because the Democratic side of the primary may be a waste of time, there’s a movement afloat to cross-over into the Republican side. Kos is leading the charge.
In 1972, Republican voters in Michigan decided to make a little mischief, crossing over to vote in the open Democratic primary and voting for segregationist Democrat George Wallace, seriously embarrassing the state’s Democrats. In fact, a third of the voters (PDF) in the Democratic primary were Republican crossover votes. In 1988, Republican voters again crossed over, helping Jesse Jackson win the Democratic primary, helping rack up big margins for Jackson in Republican precincts. (Michigan Republicans can clearly be counted on to practice the worst of racial politics.) In 1998, Republicans helped Jack Kevorkian’s lawyer — quack Geoffrey Feiger — win his Democratic primary, thus guaranteeing their hold on the governor’s mansion that year.
….
With a history of meddling in our primaries, why don’t we try and return the favor. Next Tuesday, January 15th, Michigan will hold its primary. Michigan Democrats should vote for Mitt Romney, because if Mitt wins, Democrats win. How so?
….
Meanwhile, poor Mitt Romney, who’s suffered back-to-back losses in the last week, desperately needs to win Michigan in order to keep his campaign afloat. Bottom line, if Romney loses Michigan, he’s out. If he wins, he stays in.
And we want Romney in, because the more Republican candidates we have fighting it out, trashing each other with negative ads and spending tons of money, the better it is for us. We want Mitt to stay in the race, and to do that, we need him to win in Michigan.
….
Two polls the last couple of days show a tight race: Strategic Vision (R) shows Romney within striking distance with 20 percent to McCain’s 29 (Huckabee is third with 18), while Rossman Group shows Huckabee with the lead — 23 percent to Romney’s 22 and McCain’s 18.
….
If you know someone in Michigan, send them the email I’ve included below the fold. If you don’t know someone in Michigan, send the email to your liberal friends and see if THEY have friends in Michigan. Get the word out, whether by blog, mailing list, MySpace or Facebook page, or whatever.
Or they could vote for Ron Paul.
….
Romney does have a significant ally in the National Review. From the Nation:
In a round-up of the election, National Review‘s Kathryn Jean Lopez, longtime leader of the magazine’s Romney brigade, listed the reasons why McCain’s “not on of us.” Her first example: waterboarding.
….
But back to waterboarding. You may recall that at a GOP debate Romney wouldn’t say whether this abhorrent technique constituted torture. He said he’d need to check with his advisers, including Cofer Black, the vice chairman of Blackwater. “Governor, I’m astonished that you haven’t found out what waterboarding is,” McCain responded. “How in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me.”
Count NR among the pro-waterboarding faction. “Conservatives suspect that he’s a recipe for heartache,” Lopez writes of McCain. Maybe there’s room for him at Gitmo.
Sorry Kos. No way I could vote for Romney. Not even as a prank.
Recent Comments