Dad wears skirt to show support for 5 y.o. son who likes to wear dresses

Chris thinks this story is adorable.  I'm actually a bit conflicted. Read the snippet first, then let's discuss. Gawker:

"My five year old son likes to wear dresses," says German dad Nils Pickert.

Back when he lived in West Berlin, it was certainly a conversation-starter, but not much more than that. Now, however, Pickert and his son live in a "very traditional" South German village where his son's predilection for dresses is the talk of the town.

"I didn't want to talk my son into not wearing dresses and skirts," Pickert tells the German feminist magazine EMMA. "He didn't make friends in doing that in Berlin already and after a lot of contemplation I had only one option left: To broaden my shoulders for my little buddy and dress in a skirt myself."

Here are my thoughts.

Good that the dad is teaching his son to be himself, and to be proud of himself, whoever he is.

But, I worry about the hate that a young boy is going to be shown wearing a dress. And while it's all well and good to say that that's society's problem, it's also that little boy's problem - he's five years old, I worry about the impact of him being laughed at, pointed to, and mocked every day of his life.  Now, that doesn't mean we should stifle who he really is, which can lead to its own damage.

The thing is, who is he? Is he transgender, or just a boy who likes to wear a dress (and is there a difference?)?

And even if he's "just" a boy who likes to wear a dress (i.e., if he doesn't think he's a girl in a boy's body), is it right to tell him what boys and girls should and shouldn't do?  Isn't this like that little girl at Christmas who went off on the rant about how everyone is trying to make her buy pink toys when sometimes she wants blue toys:



I'm all for breaking down silly societal norms - such as American guys who (used to) fear wearing shoulder bags ("murses" in the vernacular). They don't fear any such thing in Europe, and it's now spreading in the states - though we still wear "big" bags, not the small purse-y ones that Europeans also wear.

But I still worry about it when 5 year olds make social statements. It's one thing to be a civil rights activist as an adult - and it's not easy then - it's quite another to try it at age 5. I remember talking once with someone about what it's like for high school kids who come out and become outspoken gay rights advocates. We like to think it's healthy for them. But being in the spotlight isn't always easy, and it's not for everyone.

Then again, his parents are in the best spot to decide what's best for their kid and how he's handling it.

Your thoughts? Read the rest of this post...

GOP convention speaker says "I did build this" - he took stimulus money and $2m in govt contracts

The jokes just write themselves at this point. "We did build it" - the guy says - uh no you didn't. He took $2m in government contracts and over $200,000 in stimulus money to "build" his company. So in fact, WE did build it - we the people, we the taxpayers, built this guy's firm. And he's on stage mocking President Obama, claiming he got no government help to build his business, and now we find out he did.

They really are pathetic.

Another small business owner featured at the Republican National Convention undercuts the Fox-fueled "We Built It" narrative surrounding the event.

Steven Cohen, president of Ohio-based manufacturing company Screen Machine Industries, is scheduled to speak tonight at the convention. According to a press release from his company announcing the speaking appearance, Cohen will speak on "political issues important to manufacturing." Much like Sher Valenzuela, the Delaware small business owner that was featured on "We Built It" day at the convention, Cohen's business has also received help from the government.

Screen Machine has received more than $2 million in government contracts, including nearly $220,000 in stimulus funds, and claims a "long and proud history of supplying heavy-duty American Made equipment to government agencies and the US Military."

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Video: 11 month old twins rock to daddy's guitar

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Poll: Americans think rich don't pay enough taxes

Uh oh. It looks like the Teabagging Republicans are on the losing side of this debate.

The poll found that many Americans believe rich people to be intelligent and hard-working but also greedy and less honest than the average American. Nearly six in 10, or 58 percent, say the rich don't pay enough in taxes, while 26 percent believe the rich pay their fair share and 8 percent say they pay too much.

Even among those who describe themselves as "upper class" or "upper middle class," more than half — 52 percent — said upper-income Americans don't pay enough in taxes; only 10 percent said they paid too much. This upper tier was more likely to say they are more financially secure now than they were 10 years ago — 62 percent, compared to 44 percent for those who identified themselves as middle class and 29 percent for the lower class. They are less likely to report problems in paying rents or mortgages, losing a job, paying for medical care or other bills and cutting back on household expenses.

As this article mentions, it's not a problem that Romney is rich, but that he is strongly perceived as the candidate who will promote policies that mostly benefit the rich. Read the rest of this post...

Obama doing "ask me anything" chat on Reddit, now

Here.

Ruh roh, looks like Obama broke Reddit.

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GOP convention flooded with lies

The Republican party should have had a fighting chance of winning the 2012 Presidential election on the issues. Four years is more than enough time for voters to forget who created the current economic mess (hint: them).

Instead the 'We Built It!' convention is themed as a rebuttal to a statement that was never made. Here is what the President actually said:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

It is one thing to win a media cycle or two with an out-of-context quotation, but using a malicious mis-quotation as the whole convention theme is completely unprecedented. Fox News thinks it is 'ironic' that the Conference is 'using the President's 'own words' against him, but what is genuinely ironic here is the fact that as Issac headed towards the GOP convention, Republican governors across the South were calling for precisely the type of assistance that Obama was talking about in his speech.

The idea behind this lie is that it is meant to demonstrate the President's 'hostility to small businesses'. And so the Republicans have a parade of small business owners to tell the convention how they built their businesses on their own without any government help apart from grants, loans, tax breaks and government infrastructure. In other words no government help apart from all the types of help that governments provide, and the very help the President was talking about.

Which gets me to the fundamentally stupid part of this whole 'We built it' charade: If businesses have no need of any form of government help whatsoever, then a Romney administration can't be any better for business than an Obama administration.  And we can forget about all those pesky tax cuts too. Read the rest of this post...

American flag not good enough for Mitt Romney

Flag via Shutterstock

Now who's the foreigner?

For a campaign and party that likes to race-bait President Obama as some kind of "foreign" entity (RNC chair Reinhold Reince Priebus got smacked down for doing it again earlier this week), Mitt Romney sure seems to have a problem with America.

First Mitt's family self-deported to Mexico in order to evade those pesky US anti-polygamy laws.

Then Mitt chose the Burmese dictatorship to make our 2002 Olympic uniforms, rather than good ole Americans.

And now, Romney is caught holding a campaign event, during the GOP convention, on a ship flying a foreign flag, because apparently being proud of America costs Mitt too much in taxes, and when it's a choice between being proud of America and evading his taxes, Mitt always goes with the money.

Speaking of Mitt Romney's dearth of national pride, it's interesting to note that Romney also wasn't proud of the fact that America caught Osama bin Laden.  He even chastised President Obama for saying that he was proud that we caught OBL.  Why does Mitt Romney have such a problem with pride of (this) country?

And finally, just imagine what the Republicans would do if our candidate - Barack HUSSEIN Obama, as they like to note - were flying a foreign flag instead of the stars and stripes at a campaign event DURING the convention?  It would be THE central theme of the entire convention.

From ABC News, and they've got a photo of the ship not flying the American flag:

Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign toasted its top donors Wednesday aboard a 150-foot yacht flying the flag of the Cayman Islands.

The exclusive event, hosted by a Florida developer on his yacht "Cracker Bay," was one of a dozen exclusive events meant to nurture those who have raised more than $1 million for Romney's bid.

"I think it's ironic they do this aboard a yacht that doesn't even pay its taxes," said a woman who lives aboard a much smaller boat moored at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina.

No more ironic than the Republicans nominating a candidate who doesn't even pay his taxes. Read the rest of this post...

Romney wraps up nomination with low favorability ratings

Americans simply don't like the guy and a few speeches won't change that perception. Mitt Romney has no sense of compassion or appreciation for the struggles of others and he doesn't even try to understand. One can argue that Obama needs to stand up for the middle class in a more forceful way, but he at least invests energy into the process of helping someone other than the 1%.

Anyone who makes jokes about the "funny" times when his dad closed factories causing the loss of jobs doesn't have a clue. Throwing millions around still hasn't changed his perception of being an insensitive rich guy.

Mitt Romney accepts the Republican nomination for president this week with the lowest personal popularity of any major-party nominee in polls dating to Ronald Reagan's presidency, a difficulty for Romney that's persisted throughout this election cycle.

Forty percent of registered voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll see Romney favorably overall, while 51 percent rate him unfavorably - 11 points underwater in this basic measure, with a majority unfavorable score for just the second time in polls since last fall.

Barack Obama does better in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, but hardly well - 50-47 percent in favorable vs. unfavorable views among registered voters, essentially the same as his 2012 average in ABC/Post polls. On this, as on other measures, as hard as they've campaigned, views of the two hardly have budged.

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Obama crosses John Cusack's "line of conscience"

The "Line of Conscience" phrase in the headline is mine. I wrote here, in the start of a series I will still complete:

Group 1 in the "Can't vote for Obama" crowd — no matter the other reasons for pulling that trigger — are those whose lines of conscience have been crossed.

I aim this at the people who say, "But President Santorum would take marching orders from Koch Bros Central." That's true; President Santorum would rule from Wichita (via its Wisconsin field office).

But there are those whose consciences are so offended (that's a war crimes link) that they cannot let themselves do one good thing for the perpetrator. Not one.

Unlike phony "consciences", these genuine cries of integrity must be honored, in my view, even if you tactically disagreed. You can fight a war, in other words, and still respect the Quakers.

There are other reasons for not voting for Obama, and many for voting for him as well. That's the point of the series — identify the reasons for and against that make sense, and sort out the ones that make no sense at all.

But back to this one — crossing lines of conscience. At what point does a generally good office-holder lose your support? What if they*:

• Stole from the office lotto pool?
• Had sex with a colleague in the back room?
• Had sex with an intern in the back room?
• Tortured frogs?
• Hit a spouse?
• Committed murder?

At the lesser "crimes" you overlook the bad for the good. But at some point in that list, if your candidate were guilty, you would not be able to support them*. He or she has crossed your "line of conscience."

Back to Obama. I've written many times:

Barack Obama is crossing lines of conscience, one Democrat at a time.

It's obvious, true on its face. And whether your line has been crossed or not, he seems to be testing us all, one step at a time. FISA betrayal? No? Bush tax cuts? Not yet? NDAA perhaps? No? Let's try this one then...

Nevertheless, as I've also said, the next Republican president will be a wrecking ball — he'll use the radical Republican governors as a template.

What are the Republican governors doing, if they can get away with it? Constitutional coup at the state level, with the goal of permanent one-party rule. It's almost impossible to say that any other way.

But this piece is not about your vote. It's about Barack Obama, lines of conscience, and John Cusack.

Here's Cusack writing at Shannyn Moore's site (my emphasis, paragraphing and asterisks; yes, plural):

[T]here are certain Rubicon lines, as constitutional law professor Jon Turley calls them, that Obama has crossed. ...

Three markers — the Nobel prize acceptance speech, the escalation speech at West Point, and the recent speech by Eric Holder — crossed that Rubicon line for me…

Mr. Obama, the Christian president with the Muslim-sounding name, would heed the admonitions of neither religion’s prophets about making war and do what no empire or leader, including Alexander the Great, could do: he would, he assured us “get the job done in Afghanistan.”

And so we have our democratic president receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as he sends 30,000 more troops to a ten-year-old conflict in a country that’s been war-torn for 5,000 years.

We can’t have it both ways. Hope means endless war? ... Why? We’ll never fully know. Instead, we got a speech that was stone bullsh*t and an insult to the very idea of peace. ...

To sum it up: more war. So thousands die or are maimed [but] he and his satellites get their four more years.

Cusack concludes:

One is forced to ask ... Is the President just another Ivy League Assh*le shredding civil liberties and due process and sending people to die in some sh*thole for purely political reasons?

You really should click over if this interests you. The article continues with a terrific interchange between Cusack and constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, of whom we've written much. It's well worth your time.

This election has turned into a Rorschach test for Dems, with clusters of answers and all of them about you, not the candidates.

Romney and the Koch-couped Republicans are a solid known. ("Power please, and no, you may not have it back.") Obama is also a known. ("Look out Lame Duck; you could be Dead Duck in December. Keystone, you're next.")

But what about you? The choices define your care-line. Is drone-killing babies a bridge too far? Or do you think Republicans are doing even worse? Do you prefer the slow death of Social Security to the fast? How much new carbon before Obama is a criminal too?

How about the genuine victory of electing the first Black president, offset by the fact that he too won't help the "undeserving" — "moochers" in Repub-speak; "not-bankers" in Obama-world. Talk about an ironic choice.

Fascinating stuff, I have to admit. If I didn't care about the outcome, this would make a lively and ghoulish family drama, an aching Long Day's Journey into Night for the American people and their unguarded dying democracy.

Obama or Romney? Really. How did average Americans get shoved into this box? (Oh that's right; their addiction to hating the "undeserving" and a last little straw called Bush v Gore, which passed by majority vote of an unprotesting people.)

But I do care, and I don't want to watch a friend choose which drug to die from. Trouble is, he's doing it in front of me. Cusack is another who's noticed, as has Turley. The piece is quite a find. (Interesting thought; I'll bet Cusack has acted in Long Day's Journey. Wonder if he's thinking of it now.)

* Grammar note for fans: "They" and "them" are slowly gaining the singular meaning "he or she" ("him or her") in addition to their plural meanings. Note that they, them and their are already both singular and plural in speech — "everyone has their book."

As a talk-around for the "he or she" problem, this has become my preferred solution, far less clunky than any of the others. (Fair warning — this is deliberate. In thirty years, no one will notice.)

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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So if you haven't read that David Brooks piece eviscerating Mitt Romney...

I meant to write about this yesterday.

Conservative NYT columnist David Brooks wrote a scathing piece about Mitt Romney that reiterated every criticism ever made of Romney, but in a fresh and particularly bitter light.

Thing is, it was a joke.  Brooks was poking fun at liberal criticism of Romney.  But he did it so well, that no one got the joke.  Instead, we got a cringe-worthy, withering attack on Romney that liberals have been sending around the Internet for a good 24 hours and counting.

Here's an excerpt, but do go read the whole thing - it's that good.

Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words (“I like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal.

The teenage years were more turbulent. He was sent to a private school, where he was saddened to find there are people in America who summer where they winter. He developed a lifelong concern for the second homeless, and organized bake sales with proceeds going to the moderately rich.

Romney also went on a mission to France. He spent two years knocking on doors, failing to win a single convert. This was a feat he would replicate during his 2008 presidential bid.

Some have said that Romney’s lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs.

Seriously, this is only a snippet.

If this is satire, if this was meant to "help" Mitt Romney - then more of it, I say. Read the rest of this post...

Report on Putin: Life as a Galley Slave

It's not nearly as easy as you might think to be a modern tsar in Russia. The mansions, the yachts, the helicopters, the $75,000 toilets. It's rough. What's especially difficult is pretending that you're a simple guy, with simple tastes while so many struggle to reach even the middle class.

According to the report (which includes photos or the alleged mansions, yachts and jets) by his former deputy prime minister, Putin has amassed wealth far beyond what most even imagine. His greatest fear of giving up his leadership position is losing access to his luxurious lifestyle. (Accessing the report is not easy though this article includes photos of some of his properties.)

As Russians do join the middle class, will they continue to support Putin? For years my Russian friends and colleagues (who eventually all left Russia) tolerated it because there was a general movement upward for many. Now there is more frustration and a general realization that things may be about as good as it gets in Russia. Will that be enough for Putin?

There are the columned facades of palaces outside Moscow, in the southern resort of Sochi, and dozens more around the country. On an island in the centre of Lake Valdai, stands a 930 hectare estate serviced by a 1,000-strong staff that includes a "presidential church, swimming pool, two restaurants, movie theatre, bowling alley and concrete helipad".

The authors compare Putin's nearly two dozen official residences to the number held by other state rulers – two for the leaders of the United States and Germany, and three for the president of Italy. Nine of the villas were built while Putin was at the helm of the country, they note.

The leader has long attempted to present an image of average Russian machismo, staging regular photo ops with factory workers and bikers. Images of his stark home life stand in contrast to the meetings he holds in the Kremlin's gilded halls. During a televised meeting of his participation in Russia's nationwide census in 2010, Putin appeared on a drab beige sofa in one of the two modest flats he is officially registered as owning.

Yes indeed. Just a simple galley slave, as Putin calls himself. Read the rest of this post...