The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Craig McDonough:

One software house I used to work for had several products that Walmart used, a lot.

Walmart demanded that they open a branch office for support in Russelville, so they could be close to Walmart's corp. HQ.

One year I wound up down there for a week.

There are three employers in that part of Arkansas that dominate the landscape -- Walmart, JB Hunt trucking & Tyson Foods.

Damn near nothing but Walmart for retail.

What I found astounding was that the "Walmart Superstore" right across the street from corporate headquarters was staffed with surly people, the store looked grimy, the lighting was poor and the layout badly done.

At the time I thought it odd -- I had worked for another big regional retailer before, and the stores near corporate HQ were always considered showpieces.

Now I think the condition of that superstore was that way because "we don't care what you may think -- we don't have to care"

(I was shopping there because I had to bring home obligatory trinkets for the kids -- and re-read "Damn near nothing but Walmart for retail" up above)

notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield

a man who truly grieved for all members of his nation

from the SWFA statement:
"SFWA does not believe that changing the name of the imprint, or in some other way attempting to disguise the relationship to Harlequin, changes the intention, and calls on Harlequin to do the right thing by immediately discontinuing this imprint and returning to doing business as an advance and royalty paying publisher."

I don't know if that was added after Harlequin's announcement that HH would not have the Harlequin name on it, but it certainly looks like that angle is being covered...

Velma --

My prayers for both of you.

In re: Soren's declaration to you, it may be born of depression or desperation, or it may be that he feels badly enough about his prospects of survival that he is trying to cushion its affect on you, by his trying to put distance between you two.

Those who are profoundly depressed are not always making really good choices when an event disrupts things.

#587 ::: heresiarch--
"...He subscribes to an ideology of cool sourced in Thanatos, idolizing destruction in both its internal and external manifestations. The correct face to present to the world is tough, confrontational, manly..."

Nahh.

He's just a wanker

OtterB - # 580

Some other viewers on Amazon added their own "product pictures" including this one
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000IZGIA8/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0

(in case it gets removed, it's an aerial view of a traffic snarlup involving multiple tractor-trailers flung across lanes and what looks like a truly heroic level of traffic backup)

#549 - David Harmon ==
Actual Quote time: "..Republicans called Boxer's move the “nuclear option,†warning that it violated decades of committee precedent..."

Hypocritical worms.

As somebody else has said -- "bipartisan does *not* mean 'you do what I want when I have the power' *and* 'you do what I want when you have the power' "

#85 ::: heresiarch

I suspect that objections to Jim McD's statements would presume that Ann Coulter is either "Normal" or "appropriate"

Are your objections based on the fact that Coulter is female, or on the fact that you think Jim would be being "uncivil?"

Since Jim is speaking of a person who has threatened him, I think he may be allowed leeway in expression.

And especially since he is describing an act that would be *in direct response to an actual physical attack.*

He is not saying he will hunt Coulter like a dog and bash her head with a baseball bat. He is saying that if she were to attempt to attack him, as she has threatened, that he would be happy to oblige her in retaliation.


(and yes, I'm cranky at the Right/Reich-wing blowhards these days, especially since what they have openly expressed is not a desire to better the part of their fellows in the nation (except their economic fellow-travelers), but to have Obama *fail.*

In my opinion, this is so they can try to deflect the gaze of the public from the truly horrible job they have done during their sojourn in the controlling seats of power)

Matthew Daly (#55) You may not think that the actual GOP health care plan is for the poor to die quickly (or in agony, over a long time), but that certainly will be the result.

We are, still, a great nation.

And it is, to mine eyes, appalling that the touted level of care we should strive for is to let 'em die? when we have the ability to make them well?

And the great "masses" (actually, thankfully,a minority)that the GOP claim as their "base" sees it as laudable to deny coverage because someone may have made some bad decisions in their finances, and that some of the more vocal *have* said "go home to wherever you came from and die there".

That the GOP even wants to *admit* that these people are the "base" and *court* them by patronizing the talk-show mobsters like Beck and Limbaugh, gives me all the reason to approve of them being mocked and ridiculed as a "responsible political party"

(1) -- Please be it noted that "Craig Ranapia" is *not* me

(2) -- Albatross (# 45) exactly how we do all safety net programs: the goal is that people who need the help get it, but not people who could provide it for themselves

Screw that. I am not satisfied with letting the "free market" decide who has enough financial resources to live. And it will come down precisely to that -- if you do *not* guarantee that the safety net can catch *everyone* then there will be the "line" beyond which the paper documents say that this person cannot be covered, because, on paper, they make too much. So they will be told to go home to die.

And that *will* happen.

And the GOP does not have any sort of a health-care plan. They have numerous plans (the better to do the bait-and-switch with)that are a little bit less of a give-away to the insurance industry than is current.


And the more I see the capricious nature of the private-industry approach to insurance exclusions, the more I want to see a single national system that is transparent and uniform

-- not a system where a victim of domestic violence can be denied coverage once they report the abuse.

-- Not a system where a woman will be denied coverage for a normal pregnancy because she once had a C-section

-- Not a system where an infant can be denied coverage because some clerk deems them too "fat"

-- Not a system that treats a normal pregnancy as a "pre-existing condition" that can be excluded from coverage

(and all four of these conditions *do* obtain, currently, and the exclusions were put in place deliberately, likely by account executives who were rewarded, just as insurance companies have been rewarding clerks who have the sole assignment of finding ways to cancel coverage once somebody makes a claim)

*You* sir may be satisfied with that system. *I* am not.

I love this bit from Digby's quote of Rothenberg:
"also asserts that “life at Harvard wasn’t easy. Alan cleaned toilets, and worked as a night watchman.†And he “graduated from Harvard in the top two percent of his class.†Surprisingly, given what he does include, Grayson does not include his SAT scores or his IQ.''"

WTF?

What does it *matter* what the SAT scores were?

We should be glad that somebody with that kind of drive and intelligence is willing to work as a congress-critter, and on the progressive side, as well.

I also like the rank opportunist in Grayson to skip any delay and jump right to using the anti-ACORN bill to go after cheating defense contractors.

Beats the hell out of someone like Charlie Wilson.

Reading at an early age -- I don't know just when I learned to read. My parents claim that I taught myself, and that one day they noticed I was absorbed into the books lying around, even ones that I hadn't been read from. Just when it dawned that I wasn't just looking at pictures is unclear.

I was always reading ahead of my age group in school (when we took standardized testing in 5th grade I was rated as being between 11th grade and 12th grade reading level). I would routinely be scaled into the college-level bracket for vocabulary and comprehension. The problem I wound up with was that, because so much of the high-school curriculum is geared towards reading and outline recognition, I breezed through. When I got to college I near to died because I didn't have any usable study/research habits -- I hadn't needed them until then.

I (and my kids, and wife) have what a late friend of mine called "words in a row disease." If it's got words in a row, we *will* read it.

I know just when I realized my eldest of this marriage was reading on his own was when he was telling me I'd skipped pages in one of his books that I know he hadn't been read to from as yet. I thought he had memorized it from, perhaps, Leslie reading to him, but she hadn't read that book to him yet, either.

A lot of the "invisibility" described seems to the result of unexamined privilege. A smaller amount is learned extension of privilege.

When I was first corralled into tutoring high-school students, I had to make a conscious effort to pay attention to the distaff members of the study group, so that I didn't blithely skip over their efforts to ask questions or make contributions. I originally made the effort because I had just read something about the studies about female students being ignored in the co-ed classroom setting, even down to primary school level.

Of course, I was *sure* I didn't/wouldn't do any such thing. My strategy was to scan the group, pick who would get the next recognition for the question/observation, then rescan just the female students. It was an eye-opener for me to realize that I was ignoring at least 50% of the female students in the first scan.

I sat down with the group adviser to tell her that maybe I shouldn't be doing this, because I apparently wasn't giving full attention/aid to the group as a whole. Her response was to laugh at me when telling me "bulls**t!" She said that full-time teachers she knew had never gotten that point about the way that members of the student groups would be routinely ignored.

Nonetheless, when the next group of tutorees came through I asked to be put in the one-on-one assignments,especially since I didn't want to know what I would find out about myself when I found myself dealing with non-constant skin colors.

These days I would hope to be more confident about dealing fairly with any group as a whole, but back in my very early 20's it was a kick into my self-esteem.

Epacris # 329 -
Hmm, No, the use of the word savant by its lonesome is not itself a bit of PC-ness, but (as I mention below) imprecision.

The word savant has a long and honorable history, as a "man of learning or science," when much more of "science" was based on memorization and recall of observation. The OED shows uses of the word, in English, back to 1729.

The "PC-based" change (which was really a change because the phrase "idiot savant" was both incorrect and imprecise in addition to being pejorative) was to "autistic savant."

I will happily agree that the use of "savant" or "savantism" as a short form of "idiot savant" itself shows imprecision (and may be perhaps due to "pc-ness"). The nuance of the condition when the two words were joined in one descriptive phrase was the tension between the two words' meanings -- one who is profoundly disabled, and one who is keen in observation and learning. The use of "autistic savant" doesn't have quite the dynamism, but is more accurate.

Even the use of the term "savant syndrome" is imprecise. (A "syndrome" of "learned observation and judgment?" We should all be so afflicted.)

Albatros -- 634 -- refer back to subtext.

Constance - # 620
I was working for an insurance company when the Clinton administration tried to get their health care plan passed -- as I RECALL IT, the insurance companies were *not* in favor -- they had full-court presses going on to push employees to contact their congress critters to oppose the plan. It was insurance companies who come up with the "working class couple" they used as a public face to attack the plan.

C.Wingate - # 618 - The health-care debate comes not so much as directly from "white privilege" as from the underpinning that says "if you are favored by Ghu you will not need assistance to find funding, and besides, because Ghu favors you wyou will not get sick beyond the means to pay for it"

It's a world view that says "my life is built on the assumption that I am favored, and that the institutions I support are right and just."

The same worldview that blames Barney Frank for supporting the Community Reinvestment Act and blames the CRA for the sub-prime mortgage meltdown -- bypassing the fact that the CRA did not force banks into accepting loan applications without documentation, the CRA did not lead inevitably to the fraudulent mortgage brokers who falsified data, nor did the CRA force the financial world to "securitize" mortgage instruments, and the CRA most certainly did not force the U.S. Congress to dismantle a regulatory framework and protections that had been in place for over 60 years, including specifically exempting "bucket shops" from regulation.

It's that world-view that says "what I've always assumed to be the basis for my identity cannot possibly be wrong, so I'll have to continue to view it as correct, no matter that my own eyes must be lying to me."

In some manner, the current "conservative movement" has been able to do a masterful job of making a whole lot of the United States citizenry act and vote against both their own, and the world's better interests.

Another anecdote -- I took my boys to the Providence (RI) Children's Museum over the weekend. One of the exhibits was about the ongoing construction of highway ramps and interchanges going on in the Providence area. A part of the exhibit (a crane) was stuck so the children could not actually operate it. A man was there with his child, and when the little girl complained that "Daddy, it doesn't work" his response to her was "it must be a union job, and they're looking for more money for less work." Now, appearances can be deceiving, but this fellow and his daughter seemed to be dressed in a manner consistent with "middle class." I was there with my boys, so preferred not to get into the discussion about why he was able to be there, on a Saturday, spending time with his kids, instead of working, and also didn't ask about the assumption that things like reflective vests and hard hats should be presumed to be the norm at a construction site. Or that it should not be considered extraordinary that a girl would want to play with the crane. What we have is, again, unexamined privilege.

Albatross -- # 609 - I'd like to point out that both the article describing the study, and the study itself, make direct reference to the disconnect from reality of this group on several salient points, including a direct reference to the subjects' "rewriting history"

Please note that I did not describe this group as "evil," nor did I describe them as being "pathetically ignorant."

What I did say, and this is something that bears repeating, is that many people, "liberals" and "conservatives" and all the stripes in between, carry a lot of baggage in the form of unexamined assumptions.

Most of the time these assumptions are present because of upbringing, and they are unexamined because they were part of the basis for upbringing, and are part of that foundation.

For example, earlier in the thread there was the example of Dobson and his attitude towards child-rearing. The attitude that says that the parent/authority figure needs to be regarded as infallible is one that actually directly comes from Dobson's expressed choice of faith. It also likely stems from his own upbringing (numerous studies have shown that the pattern for abusive relationships, both to be the abuser or the acceptance of being the target, are set in early childhood, and that abuse does "run in families," except that it's a societal/sociological basis, rather than genetic)

Probably the most self-unexamined assumptions are those that provide "us" as our basis when dealing with "them," whether the "us" are "liberals" or "conservatives." These assumptions are also the basic on how we formulate our self-image, be it assumption that "the Earth needs our protection" or that "the earth and its denizens are here to serve us" or the unconscious assumption that "because I am white, male, xtian and straight I am the apex, and my inherited wealth proves that G/d prefers me and mine."

As any writer will tell you, there's a shootload of subtext in any piece of writing, whether fiction or otherwise. And just as much subtext gets read into the work. Witness your "read" that I'm considering the study subjects as being either evil or ignorant.

Now, what I will say that I certainly do disagree with your implication that Coulter or Goldberg are making mistakes in analysis -- rather, I believe that Coulter, Goldberg, Malkin, Beck and Limbaugh are purposely misrepresenting and demonizing the "liberals" solely to be able to boost ratings and book sales in an amoral manner.

There are likely "liberal" writers who do so as well, but maybe they can't really put their hearts into the effort, and are not as successful. (OK, maybe Jon Stewart) (and Stephen Colbert) (But they're *different*)

I was just realizing two things that makes me glad I read/participate in the Making Light comments

The ability for topic drift to flourish ("What do you mean the Topic Compass has started to list? It can't do that! WeHaveRules!") and the fact that, whereas a Wall Of Text (that sans white-space or punctuation) is not usually appreciated, comments in the conversation are not limited to a three sentence maximum lest the reader's eye glaze over (which is why I will never be able to Truly Embrace Twitter)

Lee # 570 --
I think that the degree of overt racism across a large minority of the GOP base may be overstated, but it is still there.

Witness the opposition to immigration (anecdotal evidence here: When I've questioned those who are against allowing legal and non-legal immigrants more help in obtaining health care fully 7 out of ten couch their responses in terms of characterizing the immigrants in question as being Hispanic, Asian (Middle East, India, south Asia) or African. A rare response was to the effect that "they can always go back to Germany or France")

A large basis of opposition is a worry about the erosion of white privilege, especially in the arena of availability of jobs. there is still hefty opposition to the very idea of affirmative action (with the subtext of "'They" don't deserve those jobs -- 'they're' only getting those jobs because the government liberals are giving them to them" -- no matter how qualified for the job a particular person would be).

A further trend, that was shown in the report, was the sense of em-battlement and need to "protect" "American values" from being subsumed. Again, the subtext if to protect the straight white male privilege that had been the norm when they were growing up. (witness the self-designated "truth police" who declare they can document all the news/"truth" that only Fox News shows, and all the liberal media ignores or lies about, and the expressed fear that Glen Beck (!) is in danger of assassination, as Beck is a very vocal proponent of "taking back America" and "restoring Core American Values" -- and, lets face it, "core American values" for a long time included xenophobia, Manifest Destiny, "people should know their place," "nice girls don't need abortions," "a woman's place is in the home" and a decidedly unhealthy dose of the unexpressed "*I* had to walk to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways, and by Ghu everybody else should have to suffer through that as well" )

I really would have liked to have seen this demographic sample's directly expressed opinions on advancement of women in the workplace, and on women's rights in general. The opposition stated by the study targets on issues such abortion and gay rights is only touched upon, not explored in depth, which I would have liked to see.

Bear in mind, also, that this group was very self-aware that the were being interviewed for analysis, and were very careful to couch their responses in terms that made it very clear that "they" didn't consider *themselves* racist, but that everybody would assume it was so.

As I stated in my opening sentence,for myself, I don't think the majority of opposition to Obama is overtly racial in bias, but there is a very vocal minority that leaves that impression, on me.

Of course, as in all matters of opinion, YMMV

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