It's not just the power, and the amount resting on it, it's also just the physical nature of it. Coaches, even non-creepy coaches, are often touching the people they are working with, or involved with their bodies in ways that are more intimate than the norm. Which makes it all the harder for people to tell when someone is taking advantage of them, or crossing a line.
Absolutely. I was kind of thinking along those lines when I said that a musical instrument isn't as body-basic as sports, but hadn't completed the thought.
I was going to say what togolosh said and then probably more once I'm through the whole article, but I will forever more assume that trapnel is a devoted reader of Marie Claire.
The musical world is far, far from clear of this:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/11/chethams-teacher-child-sex-abuse-inquiry
Frances Andrade's suicide is really a black mark on the universe.
As in sports, reaching the highest levels of achievement in music and dance requires talent, extraordinary hard work, discipline - all starting at a very young age. There are exceptions who took up their arts relatively late (Ashton, Richter), but these are really the exceptions. For dancers, as for athletes, the window for a career is so painfully short, as well.
Add the emotional and intellectual demands as well as opportunities of high-level performance in music and dance and you have a really explosive mix ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous, unbalanced adults. I had some run ins myself studying music quite seriously growing up. I've made sure to let the young man know about them, and how I and the adults around me navigated various shoals (the good and the bad navigation, mind). I also keep an eye out for the dynamics in the dance studio, although avoiding strenuously any of the bizarre parental politics.
I was reading a discussion on a tutoring website between music and singing teachers about whether and how much they touched their students - more of a concern for the teacher because of the 1-1 nature of the teaching. Gym coaches seem to be extremely hands on, but isn't it usually much more public?
Oh, Trapnel just sent me some links about my acne. The athletes link is to the Guardian.
Kidding! Link is fixed.
Serious musical training is extremely intimate, private and all encompassing. It is physical, emotional, intellectual - everything. Also largely one-on-one. From a "grooming" perspective it may be ideal, actually, as the opportunities for gaining unhealthy control over the essence of another are pretty boundless.
8: I think the emotional aspect of music in particular makes it ideal for the formation of an inappropriate bond between teacher and student. Dance probably has the same sort of issue.
Poor girl. Following 5/8, I think the parenthetical about music is right on. My high school band director is currently serving a many-year sentence for having sexual relationships with students. Sordid details included groping in private practice rooms and a blowjob in his minivan after a concert. His arrest and trial explained something I'd always wondered about. In my class, there was a girl who was extremely talented, not a prodigy but someone who could likely have made a living playing rather than teaching. Her senior year, her father was transferred overseas. The band director offered that she could come live with him and his wife for her final year so she could finish high school without jeopardizing university scholarships. She began drinking and drugging, eventually dropping out of college after her first year to go to rehab. It was really surprising, since she'd always been pretty stable as far as I could tell. There's a ton of private time that goes into any coaching/tutoring at elite levels, and I hate to think that if only a small fraction of victims go public what's still going unchecked.
I was struck, when judging at the world champs in the sport I do, by the fact that just before she went in the ring, the coach of one of the under-48kg [or under 52kg - tiny, anyway] Ruritanian fighters was carefully massaging her arse. Now, I could see that that might actually be quite useful, and she certainly didn't seem bothered by it, but it would have been crossing a line in any UK club I've trained in, I think.
it's also just the physical nature of it
My older kid is a competitive age-group swimmer (as untermenschen, we have no idea how this happened), and there was, about six months ago, a great deal of talk that his team's previous coach, whose "contract wasn't renewed," was actually fired for inappropriate conduct with the girls -- or maybe the boys. It was never clear precisely what his bad act was, but the implication of kiddie-fondling was there. And though I kept insisting at meets that the gossiping ninnies (the parents of the other kids on the team) should hold off on such speculation, my protests were complicated by the fact that the kids, the girls especially, spent a great deal of time hanging, literally, on that coach, and that he had to spend an even greater amount of time at practice with his hands on the bodies of both the boys and girls. And I wasn't too excited about being the guy defending Mr. Short Eyes, if that's who he turned out to be.
In the end, it turned out that his "contract wasn't renewed" because the head coach -- the team is huge, so there are several age-group coaches who work under a head coach -- wants the team to become even MORE competitive than it already is, and the age-group coach in question wasn't willing to push the kids hard enough to suit the head coach's new goals. Now the girls hang all over the new coach, who has to spend a great deal of his time at practice adjusting the swimmers' bodies. It all seems very fraught.
I now assume ttaM is a judge for competitive sitting competitions.
14: Nope, competitive walnut-cracking-with-the-buttocks. It's not much known outside of Scotland, Ruritania and Leng.
12: I was on a swim team from maybe 10 through 14 years of age and I didn't figure out what the kick on the crawl was supposed to be like until I was nearly 30. (It just hit me one day in the pool.) Maybe this was because my coach was afraid to adjust my body or unwilling to push me hard enough. But probably they just gave up on me because they could see I wasn't going anywhere.
competitive sitting
Oh man, there's a sport for me!
If I had my float belt on, sure. Of course, those weren't allowed at meets.
Heh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNPF7YGjCI8
[The judge with their back to the camera is me]
It is a serious issue. I never teach students alone, and most of mine are over 18, but I still think fairly hard about where the boundaries lie. The opportunities for people who actively want to cross those boundaries seem rife.
Wow, talk about grudge match - Morocco v France!
A sort of kickboxing/ballet mash-up, I love this story:
"When I got in the ambulance, I told the EMT I'm in the San Francisco Ballet, and the ambulance driver was like, 'A ballet dancer just kicked that guy's ass?' And he gave me a high five."
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/san_francisco_ballet_dancer_be.php
Go Super Pupi!!!
Ironically, Catholic doctrine is helpful here. Abuse in these situations is so common that we should just call them a proximate occasion of sin, and ask that people take appropriate measures--leave the door open during office hours, always have an assistant coach present, maybe videotape sessions if you're a music teacher.
But the more you move toward the end of the spectrum where people are training for the Olympics and that sort of thing, the harder those rules would be to enforce. If somebody is training 30 hours a week and trying to go to high school at the same time, they're going to be spending lots of time in the gym or the pool when the place is likely to be nearly empty.
Hard to get much swimming practice done then.
It fits with my experience. The only person I know who was once at Olympic-caliber competitive sport experienced awful sexual abuse by her coach.
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The Senate just eliminated the 60-vote cloture threshold for non-Supreme-Court judicial nominations. Bye bye, filibuster.
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I don't know that I'd make them rules, MH. I'd like coaches to address it with parents like a safety issue: this is what I do to protect my kids and myself. But no system is going to successfully stop all abuse.
And the Committee has passed Yellen, so movement.
27: Those types of things have been made rules in many groups that where there are lots of kids. Insurance companies like rules of that kind.
Also parents talk to your child in an age appropriate way about power dynamics, the child's own comfort in situations and looking out for each other.
Hallelujah. Now, lets keep the Senate.
To amend 26, apparently the rule change applies to executive branch nominees as well.
Dammit, I forgot to duck and cover!
26: Should have forced a talking filibuster of a clearly qualified judge first. Make the extent of Republican obstructionism unambiguous.
I for one am ready to declare Harry Reid a hero.
As frustrating as the filibuster is, I can't help but think that unfettered Republicans can do a lot more harm than Democrats can do good.
And now Sebelius can fall on her sword and actually be replaced. Which should happen.
39: There is no way the Republicans have been fettered by the filibuster on appointments. They were able to appoint Janice Rogers Brown, for god's sake.
37: And here's the chart for it:
Federal judges currently: Dem-appointed 391, Rep- appointed 390, Vacant: 93.
That's an awful lot of vacant judgeships.
Presumably this doesn't actually stop the minority party standing on its hind legs and actually talking stuff out if they have the stamina and can keep a quorum.
If the administration doesn't pack the courts double quick they are bastards and we are doomed.
I don't think filling the federal bench counts as packing the courts.
If the administration doesn't pack the courts double quick they are bastards and we are doomed. FTFY.
Rather than "packing the courts", we might want to speak of Obama "appointing nominees to vacant positions in the judiciary, as provided for under the Constitution." (Or simply "doing his job", if you're into that whole brevity thing.)
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A family of elk just attacked a nine-year-old boy who was cycling to school in southern Sweden
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/algfamilj-till-attack-mot-9-aring_8751486.svd
This is the only story better than the Rev Paul Flowers
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I don't give a shit what you call it. Just get it done right now.
My relative who's a senior (= retired) judge was appointed by a Democrat and is now over 90 but has apparently still been active on a few cases this year. The thought that Reagan appointees will still be doing that for the next 20 or 30 years is not encouraging, though surely some have evolved over the years.
Wow, I saw the buzz this morning but figured for sure it was another bluff and we'd get Millett confirmed in another ridiculous bargain. This is really fantastic. Given the increased pace of nominations this term (a recognition of a serious first-term fuck up, presumably) I think there's a good chance that they'll start filling those seats fast. Although I wonder how much blue-slipping will remain a problem (or get worse).
Also 39 is insane and 41 exactly right.
52: Is the need for senior judges to be active a result of the large number of vacancies on the bench, or would senior judges be active regardless? How does that work?
Senior judges can basically be as active or nonactive as they wish. Some are basically at 100% full work but took "senior status" to free up a new appointment. Others stay "active" well into their 80s. Some on senior status really are close to 100% retired.
McConnell was jealous that Boehner was hogging all of the "worst Republican congressional leader" headlines.
54: It's up to the senior judge, basically. They're not forced into service because a court is overloaded, if that's what you mean, though I imagine some senior judges decide to pitch in for that reason. Others just like being able to work when, and only when, they want. They get the same salary either way.
unfettered Republicans can do a lot more harm than Democrats can do good
Only if they can win the presidency and the Senate and hold both. McConnell said earlier this year that if the Democrats did this, he would eliminate the filibuster altogether if he ever got the gavel. To which I say: great!
Others just like being able to work when, and only when, they want. They get the same salary either way.
My new dream job is senior judge.
5, 8, ff: Tell me about it.
54: Other people who know answered. I just thought about him because one of the articles I saw said that there are almost as many senior judges appointed by Republicans (mostly Reagan) as there are active ones appointed by Republicans, whereas the number of senior judges appointed by Democrats is way lower, which may or may not mean much about what cases get heard by whom. I'm pretty sure my relative stays active on a few cases he's been covering for decades and nothing else, and my understanding is that he took senior status rather than enforce minimum drug sentences. I wish I'd known more about his politics when I was growing up, but it doesn't come up at Christmas dinner.
Thanksgiving is a better dinner for family political discussions. Everybody is going to leave that same day.
To which I say: great!
You're less afraid of crazy people than I am.
Going back to the OP, I'll take this opportunity to again recommend Heart Of The Game, a documentary about a girls HS basketball team in Seattle which manages to be both tremendously entertaining and deal with serious issues in a sensitive way.
It includes one girl who is sexually abused by the outside coach that she begins working with -- and it's a very interesting thread in the movie. The meterial covers a long enough time frame that it you watch the arc of her starting out enjoying the somewhat flirty relationship with the coach, going through emotional turmoil, deciding (correctly) to charge him with sexual abuse, and later in college still processing the whole experience.
64: Given where he lives, he's probably got greater familiarity with them.
64: I grew up in the south. Maybe I've just had more experience with crazy people. Anyhow, so it's easier for the GOP to move legislation, should they manage to take both the Senate and the presidency. Also easier for the Democrats to overturn it when they win it back.
Charles Pierce pretty well sums up my take on this: As I said before. I was nervous about this prospect for years, but recently passed over the International Fk You Line.
Or Jon Favreau highlighting the (non) radical nature of this: I, for one, am pretty happy that a bunch of judges and public servants with bipartisan support will finally fill vacant government job.
But what if filibusters came at a cost of some sort? There have been several proposals along these lines, and all of them would have allowed the minority party to obstruct things they truly felt strongly about. But there would have been a limit to how many things could be obstructed, or how long the obstruction could go on, and the majority party could eventually have gotten its way if it felt strongly enough. It would have been ugly, but at least Republicans would have retained some ability to gum up the works.
Instead, by refusing to compromise in any way, they've lost everything. Just as they lost everything on health care by refusing to engage with Democrats on the Affordable Care Act. Just as they lost everything on the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. Just as they lost the 2012 election.
Hard-nosed obstinacy plays well with the base, but it's not a winning strategy in the end. Republicans never seem to learn that lesson.
67: But one will still be able to filibuster legislation or Supreme Court noms. I dunno about cabinet positions.
My basic view is that (a) liberals always win long term by having the ability to run a functioning government (b) if you've got ideological parties that are unwilling to compromise, you're always better off with majority rule than giving the ability to block significant things to a minority of crazies; (c) I can't think of a single example where the use of the filibuster for Democrats has ultimately been effective in controlling appointments from Republican presidents (sure, you kept Miguel Estrada off but got the even worse Janet Rogers Brown); (d) majority parties should be able to govern like majorities; (e) in the current climate, there is no way that a Republican president with a Republican-majority senate wouldn't have done this anyway.
On the specific issue of appointments to the lower federal courts, the courts are extremely conservative already and the "bench" of potential Republican nominees in waiting is even more conservative. So, if you had a Republican president and Republican majority senate, you were going to get extraordinarily conservative judges on the courts no matter what. If you were going to have appointments at all with a Republican president and Republican majority senate you were going to have crazies. The same is, I think, true for the bench of potential Republican presidential appointments. .
73: Aha. Gone for executive branch nominees too.
s/b Janice Rogers Brown. sorry!
73, see 58. If the past three Congresses have demonstrated anything, it's that the next GOP Senate majority would have eliminated the filibuster about 15 minutes after the first time it inconvenienced them.
A thing to remind the wingnuts and recalcitrant family members you may encounter on this:
What's worth remembering is that those who opposed Bork in 1986 never even considered filibustering to beat him. Bork was eventually defeated 42-58. Just to be clear: that's 58 "no" votes, not 58 Senators who supported him but couldn't find two more to get cloture.
It's also true that this effectively, if not formally, kills the filibuster for significant legislation, as well. If the norm preventing the rule change for appointments can be broken, it can be broken effectively for legislation, as well. And will be, as soon as the first major occasion comes up where breaking the filibuster is necessary to get a significant bill passed. And that's a wonderful, wonderful thing -- reducing an unnecessary veto point on legislation means that we might finally get something closer to a functioning government.
Harry Reid: Hero.
In Obama's remarks just now, he heavily implied that filibuster rules on legislation needed to change as well.
I wonder if this will free Obama up to fire Kathleen Sebelius.
I wonder if it will free Obama up to nominate Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers for judgeships.
This, from Ezra, is I think very very good on the significance.
My default position is pro-democracy. Obamacare would have been less screwed up if he hadn't needed a supermajority to get it through. The Iraq War, on the other hand, was unaffected by the need for a supermajority.
Obamacare would have been less screwed up if he hadn't needed a supermajority to get it through.
Amen to that. The need to get to 60 votes allowed Joe Lieberman to veto the public option.
From 85:
There's a lot of upside for Republicans in how this went down. It came at a time when Republicans control the House and are likely to do so for the duration of President Obama's second term, so the weakening of the filibuster will have no effect on the legislation Democrats can pass. The electoral map, the demographics of midterm elections, and the political problems bedeviling Democrats make it very likely that Mitch McConnell will be majority leader come 2015 and then he will be able to take advantage of a weakened filibuster. And, finally, if and when Republicans recapture the White House and decide to do away with the filibuster altogether, Democrats won't have much of an argument when they try to stop them.
87: Saw this today and laughed (from interview with Liz Cheney):
"I'm going to be my own person. As I mentioned, I've got a lot of respect for some of the new guys who have come in," Cheney told TIME. "I also have huge respect, though, for people like Jon Kyl, who's retired, but who always had the courage of his convictions. Joe Lieberman was like that too. People who stood for what they believed in no matter the criticism that came."
88: Presumably he was wearing his concern face when he wrote that.
very likely that Mitch McConnell will be majority leader come 2015
Maybe, but Obama will still have a veto pen and no re-election concerns. And 2016 is very much more likely to be a bloodbath for Republican Senate hopes.
88 -- Oh no. We get a whole lot of judges and presidential appointments now, and (if) they retake the Senate in 2014 Republicans can do . . . basically nothing. If they get the Senate and the Presidency in 2016, well, then they can pass more legislation and appoint some crazy people, but, guess what, they were going to do that anyway.
2016 is very much more likely to be a bloodbath for Republican Senate hopes
When we elect Elizabeth Warren God-Empress?
Weigel does a nice job of explaining how it came to pass.
93: When we elect Hillary Clinton to be the new Disappointer-in-Chief. The 2016 map is just brutal for the GOP Senate.
95: Hillary, with a coattail of 10 million pissed off red state women and assorted other "at least I don't have to vote for a black guy" goobers fucking the fuckers up the ass with the world's most brutal strap-on.
We get a whole lot of judges and presidential appointments now
We'd better. If we don't, it will be infuriating.
The "McConnell can take advantage" arguments are insane. The Republicans came pretty close to gutting the filibuster under Bush. McConnell and the Republicans spent a long time trying to cripple a government agency (the CFPB) by refusing to approve anyone as a head, and just last week decided that the President didn't get to appoint anyone to vacancies on a circuit court. What possible reason is there to think they wouldn't abolish the filibuster the second they needed to?
YOU CAN'T DO AWAY WITH DAVE AND BUSTER'S! I LOVE THAT PLACE!
Is this is really the best response the Republicans can come up with??
The minority leader accused Senate Democrats of "cooking up some fake fight" with the filibuster issue to distract from the array of problems facing the health-care law. "I'd want to be talking about something else too if I had to defend dogs getting insurance while millions of Americans lost theirs," McConnell said in reference to a report that a man seeking coverage on the health-care exchanges was informed that his dog had been successfully enrolled.
Because... my god, that's lame.
Somebody get this man a hanky: "I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate," Paul told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I mean, now we've got a big bully, Harry Reid says he's just going to break the rules and make new rules. Never been done this way before."
Does Rob Ford really like Dave and Busters? I thought he was a man who liked to party, but if he actually likes Dave and Busters I will have to revise that opinion.
There was an episode of It's Always Sunny that got criticized for its aggressive Dave and Buster's placement. When I watched it, it just struck me as realistic -- I've been dragged there on multiple trips to Philadelphia.
Here's a historical oddity to ponder: Had the Senate made this move a few years ago, Elizabeth Warren probably would be head of the CFPB, and not in the Senate. Seems like Cordray is doing okay there, and I like having Warren as a Senator.
WAIT, PHIL AND BUSTERS? WHAT HAPPENED TO DAVE?
106: Dave's dead, baby. Dave's dead.
107: Don't you remember, Rob? You killed him.
96: That's what I'm talking about. Actually, I do expect the ACA to drag things a bit still in 2016 (because the Dems will effectively own most of the ills of the prior system. not because of the effing website).
Vitter: This isn't just a shame for the Senate; it's scary and dictatorial for our country.
"What is the filibustered my prostitute, who I paid for sex?"
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I had mentioned WaPo on Politico violence in the other thread (a nice exposure of Mike Allen's lack of journalistic ethics by Eric Wemple), but this WaPo on WaPo is just as good: Barton Gellman's smackdown of Bob Woodward's absurdist* lament that Snowden did not come to him (and stay anonymous while Woodward gave him his voice).
*Practically Wolframesque in its conceit.
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Probably. Should have been "What if they..."
114: Still seems like an argument against the fillibuster, unless I'm misunderstanding.
I'm implying that Vitter's should be less quick to talk about "shame for the Senate" since he is still serving it after Hustler outed him as hiring prostitutes while running on "Family Values" and such.
110: Just in time for Jonah Goldberg to put out another edition of his opus with a new chapter on Obama!
116: Why? It's a subject on which he posseses unique expertise.
117: Misread that initially as talking about a new edition of Bloom County, which I would much rather read. Because Opus.
it's scary and dictatorial for our country
Yes, it's dictatorial when the Senate majority is allowed vote on a president's nominations for judges and agency heads. If only the world had more dictators that scary.
116 is literally -- literally -- slut shaming.
Back to the original post, I get interested in the difference between how hysterical people get about scary things that almost never happen, and scary things that happen all the time. It is perfectly conventional to get all bent out of shape at a man spending time around little kids without a very good reason, despite the fact that there's really very very little abuse of small children (that is, clearly prepubescent children) by strangers. On the other hand, it's kind of unusual and overcontrolling to worry about teenagers and coaches/tutors/teachers and so on, despite the fact that inappropriate sexual behavior is actually pretty common in that context. Weird.
(And, yay Harry Reid, except he should have done this many years ago.)
Wait, define "actually pretty common." Like, way more than strangers, but still well under 1%, yes?
Is 123 really surprising? People probably figure teenagers can identify and put the kibosh on creepy/inappropriate behavior. Which seems reasonable.
Physical abuse that is- I'd believe some significant percent of interactions involve inappropriate comments or communication.
I feel like the incidence was the topic of a previous thread.
Per some earlier discussions, I think the whole setup is fraught. In my sport at my high school the two coaches I had plus the one following all had inappropriate relationships, the last one ending up in jail I believe.
It is somewhat baked into the structure of the thing.
124: What's your denominator? If it's "percentage of all teenagers that are sexually targeted (under-defined term here) by a teacher/coach/authority figure", yeah, maybe less than 1%. If it's "percentage of teenagers in an intense coaching/tutoring relationship that are sexually targeted", I'd bet we're getting up into at least a couple percent. Which seems to me to qualify as "actually pretty common".
Another way to put how I'm thinking about the difference between rare and common is that I bet there aren't any commenters here with first or second-hand experience of a small child having been molested by a stranger (happened to them or they know someone it happened to). I bet well over half of the people reading here know or knew someone who was in an inappropriate relationship with a teacher/coach/tutor (even if we don't count "knowing" Alameida toward that).
Re 125, in the specific hot house conditions that are the subject of this thread that expectation is pretty UNreasonable.
An awful lot of world-class women's sports coaches certainly look like creepy molesters.
I took LB to be talking about general societal parnoia so the former larger denominator.
128: My anecdata, let me show you it.
I often have sex with the students at my intense, secretive Olympic race-walking academy. What's the problem?
But I'm not like those animals over at SexLuge.
In the UK it's a crime for someone over 18 to have sex with someone 16 or 17 (which is above age of consent) if they're in a position of trust over them. That seems about right to me.
Sorry to not be talking about coaches creeping on their charges, but these Republican Senators are a hoot: Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., called today's rule change the "most important and most dangerous restructuring of Senate rules since Thomas Jefferson wrote them."
In the conservative mind, of course, this is a predictable consequence of Title IX:
When women's sports programs started gaining prestige and funding in the 1970s, they began to attract male coaches. Prior to Title IX's passage, women comprised more than 90 percent of the head coaches of women's college teams....
For female players, the gravest consequence of having male coaches has been an increased risk of sexual abuse. Pediatrician Ken Feldman, the recently retired medical director of the Children's Protection Program at Seattle Children's Hospital, says that although there is no formal tracking of sexual abuse by coaches per se, "girls will be more victimized than boys." Dr. David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire believes that the physical nature of sports can make them sexually charged. "There's tremendous intimacy in coaching situations, between men and girls," he says. "Young people are sexually attractive, and they don't turn that off in their interactions with adults." Since 1999, 36 coaches from the U.S. national swim team--including the former director--have resigned or been banned from the sport following allegations of sexual misconduct or inappropriate sexual behavior. In November, USA Gymnastics named Don Peters, coach of the 1984 U.S. Olympic women's team, "permanently ineligible" for membership after two of his former gymnasts reported having sexual intercourse with him when they were 17 and 18 years old.
140: I'm waiting for them to start drawing connections between the elimination of the filibuster and Benghazi.
140: That'd be Lamar "I would never filibuster any President's judicial nominee, period" Alexander. I am just loving the spectacle of these guys feeling powerless and shat on for once. Wonder if there's any footage of McConnell's head exploding out there.
"Young people are sexually attractive, and they don't turn that off in their interactions with adults."
Barf.
I love this Chuck Grassley quote (from yesterday, but I'd missed it):
"So if the Democrats are bent on changing the rules, then I say go ahead," [Grassley] said. "There are a lot more Scalias and Thomases that we'd love to put on the bench. The nominees we'd nominate and put on the bench with 51 votes would interpret the constitution as it was written."
Just let that sink in for a few minutes.
124, 129: Look at the OP blockquote. I have no idea how they're defining "female athletes," nor am I going to hunt down the study that found 31% have been sexually abused, but that doesn't sound like a totally crazy number, espcially given that a coach would have access to lots of girls for many years. Like the rapist:victim ratio. There are relatively few rapists compared to the number of victims.
145: I love it.
"If you change the rules, we'll be able to do what we've already been doing and that will show you."
145: That is a great quote, on a lot of levels. It seems clear that, in his own opinion, when he says "Scalias and Thomasas" he means "nuts."
147: Right. Republicans do whatever they want to do, then look for a way to blame Democrats.
And you're just some pointy-headed liberal if you insist that causes normally precedes effects.
31% is in Australia, we know they're all a bunch of criminals anyway.
140: The balance of that quote is just as great: "it's another raw exercise of political power to allow the majority to do whatever it wants to do." And then McConnell actually calls the Senate--I assume without intended irony--"the greatest deliberative body in the world." McCain threatens that Dems "will pay a heavy, heavy price" (but clarifies that he doesn't mean at the ballot box). Keep it up, guys, this is great stuff.
The only way this could get better is if mcmanus comes along to shout about how this is all part of Obama's plan to run as a Republican in 2016.
Technically can't they still bring everything to a halt? Unanimous consent is required to do many things (I don't know how many) every day in the Senate that would otherwise require a roll call vote- I'd imagine Republicans could take up entire days with requiring roll calls.
The first link in 140 is my favorite thing I've read all day. You both left out the best part of the Lamar Alexendar quote:
Alexander added. "It's Obamacare 2, in that sense."Huh? In what sense? What the hell is he talking about?
And McConnell really argued "if Americans wanted Obama to appoint judges or staff his administration they would have given him a supermajority"? Really?
The full Alexandar quote:
"This is the most important most dangerous restructing of the Senate rules since Thomas Jefferson wrote them at the beginning of our country. It's really not about the filibuster, it's another raw exercise of political power to allow the majority to do whatever it wants to do. It's Obamacare 2, in that sense."
That's just beautiful.
"It's really not about the filibuster, it's another raw exercise of political power to allow the majority to do whatever it wants to do. It's Obamacare 2, in that sense."
Using the votes your party has to pass a motion.
152: I think the theater of constantly requiring roll calls would look so bad for the Republicans it'd be self defeating. Not that that will prevent them from doing it, of course.
153: He's talking (I assume) about the fact that reconciliation was used to get around what would have been a filibuster, thus allowing the tyrant Obama to impose health insurance on the nation in an illegal usurpation of the legislative process articulated in the Constitution with nothing more than a majority of both houses of Congress behind him.
David French at National Review: at National Review:
I look forward to the speedy confirmation of President Cruz's or President Paul's nominees, beginning in January 2017.
I mean, he might as well come out and say: "You should see the assholes we plan to nominate."
The only way this could get better is if mcmanus comes along to shout about how this is all part of Obama's plan to run as a Republican in 2016.
Someone lit the batshit signal
1) Obamacareless gives Republicans House and Senate in 2014;with no filibuster, welcome Grand Bargain #1
2) Utterly demoralized by GB #1, the second dip of the Long Longer Recession, and going bankrupt after full implementation of Health Insurance Fraud, Dems stay home and Republicans win everything in 2016
With no filibuster, they pass forced re-education camps for homosexuals, zero taxes for millionaires, and forced birthing for all women Handmaid's Tale. Oh, and at least one war. Dems say:"Well, that's Democracy, if anything is left alive, we'll get them in 2018! Maybe."
PS:If you are still lovin on Obama and Democrats, they could have gone nuclear in 2009, giving us a terrific stimulus and Medicare-for-All. They suck.
160 -- well played. I kind of find Bob soothing at this point. The man does not disappoint, and I've been living with him for a long time. Plus he's often sort of right.
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"Sullenness, muttering, irony, joking, and sarcasm may allow one to show that something of oneself lies outside the constraints of the moment and outside the role within whose jurisdiction the moment occurs" (Goffman 1990: 107)
as quoted by McVeigh, Wearing Ideology
Third, in spite of the fact that cuteness appears to oppose (at least at the aesthetic level) Japan's productivist capitalist order, at a deeper level cuteness exemplifies the inherent connections between productivist capitalism and consumptivist capitalism. Ultimately, production and consumption, work and play and labor and leisure cannot be divided, since they all feed off each other. Put simply, presenting oneself as cute requires money, and this in turn requires participation in corporate structures.
Fucking loving this book
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160: Aw, shucks, bob. Thanks for obliging.
they could have gone nuclear in 2009, giving us a terrific stimulus
I am honestly not sure whether this means "going nuclear" in the sense of "abolishing the filibuster", which would have given a lot of people one sort of stimulus, or "going nuclear" in the sense of, well, "actually going nuclear" which would have given bob another sort of stimulus.
Possibly not the most pertinent anecdote from the McVeigh of #163, but amusing. Cuteness lasts until death.
A firsthand experience illustrates how significant the giving of cute items can be. As a faculty member at a college, I was invited to the tenth anniversary of the school's founding. This event was also held to celebrate the president's mother's birthday and I had the honor of sitting at the president's table with his mother. Held at a high-priced hotel in the vierusaiyu no ma (Versailles Room) whose glittering chandeliers, gold trimmings and giant mirrors provided the illusion that the hall was vastly bigger than it actually was, the event was a sparkling spectacle of beautifully attired young female students, extravagant dining and costly entertainment. But as if to "soften" all this glamour and add some warm-hearted sentiment to it, during the celebration the mother was presented on stage with life-sized Mickey and Minnie Mouse dolls. After the presentation, two waiters rushed over with chairs for the Mice couple, and seated them so they could join us at our table. A female professor sitting next to me, observing the irony of the situation, leaned over and said to me, "This indeed is a Mickey Mouse event." The mother petted and whispered a few words to them, and the president would lean over every now and then, smile, squeeze their noses and stroke their stomachs. But on a sadder note, Mickey and Minnie again made a public appearance some months later. When the president's mother passed away, they were seen again, sitting on the mammoth flower-festooned stage set up in the school for her funeral.
Why on-topic?
Three aspects of cuteness:Hierarchy,
Obedience
"Sunao, which is used toward children as well as adults, actually carries a heavier semantic load, denoting submissiveness, gentleness, meek-
ness, receptiveness, compliance or co-operativeness. White states that, in an educational setting, it is used to describe the "good child" and has many nuances: open-minded, nonresistant, truthful, naive, natural, simple and mild"
...and Empathy
"One cannot be cute unless another recognizes one's charm. Or one's helplessness. The word kawaî (cute) is related to kawaisô (pitiful, touching) and kawaigaru (to love, make a pet of, take loving care of). To be
cute triggers a sympathetic response in another, leading to an emotional involvement and perhaps an attachment. A focus on powerlessness - whether seen in infants, small animals or pretty but defenseless females - leads to empathy."
"And cuteness, embedded in material objects, does
not merely reflect the social world; rather, via communicative acts of self-presentation, it constructs gendered relations."
Embedded in material objects = Hello Kitty, commercial airplanes, coffeepots. Also kittens, puppies, etc.
Cuteness would be used for anti-littering campaigns, anything that needs protection.
Infantilization.
Am I on-topic yet?
I doubt McVeigh will go there, but without exaggerating the effects, and recognizing all the nuance and exceptions you want, I have, have long had, questions about the connection between the (self- and societal) infantilization of young women and "rape culture."
And after years of Japanese culture, I have something of a visceral reaction many times when protective feelings toward women arise in me. I view them as gendered and misogynist.