It's good for He, but not for Thee...
Just as it would leave a bad taste in my mouth to hear a member of the ADL call for racial profiling of blacks, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to hear someone simultaneously defend one perversion while condemning another. I normally respect James Taranto of Best of the Web, but yesterday's top post, titled "Look for the Union Label" just pisses me off. Mr. Taranto is okay with gay marriage, but nearly goes into hysterics in his attacks on polygamy

Echoing Santorum, Kurtz raises the possibility of a "slippery slope" leading from same-sex marriage to polygamy. But one can easily draw a distinction. The widespread practice of polygamy would have great social costs. It would distort the sexual marketplace by creating an undersupply of marriageable women. (Polyandry, the practice of women having multiple husbands, is too rare to be worth discussing.) The result is the creation of what Jonathan Rauch calls a "sexual underclass" of "low-status men" whose prospects for marriage are virtually nil.

First, the practice would have to be wide-spread in order for it to have any sort of the affect on the 'sexual marketplace' - which, by the way, is an awful term for love relationships. Second, what makes you think that women the United States over would be clamoring for a slot as 8th wife?

What has fueled the issue of polygamy statewide as well as nationally is the case of a 16-year-old girl who stumbled into a remote gas station in northern Utah this summer.

This summer? The case actually happened in May of 1998, by my math a good five years ago. Not that the actual date counts so much except that its sloppy reporting.

Covered with fresh bruises on her legs, arms and buttocks, authorities said the girl had run seven miles through the night, fleeing her father's belt and the future he had ordained for her: marriage to her uncle, and life as his 15th wife.

The teen-ager's 911 call has resulted in a charge against her father, John Daniel Kingston, a leader of a wealthy but secretive polygamous clan based in a Salt Lake suburb. Rowenna Erickson, a Tapestry member who left the clan in 1991, said that incest, child marriage and birth defects were becoming more frequent in the clan, which numbers about 1,500 people. . . .

Ms. Erickson said that John Daniel Kingston had fathered 10 children with a half-sister and that the 16-year-old girl who fled was his eldest child. Identified only by her initials, M.N., she testified in late July in court here that last fall she had been secretly married against her will to an uncle, David Kingston.

It's easy to understand why polygamy would lead to child abuse and incest, especially in relatively small communities. If the supply of marriageable women is severely restricted because a large number of women are married to a small number of men, then it's not surprising that men would turn their attention to underage girls.

Say What?? If you're going to make that argument, then perhaps you should present data that actually shows something like that going on. Instead, you paint a story of a male patriarch abusing his power to force a non-consenting child to marry a man who already had 14 wives. This is like me claiming that single men are more likely to rape and kill pregnant women, and using the Laci Peterson case as my evidence.

As for incest, the practice of polygamy creates huge numbers of close relatives. The Times cites the example of the late Wilford Woodruff Steed of Colorado City, Colo., who when he died in 1994 left six wives, 43 children and 235 grandchildren. In 1990 Colorado City had a population of 2,426, which means that those 235 grandchildren--all of whom are either siblings, half-siblings or first cousins--were nearly 10% of the town's population, and a higher proportion of their peers.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a bad thing, unless there's a local ordinance prohibiting marriage to anyone outside of the town. They aren't living in Antarctica, and it doesn't take a seven day trip by mule-drawn buggy to get to the nearest settlement. So there are a lot of relatives around.... bet that means the women in the town hardly ever have trouble finding a trusted babysitter.

But Taranto isn't one of those "marriage means one man, one woman!!!" freaks...

By contrast, it's hard to imagine any great social harm arising from official recognition of same-sex unions. Just about anyone who would consider "marrying" someone of the same sex is outside the ordinary marriage pool anyway; for the vast majority of heterosexuals, the idea of a same-sex union is entirely (if you'll pardon the expression) unnatural.

Since when did affirmative action come to sexual relationships? And does that mean that if the population ratio swung to 75% female, you'd change your mind?

Homosexuality, polygamy and incest all carry societal risks. Anal sex brings with it a greater risk of disease transmission. Polygamy brings an increased risk of close-interbreeding and forced marriages (although I'm of the opinion that a lot of these problems would be mitigated were polygamists not forced underground.) Incest brings with it an increased risk of reinforced bad recessives and birth defects. It pisses me off to hear people claim that while anal sex and gay marriage should be legal, polygamy should not. Likewise, I find it irksome to hear polygamous groups rant about the unnaturalness of homosexuality. Wether its the Beehive or a gay bathhouse, you're all on the fringe. Instead of clamoring for special treatment for your kink, while arguing against equal protection for others', it seems to me you'd accomplish a lot more if you argued that consenting adults should be able to enter into whatever relationship they please.

Whichever way the Supreme Court rules, I'm fine with it. My kinks are legal. I just think that perhaps homosexuals would have firmer ground to stand on if they didn't react to other fringe groups the way a southern Baptist would to them.

Always good advice
Clayton has an excellent series of posts on How to Become Wealthy (scroll up for parts 2 and 3). All of it is advice that is obvious to me, now, but I sure wish someone had told it to me back when I first moved out of my parents' house, and got four credit cards. There is one point he makes that hadn't occurred to me so far, that especially bears repeating:

You must find out where you are spending your money, and either reduce spending, or increase income. ...however, remember this: an extra dollar earned, because of federal, state, and Social Security taxes, is typically $0.55 to $0.65 more in your pocket. A dollar reduction in spending, however is $1 towards solving your budget problem.

The entire series is smart advice, and recommended reading for anyone who isn't already rich.

What's so wrong with comparing homosexuality to polygamy?
All sorts of people have their panties in a twist over the Santorum interview, where he infamously stated:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum said in the interview, published Monday.

So far, of the posts I've seen regarding the issue, my favorite has to come from Rand Simberg. He writes, in part:

Now it's clear from context and his history that he thinks that not only is there something wrong with all of those things, but that he also thinks that they should be therefore illegal, and that not allowing laws against consensual gay sex shoves us down the hill on a slick road to perdition. That's not a position with which I agree, but I don't see any comparison of that to wistfully dreaming of a return to Jim Crow. I assume that, to the degree that the objectors have a sincere objection (disregarding the simple political and partisan opportunity), it is his lumping homosexuality in with the other things, unless they're proposing to make them all legal as well (no doubt some of them might).

To me, that's the most interesting thing about this case. I wrote in his comments section (I've only added html tags here):

"Santorum does indeed appear to be against any non-procreative heterosexual sex. That's fine with me, since he won't be the one deciding wether or not states can make other sex illegal - that'll be the Sup Ct.
What bothers me is the outrage everyone is expressing because Santorum compared homosexuality to incest, adultery, bigamy, etc... The impression I'm getting here is that the folks upset with Santorum are upset because he lumped homosexuality into activities these people think are wrong. In other words, their tolerance for homosexuality does not extend to tolerance for polygamy or other alternative relationships. If so, why not? Polygamy in particular has a far longer history of social acceptance (at least in other cultures/religions) than homosexuality has had.
Incest - I understand the genetic concerns incest raises, but defective babies are not created only by sister/brother or mother/son pairings. If the prohibition against blood-related consensual adults having sex is only due to the risk of birth defects, why have we not also made it illegal for people who know they will have defective children to breed? And if no offspring results from the pairing, why is it wrong? (Before anyone jumps on my case for that - I don't think its the governments' business to decide who has babies and who doesn't...smacks too much of nazism to me.)
I disagree with Santorum's stance, but I agree with his statement. If the Sup Ct rules, based on the 'right to privacy', that the states cannot make laws prohibiting homosexual sex, then they shouldn't make laws prohibiting other sexual relationships between consenting adults."

I'm tempted to say that those folks upset over Santorum's comments - because he compared homosexuals to bigamists, polygamists, etc - are no more tolerant than he is.

Prosecuting people for the IRS's own stupidity
The Washington Times reports that:

A Richmond father and daughter have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to defraud the government and filing a false tax return that claimed a $500,000 refund for slavery reparations, the Internal Revenue Service said yesterday.

I won't argue that claiming a half-a-million dollar refund for slavery reparations is illegal. There is no 'slavery reparations' fund. Robert and Crystal Foster definitely attempted to defraud the IRS. What I want to know is how dumb is the IRS that they got away with it, even for a little while?

The IRS has included slavery reparations on its list of the "Dirty Dozen" tax scams the agency has urged taxpayers to avoid. Efforts by the IRS and the Justice Department to shut down tax scams based on slavery reparations and similar claims have resulted in a 97 percent drop in the claims in recent years.
     According to the Richmond indictment, released Monday, Mr. Foster and his daughter received a tax refund of $507,490.91 from the IRS on Oct. 29, 2001 — the largest refund paid by the government that year. The claim was based on Miss Foster's contention that she and other blacks suffered harm because of slavery and its aftermath. ...
The IRS approved Miss Foster's refund, and she received her refund check after answering a letter from the agency on the identity of her investment firm. According to the records, she said it was the "U.S. Department of Treasury, Black Capital Investments."
     IRS officials said although no such firm exists, the refund check was issued anyway. Later, when the agency realized its mistake, the IRS filed a civil lawsuit in November 2001 to get the money back from the Fosters and others to whom money had been paid.

Personally, I'd be much more interested in finding out that whoever was dumb enough to issue a half-a-million dollar tax refund for 'slavery reparations', has been fired, and blacklisted from ever working in the tax/accounting business again.

That's what truly disturbs me about this story - the IRS is so incompetent they shelled out half-a-million dollars from a fund that they knew - and widely advertised - did not exist, to a woman who claimed less than four thousand dollars in income that year. What the Fosters did was wrong, but their crime only serves to highlight the IRS' much worse incompetence.

Beating the horse some more...
Dancing With Dogs manages to sum up a lot of my disgust with the current feminist movement and perceptions of women in general.

Growing up, it was annoying enough for me to hear men make stupid assumptions about me based on the fact that I was a girl. I find it infinitely more horrible for self-proclaimed feminists to blandly state that women are more emotional, empathic, better listeners... to have another woman automatically consign me to a passive, peaceful role really sticks in my craw.

Maybe I am a better listener than the average man. Maybe I am more emotional than the average man. That doesn't make me any more peaceful than the average man. I wear pink. And I'm willing to shoot to kill. I don't think the two are incompatible.

I listened to the reports of tyranny, torture, rape, and support for terrorism coming out of Iraq. I felt a great sadness for the Iraqi people, and a great anger for my own people.

The result? Fervent support for a military invasion of Iraq. And you won't hear a peep out of me if we go into Syria or Iran afterwards. I want the world to be healthy "for children and other living things", and I think the way to do it is to defeat any country that would threaten us or our own.

That's the way this girl feels.

Interesting reading...
I happened to find The Ranting Rationalist through American RealPolitik. He has good stuff to read.

Simply put, They Can Dish It Out, but They Can't Take It
Eugene Volokh makes some thoughtful comments on the ethics of boycotts.

So, here's my narrow proposal: We should indeed resist claims that private boycotts and firings violate the First Amendment -- those claims are legally incorrect. We should also resist the assumption that the First Amendment provides proper ethical and moral standards for the behavior of private actors; sometimes, as with private universities, it might, at least to a large extent, but sometimes it doesn't: If you want to say the Nazis were right, you have the First Amendment right to do that, but I'll kick you out of my house, and generally won't do business with you. But we should also look behind the erroneous claims of First Amendment protection, and take seriously the deeper arguments that generally underlie such claims -- the arguments that it is indeed unethical and in the long run harmful to try to economically retaliate against people in certain ways based on certain kinds of speech. And perhaps this inquiry might eventually give us some sense of what the right ethical and pragmatic guidelines should be here.

This is a nice enough sentiment, but I think its entirely misplaced. The problem here is that the very sorts of people loudly complaining of censorship and '1st amendment violations' now, are also the sort of who have no qualms about applying the same tactics to groups they don't like.

Or was this story a hoax? If not, how is such a thing defensible if disinviting Robbins and Sarandon is not?

Likewise Gore's defense of the Dixie Chicks, which is truly hypocritcal given his support for musician boycotts in the past. Or have he and Tipper made up with 2 Live Crew?

If you don't want people to tell you, loudly, that they think you are a twit and not worth their hard-earned cash, then don't tell them, loudly, that their country sucks and their president is worse than Hitler. If you can't resist opening your big yapper and spouting off about 'the issues', be prepared for a negative response.

The Spider isn't the writer he used to be...
Aaargh.... it's always a disappointment to have someone you thought was smart prove you wrong. But that's what just happened to me. I was reading Transterrestrial Musings, which linked to Spider Robinson's ridiculously shallow and irrational op-ed in the Globe and Mail. When I was 13 or so - and still tickled pink over puns - I liked reading Robinson's books. After reading his op-ed, I couldn't agree more with the first sentence (emphasis mine):

I want my money back. War, plague and pestilence (think SARS) -- this millennium sucks.

Because, after all, 3 years into the thousand we have still to go is sufficient time to declare a verdict.
... whining about how wonderful things were before Bush was elected cut ...

Peace in the Mideast seemed just around the corner, thanks to the patient diplomatic efforts of a well-informed, articulate and creative U.S. president. Was poor taste in mistresses a sensible reason to replace him with a man who's proud to tell you foreign affairs are something he himself is never ever going to have, swear to God? Whose idea of diplomacy is smiling while delivering an ultimatum?

Lot's of people, you twit, or have you never heard the phrase, "diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggie until you can find a big stick"? And in case you're suffering from short term memory loss, in the United States, presidents only serve two terms. It not like we ousted Clinton just when he was finally about to lobby his way into a nobel peace prize, as some sort of cruel joke. We had elections. He couldn't run, because he'd already held the office for eight years, and his designated successor was such an uncharismatic, pathological liar, that Bush was able to win the presidency despite being depicted in the press as a retarded playboy. Gore sucks so bad, that as bad as you think Bush is, he couldn't beat Bush. Blame Clinton for not training his vice-president better than that.

In 1993, Arab terrorists tried to -- get this! -- blow up the World Trade Center. Of course, they failed ludicrously. Terrorists usually did; they were figures of fun, bearded buffoons who squabbled and shot ineffectually in all directions in films. They couldn't even take out a satirist: Salman Rushdie toured at will. The only modern terrorists to have taken a significant number of lives on U.S. soil were white, male Americans -- specifically, Timbit-Brain McVeigh in Oklahoma City and the FBI in Waco;

Arab terrorists were figures of fun? Tell that to the Israelis. And be sure you leave that part about U.S. soil in there, because without it, your argument falls apart. Arab terrorists failed at bringing down the trade towers once, but they succeeded in their attempts in Beirut, Dahran, on the USS Cole, at two U.S. embassies... apparently Robinson feels that we should only take terrorism seriously when it happens at home. If our people die overseas, that's no big deal.

Musicians and writers were optimistic. Multitrack recording had just stopped requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars of machinery and expertise; the sound quality of consumer playback had just reached perfect. Publishing books suddenly no longer absolutely necessitated printing 25 paper copies in the hope of selling one, and writing them no longer required a (shudder) typewriter;

But now that Bush is president, we've all had to revert to phonographs, party line telephones, and the Guttenberg press. Oh, mourn our lost progress, lost dreams, lost technology, now that Bush is president.

The Internet was going to make us all rich. 'Nuff said;
Just about everyone on Earth understood that the United States would never, under any circumstances, first-strike a weaker opponent. It had just proven it by allowing the Soviet Union to surrender;

I think that merely proves that we were engaged in a rather long and uncomfortable standoff with another nuclear armed power. And maybe I'm suffering from short-term memory loss too, but I don't recall the Soviet Union either a) formally declaring war on the United States, or b) formally surrendering to the United States.

... whining about British Columbia's social welfare system deleted ...

The U.S. seemed poised to legalize medical marijuana. Or rather, individual states still entertained the delusion that they had the power to do so, merely because the Constitution said they did and their citizens voted for it;
You could board an airplane in under two hours, carrying nail clippers;

Oh, how I long for those days... when people were allowed to perform their personal grooming on an airplane. But then again, those were also the days when islamist terrorists armed with boxcutters were capable of taking over an airplane and using it like a missile.

There seemed to be so little to worry about, we had time to worry about nothing at all. Anybody remember Y2K, when our biggest fear was that at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, our term papers would be lost and Revenue Canada would forget how much we owed?
We were living in the Golden Years, for a while there. Instead of savouring it, making sure that half a century of that kind of forward progress would continue, we decided, for a minute, that it was safe to coast. We yammered about the End of History, and invented "reality TV." We thought we could afford to let dimwits take the reins of power. How much damage could they do?

Everything was perfect when the democrats were in office. The was no such thing as terrorism. There was no such thing as a recession. Our entire country was so doing so well, we thought it would be funny to elect a 'dimwit' for president because, 'how much damage could they do?' So I guess it's all our fault. Now we have a war in Iraq (that started 12 years ago), a recession (that had started before the republicans took the presidency), and fighting in the middle east (that's been going on for centuries).

I choose to believe that the true Golden Age lies always ahead of us, never behind. But some years, it's harder than other years.

I know how you feel. When the U.N. security council was busy arguing about wether or not we needed a second resolution to go into Iraq, things looked grim to me, indeed. But Bush has proved his mettle, and the Iraqi people are dancing in the streets, celebrating their newfound hopes for freedom. I'm looking forward to a future Pax Americana, with a democratic middle east, and hopefully the fall of communism in the far east.

The future might be looking bleak to you, but to anyone who loves liberty and freedom, it's looking bright indeed.

Sucking blood from a stone
The Washington Post carried an article from the AP today, headlined: States Fear They'll Lose Tobacco Money.

State leaders from Vermont to California, hooked on annual payments from their landmark settlement with the tobacco industry, are worried a multibillion-dollar court order against Philip Morris might keep them from getting their next check. ...
In 1998, four tobacco companies agreed to settle states' claims for smoking-related health care costs by paying them $206 billion over 25 years. Philip Morris, the largest in the group, pays about half the settlement, which covers 46 states.
Recently, a Madison County, Ill. judge awarded $10 billion in a class-action lawsuit alleging that Philip Morris misled smokers into believing that "light" cigarettes are less harmful. Philip Morris must post a $12 billion bond before it can appeal the judgment - equal to the amount of the award plus $2 billion in legal fees. ...
"Philip Morris USA's net worth is south of $12 billion," said William Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris vice president and general counsel. "We only have so much money. If the judge requires us to put it all in Madison County, we wouldn't have enough to make the master settlement agreement payment."
Philip Morris has asked the judge to lower the bond to between $1.2 and $1.5 billion, an appeal supported by the attorneys general of 37 states and territories.
Wall Street analysts say Philip Morris isn't blowing smoke about its inability to pay.
"I do not believe Philip Morris USA has the ability to post the bond of $12 billion," said Martin Feldman of Merrill Lynch. He suggested bankruptcy was a "real option" unless the bond is reduced.
The uncertainty is already disrupting state budgets. New York, Virginia and California, for example, have postponed plans to sell bonds backed by money from the tobacco settlement.

I derive a certain amount of glee from this, namely because I always thought the tobacco settlement would cause the states trouble eventually. Well here they are. They succeeded in blackmailing big tobacco into handing over billions of dollars in protection money to the states, but the states - instead of protecting their meal ticket - acted like sharks in a feeding frenzy, passing out multi-billion dollar judgements to people who made themselves sick from smoking, as if Phillip Morris had their own private printing press for U.S. currency. Turns out they don't. Looks like the generosity of our courts is going to end up cutting into the state's take. This means a lot of worthy programs might get cut:

Kentucky uses settlement money to diversify its tobacco-based agricultural economy, while Kansas puts the money into an education trust fund. Indiana earmarks the money for children's health insurance, prescription drugs for poor seniors and anti-smoking programs.
Vermont has already spent the $13 million it expects from Philip Morris on Medicaid services and tobacco and substance abuse programs. And Washington has spent its anticipated $53 million on health insurance for children, immunization programs and other public health needs.
If Philip Morris falls short, states may have to cut those programs deeply, cut other programs or raise taxes - not a popular option during an economic downturn.

Of course, you could argue that the billions agreed upon was actually supposed to go to paying for the health costs of sick smokers, and that a number of the states are patently not spending their money on that. You could alternatively argue that the states crusade against big tobacco was intended to put big tobacco out of business, and in that case, this is good news, even if the states are crying crocodile tears about it now. Or you could realize that the tobacco settlement was never about public health or compensating sick smokers or even punishing evil - it was a mugging. In any case, I can't feel any sympathy for states that are whining about Philip Morris' precarious financial position now.

Digging Himself a Deeper Hole

A man is charged with attempting to hire a hit man to kill two teenage girls before they could testify at his trial on charges he sexually assaulted them. ... Hackel said Kokowicz, 54, wanted the slayings carried out before his April 22 trial on charges of criminal sexual conduct and providing drugs or alcohol to minors. He is accused of having intercourse with an incapacitated 16-year-old and fondling a 17-year-old girl at his home in Eastpoint, police Detective Neil Childs said.
In the new allegations, Kokowicz faces two counts of solicitation of murder and one count of intimidating or threatening to kill or injure a witness.

I could wish that there weren't people this dumb living in the United States, but then again, when a criminal is as obviously retarded as this twit is, catching him is easier.

Thank You, Lisa Lozano
My new swimsuit by TNA was delivered yesterday. I don't think TNA officially stands for Tits and Ass, but that's definitely what gets showcased in their designs, and boy am I happy about it. I have never had a bikini that fit so well or looked so damn good. Now I can barely wait for summer to start.

And the folks at Swimwear Boutique made shopping for it mighty pleasant. They've definitely gained a repeat customer.