January 2009 – Shortwoman.com

Month-End Miscellany

On this day when a huge economic stimulus bill has been passed, it is only appropriate to reference what I said in 2004 about the National Debt. Let me add Brad DeLong on how the government spending on infrastructure can actually benefit the economy 3-fold over just passing out money. And John Cole asks a great question: “If Republicans plan to deliver exactly zero votes for Obama’s stimulus bill, then why does the bill still have compromises in it? Screw them. Put the family planning stuff back in, take the tax cuts out. If we know for sure that passing a crappy bill won’t win any more votes then just pass a better bill. They won’t scream any louder. The political cost won’t be any greater. Also, and pay attention because this is the important part, a better bill is more likely to succeed.”

I also talked about education “reform” back in 2004. Interesting, the bill passed today has a lot of money for making sure that physical school buildings are safe and in good condition. Elsewhere, other people are talking about teaching “green” at school. And on a local note, one Nevada school district wants to expand random drug testing at exactly the same time that the state wants school districts and everybody else to cut their budgets. Somehow, that doesn’t seem right to me.

In 2005 I laid out some of the lies told about Social Security to manipulate us into thinking running our own private retirement accounts was a good idea. Anybody look at their IRA or 401k statement lately? Anybody still think this is a good idea? Anybody?

In 2006 I argued that I was a centrist because, in fact, my ideals were in line with “most Americans.” Today, one of Ezra Klein’s guest bloggers calls out the media on not being very centrist in their choice of interviews. Liberal Media? Where??

It’s a shame the comic is no longer available online, because in 2007 I wrote yet more about universal health care (as opposed to mandatory health care). Just today, we have “COBRA expansion won’t benefit most low income workers” (hello, recently somebody actually did a study that proved what many of us already knew, COBRA is a sick, expensive joke on the newly unemployed). Oh, and Mahablog has a great BBC documentary on the American health care system. Rather damning that Auntie Beeb had to do that for us.

In 2008 I rounded up some of the ways that the government has manipulated economic “data”. Now, the phenomenon has a technical name: Pollyanna Creep. Kinda sounds like the sort of guy who hangs out just outside the Junior High School, doesn’t it.

I also asked why we ask if America is ready for a woman President. Sure, we are. We just aren’t ready for President Hillary Clinton, or worse yet, Vice President Sarah Palin. Gee Sarah, thanks to you and that Ferraro woman for setting women back politically a couple decades each!

In Closing: Google wants to help you figure out if your ISP is throttling your bandwidth; the Abramoff scandal continues to spawn indictments (and public trial records that may yet be used against members of the Bush Administration); and Carrie asks all the hard questions about being the parents of octuplets. How easily we forget that a) the Bradys were fictional and b) Carol didn’t have to potty train them all at the same time.

On the Roe v. Wade Anniversary

It’s Blog for Choice Day.

Last week I was listening to NPR, and they had some leaders from the So-Called Pro-Life community discussing how they were going to have to change their tactics during the Obama presidency. I will continue to call them the So-Called Pro-Life community until such time as they denouce and expel the internal faction that thinks it is acceptable to enforce their opinion through intimidation, violence, vandalism, and murder. The first fellow they interviewed was mostly reasonable. But then the conversation turned to the idea of “If abortion can’t be prevented altogether, then how can it be reduced.”

This gentleman began to talk about policies such as childhood health care initiatives that could “encourage women to keep their babies.” What? Never heard of giving a child up for adoption? I’ll give this guy credit for at least caring about babies that are actually born. He might actually be “Pro-Life” for real.

Let’s get one thing perfectly straight: The best way, the only way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Sure, I support universal healthcare for children (grown-ups too, but that’s another issue). I support policies that make life easier for families to exist. What do such policies do to prevent unwanted pregnancies?

The policies we need to prevent abortions are age appropriate comprehensive sex education, wide availability of contraceptives, birth defect prevention, rape prevention, and moving the high school schedule so that teenagers don’t have as many unsupervised hours after school. These things will prevent unwanted pregnancies, the leading cause of abortions.

The next fellow was not so agreeable. He spoke graphically of things like forcing women to see ultrasound images of their “unborn babies” before “killing” them. Well, if guys like this get their way and abortion is outlawed, does he propose charging women who get illegal abortions with “murder”?And if not, why? Why do we never hear the So-Called Pro-Life movement go that far when they discuss the consequences of outlawing abortion?

It becomes more and more clear to me that the Pro-Choice and So-Called Pro-Life movements are speaking across one another. Nobody really wants abortion to be widespread. The Pro-Choice movement wants to stop abortion before there even is a pregnancy, but understands that sometimes abortion needs to be considered.

Somehow, the So-Called Pro-Life movement doesn’t want to deal with preventing the problem. They think they can just make women magically want to be mommies, that they can wish away the reasons a woman might say “I can’t have this baby”. It makes you wonder if maybe the real goal isn’t to punish women for having sex. Come to think of it, mighty curious that neither of the people interviewed by NPR are at risk of becoming pregnant.

In closing: H-t to Poligazette for this First Amendment Quiz; why the bailout will create inflation (giving the FOMC a good excuse to raise interest rates to a more normal level); somehow China can implement universal health care while becoming capitalists in the midst of a “retail consolidation“; and Myths and Truths about Japan and Fiscal Stimulus.

A Non-Political Post About the Automotive Industry

Sure, it’s a huge day. But there are things that are happening outside of Washington DC. There are a lot of really good sites covering what’s going on there, including The Moderate Voice (where you will find a small and rather fluffy item I wrote on the incredible job the White House residential staff does moving one First Family out and the next in).

Nope, there’s stuff going on elsewhere.

There are two huge automotive news items that deserve attention. The first is that Fiat is planning on purchasing a rather large stake in Chrysler as part of a “strategic alliance“. More:

Under terms of a pact that is being hammered out, Fiat is likely to take a 35% stake in Chrysler by the middle of this year. It would have the option of increasing that to as much as 55%, these people said.

Fiat, the stronger of the two, wouldn’t immediately put cash into Chrysler. Instead it would obtain its stake mainly in exchange for covering the cost of retooling a Chrysler plant to produce one or more Fiat models to be sold in the U.S., these people said. Fiat would also provide engine and transmission technology to help Chrysler introduce new, fuel-efficient small cars, they said.

Critics of this plan say it is nothing more than trying to make two small, struggling car companies into one large, struggling car company. You remember Fiat, right? They stopped importing cars to the United States over 20 years ago. However, they have been public about their deliberations to build a US factory for just over a year now.

And that’s not the only big automotive story of the day.

Back in Japan, Akio Toyoda is preparing to become the CEO of the compnay his grandfather founded, Toyota. This is in the wake of falling sales, particularly in the United States. Toyota may even annouce it’s first yearly loss ever. Toyoda-san is fluent in English, having been a VP of American operations and a MBA from an American college. (Note: Crown Princess Masako is Harvard educated; Crown Prince Naruhito has a graduate degree from Oxford.) He has also been an executive in the company’s Chinese interests. It will be interesting to see how his international experience influences the company going forward.

In closing: checklists save lives; so does Tom Colicchio; the Great College Hoax; and finally, seriously, I wish the very best for our new President, his family, his administration, and our country.

On the Strip Searching of Children and the ACLU

I must not be very imaginative.

I say that because I can’t think of a single thing that is so important that it’s worth strip searching a child in a public school, but so unimportant that it’s not worth calling that child’s parents first, and not worth calling the police first.

And the thing is that an appeals court pretty much agreed that if the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons didn’t apply to the actual body of a child in a school, who the heck did it apply to? The majority opinion said, in part “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude.”

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case. CNN points out, emphasis mine, that “They will decide whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in public spaces.”

Do we want school administrators to have more authority over kids than cops have over citizens? If you think that your kids should be able to go to school without the risk of strip searching on the say-so of a thick-headed administrator, based on the confession of another student who was already in trouble and probably trying to save her own skin, then you should be a supporter of the ACLU.

Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

In closing: Seven states sue to block the Bush Administration “My conscience is more important than your health care” rules; a donut is not a baby, but try telling that to the so-called pro-life movement; a CNBC columnist proposes helping us out of the recession by… legalizing pot?; if you thought landing a plane in the Hudson in January and getting everybody out alive was a good thing, thank Unions; cars, cars, everywhere, plenty of deals to be had; on class discrimination in Japan; and sure, it’s just got to be a strange coincidence that 4 out of every 5 people stopped by the NYPD are black or hispanic, never mind the demographics saying they make up just over half the population. Just a coincidence.

Only A Start

What a shame that “I beleive that children are our future” has become little more than a cliche.

This week, the House of Representatives debated and passed a massive expansion of the SCHIP program with bipartisan support, and the Senate is expected to pass it shortly. That’s the one that helps people who can’t afford health insurance for their kids.

Now, I have said this a bunch of times already, but it’s still true. Our employer-based system of health insurance is stacked against kids because none of them have full time employment. And it would be a sad world if they needed full time employment.

From what I have read, this bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. It doesn’t ensure that no parent has to go with the “hope they don’t get sick or hurt” health plan. However, in the absence of a “MediKids” plan — similar to the Dr Dynasaur program Dr. Chmn. Howard Dean managed to get through while he was Governor of Vermont — it’s a start.

The next thing the incoming administration wants to do to help kids is to fix our crumbling schools and make sure they have [relatively] up-to-date technology. As a bonus, actual people will be put to work to make those improvements happen.

In Closing: with unemployment where it is, expect to hear more about “work at home” scams (hint, if it were profitable they could afford an office, second hint, jobs shouldn’t cost you money); electricity from coal tempura; population vs job growth, one president at a time; FDIC says “Um, hey, guys, do you think maybe you could, you know, keep track of how you are spending that money you got from the Feds?” The Virtues of Stop Loss Orders; VW’s cute new roadster due to hit the States in 2011, runs on clean diesel and gets 42 MPG, unless it actually gets 54 MPG and has 180 horsepower!; sometimes a teacher’s job is to guide, and sometimes it’s to get out of the way; putting current interest rates in historical perspective; colleges decide to cut back on their core mission, education; sometimes conservation isn’t as easy as it looks; 20 worst foods in America; and for those of you whose New Years Resolution involved weight loss, take it easy.

The Haunting of Shorties Hartley

It’s the first Shorties of 2009!

A few dangling bits of 2008: 10 Weirdest Political Moments of the year.

Baby You Can Drive My Car: Maybe not if it’s a GM. Here’s a great graphic to illustrate their problems.

Track 22: Amtrak has this little contest going on for photographers who want to take pictures of their trains. Amtrak’s security people have a problem with people taking pictures of trains. Something less than hilarity ensued.

Japanfilter!: Japanese 1-2-3’s list of useful business vocabulary and Free Japanese Lessons.

Drowning in Milk: It seems that the recession has caused a milk surplus to develop. Gee, maybe there’s no more excuse for rBST.

Listen up, Congressmice: The voters — you remember them, right, the people without whom you wouldn’t have been sworn in today? — want you to get some stuff done. That goes double for you two, Pelosi and Reid! Don’t think your backs are safe next election cycle if you screw this up. Don’t think I won’t vote against the incumbent in the primary, Harry!

How much do you know about the TSA and Security Theatre?: Find out with this handy quiz!

A Public Health Argument for Medicare For All: “Arguably, this is why there are regulators: some things, such as not turning 190 hospital workers into dead people, are worth the financial hit. But as long as savings–and keep in mind the program would have lowered overall costs by $115 million annually–are parceled out among different special interest groups, each armed with lobbyists that can corrupt oversight mechanisms, then we will continue to have health care inefficiencies that kill people.” I could have done without his parting shot about the definition of “special interest groups.”

Excuse me, haven’t I been saying this for years now?: Tasini from the Daily Kos points out n the fact that the underlying problem with our current economy is that Joe and Jane Average no longer have any money becase they haven’t had a real raise in a long time.

And Last But Surely Not Least: Look, I know there are times when a family has to give up a pet. It’s sad but it happens. If you don’t find it sad, you probably shouldn’t own animals (and you might want to reconsider children). But if you have to give up an animal, at least take it to a shelter instead of turning it out into the wild. It stands a chance in a shelter. You can contact PAWS for more info. I’ve been a supporter since before I was a teenager, and they do good work.

New Year Linkbait

I am not going to waste your time with a review of 2008, nor with predictions for 2009. There’s too much that can go wrong with predictions.

Instead, I’ll waste your time with a Wired peice on how to “linkbait” your blog.

Modern Life tells us “Linkbait is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page – whether it’s an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace – that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.” The object is not merely getting the links, but getting traffic from people who click on those links.

But back to what Wired has to say:

Network with bigger bloggers—comment regularly. Email them your best stuff, then follow their tips. Link to them often, and they’ll likely start linking back. The day that Boing Boing links to you, you’re gold.

Network and comment. Be willing to take advice from people who are more successful than you Wow, as if none of us thought about that.

Request to get in the Blogroll on other people’s sites. You never know who will get picked up by somebody big and lo, there you are in the linkfest. Join groups of similar bloggers. Take time to say “I agree with Joe in his post, XYZ,” or “I think Sam doesn’t know what he’s talking about in his post ABC.” Follow up each with at least a paragraph of “Because…” Consider being active in online communities, as long as your site is linked in your profile. I think I just doubled their content.

But BoingBoing? People still read that?

Let’s continue:

Scan the tabloid rack for headlines that make you want to shout, “Hey Martha, come see!” Try to create the same “must share this” effect in your own headlines.

For example, “Linkbait Your Blog”.

Seriously, who doesn’t want more links? But just like a really good newspaper headline, the title needs to tell you just enough to make you want to read more. Such as Tuesday’s elderly woman fights off nude attacker story. Frankly, some blogosphere versions of the story were better than the serious version.

But back to the story:

You may not be able to break a juicy story (“britney shaves head—again!”) but you can pontificate on it (“inside britney’s shaved head”). Your post will show up in searches for the story, and you’ll hoover up the hits.

Why not just say “Write about whatever is on top over at Technorati“?

I’d say to go on, but that’s it.

Meanwhile, the folks who gave us our definition for “linkbait” tell us we can get linked by having “timely, current content,” defending a “controversial viewpoint,” writing “Interesting and well-written articles,” or tap into our “ongoing obsession with all that is funny, crazy, cool, or just plain odd.” As it turns out, I have been doing this entirely organically for over 5 years now.

Seriously, if you want to learn more about how to really linkbait — rather than 3 half-baked ideas from somebody who is trying to sell you his book — here’s 21 ideas, thoughts for linkbait sucess, and the art of linkbaiting.

And now, because I have written about the Wired article, this post will show up as linking to it. If enough people link to the article, it will climb the rankings on sites that follow such things. People who want to know what is being said about the article will end up here, and on other sites that discuss it. Not only will I have successfully linkbaited, there is the possibility that one of those new readers will become a regular reader.

In closing: our new Commander in Chief will hold an honest-to-goodness military ball; once he’s actually on the job he wants to do something about the fact that “Nearly half the principals in primary and secondary schools said deteriorating conditions are interfering with learning“; for your next Fun With Creationists event here’s 12 Examples of Evolution that don’t involve flu shots; next time you play 6 Degrees, be sure to use the fact that Kevin Bacon lost money with Bernie Madoff; and last, a company that re-examined their monthly expenses to save almost $500 per month. Now there’s news you can use.