Michelle Rhee is an ignorant asshat

There are some people who are trying to “reform” public education by acting like children are units of production, ignoring the effects of poverty on children, and holding teachers accountable for not have magic teaching rays of anti-poverty joy come shooting out of their ass. Some of these people are simply ignorant about the teaching facts and haven’t bothered to talk to educators at all. *cough Bill Gates & Oprah cough*

Then there are the mendacious asshats like Michelle Rhee who are trying to secure school funds for their corporate overlords and will lie & cheat to make this happen while sobbing they ‘only want to help the children’. I despise those people. I need a bigger toilet to hold all my contempt for them.

Michelle Rhee is now ground zero in a mass of cheating scandals. Happily, memos show she can’t even scrape up a plausible defense that she didn’t know this shot was happening, especially since she took “credit” for the rising test scores she knew were doctored. 

Seriously, Micelle Rhee and her Puppet Masters (although a pretty good name for a band) all lick dead goat eyeballs.  I spurn them.

SPURN!

Priss Pot and the Mail Order Bride

Sorcha is still dealing with Priss Pot’s shenanigans, but she just sends them along to her lawyer who calls Priss pot’s lawyer, who in turn calls Priss Pot to explain why his threats to “take away” their child is bullshit. She just tried to ignore it.

She also thinks she may be able to get the divorce soon, because Priss Pot has lost about 60 lbs. Why the correlation? She thinks he is the market for a Mail Order Bride (MOB) from China. Why would his weight matter? Because one of his uncles flew to China to meet a woman and was rejected by a MOB for being “too fat”; he had to lose weight and then try again to get his MOB. He finally got one. Whoop. 

In fact, two of Priss Pot’s uncles have MOB wives from China. One couple even seems happy, according to Sorcha.

Research has shown that most Western men looking for Asian MOBs hate feminism. I mean really hate women attempting to have autonomy and equality. They also feel that as men they ‘deserve’ a woman with ‘traditional family values’ … like submission and docility toward her lord and master. Thanks to the stereotype of a meek little cute Asian bride, they frequently look for love from Asian countries.

Hell, the idea of a woman who will kiss your ass and obey your every whim and do any sexually perverse thing you ask is such a fantasy that even Egyptian men are also importing a lot of Chinese brides. Yes, women in the Egypt just have too much freedom and independence I guess.

There are probably some nice enough shy guys who watched too much anime porn that are also on the market for an Asian MOB. Those marriages might work out. Sorcha told me that the uncle who is in a happy marriage is not an asshat, and seems pretty decent. But let’s be realistic – those dudes are probably in the minority by a huge margin.

Here’s two brief profiles of some of the other ‘studs’ who got themselves an Asian MOB:

After Lou’s previous 23-year marriage failed (he says his wife saddled him with housework), the 5’8″, 300-plus pound retired aeronautic engineer dated American “game players and naggers” and then tried placing a personal ad with newspapers in the Philippines and Malaysia. Among the 50 responses was one from Tessie, 40, then a science teacher. They exchanged 100 letters and countless phone calls before meeting face to face in Manila. In 1979, minutes after Lou’s divorce was final, they were married in Las Vegas. “Asian countries make fine superior products,” says Lou, 47. “And I prefer a fine superior lady for my wife.”

That tale of the liberation blues is nothing compared to the one told by a Midwesterner in his fifties who, after two connubial disasters, found both happiness and relief with a young Asian bride. “My first wife wanted a car, then she wanted to go to work,” he claims. “She wouldn’t cook or clean. When she started drinking, I sued for divorce and she took me for everything I had. Then I married again. This one had—whaddayacallit?—premenstrual syndrome. She went wacky and tried to kill me. I dumped her after that. But now I have a woman. She ties my shoes for me every morning. I really don’t want her to, but she’d be offended if I didn’t let her.” His young wife says she loves America and doesn’t mind staying home all day to clean their house. And does she think her marriage will be a happy one? “Yes,” she answers softly, in a still heavy accent. “I think so…maybe.”

Boy, those guys are just every young girls dreamboats, aren’t they?

You know, I don’t want to take away women’s agency, so let me also acknowledge that there are Asian women who feel that Asian husbands blow goats and they want a Western guy. Considering what Chinese men have to go through to get a wife in China, the MOB probably have their pick at home too. So, I’m all for people meeting on line through a dating service. I just think that thunder-douche twatwaffles like “Lou” and “Midwestern in his fifties” are out to exploit women and think that a MOB is their best chance of success.

That certainly fits Priss Pot’s character.

Sorcha is delighted yet guilty about this development. One one hand, it benefits her greatly. She’ll get her divorce and he’ll probably lose interest in their daughter. On the other hand, some unfortunate woman is going to isolated in a foreign country married to that narcissistic pile of dick-cheese and that makes Sorcha sad.

I told Sorcha that we could always hope for the best possible situation: Priss Pot gets a MOB who busts his flabby balls and takes him to the cleaners before divorcing him and heading home or getting her citizenship.

Come to think of it, I hope every single man who marries a MOB just so he can dominate her gets the surprise of his life when she turns out to be a fully actualized human being rather than the “China Doll” of his misogynistic dreams.

I am totally going to say “I told you so”.

Hey guys! Remember how I have been jumping up and down hollering that genes and non-genetic factors, like stress, poverty, ethnicity, sleep deprivation, and being a sexual/physical/emotional abuse survivor all increase your chances of being overweight of obese, so maybe ostracizing and discriminating against people because of their obesity is an asshat move? Yeah, it looks like the people who think fat is a result of gluttony and sloth have yet another scientific study they need to pretend doesn’t exist.

They have discovered that when you digest shitty food, like fast food and sugar and HFCS, it makes your immune system think it is under attack and sets up minor but long term inflammation in your body. This is not good, because:

“Chronic, low-grade inflammation has long been recognized as a feature of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of dysfunctions that tends to precede full-blown diabetes and that also increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, and even dementia—the top killers of the developed world. The syndrome includes a combination of elevated blood sugar and high blood pressure, low “good” cholesterol, and an abdominal cavity filled with fat, often indicated by a “beer belly.”

Moreover, good food won’t do it to you, even if it is full of the same “sugar” as a candy bar:

“Over the next decade [Dr. Dandona] tested the effects of various foods on the immune system. A fast-food breakfast inflamed, he found, but a high-fiber breakfast with lots of fruit did not. A breakthrough came in 2007 when he discovered that while sugar water, a stand-in for soda, caused inflammation, orange juice—even though it contains plenty of sugar—didn’t.”

Why is that, you wonder? Because :

“increased blood levels of a molecule called endotoxin. This molecule comes from the outer walls of certain bacteria. If endotoxin levels rise, our immune system perceives a threat and responds with inflammation. Where had the endotoxin come from? One possibility was the food itself. But there was another possibility. We all carry a few pounds’ worth of microbes in our gut, a complex ecosystem collectively called the microbiota. The endotoxin, Dandona suspected, originated in this native colony of microbes. Somehow, a greasy meal full of refined carbohydrates ushered it from the gut, where it was always present but didn’t necessarily cause harm, into the bloodstream, where it did.”

Guess what poor people can afford to eat? You guessed it! Shitty food! Which the government subsidizes! And guess what the fattest states in America are! Yes! The poorest states! So this means that the human dick-cheese that hates fat people are really manifesting another way of hating of poor people. Wow. Doubling down on asshatery. I’ll be impressed as soon as I gagging.

I’ll let y’all guess what the government is going to do about the amount of vile garbage people can be fed? You know, like telling McDonald’s & Coke that they either take some of that crap outta their food lest it gets banned or at least has to have a warning label so people know they are poising themselves? (hint: The answer is either “nothing” or “cover up”.)

I spy with my little eye … a narcissistic asshat

Apparently Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the pair of brothers who set off the terrorist bombs at the Boston Marathon, had been arrested before on charges of domestic assault and battery, and he described as “very controlling and very manipulative” by people who knew his wife/girlfriend/mother-of-his-child before he isolated her from all her friends and family.

The younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is contrastingly described as “wicked nice. We would go hang out with him and watch soccer on TV. He was so normal — like had naked girls on his walls on posters. Just an everyday 19-year-old boy” and his friends are “in shock”.

Hmmmm … so Tamerlan is an abusive, manipulative, horrid asshat and both his significant other and his baby brother were not. Anyone else see what I see?

I’d bet dimes to little green apples that Tamerlan had narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). People (and I use that term loosely) with this disorder are “cocky, self-centered, manipulative, and demanding” and if they fear you don’t think they are awesome they get really aggressive and abusive (mentally and/or physically). NPD also overlaps with the the clinical diagnosis of Machiavellianism. The people with this disorder display “a manipulative strategy of social interaction and personality style that uses other people as tools of personal gain” and they believe that “a desired end justifies virtually any means”.

Normal humans, otherwise good humans, who run up against these bastards can be twisted into emotional pretzels and coerced/brainwashed into doing any grandiose insanity the dipshit NPD wants them to do. We know Tamerlan bullied his girlfriend into converting to an extremist version of Islam and got her to cut off all contact with anyone who loved her. What do you want to be that Dzhokhar was manipulated into becoming a terrorist?

People, including children, are dead now because some scum-sucking douche with NPD thought he would be “impressive” to others in his extremist group if he became a terrorist. He’s also ruined his brother’s life, because that kid will never get out of prison. Ever.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike NPDs?

Saturday BlogHer

I’m up on BlogHer again today, and it is a freshly minted post.

This is why it matters

A fertilizer plant in West, Texas blew up. As many as 40 people are dead because of this explosion. How does this relate to far-right conservative politics? Well, it turns out this nightmare was completely avoidable if it hadn’t been for that dream-within-a-dream, that  atlas-shrugged-experimental-playground, of “small government” agenda politics of Texas and the larger USA:

Let’s start with the lax zoning requirements, which allowed such a high-risk enterprise smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

And the Chemical Safety Board, which was deployed to the West TX site last night, is chronically understaffed and inadequate because… you guessed it, it’s underfunded by a Big Oil-friendly Congress! They get $10.5 million to regulate an industry with 170 major companies making 70,000 different chemicals, totaling $750 billion revenue — and they’re still investigating the BP Gulf explosion. Thanks, Congress!

Then there’s OSHA, which is supposed to protect workers in the workplace but is really more of a fig leaf. Do you know how many OSHA inspectors we have for the entire country — more accurately, how many we don’t? Six fertilizer plants were inspected by OSHA in the past five years. West Fertilizer was not one of them. (When West Texas was cited for OSHA violations in 1985, their fine was $30.)

Experts say for a country the size of the United States, we should have 12,000 OSHA inspectors. We have 2,220. And the fines are laughable.

Golly gee, aren’t we all glad those brave stalwarts on the far right keep the government’s nose out of this company’s privatized business? And let’s not forget the glory of the EPA’s “Audit Policy”. In 1995 Congress decided to make a law wherein companies could police themselves and report themselves, which that right-wing moderate accused of being a liberal Bill Clinton signed into law. People who saw thru this horseshit pointed out that: this policy ultimately protects polluters from punishment, and thus will have a detrimental effect on the environment because facilities have less incentive to comply.[7]

Duh.

Nevertheless, the “audit policy” was embraced with both hands by the GOP, especially the far-right nutjobs. Let’s see what Barry R. McBee, the Chairman of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (“TNRCC”) had to say in 1997, when he testified before the federal United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He explained that the TNRCC “is a multi-media environmental agency covering all air, water, and waste-related activities” and assured Congress that one of their main jobs is “To promote and foster voluntary compliance with environmental laws.” McBee then testifies that:

“these issues comes at a critical time for the future course of the state-federal relationship. EPA Administrator Carol Browner has said that she views the relationship between the federal and state environmental agencies much like a marriage. Based on my experience, EPA sees us in the light of a paternalistic parent-child relationship, a relationship that is not healthy and that we must both work to change … It is time for Washington and the EPA to “cut the cord” and give states the independence and flexibility they need to meet each state’s needs. States want, and deserve, as you heard a witness from the Department of Justice state in her testimony before your committee in June of this year, to be “partners” with the federal government,- independent and responsible partners, with a greater role in the decisions that affect our states, our people, our environments and our livelihoods … The lack of federal cooperation in the implementation of state self-audit laws has created needless tension and uncertainty that hampers state efforts to experiment with innovative enforcement tools and deters regulated entities from utilizing them. Federal legislation expressly allowing states authority to pursue such innovations would be a welcome development.”

To sum it up for you, McBee says they don’t want federal EPA telling what to do because state’s rights y’all and the USA is a poopyhead for not giving Texas more control over itself and for failing to spread the dandy self-reporting idea across this great land of ours.

The fertilizer company that just detonated and destroyed lots of lives “self reported” that they had NO RISK OF FIRE, so you can see that the audit program really does work! Yay for weaker federal government and red states’ rights!  

I think we can all say that Texas was all kinds of environmentally awesome after that. The environmental records of both of it’s governors since 1995, George W. Bush and Rick Perry, are peachy keen!

Sadly, it’s only been eight years since the last time a Texas industry went ka-boom and caused multiple fatalities and causalities. In March of 2005, “a hydrocarbon vapour cloud explosion occurred at the ISOM isomerization process unit at BP’s Texas City refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15 workers and injuring more than 170 others.”

This. This is why politics matter. Who you chose to run your government, on any level, can literally be the difference between life and death.

PS – That asshat Ted Cruz (R-TX), who in “January of 2013 … claimed he couldn’t support aid for Sandy victims because of the “pork” and “wasteful spending” in the Disaster Relief Act of 2013” is now begging Uncle Sam for some of that sweet, sweet relief money.  Hypocrite much, Teddy Boy?

Book Review: Hatchet Job by Tamsin Everly

I like romantic suspense. I like to read the way a fish likes water. So when I have read all the books I already have, and all that are new by authors I like, I have get new books by new-to-me authors, right? Except reading a book by new author always makes me feel what can only be described as trepidation because I have a such a low threshold for bad writing that it can slide under a dollar bill and give Washington a hand-job.

Nevertheless, I do break down and buy new novels. It happens. But when it’s not one of my auto-buys what I want is a cheap book to try on for size. Hatchet Job by Tamsin Everly cost a whopping $3.99 so it fit my criteria. Plus, the tagline of “”Lizzie Borden took an ex …” amused me and the blurb made it seem interesting:

“Lizzie left her cheating husband and her Gold Coast life behind after taking a hatchet to his political dreams. But a successful divorce in a world where women are traded in like used cars is the Holy Grail, and when her friend Samantha asks for her help she digs out her camera and prepares to solve the mystery of Mike Riley–a successful plastic surgeon whose behavior has changed so drastically that his wife just can’t deal with it any longer. Spying on Mike leads to nothing but trouble, though. He’s not into drugs, or women… he’s dead. In over her head Lizzie turns to her mobbed up landlord and his dangerously sexy nephew Nick, a man who could easily do more damage to her heart than her ex-husband ever had. As the body count rises Lizzie finds herself trapped between a man who makes her feel alive, and someone who seriously wants her dead…”

I read it, and lo a miracle occurred for me — it was worth reading!

Warning there might be “spoilers” ahead. I don’t think they’re “spoilers”, but they might be for some people. I don’t give away stuff about the mystery, though. What kind of person do you think I am?

Do not answer that.

Anyway, back to the book — It’s told in the first person by the heroine, Lizzie Borden. No, her parents weren’t sadistic dipshits; her ex husband was a hotshot lawyer named Stephen Borden so she got that name when she said “I do”. She also got treated like crap. Unlike the good little heroines of yesteryear, she did not take it meekly and then let some Big Strong Man find her and love her after her jerk of a  husband abandoned her. Nope. She saw the women around her in her ritzy neighborhood either lose their humanity by staying with the bastards they had married or their shirts when they got swapped out for a younger woman (and God Forbid if they were the ones who asked for a divorce) so she made a plan.

That plan involved taking color photos of her politically ambitious husband’s nekkid hiney in flagrante delicto with some chick in a hotel room and then releasing the aforementioned pictures to the media. Needless to say, she walked out of her divorce in much better shape than most women. Honestly, the flashback of her sneaking into the suite and taking the pictures was worth buying the book for me. I love a protagonist who takes the bull by the horns, so to speak:

 

“I smiled at the hotel clerk and told him I was there to surprise my husband, the poor sod knew something was up but he wasn’t willing to take the fall for Stephen, and I didn’t blame him. I’d been counting on it. He looked at my ID and gave me a smile as plastic as the key card he slid across the desk. I sauntered to the elevator and up to the room, got out the new smartphone Stephen had insisted that I needed and opened the door. Did you know that the new door locks are practically silent? Apparently anything as loud as a turning lock mechanism is considered passé. I slipped out of my heels and padded silently across the three-inch pile towards the bedroom and the oh-so-recognizable sounds coming from it. I have to admit I was torn—I couldn’t decide whether to be angry or thankful that he was actually doing what I expected him to be doing. I decided I would make that decision later when I had more time and a large glass of something alcoholic to help me think. The door was slightly ajar and I nudged it with my stockinged toe, holding my breath. I should have known that any place that wouldn’t allow locks to click wouldn’t allow doors to creak either. It swung silently and the whole scene became more and more surreal. I felt like I was watching something on television, the sounds were strangely distant, muffled by a roaring in my ears.

I raised the 14 megapixel camera phone and took thirty seconds of live action film and a few dozen stills. I made sure to capture his face, her face, and his muscular, humping ass as it waved obscenely in the air.

Then, I backed out, pulled the door closed behind me and ran.”

 

Although you have to read further into the book to find it out, the media had a field day with the photos (of course), and Lizzie’s very-headline-play-on-words-worthy-name made it all the juicer. Stephen’s political career was toast. The only consequence she “suffered” from was to be cast out of their social group, but she was more relieved than sad about that.

So when her best friend from college, Samantha Riley, needed help leaving her crackerjack plastic surgeon hubby she came to Lizzie Borden, “the Queen of Vindictive Divorce”. Lizzie agrees to do her buddy a solid and stake out Sam’s house to take pictures of whatever it was that dearest Mike was up to.

Enter (well, re-enter but this is where it gets rolling) the hero stage left. Because Lizzie needed a discrete ride to the snazzy neighborhood Sam lived in, particularly a someone who would drop her off and then come back to get her without quibbling about irrelevant stuff like “legality”, and she asks her landlord’s nephew, Nick Staczak, for a favor. It’s a little contrived, but not completely implausible by any means. Since she is friends with her elderly Polish landlord, Wally Kovacs, she has known Nick for a while and Wally likes it when Nick is nice to her. Furthermore, she assumes Nick is in organized crime because Wally had been, so he would be less upset about a covert op than most people.

I wasn’t crazy about the hero at first, because Nick initially came across as a “bad boy” from whom Lizzie has been steering clear of to protect her already broken heart and that trope had gotten old for me by 1986. However, there was much more to Nick than just “bad boy”, and by the end of the book you are rooting for him to win Lizzie’s heart.

Mystery happens. I don’t want to go into detail because it is too easy to drop accidental clues, but the mystery is a good one. It’s not an easy-peasy one, but it isn’t ridiculously complex just to make it harder to figure out. It’s a hard in a rational, non-the-butler-hid-in-the-elephant kind of way.

Romance also happens. Like the mystery, it was also a good one. It even had the refreshing change (nowadays) of having the couple make out a couple of times instead of cutting straight to the rumpy-pumpy. (Seriously, we used to kiss on dates and make out with people even when we weren’t ready to make the beast with two backs. Do they not do that anymore?)

Secrets are revealed! Danger is survived! Understandings are come to! HEA is achieved!

The thing I liked best about this book is it didn’t stint on either the “romantic” OR the “suspense” aspect of the story. Sadly, too many books in this genre will have a smoking hot romance but a mystery that a toddler could solve if it weren’t for the unlikelihood (physics much?) of the “crime” OR  they have a great mystery with the lamest excuse for romance ever in the history of the world. A middle ground where both are good is nice to find.

The second thing I liked best about this book was the heroine’s snarky internal monologue. Bitch could turn a phrase, y’all. To be honest, the book needed it. The mystery could have gotten way too “dark” for a romance in a hurry if Lizzie’s witticisms didn’t keep bringing the “light” back. Here are a few of the ones that tickled me:

• “Yesterday we were friends having a reunion and today we were having a sleep-over with a side of potential homicide.”

• “I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this close to a man. Well, I could, but I didn’t think that holding a letter opener to someone’s zipper would be in the same category.”

• “Nick was rigid behind me, and I knew he was stomping down on his impulse to shake Stephen by his seventeen-inch Brooks Brothers collar until he told us everything he knew and then beat him to a pulp. He was so sweet.”

• “There was no way I could hurt him. Nick’s skin was thicker than War and Peace and tougher than the tax code.”

In short, Imma give the book a hardy B+ because a it had a romantic romance, a rational mystery, and lots of smarty-pants comments, with only a few rough spots.