Last Call

The Republican party's constant projection of their leadership's faults onto President Obama knows no limits or boundaries.  If you ever hear Orange Julius accusing President Obama of doing anything, it's a sure bet that Boehner is hiding his own massive failures.  For example:

House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of giving up on governing the country at a dangerous economic time to focus on campaigning for re-election.

Interviewed by Major Garrett of National Journal on the second day of the Washington Ideas Forum, Boehner said he hoped someone would ask Obama at his news conference Thursday, "Mr. President, why have you given up on the country and decided to campaign full time?"

"Nothing has disappointed me more than what has happened in the last five weeks," Boehner returned to this point later in the interview. "To watch the president of the United States give up on governing, give up on leading and just spend time campaigning."

"We're legislating. He's campaigning. It's very disappointing," he said.

Number of jobs bills Republicans have presented?  Zero.  Number of federal abortion bills presented?  Thirteen.  Yep, they're legislating alright:  legislating tax cuts for the wealthy, legislating rolling back civil rights, legislating what a woman can do with her uterus, and not legislating help for the millions of unemployed Americans out there.

The notion that House Republicans have done anything at all to help America at all right now is laughable.  Boehner is an embarrassment to the country, and all he can do is attack the President.

What a buffoon.

Cain Unable, Part 4

Lawrence O'Donnell utterly eviscerates Herman Cain in about 25 minutes of epic journalism, as he calls out Cain on everything from Occupy Wall Street to the civil rights movement to Cain's apparent ignorance of the material in his own book.  Watch part 1:



More of the interview here (part 2) and here (part 3).  It's gobsmacking stuff.  Cain is so utterly unprepared and weak-minded here that Lawrence is able to just repeatedly blow holes in everything, his positions on the middle-class, race, society, and his "9-9-9" plan which would, surprise!...result in a massive tax break for the wealthy and a massive tax increase on middle-class and poor Americans, including a national 9% sales tax.

If Cain can't handle O'Donnell, then he's done.  Hell, he couldn't handle a high school student at this point.

EPIC FAIL.

Classless Warfare

Tea Party conservatives protest?  The voice of Real America that all must obey.  Occupy Wall Street protests?  Violent class warfare that pits "American versus American".

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor took to the stage at the 2011 Voter Values Summit in Washington to do a little fear-mongering about the growing Occupy Wall Street protests.

"If you read the newspapers today, I for one am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country," he said.

Cantor appeared try and connect the protests to the cries of "class warfare" Republicans are lobbing at President Obama's jobs bill and his Buffett Rule.

"Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans," Cantor said.

Think the 1% is getting concerned?  Enough to have the House majority leader attack them as a "growing mob".  Which is funny, I thought the Tea Party was in fact proud of saying "We are the mob!"




Now of course when people are actually protesting the folks that really did destroy the country's economy, now being a mob is bad.  Republicans are having a field day by projecting all the criticisms of the Tea Party over the last two years onto OWS, and laughing them off as the unfortunate poor who probably shouldn't even have the right to vote.

As I roll this thing back and I think of American history, there was a time in American history when you had to be a male property owner in order to vote. The reason for that was, because they wanted the people who voted — that set the public policy, that decided on the taxes and the spending — to have some skin in the game.

Now we have data out there that shows that 47 percent of American households don’t pay taxes, 51 percent of American wage-earners don’t have an income tax liability. And it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of people who are not in the workforce at all. In fact, of our unemployment numbers — that run in the 13 or 14 million category — when you go to the Department of Labor Statistics and you look at that data, you can add up those that are simply not in the workforce of different age groups, but of working age, add that number to the number of those who are on unemployment and you come up with a number that was just a few months ago 80 million Americans. Just over a month ago that number went over 100 million Americans that aren’t working.

Now I don’t think they’re paying taxes. But many of them are voting. And when they vote, they vote for more government benefits.

The 1% is now fully playing into the fears of "class warfare" and the GOP is leading the way in continuing to marginalize the vast majority of Americans.

Only In California

(CNN) -- A central California man has been arrested for possession of child pornography, thanks to a tip from burglars who robbed the man's property, authorities said.

Last month, a juvenile and a 19-year-old illegally accessed the property of Kraig Stockard, 54, of Delhi, California, according to a statement from Deputy Tom MacKenzie of the Merced County Sheriff's Department. They broke into Stockard's barn and stole approximately 50 CDs they believed were blank.

I mean, sometimes you just gotta blog something that awesomely awful. For a dose of further irony, charges against the intruders cannot be published because one of them is a minor. The Bon is amused, and grateful the burglars did the right thing, because that truly had to be hard to do.

Yahoo Stops Dancing Around

When Carol Bartz was fired last month, everyone knew then what was going to come.  Yahoo officially denied their plans to sell, but stock went up in anticipation of the sale, and now we have the next step on the road to change.  It seems Yahoo has been releasing necessary information for companies to bid, and have been putting out feelers for buyers.

What does this mean for us?  It depends on who buys Yahoo.  I think any change will destroy the customer base, making the new owners divide up and use the services, but without the love and loyalty that Yahoo has built from the beginning.  That's just my opinion, but so far rumor has proven to be fairly accurate.

Half And Half Again

Right wing radio host Laura Ingraham actually served a useful purpose this week with her charming comments on race, President Obama, Herman Cain, and American history.

And what happened with Obama is that he gets this job that he’s not qualified for… OK, so [Obama is] Constitutionally qualified for but he’s not really qualified for. And guess who pays the price? All of us. Because we had such a yearning for history.

Well I have a question. Herman Cain, if he became president, he would be the first black president, when you measure it by — because he doesn’t — does he have a white mother, white father, grandparents, no, right? So Herman Cain, he could say that he’s — he’s — he’s the first, uh — he could make the claim to be the first — yeah, the first Main Street black Republican to be the president of the United States. Right? He’s historic too.

Now you may be thinking "How is this useful other than as a window into just how awful a person Laura Ingraham is?"  I'll be happy to explain my theory.  It goes something like this:

Ingraham's comments show the difference between racism and assumption of privilege.  They're related, but they're not the same thing.  One specifically involves baseless assumptions, negative stereotypes and bigoted behavior specifically involving race, the other involves that a person believes a specific group that they don't belong to should follow behaviors and be assigned criteria that they consider to be societal norms that the group in question should possess.

It's entirely possible to assume privilege about a group, to "take it upon oneself," on issues other than race (gender, sexual identity, religion or lack thereof, etc.) and it's entirely possible to be racist without assuming privilege (propagating negative stereotypes about one's own race, "self-hating" etc.)

What Ingraham's doing is very much in the category of assumption of privilege.  She feels that she not only has the right to be the arbiter of the President's racial identity, that she not only has the right to define what that identity means to all other racial identity groups (and that Barack Obama's racial identity is different from Herman Cain's racial identity based solely on her opinion) but given her statements in the past she feels that she knows what is best for the black community as well, even though she's not a part of it.  On top of all that, because the President is biracial (like myself) she feels that she can emphasize one race over the other when it suits her argument, and that his identity is mutable based on what she thinks at the time and from which angle she needs to attack him from.  The assumption that other African-Americans need her guidance and opinion in order to formulate their own perceptions of the President's racial identity is pretty much the height of hubris.

But Ingraham's technically not being racist.  She's not actually saying that being black is bad, she's just defining what she thinks being black from a Presidential historical standpoint means and should be defined as.  Having said that, her assumption of privilege here is repugnant, ignorant, arrogant, unacceptable and generally makes her a truly rotten human being.  I'm pretty sure most of us would find her statements to be breathtakingly terrible and that most people find what she said to be unremittingly foul on pure instinct.  Her statements in fact imply a great number of negative things about the President being biracial and that not being good enough to qualify the him for historical status, that somehow it makes Herman Cain "better" in her opinion, but her statements weren't technically racism, only implied.  There is a difference, and it's one that has been exploited to great effect in history.

Now here's where it gets fun:  Ingraham's defenders will no doubt say that her assumption of privilege is not racism, and that anyone who does attack her as being such is overly sensitive and should be dismissed.  But this means that her assumption of privilege is acceptable to society because the racism is merely implied and not overt, and therefore a matter of one's opinion and perspective.  Implied attacks on minorities through the language of assumption of privilege have been used throughout American history. 

It's readily and painfully recognizable to various minorities, but has over the decades has lost stigma and has even become acceptable to those who regularly assume the familiar code phrases, tired arguments, and "dog whistle" semantics because they are in the majority and get to define in society what the acceptable norms are.  When couched in the haze of opinion and point-of-view, attacks on such language can be easily discounted in order to maintain that majority hold on what is acceptable and what is not, and it's done specifically to blunt criticism from minorities and to perpetuate the power in the majority.  At its logical endpoint, it's also designed specifically to anger the minority group in question in order to provoke a reaction by the minority that can be dismissed by the majority in order to establish dominance by being able to control what is acceptable in society.

It's worked for a very, very, very long time.  Ingraham is playing a game as old as human interaction itself.

Having said that, Laura Ingraham can kiss my biracial ass. 

Madam, you are no more the arbiter of the President's racial identity and what it means to America than pile of fecal matter inside your cranium, and the poison-saturated sack of hypocrisy that constitutes your soul is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy.  I am proud of being biracial.  It does not make me any less pure or less worthy or less human than human, and I greatly resent the implication.  I am exceedingly proud of my President because he is someone like myself, and I live in a country where someone like myself can in fact be the leader of the free world and govern a country of 310 million people, all of which are better people than you are.  If you cannot find the singular joy in a society that allows that to happen, your worldview is a hopelessly broken and bleak landscape of endless recriminations that is so exceedingly and perfectly empty that you will seek to fill it with shallow, sneering, venal attacks in order to find some way, any way, to stop the relentless pain that your daily existence must entail.

My theory ends forthwith.  Have a nice day.

Brought To You By The Letters "F" And "U"

National Review's Julie Gunlock takes great umbrage with the notion of the latest puppet character on Sesame Street: Lily, a little girl who sometimes goes hungry.

Although Lily is just the latest politically charged plot to come out of Sesame Street, the problem with this storyline is that it is absolutely false. In fact, Lily’s lucky to be “poor” in this country. Sesame Street would be wiser to educate America’s children about the real poor and hungry — the 98 percent of the world population who live outside the United States.

The truth is, 94.3 percent of American households are able to put enough food on the table every day to feed their families. And despite the grim “facts” and figures thrown around by children’s television programs, celebrity spokespersons, and the mainstream media, the vast majority of children living in America are healthy and well fed.

The facts about hunger in America really aren’t that alarming — certainly not alarming enough to warrant a whole new Sesame Street character!

In fact, American kids have it pretty good. As I wrote on NRO back in January, the idiom “food insecure” — a term created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — means one has either “reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet” or “disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”

So, far from hungry or starving, Lily suffers from a much less dramatic condition — unpleasant to be sure, but at its core, just a somewhat boring, irregular, and occasionally reduced diet.

Of course, what will likely be absent from Sesame Street’s lessons on “food insecurity” are the various federal, state, and local welfare programs for which Lily’s parents qualify: food stamps, WIC, free school meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner!) as well as all the charitable services provided to families in need, such as food banks and church-run food assistance.

Yes, how dare Sesame Street lie and lead anyone to believe that there are kids going hungry in a singularly exceptional country like America, the commie pinko (and actually pink) bastards.  There's no such thing as poverty here, only brave Real Americans supporting millions of parasites out of the goodness of our hearts (and we really should cut funding for the programs that do that so the moochers and looters will pull their fair share dammit.)  Besides, God will fix it.

We have fat people with cell phones and shoes and ethnic hairstyles.  Nobody's actually poor in America the greatest country ever.  Why, food insecurity is just an evil liberal myth.

The shoes belonging to Skyler, 10, and Zachery, 12, are falling apart. Their sister, Jordan, 14, wears the varsity coach’s shoes when she plays on her school’s volleyball team. Less visible is hunger. The children and their parents, Tonya and Ed McKee, of Dowagiac, Michigan, sometimes went without food this summer when Ed’s unemployment insurance ran out and the family was not yet receiving food stamps. Skyler told Cass he gave the birthday money he got at church to his mom for groceries, “and I told her she didn’t have to pay me back.” Skyler confided that sometimes his stomach has growled. “It’s hard, not easy like it was before where we had money and could do stuff. Now we don’t go anywhere… Sometimes we don’t have food and we just don’t eat.” 

Damn kids could stand to skip a meal once in a while, the little lardasses are lucky they're not in Zimbabwe or Mongolia or Costa Rica or something.  And hell, we send them food all the time.  Ungrateful, all of them!

Hungry people in America?  They don't exist.  Not like food insecurity actually affects people if it doesn't affect NRO writers.  It's always good to hear what "poverty is really like" from people who reduce missing meals to an exercise in statistics.  The Math Demands It(tm).

Harry Reid Goes Mini Nuclear

If this report from Alex Bolton at The Hill is legitimate, Harry Reid may have just opened up a huge can of whoopass.

In a shock development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely-used procedural option informally called the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules.

The Democratic leader had become fed up by Republican demands for votes on motions to suspend the rules after the Senate had voted to end a filibuster.

Reid said these motions, which do not need unanimous consent, amount to a second-round filibuster after the Senate has voted to move to final passage of a measure.

The surprise move stunned Republicans, who did not expect Reid to bring heavy artillery to what had been a hum-drum knife fight over amendments to China currency legislation.

It seems that the Republicans either got lazy or sloppy, and left the door open for Reid to throw some serious jujitsu.  Now, what this means is that one of the byzantine filibuster options available to the Republicans is going to go away.  If that happens, all of a sudden things get very, very interesting.

So here's what I want to know: is Reid really going to do this, or is he finally playing cards he has left in order to win concessions from Orange Julius and the House?  Let's not forget that Republicans immediately reneged on the deal reached after the debt ceiling fight and tried to shut down the government a few weeks ago.  If this is Harry Reid's payback, then I hope he's at least getting passage of the American Jobs Act out of the deal at the bare minimum.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Rep. Gabby Giffords celebrated with her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, at a ceremony marking Kelly's retirement from the Navy.
• A Florida GOP state lawmaker wants to repeal the state's dwarf-tossing ban.
• Federal regulators are calling for increased scrutiny of Wall Street speculation in commodities.
• Software giant Oracle will pay nearly $200 million to settle charges that they overbilled the US government for nine years.
• UK-based Verne Global says it will soon open the world's first "carbon-neutral data center" taking advantage of Iceland's geothermal and hydroelectric energy.

Last Call

Greg Sargent argues that the Dems have shifted gears from the party of bi-partisan comity to grab the populist mantle from the intellectually lazy Republicans this week by going after the GOP with a Senate battle on using the Buffett Rule's millionaire's tax to fund the American Jobs Act.

Though it probably won’t secure enough votes to overcome a GOP filibuster, Dems are hoping that an epic floor fight over the surtax will cast Republicans as defenders of the rich and opponents of any and all action on job creation policies that have very broad public support.

More broadly, it’s hard not to discern a clear shift in strategy on not just Obama’s part, but also among Dem party leaders — one designed to, in effect, completely redraw the battle lines that have largely defined our politics in recent months. While the jobs bill in its original form seems doomed, Dems seem to be mounting a full-throttle effort — one involving the White House, Senate leaders, and the DNC — to draw a sharp populist contrast with Republicans on every available front, whether it’s over jobs, tax fairness, or Wall Street reform.

All this is unfolding as a host of various factors — Occupy Wall Street, Obama’s jobs tour, Elizabeth Warren’s Senate run, Warren Buffett’s appeals to his class that they sacrifice a bit more — are pushing the disputes over economic fairness, progressive taxation and corporate influence to the forefront of the national conversation. After two years battling on GOP austerity/deficit/cut-cut-cut territory, Dems finally seem to be making a serious, across-the-board effort to shift the storyline on to their own turf.

The Dems needed to go here years ago, but the Tea Party beat them to it.  Now the Dems are wisely taking advantage of the moment to redefine themselves, their party, and most importantly their battle.  The same effort by the Tea Party redfine Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of dirty effing hippies shows just how worried they are about the movement and about losing the populist mantle they spent billions to buy.

The narrative changes this week, and now the real battle is joined.

Nuked Gingrich, Part 9

Newtie is still in this thing?

Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and now a candidate for Republican nomination for president, listens politely as he sips his coffee before finally rubbing his hands together and interrupting the discussion:

“Let me ask you all on a practical level for a minute: What are your thoughts on how we win the (S.C.) primary?”

You don't, Newt.  You're done. Your campaign is a fantastic joke at best, and at worst a cruel and unusual punishment on the country.

Gingrich also has been abandoned by his presidential campaign staff in South Carolina — including former S.C. GOP chairman Katon Dawson and political consultant Walter Whetsell — who quit and joined Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign.

“He was reasonably popular back (in the ’90s). He was the ying to Clinton’s yang,” Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at Florence’s Francis Marion University, said of Gingrich. “He’s just run into trouble on every front . ... I don’t see him doing all that well here.”

Last month, only 5.6 percent of likely S.C. Republican primary voters said they would vote for Gingrich, according to a poll by Winthrop University. Even fewer — 1.6 percent — said they thought Gingrich would win the nomination.

But Wednesday, Gingrich said he can win the S.C. primary. He said he plans to hire staff and open an S.C. office later this month. And he said he has local connections to most S.C. voters.

His father spent 27 years in the military, which Gingrich says can win over “all the retired military and retired veterans along the coast.”

Is there anyone in the GOP more delusional right now than this guy?  Newt's "My dad was in the military" is going to win him South Carolina?  If there's anyone who personifies the Republican Party and conservatives in general wanting to force America back into the "glory days"of the past, it's Newt Gingrich.

StupidiNews! Celebrity Catchup

Time for some quick bullets from Hollyweird:

I'll start with Billy Bob Thornton.  Granted, I have grown up with a dozen Billy Bobs in my life (yay for the Midwest).  In this case though, it's bad news.  Billy Bob's estranged daughter has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the death of an infant in her care.  It's a tragic story from every angle.

Jani Lane died of alcohol poisoning.  That is incredibly sad, and a waste of a talented guy.  However, several fans have expressed relief mingled with sadness, happy on one level that the singer was not distraught enough to have taken his own life intentionally.

Laura Dern is getting some attention for her new series, Enlightened.  Traditionally, shows like this have not succeeded despite their thoughtful message, but from what I read there is a balance between funny, sad, deep and hysterical.  Enough that you never feel like you are on a single journey, but many.  I love Dern (but I'll never forgive her dad for shooting John Wayne in in The Cowboys) and I wish her the best. Maybe this show will give us an idea of how to find our inner activist and follow our voice.

SlutWalk Serves A Purpose

SlutWalk is a response to a police officer who said "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."  To defy the pattern of blaming the victim, women are organizing events where they march in provocative clothing to bring attention the the fact that it doesn't matter what a person wears, they are not inviting sexual attacks by showing some leg or cleavage.  In fact, it is no less a rape if a woman is walking naked down the street.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, gives a person the right to invade another person's body without their consent.

USA Today draws several parallels between this movement and Take Back The Night, where victims of assault walk campuses and dangerous areas to bring attention the crimes, and to announce to criminals that they will not be chased off the streets in fear.  The two are similar in feel, but bring two entirely different methods in accomplishing their goals.  SlutWalk isn't poking fun at sexual crimes, it is bringing context to a quote from an asshole who thinks women bring rapes on themselves by how they dress.  The fact that his phrase "dressing like sluts" illustrates the very problem they are bringing attention to.  I respectfully disagree with the groups who feel the word slut is inappropriate in this context.

For example, we have this:

"Using the word 'slut' as an adjective to describe women in any way, shape or form just reinforces that pigeonholing of women and tying our value to our worth as sexual beings," Koestner said. "The things that we're trying to accomplish are talking about where women find comfort and where women can heal after being the victim of abuse and objectification and sexualization…. We believe collectively that the violence against women and violence against anyone shouldn't be based upon gender or what one is wearing. But the source of female empowerment or power of the person - I don't think all of us would ever agree that the power comes from the freedom to wear what you want."

Maybe I'm the one who is off here, but it seems to me that this type of thinking misses the very point. The participants in SlutWalk are not calling themselves sluts, they are saying that it is wrong to believe women "ask" for sexual assault.  I do not see anywhere that they are saying that is the end of the matter. It is simply the part of the problem they chose to address.  There is no way to cover every relevant aspect of sexual assault.  SlutWalk just says that if you show some cleavage you are not inviting being attacked.  If you choose to wear a short skirt, you are not responsible for the criminal actions of another.

Hundreds of black women (many of them professors) have endorsed an open letter to SlutWalk, which says that to call themselves sluts would validate "the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the black woman is."

"As black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it. We are perplexed by the use of the term 'slut' and by any implication that this word, much like the word 'Ho' or the 'N' word should be re-appropriated," the letter reads. "In the United States, where slavery constructed black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the black female immigrant struggle combine, 'slut' has different associations for black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label."

Again, SlutWalk did not say they were carrying the torch for every possible relationship to sexual assault.  They may not include the particulars that apply to black women and girls, but they would not be taking anything away from these women, as their point is to help women of every race and walk of life.  If these women feel they are not included, it isn't on purpose, and the spirit of the protest would surely happily include a sister movement that brought attention to what these women feel has been overlooked.  To me this wasn't misrepresenting black women, but would allow for different groups working together while cooperating from different perspectives.

The whole point is: it's just a damned word.  A word that is not justification for rape, a word that is not a real description of a woman who wears spaghetti straps or is responsible for her own sexuality.  Slut is like "bitch" or any other hollow insult, it only applies if you allow it.

I won't get too personal here, but I do want to share my own input on this.  I was raped when I was eighteen.  I was young and moved from a farm town to a major city.  I was attacked outside a grocery store, and beaten so badly I couldn't eat solid food or even wash my face for two weeks because it was too painful.  When the police arrived, I was dirty, in terrible pain, and ashamed to tell them what happened.  I will never forget when one officer asked me "What do you think you did to contribute to these events?"  That has haunted me forever.  Now I'd say "you asshole, I wanted some Chunky Monkey and Sprite, what the hell  is it to you?"  Back then, I was immediately shamed and withdrew.  I answered questions but did not look them in the eye.  In subsequent interviews I declined their offers of help and I suffered more than I had to because I was terrified to face the idea that I had somehow brought this on myself.  It took years before I realized the criminal was 100% responsible for his actions, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But this is what thousands of women face, from the police, from the lawyers, and the criminals themselves when they try to justify themselves in court.  The saddest thing of all is that sometimes it actually works.

Enough is enough.  It's time to change the attitudes of the men who never have to face those circumstances.  If Springfield ever has a SlutWalk, I'll be right up front, loud and proud.  And I dare anyone to try and stop me.  I'm a grown woman now, and I will wear what I please. I will say what I please.  I will not apologize for wearing heels or a nice dress, and I will not bear the guilt of a criminal's decision to harm another.  My prayer is that all women can reach this place of confidence, and not have to take the path that I and other victims have had to in order to see the light.

Your Political Cartoon Of The Moment

From Jeff Parker of Florida Today:



Oh, and Nevada Republicans have moved their primary up to January 14th, now first in the nation. This means we could have 2012 primaries in December 2011 at this rate: in just weeks.

Steve Jobs Was Brilliant, His Company However...

Let's face it, Steve Jobs was one of corporate America's leading visionaries and leaders, gone at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.  That may say more about the state of corporate America than Steve Jobs, for Apple was no corporate saint by any means on the issue of underage Chinese labor, something the struggled with for several years... but Steve Jobs will be missed.



To his credit, Jobs did come clean on the company's audit and fought to remedy the situation, but the efforts to do so have stalled out in the wake of fabulous iPhone/iPad profits.  Perhaps the best way to remember the company's founder is to see the efforts to correct Apple's child labor issues through.

In a New York Times article last week by Catherine Rampell, performing artist Mike Daisey talked about his trip to Shenzhen, China, where he posed as a wealthy businessman to infiltrate factories where Apple products and other electronics are made. He says he witnessed inhumane conditions and interviewed workers outside of factories who said they were as young as twelve.

Apple?  Honor Steve.  Fix this.  Now.

On the other hand, Westboro Baptish Church?  You can suck it.