Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays

(Forgive: Blog postings will be intermitant until the new year.)

More: ..."new black."

"Pink is the new black."
"'Sixty percent off' if the new black."
"White is the new black."
"Free market capitalism is the new black."

Behind Terror

Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, a Russiqan terrorist from the late nineteenth century, said: "Terror is a terrible thing. There is only one thing worse than terror, and that is putting up with oppression docilely."

"He Got Her Pregnant"

In an article, "Outside Agitator", on Naomi Klein, "the new new left"'s agitprop star, in the December 8th issue of the New Yorker, author Larissa MacFarquar, writing about the doctor father of Naomi Klein, Michael, states: "Meanwhile he had met a young activist filmmaker from Philadelphia named Bonnie Sherr, and got her pregnant [italics mine]...They ended up in Montreal."

Got her pregnant? I assume Naomi's dad didn't rape her, since they went off together to Montreal and set up house. My best guess is the sex was consensual. If so, isn't "got her pregnant" a bit of recidivism from the female writer's point of view?

I remember well that statement from my youth: "men got women pregnant"...which, at least from my mother's point of view, she strongly passed on to me. We men--whose fault it was--were expected to assume (as the phrase infers) responsibility. "If you're old enough to get a girl pregnant, you're old enough to marry her."

The sense of 'getting a woman pregnant' (I've always figured) was based on (and rejected by the modern, liberated women) the assumption that women in those days didn't really want sex and therefore men always cajoled, seduced, extorted and forced women into it....whom, I assume, from Ms. MacFarquar statement, includes even the liberal, free-spirited filmmaker-communist-feminist inclined women such as Bonnie Sherr (Naomi's mother); at least as I read her persona from the article, which included a later film on pornography.

Note to Ms. MacFarquar: in today's age and time, and properly so, if it's now a woman's body--and a woman's sexual choice is bolstered by the law and the pill--may I ask you to drop in any future writing on sex and pregnancy that antiquated--and female chauvinist--phrase: "got her pregnant". It now--and perhaps even then--takes two to tango.

Bailouts: And the Goose and the Gander

Three weeks ago, when Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson was first proposing to 'bail out' the banks, everyone (at least everyone left of center) said: "Not unless we the government gets a piece of the action; we want some oversight (some decision control);' bailout money was conditioned on hands-on, participatory involvement.

Which leads us to a further consideration: now that the Fed and the Government are going to have to go to the marketplace to get themselves bailed out...after all, the US is running a huge dollar deficit already and needs to borrow even more money to make up for the ever-increasing deficit for the bailout...the US government is going to have to turn to a lot of Chinese state fund sources and Arabic resources to buy our debt instruments (i. e., loan us the money). The question then arises: does the same demand for a piece of the action and regulatory control apply to our international bailout partners...those who buy our debt? Should the Chinese or Arabs now demand a piece of the USA action and demand some control over our US economic decision-making, similar to that which the Congress and American people are demanding from the borrowing banks and investment banks?

Isn't "what's good for the goose, good for the gander"?