Lord, Protect Us From the People Supposed to Be Protecting Us

I can’t say with any certainty that I’m the first blogger to ever quote both Radley Balko and David Neiwert in the same post, but I bet I’m one of only a few.

So, here we go.

From Balko, we learn that, in Chicago, cops more often fuck prostitutes in exchange for not arresting them than they do arresting prostitutes.  So, in effect, police in Chicago have a vested interest in keeping prostitution illegal because, if it’s legal, they lose a large pool of women they can coerce into having sex with them.  Remind me again how this is better than just regulating the industry?

It seems to me that there’s no question that the only feminist response to the way the world is right now is to advocate for the legalization of prostitution.  We can argue all day about how, in a perfect world, women should have other choices as to whether to sell their bodies for money.  We can argue all day about whether or not it’s moral.  But, in the meantime, bullshit like this is going on and these women have no recourse.

Make it legal, get it regulated, and then we can worry over the morality of it and the proper feminist position to have on it*. 

From Neiwert, we learn (and you all may, if you haven’t already seen this, have to sit down.  Remember when I theorized that Nate, the Pan-Galactic Blogger Blaster had to be working for the FBI because his persona was just too good?  This tidbit is like if that turned out to be true, but moreso.) that Hal Turner may be an FBI informant.

Yes, let me say that again: HAL TURNER may be working for the FBI.

If this is true, it is the equivalent of the FBI hiring a bombmaker to make bombs, to hand said bombs to mad bombers, and then to turn around and tell the FBI which bombers he gave bombs to.  Because, of course, he’s proved himself to be such an upstanding citizen in the first place.

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*My opinion remains that a woman should be able to do what she wants with her body, whether or not I approve of it and that, if prostitutes were able to have a public voice–which they’d have if prostitution were legal–they could spearhead for themselves the reforms they need.

Lazy Sunday Morning

World, I ask you this.  Is there any more surprisingly pleasant feeling in the whole world than when a dog settles herself under you and rests her head across your feet, so that your toes are draped in the warm, soft folds of dog neck?

Here’s my small sadness for today.  I spent all yesterday afternoon with the girls at Mack’s house making chocolate covered pretzels sprinkled with almonds and they all rocked so much at it.  Supermousey and her friend, who probably has a cute nickname, I just don’t remember it, were dipping the pretzels and Ginger’s daughter, who was too short to kind of safely do that, instead became like queen of everything else.  She was moving trays around and sprinkling almonds and even, when we needed them, crushing the almonds.

Teeny, tiny little girl, big mallet, bang, bang, bang.  It was so cool to see her just take charge of all of those details.

Anyway, here’s the sad part: We made sure that everyone had some to take–Ginger, Supermousey’s friend, Mack with him to watch football, and some for Mack’s family and…

I’m sure you’ve guessed.

Somehow it completely slipped my mind to make sure I remembered to bring some home for me and the Butcher.

Oh well.

It May Be Better If I’m Sedated Before I Read Stories Like This

I read this over at Sylvia’s and I felt a kind of metaphysical dizziness, like my mind was still going no, no, no, while my heart was breaking.

I have to talk about it like this:  To me, I think your best friends are the ones who can hold for you the idea of the best you when you lose sight of it.  They see you like you are.  They know the person you wish you could be and the person you have the potential to be.  They love your best you, which, I think, is the part of you that responds to being loved.

And your best friends will hold your best you for you when you’ve fallen so low down and crazy with grief or rage or just the blues in general.  When you’re lost from yourself, it’s your friends you can count on to whisper yourself back to you, little by little.

Who, America, is your friend?  Who is the person who loves you enough to throw his arm around you and tell you your best things to you?  Who is it that can reach you when you are so damn lost from yourself?

I just don’t know.

You’ve never been easy to love, punching your way across the continent, landing devistating blow after blow, even as you also so carefully raised your petticoats to keep them out of the mud.

Broad-shouldered and practical, deeply superstitious and rash.

A dreamer, though.  A dreamer, always able to be better than the men and women who dreamed of what you might be.

How long do we have to wait for you to come back to that?