SlowpokeBlog

...as I did yesterday, the man just authored one doozy of a Supreme Court opinion on pay discrimination. In short, you'll have 180 days from the set date of your salary to ferret out whether you're being screwed and make any claim of discrimination. As usual, Ginsburg states what should be obvious to anyone sitting on the SCOTUS:

In a vigorous dissenting opinion that she read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the majority opinion “overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination.” She said that given the secrecy in most workplaces about salaries, many employees would have no idea within 180 days that they had received a lower raise than others.

An initial disparity, even if known to the employee, might be small, Justice Ginsburg said, leading an employee, particularly a woman or a member of a minority group “trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment” to avoid “making waves.” Justice Ginsburg noted that even a small differential “will expand exponentially over an employee’s working life if raises are set as a percentage of prior pay.”

I will state again that the Dems' unwillingness to try to stop Alito from joining the highest court in the land was their worst crumble to date.

My thoughts on the Democrats' cave last week on the war funding bill are a little more complicated than this cartoon suggests, though it reflects my overall belief that the vote was politically disastrous. Instead of being overcautious about seeming too forceful, the Dems need to start worrying about appearing too weak; and that is exactly how they came off by giving Bush a blank check to continue the Iraq gorefest until September. More than anything, Americans want leaders with convictions. For better or worse, it matters less what those convictions are than the strength of those convictions.

I find myself more perplexed than anything. What the hell were they thinking? It almost seems like there has to be more to the story than what we know. The thing that confused me most was that my own Senator, Jim Webb, voted for passage -- and not only has he opposed the war from the beginning, but he has a son in Iraq. More than anyone, he doesn't have to worry about accusations of "not supporting the troops." An excerpt of his statement on the bill:

I worked very hard to try to persuade the Democratic leadership to include clear, restrictive language in this Supplemental. I did not succeed, and was disappointed in many of the provisions that remained. However, we are working under the reality that, on the issue of Iraq, this Senate does not have a Democratic majority. From the outset, we are a minority of 49, given Senator Lieberman's position on the war. This reality dictates our conduct.

The fact that he mentions Lieberman intrigues me, because I was just speculating that that obnoxious tit could be at the center of all of this. He recently backed away from his earlier promise not to go Republican, which would end the Dems' control of the Senate. Given Webb's statement, I can't help but think Lieberman factored in more heavily than most reporting on the bill suggests.

Personally, I was more upset when the Dems declined to filibuster radical wackadoo Alito, because I think the consequences of having him on the Supreme Court for the next three decades could be worse than a few extra months of involvement in Iraq, as bad as that will be. But they still deserve a kick in the pants.

I grew sick of seeing Johnny Depp dressed like a pirate everywhere I went last summer. I even blogged about it briefly. I have nothing against Mr. Depp; I just find his pirate portrayal repulsively slick. It took several months, but the imagery of Captain Jack Sparrow finally receded from the media landscape, much to my relief. And now... now I have to go through it ALL OVER AGAIN! It's just not fair. The same goes for Shrek, who stared at me from a cereal box in the grocery store the other day. Can we at least get some new hollow characters with which to be inundated?

...who was awarded his Ph.D. today. Does this mean I'll have to call him Dr. Slowpoke?

John Grisham gave a nice commencement speech, in which he dispensed three basic pieces of advice: Don't think you can plan out your life; don't believe the words of a president itching to go to war; and this generation is the one that will need to save the environment. Good for you, Mr. Grisham.

I realize I'm a tad late with this post, but I wound up spending last night futilely attempting to sleep on the floor of the Detroit airport. To make a long story short, there were storms and Northwest Airlines screwed us. Air travel sucks so bad these days, the least airports could do is provide a "quiet room" for people trying to sleep, away from the obnoxious blare of CNN and the incessant, deafening announcements about carry-on luggage restrictions. A pox on it all! Also, a pox on the evil Chili's Too, the last open restaurant, that denied us entrance around 1 a.m., moments after seating other people.

Speaking of poxes, last week Mr. Slowpoke read me something out of Michel Foucault's Birth of the Clinic about an old medical practice of spinning people in centrifuges to balance out their bodily humors (unfortunately I cannot locate the reference now), which struck me as kind of hilarious. I confess to taking a little artistic license here, placing the centrifuge back in the Middle Ages. Reader Mat in France helpfully notes:

I got a huge laugh from you last cartoon, but I have to add that medieval physicians were actually not all that bad! (let's say a little less "Spanish Inquisition" like"). One cute aspect of it is that "physician monks" in those days use to share their knowledge with the ladies in charge of estates and castles (aka the wife of a duke, lord, baron etc. gone off to tour his territories). Those ladies where highly respected for the special healing powers they knew about. And most of the medicine used was derived from herbs, so it was much "softer" than what we perceive it to be. It would be funny, then, to imagine those anti-science macho types relying on respected women to provide them with organic meds...

I did in fact read something while researching the cartoon about how a large number of medieval doctors were women. Curious, huh?

I'm visiting Toronto for the first time. Note to non-Canada-frequenting Americans: there's some stuff up here. Observations on my trip so far:

1) Toronto prostitutes are into thigh-high, white leather boots.

2) The subways run more frequently here than anyplace I've ever been. It's nice to be someplace where public transportation is clearly a high priority.

3) The Detroit airport has a totally rad water fountain. Also, the walkway between terminals has flashing multicolored lighting and techno music that make it seem like a disco tube.

More observations to follow, probably.

I realize I'm probably offending at least a few of my readers with this one. Let me just say, I mock because I love. While I have never immolated myself, I have wasted precious time engaged in blog comment warfare. Well, I'm not sure that I love the bongo-beaters that show up at political rallies -- as I've said many times before, these events are not the place to let your freak flag fly.

Someone did, sadly, set himself on fire last November to protest the Iraq War. He was not in his living room, but near a freeway exit in Chicago. As we can see, this strategy did not result in the desired policy change.

I considered including "political cartooning" among the activities listed here but, well, I like to think it has the potential to do some good.

I received an answer to my earlier question about what sort of person writes Wikipedia entries about snack foods: apparently, a very thorough one. My cartoon "Frannie Fleenowitz, Food Photographer", which mentions Cheez-It crackers, has been added to the "References in Popular Culture" section of the Cheez-It Wikipedia entry. This makes me extremely happy.

I didn't want to give the Edwards haircut story any more legs, but once a stupid "scandal" like this has made its way through the cable news cycle, late night comedy shows, and a presidential candidates' debate, I doubt there's much damage an altweekly cartoonist can do by continuing to talk about it. Besides, I thought some perspective was in order.

Here's an open invitation to the Edwards campaign: the next time someone brings up the silly haircuts, feel free to use my factoid that Edwards could get one of those expensive 'do's every week for the next 20 MILLION YEARS and still not equal the cost of the Iraq war. Edwards can get thousand-dollar haircuts for all I care, if he enacts universal health insurance and invests in this country's infrastructure instead of starry-eyed military adventurism that creates more terrorists.

I think the Democrats would benefit from more talk of the ungodly waste of taxpayer money that has gone into the war. Leaders need to say, "We simply cannot afford $2 billion a week any longer."

I must say, I enjoyed drawing the cross-section of Edwards' scalp. The human body is filled with lots o' neat organic shapes.