Bank of America dumps a credit card customer one day (apparently as a result of griping about having her limit cut in half without notice), and then asks her to come back two days later at the original credit limit…
and NOT because of a reporter’s inquiry about the issue, per BoA.
Riiiiight.
…but this one’s too good to let go by unnoticed.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would have voted against Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark legal case that paved the way for racial desegregation of school systems across America.
So, homosexual acts, abortion upon demand, same-sex marriage, equal pay for equal work, and racial desegration of school systems are all “new constitutional rights that were never intended by the drafters”.
This man is evil. (And Justice Clarence Thomas is his sock puppet.)
The next leap into space
The Ares I-X orbital vehicle is sitting on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral this morning, waiting for its first flight test. America’s next leap into space is about to take first steps.
Here is a great page for showing your children where their future is going.
It’s enough to make you collapse into the newest American disease: CFS, the crippler of young liberals
A recent defense spending bill (FY2010 Defense Appropriations Bill) contains an amendment, sponsored by Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken, that requires companies with government contracts to allow employees to seek redress in a court of law rather than be forced into private arbitration. The penalty for violating companies would be loss of all government contracts.
Minnesota junior senator Al Franken
The amendment was prompted by the plight of Jamie Leigh Jones, a former Halliburton contractor who was gang-raped by co-workers while she was on assignment in Iraq. Her contract forbade her to seek legal redress; it also required her to not disclose what happened. She ignored that requirement, and was fired.
The Senate passed the amendment 68-30. 30 senators, all Republican, voted against this particular amendment.
I’ll say it again: 30 United States senators decided that staying on Halliburton’s good list was more important than allowing Americans to seek redress in our legal system.
And, they gave tacit approval to rape.
Here are the names of those distinguished white middle-aged (or older) gentlemen:
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS).
Here’s a lovely list of these gentlemen, with pictures and contact phone numbers.
In addition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied against it, and the U.S. Department of Defense conspired to stop it.
The House is now considering the appropriations bill, and Hawaii Representative Dan Inouye (of congressional Watergate investigative committee fame) is being heavily lobbied to remove or water down the amendment. Let’s see how he and the rest of the House votes.
From President James Madison’s Speech on the Right of Suffrage:
“The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy.
“Allow the right exclusively to property, and the rights of persons may be oppressed. The feudal polity alone sufficiently proves it.
“Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property or the claims of justice may be overruled by a majority without property, or interested in measures of injustice. Of this abundant proof is afforded by other popular Govts. and is not without examples in our own…
“In a just & a free Government, therefore, the rights both of property & of persons ought to be effectually guarded…
“Should Experience or public opinion require an equal & universal suffrage for each branch of the Govt…a resource favorable to the rights of landed & other property, when its possessors become the Minority, may be found in an enlargement of the Election Districts for one branch of the Legislature, and an extension of its period of service [the U.S. Senate]. Large districts are manifestly favorable to the election of persons of general respectability, and of probable attachment to the rights of property…The tendency of a longer period of service would be, to render the Body more stable in its policy, and more capable of stemming popular currents taking a wrong direction, till reason & justice could regain their ascendancy.”
[bracketed insert and emphases mine]
The U.S. Senate was created to supply a more stable institution to balance the more frequently elected, more volatile House of Representatives. Also note that the Senate, created to represent the “rights of landed & other property”, cannot initiate bills dealing with money (revenue). That is reserved to the House only.
Bill Caudle, at the age of 39, joined the U.S. Army this month.
Why? It was the only solution he could see. He was laid off in March from a position he’d held for 20 years, and he got inducted so he would have coverage for his wife’s chemotherapy.
He will be gone for four years.
He will miss his youngest child’s entire high school career.
His wife’s ovarian cancer may well kill her before he musters out.
Mr. Crumb, of underground comic fame, has released an illustrated Book of Genesis. (I should have bought it at the local comic con earlier this month.)
Lot, post-Sodom and Gomorrah
I must have dozed off in Sunday School when they covered the above-illustrated story about Lot’s daughters having sex with him (“to maintain his line”) (Genesis 19). This was after Lot had offered the samesaid daughters to a gang of rowdies for a group shagging, just so the gang would leave Lot and his guests (the pair of angels that had come to warn him of Sodom and Gomorrah’s imminent destruction) alone.
I must have been on vacation when they discussed the business of Elijah asking God to send she-bears to rip apart the children that had made fun of Elijah’s bald head (2 Kings 2).
And we’re not going to get anywhere near that psilocybin trip that is Revelations.
Oh, this is rich:
An on-line game about a fictitious coup by President Obama. (Wingnuts of America, gamers are not exactly your ideal demographic, unless you’re offering free pizza and Mountain Dew.)
The mind boggles.
Mr. Trillin’s verse comment about Roman Polanski, from The Nation:
A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he’s been punished for this lapse–
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He’ll miss the movers and the shakers.
He’ll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He’s suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.
Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that’s for sure–
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too–
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people’s rules.
So Roman’s banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.
Did you know that electronic fetal monitoring (EFM), lauded in the 1970s as an inroad to prevent cerebral palsy and other birth injuries, has only resulted in an increase in the percentage of C-section births–up to 33% (double what it was 10 years ago). (Cerebral palsy occurrence hasn’t changed since 1945.)
Do one-third of all women need major abdominal surgery in order to bear a child? Really?
Did you know that in the last 20 years the incidence of induced labor has doubled to 22% of all births in the U.S.?
Do women really need to be injected with a drug in order to have a baby?
Did you know that the incidence of maternal death is actually three times what is reported, because the U.S. is the only country that shortens the tracking time for such deaths to six weeks post-natal. (All other countries track it for a year.)
Why?
Did you know the number of maternal deaths in the U.S. has jumped from 7.5 per 100,000 births to 15.5 in the last 23 years?
Doesn’t that appall you?
Did you know that midwife-moderated home deliveries for low-risk births result in:
Consider the option of a midwife. What would you rather have?
a hospital, unnecessary drugs and medical procedures, and unconsciousness during one of the most important events in your life (and the most important of your baby’s)?
or
the comfort of your home, the loving assistance of your partner, and a midwife who knows what you’re going through and has any required medical assistance available at a moment’s notice?
Talk to your OB doctor, and don’t take that “Doctor knows best” condescension and the warm pat on the shoulder. Take charge of your births, just like you take charge of your life.
Cameron Todd Willingham, who refused to plead guilty for a lighter sentence
So, you take an apparent case of arson and resultant deaths, you convict someone of it, and you execute the guilty party.
Years later, arson experts (including Craig Beyler, one of the most respected in the field) bring up strong evidence that indicates that the fire was accidental. This comes up before a review board, which is rightly concerned that the wrong person was sentenced and executed, and an investigation of the issue is planned.
As governor of that state, what do you do? You could:
a) support the discovery of the facts in the case (if any were missed), discover any missteps in the pursuit of justice, and humbly apologize (and possibly offer some sort of recompense) to the family of the executed man on behalf of the state if facts dictate that he was not guilty;
or
b) ignore the whole thing;
or
(c) dismiss three members of the review board (causing cancellation of the scheduled inquiry), proclaim that the executed man, Cameron Todd Willingham, was “a monster”, tell the review board to “look forward, not backward”, and then run scared that he won’t get the GOP’s nod to run for re-election in 2010.
Guess which one Texas Governor Rick Perry chose?
Gotta love the ginchy vintage web design!
The congregation of the Amazing Grace Baptist of Canton, North Carolina, is planning to put to the bonfire all English-language versions of the Bible except the KJV (King James Version), as well as books written by such heretics as Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, the Pope (those dirty Cath-o-licks!), and other heathens. Recorded music will also see the torch–everything from rap to country to contemporary Christian. These folks don’t miss a thing, do they? There are also promises of “great preaching and singing”, as the site says.
Oh, and they’re serving BBQ and fried chicken, and all the fixin’s. If they offer decent peach cobbler, I might show up.
