Typical Republican advice. No taxpayer money for abortions, but plenty of party money for them.
“I say there is no darkness/But ignorance”
South Carolina’s legislature has voted to remove all funding to the state’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP).
This means that the 3000 people (out of 14,000) known to be HIV+ and who receive state assistance to pay for the medication that keeps them alive, won’t be alive a lot longer.
Supporters of the funding were hoping for enough additional moneys to clear out the waiting list at ADAP. So, instead of getting help for an additional 600, everyone loses.
I mean, everyone. Without medication, those carrying the infection will not only die sooner (in some cases, much sooner), the virus will be much easier to spread. AIDS meds lower the viral load, which makes transmission less likely.
The South Carolina legislature took their cue from the microcephalic waterheads directly to their north. In January the North Carolina lawmakers decided to not allow increased enrollment in their ADAP program. (Current recipients are still getting their assistance–for now.)
Separate legislative buttocks cheeks strongly. Insert legislators' crania forcibly.
Support for HIV and AIDS patients has never been high on legislators’ minds. As Molly Ivins said,
“[The legislature] voted against it because if they didn’t, everyone’d think they was queer.”
Moral backbone appears on the Internet!
Google has apparently lifted the censorship filters that the Chinese government demanded as a requirement for doing business in their country.
This image is now available when you search ‘Tiananman Square’ on www.google.cn:
Hot damn! They actually did it!
This is also searchable at www.google.cn
Let’s see if Microsoft has the balls to follow suit with Bing. Anyone want to take a bet? I’ll offer 3-1 that they won’t.
“What’s in a word?”
Tired of reading PC crap? Okay.
“Nigger, Boogie, Jig, Jigaboo, Skinhead, Moolimoolinyon, Schvatza, Junglebunny. Greaser, Greaseball, Dago, Guinea, Wop, Ginzo, Kike, Zebe, Heed, Yid, Mocky, Himie, Mick, Donkey, Turkey, Limey, Frog. Zip, Zipperhead, Squarehead, Kraut, Heinie, Jerry, Hun, Slope, Slopehead, Chink, Gook.
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They’re only words. It’s the context that counts. It’s the user. It’s the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language. Bullshit!”
Ah, the words of the immortal George Carlin.
There are so many other words we’re not supposed to say. If I may expand upon what Mr. Carlin says above, it’s not just the context of the speaker that counts. It’s also the context of the listener; in fact, I’d hazard to say that the context of the listener is far more important.
I’ve posted politically incorrect material before. Some others see it as an oddly-drawn guy with a lit, old-fashioned iron ball bomb perched on his head. Others see it as a representation of facts and concepts about religious extremism in today’s world. (I would be included in this group.)
A few see such material and would react by greeting me with a machete and an axe.
This last says something about me, but says far, far more about those like the attacker who wish me to say nothing that offends them.
Bullshit on that.
All the bad Republican eggs in one basket
(from Huffington Post)
On April 7 Sarah Palin is planning to appear at a campaign fundraiser for the Minnesota 6th Congressional District’s very own wackadoodle Michelle “census=internment camps” Bachmann.
Bachmann is well-known for own distinct flavors of reasoning. What was her logic for rejecting the census as “unnecessary government intervention into American lives”?
“If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.”
It might be noted that the vast majority of Americans who were sent to the WWII-era internment camps were of Japanese descent and were not female Republican representatives.
Other Minnesota Republican dogs are returning to their vomit planning to appear at the rally, including present governor Tim Pawlenty and all-around poor sport would-be senator Norm Coleman.
The head of the attorney general of Virginia, on a pike, on the outskirts of Richmond
A letter from asshat extraordinaire and state A.G. Ken Cuccinelli to Virginia’s public universities specifically says
the law and public policy of Virginia “prohibit a college or university from including ‘sexual orientation’, ‘gender identity’, ‘gender expression’ or like classification, as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy, absent specific authorization from the General Assembly.”
This means that Virginia’s public schools of higher education can’t even take the more-than-fair stance to choose not to discriminate on the basis of orientation or identity; they are specifically forbidden to do so.
Here’s his contact information:
Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli
900 East Main Street
Richmond, VA 23219
(804) 786-2071
Here is his email form. (The coward lacks the cojones to give out a real email address.) Drop a few well-chosen, polite words about how Loving v Virginia might have a few words about this.
McCarthyism rises zombie-like from the grave
1954. The hearings against the Army that brought down Joseph McCarthy’s reputation and his self-aggrandizing campaign against Communism in the U.S. (I couldn’t find online video or audio of the “I have evidence in these papers!” speech–the papers were blank–that catapulted McCarthy to infamy.)
2010. The words and actions against the Department of Justice (a favorite Joe McCarthy target) that may bring down Liz Cheney’s reputation as anything except a self-aggrandizing campaigner against terrorism. It’s ironic that she is targeting the DoJ and its lawyers she claims are “sympathetic to terrorists”. It is as if she’s reading out of McCarthy’s playbook. (Keep America Safe is a sock puppet for Cheney’s political interest.
No one ever credited Cheney (or McCarthy) with an overabundance of smart. Her apple didn’t fall far from her father’s tree.
You s-s-s-said it, P-p-orky!
(Hint: the clip was animated in 1939–note the 48 stars in the flag.)
In 1954 the political wingnut combination of the privileged white Daughters of the American Revolution, the Catholic storm troopers fraternal service organization Knights of Columbus, and closet Jehovah’s Witness President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed Congress to violate the separation of church and state by inserting “under God” into the Pledge.
Fun fact: the original salute to the flag was not placing the right hand over the heart. It was the Bellamy Salute:
I think we all know why *this* changed.
(Thanks to Phil at Skepticmoney for this one.)
Paging Larry Craig!
UPDATE: Grrrr!!! Local media and political figures knew Ashburn was gay, and they still let him spew his homophobic venom. When The Californian asked him point-blank if he was gay, his response was
“Why would that be anyone’s business? Including The Californian’s? I think there are certain subjects that are simply not relevant and this is one of them. It has no bearing on the job I do.”
Guess what, asshole? It most fucking well does.
~~~
There’s a semi-formal rule for outing public figures on the internet:
You don’t, unless the said figure has been actively working against gay folk having the same civil and legal rights as straights.
Rep. Ashburn
Time to out a really bad closet case.
California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is a staunch family-values legislator. He regularly organizes anti-gay marriage rallies.
He was arrested for driving under the influence early yesterday in Sacramento. He failed his field sobriety test and was taken to jail, along with his state-issued car.
It was later discovered that he was leaving a well-known gay bar with an “unidentified man”.
It makes you yearn for the good old days.
Rights? Riiiiight.
You don’t have any rights.
None.
Hey! I hear you cry. I’ve got rights! Lots of rights. I’ve got the Bill of Rights right in front of me, and it says I have rights–the right to assemble, the right to speak as I please, the right to be tried by a jury of my peers, the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
Wrong. You do not have rights.
What you have are temporary, selective privileges granted to you by a government that has grown less concerned about its citizens and far more concerned with maintaining and expanding its power base. And that group of privileges is getting smaller every day.
Habeus corpus is still suspended, in the U.S., for everyone.
The Patriot Act has been extended for yet another year (so much for “temporary” measures).
We will soon not be allowed to speak the harsh truth about militant religions and their war on rational thought. Fundie wingnuts (of all flavors) and teabaggers push for legislation that makes criticism of what they believe to be labeled as “hate crimes”.
And if we’re not careful, it might just come down to this.
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
The health care system in Animal Farm Canada is touted as “the envy of the world“, according to former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
Well, perhaps most of the world envies it. But not Labrador/Newfoundland premier Danny Williams. When one of his cardiac valves started to leak, he beelined it for Miami’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he underwent a minimally-invasive surgical repair.
I sorta buy Williams’ argument that
“I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics.”
The theory in Canadian health care is that rich and poor are treated alike. Granted, Williams sought out the best privilege his money could buy, which happened to be private medical care in the United States. However, his attitude rings a very shrill hypocritical bell:
“This is not a unique phenomenon to me [referring to Canadians going south for health care]…this is something that happens with lots of families throughout this country, so I make no apologies for that.”
Tell that to an working-class stiff in Quebec Province with a spouse, three kids, and overdue bills.
“Live from New York!”
Funny or Die (usually the latter) has an exclusive video made by former Saturday Night Live actors who have performed as U.S. presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Shrub. They’re proselytizing for creation of a federal consumer protection agency to curb the aggrandizing behaviors of banks and financial institutions, which was allowed by a number of the very men who created the problems in the first place.
Msrs. Ackroyd, Chase, Carvey, Carrey, Farrell, and company do a relatively funny job, even if Chase does one of his old, tired pratfall pieces, and Jim Carrey (filling in for Phil Hartman as Reagan) goes a little over the top as usual.
Rerun: who’s responsible?
Some thoughts about you, the electorate, and our current American political system, from V for Vendetta:
“It’s no good blaming the drop in work standards upon bad management, either, though to be sure, the management is very bad. In fact, let us not mince words. The management is terrible.
“We’ve had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars, and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact.
“But who elected them? It was you! You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you!
“While I admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal error century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.
“You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines.
“You could have stopped them. All you had to do is say ‘No!’
“You have no spine. You have no pride.”
Fun time with Ron Paul
Ron Paul belongs to that group of libertarians that Ayn Rand called “hippies of the right”–arch-conservatives who nonetheless dreamed of an anarchic America rather than a collective one.
Mr. Paul has been “blessed” (if that’s the word for it) by a straw poll held by the recent CPAC convention. The poll showed that a plurality of 31% of the conventioneers wanted Ron Paul to run for the presidency in 2012, ahead of the likes of Mitt “Waffles” Romney, Sarah “I never saw a job I didn’t want to quit halfway through during” Palin, and Minnesota governor Tim “completely clueless” Pawlenty.
However, one needs to consider material that was published with Mr. Paul’s blessings. Including in his rantings were such 1992 delicacies as:
“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began…”–in reference to the LA race riots in 1992 in response to Rodney King’s attackers being acquitted in court
and
“’I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.”– in reference to white urban dwellers facing “uppity blacks”
These are lovely thoughts, I am sure, especially to those wingnut wackadoodles that attend CPAC conventions.
You *really* want to balance the budget?
I’m getting really tired of those political jerkwads who whine about the current budget deficits but still want to spend money to benefit their own agenda.
I’ve got a few suggestions for them.
1) Cut all salaries for all government employees by 20%.
Everyone, from janitors to state legislators to the President. That will save money and thin out the herd that enjoys feeding from the public trough.
2) Raise/cancel caps on property tax rates.
That will raise additional money and show property owners just how much it really costs to run a state. Hey! You want police and fire protection? Now you really have to pay for it.
3) Tax churches, synagogues, and mosques at the same rate other businesses are taxed–a percentage of property value + a tax on all income.
Religious organizations want to play politics? Fine, let them pay their admission price just like everyone else. Hell, revenue from the Catholic Church alone would put a huge dent in the federal budget deficit.
4) Phase out all state and federal farm subsidies everywhere.
Prices will have to go up, and consumers will discover just how expensive decent food really costs. (Most small producers of organic products will also discover that their products would become far more competitively priced.)
5) Mandate that all government budgets that are submitted be balanced.
Always. Without exception. That might mean that suggestions #1-4 above might stand a chance of being implemented.
6) Make lobbying government officials illegal.
No lobbying, for any reason, from anywhere. You might be surprised how much budgets would shrink if this were done.
