News of the Restless

Teh Heterostoopid: Less equality, more nookie? Ha!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Sabina Becker

sexist-ad-fail

Q. Why the fuck is this news?

A. Because it’s sensationalistic as hell. And it’s full of “gotcha” and “checkmate, feminists” bullshit:

Married men who shirk traditional “female” housework have more sex with their wives than those who willingly pitch in with the cooking or cleaning, a new study says.

The research, out of the University of Washington, shows that couples who keep to traditional household chores – where men rake leaves or fix the car and women tidy up or shop – have significantly more carnal encounters than their more egalitarian counterparts.

“Where the male is doing the male tasks and the female is doing the female tasks, those are the couples (who) are having more sex,” says Julie Brines, a sociologist at the Seattle school and a study co-author.

The study was released Wednesday by the journal American Sociological Review.

It found that couples spend an average of 34 hours a week on so-called “female” chores and 17 hours on more traditional male tasks. It also found that couples overall reported about five sexual encounters a month.

But households where Dagwood-like dreamboats preformed none of the “women’s work” reported 1.6 times more sexual encounters than those in which men took on the bulk of cooking and cleaning chores.

That increase in sexual frequency went down in an inverse proportion to the amount of traditional “women’s work” a husband took on.

Households where husbands claimed 40 per cent of that housework reported almost one less sexual encounter a month than those in which the males took on none of those chores.

Sounds like it confirms what the social conservatives and MRAssholes have always “known”, right? Namely, when “men are men and women are women”, that is, each sex conforms to its socially mandated sex role, sex is SEX. And it happens more often.

Meanwhile, egalitarian lovers aren’t getting enough love. Because men who do dishes and take the burden of housework off their wives’ already overloaded shoulders aren’t manly enough. Just the act of putting on an apron causes the testicles to shrink, and the penis to go limp. Poor babies!

Meanwhile, buried halfway down the piece, we get at the less sensational (but much more embarrassing) truth about the survey itself:

One of the study’s drawbacks is its reliance on data that is now two decades old.

The study looked at 4,500 heterosexual couples polled as part of the U.S. National Survey of Families and Households, conducted between 1992 and 1994.

So the data is 20 years out of date. Stale data to back up a stale pre-drawn conclusion, yawwwwwwwn. But, claims the author, it’s still relevant:

But Brines argues that the conception and division of male and female chores – not including child care duties which are much more evenly split today — has changed little in 20 years.

“It’s not what it was 50 years ago, there was a lot of change in the division of household labor in the ‘70s,” she says.

“But the pace of change started to slow down in the ‘80s and by the mid 1990s it kind of remained stuck and you’re pretty much at the same point.”

And she knows this HOW? Sorry, she doesn’t say. She does, however, like to stress how dull and boring the poor egalitarian couples are, and posits THAT as the cause of their almost one (!) less sexual shenanigan a month:

Past research, Brines says, suggests that mundane, gender-linked chores may be much more sexually charged than has been imagined.

“If the activity is coded as masculine or feminine and it expresses ideas about what makes the opposite sex interesting, attractive, alluring mysterious…that seems to be related to sexual activity and possibly sexual desire,” Brines says.

Egalitarian marriages, where couples share everything, have common interests and express close friendships produce less sex on average than their more disparate counterparts, she says.

“Their sex lives are pretty lackluster, they’re not all that active,” Brines says.

“There’s a sibling-like tonality to the relationships. They’re really good best friends, but the sexual charge is missing from the relationship.”

Gee, lady, you make it sound like we’re all just poles on a battery. Kind of a lifeless, mechanistic view of sexual relations, don’t you think?

Oh, and the best part comes last:

Brines says the finding do not reflect a sexual coercion on the part of knuckle-dragging husbands as both male and female spouses reported satisfied sex lives among those couples who practiced gender-based chore divisions.

While their sex lives may be more robust, however, these couples might pay for that sexual pleasure with more confrontations outside the bedroom, she says.

What exactly constitutes “satisfied sex lives”? Again, she doesn’t say. For all we know, the women in these households may have to finish themselves off with a vibrator because their dude is a truly traditional wham-bam kind of of guy, and the men might find more fulfillment in a bottle of Jergens lotion and a tattered copy of Playboy. Which, I guess, is satisfaction of a sort.

But not nearly as sexy as a guy who knows how to pick up after himself and can do it without complaining…or insisting on manning a leaf-blower, instead.

And certainly not worth more “confrontations outside the bedroom”, however “satisfying” what goes on within may be.

Share this story:

Posted in Isn't It Ironic?, Men Who Just Don't Get It, She Blinded Me With Science, Teh Heterostoopid, The WTF? Files, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off

Hello, Charles McVety? It’s me, your aneurysm.

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Sabina Becker

kathleen-wynne

So, I guess you’ve all heard by now that our fair province, Ontario, has a new premier-designate. Her name’s Kathleen Wynne, and she’s apparently from the liberal wing of the Ontario Liberal party. That’s nice, eh? I think so…especially since she seems willing to work with my party of choice, the New Democrats. And that’s not all she’s willing to do…

Ontario’s new premier Kathleen Wynne has promised to reintroduce controversial inclusive physical and sex education curriculum which was shelved after conservative religious groups protested in 2010.

Wynne spoke to reporters Jan 27 at her first news conference as premier designate at Toronto’s Delta Chelsea Hotel.

“We are going to evolve the physical health and sex education curriculum,” she said when questioned by Xtra.

Wynne did not say when the curriculum will be reintroduced, but she said parents can soon expect consultations, which will include education advocacy groups like the Ontario Physical and Health Education Association (OPHEA) and People for Education.

[…]

When it was first released in 2010, the curriculum was called groundbreaking because it presented age-appropriate discussions on sexuality, gender and different types of families. But the document, which attempted to update information that is more than 15 years old, was shelved after a backlash from religious groups.

Yes, that’s right, comprehensive sex-ed is back on the table in Ontario, after two years on the shelf. Why is this important? Well, it may have to do with the fact that Premier Wynne is one of those ladies:

Wynne is Canada’s first lesbian premier. She says she’s incredibly proud to be a role model for queer youth, but being gay isn’t the only quality that defines her.

“Coming to the legislature I have a responsibility to represent all my constituents, but I have some special responsibilities as well,” she told reporters when asked about her history-making leadership victory.

“I have a special responsibility to young gay people, who might be looking for the possibility of a more accepting world. [But] I’m not a gay activist. That’s not how I got into politics. I’m talking about it today because you’ve asked about it, but I’m not going to spend the next month talking about this.”

Wynne, a former education activist, entered the political boxing ring fighting the Mike Harris government’s Common Sense Revolution in the 1990s. She founded a group lobbying for better education and joined another led by former Toronto mayor John Sewell and resisted deep cuts to education, reports the Globe and Mail.

Yep, she’s an education activist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But a certain meddling preacher man just hates those:

Dr. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, said Ontario’s revamped sex education curriculum will teach 11-year-olds about oral and anal sex and eight-year-olds about sexual orientation and identity.

“Little eight-year-olds, they’re going to be taught they look one way on the outside but they may be the opposite on the inside,” McVety said. “This is so confusing to an eight-year-old … these are children in the strongest sense of the word — they’re innocent, they’re clean, they’re beautiful — and to corrupt them by imparting a question of gender identity is beyond the pale.”

Of course, Chuckles was lying about that. The curriculum in question would not have taught those issues to eight-year-olds, but to eighth-graders. That’s a full five-year difference. The average age of a student in Grade 8 here in Ontario is 13. And no, kids of any age would NOT be taught that they are the “opposite” sex on the inside, but rather, when they are old enough to understand, they would simply be able to recognize what transgender actually means. This is all about supplying kids with accurate information, not indoctrination.

But leave it to Chuckles to confuse the issue with disingenuous rhetoric; his grandiose vision of “Canadian Values” is not one of clarity, but of deliberate fogginess on his part, leading to blind “moral” panic in the general public. Two years ago it may have worked, if only by catching Ontarians unawares, but there’s no excuse now; the oh-so-Christian lie has been exposed.

And while Dalton McWimpy may have caved to Chuckles and his idiot brigade out of political expediency, Kathleen Wynne looks to be made of sterner stuff. After all, she entered the Liberal leadership fray as an underdog, and beat out McWimpy’s heavily favored “attack dog”, Sandra “Pitbull” Pupatello. She’s gonna need every bit of that stuff, and I don’t envy her the fight that lies ahead. But I’m glad she’s intent on wading in. If she shows the same dynamism on other issues as well, and continues to work with the left, she could be just the premier we need to reverse the backwardness Mike Harris and his SupposiTories left us with. Wouldn’t that be something?

Personally, I’ll be happy just to see Chuckles have a hemorrhage when Ontarians fail to react any longer to his hysterics about evil, evil LGBT people. One of whom also happens to be a former education activist…and now Premier of Ontario.

Share this story:

Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Fetus Fetishists, Isn't It Ironic?, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Pissing Jesus Off, She Blinded Me With Science, Teh Ghey, Uppity Wimmin | 1 Comment

Quotable: Olafur Ragnar Grimsson on banks

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Sabina Becker

olafur-ragnar-grimsson

Share this story:

Posted in Economics for Dummies, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Quotable Notables, Scandinavian Smorgasbord, Socialism is Good for Capitalism! | Comments Off

25 years…

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Sabina Becker

morgentaler-clinic

The Morgentaler Clinic, downtown Toronto. Dr. Henry Morgentaler deserves a huge amount of gratitude for so many things: He pioneered the suction-curettage method of early surgical abortion; he defied the law to set up free-standing women’s clinics; he coined the term “fetus fetishist”, which is SO applicable to this day; and of course, he helped make certain that the bad old abortion laws of our home and native land were struck down for good, 25 years ago this week. He began his campaign for abortion rights the year I was born, going before the House of Commons to testify that the illegality of abortion was killing women, and that women should have the right to safe, legal procedures instead. He is also a living refutation of the pernicious anti-choice myth of abortion-as-holocaust, seeing as he survived the REAL Holocaust at Auschwitz. (How fitting, then, that this week also marks the anniversary of the liberation of that camp.)

But Dr. Morgentaler wasn’t alone. Countless women from across Canada fought for the right to a free choice, with no time limits, no mandatory waiting periods, and no “therapeutic abortion committees” in big-city hospitals to decide their fate. Every time the government tabled a new bill to try to reimpose restrictions, women turned out in the hundreds of thousands, shouting “NO NEW LAW!”

I was among the marchers back then, and aware from the start (volunteering at a university women’s centre has that effect on one) that the anti-choicers weren’t going to take their defeats quietly; they were going to try again. And sure enough, they did. They tried all kinds of tactics, all of them dirty. It is fair to call them terrorists; terror tactics were their stock in trade. They bombed clinics; they harassed patients and clinic staff on the sidewalks and in parking lots; they chained themselves to the doors with bike locks; they shot doctors, wounding some and killing others; and, most insidiously, they elected anti-choice MPs to Parliament, in the hopes of sneaking new legislation in (under the guise of “debate”, never mind that the actual debate was settled by the Tremblay v. Daigle decision, which followed on the heels of the striking of the old abortion law and is also now almost a quarter-century old.)

I wish I could say the fight were over, but I know damn well it’s not. Today, even with legality fully established, accessibility of abortion is still not what it should be. And there is still the fight to be fought against new anti-choice legislation every time some “reasonable” measure (which in fact is anything but) gets introduced by some pompous twit in Parliament. And for that, we need millions more marchers, many more Morgentalers, and above all, constant vigilance against the sneak-thieves of our own democratic process. Because, in the final analysis, women’s right to bodily autonomy is not something that can or should be decided by a vote in Parliament…ever again.

Share this story:

Posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Fetus Fetishists, Law-Law Land, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off

Music for a Sunday: Batten down the hatches…

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Sabina Becker

…there’s an ice storm on the way, and a full Moon outside tonight. What better tune for the times than…THIS?

Share this story:

Posted in Music for a Sunday | Comments Off

Wankers of the Week: Coldest wank of the year

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Sabina Becker

Crappy weekend, everyone! Cold enough for ya? Yeah, the balls actually dropped right off that brass monkey on my front door. Whatcha gonna do, it’s Canada, eh? So pull up your thermal long-johns and pour yourself a cup of something hot and nourishing (and loaded with rum!), and have a seat by the fire. We got a lot of butts to roast tonight. And in no particular order, here they come:

1. Julian Fucking Fantino. Well, well. Looks like Ontario’s former worst cop ever has had to pull his two nasty, petulant widdle partisan letters off the CIDA website. Too bad he didn’t do it before the media caught on. Now he just looks even more like an ass than ever! But will Harpo fire him? Will he step down himself? Noooooo…and that’s the REAL wank here. He’ll probably just get promoted, as usual.

2. Justin Fucking Bieber. Looks like overalls aren’t his worst wardrobe malfunction. And neither, mirabile dictu, are his stupid drop-crotch pants. No, I’d say the tackiest thing about his wardrobe, overall, is his scrawny little chicken butt hanging halfway out of it.

3. Thomas John Fucking Paprocki. Same-sex marriage is “just unacceptable”…says yet another closeted old queen in a long dress. Yawwwwwwwn.

4. Rand Fucking Paul. No, doctors are NOT government spies trying to out law-abiding gun owners. Although I do understand that in most places, they ARE required to report gunshot victims to police. Which is just common sense, since gunshot wounds are often an indicator of a crime. I also understand that Rand Fucking Paul is paranoid and should probably lose his medical licence for being such a goddamn fucking chronic pathological liar. PS: Ha, ha. PPS: Ha, ha, ha! Oh, ha ha ha ha HOO ha ha!

5. Pamela Fucking Geller. Not content to spread racism and religious bigotry around like herpes, now she’s also the poster bimbo for high treason. I can hardly wait to see how ravishing she looks in those stylin’ orange prison coveralls. PS: Oh, look who’s been crowned Queen of Nothing. Congrats, I guess.

6. John Fucking Boehner. I don’t know what he said to make Michelle Obama roll her eyes like that, but having to sit next to that lachrymose, perpetually pickled Oompa-Loompa would try the patience of a saint. (Also, was his wife stealing the silver? Hope they caught her at the metal detector, because she sure looks suspicious to me.) PS: Apparently the wank that got the eye-roll was a lame joke about His Barackness’s now-abandoned ciggie habit. I bet it was hee-larious. PPS: Nice video, Boner! I see you matched your tie to your complexion, too.

7. Jim Fucking Karygiannis. Venezuela HAS true democracy, you not-so-Liberal dolt. Canada, on the other hand, has had an election stolen, and instead of doing something about THAT, you’re sitting there with your thumbs up your ass, kvetching about Venezuela at the behest of a bunch of fascist putschmongers. Do democracy a favor and shut the fuck up, eh? PS: Ha, ha!

8. Larry Fucking Klemin. Men are seldom depressed because they don’t have shit to be depressed about, duh. They make a dollar to our 70 cents, they never get preggers, they never get their hearts stomped, and they can pee standing up. They also get taken seriously as human beings even when they just don’t fucking deserve it. And in the case of this one, they don’t get depressed because they don’t have the wits to realize how very depressingly stupid they look when they forward dumb, smug-sexist e-mails around to “cheer people up”. Because they are stupid, duh.

9. Taro Fucking Aso. I will not make jokes about how his last name sounds like asshole, however tempted. No. I WILL NOT.

10. Paul Fucking Curtman. Gee, it must be SO nice to be a straight, white, Christian male. You get to deny that hate crimes exist because nobody could possibly hate on you…except maybe for being young, dumb, and chock-full of privilege denial.

11. Mitch Fucking McConnell. Paranoia: It’s all he’s got left to offer his constituents. Scrapings from the bottom of a barrel, anyone?

12. Tim Fucking Huelskamp. So, lemme see if I got this straight: Hurricane relief to people who’ve lost everyfuckingthing: BAD. Farm aid subsidies to those who probably don’t need it, like your own relatives: GOOD. Yeah, that sounds about right. Dude, if you’re not sure the hurricane relief is needed, why don’t you tour the actual disaster area and see for yourself? Or are you afraid to because it might cost your brother some unearned millions? Jesus.

13. Nicolas Fucking Sarkozy. Et tu, Sarko? It appears the former French president is thinking of packing up his former supermodel and moving to London to dodge those high French income tax rates for ze filthy, stinking riches. Soon, he could be England’s problem, and the fou cost of London real estate will become a pile of merde he’ll just have to deal with. Guess Russia was too cold for him? Or maybe he was just afraid of running into a drunken Gérard Depar-don’t on the streets of Sochi?

14. Glenn Fucking Beck. OMG, a rare moment of self-awareness! I can see that for Biff, I’m gonna have to rewrite Shel Silverstein’s “Freakin’ at the Freakers’ Ball” a wee bit. Not much…just replace “freak” with “wank”, and call it a day.

15. The Fucking Repugs of Virginia. While a leading black Democrat was attending the second inauguration of His Barackness, they snuck a gerrymandering bill in under the wire. Even the Republican governor was not impressed. Does he have veto power? If so, I hope he uses it. This shit stinks, y’all.

16. Ed Fucking Hartzog. What’s a dumb sexist jackass like you doing running for city council? (Try dogcatcher, you’ll get more bitches that way.)

17. Ted Fucking Nugent. Looks like that countdown clock for “dead or in jail” is starting to run down faster. Good!

18. Ken Fucking Cuccinelli. Yes, the Attorney General of Virginia has wanked again…this time for urging “civil disobedience” against the religion-trampling evils of slut-condoms and whore-pills. And he dared to appropriate Dr. Martin Luther King, who was a well known supporter of Planned Parenthood. Oh, the irony!

19. Tim Fucking Hudak. Uh oh, somebody needs to go back to school…and learn the meaning of EXTRAcurricular. You can’t force teachers to donate their spare time. But that won’t stop Mike Harris’s little Mini-Me from trying. What do you bet he plans to make a high-school drop-out his minister of education too…just like Mikey did?

20. Phil Fucking Mickelson. Dude, you play golf for a living. A very lucrative living, I might add. What’s your problem with paying higher taxes? Will it cut into your hooker money, or something? Are you living just one or two paycheques away from the street? No? Then stop being such a big fucking baby about it. And pay your taxes, already. PS: Ha, ha.

21. Tim Fucking Loughton. So, SOME gay people have told you they don’t want to be married, and this is reason enough to deny others who DO want to be married the right? Wow. That’s a real convincing argument you got there, bud. Next thing I expect to hear is that women prefer to earn less money than men, or that they don’t mind having their reproductive rights limited even more, or some such.

22. Peter Fucking Kent. The truth is a “low blow”? Trust me, it’s nothing compared to how much that sand around your ears is gonna burn when this planet gets really fucking hot thanks to your intransigence, old man.

23. James Fucking Lankford. Guns don’t kill people, welfare moms do! Only one problem with that tidy little theory: Nancy Lanza was not a welfare mom. She got a good settlement in her divorce…enough to buy a fancy house and, apparently, a gun for every room in it. And more than enough for her disturbed son to go on a murder spree.

24. Reed Fucking Hastings. Foxconn workers are killing themselves over the shitty factory conditions in China, and all but dying of exhaustion on the job. Does he care? Only enough to laugh about it. Maybe he should try actually working for a living, seeing that as a CEO he has nothing to do but putz the fuck around.

25. David Fucking Frum. Oh noes, women in combat will lower the tone of the army! Davey, my ass-kicking Norse/Saxon/Keltic ancestresses are sneering over their swords and shields at thee. Oh noes, the enemy is all rapey and could attack those poor army girls if they go into combat! Yeah, like their own all-Amurrican commanding officers aren’t doing exactly that already.

26. Tucker Fucking Carlson. And on the same side of the same issue, the Bowtie Boy has squeaked up just long enough to take a swipe at feminists…out of “concern” for women in combat. Of course. And meanwhile, what is he doing to stop wars? Or for that matter, keep guns out of the hands of rapists in the biggest combat zone of all…the United States proper? Nothing…of course.

27. Ryan Fucking Smith. Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Urinal, a former Marine thinks women should stay out of the combat zone because it would embarrass their male comrades to be seen pooping. Yes, that’s right…crapping, shitting, taking a steaming dump. Women aren’t supposed to know that men poop! One can only imagine how he must have felt every time his mom changed his diapers. And these are supposed to be the toughest guys in the whole fucking world? It is to laugh.

28. Giorgio Fucking Mammoliti. Oh noes, the Illuminati are after him. Or somebody. He doesn’t know who, exactly, but they’re AFTER him! And he’s gonna get to the bottom of it if it’s the last thing he does. Oh yeah, and he also overspent on his last election campaign by 44 percent. But that’s a trifling matter, and anyone who says it isn’t, must be one of THEM!

im-not-saying-it-was-aliens-but-it-was-aliens-funny-cat.jpg

29. Tom Fucking Tancredo. He lost a bet, and now he has to smoke pot. I’m sure it will be a terrible sacrifice for him.

30. Jeff Fucking Flake. Yeah, I’m sure you’ll conquer Cuba with a bunch of college girls in bikinis. It’s not as if the Cubans have ever seen that much female flesh on their beaches, eh? I mean, aside from visitors from everywhere EXCEPT the US. Which is the only country that has actively blockaded Cuba. In the name of freedom and free trade, natch. BTW, who was it that got their asses whupped at the Bay of Pigs, again?

31. Cathrynn Fucking Brown. And while we’re on the subject of female flesh and freedumb, how about this lulu? She thinks that the best way to preserve “evidence” in the event of a rape is to force the victim to stay pregnant — and jail her if she has an abortion. And silly me, here I thought that the best way to preserve evidence was to get the victim into hospital quickly, do a rape kit, and give her the morning-after pill so she doesn’t even have to GET pregnant! And oh yeah, fetal DNA is still obtainable even in the event of an abortion, so the “evidence” excuse doesn’t pass even the most basic of sniff tests. But yeah, let’s punish crime victims for what someone else did to them. That makes SO much sense!

PS: Ha, ha! Nice try, but still no dice. It’s not rapists who go for abortions. It’s the VICTIMS. And they come to that decision on their own because they don’t want to be pregnant by a criminal, duh.

32. Patrick Fucking Brazeau. If it’s fiscal accountability you’re so concerned about, Senator Sac-de-Douche, perhaps you might want to start criticizing your SupposiTory cronies for their obvious shortcomings in that department, which far outstrip anything that goes on in any First Nations reserve. Meanwhile, I agree with whoever was tweeting from Chief Spence’s account; you ARE an asshole.

33. Bill Fucking Kristol. Yet another fool who thinks women can’t fight and shouldn’t be allowed to. Tell it to Israel, Bill. Tell it to Israel.

34. Rob Fucking Ford. Still mayor of Toronto, by some weird and malign coincidence. And still wanking, which is no coincidence at all.

35. Stephen Fucking Harper. And while we’re on the subject of tin-pot dictators and wannabe kings up here, look who just packed the Senate a wee bit tighter. Aren’t they running out of chairs for Harpo’s cronies yet? At this rate, the Upper Chamber is gonna collapse under the weight of all those overfed rump roasts.

36. Kirill Fucking Bartashevitch. If your daughter’s grades (B instead of A, oh NOES!) are not to your liking, you sit her down and have a good long talk and figure out how to help her do better. You do NOT, under any circumstances, point a motherfucking assault rifle at her OR her mother. (And you don’t go buying assault weapons like they’re going out of style, either.)

37. and 38. Kevin Fucking Swanson and Dave Fucking Buehner. Newsflash: Sarah Fucking Palin is NOT a real feminist, she just used to play one on TV (very unconvincingly, I might add). And real feminists are NOT “selfish, narcissistic, family-destroying whores”. If female autonomy scares and threatens you guys so much, maybe it’s because you are sexually unappealing wankers with a control-freak streak. And under those circumstances, it’s little wonder that bright, independent women don’t want to settle for “attractive-deficient” guys like you.

39. Andy Fucking Driscoll. If by now you don’t know that the Onion is a satire site, you are beyond help. That is all.

40. Rives Fucking Miller Fucking Grogan. Why the double Fucking? Because Mr. Family Values here has a wife and three kids in California, and he’s shamefully neglecting them to go drinking and climbing trees in Washington, DC. In the name of promoting Family Values, no doubt. Why else the touching concern for “unborn children” who are not even his? (Special wanker points to his mom for raising him with a poor sense of priorities.)

41. Don Fucking Benton. Oh look, another wanker trying to sneak-criminalize all abortion without really thinking it through. This one in Washington state, rather than Aryanfuckingzona. Put on yer dunce cap and get into the corner with #31, asshole. And no talking, you hear?

42. Jamie Fucking Cavanough. Aaaaand in the land Down Under, somebody thinks halal meat is just not kosher for Australia Day. Curses! Yet another dastardly crypto-Islamofascist takeover scheme, foiled! And by such impeccable logic, too. May an emu kick yer dunny down, mate.

43. Larry Fucking Ward. Oh look, a white gun nut is trying to pretend he’s not really racist…by co-opting a movie about a black guy made by another tone-deaf white guy. Cute!

44. The Fucking Globe & Mail. Once again, the Grope & Flail reveals just how full of dopes and fail it is…by running a loopy rant against a couple of computer nerds who are NOT criminals, and utterly forgetting the plagiarism of their own Margaret Fucking Wente, who remains, inexplicably, on the masthead.

45. Joanna Fucking Lumley. Absolutely NOT fabulous! I can’t believe I have to tell you this, Dame Joanna, but booze does not make rape happen. And neither do miniskirts and high heels. Booze makes drunk happen. Minis and heels make fashion disasters happen. RAPISTS make rape happen. See how that works?

46. Sarah Fucking Palin. Awww, I guess her novelty value has finally worn off. GOOD.

47. Stacey Fucking Campfield. How the hell is removal of welfare assistance (that’s FOOD, you idiot!) supposed to help an impoverished kid with bad grades? How is it supposed to get that kid’s family back on their feet when there’s no ground underneath them? I don’t know, but I’m sure Mr. Wizard here does. After all, lack of oxygen to the brain sure made a genius out of him.

48. James Fucking Taylor. No, not the singer. This one’s a crazy-ass fundie preacher-man in Oklahoma, and he’s trying to school us all on what parts of Leviticus we can pick and choose. Unfortunately, he forgot all about the shellfish. And the rabbit. And the linsey-woolsey. And the shaving. And…well, you get the picture. But if you go on the air to shoot the holy shit with Peter LaFucking Barbera, you’ve committed one of the most grievous abominations of all: bearing false witness. Ten Commandments, asswipe…look it up!

49. and 50. Gary Fucking Chism and Jeff Fucking Smith. Nice try, guys, but remember what happened the LAST time Mississippi tried to secede from the Union? Yeah…you really don’t wanna go there again. And if you do, you’re even more fucking nuts than I thought.

And finally, to the Fucking Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. How’s that for a crunchy mouthful? These hicks from the wilds of Redneckistan all consider themselves constitutional scholars all of a sudden. Why? Because a black guy is sitting in the Oval Office, that’s why. They’ve taken it upon themselves to put that boyyyyy in his place. And by refusing to enforce gun laws (in stark contrast to their police chief counterparts up here, who appreciate the long-gun registry and are not happy to see it go), they think they’re upholding the supreme law of the land. No. No, they’re not. They’re just tin-pot petty dictators committing treason, and not one of them is even qualified to run for dogcatcher in the next election.

Good night, and get fucked!

Share this story:

Posted in Wankers of the Week | 2 Comments

Festive Left Friday Blogging: El Ecuadorable is looking good!

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Sabina Becker

correa-campaigning

And not just in the obvious sense, either (although damn, dude is HOT). Get a load of his numbers as his re-election campaign kicks off:

President-candidate Rafael Correa has 57% support among voters in Ecuador, according to the latest poll by Opinión Pública Ecuador.

Director Santiago Pérez added that 12% of those surveyed left their forms blank because they had not decided yet. In third place was the former banker, Guillermo Lasso, with 12%; 6% annulled their votes; and, barely in fifth place, was former president Lucio Gutiérrez, with 5%. The former president of the Constitutional Assembly, Alberto Acosta, had 4% of the vote; Alvaro Noboa had 2%. The candidates with less than 1% each were Norman Wray, Nelson Zabala, and Mauricio Rodas.

The other important fact is that 57% of respondents had already decided on their votes, much different from the 40% who were already decided by this time in the last presidential election, in 2009.

Since the electoral campaigns began on January 4, this survey may be considered a snapshot of the beginning of the campaign.

[…]

The survey was conducted on January 10, on a nationwide level, with 2,570 persons over the age of 16 consulted directly, in their homes. They were selected at random based on the last census and the electoral register.

Rafael Correa has increased his support by 6 percentage points since the last Opinión Pública Ecuador survey, done on December 15. Guillermo Lasso is down by 3 percentage points from the same survey. According to Santiago Pérez, however, this decrease is within the range of the poll’s margin of error.

Translation mine.

Margin of error or not, it’s pretty obvious that El Ecuadorable is all but a shoo-in at this point. And why not? He’s already proved all the critics wrong. Despite enormous pressures from Big Foreign Oil and CIA-backed putschists, he’s very much in charge of an increasingly stable and prospering Ecuador. I suspect that most of my future posts on him will be sheer pr0n, but I doubt anyone will complain.

Share this story:

Posted in Ecuadorable As Can Be, Festive Left Friday Blogging | Comments Off

The woman who avenged Che Guevara

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Sabina Becker

A five-minute film in Spanish, based on the life of Monika Ertl. She was the daughter of Nazi propagandist Hans Ertl, “Hitler’s photographer”, who fled to South America after World War II along with some other notorious Nazis who later figured in the local fascist circles — among them Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon”, who taught the arts of Nazi torture to Barrientos’s thugs in Bolivia, and whom Monika grew up calling “Uncle”. Monika went the other way, politically speaking; she became a leftist guerrilla during the late 1960s. In 1971 she went back to her native Germany; she disguised herself as a journalist and shot the Bolivian consul in Hamburg. And why not? He was none other than Colonel Roberto Quintanilla, who ordered the final indignity to Che’s corpse when he had his men cut off the guerrilla comandante’s hands before burying the remains beneath the airstrip at Vallegrande.

Share this story:

Posted in All About Evo, Confessions of a Bad German, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Uppity Wimmin | Comments Off

Checkmate, fetus fetishists!

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Sabina Becker

arm-the-fetuses

I mean, really…what else is there to do when a “pro-life” Catholic hospital doesn’t consider you a person when your death (and that of your living incubator) costs them money…

The lead defendant in the case is Catholic Health Initiatives, the Englewood-based nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital as well as roughly 170 other health facilities in 17 states. Last year, the hospital chain reported national assets of $15 billion. The organization’s mission, according to its promotional literature, is to “nurture the healing ministry of the Church” and to be guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.” Toward those ends, Catholic Health facilities seek to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those rules have stirred controversy for decades, mainly for forbidding non-natural birth control and abortions. “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death,’” the directives state. “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”

The directives can complicate business deals for Catholic Health, as they can for other Catholic health care providers, partly by spurring political resistance. In 2011, the Kentucky attorney general and governor nixed a plan in which Catholic Health sought to merge with and ultimately gain control of publicly funded hospitals in Louisville. The officials were reacting to citizen concerns that access to reproductive and end-of-life services would be curtailed. According to The Denver Post, similar fears slowed the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth’s plan over the last few years to buy out Exempla Lutheran Medical Center and Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center in the Denver metro area.

But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs, argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”

…or when a “pro-life” legislator considers you nothing more than “evidence”, and is willing to lock up your incubator to “protect” her from “getting rid of” you?

House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for “tampering with evidence.”

“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.

Third-degree felonies in New Mexico carry a sentence of up to three years in prison.

Pat Davis of ProgressNow New Mexico, a progressive nonprofit opposing the bill, called it “blatantly unconstitutional” on Thursday.

“The bill turns victims of rape and incest into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state,” he said. “According to Republican philosophy, victims who are ‘legitimately raped’ will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case.”

Yes, folks, it’s a cold day indeed…

hell-freezes-over