News of the Restless

Headline Howler: Holy shit

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Sabina Becker

The second coming has come…and surprise, he’s a mere mortal after all!

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Posted in Headline Howlers, Pissing Jesus Off | 4 Comments

Short ‘n’ Stubby: Ms. Manx visits Kent State

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Sabina Becker

Full disclosure: Ms. Manx was still litter-training when Kent State went down. She was also living in Northern Ontario at the time, and hadn’t heard of it till much, much later. But she thinks it’s still relevant in light of the times we live in (Free Speech Zones of Muskoka, the Stumpy Cat is glaring at YOU.) So it’s with how little has really changed in mind that she would like to bring to your attention the following:

Lots of people still haz a bit of Teh Stoopid about Kent State. To wit, USA Today:

…a campus that unwillingly became synonymous with protest…

Uh, try “synonymous with VIOLENT CRACKDOWNS AGAINST protest”, lame writer. Every US university campus, other than the most hardcore conservative, was at that time synonymous with protest against the Vietnam war, and universities in general have been so for as long as there have been foolish old farts who make bad policies for younger, wiser souls to protest against. To single out Kent State as a lone anti-war protest hotspot like this is ludicrous. And if you want to know what the biggest institution in the US to protest the war was, get this: It was the military itself.

More stoopid: Robert C. Cheeks, a hard-right-wing Catholic who praised the Kent State murders in the name of “order”. The coward has since deleted his crap, but Beliefnet’s pagan blogger, Gus diZerega, sets the record straight and delivers a fab-tabulous spanking.

And speaking of fab-tabulous spankings for craven historical revisionists (and all others touting the discredited line about how the National Guard fired on unarmed protesters and bystanders for the sake of “order”), how about this? Scientific analysis confirms that they were ordered by superiors to prepare to fire, regardless of any lack of aggression on the part of the victims. Nixon was not only escalating the war in Southeast Asia, but also on freedom of speech back home. Alan Canfora, one of the wounded survivors of the massacre, is now using this evidence as basis for a new investigation of the crime. Let’s hope he succeeds!

And while you’re at it, the Truth Tribunal website is a good place to visit and learn about the ongoing search for facts about Kent State. What’s truly appalling is that even now, 40 years after the fact, all the facts are still not a matter of public record. Let’s hope that changes, too.

Finally, if your blood is easily boiled, don’t click this link. But if you can convert that energy to righteous action, DO CLICK IT.

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Posted in Angry Pacifist Speaks Her Mind, Fascism Without Swastikas, If You REALLY Care, Isn't That Illegal?, Law-Law Land, Short 'n' Stubby | Comments Off

Quotable: Sir Bob Geldof on NOT shutting the fuck up

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Sabina Becker

“Annoy your friends. And REALLY ANNOY the G-8 Members!! Talk & write & communicate to everyone about the total Maternal Child Health Initiative that must be instituted at Canada’s G8 & G-20”

–Sir Bob Geldof

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Happy Birth Control Pill Day!

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Sabina Becker

Courtesy of the New York Times, something that isn’t whorish, for a change. Gail Collins writes:

This is by way of saying that on Sunday we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill. We live in troubled times. […]
Like a great many of our anniversaries, this one is a movable feast. The Food and Drug Administration actually gave G.D. Searle the go-ahead to market the first oral contraceptive (not counting bees) on June 23, 1960. But the F.D.A. announced its intention to approve the pill on May 9, which also happens to be Mother’s Day this year and, therefore, too good to resist.

I can hear all the fundies screeching already. How can one celebrate, on holy, sacred Mother’s Day of all days, a pill that made motherhood merely optional, rather than de rigueur as it had been until then? Sacrilege!

Well, I guess the fundies have their piddling little right to be shocked, shocked! that the pesky thing that’s been keeping them from filling their quivers is now fifty years old and still showing no signs of dying. They also have a perfect right not to use it themselves. But they have no right to deny it to others.

And there are plenty of others. Women have been trying to avoid compulsory motherhood, and to plan when and if they had children, since time immemorial. Birth control has saved women’s lives, and by limiting family size (meaning more food to divide among fewer mouths), has done wonders for the lives and well-being of children, too. Malthus knew it, and had the temerity to say so. Even in the prissy, motherhood-glorifying Victorian era, birth control was a subterranean industry of remarkable proportions:

American women had been limiting the size of their families long before the pill came along. In the 19th century, the fertility rate was plummeting, and ads for everything from condoms to douching syringes helped keep urban newspapers solvent. My favorite factoid from this period is that a company called National Syringe offered a model with changeable nozzles so it could be used for both birth control and watering plants.

Fertility (for plants) and infertility (for the women who tend the plants) in one device! O, the irony.

But wait, it gets even better–and more deliciously ironic:

The powers-that-be believed that the only appropriate form of birth control was celibacy. “Can they not use self control?” demanded Anthony Comstock, the powerful crusader for the Sexual Purity campaign. “Or must they sink to the level of the beasts?”
Comstock managed to get New York authorities to grant him the powers to both arrest and censor, and he bragged that he sent 4,000 people to jail for helping women understand, and use, birth control. He seemed to take particular pleasure in the fact that 15 of them had committed suicide.
One of his targets was Margaret Sanger, a nurse who wrote a sex education column, “What Every Girl Should Know,” for a left-wing New York newspaper, The Call. When Comstock banned her column on venereal disease, the paper ran an empty space with the title: “What Every Girl Should Know: Nothing, by Order of the U.S. Post Office.”
Sanger was the first person to publish an evaluation of all the available forms of birth control. As a reward, she got a criminal obscenity charge. She fled to Europe to avoid going to jail, and her husband was imprisoned for passing out one of her pamphlets. In the end, he got 30 days, and Anthony Comstock got a chill during the trial that led to a fatal case of pneumonia.

Ha, ha. Pardon me if I don’t have even a crocodile tear to shed for the blessed Anthony of Comstock, the martyred patron saint of sex-hatred and censorship. The man who tried to put a chill on women’s efforts to limit their family size without celibacy, dead of a chill himself in the glorious golden age Before Penicillin! Too bad there was no pill to save him. One wonders if he’d have been as zealous about trying to stop research and information regarding antibiotics as he was when it came to contraception.

And here’s another irony: it’s “the level of the beasts” at which you find sex for procreation only. Humans are the among the few animals who don’t have an estrus cycle. Meaning, we can have sex at any time, fertile or not. For us, it must therefore serve a purpose, or several purposes, not linked to reproduction. So Comstock was a bad scientist, among all else. There was no Jane Goodall yet to set him straight.

But Margaret Sanger outlived him, and persisted, and today we have her to thank. I thank her, in particular, for the fact that my period, which had gone haywire after an accident, could be made regular again. And for the fact that I bypassed fertility altogether during the so-called peak of my fertile years (which felt like a nadir to me), and was able to get my tubes tied without incident afterward. My own dear mother had six kids, and used birth control to make sure they did not become a dozen or two (or more, Bog help us all).

So even large families can give some thanks to the early advocates of family planning that they’re not larger–or living in a house with its own graveyard of lost babies, as was commonplace not so long ago. In Canada, we know the value of our birth control, and we like it…and those of us who know and like it best, thank that true saint from just to the south of us for doing her time in martyrdom so that we could all be free. Blessed be the name of Margaret Sanger!

Meanwhile, just to the south of us, there’s still a war a-waging:

And we lived happily ever after. Except that over the last 20 years, protests from the social right have made politicians frightened of mentioning birth control and school boards frightened of including it in the curriculum.
Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, remembers getting a pretty thorough grounding in sex and the ways to prevent pregnancy when she was in school — back in the days when the raciest thing you saw on television was Rob and Laura Petrie waking up in twin beds on the opposite side of the room. “Kids growing up today watch ‘Gossip Girl’ and all these shows where every teenager is having sex every day — and now we don’t teach sex education in school,” she noted.
Even though 100 million women take the pill every day, to the great relief of 100 million or so of their partners, the terror of mentioning birth control is so great that the humongous new health care reform act has managed to avoid bringing it up at all. Advocates are hoping that when the regulations are finally written, they will require health insurance to cover birth control pills like any other drug. But nobody is sure.
“If the administration would announce tomorrow that all birth control would be free for every woman in America, I think the health care plan would gain 30 points in popularity overnight,” said Richards.

And the teabaggers and fundies would be out of a job, out of office, out of all real power. Now THAT would be something to celebrate.

Well, maybe if they could learn to stop protecting the drivel of the local Nazis and concentrate instead on protecting and promoting the REAL freedom of speech–the freedom to teach birth control, among other counter-oppressive
things–they might just get something accomplished there. Then kids would learn the facts of life straight and undiluted from real teachers, not trashy TV shows…or precocious friends behind the bike sheds…or the hard way, as their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents often had to.

Let us pray…

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Posted in Isn't It Ironic?, Karma 1, Dogma 0, Law-Law Land, Men Who Just Don't Get It, Morticia! You Spoke French!, Not So Compassionate Conservatism, Schadenfreude, She Blinded Me With Science, Uppity Wimmin | 2 Comments

Music for a Sunday: And all she had to do was step into the light

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Sabina Becker

…and everyone would start to roar:

Genesis’s entire Duke album was a gem; it’s one I keep coming back to when I’m feeling pensive and in need of understanding. This song didn’t chart over here (that honor was reserved for the more conventionally radio-friendly singles, “Misunderstanding” and “Turn It On Again”), but it’s a masterpiece both for its instrumental virtuosity and its ability to tell the story of all too many pop stars who start out good, then falter.

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Stupid Sex Tricks: Full Moon Fever

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Sabina Becker

There are certain things you really should know better than to announce to the world. This is one of them:

I think “Mum” forgot just how big the Internets really are.

Happy Mother’s Day!

(And try not to get yourself in the family way again when there’s a full moon out. Do what I do and just howl back at the coyotes instead.)

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Oh, rats!

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Sabina Becker

A rat gets stuck in a hole it gnawed in a compost bin. Fortunately, the Germans were there to lend a hand…

So much for the myth that rats can squeeze through any hole, no matter how small. Not when they’re full of compost, they can’t!

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Posted in Confessions of a Bad German, Environmentally Ill, She Blinded Me With Science, The WTF? Files | Comments Off

Wankers of the Week: Wank never sleeps

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Sabina Becker

Uh, dude? Money is an inanimate object. You are not. Besides, as Antonia pointed out this week, sleep deprivation is just plain old bad for you. So get some shut-eye, ‘kay?

Meanwhile, here are some others who should also give it a rest…preferably for good:

1. William Fucking Kristol. Oh great! He’s a “drill-baby-drill”-er. AND he wants to see rigs closer to shore, fucking everything up even more (and faster, since a spill would make landfall sooner)! It would serve him right if Bloody Pathetic decided to plant a dozen or two of them right by his favorite vacation beach, eh?

2. Gene Fucking Taylor. “Not as bad as I thought”, he says. “A lot of people are scared and I don’t think they should be”, he says. Well, shucky darn, it’s only a massive amount of oil, fouling a massive amount of seawater, and a correspondingly massive amount of shore, where a massive amount of fishing goes on. So what if local industries and wildlife habitat are ruined? It’s not as bad as Gene Fucking Taylor thought, and that ought to be good enough for everyone. Please tell me this intellectual giant is up for re-election this year, I see someone just fixin’ to lose.

PS: He looks just like Dubya, but blond. That might explain everything.

PPS: Bwahahahaha!

3. Fucking Americans for Job Security. Basically, they ARE fucking Americans. Up the ass. With bullshit for lube.

4. The Fucking US Chamber of Commerce. Same shit. Different assholes. Well, actually, it’s a sodomizing daisy chain. See #3.

5., 6. and 7. These three murderous little fucking bitches. Fortunately, their homophobic hate crime was caught on a cellphone cam. Especially heinous: They did it on the National Day of Silence, a day when students protest homophobia and the silencing of queer voices–some of them silenced by bullying unto death. According to the victim’s mother, this attack was in connection with that. I’m sure these girls thought they were doing just the “right” thing!

8. And while we’re at it, let’s give a razz-out to the judge, Hendria Fucking Bailey-Lewis, for reducing the charges against these girls. And WTF is this about a lack of evidence? Are cellphone videos not admissible in court in Kenfuckingtucky?

9. Joe Fucking Arpaio. First, this open ally of neo-Nazis bullies the governor of Arizona into signing the racist legislation he endorses; now, not content or appeased, he’s looking to take her seat. Here’s hoping Arizonans kick him in his!

10. Nancy Fucking Ruth. “Shut the fuck up” on abortion? LIKE HELL we will! Silence=DEATH, Nancy. Didn’t you learn that yet? PS: Awesomest inaugural blog entry EVER. PPS: What Pale and Judy said. PPPS: Now look what you’ve gone and made someone do.

11. Whoever the fuck thinks skinny jeans can’t be torn off by a rapist. Oh yes, they can be removed without help–otherwise, as one of the commenters here points out, “If skinny jeans were impossible to remove alone, then nobody that couldn’t afford a personal maid would wear them!” (Important factoid: ALL skinny jeans contain spandex, making them stretchy. In other words: Easy on, easy off.)

12. Jenny Beth Fucking Martin. So, there’s no racism in the Teabagger movement, eh?

Funny, Jenny, but I don’t believe you!

13. Thomas Fucking Lukaszuk. “Job creation” apparently comes on the backs of minimum-wage-earning women. I’d like to say “Only in Alberta” (where women don’t count for cowpatties), but seeing as our current loathsome government largely hails from thereabouts, I have an ugly feeling that bad strategy is about to be exported from the badlands.

14. Lisa Fucking Murkowski. Yeah, pollution and global warming would be GREAT for Alaska. What could possibly go wrong up there?

15. George Fucking Rekers. The thing to do on vacation, if you want to have a gay old time, is to rent a boy to handle your bag. And the two balls in it, too. Especially if you’re a screaming closet case who made his bundle peddling homophobia disguised as pediatrics. PS: Oh my, isn’t he cute! Yeah, I can totally see why he was hired to carry the luggage. PPS: Lame excuse is getting lamer. Yeah, I really believe it was only “ministering”. Is THAT what the closet cases all call it these days? PS: Bwhahahahaha:

Sorry, George, no forgiveness for YOU. I can’t believe you’re charging a dollar a pop for that drivel! Is that where you’re getting the money to pay that rent-boy? Shame on you!

16. Victoria Fucking Jackson. Guess what, folkies! She’s a native of Miami. That explains so much, does it not? Including her odd penchant for putting the stick on the wrong side of her teabagger protest signs. (See photo at link.) Oh, and Vicki? Your little gusano boyfriend’s da
d wasn’t in Evil Wicked Fidel’s jail for mere differences of opinion. Assuming he was real (which I strangely doubt, considering the source), he was in for a REAL crime. Like sedition or treason. A lot of Cuban Miameros’ daddies are kinky little buggers who are really, really into that sort of thing.

17. J.D. Fucking Hayworth. “Enforcing federal law” suddenly entails writing your own state’s repressive, decidedly non-federal legislation. Golly willikers, who knew?

18. Mary Fucking Landrieu. Yeah, that oil leak isn’t such a disaster after all. It looks like shiny, rainbow-colored chocolate milk. Won’t kill a single seabird. In fact, they’ll probably all thrive on it, won’t they, Mary?

19. Dick Fucking Cheney. We just knew the Big Dick would have a catastrophic impact extending way beyond his time in office, and now we know what it is: “…it was Cheney’s energy task force – the secretive one that he wouldn’t say much about publicly – that decided that the switches, which cost $500,000, were too much a burden on the industry.” Well, Biggus Dickus, they now seem pretty much a bargain compared to the cost of cleaning up all that wasted oil, don’t they? Maybe you’d like to chip in to relieve BP’s “burden” now, since you, your company and your energy task force are in this up to the eyeballs? And since you made such a tidy profit on Halliburton stock while you were still in office?

20. Tiger Fucking Woods. Making an obscene amount of money at golf apparently means that not only does your shit not stink, but neither does the alcohol on your breath. And it also means the cops can’t bust you for driving drunk (and/or drugged). Yeah, tell me crapitalism doesn’t have its great performance incentives!

21. David Fucking Vitter. He’s found something new to soil his diapers about, and its initials are B and P.

22. John Fucking Baird. Does Squealer ever listen to himself? He moans about how the Liberals are supposedly dividing the country, but in fact, he’s projecting his own party’s strategy–separate the Western country bumpkins from the Eastern city slickers, etc. Considering how many so-called Liberals from the GTA are practically Conservatives from out West by their voting habits, Squealer may want to rewrite his crapaganda–if he’s not man enough to take his damnfool accusations back. And of course, we’re supposed to shut the fuck up and let this pigshit pass, too.

(Apologies to any pigs out there who may be offended by this odious comparison.)

23. James Fucking Moore. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again–this time with a battering ram behind it? HELL NO! If you’re so enamoured of US digital copyright draconianism, Mr. Moore, MOVE THERE! But don’t try to dictate that we follow suit. And while you’re at it, watch this YouTube to see how well that’s working out for them down there.

24. and 25. Lisa Fucking Raitt and Christian Fucking Paradis. Aw, isn’t it cute how obedient these two good little kids are? When Daddy Harpo tells them what to do–or rather, what not to–they don’t even bother to ask how high, they just jump! Even if it means obstruction of the justice that’s supposed to be coming to Rahim Fucking Jaffer. Ain’t corruption and dictatorship lovely?

26. Karlheinz Fucking Schreiber. Finally we know who to blame for Lyin’ Brian Fucking Mulroney’s accession to power over the head of a decent man:

January 1983 – Schreiber pays to send delegates to the PC convention in Winnipeg to vote against then-party leader Joe Clark. In June, Clark loses the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party to Brian Mulroney. He later claims that some of the money was given by Franz Josef Strauss, former premier of Bavaria and chairman of Airbus Industrie, an aircraft manufacturer.
[…]
Sept. 4, 1984 – Brian Mulroney is elected Prime Minister of Canada.

Oh yeah, and that was just the BEGINNING of the Airbus Affair. We haven’t even touched on the hundreds of thousands ol’ Lyin’ Brian was paid to keep himself in Gucci loafers–and bribed to buy Airbuses for Air Canada. And can you believe they both, along with the late Frank Fucking Moores, had the nerve to sue reporters for TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THEM?

One thing I do thank this smug little turd for, though, is showing just how dirty the Tories’ underbelly was and still is. Of course, he’s a major clump of the dirt that’s on it…but he’s just one clump. There are others.

27. Stewart Fucking Rhodes. A right-wing gun nut who thinks he can rally progressives behind him…using a magical blend of fake conspiracy theories and real ones that don’t actually apply to the situation as it currently stands? Uh, yeah. Keep dreaming. It’s the only political power you’re ever likely to reach, dude.

28. Erik Fucking Prince. Just shut the fuck up, and go the hell away. Preferably to die bankrupt and rot in your cracker swamp. Asshole.

29. Joe Fucking Lieberman. “Accidents happen”, says he of the BP oil fiasco. Yeah, Joe, I bet your mom said the same thing when she learned she was pregnant with you.

30. Dennis Fucking Prager. It really chaps his ass–and that of all teabaggers–to be called on their collective racism. But hey, if bad presidenting were REALLY the reason they hate Obama, they’d have been calling for Dubya to b
e tarred and feathered, since he’s the one that got this bad ball rolling. Where were they back then?

Aha. Thought so.

31. Lou Fucking Engle. Srsly, I’m just waiting to hear that he was caught renting a boy in Uganda. Murderous professional homophobes are surprisingly good at that sort of thing.

32. Grover Fucking Norquist. And anyone else out there in the Douchebag Party who thinks that “teabagger” is the new “n-word”. Gimme a fucking break–you people were using that term yourselves, BEFORE you knew what it meant in queerspeak. Shall I play it back to you verbatim?

You used it first. Now stop your fucking whining, you racist douchebags.

33. Dadeus Fucking Grings. Once more, a fascist archbishop feels compelled to blame the victims. Teens are “spontaneously homosexual” and all of society is “pedophile”, whatever that means. I think he’s trying to blame the young jezebels again, instead of those who rape them. Because we all know priests are celibate until tempted otherwise…and of course, the church can police its own, so it doesn’t have to hand its offenders over to that “pedophile” society full of “spontaneously homosexual” teens and cops! (PS: Nice holocaust denial you got there, bud.)

34. Stephen Fucking Harper. This wanker never stops wanking, not even in his sleep. Not ony is he constantly dreaming up new ways to undermine those to whom he is ideologically opposed (ridiculous, potentially disastrous funding cuts being his main method of choice), the goddamned motherfucker has the shittiest taste in music, too.

And finally, to all the above, and to any wankers out there whom I may have missed…Babs here has a lovely little ditty she’d like to sing for all you asshats. Enjoy:

Good night, and get fucked. (Except, of course, for George Fucking Rekers, who really should fall impotent for his god-awful hypocrisy.)

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Posted in Wankers of the Week | 2 Comments

Hay, that could work!

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Sabina Becker

Never underestimate the creative problem-solving skills of bubbas in overalls. These two good ol’ boys have a literally homegrown solution that could help mop up the Gulf oil slick without chemicals or booms. You really have to see this to believe it.

And I do.

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Posted in Environmentally Ill, She Blinded Me With Science | 1 Comment

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Chavecito Tweeto

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Sabina Becker

The Venezuelan tweeterverse was very boring…until along came a big red bird in a beret, who now has more followers than any other local personality on the tweeter: