Another honour killing?

Three female family members murdered by the family patriarch, and where are the anti-feminists?:

A 58-year-old man turned the gun on himself after shooting three members of his family in a northern Alberta town, according to new information released by the RCMP Thursday.

Ian Jeffrey Paget appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, RCMP said in a news release.

The bodies of Paget, a woman police described as his estranged wife, Joan Hanson, 64, the couple’s daughter Jolene Eliuk, 32, and her daughter, Misty, 9, were found on Sunday in a farmhouse in Smith, about 200 kilometres north of Edmonton.

I expect there’ll be as much ink, tears and spittle spilled by conservatives over these Alberta killings as the Rideau Canal murders, which may (or may not) have been honour killings.  At least I hope so:  otherwise, it looks an awful lot like they’re just “concern-trolling” about Muslim women as a way to vent some kind of genteel racism.   The outrage will be coming any minute now, I’m sure.  Any… minute… now…

There’s more on the story here:  What a tragedy.  It appears that financial pressure drove Paget off the deep end and everyone else was in the wrong place at the wrong time.   If someone is suicidal, can’t or won’t seek help and self-destruction is imminent, why can’t they just go off somewhere alone and check out?   Why do they have to take other people with them?   A 9-year-old kid — so sad.

Speaking of the Rideau Canal Murders: This story was weird from the start and gets weirder every day, with family and friends continually showing up to say (a) it was an “honour” killing, and alternately (b) it wasn’t an “honour” killing.  It appears to be less about “honour” and more about a guy wanting to rid himself of an “extra family” (second wife and 3 kids), although it’s hard to imagine the mentality that would consider killing them to be a viable option.   This is clearly one of those stories where nobody but the perpetrators will know the whole truth until the trial starts — in the interim it’s  a good idea to avoid making assumptions about cultural issues that may (or may not) have played into the killings.  That’s not political correctness, it’s logic.

Oh, fer cute

Lookie, it’s a baby cheetah:

Squeeeeeee!  More here.

(This has been a Public Service Announcement from the Ministry of Cuteness.)

Friday afternoon turkeyblogging

YES!

Yesterday morning at dawn (had to adjust the light with iphoto) they were out there: a male, a female and a baby turkey.  My batteries died right after I took this picture, so that’s it for now… I gave them some cake, hopefully they’ll come back.

What he said

I was going to write about Shona Holmes and the outpouring of Canadian rage she’s experiencing since she decided to pimp for private health care interests in both Canada and the US, but Bruce pretty much says it all.

Slowly they rise

… step by step, inch by inch… the MSM awakens, stretches, lumbers out of the bedroom and, pushing past the furious discussion already in progress in the kitchen, puts on the coffee, stumbles to the bathroom for the Morning Ablutions, returns to the kitchen, clears its throat and joins the discussion:

A U.S. ad featuring an Ontario woman who spoke out against the Canadian health-care system may be exaggerating the severity of her condition, say medical experts.

Excellent, some professional opinions.

Shona Holmes has appeared in U.S. ads saying she had to go to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona to be treated for a rare type of cyst at the base of her brain — a Rathke’s cleft cyst. She mortgaged her home and paid $100,000 to be treated there because getting care in Canada involved a six-month wait, she said. She is currently suing OHIP to recoup those costs.  [...]

Dr. Rolando Del Maestro says the lesion Holmes was diagnosed with is benign, and usually slow-growing. It typically does not require urgent attention, he said.

Unfortunately, the story goes on to repeat Holmes’ bogus claim that the Mayo Clinic doctors said her cyst…

would cause death if not removed immediately.

Memo to CBC — Use the Googles.

Although we can’t know 100% because the medical records aren’t public, it’s almost certain that Holmes was diagnosed with a benign cyst in Ontario:  her treatment there just doesn’t fit the profile of someone diagnosed with a life-threatening condition:

But neurosurgeon Michael Schwartz of Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital says he’s never seen or heard of a death from a Rathke’s cyst. He told CBC News symptoms can be alleviated if the cyst is drained or part of it removed to take pressure off the optic nerve. “Then the person’s vision almost always improves.

“If somebody called me about a patient that was losing her vision or had a structural abnormality of the brain I would see them within days.”

This whole story is very murky.  Although Holmes’ health care choices are obviously her own to make, given that she’s taking an enthusiastic run at our health care system with her lawsuit, I think it’s fair to wonder:

*Why the Mayo Clinic in Arizona rather than somewhere closer?

*Why did she launch a lawsuit to recover her costs rather than just let Ontario complete their investigation to confirm the treatment was necessary (standard operating procedure when they’re billed for out-of-country medical expenses), rubberstamp her bill and pay it out?  Was she worried that her Mayo Clinic treatment might not make the cut?

*Why doesn’t CBC talk about the Canadian Constitutional Foundation, a right-wing charitable organization who’s bankrolling Holmes’ lawsuit in the hope that a court challenge will eventually result in all of Canada being “gifted” with a health care system where we’d have to re-mortgage our homes to get benign cysts removed (those of us who have homes to re-mortgage, that is)?

It’s no secret that Holmes and her spurious claims about her condition have been bought and paid for by private insurance pimps to fight health care reform in the US.  How did that all come about?  Maybe Canada’s MSM could use its vast resources to explore the vile and seamy background of this story, rather than just repeating what bloggers have already dug up.

(h/t ACR and CC)

Gordie hits one out of the park

Well done, my reluctantly pro-choice friend, well done.

LOL Break

For dog owners:

Malicious Tweet

Be careful out there, Tweeps!:

A 127-character tweet about a moldy apartment in Chicago could end up costing @abonnen $50,000.

On May 12th Amanda Bonnen, who has since deleted her Twitter account, responded to a friend with the tweet, “@JessB123You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

@abonnen only had about 20 followers that directly received the message, but her profile was set to public, and Chicago-based Horizon Group Management discovered the tweet.

Chicago Now reports the company then filed a defamation lawsuit alleging Bonnen, “maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory Tweet on Twitter, thereby allowing the Tweet to be distributed throughout the world.”

Horizon is seeking $50,000 in damages.

$393.70 a character, that’s a steep tweet.

VP Joe Biden, hatespeecher

During a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal about foreign policy and eastern Europe, VP Biden Took The LORD’s Name In Vain:

“I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, ‘Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?’ Moscow, not Washington.”

You might think, as any normal person would, that Biden’s offhand comment was pretty harmless… oh yeah? Well, here’s something to file under “O” for “Over-reaction”and “Over-sensitive”, with copies filed under “P” for “Persecution Complexes” and “I” for “Indignance High”.   It would certainly be a good article to have on hand the next time you get any backtalk from a wingnut about “political correctness”:

It’s also long been the rule among prudent politicians with national aspirations to say nothing unkind about anybody’s religious faith. But the silence that has greeted Vice President Joe Biden’s use of “Jesus Christ” as an expletive in an on-the-record interview with The Wall Street Journal, suggests that such prudence has been tossed aside.  [...]

Of course, as predictably as the sunrise:

Either way, had Biden used the name Mohammed in this manner, Muslims would be crying foul.

Where’s the outrage!?

So where is the outrage about Biden’s hate speech against Christians?

And invoking the name of Jesus Christ is meant to demean and degrade and spread hatred of Christians how, exactly?  It’s like yelling “Muhammed!” or “Gays!” — utterly meaningless (as opposed to statements about Muslims and gays which are obviously meant to foment hatred).

Apart from comic relief, this article makes the point that in spite of all their bombast about free speech, religious social conservatives are the last people who can actually be trusted to uphold such principles.

NOTE: Pharygula linked to this article, so check the comments.  Haha!

(via pharyngula)

Nice petition, guys

Fetus fetishists make a petition for “fetal consent to abortion”:

“Any baby killer that does NOT obtain written or verbal consent from the child they kill WILL be executed for first degree murder within 90 days of the murder with no appeals process.” Fortunately it looks like this isn’t a super-popular petition, given there’s only 12 signatures:

But 12 signatures (oh and look who #2 is:  Jill aka bayouchild… colour me fucking shocked) translated to 12 high-powered rifles at 12 different locations, hmmm yes, I can see a potential problem.  Do you see a problem?  I see a problem.

A teachable moment, wasted

That the anti-choice movement has an image problem (or as they might prefer to call it, an “unborn image solution”) is undeniable:  that  whole “dead doctor” thing is like a ball and chain.   So, especially in the wake of Dr.Tiller’s murder, it only makes sense that they’d take any and every opportunity to call out the psychotic extremists that they claim inhabit only the “fringe” of the movement.

In a post about euthanasia over at SUZANNE’s, new (at least to me) commenter “Jill” projectile vomits her 2cents worth of “murder, blood & body  of Christ, killing the unborn and murdered children ” rhetoric all over the page.

I posted my comment on the euthanasia issue, then threw on the metaphorical hip waders and slogged through the blood, guts and bullshit in “Jill’s” comment.  Hovering over her “homepage” link (never click because you never know when you’ll be greeted by fetus pron and/or an eyeball-shatteringly MASSIVE font in the header banner), I recognized the URL as that of a commenter who recently visited the blog of an abortion provider and left this comment:

Wow.  Anyone catch the irony of Jill/bayouchild scolding the doctor for blogging under a “bogus name and no picture” and then basically saying “Hope someone stalks and kills you!”?  Talk about answering your own question.

So I decided to post another comment calling out Jill/bayouchild on her deranged hypocrisy and linking to her comment at Passionate Provider’s blog:

This was more than just me calling out an anti-choicer on her disgusting hypocrisy.  It was an opportunity for other anti-choicers to stand up to one of the “fringe extremists” to whom their movement is supposedly opposed.  To say: Hey.  That wasn’t cool.  Wishing people dead is not what our movement is about. A “teachable moment”, so to speak.

Predictably, this morning I found that only my comment about euthanasia made the moderation cut — hands up everyone who’s surprised! — so I posted another one which probably also won’t be allowed:

Or maybe it’s just that “Jill/bayouchild’s” views aren’t all that extremist.  At least that’s how it looks from where I sit.

Obama’s Evil Plan to Kill Old People

You know — like Hitler!

The GOP and health care reform, where batshit and bugshit collide:

Oy vey.  It would be funny if there weren’t so many ignorant, ill-informed conservative types out there who actually believe this shit.

Roeder pleads

Not Guilty:

A Kansas judge on Tuesday ordered an anti-abortion activist to stand trial in the death of a Wichita doctor who was gunned down at his church.

Scott Roeder, 51, pleaded not guilty after being bound over to trial on charges of first-degree murder in the death of Dr. George Tiller, who ran a women’s clinic in which he performed abortions. Tiller was shot to death May 31 as services began at Reformation Lutheran Church. Roeder also faces two charges of aggravated assault for threatening church members Gary Hoepner and Keith Martin.  [...]

Roeder was nailed as the shooter by witnesses who also testified that he’d been seen at the church the previous Sunday.

During a preliminary hearing Tuesday, Gary Hoepner, an usher and 52-year member of the church, testified he was talking with Tiller before services when a man walked up to them, “put a gun right up to George’s head and shot it.”  [...]

Hoepner identified Roeder as the man he saw that day, and testified he had also seen him at the church the Sunday before the incident. Church members told him the man had placed a note in the church’s collection plate, Hoepner said, and that the same man had done so previously. Anderson also said he had seen the man at the church, saying he remembered the man was balding and “his clothes didn’t match very well.”

So it looks like Roeder was stalking Dr. Tiller, something it’s already common knowledge he was doing during Dr. Tiller’s court case.  He did so with the assistance of Operation Rescue’s Cheryl Sullenger, who reportedly said after the killing “Who knew??” what Roeder would do with the information she was giving him about Dr. Tiller’s every move.

I’m glad Roeder isn’t copping a plea, because it means he intends to put up a fight, which in turn means he might be ratting on old friends who he feels have  deserted him.  That he’ll be convicted is without question, but in the process I’d like to see him take as many of his douchebag friends down with him as possible, starting with the rotten shit-eating scum who helped him stalk Dr. Tiller.

The trial starts Sept.21.  Pass the popcorn.

Home-skooling strikes again

D’oh!

(from JAB‘s Twitter feed)

Sotomayor OK’d by Committee

Predictably, so far Randall Terry’s fire and brimstone campaign to DEFEAT SOTOMAYOR hasn’t had the intense effect he was hoping for… or any effect at all, really:

As expected, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, setting her up for confirmation by the full Senate next week.

All those weird, sick-fuck posters gone to waste!  I wonder if we’ll see the “artwork”  recycled for use in the Epic Battle against health care reform?  Why not?  The photoshopping is already so bad, it couldn’t look any worse if they slapped someone else’s picture in there.

Kitteh Haiku

I can has attention please?
Mah bowl has problem
Is empty of cheeseburger.

UPDATE: And mah haiku pome
Wuz inside-out and backwards
Dis make up fer it

Putting government between people & their doctors

That’s one of the talking points you’ll see over and over again as the slatternly GOP and its private insurance pimps ramp up their campaign against health care reform in the USA.  The “public option” is bad because it supposedly puts government bureaucrats between people and their doctors.  But as always with right-wing hypocrites, the evil of putting government between people and their doctors is somewhat context-dependent.

Fair and Balanced Fox News recently gave anti-abortion radical Father Frank Pavone (a celibate male who’s disturbingly obsessed with womens’ reproductive issues, as well as BFF of domestic terrorist Randall Terry) a platform on their “Live Desk” show, where he fumed about the “abortion lobby” highjacking health care reform:

Pavone, a primo member of the anti abortion lobby said “let’s not let the abortion lobby hijack” the bill.  [...]  He claimed that people “are outraged” (I guess the padre isn’t aware of the outrage in pro-choice circles about how the anti choicers are, once again, trying to limit a woman’s right to an abortion.) He made the specious point that “Americans don’t want” the “legitimate” debate about health care to include abortion. (Memo to Pavone: You speak for yourself and co-religionists. You don’t speak for the rest of us!) He added that the American public wants “more reasonable restrictions on abortions.”

“More reasonable restrictions“:  and we all know what Pavone’s idea of a  “reasonable restriction” is — a total ban.  In other words, putting government bureaucrats between people and their doctors.  But I guess that’s okay as long as the people are women and the doctors are Ob-Gyns.

They can run

…but they caaaaaaan’t hide!

Hilarious as it is, I’ve never commented on this whole “Obama Birth Certificate” thing because the “birther” wingnuttery is so psychotic it really writes its own comedy routine.  When people become parodies of whacko stereotypes, mockery becomes redundant: it’s like kicking the shit out of an empty cardboard box, possible cardiovascular benefits but vaguely unsatisfying.

But since the GOP revealed that it has the collective IQ of an acorn squash when it caved into its lunatic wing and sponsored a bill that would require future presidents to prove their citizenship, it seemed that the Birfers were actually a force to be reckoned with!  So one would think those behind the Birfer Bill would be happy to talk about it, no?  Haha.  Watch what happens when FDL’s Mike Stark tries to get some of the guys who sponsored this ludicrous bill to talk it up:

Run away! Run away!  I wonder if any of these guys ever ponder the monster they’ve created in their  demented, deranged, teabagging, tinfoil-hatted base, and at what point it became the ball and chain they’re forced to drag around today?

UPDATE — RELATED: Obama’s birth certificate declared genuine — again!

Shona Holmes, Sex Advisor

I shit you not!

I just got this from a commenter:  she apparently hides behind her maiden name (and with good reason).  My commenter said he/she has contacted Holmes to ask her about the discrepancies in her execrable anti-health care reform commercials… more to come, or as they say…

DEVELOPING…

Octomom signs for reality TV show

And we’re all so surprised we could just shit!:

The American woman who gave birth to the world’s longest-surviving set of octuplets has signed a $250,000 US deal for all 14 of her children to appear on a reality TV show, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles.

Nadya Suleman has agreed for her children to appear — for about $250 US a day, per child — in an upcoming show filmed by Netherlands-based production company Eyeworks, which counts the shows The Biggest Loser and Breaking Bonaduce among its television offerings.

Shooting is scheduled to begin Sept. 1.

What else would an unemployed mother of 14 do?

I have to wonder how well the show will go over, though.  Given that a lot of the fan base for these megafamily freak shows is the brain-damaged “focus on the family” crowd, a show about this particular family might be a misfire.  Bad enough that the Family Patriarch will be conspicuous in his absence, but it’s also bound to remind the audience that those little anklebiters weren’t conceived in Christofascist-approved sexual congress in the blessed Matrimonial Bed, but via in vitrio fertilization, a big-time anti-family, anti-life no-no.  They might as well sit a turkey baster at the head of the dinner table.  HA!

If only

That is all.

Commenting at conservative blogs: A cautionary tale

Three words: screenshot, screenshot and screenshot.  Because if you make a comment that proves them wrong, it will not be allowed to stand.

In a post about honour killings, the Blogging Tories’ “Hunter” (famous for her outstanding contributions to society’s Downward Spiral of Stupid), mouths off in one of those standard “Where are the feminists??” rants:

She prattles on brainlessly for awhile, wipes the drool off her chin, and concludes:

That “feminists are too busy yapping about daycare and equal pay to be bothered with such things as honour killings” came as a surprise to me, having just read not one, but three(3) posts by feminists on this very topic.   I was compelled to advise Hunter of this, with links to said posts at Dammit Janet, Broadsides and ACR:

And rather than admit she was wrong, Little Miss Gutless does what these cowardly pieces of shit always do:

And I’m sick of it.   I’m sick and tired of feminist-bashing assholes mouthing off before they have the facts, especially considering feminists have been agitating against abuse of women in Muslim countries for over 20 years, while conservatives only jumped on the bandwagon after 9/11.

Go ahead:  prove me wrong.

A S S H O L E S !!!

More proof (as if we needed it)

…that anti-choicers aren’t all that hot to stop abortion, they just want women to stop fucking for any reason other than procreation — more recently-enacted so-called “conscience laws” allowing pharmacists to refuse to do their jobs:

On July 12, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed a “conscience protection” law that gives health-care providers and institutions the right to refuse services on religious or moral grounds.

Same goes for Arizona. On July 13, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a measure that allows pharmacists to deny a woman any birth control method that they claim to be abortifacients, even those that are medically and legally designated as contraceptives.

If a waitress who was a vegetarian refused to serve a steak to someone, how long do you think she’d last at her job?  Would the government come to her rescue with a “conscience law” that allowed her to cherry-pick which parts of her job she had to do?  Of course not:  the obvious solution for this vegan wait-person is to work somewhere other than the Black Angus Steak House, since meat is obviously on the menu.  When considering pharmacy as a career, does it not occur to anti-choicers that one of the most popular items on the pharmacy menu is contraception (with a side of cherry-almond massage oil)?

Of course it does, and that’s exactly why they choose to become pharmacists  in the first place.  Working as pharmacists gives them the opportunity to exercise sanctimonious anti-choice power plays by denying contraception to wanton jezebels, who might then end up having abortions and can be harassed and degraded even further on their way into the clinic.

It’s the vicious cycle of slut-shaming; don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Really don’t mind

if I sit this one out…

The Shona Holmes Blowback begins

Blowback?  Or collateral damage?   Both?:

I am NOT Shona Holmes.

Waterdown resident Palmira Holmes wants angry callers to know she is not the same Holmes from Waterdown whose problems with Canadian health care have made her the U.S. poster girl for forces opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care plan.

Palmira Holmes has been inundated with phone calls from people trying to express their fury over Shona Holmes’ decision to become the face of an aggressive American TV ad that slams Canadian-style health care.

Palmira Holmes says “it was like being bombarded” in the last few days as critics called constantly, thinking they’d reached Shona Holmes. Palmira’s number is listed as S. Holmes for husband Stephen.

Well that’s gotta suck!  If I was Palmira Holmes, I’d be looking for Shona with a baseball bat.  (Line forms on the right, Palmira.)

I’m extremely late in commenting on this one,  mainly because when I watched the video featuring Shona Holmes shitting all over the health care system that probably gave her a pretty good shake for the first 40 years of her life, I was so enraged my head nearly spun off and burst into flames.   But I can’t help noticing the irony of the situation.

Everyone knows the backstory by now:  Shona Holmes chose to jump the queue and go stateside for treatment she didn’t really need, then came back and launched a lawsuit, bankrolled by the right-wing CCF, to shake OHIP down for the money she spent.    (And to provide the anti-reform lobby in the US with a poster girl to lie her douchebag ass off in commercials and further their odious goal of continuing to deny  health care coverage to 50million Americans.)  Think about that for a minute…

Talk about having and eating the proverbial freaking cake. The irony is that if Shona Holmes had been living in the US and had private health insurance, it probably wouldn’t have paid for her treatment at the Mayo Clinic either, since it was very much an elective procedure.  If she chose to mortgage her home and get the treatment anyway, she’d then have no recourse for recovering the cost, as she does with OHIP.

But I guess when you’re busy shilling for the private health insurance lobby in the US, such points of logic are meaningless trivia.

UPDATE: In the comments, RossK retiterates a point that he made in his post about Holmes, which is well worth highlighting:

The benign cyst for which Holmes was treated is caused by what’s called an “embryological remnant” — that is, it formed before Ms.Holmes was even born.  Safe to say that would put it in that terrifying (but much beloved to private insurance companies) category known as “Pre-Existing Conditions“.

So not only would this surgery not have been covered under private insurance because it was elective, the fact that it was a pre-existing condition might well have been reason for her insurer to cancel her policy… at which point there’d be nothing she could do but say “D’OH!“