What we’ve suspected all along

Though under current conditions it’s unlikely that any legal culpability will ever be proven, it’s always been clear that the assassination of Dr. George Tiller one year ago today wasn’t exactly the act of a single demented nutjob.  Scott Roeder has a longstanding association with the farthest whacked out fringes of the anti-abortion movement, many of whom openly and unabashedly advocate violence against abortion providers or have proudly committed it themselves.   It’s a nest of cockroaches that only scatter when one of them actually kills someone.

Arguing against the “lone wolf” theory, Ms. Magazine uses a Venn diagram to show overlap between the wheels of the frenzied fascist machine in which Roeder was a just another greasy little cog:

The article makes some interesting points about Criminal Conspiracy law:

In international terrorism cases, in organized crime cases, even in drugtrafficking cases, conspiracy charges can be filed when two or more people enter into an agreement to commit an unlawful act. In fact, of the 159 people convicted of international terrorism by the U.S. since 9/11, more than 70 percent were sentenced for conspiracy (or for “harboring” terrorists). Once a person becomes a member of the conspiracy, she or he is held legally responsible for the acts of other members done in furtherance of the conspiracy, even if she or he is not present or aware that the acts are being committed.

The government does not have to prove that conspirators have entered into any formal agreement. Because they are trying to hide what they are doing, criminal conspirators rarely do such things as draw up contracts. Nor does the government have to show that the members of the conspiracy state between themselves what their object or purpose or methods are. Because they are clandestine, criminal conspirators rarely discuss their plans in a straightforward way. The government only has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the members of a conspiracy, in some implied way, came to mutually understand they would attempt to accomplish a common and unlawful plan.

If anti-abortion terrorism was prosecuted the same way as Islamic terrorism, Scott Roeder would likely have some company in the pen.   Until that happens, these networks of brainless scum have little to lose by encouraging anyone among them who might be so inclined to Get It On.

RIP “Billy”

"What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about."

Dennis Hopper, gone.

(h/t Willy)

After that, we need this

Click on “play” and repeat as necessary.

Way to go, BP

As seen from space

It’s been over a month since the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and sent 12-19000 barrels of crude oil on a high-speed ooze into the Gulf of Mexico every single day since.   (Or who knows?).

Google Earth image, spill superimposed in black

BP has lamely tried various methods of plugging this out-of-control environmental disaster, the latest idea being an operation called a “top kill“.

Now it looks like something down there might have exploded(?), but hours later the CNN live streaming still shows the operation functioning as per plan.  (Note the “From BP” in the top right corner — if only their engineering department was as efficient as their PR department).  Update:  Now it’s showing this:

What are they hiding?

I agree with the Lt.General — it might light a fire under BP’s slimy douchebag asses if they were being fined some catastrophic sum of money every day until this thing is fixed.  Although really, it’s a little baffling that the same gang of oilmongering buffoons who fucked up so colossally in the first place should even be trusted anywhere near the disaster they wrought.

Sickening.  You can see just how sickening here.

UPDATE: A little context for you easterners:

Catastrophic doesn’t even begin to describe this thing.

(NASA image from Wiki)

If good fences make good neighbours

… what do giant ugly-ass fences make?

You may or may not have heard that one Joe McGinniss, a journalist currently working on an unauthorized biography about Our Lady of Perpetual Teabagging, recently rented a house next door to the Palin Palace in Wasilla.  This was seen by some (including me, actually) as a bit creepy, but so what?   Kinky creeps and lint-brained weirdos abound in this whackadoodle world of ours — usually we’re not lucky enough to know where they are, which gives them a chance to lurk on our properties and peer into our windows.

But check this out — in response to this unwanted neighbour, get a load of the fence that the Half-First Dude and his buddies built:

Well, that is what I’d call one fugly fence.  About 12 feet high and constructed out of giant Popsicle sticks.

Perfect.  Tomorrow’s project: sit a great big square of plywood on top and nail ‘er down.

Jason Kenney: perjuring prevaricator

Main Entry:	liar
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	person who tells falsehood
Synonyms:	cheat, con artist, deceiver, deluder, dissimulator, equivocator, fabler, fabricator, fabulist, false witness, falsifier, fibber, maligner, misleader, perjurer, phony, prevaricator, promoter, storyteller, trickster

Fabulist!

(via:  TGB, Stageleft, CC, Willy, Skinnydip)

Where’s Nancy Ruth when you need her?

How long, o lord, how long? How many nights must I come home from work and turn on my computer only to be confronted with yet another dimwitted pronouncement about abortion from some pre-senile Pope’s minion?  Is there no end to the toxic stream of feverish, addlepated gibberish being expectorated by withered and gynecologically-obsessed Men of the Cloth like this Cardinal Ouellet dude, on a subject they’re the least qualified people in the world to address?  Because it’s all starting to get a bit old:

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who sparked controversy this month with his comments on abortion, has called for a broader debate into the issue but still considers abortion a “serious moral disorder.”

Paging Nancy Ruth!  Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

But maybe first someone should inform this half-bright papist that we already had “the debate”: 20 long, drawn-out, agonizing years of it, from 1968 to 1988.  That’s two(2) decades of protests, abortion caravans, women chaining themselves up in the Parliamentary Gallery and doctors going to jail.  That was the “Abortion Debate”, and happily, the Cardinal’s side lost and lost big.

Just because a debate doesn’t go your way it doesn’t mean you get a do-over.   Having lost so emphatically, the correct response would be to shut the fuck up about it.

Division: that starts with D and that rhymes with “Tea”

And “GOP”.  Whoopsie!  Who possibly could have seen this coming?:

Republican officials are working to derail the campaign of a tea party supported candidate in North Carolina — circulating documents from the man’s messy divorce that depict him as a pot smoker who has called himself the messiah. [...]

Republican leaders in both Raleigh and Washington, however, are worried about his electability in November if he wins a primary runoff next month. They’re publicizing court documents about D’Annunzio’s past legal, martial and business troubles and denouncing him as unfit for office.

“The Messiah”?  I thought Obama was Teh Messiah, and he got elected.  Of course, he didn’t call himself The Messiah, and I guess that makes all the difference.

To the terrified chagrin of the GOP establishment, they have been unable as yet to absorb the tea party and get it under control. Too late for all that: anti-establishment candidates appear to be in the ascendancy on both sides of the aisle.  Now that the ‘baggers have discovered they can run — and elect — their own candidates, they’re understandably excited about it.  If some of their candidates win in November, the GOP may find itself absorbed by the tea party instead of the other way around.

Slime or Reason

Another serious discussion is temporarily derailed when someone swaggers over from the children’s table, puffs toughly on a tampon they found in the upstairs bathroom cabinet, and growls…

Cross-border cunting!

But seriously: although I’d love to see the idiotic “War On Drugs” scrapped tomorrow now yesterday, this illustrates why I’m pessimistic about it ever happening.  Upper-right quadrant conservatives are such inveterate punishment freaks that they don’t see anything wrong with our government lamely kow-towing to that of another nation and allowing them to extradite and imprison our citizens for something that’s barely worth a wrist-slap at home.  Given that liberals talk a good game about decriminalization but generally fall in line in the wet-ass hour, I don’t see this changing anytime soon.

Sunday morning coming

…into a tube sock — Shorter “Paycheck” at FD:

“Almost nobody in Canada, right up to the Prime Minister, wants what we want, but by the power of sheer obnoxious loudness and batshit insanity, we’ll get it anyway.“

Sure, just like you did with marriage.  That sound about right?

Sunday kitteh

What happened

Suddenly all that screaming, screeching and shrieking we were hearing last week seems to have died out and it’s suddenly gotten very quiet…

A new abortion law for Canada just isn’t in the cards, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday as the issue continues to bubble and backbench Conservatives press for new legislation. [...]

“But I have been clear: I will oppose any attempt to create a new abortion law.”

On the other hand, maybe the rest of that sentence was “during this Parliament”.  Vigilance.

Rand Paul: GOP nightmare

Rand Paul, the GOP’s new Senate candidate for Kentucky and teabagger favourite, has run into some controversy over his somewhat, um, atavistic views with regard to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  When Rachel Maddow tried to pin him down about his views on the CRA on Wednesday night, things went a little sideways:

Watch how he studiously avoids the question, to the point where he even ignores Maddow’s frustrated request for a “Yes or No” answer:

Paul appears to be an extremely doctrinaire libertarian: government doesn’t get to fuck with private business, dead stop.  If a restaurant owner wants to pull a Lester Maddox on one of his would-be customers,

apparently in Paul’s view the world is turning as it should.

I tend to think most libertarianism is somewhat more nuanced than Paul’s absolutist version.  I have a distinct libertarian streak myself, but there’s no way I could ever convince myself that a minority person being driven out of a restaurant at the end of a gun and an axehandle, or even just being refused service, is a scene that has anything to do with what I’d call “liberty”… it looks more like authoritarianism to me.  Tyranny of the majority.

But Rand Paul entertains no such nuances, and his candidacy is turning into a shitstorm of massive magnitude for the GOP.   The Dems must be celebrating… I give it until July before he resigns.

Or maybe not, and won’t that be interesting.

UPDATE: The Invisible Hand can fix a lot of things, but it can’t fix Stupid.  See?

This is why the part of the CRA that addresses private businesses is necessary.  Bigotry isn’t a commodity that waxes and wanes according to supply and demand — the supply creates its own demand, because there is no shortage of Teh Stoopid out there.

So much for that, Part II

Wherein Canada’s Imminent Culture of Fetus Fetishizing©™ predictably takes another one in the nads with a frozen boot:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will vote against a private member’s bill promoted by one of his own MPs that would add new Criminal Code penalties for those who coerce women to have an abortion.

A senior government official also says that while the prime minister will not “whip” or demand Conservative MPs vote as he votes, it will be “very strongly recommended” that Conservatives vote to defeat the bill.

OOF!

Meanwhile, Mr. Harper’s communications director, Dimitri Soudas, says that recommendation is consistent with Harper’s position since 2002 on any bill dealing with abortion: He and his government will neither introduce nor support any such legislation.

It doesn’t look like Harpie’s too interested in continuing his inexorable stumble down the path he witlessly careened onto with his Maternal Health Initiative.  If Harper thought he’d finally shaken off all the “hidden agenda” paranoia that’s dogged him for so long, in the last few months it’s come back with a vengeance.  If a dimwitted and transparent “coerced abortion” bill were to start slithering its way towards passage, the abortion-related volume that’s already been turned up would blow the woofers right out of his election campaign.

I guess he did the math and figured out that solidifying the socon vote isn’t worth alienating the vast moderate middle who really don’t care to see this issue re-opened.

UPDATE: Noteworthy comment from further down in the NatPo article, from Harper’s Communications Director:

“[Harper] has never had more than one position on this issue. The debate is over. It’s done,” said Soudas.

Not that I trust Harpie for a second, but it’s nice to see a high-ranking CPC spokesman go On The Record with what most of us know already: “The debate is over.  It’s done.“.

(h/t – ACR)

Two beers?

I would have held out for a halfsack…

A Massachusetts man offered to give his three-month-old daughter to a maintenance man outside a gas station convenience store in exchange for two beers, authorities say.

… or if it was really really cute, maybe a bottle of Bushmills.

Dumping WordPress

After 18 months or so on Weirdpress, I have come to believe it’s the teenage girl of blogging platforms:  pretty but flaky and given to emotional outbursts and fainting spells.

Oh well.  It wasn’t a bad experiment, it just didn’t work out so it’s time to move on.  Buy the ticket and all that.

I’ll most likely be going back to Blogspot, and probably give the blog a new name.  Posting will continue here intermittently while I mull over new setups, but this will also serve as a much needed respite from the frenzy of the blogosphere which has been getting on my nerves.

I will keep you informed of any developments… (now hopefully when I hit “Publish” this thing will actually show up on the front page…)

Geometry taught the Alabama way

Teachbagger!!:

An Alabama teacher has been questioned by the Secret Service after using the hypothetical assassination of President Barack Obama as a way to teach angles to his geometry students, The Birmingham News reports [...]

Officials said the Jefferson County geometry teacher was apparently teaching students about parallel lines and angles and used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.

“He was talking about angles and said, ‘If you’re in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,’ ” said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry.

The paper says it could not reach the unidentified Corner High School teacher for comment.

No kidding — maybe try contacting the local psych ward?

I’m not that serious about the “teabagger” reference — nobody knows if this demented bozo is or ever has been a member of Teabagger Nation.  And even if he is, he’s an exceptionally stupid and vicious example of one.

But still, um, wow.

You go, girl

Bwahaa!:

A 20-something Saudi female stopped and questioned by a religious policeman as she strolled through an amusement park with a young man apparently had enough and punched the officer repeatedly until he had to be taken to a hospital, the Jerusalem Post reported Monday.

Fetus fetishists and other assorted ass-backward religiofascists who come in their pants at the thought of rolling back womens’ rights: take note.  If this is what’s happening in an atavistic theo-shit hole like Saudi Arabia, you don’t even want to imagine what would happen here.

UPDATE: On the serious side of things, I hope that human rights groups will be prepared to defend this young woman, who may end up paying some heavy dues:

If the woman is charged with assaulting the officer, she could face a lengthy prison term, or a lashing, or both.

(Thanks to RB in the comments.)

Generation fap

I really have to thank Marci McDonald for the timing of her book’s release  early last week and all the media buzz that accompanied it — for once the MSM had good reason to shine a light on Fetustock, since it underscored (with a bright red Sharpie) the book’s premise: religious fascists want to run your personal life.  The fetus fetishists’ failure to make that obvious connection and their subsequent ecstasy at the unprecedented attention they got last week is something that promises to provide snark material for some time…

For example: over at the Home of Principled Conservatism the weather report is calling for increased pressure, a relative humidity of 110% and a fapstorm of biblical proportions as the deranged “Paycheck” furiously strokes himself into a frenzy over Canada’s Imminent New Culture of Fetus Fetishizing, which he predicts will start in… Quebec!? No, really.  Now get that raincoat on, because you won’t want to be hit with any overspray, and click on the pic!:

With the other hand, he dug up one of those super-reliable internet polls, and whoops!  Fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap:

Oh my goodness.  Oh my goodness gracious.  Well, enough of that bullshit.  While the freepsters were freeping, the pollsters were polling, and here is what they got:  two polls that both show a hefty majority of Canadians think that Harper’s Maternal Health Initiative should include abortion care.   It’s safe to say that those numbers reflect Canada’s attitude about domestic policy as well.   And what of Quebec?

In Quebec, 71% agree Canadian aid should be spent to provide access to abortions

Face it, foetishists — you were handed your asses on a plate when Dr. Morgentaler was handed the Order of Canada (hard to believe it’s been almost two years, eh?  And how’s that “blizzard of returned medals-y” thing working out for you?).  Maybe you could commission Marci McDonald to write annual sequels and release them the same week as FetusFest.

Hey ho way to go, Canada

Hey, what happened to Canada’s imminent new Culture of Fetus Fetishizing that started The Year “Abortion Politics” (whatever that is) Shifted In Canada?  Does that whole 500 extra Catholic school kids who were bussed in to Fetustock (on the taxpayers’ dime, no less) count for nothing?  What happened??

Duh.  I think it’s called “sober second thought”:

A new poll suggests that a majority of Canadians opposes the Prime Minister’s refusal to fund safer abortions in developing countries, even as international concern grows about the state of his G8 maternal health initiative.

The Canadian Press-Harris Decima poll found that 58 per cent of respondents oppose Harper’s exclusion of abortion funding in his drive to improve maternal and child health in poor countries.

That’s up from about 46 per cent in March, when a similar question about aid for abortion access was asked. The increase suggests people are taking their time to think through the complex pros and cons before making up their minds, said Megan Tam, vice-president at Harris-Decima.

I have to admit that even I am a little surprised that the opposition is so high — this is about the funding of a foreign aid program and an issue that barely registers on the average person’s radar even as far as our own domestic policy; fairly boring stuff.  Frankly, I’m surprised that people would even bother to think the issue through, let alone all its implications.

If that happened because a lot of righteous people didn’t shut the fuck up about it, I may be posting a humiliated mea culpa.  (But still, tread carefully.)

(h/t DJ)

Sexual McCarthyism comes to DC

Authoritarianism on the march: it’s here and it’s queer (closeted perhaps, but still)!

Hyperbigot Christianist freakshow voted (by me) “Most Likely To Be Caught Holidaying With A Hunky Personal ‘Bag Handler‘” Peter LaBarbera of — stand back! — “Americans For Truth About Homosexuality”, wants to know if SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan is now, or ever has been, a member of Teh Ghey Conspiracy. Because according to LaBarbera, “the public has a right to know” the most private personal details of Kagan’s life:

In the wake of AP’s report that Solicitor General Elena Kagan is President Obama’s choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) reiterates its call for Kagan to answer the question: ‘Are (or were) you a practicing homosexual?’

According to some reports it is an open secret that Kagan is a practicing lesbian — to which AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera responds:

“If Kagan is practicing immoral sexual behavior, it reflects on her character as a judicial nominee and her personal bias as potentially one of the most important public officials in America. The popular mantra — even among conservatives — is that Kagan’s sexuality is ‘irrelevant.’ But a Justice Kagan would help decide some critically important constitutional issues dealing with: homosexual ‘marriage’ as a supposed civil right; religious liberty and freedom of conscience; and the First Amendment as applied to citizens’ right to oppose homosexuality. So it certainly matters if she, as a lifetime judge, could emerge as a crusading (openly) ‘gay’ advocate on the court.

All I can say to that is:   At long last sir, have you no sense of decency?

Good night and good luck (and get fucked).  (EDIT:  As Bina would say.)

UPDATE: Oh, fun… the homobigot hate site has a search engine.  Let’s see if they’re up to date on the relevant news of the day:

Oh come on.  Surely they must have something more than a 4-year-old bullshit story about a different George Rekers (the one that hadn’t been caught yet).  This was a Big Scandal among the Christofascist Elite, after all, and AFTAH links to some of the very “ministries” Rekers helped head up (so to speak)…

Ah-ha!  Ding ding ding!How many of these deranged creeps do you think went straight to the rentboy site after reading that article?  Bwahaa!

(Post edited to use cache link to what appears to be a raging hate site.  Apologies.)

Nun at Catholic hospital does the right thing

… and gets shit on for it:

Sister Margaret McBride was on an ethics committee that included doctors that consulted with a young woman who was 11 weeks pregnant late last year, The Arizona Republic newspaper reported on its website Saturday. The woman was suffering from a life-threatening condition that likely would have caused her death if she hadn’t had the abortion at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

Hospital officials defended McBride’s actions but confirmed that she has been reassigned from her job as vice president of mission integration at the hospital. They said in a statement that saving the mother required that the fetus be aborted. [...]

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated in a statement that the Roman Catholic involved was “automatically excommunicated” because of the action.

Automatically excommunicated!  Well, lucky her, eh?  Funny how the church has yet to excommunicate anyone for the child rape so many of the pope’s minions seem to indulge in. But abortion… stand back!

From Brazil to Mexico to Nicaragua to everywhere else, stories of catholic church’s destructive influence on womens’ health (not to mention childrens’) surface with depressing regularity.   Another day, another tale of this cult of creepy old castrati in velvet robes and fancy hats passing judgement on anyone who dares to consider a real life more valuable than a potential one.

I sometimes wonder what becomes of the “excommunicated” — do they bow and scrape and roll over and piss themselves and beg forgiveness or do they bitterly break free from the yoke of the tyrannical dingbats at the Vatican?

There might be good money to be made in de-programming these people.

Popiousity

More brainless bloviating from the world’s foremost doctrinaire pinhead:

Pope Benedict XVI has called abortion and same-sex marriage two of the most “insidious and dangerous” threats facing the world today.

Forget about war, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, disease, poverty, imploding economies (and child abuse, really really forget about that), the most dangerous threats facing the world today are… abortion and gay marriage??

It would be hilarious if there weren’t so many other brainless pinheads that take this twisted old fool seriously.

He was interrupted by applause several times.

Sigh.

UPDATE: Shorter Mark from the Slap: “*Yawn*”.

Anti-choice activism on the public dime?

Were those hundreds of Catholic school kids that were bussed in to Fetustock to swell the ranks and smile for the cameras done so on the taxpayers’ dime?

This is out of control.   It’s bad enough that they get any public funding at all, but using it to send students on political lobbying expeditions is beyond the pale.  Serious people need to inform the Ontario Catholic School Board in no uncertain terms that publicly-funded schools aren’t supposed to use those funds for political activism.

If the students are that committed to the cause, they’ll find a way to get there.  Young people by the thousand made their way to anti-prorogation protests last winter… on their own dime and their own time.

Dueling Days of Infamy

One of the most entertaining things about Fetustock is the posters and placards emblazoned with slogans that all boil down to demands that the government get the hell back into womens’ wombs where it belongs.  A perennial favourite is one that says “MAY 14, 1969:  CANADA’S DAY OF INFAMY“.  That would be the day Trudeau passed the dreaded Omnibus bill that legalized abortion (and homosex!), and that is why this little shindig is held during the first part of May.  DAY OF INFAMY!

But there’s another Day of Infamy anniversary coming up soon:  the first anniversary of the day that one of these lint-brained, hypocritical-ass self-described “Pro-Lifers” gunned down an abortion provider in cold crazed blood while he served as an usher in his church.  In his church.

I suspect that Day Of Infamy will pass quietly for anti-choicers as they attend their own church services in the smug, warm afterglow of their March for “Life” and pray for the feti, unencumbered by any fear of getting shot in the face by an unhinged stranger as they do.