What’s wrong with this picture?

Propaganda from the “Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform” — the fetus-obsessed dingbats who cruise Calgary and beyond in their notorious Fetusmobiles — is typically a deranged orgy of fetus porn and pure steaming bullshit.  But sometimes it’s so unintentionally hilarious that it’s worthy of being published in the Onion.

Following this week’s news of the death-by-fetus-fetishizing of Savita Halappanavar, a CCBR video is making the rounds as antichoicers feverishly try to defend the indefensible.  The video talks about how doctors can avoid doing their jobs abortions even when the pregnant woman’s life is in danger (because really, like, who cares…?).  A few seconds into it, I burst out laughing and took a quick screencap:

Yes, it’s the CCBR’s unhinged Stephanie Gray, an Expert in the Field of Fetus Fetishizing, and — HELLO!!  A stethoscope and lab coat hanging pointedly from a doorknob??  What’s up with THAT?

Presumably Dr. Demento there, with her BA in PoliSci, wants to come across as possessing a credibility she hasn’t even come close to dreaming of earning, and how better to do it than casually hang a lab coat somewhere, as if she’s just taken it off after a long day of Doctorizing?  I’m surprised she didn’t wear scrubs, since they can be picked up at any thrift store for a buck or 2.

What next from these bullshitting bullshitters?  Try to pass off The Fetusmobile©®™

as an ambulance?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

UPDATED with bonus re-tweetable irony!

From my friend Mike on Twitter:

Airplanes, Parrots in Cages and The Deer That Ran Away

(Subtitle:  ”Goofy Antichoice Analogies”)

When it comes to their Magnificent Obsession, antichoicers love them some delusional, twisted and tortured analogies.  In that spirit they’ve compared a woman’s right to make her own medical decisions to everything from slavery to the Holocaust to a broken TV set to a parrot in a cage (no, really).

Our deranged friend Stephen “M312″ Woodworth, still trying to justify the Parliamentary time and money wasted on his little fapfest, tries again with yet another goofy analogy — something to do with planes and hot air balloons.  This *motivated* fern hill to complete a project that’s been in the works for awhile: the greatest hits from the Lame Abortion Analogy Hall of Fame.

I’ve got one more, presented to me like a intricately gift-wrapped turd a couple of weeks ago in the comments section of an article at Macleans.  I give you “The Polaroid Picture of The Deer That Ran Away” analogy:

Umm err yeah okay:

Just thought I’d put that one out there and, umm, see what develops.

Sex-Selective Abortion: 1 More for the Road

It’s always amusing to watch someone writhing in the throes of a bogus Indignance High over something they’re widely known not to give a rat’s ass about.  For the Authoritarian Right, sex-selective abortion — the rare and weird practice of aborting female fetuses because daughters are seen as undesirable — is one such issue. While the more extreme Right routinely spirals into psychotic episodes over any kind of abortion, their claim to be concerned about this particular kind because it discriminates against females somehow doesn’t ring true.  After all, this is the same crowd that would force a now-20-year-old ex-fetus to carry a fetus of her own to term.

As I said in my “Bonus Track” back here, I find the “sex selective abortion” meme a little dubious at best.  Certainly it goes on, and where it does go on, no doubt it’s a foul practice. But I question whether it’s rampant enough in Canada to warrant the pandemic of pearl clutching it’s provoked in recent years.

It’s an issue that comes and goes.  But now, in the wake of Motion 312 and its companion Motion 408 — to “condemn sex selective abortion” — it’s back in all its hyperventilating, gasping glory.  And like clockwork, the relentless Blame Game has kicked off:

Fascist feminists!  And predictably, the persistent question:

Not that any feminist has ever claimed to support sex selective abortion, and one could only see it that way by wearing “With Us Or Against Us” blinders.  As for “not a single feminist“ ever addressing the issue?  Puh-leeeeease! But when did these people ever let reality get in the way of a good outragegasm?

What’s dumbly perceived as “support” is simply consistency for those who agree with the current laissez-faire status of abortion in Canada.  I don’t actively “support” sex selection as a reason for an abortion; actually I think it’s a hideous reason.  But that’s my opinion and it’s irrelevant in the context of anyone else.  For good or ill, the reasons for an abortion are the business of the woman having it and nobody else: the decision is hers and hers alone to make.  I will always support whatever decision a woman makes: whether I “approve of” her reasons for making it is a non-issue.

And if those “fascist feminists” aren’t keeping up with the speed, volume and spittle-flecked fury of right-wing commentary on sex selective abortion, maybe it’s because they’re busy working to create the conditions that would render it non-existent: a world where women and girls are valued as much as anyone else.  And we could sure use some help!

Reproductive Tyranny FAIL

As everyone knows by now, that sleazy piece of legislative feculence known as “Motion 312″ is gone, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.  Or in the contemporary vernacular,

M312 FAIL!

Indeed.

When the deal finally went down on Wednesday afternoon, my final estimate on votes for and agin was just about right.

I predicted about 1/2 the CPC would vote “Yes”, simply because any more would make Harpie, who voted “No”, look bad: the actual vote was 52%. All in all, the slimy monster was defeated by more than 2 -1: a decisive defeat, if not the humiliating, crushing blow of my sadistic, seed-stealing, baby-killing, pants-dropping, man-hating feminazi dreams.  But still, gone.

Gone but not *quite* forgotten, if Twitter’s “#M312″ timeline is any indication.

But so what?  The Men Who Stare At Zygotes motion built a lot of momentum, thanks to Woodworth’s moving the vote forward from the original date in June.  Rare is the anti-abortion motion that generates this kind of buzz, and it’s understandable that the fetus fetishists would be desperate to keep it going.

They even had a Companion Motion waiting in the hopper should M312 fail, and predictably and pathetically, tabled it immediately:

MPs may have voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to shut down discussion on Canada’s abortion laws, but another Conservative backbench MP has found a new way to keep the debate alive.

Langley, B.C. MP Mark Warawa introduced a motion Thursday calling on the House of Commons to condemn discrimination against females via sex-selective pregnancy termination.

(“Shut down discussion” — who writes this rotten sludge?)

Anyway, the newest piece of antichoice offal being flogged, Motion 408, is a total non-starter and barely worthy of attention.  It calls for the House to do no more than “condemn” a specific and rare practice, not make changes to Criminal Code definitions that would result in criminalizing abortion.  I almost feel embarrassed for its proponents, so screamingly obvious is the real purpose of Motion 408: keep the M312 momentum going.

My uterus and I say “Thanks for stopping by, but we’re not buying what you’re selling”.

Some people are concerned, as they should be about any state initiative that has anything to do with reproductive rights, but a watchful eye is all that’s needed here.  If Motion 408 is ignored, it will come and go without any affect on womens’ rights, and the Motion 312 hype, already fading, will disintegrate.  Continuing to engage antichoicers over this new motion is exactly what they want.  Until Motion 408 evolves into an existential threat, I say ignore it.  I’d rather watch the fetus fetishists melt down into frustrated dung-puddles as all the M312 buzz melts away with them.

(The Avenging Uterus! from here)

BONUS TRACK:  A Word About “Sex-Selective Abortion”

It’s the Outrage-du-Jour, or maybe just another way to try and slip one past the prochoice goalie; either way, I’m not convinced the practice is widespread enough in Canada to warrant the shrieking that goes on over it.  The notion that it could result in a Canada top-heavy with males is absurd, but the idea of social engineering by the government as a legitimate means of avoiding this unlikely situation is loathesome in the extreme.

I will say that sex selection wouldn’t be my reason for having an abortion, but that’s my personal opinion and irrelevant in the context of anyone’s abortion but my own.  For good or ill, the decision to terminate a pregnancy is the woman’s to make, and hers alone: not mine, yours or the state’s.

From the Horse’s Ass’s Mouth

Did we call it or did we call it?

Less than 2 weeks before the final vote on the sleazy, suspect Motion 312, a pleading dispatch from MP Stephen Woodworth to those voting on it confirms its true intentions:

September 14, 2012 

Dear Colleague: 

Re: Motion 312 

1. I am enclosing a copy of Subsection 223(1), the law which is the sole focus of Motion 312. You will see that Subsection 223(1) is a 400 year old law which decrees the dehumanization and exclusion of an entire class of people we know to be human beings, namely, children before the moment of complete birth. 

 

This is a direct assault upon the principle of universal human rights, which insists that every human being has an inherent worth and dignity which the state must recognize rather than merely a value assigned by others based on the utility or inconvenience of that human being. 

2. I am also enclosing an extract from the judgment of Supreme Court of Canada Justice Bertha Wilson in her 1988 Morgentaler decision throwing out Canada’s abortion law. Justice Wilson was a woman of impeccable feminist credentials. 

 

You will see from this extract that Justice Wilson left open the question of protecting the rights of children before birth for resolution by Parliament. Subsequent Supreme Court of Canada decisions have also left open this question for Parliament to resolve. Far from “re-opening” this issue, Motion 312 proposes the consensus-building dialogue which is the only path to finally closing it. This is in fact what Justice Wilson suggested. 

You will also see that Justice Wilson concluded, like me, that the existing recognition only at complete birth is wrong, suggesting that it ought to be at some point in the second trimester of the child’s development. She did not regard this to be inconsistent with her decision on abortion. 

 

3. Finally, I am enclosing a copy of Motion 312 itself. Please note that Motion 312 proposes no legislation (on abortion or anything else) and insists that the Committee also refrain from doing so. The Committee will merely study the evidence and report all available options. 

Please also note that Motion 312 directs the Committee to respect all Supreme Court of Canada decisions. All existing women‟s rights are protected by this provision! 

Laws like Subsection 223(1), which decree the dehumanization and exclusion of an entire class of people, deny the principle of universal human rights. That principle, which asserts that every human being possesses equal and inherent worth and dignity is the bedrock upon which all of other our laws rest. 

No 400 year old law should be frozen in time, forever immune from democratic review and forever immune from advances in understanding. 

Please support the mere study proposed by Motion 312. 

Sincerely, 

Stephen Woodworth 

Member of Parliament 

Kitchener Centre 

It’s ironic that even at this point, Woodworth still twists in the wind between truth and lies meant to comfort those who support the right to reproductive autonomy.  “All existing womens’ rights are protected”: well, of course.  There is no existing, codified-in-law right to the specific medical procedure abortion, only the right to privacy and security of person which in 1988 was deemed to include this doctor-patient decision.

Of course, much is made of the fact that Justice Bertha Wilson was a woman of impeccable feminist cred: she was.  But her decision in 1988 assumed there would always be a law in some form or other, because there always had been.  In 1988 not even a woman of Justice Wilson’s brilliance could have imagined that Canada would embark on an incredibly successful 24-year experiment in leaving this medical decision to doctors and patients, and the state’s interference proven to be utterly useless.

Being proven right in a contentious dispute is usually occasion for gladness, but this is one time that it would be a far better thing to be proven wrong.  I take no pleasure in the fact that prochoice suspicions about Motion 312 are now unequivocally proven right: that the motion is indeed the first legislative step towards regressive and unnecessary abortion restrictions and the establishment of pregnant women as an underclass with less rights than non-pregnant women.

If only Justice Wilson were still around to give us her current opinion on the matter.  Right now she must surely be rolling in her grave.

Letters 4 Life: Freeping V.M312

I can hardly stand another Motion 312 post, and you probably feel the same way.  But 17 days away from the final vote and certain demise of the motion, and the subsequent MASS persecutiongasm, there will be more to say on this sordid subject, so bear with me.

One of the antichoice initiatives launched in support of Motion 312 is something called “Letters 4 Life”, which for the last few months has been gamely trying to get 100,000 letters sent to Parliament by the day of the vote. 100,000 is a nice round number, and presumably L4L means to give the impression that 100,000 Canadians are so strongly opposed to abortion rights that they’ve been driven to penning shrieking spittle-flecked screeds to Harper et al.  A few days ago they had 65,000 letters sent – not too bad, assuming they were from 65,000 individuals. But some people just can’t resist snarking off:

That was obviously the incentive they needed because a couple of days later the number of letters went PARABOLIC:

But why not?  Anything’s possible, with the Power of Prayer.

No, I wasn’t buying that either, so I decided to find out if there might be something other than Prayer Power behind the MASSIVE spike in letter-writing.

My first stop was the L4L site’s “letter tracker”.  This is where letter-writing fetus fetishists record how many letters they sent, and apparently they’re being encouraged to send hundreds…

…and proving themselves more than up to the task.  To wit, on L4L’s Facebook page there’s a post from someone who thinks 30 letters from one individual isn’t very many:

…so she grabs the crack pipe and suddenly she’s banging them out at top speed:

Yay Nancy, Freeper Extraordinaire!  I wonder how many others are cranking out letters at this rate?  I had been under the impression that “100,000″ meant 100,000 individuals sending one(1) letter, but it could just as easily be 200 wired-up Nancies, each churning out a frenzied 5 or 600 letters.

The letter tracker’s question “Do you live in Canada” was also intriguing and more than a little sinister.  I fired up the Googles for some investigative blogging and instantly hit paydirt in the form of an obscure little American website, the Teenage Life Club, flogging their own ‘Stand for Life’ antichoice campaign that advises sending messages to the White House… and Congress… and… the Canadian Government??:

Really, eh?  If some  little high school club is doing this, presumably they’re not the only ones: they had to get the idea from somewhere.  I checked in on Nurse Stanek’s Sweet & Sour Fetus Cafe & Quik-Lube, and sure enough she has an article about the “Stand Up For Life” campaign, with a link to the site.  ”Letters 4 Life” is mentioned at Stanek’s without a direct link, but at least some of her substantial and furiously zealous traffic would find its way there from the Teenage Life Club’s site.  I wonder how many other US sites are telling their readers to write letters to the Canadian government?

I sincerely doubt that a small number of people — some of whom aren’t even eligible to vote here — obsessively sending thousands of form letters to Parliament will tell our elected officials anything other than who CSIS should be keeping an eye on.

BONUS TRACK:

Nancy x10?

MASS(ive) Uprising! Or not!

It’s common knowledge that extremist antichoicers — the kind that favour egg-person laws — are cataclysmiscally clueless and brutally slow on the uptake.  This grim reality is more than conventional wisdom: it’s almost a peer-reviewed science, re-proven week in and week out.  This week’s been no different from any other, so once more for the road!

Ultimate Goal of Motion M312

This was The Week That The Worm Turned like never before, as fetus fetishists who’ve been relentlessly flogging the doomed Motion 312 (aka “Woodworth’s Wank”, aka the “Men Who Stare At Zygotes” Motion) got whacked upside the head with a king-size cluebat, and finally realized something the rest of us have known for months: Motion 312 is DOA.

What’s long been screamingly obvious to the rest of us clearly shocked fetus fetishists who were slobbering giddily over the vague possibility that, with a good deal of sophistry, Motion 312 would clear the way to fetal “personhood”.  And never mind that there are much easier ways to resolve this semantic issue without involving *The Fetus©®™ or threatening womens’ autonomy. Antichoicers have proven time and again that their most profound skill is the art of ignoring solutions that don’t give us all a One-Way Ticket to the Republic of Gilead.

But they blew it, like they always do.  While “personhood” for fertilized eggs is a popular item in delusional Christofascist circles, to most Canadians — 94% of us, to be exact — the notion is so repugnant that any legal manoeuvreing in that direction has to be done in secrecy and pulled over on the General Public while they’re busy having non-procreative sex or getting illegitimately raped.  And just try getting a fetus fetishist gripped in the throes of a twitching, trembling, eye-popping, Jesus-driven fetus fetishizing frenzy to keep quiet about something like Motion 312. Right from the start they were jabbering like gerbils on crack, contradicting Woodworth, each other and even themselves. The Motion’s true intention might as well have been broadcast in a flashy 30-second spot during the Superbowl:  PERSONHOOD! PERSONHOOD! PERSONHOOD! 

Most motions come and go without notice, but when the General Public inevitably got wind of Motion 312 it was properly appalled; if you doubt it, scan the comments at any online article on the topic.  The coup de grâce was served up last month when the CMA declared their opposition to the Motion.  This came as no surprise to Prochoicers who are well aware of the CMA’s long and proud support for Freedom of Choice, but the unconditional lab-coated bitch slap was a rude shock to the fetus fetishists.  Suddenly it looked like their dreams of installing a tiny little police officer in every womb were about to be dashed upon the rocks of reason and privacy rights.

 It was time to go DefCon1, so this week the motion’s supporters announced “Motion 312′s Last Stand”, and a top secret strategy — TBA September 7th — that would incite a “MASS uprising” of support for Motion 312 (no really, that’s the wording they used).  Yesterday came and went and the Big Reveal was predictably anticlimactic: doubling down in a frenzy of pious feeblemindedness, prayer, unintelligible muttering and shrieking phone calls to Stephen Harper and incoherent messages scrawled in chalk like the ransom notes of deranged kidnappers.   In other words, “M.A.S.S.” = More of the Approximately Same Shit?

That said, the LYING is escalating to previously unimaginable levels.  The “abortion 3 days before the due date” meme is getting a strenuous workout: anyone who ever wondered how antichoicers regard women and the medical profession need look no further than remarks of that contemptuous ilk.

I can just imagine the sighs of relief from politicians of all stripes when Motion 312 is finally aborted.  I can also imagine the sly, stupid smirks on antichoice faces dissolving into shock and horror when they realize that the absolutist position promoted by Motion 312 was the worst possible route to take, and that in their “last stand” they’re staring down the barrel of a “CRUSHING BLOW” to their cause.  Not that this means we let up on defending our rights even an inch …

 *With thanks to deBeauxOs

The Good, the Bad & the Weird

In the vicious political circus south of the border, where they’re apparently having one of those “Presidential Elections” later this year, evidence of the retrograde brain damage afflicting the Republican Party continues to mount relentlessly. It’s been showcased all this week in the Republican National Convention, and last night it spiraled into madness.

Clint Eastwood showed up — more or less — and made the teabaggers’ day with an odd, sometimes incoherent routine that had him debating an empty chair and getting his ass kicked by it.  It was a strange and terrifying schtick, particularly for those of us at seniorhood’s doorstep.  And apparently not great PR, because after it painfully concluded actor Chris Rock was prompted to tweet:

And no wonder:

WHY, CLINT? WHY??

In other RNC News Of The Weird, Karl Rove apparently wants to whack Todd Akin:

We should sink Todd Akin. If he’s found mysteriously murdered, don’t look for my whereabouts!

Only a high-profile Republican windbag could get away with openly musing about assassinating someone.  But why not?  Akin might well be responsible for the GOP losing its chance to gain control of the Senate with his own bizarre comments about “Legitimate Rape“.  Not that he expressed an opinion most Republicans don’t share: his mistake was going public with it and getting caught, and then refusing to step down.

Meanwhile in Akinworld, the recalcitrant senatorial candidate begs for donations on Twitter, cursing the GOP’s upper echelons as the “liberal elite”.

 I’d be watching my back if I were him.

It’s all over now, leaving nothing in its wake but a riot of “MITT!” signs, a few random dried-out piles of elephant poop and some strange, strange memories. But as weird as the RNC was, stranger still is the fact that after electing a candidate the base despises, but who happens to be the only thing they can come up with that stands a chance in a general election, it still hasn’t occurred to the GOP that maybe what they really need a new base.

********************************************************************************

UPDATE:  And right on schedule, the inevitable half-hearted apology.  From Rove, anyway.   Clint Eastwood has yet to apologize for his abysmally weird performance,  unless he apologized to an empty chair.

********************************************************************************

UPDATER:  With typical deftness, balb points out that Eastwood’s speech may in fact have been Performance Art.  It makes sense when you think about it: the Empty Chair represents the Obama that only conservatives of the teabagging persuasion can see — the America-hater, the Socialist, the Kenyan Usurper, the Bloodthirsty Babykiller, the Far-Left Extremist and Presider Over Death Panels.

Poll Smoking & Profiles In Cluelessness

There must be some reason that the Fascist religious crackpots at FetusFetishOnline are flogging this collection of abortion polls as a “Prolife Polling Resource”, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.  Painstakingly assembled by the Evangelical Fellowship and datamined from years of polls, it’s generally good news for prochoicers.  Good old news, since it only confirms what we already know: that Canada is a vehemently prochoice country.  It can’t be a relief to fetus fetishists to know that in this great country of ours the wearing of animal fur is considered more morally unacceptable than abortion.

Not that there isn’t the occasional ripe-sounding data to be cherrypicked, like the one indicating that about half the country would favour gestational limits on abortion.  Far be it from me to rain on their parade — oh, shit on that, who am I kidding?  I take great pleasure in noting that while this gestational limit thing might sound good for antichoicers at first blush, unpack it a little and what it really shows is support for abortion rights, just not as framed in the question.  Any respondent who answered “No” to “Should women be able to have abortions any time during pregnancy?” would go in the “favours gestational limits” column.  And — oh no, somebody stop me, I’m about to take the Mighty Pinprick of Truth to a few more of their party balloons — with so many fetus fetishists preferring the brain-damaged “All Or Nothing, Egg Personhood, Stop Embryo Oppression” approach, the idea that half of Canadians would accept gestational limits under 9 months must be cold comfort.

Then there’s the data we’ve already seen in poll after poll, but which I’m only too happy to see again: like the clear plurality of Canadians that think abortion is “morally acceptable” and do NOT want the so-called “abortion debate” re-opened, or don’t give a shit either way.  Can you say “MASSIVE ProChoice Majority”?

Why Lifesite would choose to publish this less-than-encouraging data at the height of the battle of words & wits over Motion 312 is a mystery.  But then again, why not: it’s in line with the haphazard and utterly clueless way the rest of the M312 campaign has been run, a confused and riotous crusade of Twitterspam, fetusmobiles, inconsistencies, transparent lies and general dumbness.  For an initiative thought by some to be the last kick at the anti-abortion can for a long, long time, the ineptitude of its handling has been breathtaking to behold.

And fun to watch.  Did I mention fun to watch?

(h/t fern hill on Twitter)

Masturdebates, the Criminal Code & Easy Answers to Goofy Questions

At the center of the shrieking maelstrom of madness known as “the Motion 312 Masturdebate” (because it’s really about one side not knowing when to quit) is the now-infamous Criminal Code Subsection 223(1), which among other things, defines when a “child” becomes a “human being”:

The use of the phrase “human being” is unfortunate because it has two distinct meanings, one legal, as in Subsection 223(1), and one biological. One correct, and one incorrect (in this context) and just waiting to be exploited. I can’t ask the Legal Eagles who crafted the statute, but I’m as certain as I’ll ever be about anything that what they meant by “human being” in the context of the Criminal Code was “legal person”, not “member of the species Homo Sapiens”. As old as Subsection 223(1) might be, it’s not so old that the legal minds of the time didn’t understand the biological reality that humans give birth to humans, not dogs or cats or hammerhead sharks.

But imagine Stephen Woodworth’s frenzied joy when he realized that the meaning of “human being” in 223(1), taken the wrong way, could be misrepresented as a Bad Law driven by Bad Science.  Bad Law that needed to be investigated by a Parliamentary Committee.  Bad Law that would eventually have to be changed to expand the legal meaning of “human being” to include even the lowly fertilized egg.

And so began the sordid tale of Motion 312, built on a disingenuous and self-serving misinterpretation of legal jargon, with its full intention the ushering in of the Beginning of the End of Abortion Rights in Canada.

Supporters of Motion 312, and Woodworth himself, bend over backwards with assurances that it’s nothing of the kind, but I know better.  Not just because fetus fetishists let the cat out of the bag ages ago, and not just because they use Twitter to barf out scads of abortion-related tweets all over the Motion 312 timeline, and not just because they hashtag those tweets with “#FetalRights”, and not even just because Woodworth is committed to pushing anti-abortion legislation.  All that stuff is meaningful, but the slam-dunk is a lot simpler.

If the only problem is a few words in Subsection 223(1), surely there’s an easier fix than launching Parliamentary investigations and expanding the legal meaning of “human being” to include zygotes, setting womens’ rights back about 50 years in the process.  If the only problem is the phrase “human being”… then why not just change it? Amend the statute to say ”person” or “legal person” instead of “human being”?  Seems reasonable.

Reasonable to anyone whose “To Do” list doesn’t prominently feature the abolishment of reproductive rights.

Amirite?

Lies, Damn Lies & Damn Tweeted Lies

As mentioned in my elegant little Public Service Announcement, though I haven’t been around blogs much lately (including this one), I’ve been slogging around in my hip waders on Twitter’s Motion 312 timeline, known in the Twitterverse as “#M312“. (Hip waders? you ask… Yes, the bullshit’s that high.)

As we begin the feverish countdown to the Motion 312 debate and the vote that will put the whole ridiculous farce to sleep for good (September 18 & 19 respectively), Twitter has been an interesting read.  Motion 312 was conceived on Twitter with MP Stephen Woodworth’s insipid ejerkulations about a “respectful debate on when life begins”, so it’s not surprising to find much of the battle over it being waged there.  With “tweets” limited to 140 characters, it’s also the medium of a jabbering fetus fetishist’s dreams: a venue ideally suited to spitting out rapidfire gobs of propaganda at breakneck pace.  Even sweeter, anyone who asks a question or makes a dissenting point can simply be “blocked”, the Twitter version of “disappeared”.

And so it’s gone with the antichoice Twitter campaign in support of the nefarious Motion 312: long on lies but extremely short on feedback when lies are called out.  No surprise there since lying is like an uncontrollable, violent verbal tic with these people. It’s how they roll in any venue: Twitter just makes it easier.  Every day #M312 is inundated with the same boring talking points, the same lame videos, the same spamload of gawdawful embarrassing pleas imploring MPs to vote “YES! Because I love Motion 312!”.  But after awhile some disturbing inconsistencies were noticed…

Antichoicers in general and Woodworth in particular have always gone to great pains to emphasize that Motion 312 was NOT about abortion, or personhood, or so-called “fetal rights”.  Yet the fetushists’ tweets in M312 are routinely tagged “fetal rights” and their content is often abortion-related:

…both of these being things they continually insist are unrelated to M312. Questions about this incongruity are ignored, questioners blocked.

Remember now, these are the people who were shrieking and panting for a “debate”.

Despite their bellowing (“We want the debate!“), it’s clear they want anything but a debate, or at least, a “debate” with only one side.  I came up with a Twitter hashtag for it — #Masturdebate — but humour aside, it seemed to me that we were missing something.  The flip side of never blaming on Malice what can be explained by Stupidity, you know?  All these little inconsistencies might be part of an overall Plan…

…if “debate” isn’t what they want at all, and never has been. What they really want is a venue, an opportunity to mainstream their goofy language about “fetal rights”, by getting prochoicers to engage with them.  We are, after all, the mainstream.  Remember the Team Fetus Rolling Roadshow earlier this summer?  How much media attention did they get before pro-choicers started pushing back with counter-protests?  I rest my case.

Look, antichoicers have always had trouble getting any mainstream traction, or even attention, especially here in sane, pro-choice Canada, where they’re largely ignored and considered nutbars and flaming religious fascists.  To the broader Canadian public, a fetus is a lower life form than a pregnant woman and abortion is a private reality best kept between patient and doctor.

And that’s the way we’d like to keep it.

There’s little chance of “fetal rights” becoming an expression that will get you much other than a look of fear and loathing or at least puzzlement and a quick end to the conversation, before Motion 312 bites the dust. But it’s something to keep in mind for the next time they screech for a “debate”: that what they’re really doing is trying to fast-track their language into popular lexicon.

Change the language, change the attitude.

It’s pretty slick: in the states antichoicers buy a lot of this kind of advice from expensive, high-pressure marketing consultants. I was in the business and I recognize certain strategies when i see them.

On Gutlessness and Epic Meetings of Pots and Kettles

Apparently the newest nugget of antichoice wingnut wisdom is that prochoice bloggers are — wait for it — “gutless cowards” because some of us use pseudonyms.

Before you start yelling “Amanda Marcotte! Jessica Valenti! Jill Filipovic!” or point out that plenty of antichoice bloggers do the same, or protest that there’s a king-hell shitload of good reasons for not using your real name online that have nothing to do with the sick obsessiveness and twitchy trigger fingers of the antichoice lunatic fringe, let’s ask ourselves what this woebegone little whine might really be about. Because it can’t really be about anonymity/pseudonyms, since these practices cut across both sides of the abortion rights blogosphere.

From where I sit it looks more like one or two particular pseudonymous prochoice bloggers somehow annoyed some antichoice bloggers who “blog naked” so to speak. And this was the best they could do: a peevish gripe about prochoice bloggers blogging “anonymously”.

But why not?  Baiting a hook and reeling in some predictably goofy comments about “gutlessness” and “hiding behind pseudonyms” to “spew libelous smears”… that kind of post puts a little Fun into a boring mid-week afternoon.  And after all, no matter what the bible-banging doomer goons tell you, Fun is what it’s all about.

Unfortunately, over at BIG BLUE WAVE (copy-paste for obvious reasons: http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2012/07/prolifeprowoman-asks-why-are-so-many.html), SUZANNE spiraled into paroxysms of stupid rage and beclowned herself with this brainless commentary:

Oh, SUZANNE.  ”Libel”?  You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It only got worse in the comments, when a few people with their heads screwed on explained that there are a lot of good reasons for blogging pseudonymously. When I saw real-world stories of threats, harassment and stalking brushed off as “cowardly” and ”BOGUS”, along with accusations of “Libelous Smears”, I could stand it no longer.  I left a comment, and that was where the Pot and Kettle didn’t just meet but careened into each other at top speed and burst into flames in an epic head-on collision.  My comment, not surprisingly, was

…not published.

 And just because I had the nerve to ask for examples of the “Libelous Smears” and the steel-belted, gold-plated brass BALLS to suggest that said smears might exist only in SUZANNE’s frenzied imagination.  Oh well…

Anyone who makes false accusations of “gutlessness” and especially “libel” should be prepared to back them up.  Making an accusation and then deleting comments that call you on it takes gutlessness to a whole new level.

But so what? Her house, her rules.  She’s a Propagandist and that’s how Propaganda is done. But let the record stand that SUZANNE’s brainless blather about “Libelous Smears” is manufactured from whole rotten maggot-infested cloth, with nothing to back it up but the summer breeze.

And after all, they all do it: longtime readers might recall when false accusations were made against The General at Stanek’s Psych Ward & Fetus Fetishizing Cafe, and when he called her on it in her comments section, she responded by deleting his comment.  These people are nothing if not predictable.

Toronto:

Tell your city councillors to update their web security.

You’re welcome.

(h/t – chet on twitter)

Supremes give Linda Gibbons the “L”-sign

And it doesn’t stand for “LINDA”.

Welcome to Loserville, Linda Gibbons — Population: you.  But some of us didn’t need the Supreme Court to tell us that.

For the blissfully unaware, Linda Gibbons is a deranged religious crackpot who, over the years, has made quite a name for herself (I mean another name besides “Loser”) among Canadian fetus fetishists as a Martyr to the Cause. Gibbons’ relentless picketing of Toronto womens’ clinics has earned her a stay in the Graybar Hotel more times than the half-bright old fool could likely even remember, and given her a lock on deification as Our Lady of Perpetual Pestering, St. Linda of the Smited Feti.

Toronto has a bubble zone law, you see, to prevent dingbats like Gibbons (and even worse dingbats like Scott Roeder) from doing their frenzied screeching, praying, humiliating and slut-shaming right on the clinics’ doorsteps.  But Gibbons insists on getting as close to the clinics as humanly possible, the better to facilitate one-on-one slut-shaming.  In Gibbons’ demented eyes, the patients have no right to privacy: “God’s Law”, you know.

It’s the same routine every time: Gibbons parks her doddering ass at the clinic, a court order to cease & desist arrives, Gibbons refuses, cops are called, and she’s carted off to the hoosegow, lock stock and two smoking feti.  There she writhes in the throes of a persecution frenzy for a few months, along with all the other fetus fetishists who regard her as a maligned saint.  When she’s released she goes straight back to the clinic, personifying that old quote about the Definition of Insanity.

Violating the bubble zone law is a civil offense, but as I understand it, when the court order arrives things escalate and the refusal to leave becomes a criminal offense. That is in fact the primary leverage of a court order, and it’s why Gibbons spends so much time in the slam.  At some point Gibbons was wracked by a brainstorm of epic proportions and decided that it wasn’t “right” for a grandmother to be criminally charged.  She took her case, such as it was, to the Supreme Court.

The Supremes were not impressed:

The Supreme Court has ruled against a relentless Toronto anti-abortion crusader who has spent more than nine years over two decades in jail for repeatedly violating a civil order to quit picketing outside abortion clinics.

 Linda Gibbons, 63, who is in jail again, has long maintained she has a right to peaceful protest and that the courts were unfairly pursuing her because of her unpopular views on abortion.

The Supreme Court was asked to rule on a technical matter — whether it is right for the grandmother to be charged criminally for a civil violation.

The top court ruled eight to one that she could, in fact, be charged criminally for disobeying a court order.

Sorry Linda, hundreds of years of legal precedent disagree with your hypothesis that old people should be allowed to get away with anything they want.  If your age is the only defense your lawyer can come up with, you need a new lawyer.

Predictably the hysterical shrieks of “freeeeee speeeech!” have already begun… ironic as they are, coming from the same people who’d dictate what we can watch, read, smoke, who we can marry, and what medical procedures we can have.

Now, I’ve thought long and feverishly about the issue of anti-choice picketing as it impacts on free speech.

Make no mistake, I despise every perverse and twisted notion these people stand for: but at the same time, they have the same right to peaceful protest and free speech as I enjoy, and I wholeheartedly support that right.  I don’t care if it’s Neo-Nazis marching down the street in full fascist regalia — as long as they’re not beating anyone up, I support their right to do so.  On that level, I’m always glad to see the fetushists rapturing out at their goofy Marches for Life, wheeling around in their Fetusmobiles and standing on street corners with gory signs.  The fact that they’re out there means I can be out there counter-protesting if I so choose.  (And besides, a cartoonist couldn’t invent these people — they’re just great material.)

But given the Clinic Staff body count and the fact that clinic patients enjoy some rights too — specifically, the right to privacy — I don’t consider bubble zones to be an infringement on free speech, as the fetus fetishists are so fond of claiming.  The clinics themselves are Private Property, which trumps the right to protest at that location.  Even outside property lines, there are clearly safety issues in allowing these idiots within gunshot range (as Dr.David Gunn would agree if he wasn’t dead).  And yes, demented senior citizens who spend half their lives in prison and the other half muttering and shrieking at clinic patients should be considered a potential danger. It’s not a bridge too far, in my opinion, to imagine the brain-damaged Gibbons being given a .38 and talked into using it.  Bubble Zones are about the patients’ privacy rights, but they’re also about the clinic staff’s Right to Life.  (Ironic, huh?)

What the psychotic anti-choice constituency doesn’t get is that the Free-Speech-Stomping Jackboot of the State isn’t preventing them from protesting: they can indulge themselves in all the Jesus-driven fetus-fury and spittle-flecked slut-shaming they want, from 500 feet away.  The right to free speech doesn’t come with a guaranteed audience at the venue of your choice.

By now, one would imagine that Linda Gibbons’ arms are festooned with jailhouse sleeve tattoos of dead fetus porn.  Not that this, or the bitchslap from the Supremes, will stop her from going straight back to the clinic.  Time to start inking those legs… maybe a tasteful wreath of fetuses around the ankle for starters.

Irony so thick you could cut it with a jackhammer

A video that made the rounds a few years back showed anti-choice protesters being asked what punishment women should get for terminating a pregnancy, if indeed abortion is “murder” and should be outlawed.  Predictably, no answers were forthcoming:

Why is that, you might wonder.  Given that the fetus fetishists’ end game is the criminalization of a common medical procedure, one would think they’d have an answer to the obvious question of what kind of legal sanctions should be imposed on anyone who Breaks the Rules. But in spite of all the time they spend obsessing about it, the anti-choice position is just not very well-thought-out.  It’s irrational, emotional, largely driven by religious ideology and almost always inspired on some level by a punitive, authoritarian brand of misogyny so vile and repugnant that few are willing to cop to it.

Which brings me to the Fetus Puke-a-van‘s Stephanie Gray.

Interviewed Monday on Kelowna’s CBC-radio affiliate, Gray had no compunction about exposing herself as a punishment freak of the highest order, and proud of it.  Asked what should happen to women who have abortions after the dawn of her Brave New World wherein womens’ rights are a historical footnote, she didn’t miss a beat (at about 4:47 on the audio):

“Once abortion becomes illegal, I would say the consequences for a woman who has an abortion at that point, breaking the law, would be no different from the consequences for a woman who kills her born children.”

The interviewer pointed out that this would mean life in prison, and Gray added that it would “depend on the circumstances”, and allowed that some women may instead be written off as “clinically insane”.  You know, like women who drown their kids in a bathtub.

I’d say the irony’s so thick you could cut it with a knife.  However, I seriously doubt that modern metallurgy has advanced to the point where there exists a tempered steel sufficiently unyielding to cut through the irony of a sick, warped and twisted, fetus-obsessed little fuck who drives around in a truck festooned with  gross images of surgical tray contents calling anyone else ”clinically insane”.

Submitted without (much) comment

It takes a special kind of psychosis to produce fetus fetishist propaganda of this brain-damaged magnitude:

You’ll never guess where it came from: shockah!!  Yet another website dedicated to fetal supremacy, forced childbirth, Bronze Age religious wingnuttery and Photoshopped gore, the grotesque imprimatur of SUZANNE.

As if parking the lardbucket in front of a computer 24/7, blogging furiously, firing off spittle-flecked tweets at the rate of 50 TPM (tweets per minute), “writing” a “novel”, “researching”, oops I mean, *sticking her nose into* private information about other peoples’ personal medical history, pondering the benefits of Doctor hit lists, and of course, keeping up with what the other certifiable screwballs on the anti-abortion beat are blithering about… all while raising 4 kids… isn’t enough, here’s yet another focus-on-the-fetus website she commandeers.  And this is all probably just the tip of some vile iceberg: imagine all the other sites under her deranged administration that lay as yet undiscovered, foaming and festering away in some dank and secret corner of the internets.  {{{shudder}}}

This isn’t just fetus fetishism, it’s a manic disorder worthy of its own code in the DSM-IV!

A day late and a dollar short

Or maybe that should be about 50 dollars short, adjusted for inflation and general stupidity, considering the 4 decades that have elapsed since the time the fetus fetishists’ latest project was considered an edgy or attention-getting manouevre.  (My my, but they are slooooooooowwww on the old uptake.)

Slow and unoriginal.  Remember the old Abortion Caravan from over 40 years ago?

The foetishists’ latest frenzied venture, courtesy of the crackpots and weirdballs at the “Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform” (whateverthefuck that means), is an anti-abortion caravan: a fleet of Fetusmobiles©®™

festooned with disgusting Photoshop-enhanced images of dead feti, going from town to town winning friends and influencing people.  Hey, who wouldn’t want to see a cavalcade of mobile fetus pron?  Imagine a whole flotilla of these:

 …rollin-rollin-rollin down the road

Presumably this rancid rolling roadshow will travel across the country getting the boot out of one town after another until it reaches its final destination, which I believe is Parliament Hill.  Where it will do — something, maybe have “The Debate” (amongst themselves), and then boogie off into the sunset.  Or maybe when they’re finished their business in Ottawa, they’ll head up to Montreal and enter those sweet rides in the Indy 500.  Go Team Fetus!

(h/t fern hill on twittr)

Shame on you, Ottawa Sun

… re-writing an article without explaining why such major edits were made.  Oh sure, it says “updated” at the top: since when does “updated” mean “practically re-written as dictated by fetus fetishists”??:

Ottawa Sun May 11 (top of article)

Ottawa Sun May 11 (bottom of article)

And those aren’t the only changes, the whole thing is riddled with them.  Good thing that for the entertainment and edification of my readers, I have…

SCREENSHOTS AT 11!!!

Ottawa Sun, Thursday May 10

Ottawa Sun, May 10 (Part DUH!)

I guess I’d be a little embarrassed too if I’d CAVED under the unrelenting, spittle-flecked pressure of a few crazed fetus fetishists.  But letting them practically dictate a re-write to you?  Wow.  And you guys wonder why you have no credibility.

The truth is out there, and it shall be screenshat!

(h/t – fern hill)

INCOMING!!!

DROP YOUR SOCKS & GRAB YOUR… whatever.  Helmets on!  We’ve got Incoming!

You’ll recall my unrestrained and unbridled joyous delirium earlier this week at the return of extravagantly anti-choice blogger Socks-on or Bust… and also my suspicion that I might possibly be the Target of yet another Prayer Assault:

Well, it turns out I was Right:

Whew… little did I know that every Monday night at 9pm Pacific as I settle in to watch Law & Order, John & The Lord are settling in with me.  I’m not very big, so there’s lots of room in my La-Z-Boy®, but I don’t know if there’s THAT much room.  But I’m getting prepared… inside my kevlar-lined, steel-belted anti-prayer helmet, my head will be wrapped in an entire roll of tinfoil to ward off the attack.

And after all, I am well accustomed to dealing with Prayer Assaults, even warding off a Full-Scale 30-day Prayer Assault during some dark days on the battlefield.  But I’m especially adept at defending myself from Prayer Assaults of the Catholic persuasion: my boyfriend is a practicing Catholic, an aged, dissolute former altar boy who claims to be praying for me non-stop at top speed, or however urgent, desperate prayers for immortal souls are delivered.  When I showed him Paycheck’s post he could barely contain his joy.  But the Law of Unintended Consequences has once again prevailed: he says he’ll be joining in on the Monday Night Prayer Assault, even at the risk of missing the first few minutes of Law & Order, because more than one person praying at the same time is supposedly more intense than 2 individual Prayer Assaults.

Good to know:  I’m going to the store now for another roll of tinfoil, and then I’m Ready.  Bring It On Boyz!

Heeeeeeeeee’s back!

Before I get down to the business of trashing the regressive Wrong & Dumb Motion 312, there’s breaking news…

It’s a belated Festivus Miracle!  Once again, the Happy Warrior of the Feti, the Man Who Stares At Zygotes, the notorious perpetrator of the Sperm Slaughter and the Tubesock Holocaust, is back furiously pounding the keyboard amidst a fine moist haze of flying spittle, Confronting the Culture of Death, without “zest” this time but with the addition of “the Sacred Cows of Sterilized Sex”.  (Or did he mean Sacred Sex with Sterilized Cows?  Sacred socks?  Sockred cows?  The Sacred Socks of Sex!?)

Whatevs!  Let the bells ring out and the banners fly… oh, happy day!  Mr. Kicking Abortion’s Ass, aka Johnny Tubesock, has returned to blogging… just as I predicted he would.  Idle hands are the Devil’s Playground!!  And if it means more posts about 500% Sterility Taxes and other small government initiatives, it’s good news for me.

He’s apparently been Hard At It for a while now (why was I not informed??) so I had to spend some time to catching up.  His blog posts are as convulsively berserk as ever, but as I perused them, something strange occurred to me: not a word about M312, the regressive anti-abortion motion to be debated this very week (Thursday April 26th).  Hmm: anyone who remembers this guy’s frenzied spasms in the run-up to voting on the doomed Bill C-484, the one he called the “Kicking Abortion’s Ass” bill, knows that his paroxysms of ecstasy would have been squirting all over the blogosphere from the day the motion was filed.  By now, just 2 days away from the debate, it’d be…

“CLEAN UP ON AISLE THREE!”

…unless he’s venting his excited delirium over the motion *somewhere else*… like Twitter… (*WINK*)

Anyway, while I was catching up I noticed a widget in the sidebar announcing a little project he calls “Adopt A Pro-Abort”. 

Get your helmets on, it’s another Prayer Assault….but wait.  There was something about that widget.  So I zoom in:

 

LOOK FAMILIAR???

ARRRRGGGHH!

Well, that explains my headache, all that incoming prayer bouncing off my impenetrable Kevlar-lined king-hell pro-abort skull.

BALLS!

And with that I bid PBs a fine farewell.  But first…

I have to admit I’m impressed with the nerve, the gall, the chutzpah, the unmitigated, brass-plated, gold-gilded, steel-belted BALLS of the disingenuous pricks defending the idea that Motion 312 might be a pretty cool, or at least not too bad, idea.  While I have no desire to revisit the Progs vs Progs donnybrook, there is something that’s come up in the course of the altercation that I’d like to set straight, which is the way Dr. Morgentaler has been misrepresented by some of the, uh, “Motion 312 isn’t such a bad idea” bloggers, aka “disingenuous pricks”.

These guys (and gals) fell all over themselves to quote Dr. Morgentaler’s remark about having ethical issues with late term abortion:

Morgentaler said he has concerns about late-term abortions.

“We don’t abort babies, we want to abort fetuses before they become babies,” Morgentaler said from his Toronto clinic.

– as if Dr.M’s private, personal opinion on this extremely rare procedure (an opinion which, interestingly, he somehow restrains himself from imposing on others) means it’s okay to have a public debate about the possibility of Open Season on Abortion Rights.  Worse yet, and this is where the stench of duplicity rises like putrid swamp gas, they ignore the all-important follow up quote — from the same interview, no less:

Morgentaler said he does not see a need for rules on late abortions, despite his personal ethical opposition to them.

“DOES. NOT. SEE. A. NEED. FOR. RULES.”  Whoopsie.

Yet when I pointed this out to a couple of the bloggers who were using the first quote to intimate that “Even Morgentaler Himself!” might favour restricting abortion… *crickets*

Now I am the last person to question anyone’s “progressive” cred, since my own is routinely beaten like a gong, rode hard and put away wet.  “Progressive cred” has never been my issue with this thing as much as… The Lying.  Such as insinuating that women are having late term abortions Right Up Until The Moment of Birth!! because we have OMFGWTF NO LAW!.   Such as omitting little factoids about Dr.Morgentaler’s views that don’t fit the desired narrative.

“Pro-life” I can handle.  Pro-lie, not so much.

Shouting “Abortion!” in a crowded blogosphere

No, human rights — including womens’ rights — are not like free speech rights which some (though not I) believe can and should be legally curtailed in the interest of the so-called “greater good”.

In fact, the state’s prerogative to impose its will ends where my uterus begins.

Human Rights — including women’s rights — are non-negotiables: the benighted who walk among us may privately agonize over the rights of others all they want.  But in the interest of maintaining those rights, they’d be well-advised to keep their inner conflicts to themselves, particularly in the face of an imminent threat to said rights.  There is no valid “nuanced” position when it comes to human rights, and anyone who disagrees has never had theirs “up for debate”.

It is mindblowing in the extreme that some people can’t understand how completely and utterly, dumptruck-full-of-dirty-assholes offensive this whole “Debate My Rights” thing really is.

Internets broken?

Is your internet connection fast and frisky today?  Mine neither: it is, in fact, cataclysmically slow.  I was just going to phone Shaw and give them another verbal asskicking when I found this:

Anonymous is claiming responsibility for a cyberattack against Chinese websites — one that may also be having an impact on Internet speeds across the world.

Networks in North America, Europe and especially Asia were running at significantly lower speeds Thursday. Asia’s cyber backbone was especially hard hit, seeing packet loss of 33% or more, according to the monitoring website Internet Traffic Report.

Anonymous, a loosely knit group of hackers, took credit for defacing up to 500 Chinese websites Thursday, according to ABC News.

I guess Asia is getting the worst of it, but looking at the Internet Traffic Report’s Network Overview, which if I’m interpreting it properly, it appears that internet speeds in the Vancouver area really are slower than slug-shit.  (We’re doing better than some places in Ontario, though.  Yeek.)

Oh well, since it’s Anonymous, I can forgive and forget.  (But with an internet connection this slow, don’t expect me.)

Santorum’s House of Fear

That dull roar you hear is the sound of All The Internets laughing uproariously at Rick Santorum’s new, desperately dramatic campaign commercial, “Obamaville”, a glimpse at America’s dystopian future under a second Obama term.

“Obamaville” is a post-apocalyptic Anytown USA, where religious freedom has been snuffed out like a candle, dead kids’ shoes lie in abandoned, rusted-out playgrounds, young couples survive on rations of tomatoes, people shoot themselves over high gas prices, seniors wait silently for their names to be called by the Death Panels and in the background, footage of crazed, nuke-enabled Iranian presidents runs in a continuous loop on all TV screens.

Ahhh!  They had me at the snuffed out religious freedom.  Okay, let’s get down to it: you must watch this thing to believe it:

How scary is that?  On a scale of 1 to 10… BE AFRAID!!

This spot is so jam-packed with subliminal messaging that as a refugee of the advertising industry, I instantly fell head over heels in love with it.  (Bad habits die hard.)   It fires an absolute ton of scary shit directly at the subconscious lizard brain of every half-bright citizen of Flyover Country:  the (presumably dead) kid’s shoe in the abandoned playground (play is outlawed in desolate Obamaville, and anyway there are no more kids because they’ve all been aborted), the baby dressed in red (which was probably as close as the campaign dared go to fetus pron, no doubt to Mr.Santorum’s extreme disappointment), the quick-cuts from the madman Ahmadinejad to a smug-looking President Obama (satisfied that he’s given the madman the capability to Destroy America, which of course was his evil plan all along when he pretended to be a US citizen so he could usurp the Presidency), and so on and on and on.  It’s freaking awesome.  You almost have to stop it every second or two to catch everything.

Red Tory has selected some frames from the commercial that you might not even know you’ve seen at first.  I totally missed the “kid going into scary forest” frame.  Anything else jump out at you? What’s the significance of the young couple with the bowl of tomatoes?  The family on the porch of the white house?  The group of men smoking and drinking?

Ahhhh, thankyou Santorum Campaign!

Dick Cheney recovering from Heart Transplant

In other news, punchlines write themselves!

Have at ‘er in the comments.

Meanwhile, here’s a Cheney Humour blast from the past:

UPDATE:  Twitter is proving to be an impressive repository of Comedy Gold.   Mine it!