RossK nails it

…on the question of how we should be dealing with Harper and his caucus on the question of state intervention into the most private personal aspects of womens’ lives.

Our CPC Government has taken to playfully allowing certain MPs to mouth off about their desire to roll back womens’ rights to suit the religious sensibilities of the Bronze Age crackpots who dominate the shriekiest corner of their base.  The latest of these unwanted flirtations started in December with the goofy, slyly veiled twitterthreats of nobody MP Stephen Woodworth, who claimed to have no agenda…

…he just wanted to debate “policy”, that’s all, nothing to do with legislation restricting womens’ rights…

…until it was:

“My inclination is that I probably will be looking at a motion,” Mr. Woodworth said in a telephone interview on Wednesday after issuing a second news release to state his opposition to Canadian law which declares babies to be human at the moment they have fully emerged from the birth canal.

…and finally it ended this week, as we all knew it would but Woodworth refused to cop to, with yet another dead-on-arrival, socially-retarded motion that’s meant to profoundly impact womens’ reproductive autonomy.  This year’s back door is a committee to decide “when life begins”:

An Ontario Conservative MP has filed a motion in the House of Commons asking parliament to form a special committee to study a 400-year-old definition of a human being – a move that effectively brings the emotionally divisive issue of abortion back on the table.

Let’s be clear:  if an NDP MP filed a motion proposing a taxpayer money-sucking committee to study the equally ridiculous question of “where the universe ends”, it would be roundly ridiculed, and rightly so.  But Woodworth’s bill has the overwhelming stench of Wedge, so rather than being universally castigated as the brain droppings of a Bronze Age crackpot, it’s being taken seriously.  Which is just what Stephen Harper wants, because it gives him yet another opportunity to say “No, we won’t be re-opening blah blah blah”, and re-establish himself as The Grownup in a roomful of brain-damaged children.

In Normal Times, a woman’s right to reproductive self-determination wouldn’t be a question: this battle was fought and won by the side of liberty long ago.  But in these strange and savage times, things are almost never what they seem.  Our image-obsessed PM occasionally allows his braindead backbench bulldogs to escape the yard and run up the street chasing cars and biting tires and barking madly so that he comes across as The  Reasonable Guy when he gets them on-leash and herds them back to the yard.

Moronic anti-choice bills make their way into the House with depressing regularity (and they’re not always tabled by Conservatives).  To actually pass one would revive fears of Harper’s Hidden Agenda and likely be political suicide for the CPC, but since they’re in the Parliamentary driver’s seat with little in the way of Opposition there’s good reason for vigilance at the very least.

RossK is right: any CRAP MP who starts flinging this manipulative shit around should absolutely not be let off the hook to sneak away like Eddie Haskell while Harpie does his best Dad-yelling.  And not just the MPs: it’s time for Harper himself to come clean on the issue.  Coyly stating that he’s “somewhere between the two extremes” is no longer good enough, for me anyway.

I’m serious:  I’m reachin out, baby:

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.

A flounceless flounce

Does the anti-Christian bigotry from the anti-Christian Liberal Media never end?   Watch as Larry King persecutes Carrie Prejean, probably for her religious beliefs!:

And it’s the Flounceless Flounce!

For someone who works the Fundie Circuit jabbering incessantly about her “freedom to slag teh gheys of speech” and whining about how people are “trying to silence her”, Prejean is pretty silent about the reasons for her settlement with the Booty Pageant.  Maybe Larry should have asked her what she thought of gay marriage! She seems to like talking about that.

 

I love men

… but I can’t help wondering why some of them are such assholes when I read articles like this:

When Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a Seattle oncologist, was treating his brain cancer patients, he noticed an alarming pattern. His male patients were typically receiving much-needed support from their wives. But a number of his female patients were going it alone, ending up separated or divorced after receiving a brain tumor diagnosis.

Dr. Chamberlain, chief of the neuro-oncology division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, had heard similar stories from his colleagues. To find out if these observations were based in fact, he embarked on a study with Dr. Michael J. Glantz of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute and colleagues from three other institutions who began to collect data on 515 patients who received diagnoses of brain tumors or multiple sclerosis from 2001 through 2006.

The results were surprising. Women in the study who were told they had a serious illness were seven times as likely to become separated or divorced as men with similar health problems, according to the report published in the journal Cancer.

When I was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago, my partner at the time couldn’t have been stronger or more supportive.   He (and my family, of course)  gave me the strength to zoom through an unexpected and hideous situation with a sunshiny-positive attitude.

However, as my treatment came to an end and it became apparent that the future looked bright (as in, I’d have one), my partner, who hadn’t even thought about such things for years before we even met, totally fell apart and went on an extended drug binge that led to our breakup.   What the fuck? I wondered at the time.  How can someone go from being the proverbial Rock and Tower of Strength to a pitiful puddle of insipid drug-addled decrepitude and weakness?   What confused me most of all was that he knew me well enough to know his behaviour was slam-dunk grounds for breakup.

Whatever prompted my ex to spiral into self-destructiveness during my illness is probably similar to whatever it is that motivates guys to bail on their sick wives.  Maybe the pressure of being strong in the caregiver role is more than they can hack because they’re so accustomed to being cared for themselves.

(h/t balloon juice)

Somebody’s gonna get spanked

… and not in a way he’ll enjoy!

Yes, it’s that time again:  yet another GOP family values hypocrite boogies up and joins the Conga Line of Lust:

Michael Duvall is a conservative Republican state representative from Orange County, California. While waiting for the start of a legislative hearing in July, the 54-year-old married father of two and family values champion began describing, for the benefit of a colleague seated next to him, his ongoing affairs with two different women. In very graphic detail.

But-but-but-but-but but… !!!:

“California’s families are under a constant assault in Sacramento, and CRI does an excellent job of educating legislators and staff alike on issues, and advocating in defense of the traditional family,” Assemblyman Duvall said.

And who is this “CRI” of which you speak?:

The mission of Capitol Resource Institute (CRI) is to educate, advocate, protect, and defend family-friendly policies in the California state legislature and at local government levels.

Yet another one of these anti-gay organizations who dress up their bigotry in “family values” rhetoric.  And ironically, their home page has this graphic:

Hmmm!  Maybe that was meant to be a warning?

(JoeMyGod has a video of this hypocritical clown.)

Sarah was sad for awhile…

…She walked around the house pouting. I had assumed she was going to go back to her job as governor, but a week or two after she got back she started talking about how nice it would be to quit and write a book or do a show and make “triple the money.” It was, to her, “not as hard.” She would blatantly say, “I want to just take this money and quit being governor.” She started to say it frequently, but she didn’t know how to do it. When she came home from work, it seemed like she was more and more stressed out.

That’s just one little nugget from Levi Johnson’s upcoming Vanity Fair interview.  There’s much more, including SaWah’s plan to secretly adopt Bristol & Levi’s baby to keep up appearances.  Family Values!   HAHAHAHA!

It makes you wonder:  if she thinks being Governor is “too hard”, why the fuck was she running for Vice-President (and potentially, President)?  Hello??

Seriously, right-wingnuts carp and whine about how The Left©®™ was so unfair to poor Sarah, but this is it in a nutshell — her shallow arrogance and complete unseriousness.   The woman is such a joke that I’m starting to think her whole act is a put-on and she’s a secret lefty doing it all to discredit conservatism.  Also.

Easy answers to uncomfortable questions

The answer is “No“:  deranged, whacked-out right-wingnuts aren’t using dog-whistles and violent hate rhetoric to get President Obama assassinated…

…any more than delusional, depraved fetus fetishists were using dog-whistles and violent hate rhetoric to get Dr. Tiller assassinated.

And if it ever happens they won’t be happy about it, either.

Deranged preacher sorry for violent rhetoric

“Pastor” Steven Anderson of Batshittery, Arizona, is extremely remorseful for firing up any unhinged members of his congregation with hate sermons about Barack Obama.  No, really.   Err, what?

In related future news, Anderson will strongly denounce any actual violence that occurs when some deranged nutbar takes his rhetoric to heart and takes things to the next level.  You know it’s coming.

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!

Another fundamentalist perv

…dances up and joins the conga line of conservative sexual hypocrisy, lechery and deviant lust:

A jury in Arkansas convicted evangelist Tony Alamo on Friday of 10 federal counts of taking minors across state lines for sex, according to the court in the Western District in Arkansas.  [...]

Between March 1994 and October 2005, Alamo transported five girls younger than 18 across state lines for sex, according to the indictment.  [...]

Asked why authorities were searching the property, Alamo compared himself to Christ.

“Why were they after Jesus,” he asked. “It’s the same reason. Jesus is living within me.”

Um err yeah, okay.

Yet another GOP hypocrite

God, does it ever end!??  Alright, Tennessee State Senator Paul Stanley, come on down!

Tennessee State Senator Paul Stanley has resigned as chairman of the Tennessee Senate Commerce Committee after it was revealed he was the target of an extortion plot.  [...]

The extortion plot hit Nashville and Memphis television stations and newspapers on Tuesday, July 21, 2009.  The affidavit, in a Davidson county court (Nashville), lists Joel Watts as the person who tried to extort money from State Senator Stanley.

Watts says he was in a relationship with McKensie Morrison, an intern in Stanley’s office.  White Watts was in the relationship with Morrison, he discovered Morrison was having a sexual relationship with the married State Senator Stanley.  Watts found a memory disc with explicit photographs of Morrison.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s bad enough that this family values-humping, fetus-fetishizing, anti-gay, sanctity of (hetero-only) marriage-defending  Republican is married himself and fucking around with a girl half his age (countdown to  shrieks of “butbutbut the clenis!!”…3…2…1…), but to add insult to hypocrisy:

An executive of Planned Parenthood of Greater Memphis said today that when she and two colleagues traveled to Nashville in April to lobby state legislators, Sen. Paul Stanley told them he would never support Planned Parenthood and “didn’t believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway.”

I need a projectile vomiting emoticon.There we go.

When wingnuts attack

When wingnuts turn on each other they don’t fuck around.

Right-wing blog Redstate is pissed off that Bristol Palin’s baby daddy Levi Johnston is damaging the political aspirations of one of the GOP’s “brightest stars” (that would supposedly be Sarah Palin) by mouthing off on the Tyra Banks Show and in a tell-all book to be released later this year. Therefore (and I think I must be missing a few steps here) RS launches into a foul diatribe accusing Johnston of incest…? Yeah, that sounds about right:

Never mind that, though. Although I, too, was sickened by Levi’s exhibitionistic performance on Tyra, I would never get down in the mud like this:

“What’s even more creepy is that the other person in the picture is his sister. And, as if lifted from the pages of Deliverance, she has his name tattooed on her back*. Think about that one for a minute.”

In case you missed it, here it is again, toward the end:

“Soon Levi will sell his tell all book, delightfully ignoring awkward questions about his relationship with his sister while relishing in the awkward details of his relationship with Sarah Palin.”

Yikes.  And they said we were mean to SaWah.

*Note:  At Redstate, “back” is crossed out and replaced with “finger”.   Um err okay.

Family Values FAIL

Obsessing about the sex lives of other people is an incendiary formula of dark depravity that’s bound make a mess when it finally, inevitably explodes. Surprise! Yet another dancer joins the religious right’s covert conga line of Lewdness and Lust:

“Do you like older guys?” a 42-year-old Colorado Springs man who listed his employer as evangelical ministry Focus on the Family asked 11 minutes after initiating contact in an Internet chat room with a girl he believed to be younger than 15, according to an arrest affidavit released Monday by the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office.

Turns out the “teenager” was really an investigator with the district attorney’s office, as Juan Alberto Ovalle discovered the next afternoon when he was arrested on two felony counts in Lakewood after arranging to meet the girl for sex, according to the affidavit.

Won’t someone think of The Children?? No, NO! Not that way!

Snark-a-licious UPDATE: Physician, heal thyself.

(via pandagon)

“Bestiality, gay orgies and babies eating sperm”

Hey, I don’t write the news — only the fetid and feverish imagination of a fundie would be capable of generating a line like that.

That awesomeness is the latest from the American Family Association, who are apparently in a masturbatory frenzy over “The Family Guy”.  From their latest “AFA Alert”:

HAHAHAHA!  Wild, mon!

I’m not sure what the AFA finds so offensive about this one:

“Lois, wearing skimpy lingerie, is turned down by her now gay husband”.

unless it’s a scene that hits uncomfortably close to home.

(via the stranger)

Family Research Council onside with Iran

The social conservative spincases at the “Family Research Council” have flipped their lids over the US government’s decision to endorse a UN declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. SHRIEEEK!:

Adding to the long list of Bush positions that are now history, the Associated Press reports that the Obama administration will reverse Bush’s policy and endorse a nonbinding U.N. declaration to “protect” homosexuals. The document was first presented at the General Assembly last December, when the U.S. joining several African and Arab nations refused to sign.

The FRC’s article goes on to abuse “scare quotes” with reckless abandon as it describes how the evil and odious declaration condemns “violence” and “harassment” and “stigmatization and prejudice” due to “sexual orientation”. (Must be a “bitch” typing like “that” with “quotation marks” every other “word”.)

Okay, hands up everyone who’s surprised that on a human rights issue, the fundamentalist screwheads at the FRC would take sides with shit holes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria and Pakistan…

Oh come on, there must be someone…

We report, you decide.

Won’t someone think of the children?? No, not that way:

Aaron Bruns, a Fox News producer, has been arrested on charges of child pornography, according to reports.

Bruns, a politics producer in the Washington D.C. office of Fox News, is best-known for his coverage of Hillary Clinton‘s 2008 presidential campaign.

In yet another shining example of right-wing personnel vetting, Bruns has been employed with Fox since 2002 — the same year he completed his probationary sentence after being busted for similar activity in 1999.

I got nothin’.