Tweeting the burning stoopid

Slobbering Sarah tells X-treme Enviro-weenies The Way It IS:

Yes, because oil companies have such a great track record on dry land.

Certainly the massive BP oil disaster in the Gulf is the fault of environmentalists who brutally FORCED the oil companies to drill offshore.  If ANWR was opened to drilling, oil companies would instantly lose their major defining characteristic — GREED — and immediately cease all offshore operations.

Since the blithering, dimwitted Palin has an answer for everything, maybe she can explain in 140 characters or less why 20 years of GOP-controlled congress and White House out of the last 28 — including 12 immediately following the enactment of the ANWR ban — never repealed the act, instead escalating offshore leases and dismantling safety regulations.

Olbermann is right:  that woman is an IDIOT.

UPDATE: Damn those Greenie-Weenies!

UPDATE II: On top of being a complete moron, Palin’s a bullshitter.  Olbermann responds to the twit’s tweet:

FIFY

The NatPo’s Jonathan Kay salivates like a wolverine gnawing on a live sheep in today’s unfortunate screed about the demise of the Canadian left, starting with Antonia Z’s column:

There, fixed it for ya.

UPDATE: Okay, about 15 minutes ago there were 34 comments with that article, some of which informed Kay that AZ had been promoted.  Now:

What’s up with that?

UPDATE (Thursday):  Still no comments!?

Even if they dumped the first 34 comments, why haven’t there been any more since?  Normally a hysterical post about Zerb and the “death of the left” would have accrued at least 50 brain-damaged, spittle-flecked snarls from the NatPo’s “regulars” by now.

Wingnuts:  why screen shots were invented.

(h/t CC)

Profiles in Courage

Wingnut style.  BWAHAHA!!

“Life is short. Have an affair.”

That’s the slogan an online dating service proposed using in a transit advertising campaign which was summarily rejected last week by the TTC:

The Red Rocket is no place to encourage extramarital liaisons, the transit commission’s advertising committee decided.  [...]

The ad doesn’t jive with taste or community standards criteria for public transit ads, said councillor and committee member Suzan Hall.

“What individuals choose to do is what individuals choose to do, but as far as the TTC is concerned, I am never going to support that we promote infidelity.”

The ad doesn’t “jive“, eh?  I think the G&M means “jibe“, but never mind that.   The Morality Police thought the ad was a whole lotta jive and got right to work typing their stubby little fingers to the bone firing email after outraged email at the TTC:

TTC staff referred the ad to the committee on Thursday, which is customary practice for anything they think might be problematic. Since AshleyMadison.com sent out press releases announcing the ad this week, “e-mails are coming in hot and heavy” in response, Ms. Hall said – none of them positive.

And took to the interwebs for more SHRIEEEEEK! “Stop persecuting us with this anti-life, anti-family advertising!:

“To blatantly advertise cheating in this manner where people of all ages, including children, are open to it, means people may be incredibly offended,” Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, told the National Post.

“People are generally outraged by that type of a lifestyle and to advertise it in such a public fashion, in my opinion, is wrong.”

Gwen Landolt, vice president of REAL Women of Canada, said that while her organization believes in free speech, the Ashley Madison ads go too far.

Of course.  The Morality Police always believe in free speech, except when they don’t.  If that bus board was emblazoned with a certain verse from the Old Testament, oh, I don’t know, say maybe… Leviticus? you can bet they’d be holding the free speech flag high.  Because free speech is context-dependent.

As is the free market, apparently.   If a private company wants to advertise its product, shouldn’t the “invisible hand”, not the Morality Police, determine whether that product survives or not?  And although I don’t recommend adultery, if someone wants to do it, who am I to say that they can’t?

Besides, people aren’t swayed to have affairs by advertising, or the presence of sex trade workers, or pron, or any of the other amenities of the sex business.   Contrary to what sex-obsessed socon busybodies would have us believe about our inability to think for ourselves in matters of love and lust (the same way the Taliban makes women cover up because men are dumb brutes who can’t resist their carnal charm), the sex business serves a need that already exists and people seek it out by choice, not the other way around.

But let’s have some fun with this:  let’s think up a new bus board ad for this campaign, something the Morality Police can’t target.  I bet if Ashley Madison had used something like “Life is short — Do it” or “Life is short — Go for it”, those things would be running around Toronto on the sides of buses right now.

Surrey fundie drops HRC complaint

The right-wing Anti-HRC Talking Points must have gotten held up in the backlog of War On Christmas mail.  But the Pony Express finally made it over the Rockies to Surrey and got that memo into the holy-rollin’ hands of Paul Jubenvill, who decided to drop a complaint he’d filed against his kid’s school for refusing to allow a bible study group:

Surrey parent Paul Jubenvill has withdrawn his human rights complaint over an elementary school’s refusal to provide space for a Bible study group.

Jubenvill said Wednesday he was taken aback by the storm of controversy over his plans to hold voluntary meetings on Christianity at Colebrook Elementary School. [...]

Jubenvill had filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal on Dec. 1 after he was refused space for the noon-hour group.By way of explanation, the school board said it had a legislated duty to separate church and education in elementary schools.

According to Jubenvill, a 35-year-old software designer who lives “by God’s word,” his freedom of religion was guaranteed under the Canadian Human Rights Act.

But he has now withdrawn his official complaint “after further reflection.”

This is what cracks me up:  the school, a taxpayer-funded public school, wants to keep things secular and rightly so.  But even though he’s free to worship as he sees fit at home, in church, in the woods with bunnies and squirrels or even standing on an orange crate wild-eyed and whacked out on a downtown street corner, somehow Jubenvill feels the school’s decision not to allow it in this one place is an infringement of his “freedom of religion”.  Does the whining never end??

Nice work, ‘baggers

The bizarre little special election in NY-23 has really gone sideways.  With 87% of the polls reporting, results are 49% for Owens (the Dem) and 45% for Hoffman, the teabagger.  From TPM:(Scozzafava, whose name still appeared on the ballot, got 6%.)  So it looks like a safe GOP seat might go to the Democrats as a result of teabagger interference.

Whoops, hang on:  Hoffman just conceded.

Wow:  a seat that’s been held by the GOP practically since the invention of the wheel has gone blue. Take a bow, teabaggers!

UPDATE (Wednesday):  Teabaggers and Fetus fetishists behaving badly in NY-23:

“We’ve gotten reports that people are standing there, covered with Hoffman stickers and yelling anti-choice stuff at voters,” said O’Neill, a St. Lawrence native who has been running the party’s GOTV effort for Bill Owens in NY-23.

Hard to understand how that wouldn’t sway moderate conservative voters.  RINOs!

 

Timing FAIL

Sheeeeeee’s back! Gingi the Unhinge-ied, the deranged anti-abortion douchebag and Jesus Camp hatebot who gloated over the plane crash that killed several family members of a clinic owner (he had it coming), jabbers away about the appropriately disgusted response to her idiotic screed:

Following my report on the Feldkamp tragedy, (see my article dated March 24, 2009) I received a number of personal death threats – imagine that, coming from the pro-death crowd! Total shocker!

Boo hoo hoo, threats.  You mean like this?  Or doesn’t it count if it’s a veiled threat?

But never mind that: get those helmets on and watch out for flying irony shrapnel as Gingi goes full metal batshit, decrying so-called pro-choice violence and all but denying the existence of ‘anti-choice violence’ (scare-quoted, like ‘health of the mother’)…

Any virtuous thing that a pro-abort stands for is almost guaranteed to have a deep, ugly hypocrisy attached. At this moment I’d have to say my favourite is the hypocrisy of pro-aborts running around physically and verbally assaulting pro-lifers, all the while pretending to live in perpetual terror of ‘anti-choice violence’.

… on the very same day that “anti-choice terrorist” James Kopp lost his “appeal” of the “life sentence” he’s “doing” for the “murder” of “Dr. Barnett Slepian”.

Didn’t think that one through, eh Gingidouche?

(via pharyngula)

What did he expect?

“Frat Boy, putz, A-hole”: On his show Tuesday night, Hate Radio screamer  (literally) Mark Levin had strong words to describe fellow conservative David Frum.  The source of Levin’s irritation was, what else, Frum’s recent article about the folly of allowing Rush Limbaugh to be identified as the Face of the GOP:

On Tuesday evening, the radio host Mark Levin opened his show with an angry shouted 10-minute monologue in which he called me (among other choice terms)  a “putz,” an “a-hole,”a “frat boy,” “irrelevant,” and – ouch! – “this Canadian.”

Well, yeah.   Did Frum really think his article’s qualifier that Rush was deserving of respect (!??) would be enough tugging and stroking to satisfy the slavering dittoheads?   No, nothing short of donning a leather jumpsuit and ballgag and publicly submitting to every kind of unspeakable depravity will redeem a conservative who’s made the mistake of questioning Dear Leader.  Back into the dungeon with you, Gimp… El-Rushbo will call you when he needs you.

Frum even called Levin’s show the next day to try to reason with him, of course to no avail since Levin is certifiably batshit insane.   But it wasn’t all for naught, resulting in a sad moment of clarity:

As I hung up, I wondered what it would be like to be a new listener, a nonpolitical person, tuning in to Mark Levin’s show for the first time. The ferocious hatred and anger – the shouting at people not present to reply, the self-pitying complaints against a world that does not pay enough respect: it’s an ugly performance. Has Levin ever convinced any listener of anything that listener did not already believe? And of those who come to the show uncertain of what they believe – mustn’t the vast majority come away from these rage-filled narcissistic tirades thinking, “If that’s conservatism, I want no part of it”?

Bingo.   If you want to know why Obama is in the White House right now, look no further than the hate radio idiots, who along with the religious right have enormously marginalized conservatism.   More power to them:  let them continue to drive moderates away until the GOP is a pile of stenchy, fuming embers burning its way into ashy obscurity.

Sorry, Rush

We’re just not that into you.

Women don’t really like Rush Limbaugh. On Feb. 23, Public Policy Polling released findings showing that only 37 percent of women hold a favorable opinion of the hate radio host, compared to 56 percent of men.

37%!?  It’s that high??

A baffled Rush decided to hold a “Female Summit” on his radio show to get some estrogen-positive input from all those Feminazis out there.  But he qualified who was eligible to be a respondent:

One thing about the Female Summit: sorry, no transsexuals. We’re not going to have anybody who’s had an addadictomy, and we’re not going to have anybody who’s had a chopadickoffamy. We’re going to have women from birth.

37%?  Really??

More about that teapot tempest

Further to the input received by TVO/The Agenda with regard to their February 12th discussion panel on Atheism, moderator Steve Paikin had more to say on Friday at his blog.

Paikin’s got a point.  However, though nobody has the right to censor anyone (and certainly not under threat of “consequences” to TVO), it’s easy to see why so many people would question TVO’s judgement in that case.   To get an idea of the calibre of discussion people were concerned about, have a look at some of the moronic comments with the TVO post.  (Bet you didn’t know Obama’s policies are straight out of the Communist-freaking-Manifesto.)

But far from gaining any undeserved intellectual gravitas or even relevance, idiots generally reveal themselves as such in the context of an intelligent discussion, and this time was no different.   Sunshine, disinfectant, etc. — it works.   So, more of this, please:

UofC anti-abortion club loses club status

Assholishness has its rewards:

An anti-abortion group has had its status as a University of Calgary club revoked by the students’ union.

After a hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes Tuesday, the U of C’s clubs committee decided to de-sanction the Campus Pro-Life club because its Genocide Awareness Project violated policy in November.

These braindead little shits have been asking for it for a long time. Unfortunately, as long as they are a university-sanctioned club, it’s their right to have whatever kind of display they want. But it’s also up to them to be reasonable about it (ie. accept the university’s request and compromise by turning the images inward) or conversely, to be assholes. They chose to be assholes and the freedom to be an asshole ain’t free — in this case the cost is club status and all the perks that entails.

Naturally, they don’t see it that way. Whine on you crazy diamond:

“This action is a disturbing abuse of power,” said club vice-president Cameron Wilson. “It is an abuse of power when the body elected to protect us heaps further oppression upon us.”

Oppression, right. That’s the second most effective fundie-wallet-opening word.

Look, this thing was a clear attempt by the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform to use a university club to get their hideous display into a public venue, since it would probably be burned down if they tried to put it anywhere else. They got these dopey little fetus fetishists to take a bullet for them, and now they’ll skate away with their display, leaving these kids with no club status and generally despised like rabid dogs on campus. One hopes that other university anti-abortion clubs will think twice about who they associate with in the future.

Shocked, shocked, I tell you

Okay, I’ve been reading a lot about the latest anti-choice free-speech darling, Jojo Ruba (can we call him “Joe Rube”?). Jojo (Jojo?) was at St. Mary’s University in Halifax last week at the invitation of a new fetus fetishist club, who booked a room so Jojo (Jojo!!) could give an anti-abortion  presentation. The whole thing ended up going to shit when Jojo was shouted down by pro-choice activists.  End of the line, and it’s Jojo-a-Go-Go.

A pro-life speaker is shocked that an aggressive protest shut down his lecture Thursday evening at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

“If the university gives into this mob rule, then the mob gets to decide who gets to speak on campus,” Jojo Ruba said in an interview Sunday night.

Mob Rule versus Fetus Fetish Drool.   I won’t dwell on the free speech aspect, since anti-choicers are already stroking themselves into a spectacular ragegasm over that side of things.   But it’s utterly amazing that this jerk would be in any way surprised by what happened.   Speaking of civility and mob rule: Jojo’s presentation isn’t just a run-of-the-mill anti-abortion song and dance routine — Mr. Jojo is one of an especially vile and extremist anti-choice subspecies, those who like to compare abortion to the Holocaust:

Mr. Ruba is in the middle of a speaking tour in Atlantic Canada on behalf of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, a non-profit organization in Calgary that he helped to found.

That’s the same “Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform” (that’s sciencey-speak for “anti-abortion fruitbags”) that’s responsible for the notorious “Genocide Awareness Project” that’s drawing so much heat at the University of Calgary.  Jojo’s presentation is basically the Rolling Roadshow Version of the same hideous and grotesque display.  This extremist nutbar gives a presentation that basically compares women who have abortions to Nazis, and he’s surprised to encounter some aggressive opposition?  I’d have slapped him in the face with a phone book.  (Just kidding.  No I’m not.  Yes I am.)  And what about the idiot who invited this lunatic to speak on campus in the first place?  What the fuck was he thinking?  I mean, who’s next, “Atomic Dog” discussing the relative merits of a 30-30 vs. a shotgun for killing abortion doctors?

I usually come down on the side of free speech in these situations and this one is no different.  But the pro-choicers who objected to this presentation have free speech rights too, and the way I see it, they were only giving Jojo’s routine the kind of attention it deserves — minus the spit.

Wait, that egg basket ain’t broken

I know I’m not the only one who’s totally creeped out and disgusted by this story.

Eluana Englaro, or Italy’s Terry Schiavo (as she’s become known), has been in a coma for 17 years and her loved ones have finally won the right to let her go with some dignity. A very private decision, no doubt undertaken with heavy hearts.

Wait a minute — what was that? A “very private decision”??

DING! DING! DING! DING! Sound the “Culture-Of-Life” Sirens!

Those words, “very private decision“, are like a call to arms for self-righteous self-appointed arbiters of societal morality like Italy’s right-wingnut Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi (ironically known as the George W Bush of Italy) quickly imposed an emergency decree blocking the suspension of life support.

As if intervening in and prolonging a family’s private grief isn’t bad enough, get a load of Berlusconi’s rationale for doing so:

After choosing a side, Berlusconi did not mince his words: “Eluana is still looking good and in a condition to have babies“, he said, as well as “Her father is only interested in ridding himself of a burden”.

Jebus, even the Terri Schiavo nuts didn’t say anything that outrageously fucked up. At least they believed (erroneously) Schiavo still had some level of conscious awareness. They didn’t just point to her ovaries and say “BUT THE IMPORTANT STUFF IS STILL WORKING!”, and insult the grieving father while they were at it. Holy motherfucking shit, these people are nazi scum!! But what can you expect when Berlusconi’s directive came from the Vatican? Nice of them to finally confirm what we’ve suspected for years.

In spite of all the emergency decrees, meetings and other kinds of unsolicited state intervention, it seems that Ms. Englaro may have gotten away after all, at least according to her Wiki page. RIP.

UPDATE: The Times confirms Ms. Englaro has passed away. (h/t fern hill)

(belated h/t - Chimera, who gave me the link)

It just emboldens them

The persecution high of the UofC Campus Fetus Fetishist Club, some of whom are being charged with trespassing for refusing to remove their offensive “Genocide Awareness Project” display, is now in full swing.

Emboldened by national media attention and being framed as “free-speech martyrs” by Ezra Levant (I told you so), they’re now making a play to appropriate alumni donations to the UofC. From lifeshite:

Levant concluded, “This is not a pro-life vs. pro-choice discussion. That’s irrelevant. This heavy-handed bullying by the U of C would be appalling no matter which side of the debate was being squashed. I think that any pro-life alumni should be extra angry that the university is officially gagging one side of that debate. But any pro-choicer who believes in freedom of speech should be disgusted with their alma mater, too.”

Leah Hallman, the president of Campus Pro-Life, said she was thankful for the support and had this message for pro-life Canadians: “I would like to encourage all Canadians to be a voice for the unborn and to stand up in the face of persecution.”

Campus Pro-Life also said they would appreciate any donations to help with legal fees. Hallman told LifeSiteNews.com, “I suggest that alumni who are currently donating to the University of Calgary withdraw their support, and use this money to donate to Campus Pro-Life [cheques can be made payable to ‘Campus Pro-Life’ and mailed to the address below] or another pro-life organization.”

That’s the magic word and the logical outcome. Nothing will make a fundie checkbook snap open faster than the word “persecution”. And although anti-choice social conservatives are not free expression absolutists by any stretch of the imagination (try gauging their support of pornography, especially the gay variety), they’re only too happy to play the role when it suits their interests. Naturally the campus cretins have jumped on it like a fat kid on a smorgasbord, and awaaaaaay we go! This persecution thing can really pay off if you’re smart about it!

I’m personally ambivalent about the GAP project, but its disgusting, extremist and absurd analogies with the Holocaust hurt the anti-choice movement more than anything short of clinic bombers. When you’ve lost Barbara Kay, you’re really on the road to marginalization, and I say let them carry on down that road.  Gentlemen, start your Fetusmobiles©®™!

Bush policy reversals, come soon please

If there was ever a good argument for the Obama Administration’s expected reversal of several idiotic Bush policies like the new healthcare practicioners’ “conscience” rule, it’s this story out of New Mexico.

A woman is suing a nurse who, even before the Bush rule came into effect,  apparently felt she was well within her conscience rights to remove the woman’s IUD without her request or consent — because Nursie is opposed to abortion and in that dried-up little acorn rattling around in her cranium, IUDs are “abortion”. Taste the bugfuck insanity:

This kind of situation has been much-discussed as a potential outcome of the new HHS rule to go into effect on Monday, January 19th. But possibility and reality have already collided head-on in the story of a New Mexico woman whose IUD was removed by a nurse against the woman’s wishes and who is now suing both the nurse and the center in federal court for battery, constitutional violations and negligence.

The patient went to the Presbyterian Health Services Rio Rancho Family Health Center in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and saw nurse practitioner Sylvia Olona. Her request: Simply to shorten the strings on her IUD for greater comfort.

The result? Nurse Olona took it upon herself to remove the troublesome device. Why? Simple, Nurse Olona told her patient:

“Having the IUD come out was a good thing [because] I personally do not like IUDs. I feel they are a type of abortion. I don’t know how you feel about abortion, but I am against them. …What the IUD does is take the fertilized egg and pushes it out of the uterus.”

Given that the patient would have made clear the reason for the appointment when she was booking it, one would think that anyone so vehemently opposed to contraception would have opted out of this particular task.  But there’s no doubt that a lot of these nitwits purposely put themselves in the situation just so they can harass patients and enjoy a little self-righteousness high, and so-called “conscience rules” just encourage them.

This is where it goes with these whackos.  I don’t care if some health care workers want to opt out of certain procedures for whatever reason (as long as there’s someone else around to pick up the slack).   They’re welcome to let their conscience be their guide as long as they’re not letting their conscience be my guide, too.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Search:  The Signal Hill + Abortion:

Don’t fuck with us. We have Teh Googles and we will use them.

The NatPo’s downward spiral goes on

This week, our National Newspaper continues its inexorable journey on the Downward Spiral of Stupid:

Shorter Barbara Kay: “This is the world’s smallest violin, playing for all those Palestinian babies that are *supposedly* being blown to smithereens…”

Last week CNN aired a heartrending videotape of a “dying” Palestinian child receiving “CPR,” ostensibly one more Gazan victim of Israel’s inhumanity. It was quickly blogged on by alert medical professionals as an obvious hoax.
The “war crime” was a stunt engineered or abetted by a Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert, who was filmed narrating the bogus scenario for the videographer, supposedly the “victim’s” brother, but in fact the owner of a Hamas-supportive Web site.

Every time I see this woman’s idiotic smirk leering out at me from the monitor I want to bite a chunk out of my keyboard. Kay is one of those rare books that you really can judge by its cover.

Shorter Steve Janke: “As with gay marriage, we told you so!!!!”

Polygamy is about to become the next great moral battleground in the legal war on marriage. And as with gay marriage, the correct and logical conclusion on the issue of polygamy is that it is not a desirable form of marriage, and indeed, threatens society as a whole.

And as with gay marriage, I have no doubt that the people who will judge this issue will utterly ignore all of this, and decide the issue on an effort to maximize moral relativism. In other words, the judgment will be designed to be as far from judgmental as possible.

What is it CC calls him? The Enjankulator?

Shorter Rebecca Walberg: “Pay for your own abortions, you funsex-loving sluts!”

When Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, new leader of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, suggested there are more laws protecting organ transplants in Canada than fetuses, he gave the abortion debate shock therapy. One predictable outcome was disdain, and a call to focus on important things, namely the economy, in these uncertain times. Yet there is an economic angle to the abortion debate. In Canada today, abortion is available and publicly funded at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason.* That’s our tax dollars providing free and timely elective surgery, in spite of the waiting lists and chronic resource shortages that plague our health care system in many other areas. Based on abortion statistics and the cost of the procedure in clinics and hospitals, that translates into $90-million a year, as a conservative estimate.

Pro-choice rhetoric states unequivocally that abortion is a personal choice, exclusively for the pregnant woman to make. The counsel of family, doctors and even the father is unnecessary and unwelcome, unless the woman herself chooses to include it. This is one outcome of the Supreme Court of Canada’s oft-misunderstood Morgentaler decision in 1988, which ended all restrictions on access to abortion. Prior to that decision, a “therapeutic abortion committee” had to rule on whether abortion was advisable in each case. Since not every hospital had such a committee, the law was struck down.

Oh good. Let’s “Focus On The Fetishists” for a minute.

Those fetus fetishists sure love them some Rod Bruinooge, don’t they? They’re the only ones still talking about him and his goofy “fetus/kidney” analogy since Stephen Harper applied the duct tape. It wouldn’t surprise me if Bruinooge himself was wishing they’d shut the fuck up about it since his boss probably slams a file cabinet door shut on his nuts every time the idiotic analogy makes another appearance in the media and reminds the electorate about the kind of fundamentalist chimps that are hiding out in the CPC caucus.

Walberg’s lame attempt to tug at the taxpayers’ purse-strings is a straw man of the highest order — unless we completely overhaul the health care system, it’s a little absurd to single out one procedure for a funding cut on the basis that it addresses a non-life-threatening issue. There are any number of funded treatments for “quality of life” issues, and abortion is just one of them.

Re bolded selection: *That*, my friends, is a LIE (surprise surprise), or as we call it in my neighbourhood, a steaming load of BULLSHIT. A woman can’t stroll into a clinic at any stage of pregnancy and get an abortion for any reason, publicly-funded or otherwise.

Seriously, what’s up with the NatPo? I’ve heard of jumping the shark, but this is getting silly. The NP used to run some conservative scribblers of reasonable quality, but lately, with a few exceptions, it’s become a cesspool of shrieking half-bright bigots, homophobes, fetus fetishists and religious right fruitbags that I read for a laugh. Have they not caught on to this?

Harper marked by McVety

No, not that way, in case you were visualizing a morbidly obese pitbull wild-eyed with fear and a heart full of hate (no lipstick, at least not today, sailor), lifting a leg and leaving his “mark” on a blue sweater-clad fire hydrant.

Nope, we’re talking “A to F” marks, like the ones you get in school. On the January 4th episode of his critically-acclaimed “Word.ca”, our favourite religious right assclown, Charles McVety, “marked” Stephen Harper‘s performance on issues of interest to, well, Charles McVety:

1. MARRIAGE - Better late than never. The fundies have finally figured out that Harper pulled a fast one on them 2 years ago with his motion to vote on voting on whether to vote on a vote on voting to re-open another vote on voting on same-sex marriage, and they’re laying their vengeance upon him with a big fat *F*

2. PROTECTING CHILDREN – Age of Consent was raised from 14 to 16, hideous news for all those 16 year old boys with 15 year old girlfriends, but great news for the girls’ vengeful Christomaniac parents. Jailbait! Just like the good old days! *A*

(EDIT – On a more accurate and serious note, RB explains the full repercussions of the age of consent law in the comments here.)

3. UNBORN VICTIMS OF CRIME – Again, McVety’s got the feeling that he’s been scammed. Harper initially voted in favour of the infamous Bill C-484, but widespread negative response to it clued him in that this vile back door anti-abortion bill wasn’t the back door to a majority. Therefore he *quashed” C-484 right before the election, indicating that a bill protecting pregnant women would be considered instead. Putting pregnant women before fetuses earned Harper another *F*

4. CRIME – Screaming about “baby-rapers”, McVety makes it clear that Law-and-Order Harper doesn’t prosecute criminals to a full enough extent of the law (and beyond). Maybe the use of thumbscrews and jumper cables in rehabilitative therapy might score Harper something a little better than an underachieving *C*

5. CHILD PORN – Harper isn’t down with McVety’s crusade to give the state the power to force ISPs to block porn sites, probably because there are teams of police officers already tackling this job and, done properly, the websites kind of die on their own. The cops don’t need any help from censorship fetishists, and the internet doesn’t need to set off on this slippery slope. Allowing the cops to do their job unimpeded by blithering porn-obsessed religious crackpots earns Harpie another *F*

6. FUNDING ARTS DEEMED MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE BY CHARLES MCVETY – I’m sensing a definite pattern here in terms of what occupies Charles McVety’s mind most of the time, and I get the sense that looking inside it would be something like staring into an abyss of madness and depravity so deep and dark that — never mind, I’m going off on a tangent. This is about McVety’s censorship wet dream, Bill C-10, which would have prevented tax breaks for indie movies like McVety’s favourite, “Young People Effing” (which isn’t even about effing). Since there’s already a system in place that keeps porn from being funded, McVety must be envisioning a Ministry of Virtue & Vice (with himself in charge) that would spread the pornography net a little wider, maybe to include suspects like SpongeBob and Tinky Winky. Harper actually supported Bill C-10 but apparently with insufficient orgasmic zeal for Chuck, who gave him a milquetoast *C* for his efforts.

7. ISRAEL – Israel? Huh??

8. FREE SPEECH, HRCs & FREEDOM OF RELIGION – F, F and F!!! Harper apparently doesn’t buy into the idea that “religious freedom” includes the right to slag minorities, so all the bigots can relax, the persecution party is still rockin’! But Harper’s marks suffer the consequences.

There’s more of course, bringing Harper’s overall average mark to a “C-minus” — “not very good” in McVety’s words.

One shudders to think what kind of world it would take to qualify for straight “A’s”.

We got trouble

…trouble, my friend, right here in Outrage City. Something’s got the wingnut-o-sphere just torqued, and that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for “Polygamy”.

Everyone’s heard about the polygamy bust this week in Bountiful BC. Like many small, isolated BC towns, Bountiful is a weird place and its inhabitants do weird things.   In my neighbourhood, we swig chianti from the bottle while riding motorcycles in our pajamas.  In Bountiful, they practice polygamy.

But there are also stories of abuse and exploitation of women and minors in Bountiful, which is why the BC government finally decided to clamp down. Conveniently, there just happens to be a law against polygamy and incontravertible evidence that it’s being broken, so that’s the approach the government is taking in its investigation.

The side issue is that if the charge is successfully challenged, the polygamy law (which isn’t stopping anybody who’s interested anyway), could be struck down. Predictably, it’s this little factoid that has social conservatives pissing themselves with outrage. “WE TOLD YOU SO,” they shriek. What?  yes, seriously: It’s All Because The Gays Are Getting Married.

Never mind that Bountiful was practicing polygamy decades before marriage was even a gleam in the Gay Agenda’s eye. Forget about the fact that these polygamous sects are all made up of extremely conservative religious nuts.  And by all means, disregard all that “consenting adults” crap. Make no mistake:  Canada is about to be overrun with polygamy, and it’s because of gay marriage, feminists, liberals and the war on Christmas. But don’t take my word for it, check out this explosive and outragegasmic verbal diahhrea quoted at SUZANNE’s:

SHRIEEEK! SHRIEEEK! SHRIEEK! SHRIEEEK! SHRIEEEEEEEEEEK!  SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!

If a socon’s level of distress can be gauged by their use of “Quotation Marks”, this one’s clearly having a nervous breakdown.   Let’s hope the polygamy law holds up, because if it doesn’t, they’re likely to use up all the quotation marks in the world, and there’ll be none left for us when we really need them.  You know, like when we write “pro-life”.  Or for that matter, “conservative”.

Your daily you-know-what

You better watch out, you better not shout

You better not cry, I’m telling you why

Santa’s handing out condoms downtown…

SHRIEEEEEEK!

Christmas shoppers were shocked this week to find men and women dressed up as Santa Claus on some of the busiest streets in Toronto, handing out condoms.

The publicity stunt was arranged by Durex, the condom manufacturer.

A press release from the company explained that costumed representatives, dressed as Santa Claus, would be handing out the condoms beginning on Tuesday, December 16.

Lifeshite didn’t get any interviews with these phantom “shocked shoppers”… maybe because they were all hurrying home to stuff their little latex stockings, ya think? No matter — the unspeakable thought that anyone might be having sex for — gasp! — fun, is unacceptable to socially conservative busybodies and crotch-sniffers who were quick to condemn Durex for… I don’t know, engaging in free market capitalism and promoting their product? They further bitched:

The condom manufacturer is not the only organization that is hijacking Christmas to spread a message of casual sex.

HAHAHAHA! Highjacking Christmas!! How long before they accuse some sexual jihadist of planning to fly Christmas into the side of a building?