Happy Independence Day!

Hey, everybody! The asshats around me are starting to fire off their rockets in the middle of the fire season. Isn't that CUTE? Will we be forced to flee our homes at some ungodly hour, in our pajamas, cats tucked under each arm?

Tune in tomorrow, same time same place, assuming we fucking survive.

Don't you hate that shit? Boom, boom, boom. I guess the people enjoying this stuff have never lived around, you know, actual guns and bombs going off and people getting all shredded and stuff. Because lemme tellya, ever after, your shoulder blades twitch when you hear that noise. I'm expecting shrapnel fragments.

No, I'm not. The neighbours are idiots, but more in a non-malign, stupid, poleaxed, well-meaning, friendly, idiotic sort of way than actual redneck goobers who run around trying to kill people and other living things. They'll burn all our houses down around our ears, then fling themselves on our shoulders and sob about the loss. Dumbfucks.

So Mitt Romney's big fundraiser in London was held by disgraced and recently-resigned Robert Diamond, former head of Barclay's Bank? Do the teabaggers not see any irony whatsoever in the would-be president of the former colonies going to the Mother Country to raise funds from the SAME FUCKING PEOPLE the first Americans fought against to establish this nation? Where are the cries of corruption and foreign interference when Mitt Romney courts the British banking establishment, on fucking INDEPENDENCE DAY? Where are the cries when the biggest contributor to the Republican party is a guy who makes money off whorehouses in China?

Meanwhile, over at the ongoing Republican War On Women Headquarters, we're reliably informed that yon lout in that pitcher up there, one NY State Senator Marty Golden, is finally ready for the onslaught of the 15th century. Someone please tell him it's actually the 21st.

Because this benighted son of a poop-eating bottom-feeder is proposing to WOW the LayDeez of his constituency by teaching them the fine art of "feminine presence." I have no idea what this fucking "feminine presence" is. Is it another term for poontang?

Mind you, this asshole is one of those guys who think the Fair Pay Act doesn't even deserve a hearing, and votes against increasing the minimum wage or giving the Nice Laydeez some fucking maternity leave or elder care leave, paid, so they can do their OTHER fulltime job as well.

But wouldn't you know the Feminazis got to him, and he has now canceled all those nice classes, boo hoo. No word if he's considering any bills that might actually help low-paid women, but at least he's not gonna make taxpayers cough up to teach people how to climb fucking stairs for chrisake.

And that fucking sack of fermenting poop, @RepJoeWalsh, is actually attacking the military service of a woman who lost two legs and an arm rescuing her mates in the Iraq war. Please feel free to contact his office and tell him to go suck dick. Well, no. Be polite. Just because he's an asshole is no reason for anyone else to act that way.

I can't believe this worthless fucking putz. He wouldn't pay to keep his children fed, clothed, and housed. I mean this guy owes $200,000 in child support, and his kids had to go on welfare at one point. That's TAXPAYER MONEY that he shoud have been paying. He went to court to fight his duty to pay for the children he fathered. He would rather run up lawyers' bills than feed his own kids.

And he wants to take care of his constituents? A man who can't take care of his own fucking children can't take care of anyone else. Don't be fooled, peeps. This guy NEEDS TO LOSE his election. He's a swine who won't even pay his own children's bills.

Enough, I'm done ranting. Here's your Libertarian/Republican paradise, all you assholes. You can just suck it, srsly.

Alright, alright, I've been a beast. Here, listen to some terrific music and get ready to spread 'em for the bankers. Geez.

Stumble It!

Politics: Torturing Your Children

This is what making war does to us, people. This is what it's done historically, except we just can't seem to learn, can we?

What's "this," you ask? Yeah, I know, nobody wants to click a link anymore because you just don't know what kind of malware or spam or really depressing shite is on the other end.

See, what we have here, in today's story of the military and war and chickens coming home to roost is, we have a 27-year-old soldier admitting to the cops that he pushed his four-fucking-year-old daughter's face into a kitchen sink filled with hot water and held her under because "she could not recite her alphabet," and didn't know her colours and numbers.

The child had "severe bruising on her entire back," "scratch marks on her back made in a downward motion" and "bruising on both of her arms, her legs and her buttocks," the police report said.

Jesus fucking J.H. Christ. A fucking four-year-old. Oh, and, he

allegedly told police he'd chosen a water-based technique because his daughter was terrified of water.

I wonder why. He did it three or four times. He has sole custody of his daughter.

Now, why would a man do this to his own kid? I don't know. Lots of parents abuse their kids, and the things they do to them are often so horrible as to make you wish for the immediate destruction of the entire human race because, by god, what the fuck happens to a kid who has to live through something like that, can they ever trust in the goodness of any human being again? Do they all turn into malevolent little psychopaths themselves, lighting their little classmates on fire, or raping men or women at random or breeding their own little next generation of victims?

It is enough to choke a person with the bitter taste of despair.

But why I bring this story to your attention, dear ones, is: what he did to his kid, rather than why. Which is, something very close to waterboarding.

Technically, there are a few differences. The kid was not tied to a flat surface, did not have fabric covering mouth and nose, did not have water poured on those until it experienced a simulated drowning. I'm not sure, though, that it's a hella improvement. I am pretty sure that poor child really would not care to dispute the finer points of the difference.

This is why we, as a nation, should eschew torture: because we risk finding it used against ourselves, not just by "bad guys in black hats." Not just by terrorists. Not just by those who capture our troops on the battlefield, and, having heard of our despicable actions in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, want vengeance for our rape and sodomizing and beating and blinding of their brothers and sisters, whether biological or religious or cultural.

But because, worse yet, when we stand up and say that what we are doing is not wrong, we are giving permission to all those people that we train in these methods, or who hear about or read about these things, to practice them on us. On the civilians to whose supportive embrace they return after getting their heads well and truly fucked up out there, wherever they've been simulating drowning anybody they identify as "bad guys," regardless of whether those are defenseless women like Aafia Siddiqui or teenage boys. Or their own four-year-old daughters.

Who knows why this little girl is in her father's sole custody? I see many people blaming the mother, speculating about how much "worse" she might be than the father. We don't know. The mother might be terminally ill. Or mentally unstable. She might be a drug addict. She might have lost her job, or her home, or have no source of income. She might be so afraid of the child's father that she did not contest custody.

He was, after all, arrested for threatening to break his neighbours' windows with his Kevlar helmet.

Maybe he's psychotic. Maybe that resulted from his deployment. Maybe PTSD has finally broken him and made it impossible for him to distinguish anymore between the four-year-old child of his own body and the last guy he waterboarded.

According to his estranged wife, the guy has "anger management issues." Yeah, I'll just fucking bet he does. His current girlfriend agrees. When the police showed up at his home at 2 am, they had to coax the little girl out of the bathroom, where she had locked herself for fear of her father.

The child is now in the custody of her maternal grandparents, and has said she never wants to leave. Her mother flew in from Kansas to get the child, but the maternal grandmother apparently filed to assert custody. The father is out on bail, but restricted to base (Fort Lewis).

Somebody please get the father some help now. And the mother, too, if she needs it.

Stumble It!

Human Rights: Why Reproduction Should Be

a licensed activity

Otty Sanchez and her baby

This is Otty Sanchez, a 33-year-old woman from San Antonio, Texas. Otty is in the news today because she killed her only child, a 3.5-week-old boy named Scott Wesley Sanchez Buchholz. Ms. Sanchez then proceeded to skin, gut, and decapitate the infant, and then, according to one or more news reports, eat parts of its body.

This last fact is disputed by Ms. Sanchez' family. Understandably. While the specter of your sister or daughter killing her kid is bad enough, the idea of said person actually cannibalizing the defenseless sprog has to make the toughest stomach churn.

Also understandably, the tabloid press, or gutter press, or yellow press, whatever you call it, is going hog wild with cries of "Cannibal Mom!" while a large number of Ms. Sanchez' fellow-Texans and fellow-Americans, most likely Republicans from the tone of their comments, are calling for her death, accompanied, preferably, by prolonged suffering.

La Casa de Los Gatos has only this to say to this last pack of hyenas: Shut the fuckety-fucking-fuck UP! You fucking morons. You fucking-fuckety-fucked-up fucking morons. Exclamation points, multiple. Do you seriously think a human being who has been trying to have a baby for something like five fucking years is going to kill and mutilate it just for fun? Do you people have any idea what pregnancy does to a woman's body and mind? No, of course not, or you couldn't make your moronic pronouncements. All you want to do is cannibalize the tragedy, and it is a tragedy, you worthless fucking fucks.

La Casa de Los Gatos is also using this tragedy, but for a different purpose: to point out that procreation is indulged in way too casually by all and sundry, with never a thought to the consequences. To argue for contraception as a basic human right (and, yes, that includes abortion, adoption, birth control, chemical or mechanical, sterilization, and anything else in our population control armory). To call attention to the incredible hypocrisy with which our society yawps about the sacredness of sprog and human life and procreation while ignoring the real needs of children, mothers, mentally ill people, poor people without resources.

This issue is our favourite (if one can grace it with such a description) bugbear.

Otty Sanchez was diagnosed as a schizophrenic approximately a year ago. The father of the baby, Scott Buchholz, is also a schizophrenic. Otty and Scott met at a local college where they were both training for careers as dental or medical techs. It is not clear whether either of them has a job. What is clear is that both of them are seriously mentally ill with an illness that requires them to remain on medication for the rest of their lives, and that, absent regular medication, they are or could be a danger to themselves or others.



So riddle me this, children. What are two seriously mentally ill people doing having a fucking baby? Srsly. We don't know if schizophrenia is hereditary, but the NIMH (National Institutes of Mental Health) has this to say on the topic:

If you have a close relative (parent or sibling) with schizophrenia, you have a 10 percent chance of also developing schizophrenia. In identical twins, the chances are much higher, at 40 to 65 percent.

Theories/Speculation

In July of 2008, a study came out looking at the genetic causes of schizophrenia. So far, it looks as if there are three kinds of genetic material (microdeletions) present in non-schizophrenics and lacking in schizophrenics, and it's thought that this factor can make a person more prone to developing schizophrenia, but may not be the actual cause. These microdeletions do seem to run in families. Other factors thought to combine together with these genes include problems with brain chemistry, injuries to the brain during birth that leave the brain smaller than normal, and traumatic or very stressful events.

NIMH states that one per cent of the planetary population is schizophrenic. That would be some sixty million people who suffer from this mental disease. Most mentally ill people pose no danger to others. However, symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, auditory and visual, and disorders of thought. Schizophrenics might not understand the nature of the thoughts they are having and might not understand cause and effect when in the grip of their personal, let's call them, demons.

This would explain why a woman who wanted and loved her child might pick up a knife and inflict fatal damage on the child and near-fatal damage on herself.

Otty Sanchez was also diagnosed with post-partum psychosis. Post-partum psychosis (PPP) is a rare mental illness that affects one out of 1,000 women who have borne a child. Unlike the more common PPD (post-partum depression), PPP, which results from the same causes as PPD, can cause a new mother to suffer hallucinations, lose contact with reality, and become a danger to herself, her child, and possibly, others.

Ms. Sanchez has been institutionalized in the past for mental illness. And, to the credit of her poor, disordered mind, she tried to get help shortly before she killed her child. Surprisingly, the hospital to which she went released her. Or perhaps it's not so surprising. She went to the emergency room for treatment (let me guess — no health insurance). And, as everyone knows, emergency rooms are not staffed with mental health workers, in addition to being horribly overcrowded, overused, and understaffed. So they sent her home to her baby. FTA:

Had deputies been called to the home, they might have been able to intervene, said Deputy Chief Dale Bennett of the Bexar County Sheriff's Office.

"Most of our officers have been trained in mental health awareness, so they had a strong probability of recognizing what was going on," Bennett said.

Many of the people involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation initially are arrested by law enforcement officers investigating domestic disturbances, said Kevin McManus, a public defender who works with Bexar County clerk's Mental Health Office.

State law doesn't permit health care providers or authorities to detain a mentally ill patient against his their will unless that person is considered an immediate threat to himself or others.

"A lot of times, the officer is the best person to tell if someone appears to be a threat," McManus said.

Ironic, innit? Would you call the cops on your sister/cousin/kid? Otty Sanchez' family does not appear to be wealthy. In addition, they're Latina, and if a renowned scholar like Dr. Gates gets hassled by the cops in an upscale University town, just imagine the relationships between poor Latinos and the cops in Texas.

I'm guessing the family figured if they called the cops, Otty would be manhandled, thrown in jail, and further traumatized, not to mention the issue of what it would do to her already fragile mental health. So they didn't call the cops. They figured, she had a therapist appointment on Monday, they'd tell the shrink she was "hearing voices," and try to figure out how to handle the whole thing then. Except right before that, she killed the baby.

I know it sounds harsh to say that people like Otty Sanchez and Scott Buchholz have no business having a baby. And it sounds like eugenics to ask for population control measures that prevent people who have inheritable diseases that will permanently and negatively affect a child's health or life from having a child. But how do you propose to protect children from danger otherwise? Implementing such a scheme would undoubtedly raise cries of racism, discrimination, class warfare, undemocratic actions not consistent with human rights and civil liberties, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

But I am so fucking heartily sick of seeing the most defenseless of victims fall prey to the needs and wishes of others. How could this tragedy — like Andrea Yates' tragedy, and countless others — have been prevented? Anybody have an idea? All I can come up with is reversible sterilization the minute people's gonads become active, followed by a reversal only when an individual has shown that they are ready, willing, and ABLE to provide the kind of care a helpless sprog needs. Otherwise, what we're saying to ourselves and each other is that the wishes of individuals to procreate outweigh the basic right to safety of the result of the procreation. If we're not willing to do this, then we should just come out and bag the whole "human life is sacred" crap and start using fetii or even children as food material. Yaknow, Soylent Green, and all that.

For the record, I think abortion is far more humane than killing a child after it's born.

And this is how much the issue of PPD is finally affecting the collective consciousness of this country: none other than Rupert Murdoch catbox litter, aka Faux Noise, is actually calling for mandatory pre- and post-partum screening for new mothers. Good idea, Fox, but won't we need to finance this, as in, have some kind of single-payer health plan in order for this to happen? Otherwise, what's the solution? Screen them and turn them loose? So they can kill their kids?

Stumble It!

Entertainment: Today's Republican Hypocrite

ICHC

OK, Republicans, are you guys (and all two or whatever of you gals) running a contest to see who can be the biggest weenie-waving fucking hypocrite on the planet? Or are you just trying to make sure that the recession that you told us "wasn't happening" back when we noticed it happening doesn't hurt as much because we're laughing so hard at you?

Cos y'awl are just working this meme too hard, boyz'ngrrlz. I mean, thanks for the laughs, but, fuck me, children, when does this fuckin' stop?

Every day another Republican explodes in a welter of hypocrisy, greed, mind-boggling stupidity, and record-breaking shamelessness. What, Mark Stanford dumping wife and four kids to boink his mistress on Father's Day wasn't enough? John Ensign getting his Momma and Daddy to pay huge sums of money to his ex-best friend whose wife he's porking wasn't enough? Michelle Bachmann's increasingly unhinged pronouncements about how government healthcare would be cheaper than private (which, according to nutty Michelle, makes it a bad thing) isn't enough? And skanky harpy Liz Cheney appearing on every fucking TV screen 20 minutes out of every hour with her defense of Daddygumz' torture isn't enough.

Christ on the fucking cross, people! Maybe the plot is to make us all laugh so hard we'll die and then the rethugs can take back the country.

Today's plotter, in all his shameless glory: Tennessee State Senator Paul Stanley. What, you ask, did Senator Stanley do? Why, Senator Stanley, a married father of two charming Christian sprogs, a "Republican Fambly Valyoos 4evah!" kinda guy, you know, dumped his first wife to marry an attractive intern he was boinking — got caught boinking his latest intern and taking nude photos and videos of the whole thing.

OK, Stanley, I get it. Sump'n in the water out that way makes for teh abysmally stoopid in real life. And you're definitely a champion fucking (uh, literally as well) hypocrite.

But Jesus fucking J.H. Christ and his Black brother Harry, man! Even teh stoopid know by now that you don't videotape the whole fucking episode and you don't compound that level of idiocy by giving the tape to the chickie you were boinking after you already met her boyfriend who doesn't like you.

Christ on a fucking croissant! And then, guess what, Mr. IAmStoopidAndMyPantsKeepFallingOff is amazed, amazed, I tell you, that Boyfriend offers to perform a nutectomy on him unless he coughs up ten grand in small bills. Yo, Stanley, dude, you practically offered the guy a size 20 log to shove up your size 10 ass, be grateful he didn't make you bend over and take it in the tonsils.

ICHC

Holy quacking duckshit. And that's not the worst of it. This is why this fecking eejit deserves to go down into the Hypocrites' Hall o' Infamy. FTA:

State Sen. Paul Stanley only recently sponsored legislation designed to prohibit gay couples in his home state from ever adopting children. He has also opposed family planning services, explaining that his “faith and church” require him to “promote abstinence.” And Stanley has run as a “pro-family” candidate in his campaigns for the Tennessee State Senate.

Pro-family except for teh ghey. Promoting "abstinence" for everuhboddah else. And full o' faith and church that won't allow a body to plan their family without Stanley's Senatorial nose all up in their crotch.

With any luck, Stanley's current (ex-intern) wife will staple his pants to his crotch and he'll never be able to boink anyone else again. One look at the guy and you know nobody's boinking him for teh handsome.

Just quit, you guys. I mean, literally. Just every one of you Repuglies, quit your jobs, quit your lives, quit the human race. Because we can't take too much more of this.

Stumble It!

World: No Regrets?

No, it's not the Billie Holliday song. It's what's happening in the trials of the Khmer Rouge criminals right now.

Prisoner at Tuol Sleng, Pol Pot's notorious S-21 prison

No, my knowledge of Kampuchean history is not great. I know something about the early history of the Khmer and other peoples of that part of Southeast Asia, the Funanese empire, the Dong Son bronzes, but almost nothing about their modern history, except that my parents greatly respected and admired Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

I am about to begin my historical explorations of that deeply wretched nation.

However, today's report from Reuters does not bode well for my virtual travels thereto. According to Reuters, one Mam Nay, aka Chan, who served for a time as an interrogator under Pol Pot's head jailor, Duch (real name Kaing Guek Eav) testified in court today that he has no regrets for

what happened at the Tuol Sleng prison, where more than 14,000 men, women and children were killed, [...].

Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, is the infamous prison referred to in "The Killing Fields."

No regrets for this, Mr. Chan? Or Mam Nay, if you prefer?

Tortured Prisoner, one of 6,000 photographs left behind when Khmer Rouge jailors evicted Tuol Sleng prison in advance of invading VietNamese troops

Mam Nay, who is appearing as a witness for the prosecution in the joint Kampuchean-UN war crimes trials, has denied any part in torture or killings of prisoners and blamed the United States and Vietnam for undermining his country.

"My only regret was our country was invaded," he told the joint Cambodian-U.N. tribunal. "Frankly speaking, the Americans invaded us then Vietnam invaded us. That is my regret."

[...]

"I did not use torture in my interrogation. I believed I would not get a true confession."

Asked about the deaths of innocent people, Nay, 76, said: "None of them was innocent -- those people committed offences, either minor or serious.

"This was the reason for their arrest. How serious or how minor, I don't know."

Note: This guy was a schoolteacher. Maybe he was a brainwashed cadre turned schoolteacher. But how do you become a schoolteacher if you cannot empathize with frightened children? And some of the 14-20,000 imprisoned at Tuol Sleng were children. Ony six people survived that prison. The remaining 13,994 — or 19,994, no one really knows — died as a result of torture.

There is no denying that the US bombing of Kampuchea and various associated military actions led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. But who thought they would be so inhumane as to kill between 1 and 3 million of their own people? Between the U.S. bombing and the NVA attempts to escape U.S. military actions by slipping over the border into Kampuchean territory, evicting Kampucheans, and training members of the Khmer Rouge, Kampuchea's attempts at neutrality and Sihanouk's heroic efforts in that direction were virtually worthless. Here is a brief background on these aspects of Kampuchean history.

Mam Nay, or Mr. Chan, or whatever you call yourself, should a "minor" offense warrant waterboarding? Or, as Americans and other Westerners used to refer to it, "Chinese" or "Japanese" water torture?

Picture taken by Jonah Blank in 2005 at the Tuol Sleng Museum. Published on the Web by David Corn.*

Oh, well. I guess now that it's come to light that we waterboarded mentally ill or innocent or possibly innocent people ourselves, repeatedly, I guess we're in no position to quibble about anyone else's crimes.

Ain't torture egalitarian?

*See here for copyright/licensing information on this picture.

Incidentally, the still-adored ex-partner made a trip to those parts some years ago, and opined that "the whole place seemed haunted. It was like going to a ghost town. Even the people's faces look haunted." The ex is a tough businessperson who has had plenty of occasion to mock and deride my own claims of sensitivity and queasiness and unexplained oojie-woojies, so to hear those words from such a person, well. Virtual trips to Kampuchea is all I'm up to for now.

Stumble It!

LGBTQ: Teh Effect of Teh H8

Good God Almighty! This is so revolting, it has me, an atheist, calling on a deity in which I do not believe.

What, you ask, has my knickers in a wad? Me, wot tolerates anything short of someone actually crapping on my living room floor and has friends with a wide variety of, um, interesting paraphilias or interest in paraphilias, including the very sexy Sirenita Lake who gladdens my heart with her detailed descriptions of adventurous sex?

Hate, that's what. I don't have a problem with people doing anything to each other, as long as I don't have to watch the parts I don't like and, more importantly, as long as it's consensual between adults. (Animals cannot consent, and neither can children under an age as defined by law in their community; nor can the mentally disabled, the mentally ill, and the unconscious, regardless of whether their unconscious state is self-inflicted.)

But here we have what we used to quaintly call "shock-jocks" broadcasting from a Sacramento radio station. And they're using their bully — and I mean bully — pulpit to hate on children, and recommend violence against them. The station is KRXQ 98.5 FM in Sacramento. The show is called Rob, Arnie, & Dawn in the Morning. Here's a little of what they had to say on the issue of transgender, or gender-dysphoric, behaviour in children:

"Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals," they said.

For his part, [Arnie] States bragged that if his own son were to ever dare put on a pair of high heels, States would beat his son with one of his own shoes. He urged parents whose own little boys expressed a desire to wear a dress to verbally abuse and degrade them as a viable response. "Because you know what? Boys don't wear high heel shoes. And in my house, they definitely don't wear high heels.

"I'm going to go, 'You know what? You're a little idiot! You little dumbass!'" States sneered, adding later, "I look forward to when [the transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down. And they wind up in therapy."

What kind of bullshit is that? You want to beat a child with a shoe? Pick on someone your own size, you walking shit-receptacle. If, by all I hold dear, you ever hit a kid with a shoe in front of me, I'll break both your legs off and stick them down your throat. You puke-sucking anus on legs.

What the fuck is this? We allow people like this to say these things on air? Some idiot hears this and decides his kid is not "masculine" enough and hits the kid, and then what?

Mind you, these two assholes have long spread this kind of vitriolic hate on the air. Their attitude towards women is just as reprehensible and disgusting. You can read about it here in a decision from the FCC to penalize the motherfuckers for their creative ideas on sexual intercourse with women. No, fuck it, it's not sexual intercourse because there's nothing consensual about it. This is their diatribe on how to rape women in the most humiliating and degrading way.

As nasty and misogynistic as they are, I suppose it's no surprise that they should turn from attacking women to attacking children. Do they have any idea how much harrassment children already face from their peers? Especially gender and gender-identity related harrassment? Have they ever heard of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover? Carl, a sweet-faced eleven-year-old, hanged himself recently because of homophobic harrassment by his classmates. The saddest thing is, Carl wasn't gay. He was just a child, a child who happened to be less than macho enough for his classmates. Or maybe his classmates had daddies who listened to the kind of shit that Arnie and Rob spout. Thus, for instance, Jaheem Herrera, who hanged himself because he couldn't take the antigay taunting and slurs. An eleven-year-old boy. And the murder of Lawrence King.

Jill, over at Feministe, has posted a list of Arnie and Rob's advertisers. She thinks you should contact these people and tell them to pull their advertising.

CARLS”S JR. (CKE RESTAURANTS):
pr@ckr.com Press Room

HOME DEPOT
public_relations@homedepot.com

TOBACCO REPUBLIC:
trcigar@aol.com

ALBERTSON”S:
Alicia Rockwell
arockwell@savemart.com

FLEX YOUR POWER
enewswire@fypower.org Editor
info@fypower.org

NISSAN:
Darryl Harrison - Media
Darryll.harrison@nissan-usa.com

BANK OF AMERICA:
joseph.l.goode@bankofamerica.com
AT&T
John Britton
E-Mail: john.britton@att.com

VERIZON:
Debra Lewis
908-559-7512
Debra.Lewis@VerizonWireless.com

McDONALDS:
Walt Riker
Vice President, Corporate Media Relations
walt.riker@us.mcd.com
Heidi Barker
Sr. Director, Corporate Media Relations
heidi.barker@us.mcd.com

WELLS FARGO:
Media Relations: corpcsf@wellsfargo.com

GRIFFIN & REED EYECARE:
info@LASIKworld.com

PRO CITY MORTGAGE:
procity@procitymortgage.com

Thanks to William for the link.

I couldn't agree more. What kind of sick fucks are we letting on our public airwaves? For the love of Mike, get these fuckers off the air. Nobody should deny them their freedom of speech, but that does not include this kind of hate speech. Moreover, they're free to set up soapboxes at the local park and spout whatever they like. What they're not free to do is use public resources, such as the airwaves, to make themselves tons of money by advocating beating one's children with shoes.

Please do your part by writing the sponsors of these lowlife scum. Booting them off the air should be the least to be done to them.

Stumble It!

Human Rights: Why Reproduction Should Be

A licensed activity.


This 34-year-old woman, Theresa Platt, is homeless. She sleeps where she can, depending on the kindness of strangers who will let her bed down in their garage or carport, or wherever.

The problem is, she has three children, all under the age of 10 years. She doesn't want them. She doesn't take care of them. Their father is in prison. Hardly surprising, you say? You've heard lots of loser/hard luck stories like that, you say?

Florida sheriff's deputies recently arrested Ms. Platt on charges of child neglect, and took the children into state custody. However, she has apparently been released.

What do you do with people like this? What do we, as a society, do? Her oldest child is six. The other two are three-year-old twins. So she's not exactly a case of teenage pregnancy. Do you think she's a junkie? Or just a person with perhaps a less-than-average IQ, or poor coping skills? An adult who was abused as a child? An alcoholic? She doesn't look like a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed cheerleader, that's for sure. But really, what do you do with her?

Jailing her is not an option if she hasn't committed a crime. So far, her main "crime" appears to be her failure as a mother. She is neglectful and abusive. But couldn't that have been avoided by ensuring that NOBODY has a child without a prior certification for fitness?

The civil liberty crew (of whom I'm often one) will howl about how this would be an infringement on basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They have a good point. But we live in an increasingly crowded and overexploited world, and your right to reproduction as part of your search for liberty or happiness might well conflict with MY right to curtail your reproduction in the interest of my greater enjoyment of my own earnings (as opposed to paying for the city, county, or state to raise your already abused and traumatized sprogs), not to mention my enjoyment of not having to compete with your sproggen for clean drinking water, air, land or space, jobs - the resources of a reasonably happy life, in other words.

Mainly, it's about the sproggen. This is a child-centric world we live in, but only in the most hypocritical meaning of the word. That is to say, we glorify the act of reproduction, we "adore" children by making them the centre of our materialistic focus, as "things" to have, adorn, display, and talk about. We don't give a fuck about their actual welfare. When it comes to their physical safety, their need for emotional fulfilment or security, then we get all self-righteous about parents' right to discipline their children however they wish. Then we whine about how the state has no right to interfere. Then we shriek about the nanny state.

When it comes to adults' right to get stoned on a little weed, or play bouncy-bouncy with the naughty bits of a same-gender pal, or decide not to play host to another life, we want a nanny state. We want the state to peer into your bedroom, check your genitalia for evidence of disallowed use, stick its collective nose into your vagina to ensure that a cell or two that might be attached to what normally equates to gooey menstrual blood "has a right to life," even though everybody (with a working brain) knows that more than two thirds of those cells end up plopping out with blackish clots of menstrual tissue.

But where we really need the state — to ensure that those with the "right to life" don't live a hideous life filled with beatings, bitings, torture, cruelty, indifference, neglect, emotional, physical, and mental stress, suffering, and pain — then we're all on the side of individual rights to liberty and freedom and deity alone knows what other shit.

Well, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of those moronic "right to lifers," or "pro-forced-birthers" wanting to interfere any time a woman spreads her legs. They're the last to oppose war, the death penalty, the hideous foster system that exploits children. They won't support realistic measures to ensure that every pregnancy is a wanted, safe pregnancy, every child a wanted child. They just want to root through women's panty collections.

Fuck you, you self-righteous ass-sucking shills. I don't want to read another story like this. Why the hell should a 19-year-old girl be forced to bring to term the baby of her 20-year-old boyfriend? Two children having a child? This is the result. They beat their weeks-old baby, and break its leg in two places. What kind of person beats a child barely one month old?

The kind of person who never wanted that child, who lacks the means to cope with that child but has been forced to have it anyway, and is filled with rage and frustration and gets no training or help on how to deal with it. You self-righteous godbags, how do you deal with this? Jail the mother, or the father, or both? Put the baby into foster-care? That's really helpful. We end up paying for the care and feeding of one to three people for varying lengths of time instead of having one to three economically productive citizens who contribute to society.

Here's another 19-year-old mother whose kid got squashed by a falling TV set. Why? Because the girl's a kid herself, and had two other kids in the room to deal with. The article doesn't say how old the other kids were, and whether the teenager was supposed to be keeping an eye on all the kids, but adults find it hard enough to watch three children, why is a teenager supposedly better equipped to do so? Chances are the baby will die or be seriously injured.

And here's a kid whose story you do not want to read. This sweet little boy's father, Angel Vidal Mendoza, is wheelchair-bound. He OD'ed on PCP while his wife was not around, attacked the four-year-old, who may be blind for life as a result, and then hacked at his own legs with an axe. Who knows what was going through his head. No, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for him, except that I sure as hell can understand why someone in a wheelchair might want to do some drugs. What happens to the kid? Will the state take him away from his parents? He probably should not be allowed around his father ever again without adult supervision. His mother is probably a poor working woman who relies on his father's disability income to help around the house. Certainly, the single mother of a blind child is going to be severely economically disadvantaged

Alma Beatriz Frias

And what about this paragon, a mother of a two-year-old and a two-month-old? She is wanted on charges of child abuse and neglect, for beating her two kids. Beating a two-month-old? What kind of madness is that? If you see her with or without her two little girls, you might want to let the police know.



Or what about this cute little kid? Malachi Magana was allegedly abused, tortured, and murdered by his mother and her boyfriend. Not that ugly kids don't deserve just as much protection from torture as cute kids, but how could someone look at this kid's face and then hit him? The kid was TWO years old at his death.

Or this loving soul who threw her four-year-old and seven-year-old into a river? The boy is dead, the girl is recovering at a local hospital. The mother is alleged to have "a history of domestic violence" and is in the process of separating from her children's father, with whom she shared custody of the children.

Tell me if you think any one of these tragedies could have been prevented if all human beings were rendered reversibly sterile at birth. In order to reproduce, they would have to take between two and three years' worth of classes, resulting in a certificate or diploma. This would include things like child development; nutrition; basic health and hygiene; life skills including job interviews; sufficient math to balance a checkbook, and create and live within a budget; anger management; conflict resolution; food preparation; diagnosis and management of common childhood ailments; and the like. People would have to be drug- and alcohol-free for five years, including before conception and during the first three years of a child's life; and would have to show that they had sufficient resources to raise a child.

I don't believe that only the rich should reproduce. Some of our finest human beings, including Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan, were the children of poor families. And, in fact, I'd rather have a hundred Carl Sagans than a single Paris Hilton. However, there is no denying that some resources are required to raise a child. Perhaps we could make it possible for certain types of government subsidies to be paid on behalf of a child to would-be parents who had the courage and persistence to take such courses and excel in them. Perhaps we could give them financial incentives to offer part-time childcare to other parents in return for an assumption of their childraising expenses by society at large.

All I know is, I don't want to see one more kid have their head chopped off with a hoe, or their eyes bitten out, or their leg broken because these fucking pro-forced-birthers want to put a padlock on a woman's uterus while baying like pie dogs about the sacred right to fucking reproduction. You lot, the world would have been better off if alla youse had been aborted. Unless you're willing to do something about this type of domestic tragedy, shut your fucking pie-holes.

We need real solutions.

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Jailing Kids for Cash

I just read an article in yesterday's paper that appalled me. Amy Goodman writes about a county in Pennsylvania (but suspects it's going on elsewhere) and its two judges who were convicted of jailing kids for cash. Here's an excerpt:

As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States.

The whole things is worth reading. And you won't need caffeine to pump you up for the rest of the day. To read it, click here.

Here's another excerpt:

This scandal involves just one county in the U.S., and one relatively small private prison company. According to The Sentencing Project, “the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.1 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails—a 500 percent increase over the past thirty years.” The Wall Street Journal reports that “[p]rison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.” For-profit prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) are positioned for increased profits. It is still not clear what impact the just-signed stimulus bill will have on the private prison industry (for example, the bill contains $800 million for prison construction, yet billions for school construction were cut out).

500% increase!!! What shame upon our country!

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Health: Subjects Guaranteed To Make Me Unpopular

Overpopulation, Abortion, and Fertility Treatments are the triune deity of today's topic, I'm afraid. Just raise any one or more of these three as a topic of conversation in your venue of choice and prepare to be pelted with, let's call them ungracefully aging fruit and vegetable matter, if not invective and threats against life and limb.

What the fuck, why not live dangerously? I need the excitement. (You try sitting in an eyrie-like bedroom for a year with the very rare trip down the stairs to visit with friends or, worse yet, doctors and lawyers.)

So here goes. Today's topic happily combines all three abuse-inviters, and if you're going to comment, just remember, this here is my territory and while I am absolutely committed to freedom of speech, I have no problem retaliating in kind when someone, anyone, attempts to kick my behind in a hostile fashion. Respectful disagreement is, OTOH, always welcome.

Alright, alright, I'm cuttin' to the chase already, geeze. Nadya Suleman. Who, you ask? Surely everybody from Monterey to Mauritania has heard of Ms. Nadya Suleman, who recently delivered eight babies in California? The media lickspittles, terrified of incurring the venom of the rightwingnut insane elements, keep referring to the sproggen as healthy. Well, according to my research, they were born 9 weeks premature, and anyone with a basic knowledge of biology, anatomy, human health, or medicine knows quite well that the earlier before term a fetus is expelled or delivered, the worse its chances at life. We now have technology that will keep a 1.x-lb preemie alive, but nature did not intend such creatures to live, so what we end up with is a disabled human at some point along the way. Severity of disability depending on various factors, but usually proportionate to the unripeness of said oven-bun. Incidentally, some of Nadya's octuplets weighed less than 2 lb at birth.


In case you're one of the seven people on the planet who hasn't heard of Nadya Suleman, here is all the information you'll ever need.

Nadya Suleman is 33 years old. She lives with her parents, Edward and Angela Suleman, in the community of Whittier, a bumpule in the megacarcinoma of Los Angeles. It would appear from the facts available via teh Googles that Ms. Suleman (and, of course, her parents) is an Iraqi Christian. Her father, Edward, who is in his sixties, is a former Iraqi army dude. He continues to work with the U.S. Army as a translator in Iraq. Her mother Angela is a retired schoolteacher. Reasonably intelligent, well-educated people, wouldn't you say? And clearly very fond (deity alone knows why) and supportive of their daughter.

Nadya is an only child, and apparently always wanted siblings, which her mother declined to provide. Apparently, this caused Nadya to attempt to break world records in procreation. Nadya's name was originally Nadya Doud, which is why it wasn't easy to discover the facts about her immediately. Sometime in the late 90s, she married one Marcos Gutierrez. She left him four years later and returned to the parental home. There were no children born of the marriage. Around that time, she legally changed her name to Nadya Suleman. She divorced Gutierrez last year.

She has a degree in child and adolescent development which, I suppose, is a good thing. Pity she didn't get a degree in something like the effects of overpopulation, or basic biology (you know, a human body takes around two years to recover from each pregnancy, and all that). She started a master's degree in counselling, but dropped out early last year — presumably to start work on her current litter.

Apparently, shortly after that, Nadya's mother, Angela, filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy involving a house that she had bought as an investment. Debts involved in that action totalled a little over a million dollars. However, Mrs. Suleman and her daughter Nadya still own several properties in California.

At some time or another, Nadya was employed at a fertility clinic. There is a rumour that she was injured on the job, and received a settlement that enabled her to afford the (expensive~!) treatment that makes her the mother of a potential sports team.

Now here's where things get very squirrely (no offense intended to squirrels, who can't help being crazy little rodents with megaquantities of teh cute). Nadya has six previous children, all under the age of 7 years. (7, 6, 5, 3, and 2-y.o. twins.) The oldest four were conceived with the assistance, apparently, of a sperm donor named David Solomon.


Nadya's mother, Angela Suleman, claims that all the children were fathered by the same sperm donor. (Who in the universe would be so batshit-crazy as to donate 14 times to the same loony tune? Or if he donated only once, did she just get all 14 started at the same time and stick them in the deep freeze for thawing whenever she felt like having a baybee? Is this woman the poster child for Seriously Wrong Wrongitude?)

Ed and Angela Suleman are divorced, but continue to live together, no doubt in the interest of providing the auxiliary child care that this dingbat needs. (No, I'm not sorry to be so judgmental. A little judgment, applied early and often, would have ensured that cases such as this don't happen. They shouldn't happen.)

Incidentally, Solomon and Suleman are (obviously) the same name. So who is this David Solomon dude? Why isn't he stepping up to the cameras for HIS 15 minutes of fame? How come Ms. Suleman chose not to have Mr. Gutierrez' babies? Or did Mr. Gutierrez precipitously flee when he realized her potential as a baby manufactory?

After all, her father has fled to Iraq, preferring the comfort of a war zone and some chance of death or dismemberment to the joys of hanging around with 14 screaming children. Her mother is threatening to leave the family home before Nadya returns, thereby saddling the imprudent one with all fourteen bundles of joy or, more likely, effluvia (good luck with that, girlie).


Now, the fact is that reproductive endocrinologists, which is what we call folks who, for a living, help the infertile to reproduce, have to adhere to certain standards, in this country, in order to continue practising their brand of medicine. I know lots of people have their knickers in a knot and want to personally hang the IVF folks who made Nadya Suleman's plethora of pregnancies possible, but folks, really. There's more here than meets the eye.

KevinMD says, at his fine blog, while admitting that the subject is outside his own field, nevertheless raises some interesting questions and provides us with links that might help explain exactly how this woman ended up with her own football team of sprog.

Mind you, what has occurred is statistically very rare indeed. A woman carried to term eight fetii, which have ALL survived. AFAICT, this is only the second recorded case in the US.

Over at Fertility File, a reproductive endocrinologist and med school professor with a passion for math and statistical analysis is happy to give you the likelihood of success of Nadya's pregnancy. Dr. Lee combines wit and wisdom with humanity, and provides a good take on this woman's drama.

So how exactly did Nadya Suleman end up with 14 IVF babies? You don't have to be a genius to realize that there is something very wrong with a woman who keeps having children without any visible means of support, economic or practical. Does she really think her mother will be alive for the next 33 years or so to assist with childcare and support?


She already has one autistic child (it's not clear which of the previous six it is, but it's most likely to be a child over 3 years of age, as the diagnostic tools are unable to accurately spot autism in children below that age). Autistic children are a handful. Depending on the severity of the child's autism, it might never be able to live an independent life, and will always need some level of care and assistance.

Moreover, the more premature a child, the greater its chances of autism, according to a recent study. From the article:

Pre-term birth is associated with a long list of health risks for a baby such as mental retardation, cerebral palsy, lung problems and vision and hearing loss.

Who is going to pay for the medical care that these children will require?

In addition, safe delivery of the children required 46 staff at the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower hospital. That has to cost a bundle. Who is going to pay the cost of delivery and hospitalization of the mother and children? The mother certainly does not seem in a position to pay.

She showed up at Kaiser three months pregnant, at which time she was advised that she could selectively reduce some of her fetii in order to give the others a better chance. She refused selective reduction, doubtless because of her Christian beliefs, which, apparently, don't extend to being able to feed what you breed.

So the rest of us are now stuck with eight kids who will have impairments at various levels that we taxpayers need to support (for those of you already fuming, consider that each healthy child costs about $1 million to raise, not including those full-potential-tapping pluses like music and dance lessons, or top-notch educational opportunities) over the next 18 years.

Consider the autistic sibling. Consider the mother's employment qualifications and status. Consider that she's going to be way too busy taking care of the kids to even look for work for at least 6 years, when the last of the sprog toddle off to pre-school. Consider that her parents, who appear to be saddled with the financial support of the brood, are in their sixties and might not live out another decade without increasingly expensive health problems or that old nemesis of us all, death.

Whatever happens, don't blame the staff of Kaiser Permanente, who actually managed to save this woman's life (instead, pray that they tied her tubes while she was unconscious so she can never do this again). They had nothing to do with getting her pregnant.

The most interesting aspect of this littering is the reaction to it. You'd think all those god-'n-gun conservatives who want all uterii regulated to ensure maximum fruitfulness would be falling over themselves to aid this woman, no?

No. Take a look around the InnerTubes if you dare, but there's some mighty venomous invective being hurled her way. A lot of it has to do with the fact that she's not white. Some are accusing her of personally trying to undo the Holocaust, and have to be gently reminded that she's not Jewish (you'd think Angela and Ed being her parents' names would've been a huge fucking clue). Some insist she's a Palestinian despite the stunning lack of evidence therefor.

Some want her summarily deported; others want her children forcefully removed; still others are campaigning to boycott any kinderjunk producer who donates to her cause. Why the hatred? After all, Kenny and Bobby McCaughey, proud IVF parents of a litter of seven, despite having produced a previous sprog, got themselves a house, an endless supply of diapers, baby formula, junk food, and god-knows-what-all.

From all accounts the woman appears to be a good mother to her kids, but that's only with the help of a nanny and her mother. Also, she's about to find out that 14 kids is a lot more work than six. And, of course, all of us who are watching our earth dying from too many damned people are eyeing her with a level of cynicism that make me nervous. If everybody had 14 kids, we really would have to stage mass suicide campaigns because we would otherwise starve to death in short order.

What do you think?

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Entertainment: Inauguration/Farewell

OK, I'm really not into cutesy kiddy stuff, but yaknow what?



She's saying exactly what I'm thinking. Thanks, little girl!

I guess I don't need to tell y'all that the conservatives have their knickers in an almighty wad over this. Some skank named Amanda Carpenter is saying the kid will never get a job because of this video clip. Hey, Amanda! Let's hope they lay you off right soon so you can feel what it's like to not have a job. It's not something most of the rest of us joke about. It's part of our reality, thanks to Gee Dumbya McDrinkerson. Also, hopefully our recent turnout at the polls is going to take away from assholes like you the ability to threaten our gainful employment.

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World: Enough!

Image from AliyaAllZionists

Enough of what's going on in the Gaza strip. For all of you upset by the Israeli military action against the mostly civilian population of Gaza, we have to come up with something to do. It's useless wringing our hands and moaning and mourning. Israel has gone too far, this time.

Today, the Israeli military bombed the UN headquarters in the Gaza strip,

[...] engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

It was bad enough that, after the ceasefire ended in late December of 2008, Israel attacked Gaza which has suffered for nearly two years under an Israeli embargo that has prevented basic supplies like fuel, food, water, medicine, even concrete for the burial of bodies, from reaching the Palestinians of Gaza.

Despite the fact that the so-called "free and fair" elections held in Palestine resulted in the election of Hamas, Israel and its supporter and military paymaster the United States have refused to recognize Hamas as legitimately elected political leaders of Palestine. Had the US not pressed for the elections at the time that they were held, it is quite possible that Hamas would have lost the elections. However, once they were held, Hamas became the legitimately elected government and, as such, should have been accorded the basic courtesy extended to every elected government.

Why is it that we are willing to sit down with murderous dictators like Mugabe and Ferdinand "we love your adherence to democratic principles" Marcos, but refuse to negotiate with a fairly elected democratic government just because we don't like them?



For the record, I know quite well that Hamas once held the view that the State of Israel had no right to exist. But that State of Israel is long since gone, having gorged and bloated itself on Palestinian territory and squeezing the Palestinians into two tiny corners of what was once their land. At this point, Hamas is not capable of wiping out the State of Israel, and the more pragmatic among their leaders recognize that fact. These people SHOULD be courted and given a seat at the table while all the countries of that region sit down with the funders of this ludicrous and soul-destroying conflict to determine how to best effect a peace. There is no question of being unable to do this because the alternative is to murder every Palestinian alive no matter where they are to be found, and that is not a viable course of action.

Regardless of the willingness of Israel to engage in such acts, we can no longer afford to, financially, morally, intellectually, or socially, support such acts. Firstly, we don't have the money to keep paying the Israelis billions every year in social welfare and military supplies. Israel cannot survive without American taxpayer dollars at this point because a wartime economy does not thrive. The state of Israel needs to find a peacetime footing in which currency can be stabilized, economic prospects realized, jobs created, and monies exchanged. Then it can safely get off the American dole because heaven knows, Americans need their money to start repairing the damage that has been done to their own country. We would like, for example, to have a health care system just like Israel's. But we can't afford it because a lot of our money is paying for Israel's excellent medical system. Which I don't begrudge, unless it's at our expense.

Worse yet, our dollars are paying for bombs that blow up Palestinian babies, guns to shoot them, concrete walls and armed soldiers that forbid humanitarian assistance to them, checkpoints that harass and humiliate them multiple times daily as they walk to work or school. Jobs don't exist any more in Gaza. If we were to stop paying for these murderous crimes, we would have more money to repair our broken bridges and roads and give our own children health care. The Israelis could then be forced to negotiate with the Palestinians. Instead of financing the building of luxury homes for Israelis in land unlawfully seized from Palestinians, we could finance our own homeowners who are losing their homes.

We could make aid to Palestine and Israel conditional upon a peace settlement, a two-state solution, acceptance by Israel of multiple world court decisions that were preceded by free and fair trials and findings of fact and that have found against Israel and for the Palestinians. It is not too much to ask that Israel be a law-abiding member of the international community instead of a gangster, thug, and murderer that only gets away with these horrible crimes because we are playing their bully enforcer.

The process has begun in the EU. The EU is Israel's largest trading partner, and activists in European nations are calling upon their governments to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement (petition here). We here in the US can do the same.

Please take a moment or more to write, call, email, or fax your Congresscritters, both in the House and in the Senate, and tell them that you want them to ensure that your tax dollars do not go to Israel until Israel agrees to abide by the law and ceases bombing civilians, the UN, the Red Cross, schools housing only refugees, humanitarian aid stockpiles, ambulances, and the like.

Here is a list, compiled by activists in the UK, of brands that are either made in Israel or made by companies that unquestioningly supply Israel. Here is another that appears to focus on American companies and brands. Adbusters is calling on citizens and consumers to join in the boycott, pointing to the ever-inspiring Naomi Klein's call as a fine example. Professor Ilan Pappe has also said that the only way to stop this humanitarian crisis is to impose financial sanctions on the Israeli State. If anyone knows of any other information that should be widely distributed, please, pass it on to us and one of us will try to spread it around on this blog and in other fora.

The Global BDS Movement is calling on everyone to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel for its violations of human rights laws in Palestine. I believe firmly in wallet pains as an instructive action. People who don't give a fuck about human rights suddenly care a lot if they start losing money as a result. We managed to overcome apartheid in South Africa through a combination of boycott, divest, and sanction. We can bring peace to Palestine/Israel the same way. As a consumer, please boycott anything made in Israel, or by companies that have ties to Israel. Check with your local manufacturers whether they support Israel. Not Israel's right to exist, which we at this fine blog support wholeheartedly, but Israel's current and past violations of the precepts of international law and human rights.


Note: Look for the digits 729 at the beginning of the bar code on any products you buy. 729 indicates that the product was manufactured in Israel. Talk to your local grocery store or deli if they carry such products. Do not buy them and tell your store why you will not buy them. Tell your friends to look out for this barcode as well.

Here are many other sites involved in the boycott, with helpful hints about how to go about registering your feelings about the Gaza situation.

Once again, I want to say — no, not that some of my best friends are Jewish — that I have been pro-Israel all my life from the time I was a child, when I first heard about the Holocaust from my father, who told me that it was my moral obligation to ensure that such a thing would never happen again. I cannot support what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, but that does not change my support for the right to existence of the Israeli state. I cannot condone crimes against Israel or against Jews based on what the criminals in the IDF and the government of Israel are doing. Many Jews and many Israelis are also protesting and calling for a boycott. Please do not direct your anger at Jewish people, whether religious or secular. That helps no one, and especially not the Palestinians. What we need is to do something. We need to do it in a peaceable and law-abiding manner, but we also need to let the Israeli government and its puppets in the United States know that we are neither blind nor stupid and we want an end to the conflict in Gaza and to the flagrant murder of civilians.

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Environment: Living Responsibly

This clip, found thanks to a fellow-Digger, on YouTube:



reminds me of that scene in The Matrix, where Lawrence Fishburne (Morpheus) has been captured by Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith), who is pondering the human species as a carcinogen.

Responsible people have two children or fewer, and try to live in harmony with their environment. We have nearly killed our Mother Earth. Please do your bit to bring her back to health, today and every day.

La Casa de Los Gatos thanks you for your efforts.

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2008 Elections: Women and McCain

Okay, apparently the women of PUMA don't give a damn about reproductive choice for women (see it for yourself at Hillary is 44 dot org, to which we refuse to link) because they're all older than Methusaleh and their reproductive bits have dried up and fallen out and are therefore not in danger from the McFail people.

But our understanding is that women of many different political stances believe that while abortion should be rare, it should also be available if a woman's health will be negatively affected by carrying a pregnancy to term. We personally know of two women who had to terminate very-much-wanted and planned pregnancies because of health issues, and while they were very sad to do so (as we pointed out, they very much wanted the pregnancy), to have attempted to carry to term would have either killed or crippled the mother and the outcome for the fetus was not much better.

Apparently, John McFail doesn't think that a mother's health should be a consideration:



La Casa de Los Gatos is currently betting that McFail has just lost the election.

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2008 Elections: More Entertainment!

OMG!! No, really, OMGWTFBBQLOL and ORLY to boot. Checkidout:



Okay, all you friends, neighbours, and visitors, you're all probly old enough to have kids the age of these. You so need to show these to your kids, too.

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Crime: Oh M'Gawd

Okay, we have determined by unanimous fiat that everyone involved in this is so stupid as to defy possibility. How do these people manage to breathe? Do they really have functional autonomic nervous systems? We want proof.

The authorities in Hidalgo County, Texas, are pondering the difficult question of how to bring a 1,000-lb bedridden woman to court, county jail, and trial for her role in killing her nephew. The child's mother has been arrested (presumably she weighs much less than Aunt Mayra) for her role in the crime.

First off, why on earth would anybody leave a child with a bedridden woman who has multiple medical conditions and weighs nearly 1,000 pounds? The kid was two years old, and anybody who's been around kids knows that that's not a good age to be dropping the sprog off with someone else, because not only are they ambulatory, they're curious as all hell, plus they're passing through the defiant stage where they've finally learned the word "No!" and are determined to use it.

And leaving the kid with someone who can barely get around — not a recipe for success. Mother awarded Thirty Points of Sheer Stupid for this one.

Next, why do we put people in jail before we try them for crimes? So they can't run off and escape consequences. Now, seriously, Mister Sherriff of Hidalgo County — a woman who can't fit through the doors of her own home and is barely able to walk is not, like, a huge flight risk, if you get our drift. Surely Hidalgo County can spend its time and money in better ways. It's not like this woman can jump in a car or on a bicycle and speed off someplace. She has multiple debilitating medical issues. If nothing else, you can always track her down by the trail of drug prescriptions and doctor visits she'll require.

So there's no need to put her in jail. She is already in jail, the prison of her own failing body. Yes, she committed a crime, and like everyone else (except our rich and powerful leaders), she should pay for her crime, but you can put her under house arrest. Because to attempt to move her into the county jail would be an exercise in futility and a most cruel and unusual punishment in that she would probably die just from being moved. Plus, the taxpayer will be saddled with the unnecessary cost of breaking her house down in order to get her out of it, machinery to move her (a regular ambulance couldn't handle someone her size), she'll probably need a new cell to accommodate her, and the taxpayer will then be stuck with the cost of her health care until her trial is concluded. So leave the malign creature where she is. It's just as good as jail. Sherriff awarded Forty Points of Sheer Stupid to be shared with the courts and anyone else wanting this woman jailed.

Finally, as to the criminal herself: Woman, what on earth possessed you to kill that child? You're his aunt, goddamn you, you share some of his genes. Your first duty should have been to protect him. OK, the kid was probably being a pain as kids at that age often are. Why did you accept custody of him, knowing that you're bedridden? Stupid, stupid creature. Now your sister? cousin? relative and the boy's father have lost their child, and your sister (or whatever) is sitting in the county jail waiting to be tried for her part in this crime. Your family is mourning the loss of this child, and they'll lose his mother (for some time at least) and his aunt, thanks to you. You may have killed yourself in killing this kid, because some people are going to want you in jail (because stupid, unlike common sense, is endemic).

And, finally, how does someone get to weigh so much? We can understand being "overweight," everbody we know has a panza and nice squeezable quantities of flesh, except for the druggies, exercise addicts, and born scrawnies, but sheesh! You really have to work at it to be this huge, and look what it's done to your health. This one's probably not your fault, so you get Sixty Points of Sheer Stupid for all the other stuff, but we're giving you a pass on the weight thing. It's gotta be something medical.

Why Sixty Points? She claimed the kid died because she rolled over on him. That, plus, why the hell would a non-ambulatory person agree to look after a very active little sprog? Lying to the family, lying to the police, taking responsibility for the kid, killing the kid, all adds up to Sheer Stupid in Spades. The only plus we see here is, at least her genes are not going into the pool.

Stumble It!

Religion: Why Godbags Are Dangerous

Well, it's probably good riddance to bad rubbish - Father Philip Magaldi, the HIV-positive and sexually abusive priest, is dead.

We discussed this eminent worthy before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't speak ill of the dead and all that. But you know what? That doesn't apply to people who sexually (or otherwise) abuse children.

Not only was the bastard victimizing the children in his care, he was doing it knowing quite well that it might be a death sentence for some or all of them. So if you had any contact with this pig, you ought to know that he's gone. It's a pity at times like these that, being an atheist, we can't feel as if he's gone to his just reward. He's just dead, unpunished but dead as all of us eventually will be.

Pertinent snip from the article:

[Father Magaldi served at] St. John the Apostle Catholic Church in North Richland Hills. [Parishioners] learned – through a letter read by current clergy [that] their former priest had been HIV positive since 2003.

Magaldi served at St. Johns from 1993 to 1999. He was dismissed amid the sexual abuse allegations.

If you, or anyone you know, was victimized by this evil man, hie thee to an AIDS-testing facility right quick. The church is, meanwhile, praying for "the repose of his soul." Perhaps they'll be praying for a smaller payout for his erstwhile victims if enough of them file a suit.

Stumble It!