Palin's ABC interview: the horror

Ho. Lee. Fuck. Watch:



She has no clue what the Bush Doctrine is. The Bush Doctrine, of course, is the doctrine of pre-emptive war, probably the most defining characteristic not just of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, but of the administration itself. And Sarah Palin, Vice Presidential candidate, doesn't know what the fuck it is. I know what it is, for fuck sake, and I'm a grocery store cashier.

This has gone beyond ridiculous and crossed over into terrifying.

Hyperbole much?

What the-???Um yeah. Meanwhile, in Reality-Land, the story goes like this.

Lifesite: Your fairly unbalanced news source.

Demented in Denver

The giant inflatable fetus may have been rented out this week, but with their mighty Banner Of Bedsheets unfurled, fetus fetishists are using the opportunity of the Democratic National Convention to make total pains in the ass out of themselves. And look who's back:

"Randall Terry, the founder of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, was arrested at the Democratic National Convention after leading a sit-in that would have blocked a convention center entrance. Nearly 60 participated in the sit-in and 13 were arrested after police warned the protesters to disperse three times, according to the Associated Press.

Randall Terry is the militant anti-abortion extremist who exhorts his followers to "let a wave of hatred wash over" them, and after that, presumably, let nature (or nitroglycerine) take its course. (Like one of his buddies, James Kopp, did.) In addition to getting arrested for blocking the entrance to the convention centre, this time Terry's in a little trouble for spicing up the protest with a dash of spittle-flecked racism:

"“Racist” fliers authored by notorious anti-abortion activist Randall Terry littered cars parked at Elitch Gardens Saturday night where a DNC media party was taking place.

The brochure touts a fake “Candidate Smith” proposing “real solutions for the ‘Negro problem’” as a shocking metaphor for Christian voters who support pro-choice but otherwise conservative political candidates." [...]

"A favorite tactic of the anti-abortion movement is to equate their struggle with the Dred Scott decision to deny civil rights to African Americans. Advocates of proposed Amendment 48, which seeks to confer due process rights on fertilized human eggs in Colorado, have also conflated slavery and abortion." (emphasis mine)

Fertilized human eggs = oppressed minority. And they wonder why they have no credibility.

Harassment-R-Us

When they're not harassing women at clinics (and taking the occasional header off their custom-made cartop shrieking platforms), they're hassling members of the Order of Canada.

With only 8 OC medals on the way(?) to being returned, the "blizzard" of returned "snowflakes" never materialized. So outraged fetus fetishists, determined to make it happen, have set up a website to help their fellow travellers get in touch with the remaining OC members to demand that they also return their Morgentaler-tainted medals. Behold -- "Dis Order of Canada":

(Screenshot provided in case they re-direct my link to fetus porn.)

Someone has gone to a lot of time and trouble to set this up. The site includes alphabetical listings of contact information for 3,188 OC members, and where that's not available, a link to Google results for each name and city. With contact info the zealots will almost certainly pick up the ball and run with it, contacting these OC members over and over and over and... you get the idea.

I'm pretty sure that, like everyone else in Canada, all the OC members know about Dr. M's induction, and they've clearly made their choice with regard to their medals. So this little website setup is obviously designed to encourage the nutbars to harass and bully OC members into returning their medals... in a Godly way, of course. (The disclaimer at the bottom says "legal, non-malicious discourse", and maybe some of it will be, but you can almost be sure that some of it won't.) Most of these people are private citizens -- is this not just a bit invasive?

But what can you expect from people who spend their time hanging around clinics and harassing women? Whether it's the choice to have an abortion or the choice to keep an Order of Canada medal, choice is obviously a concept that's anathema to these idiots.

UPDATE: Via CC in the comments, this might be a good time to remind everyone how utterly meaningless these "returns" really are.

Nuts about the Net

Attention fellow bloggers, message board posters, gamers, haxxors, trolls and other miscellaneous internet denizens: we may be getting our own mental health illness, recognized by the DSM-V:

"Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V. Conceptually, the diagnosis is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage (1, 2) and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging (3). All of the variants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue."

Sound like anyone you know?

On the upside, I notice the article doesn't mention blogging specifically, as it does gaming, messaging and "sexual preoccupations". However, the SoCon Blogs with their feverish preoccupation with all things gay might well fall into the third category.

They're coming to take you away, SoCons, they're coming to take you away.

Buy gold.

This is what happens when the Invisible Hand raises its middle finger:

"NEW YORK — Just four days after Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz assured Wall Street his company was not in trouble, he was forced Sunday to sell the investment bank to rival JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of $2 a share, or $236.2 million.

The stunning last-minute sale was a move to avert a Bear Stearns bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system sparked by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market."

And what's responsible for the insane subprime mortgage market? A deregulated banking industry: where Stupid meets Greedy, they get married and have a big family (that they subsequently can't afford to feed).

"In the past decade, as regulators discarded rules, shady mortgage banking companies, financed by the bluest-chip outfits on Wall Street, calculated that they could make a lot of money offering bait-and-switch mortgages to poor credit risks. Default and foreclosure rates would be greater, but higher profits would more than compensate for the risks.

So the subprime mortgage industry, enabled by the big banks, invented amazing gimmicks. These included not just variable-rate mortgages, but mortgages that were initially interest only, mortgages with introductory teaser rates, mortgages with no down payment. No income verification required! No credit check! Subprime operators targeted people with horrific credit histories and families desperate for housing who could not afford the debt they were taking on. Last year, 60 percent of subprime loans required no meaningful documentation.

Then came the morning-after: As higher payments kicked in, people couldn't meet them. Defaults skyrocketed, to an estimated 13 percent of all such loans. At least 25 subprime lenders have gone out of business. The big dogs on Wall Street, who had invested in the subprime operators, took a big hit, too."

It boggles the mind that anyone could ever have thought subprime mortgages would be anything but a complete disaster, with their inevitably unaffordable payments. It might be wise to buy more gold -- and it topped $1,000/ounce last week, so I'm not the only one thinking that way.

Pain in the gass

Oil was up to over $109 a barrel yesterday. (And to think I can remember freaking when it started getting close to $50 a barrel.)

The price of gas is correspondingly ridiculous. For the last few months the price of Regular has hovered between $1.05 - $1.12 a litre. It's been higher of course; during the Hurricane Katrina it zoomed up to $1.19/litre, but it's never been this high for this long. It won't be going down anytime soon. It definitely won't ever be under $1/litre again.

I shudder to think what it must be like to have to commute any real distance to work. I used to drive 20 miles (one way) and even then, at about 69 cents a litre, the cost of driving my truck to work was staggering. I could only manage it because the cost of winter driving was offset by the significantly lower cost of riding my 70-mpg motorcycle to work when the weather was good.

Now I live a mere 3 miles from where I work, so I have the option of using non-internal combustion transportation, and will start doing so as soon as weather permits. Either my hybrid bicycle or leftie-rightie will carry me to work, serving the dual purpose of allowing me to stay in shape while giving the oil companies the finger. (Never mind that I'll still be paying more for food and anything else that's trucked in, but oh well.)

But that's me -- I wonder what everyone else be doing. Making some changes or continuing to drive your Hummers in support of the Oil Patch?

Back in Denver

where anti-abortion dimtwits have been harassing a construction contractor at his private home, they're getting pretty bold. Now they've started harassing the guy's neighbours as well:

"This is ridiculous," said Hornady's neighbor."There is no end to what they'll do. This is not really about abortion. It's not about free speech. It's about intimidation. It's about harassment," said a resident, who wished to remain anonymous." [...]

"The family told 7NEWS they've been yelled at while simply doing yard work, as if they are somehow complicit in the construction man's endeavors.

They showed 7NEWS a plastic baggie filled with red liquid and a doll in the shape of an aborted fetus that they found at the end of their long driveway. Several neighbors found the same item early one Saturday morning, he said.The neighbor said a couple of dolls were even found inside mailboxes.

The family said the construction executive felt so bad he came over to apologize to his neighbors for all the commotion. They told Hornaday there was no need to apologize."

No need to apologize! Sounds like this intrusive little protest is only strengthening the neighbourhood's resolve to hang tough against the fetishizers. And counter-measures have started with neighbours videotaping the protesters, and the mayor stepping in to limit the protests:

"Mayor Nancy Sharpe said two emergency ordinances will be considered: they would limit the hours of the protests from sunrise to sunset, and would limit the size of signs to three square feet. In addition, another proposal would require groups of 15 or more to get a permit for a residential protest or parade."

Way to go, dumbasses, way to waste taxpayers' money. Now if only they'd all stand atop their cars, a co-ordinated surgical strike could be launched... fun for the whole neighbourhood. One, two, three... push!

The Values Voters Debate

Last night in Florida, USian fundies held their "Values Voters Debate" with all the preznitial candidates except the ones that have any chance of winning -- Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Thompson didn't show. I watched some of this little shindig online and for the most part it just confirmed my long-standing opinion that these people are all about as crazy as shithouse rats.

There were prayers aplenty, quotes from the bible, and invocations of the Lord's name, but it wasn't all fetuses and family values. Ron Paul provided some interesting moments -- I actually found myself agreeing with some of what he had to say, especially the parts about "virtue being up to the individual to decide" and how "government intervention in such things was tyranny". Tyranny! Yeah, that impressed me, although it didn't seem to fly too well with the clearly authoritarian audience who'd like nothing better than to intervene, poke and prod into every aspect of peoples' lives, especially their sex lives, and impose their values down the throats and up the asses of the nation.

As for the rest of the candidates - wow, what a collection of mixed nuts, unhinged lunatics and Talibangelists (and even Paul, the sanest among them, had lapses in lucidity). Lots of talk about Prayer! and God! and the Family! and Marriage! and Abstinence!. The Values Voters weren't impressed that Rudy et al declined their invitation, and they symbolically addressed questions to their empty podiums, I guess to rub in the message even harder: "You snubbed us! And you'll pay for that snub in '08!" Oh my goodness, what an overblown image they have of their own importance -- none of these candidates will even win the nomination, so come election day, the Values Voters will be value voting for the GOP candidate even if it's a rock.

But it's an interesting idea, getting together a big group of one-issue voters and grilling all the candidates. I'm thinking we could do something like this before our next election, maybe call it the "Value Village Voters" debate.

Back on Planet SoCon

Great snappin' assholes, Batman! We have lift-off!


"Cue the banjo, Jethro"... yes indeedy, the infamous Dueling Banjos. What's the "YEEEHAAWW" celebrating, "Another Dead Woman Because of Contraception"?

Meds - STAT!!

Irish insanity

Unbelievable! At first I thought this had to be a joke, but sadly, it's not. In Ireland, a fetus will be retaining a lawyer to stop its mother from aborting it -- no, I am not kidding:

"The Attorney General has instructed a senior counsel to represent the unborn child at the centre of a court case being taken by a 17-year-old, who is four months pregnant, against the Health Service Executive (HSE).

The girl, who can only be identified as Miss D is challenging the legality of the HSE from preventing her from terminating her pregnancy overseas.

She has been in the care of the HSE since March and was told last week that her baby is suffering from the brain condition anencephaly, resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull and scalp.

The newborn baby will live a maximum of three days."

Three days -- just long enough for the lawyer to collect his retainer, ha. Seriously, what the fuck? When did they add mescaline to the recipe for Guinness?