Was at a wedding this weekend, amazing how many more people get on the floor when Michael Jackson comes on than they do with anything else.
Talk about whatever.
by DougJ| 93 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Was at a wedding this weekend, amazing how many more people get on the floor when Michael Jackson comes on than they do with anything else.
Talk about whatever.
by DougJ| 134 Comments
This post is in: The Brown Enemy Within, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
I suspect this (via) means comprehensive immigration reform is dead as Dillinger:
Sean Hannity, a reliable bellwether on the right, has been on a similar journey since the fall. He announced the day after President Obama’s re-election that he had “evolved” on immigration reform and now supported a “path to citizenship” in order to improve relations with Hispanic voters. Hannity has now flipped hard against the Senate’s bill.
“Not only do I doubt the current legislation will solve the immigration problem,” he wrote in a June column, “but it also won’t help the GOP in future elections.”
Hannity and Hume didn’t arrive at their latest destination by accident. They’re just the latest figures on the right to embrace the compelling new message that’s whipping Republicans against immigration reform while still promising a better tomorrow for the GOP’s presidential candidates.
I suspect Chuck Schumer is right that there will be big pro-immigration reform demonstrations this summer. During those demonstrations, some protesters will undoubtedly do something to an American flag, perhaps accidentally, and Rush will spend a few weeks talking about brown people peeing on the American flag (or burning it or whatever).
It’s all ballot box poison for Republicans, most likely, but you’ve got to feed the monkey.
Update. Apparently, I’m getting senile, I thought that Rush Limbaugh’s first name was “Russ” when I first wrote this post.
by Elon James White| 72 Comments
This post is in: This Week In Blackness
During his weekly WOR-AM radio appearance, New York King Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated his support for stop-and-frisk when he said this:
There is this business, there’s one newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group,’… That may be, but it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murder. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.
The comments came just one day after New York City lawmakers voted to create an NYPD inspector general and other legal infrastructure to address racial profiling. Looks like the South really doesn’t have the corner on old-fashioned racism.
In Part Two of a special two part #TWiBRadio, #TeamBlackness continues with a discussion about New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s problematic stance regarding Stop and Frisk practices (16:45) and engage in the age old discussion of who would win in Open Battle: Dude Bros or Hipsters.
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And this morning on #amTWiB, L.Joy, Imani, and the rest of the #TheMorningCrew unpacked last week’s news when ALL THE THINGS happened.
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by $8 blue check mistermix| 161 Comments
This post is in: Religious Nuts 2
Roman Catholic Church officials in Milwaukee vigorously shielded pedophile priests and protected church funds from lawsuits during a decades-long sex abuse scandal, according to hundreds of newly released documents.
The documents include letters and deposition testimony from Cardinal and Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan who, during his time as archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009, appealed to Vatican on numerous occasions to help address the ongoing fallout from the scandal.
The 6,000 pages of documents related to eight decades of abuse cases showed in great detail the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly reassigned priests who were accused of sexual molestation to new parishes and Dolan himself asking the Vatican permission to transfer $57 million to a trust fund to protect it against court action.
He tried to bury those assets in the cemetery trust fund. You can’t make this stuff up.
As Dan Savage always says, if any other organization did this (his example is Denny’s), we’d be after them with pitchforks and torches, but the Church has a 80 year documented history of child rape and we’re still supposed to listen to their considered opinions as if they have some kind of moral authority.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 108 Comments
This post is in: DC Press Corpse
Richard Cohen’s appearance as the first symptom of this deadly ailment might have been missed by some observers, but even a first-year med school student could recognize that the Post is knocking on heaven’s door after examining Robert Samuelson’s latest emission:
If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. […]
I don’t know what’s better: the use of the word “repeal”, which would indicate that we all got together in the mid-80s and voted to start this newfangled “Internet” thing, or the notion that we’re all imagining that the half-dozen Internet-connected devices in every home are some indicator of progress.
The Post’s Fatal Case of Old White Man SyndromePost + Comments (108)
by Kay| 51 Comments
This post is in: Meth Laboratories of Democracy
We’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s important, so I wanted to raise it again. From Plunderbund:
John Kasich is just optimistic that you’ll pull through
Until yesterday, Ohio law allowed exceptions to the informed consent rigamarole in the event of “an immediate threat of serious risk to the… physical health of the woman from the continuation of the pregnancy.” While this verbiage wasn’t necessarily ideal, it was broad enough that doctors could practice appropriately.
With Kasich’s signature of the budget, physicians can only avoid the mandatory ultrasound “in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to avoid a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman that delay in the performance or inducement of the abortion would create.”Section 2919.16(K) spells out that the conditions allowing for immediate abortion:
includes pre-eclampsia, inevitable abortion, and premature rupture of the membranes, may include, but is not limited to, diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and does not include a condition related to the woman’s mental health.These rules are incredibly narrow.
The list of possible complications that can maim or kill goes on and on: anemia, arrhythmia, brainstem infarction, broken tailbone or ribs, cardiopulmonary arrest, diastasis recti, eclampsia, embolism, exacerbation of epilepsy, immunosuppression, infection, gestational diabetes, gestational trophoblastic disease, hemorrhage, hypoxemia, increased intracranial pressure, mitral valve stenosis, obstetric fistula,placental abruption, postpartum depression, prolapsed uterus, severe scarring, increased spousal abuse, third or fourth degree laceration, thrombocytopenic purpura, peripartum cardiomyopathy, and more.
Before the passage of the budget, a number of OB-GYNs protested this provision. In the past, they’ve testified that it would make them hesitate before treating women. This is consciously modeled after the Irish law that resulted in the death of Savita Halappanavar.
This should be debated. Conservatives and media limit the scope of discussion on abortion restrictions to an unwanted pregnancy, a woman seeking an abortion, but that isn’t how these laws read. Who wrote the specific medical exceptions? The lobbyists who introduced these laws all over the country? Did they even bother to consult a physician?
Conservatives at the state and national level should have to respond to specific questions on how these laws apply to women in a medical emergency. They had this debate in Ireland, too late.
by Betty Cracker| 387 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
Yesterday, Edward Snowden allegedly released a new statement. Here’s an excerpt:
For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.
First of all, the use of the plural verb highlighted above: Americans use the singular form when referring to the United States, while those who speak the Queen’s English use “are.” Either Snowden didn’t write that statement himself, or he wrote it and then allowed Julian Assange or his UK-based WikiLeaks handler in Russia to edit it.
Secondly, the US government or local authorities routinely compel citizens to surrender passports if they’re accused (not convicted, but accused) of a crime and deemed a flight risk, right? Snowden isn’t stateless — he’s just in hot water with his state.
Speaking of Assange, it appears he’s making Ecuador regret its kindness in taking him in:
Mr. Snowden’s case appeared to be causing tensions between the government of Ecuador and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. Mr. Assange has been in Ecuador’s embassy in London for more than a year, given asylum there to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on allegations that he sexually assaulted two women.
“The conduct of Assange has bothered me a little, and this morning I spoke with the foreign minister to tell him not to speak about our country’s situations,” Mr. Correa [Ecuador’s president] said Monday, according to Agence France-Presse.
Mr. Correa was apparently displeased by comments that Mr. Assange made on Sunday on the ABC program “This Week” regarding Mr. Biden’s telephone call. Mr. Assange characterized that call as an effort to pressure Mr. Correa. “What does he know about the call from Joe Biden?” Mr. Correa was quoted as saying by A.F.P. “And he says that he called to pressure me. I have never permitted a call to put pressure on me.”
Now Correa says Snowden is Russia’s problem, and Russia says Snowden has withdrawn his application for asylum there.
I’ve never quite known what to think about WikiLeaks: I can see both sides of the argument on transparency. Moreover, I’m generally suspicious when someone who is causing problems for a government is suddenly (and conveniently) discovered to be a pervert.
But whether or not Assange is guilty of sexual assault, the people who entrust government secrets to him don’t seem to fare so well, and he doesn’t appear competent enough to handle travel arrangements, let alone classified information. Future leakers beware.
[X-posted at Rumproast]