August, 2012 archive
Kinks 0
Sally Kalston has had it up to here with Republican rape fantasies:
What is it with these heavy-breathing Republican men and their rape fantasies?
How did they become so salaciously contemptuous of women that they see the term “sexual assault” as an oxymoron?
Did their mothers once catch them after church reading dirty magazines under the covers, and did it warp their sexual development for all time? Are they so ashamed of their own urges that it compels them to cast rape victims as evil temptresses who must have been asking for it and therefore deserve additional punishment after the fact?
Light Bloggery 0
Connection issues. Back when it is.
We Need Single Payer 0
The underspending rebate checks mandated by the ACA are starting to arrive.
Wonder how many insurance company country-club memberships will go begging?
In the Pennsylvania individual market, Aetna Life Insurance Co., which also sells health insurance, spent just 67.1 percent of the money collected from subscribers in 2011 on health care. Averback’s check was a rebate.
Once she realized that the check was real, she had another thought. “I guess that shows you how much they were ripping me off,” she said.
Letting Their Freak Flag Fly 0
Tony Norman finds the bright side of teabaggery:
They tell you exactly what they believe, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.
Republican Science 0
As Gail Collins explains, it’s rooted in a simpler time, when men were men and women were property.
The idea never entirely faded away, possibly because it reflects so well on male lovemaking prowess. Since Akin’s debacle, we’ve learned that a former member of Congress once told the House Appropriations Committee that when people “are truly raped, the juices don’t flow, the body
don’t work and they don’t get pregnant.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Polite in the streets:
An intelligence test would infringe on their right to politeness.
Buffoonery Wins 0
The stupid. It burns.
Apparently the Republican Party of Sarasota equates Richard Holbrooke’s brokerage of the Dayton Accords, which brought an end to the Bosnian conflict, with Donald Trump boldly informing Snoop Dog that he isn’t exactly upper management material.
Compared to last year’s Republican Party of Sarasota “Statesman of the Year,” Trump comes off as Anwar Sadat. That would have been the Foghorn Leghorn of the GOP, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who once famously said that he never really noticed any racial tensions while growing up. On his last day in office, he granted pardons and clemency to 203 people, including 19 convicted murderers.
Der Spiegel Slices a Potato and Finds the End of an Empire 0
Der Spiegel analyzes the fight in Congress of serving fat pills fried potatoes in various forms to school children and finds unexpected metaphors. A nugget:
Politicians, such as former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, exploit the divisions. They invoke the US Constitution and America’s long-outdated clichés, such as the values of small-town life and the days when a handshake was still considered a word of honor.
The world has become more complicated and complex, but the political debate in America has become more simplistic — wilfully ignorant of climate change, inattentive to the new requirements of an immigrant society, wary of science and even unknowledgeable about the insights of food science.
Change versus idyll: That’s the new dichotomy of the political discourse, which consists of only two incompatible categories: American and un-American. When Michelle Obama recommended that Americans eat more vegetables and fewer sweets, and perhaps occasionally skip dessert, Sarah Palin acted as if the First Lady had declared war on freedom. Now Michelle Obama was trying to deprive Americans of their desserts, Palin claimed, and her fellow citizens in many parts of the country agreed.
Akin Brakin Ranks 0
Mike Papantonio to Republicans trying to walk away from Todd Akin, the women can’t get pregnant from rape candidate:
They are mad at Todd Akin because he said . . . what they really believe, that is, that women are objects. . . .
Hell, you (Republicans–ed.) invented Todd Akin. . . . Todd Akin is you.
Republicans: Watch what they do, not what they say.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
I was setting up a computer to dual boot Windows 7 and Linux Mint and forgot that it was Thursday.
No significant change, but it can’t make Republicans, who want President Obama to fail, happy (emphasis added):
The Labor Department said Thursday that the four-week average, a less volatile measure, increased 3,750 to 368,000.
Applications are a measure of the pace of layoffs. When they fall consistently below 375,000, it generally suggests hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.
Break Time 0
Off to drink liberally.
