I don't have any idea. It's getting so hard to tell these days.
Mocking the Sprayers
Reviewers at Amazon descend in mockery on the brand of pepper spray used on those students at UC Davis.
Sweet.
Enough is Enough!
There is a HEINOUS bill, House bill H.R. 3035—aka the "Mobile Informational Call Act Of 2011"—making its way through Congress right now, and it's going to affect every cell phone user in this country. The bill aims to give telemarketers, bill collectors, and similar douchebags complete, unfettered access to your cell phone number. If you aren't on an unlimited cell phone plan, this means that YOU will be charged for every minute these scum suckers can waste when calling you.
More importantly to the Congressional Vermin Hordes, passage of this bill will allow them to robocall us with "information" about why we should vote for them! How convenient! Hey, forget taxing the pigs on Wall Street a half of a percent more. Forget keeping the air and water in a non-poisonous state. Forget about the economy! To these "people" it's all about finding "new and innovative" ways to destroy the quality of our lives.
The bill was introduced by Republican Congresscretin Lee Terry of Nebraska, and all but one of the nine co-sponsors are also Republicans. Quelle Surprise! So who, besides our "elected representatives" think this bill is a good idea? The usual 1% suspects, of course: the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Banking Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
But there is a new way of letting Congress know we've had enough: Reverse Robocall. If these Koch-suckers think that receiving robocalls is so great, perhaps it's time to turn the tables on them.
Tell ya what Mr./Ms. Congresscretin…how about you publish your cell phone numbers so your constituents (you know, the people who elected you to serve as their representative) can call you day and all night with some messages of their own? I know I've got some good ones for you and there's plenty more where those come from. I can't wait until some enterprising individual actually does start doing blast emails of the cell phone numbers of the members of The Amalgamated Asswipes Of Our Government Union, and providing daily updates for those numbers. The twisted morons in Washington would need to have their staffers devoted all their time to little more than providing them with a new cell phone number or a temporary cell phone every day. Probably nothing would bring Washington's incessant attacks on us to a screeching halt faster.
What do you think?
Just Askin'
If there are no atheists in foxholes, wouldn't there be no war without religion?
This Never Gets Old
Hey you one-percenters, you hypocritical bigoted religious assholes…
Our Fuck-You System of Government
From Ted Rall:
Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services
Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn't pretend to try.
Sick? Too bad.
Can't find a job? Tough.
Broke? Can't afford rent? We don't give a crap.
Forget "e pluribus unum." We need a more accurate motto.
We live under a fuck you system.
Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: fuck you.
During the '80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge.
It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn't provide any.
So I did what all taxi drivers did. What they still do. I found a side street and a spot between two parked cars. It went OK until a cop caught me peeing under the old elevated West Side Highway, which later collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Perhaps decades of taxi driver urine corroded the support beams.
"You can't do that here," said the policeman.
"Where am I supposed to go?" I asked him. "There's aren't any restrooms anywhere in town."
"I know," he replied before going to get his summons book from his cruiser.
The old "fuck you." We create the problem, then blame you for the results.
I ran away.
In recent days American mayors have been ordering heavily armed riot police to attack and rob peaceful members of encampments allied with Occupy Wall Street.
Like NYC, which won't provide public restrooms but arrests public urinators, government officials and their media allies use their own refusal to provide basic public services to justify raids against Occupations.
In the middle of the night on November 15th NYPD goons stormed into Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They beat and pepper-sprayed members of Occupy Wall Street and destroyed the books in their library. Citing "unsanitary conditions," New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, then told reporters: "I have become increasingly concerned…that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community."
Four days before the police attack The New York Times had quoted a city health department statement worrying about the possible spread of norovirus, vomiting, diarrhea and tuberculosis: "It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone's health."
So why don't they give the homeless some of the thousands of abandoned apartment units in New York?
Anyway, according to the Times: "Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at [the few] public restrooms."
Of course, there's an obvious solution: provide adequate bathroom facilities—not just for Occupy but for all New Yorkers. But that's off the table under New York's Fuck you system of government.
Doctors noted a new phenomenon called "Zuccotti cough." Symptoms are similar to those of "Ground Zero cough" suffered by 9/11 first responders.
Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero.
Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months?
We'll never know. As under Bush, Obama's EPA still won't conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study.
Sick? Wanna know why? Fuck you.
One of the authorities' most ironic complaints about the Occupations is that they attract the mentally ill, drug users and habitually homeless.
To listen to the mayors of Portland, Denver and New York, you'd think the Occupiers beamed in bums and nutcases from outer space.
When mentally disabled people seek help from their government, they get the usual answer: Fuck you.
When people addicted to drugs—drugs imported into the U.S. under the watchful eyes of corrupt border enforcement officers—ask their government for help, they are turned away. Fuck you again.
When people who lost their homes because their government said "fuck you" to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: "Fuck you."
And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility to provide us with such staples of human survival as places to urinate and defecate and sleep, and food, and medical care, our "fuck you" government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up.
Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say "fuck you" to them.
If You Read Nothing Else Today
Read this.
Dear Republicans
From the Great Orange Satan:
Republicans: We need to talk.
I know you and I don't see eye to eye on many things. We hang out with different crowds, we listen to different music, we have different interpretations of pretty much every event that has ever happened from the Big Bang onwards—but I'm worried about you. We, the whole of non-Republican America, are worried about you. Heck, I even know people in other countries that are worried about you.
You can be forgiven for Sarah Palin. I know that was mostly McCain's fault, and you didn't have a lot of say in that. His staff looked around for someone who they thought could better appeal to the base, and that's who they came up with. You should have been insulted by that, but I'll at least grant that it wasn't your decision to make, it was his.
But that was 2008, and this is 2012. And the decisions you've been making this time around are entirely up to you, and, well … let's just say that most of the rest of us are pretty disappointed in you right now.
Your first serious non-Palin flirtation of this election cycle was with Michele Bachmann. Really? You could choose from among the ranks of the entire conservative movement, and you said "yeah, Michele Bachmann, I guess." I don't mean to be cruel, but that's when most of us realized that this little ideological obsession of yours had turned into a full-fledged, self-destructive addiction. You'd gone and cracked, right then and there. I realize that you have to work with the candidates that present themselves, and not the ones you'd actually choose on your own, but Michele Bachmann was already known far and wide as, well, a crazy person. She's Palin, after Palin drank an entire bottle of whiskey and drove her car into the side of a DMV office. She doesn't have political beliefs so much as she has spasms; everything she disagrees with is elevated to the level of America-killing communist apocalypse. There's no volume control on that knob. Her sole area of expertise is in the area of hand-waving panic over things she knows nothing about: Ask her for the barest details and she's dumb as a post.
So fine, that was the first one. First loves are often not well-planned things, though; there's some leeway there. Let's look at the rest of your candidates.
Rick Perry.
No, let's just pause there for a moment. Rick. Effing. Perry.
You're pulling our legs, right?
Let's all remember that it was your punditry, your own establishment figures, that pushed hard to get Rick Perry in the race. This wasn't a case of a candidate foisting themselves upon you, this is a guy you actually picked to represent conservatism. Holy Freaking Hell, Republicans, what is that about? Let's look at the attributes he brings to the campaign trail. First: dumb as a post. I know I just said that about Bachmann, but Perry forced us all to reconsider that, because compared to Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann looks like the freaking Einstein of conservatism. You know, if you folks believed in atoms and such. If Bachmann is as dumb as a post, then Rick Perry is as dumb as the dirt you dug out of the ground to make the hole to put the post in. He has an I.Q. 10 points lower than composted leaves. We're talking about a guy whose convictions run so very deep that, on a good day, he's lucky if he even remembers what they are.
Oh yeah, I'm going there. I don't care how bad a debater you are, if you say that as president the first thing you'll do is abolish these three federal agencies that are wrecking the country, but you can't actually remember what the hell they are, you are stone-cold stupid.
Which brings up the second possibility: That if you can't remember these three things you earnestly believe in, perhaps you don't actually believe anything at all, and are just saying whatever your handlers told you to say. I have to admit, that might make for a better representative of conservatism: It worked out just fine for George W. Bush. Bush never cared about a damn thing, he just left everything to Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Rove. Economy? Yeah, whatever. War with who? Sure, let's go for it. Freedomz and stuff.
Make no mistake here, I haven't ever forgiven you for Bush. Listening to that dimwit speak for five minutes should have convinced you what a mistake it would be to let that barely functioning manchild play with the entire free world like it was his personal Jenga game, and his first few public appearances were when you and I parted ways for-freaking-ever. But Perry, now? Rick Perry, who is the dumber version of George Bush? The less principled version? The less eloquent version? If that's who your leading pundits wanted in the race, if that's the be-all, end-all conservative savior (emphasis on the end-all, I guess), then who is it going to be after eight more years? A goddamn vase full of geraniums?
It makes you look bad. It makes you look dumb. It makes you look like, well, like a party so thoroughly detached from their mental capacities that they would actually look up to a guy like Rick Perry as being their brain trust.
So Rick Perry launched himself with a fanfare, but was last seen plummeting back through the atmosphere, hair-shield glowing red from the heat, his last words a sheepish "oops." Bold move, there, and so Herman Cain is your next big thing. Let's just skip the whole part about him possibly being a sexual predator. I think you're probably wrong to dismiss those allegations: The list of politicians who have repeatedly denied such-and-such only to be thoroughly disgraced when such-and-such was proven to be true is at this point a very, very long one, and I think your heart is going to be broken on this, but let's talk about something less contentious. Let's talk about "9-9-9" for a minute, shall we?
You know what one of those 9s stands for? A national sales tax. Now, he explicitly points that out during every single goddamn debate, so if you didn't know that, it's time for a whole separate conversation, so I'm going to assume that you, everyone in the Republican base, are fully aware of it.
Let's reflect on that. The one absolute in the modern Republican party, the one and only principle, the single Great Rule of Modern Conservatism that may never be breached, on penalty of dark, unspeakable Cthulhu-administered punishments, is no new taxes. Or old taxes. Or half-new, half-old taxes. No taxes of anything, ever. If you raise taxes, Zombie Reagan will rise up from the grave and punch you straight in the mouth. If you even talk about raising taxes, members of your party will start digging up Zombie Reagan so that he can get a good head start.
So here comes Mr. Pizza Executive Guy, and the lynchpin of his entire brilliant non-functional monster-deficit-creating economic plan is to institute a nine percent national sales tax on every damn thing you buy, ever. From cars to carrots, you're going to pay a new tax of nine cents on every dollar, in addition to all the sales taxes you might pay now. In exchange for that, you get the grand deal of also paying a nine percent income tax no matter what your current tax bracket. (Don't make enough to pay taxes? You do now, suckers.) For everyone but the top of the income scale, it's a huge increase in taxes. And the less you make (are you retired? unemployed? gainfully employed, but simply not rich?), the worse off you are.
Here's my question. How is it that the party that would rather put all of government through a wood chipper than raise taxes one thin dime finds themselves enthralled with a guy proposing the biggest, most regressive, most intrusive possible new tax? Nine percent of every purchase you ever make, you're not only fine with that, but you clap and shout and say "hell yeah, sign all of us small-government, keep-yer-hands-off-our-wallet conservatives up for that!"
What, are you stupid? The current choice you're trying to mull over is between a possible sexual assaulter who wants to institute a nine percent national tax on everything you buy, and a guy so dumb that he'd actually sign onto that tax as a good idea if someone slipped him a little blue notecard telling him so.
That's not a political party. That's a alcohol-fueled dare gone horribly wrong.
You Might Be a Republican If…
You think doing these things result in a better society:
- Elimination of EPA
- Elimination of Education
- Elimination of Energy Dept
- Elimination of Commerce Dept.
- Elimination of Planned Parenthood
- Elimination of NPR
- Privatizing Social Security
- Privatizing Medicare
- Lower taxes on the rich, raise taxes on the poor
- Trying to strip Union Worker Rights
- Trying to criminalize abortion and miscarriages
- Executive orders to mandate 12 yr old girls take HPV vaccines.
- Emergency Financial Manager Law that allows the state to fire city elected officials and install a dictator.
- Running fake democratic candidates in Recalls
Yeah, Republicans sure do run on a platform for creating a better society! /sarcasm.
Asshat of the Day – Randy Thomasson
From Joe.My.God.
"This is training up an immoral army of soldiers to attack real marriage, the natural family, and to rope more children into sexual darkness. 'Queer studies' teaches you can do anything sexual you want without negative consequences or moral accountability to God, and that you have no ability to choose whether or not to engage in sexual behaviors. This philosophy essentially turns man into an animal, but less than an animal, because beasts follow God's natural order of sexuality." – Save California douchebag Randy Thomasson, saying that Queer Studies courses are nothing more than "gay boot camp."
In the above-linked article, Thomasson goes on to repeat the familiar lie that all gay people were molested as children. Or hate their mothers. Or something.
You. Go. Girl.
Doing My Part to Piss Off The Xtianists…
NOM has their panties in a wad over this video. Reason enough to pass it around.
Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose
Barry Goldwater makes the current crop of Republicans look even more like the willfully ignorant, intolerant tools of Wingnuttia and big business that they are.
Permit
Try Not to Laugh
Exactly.
Big Potato Moths
Damn…this makes more sense than anything this jackass has said in real life.
Dear GOP Candidates…
…pandering to the "Christian" right:
Word.
Oopsie!
Why Isn't This Man President?
2016 maybe? Please, Alan?
(images stolen from Mike Mitchell's Tumblr of Amazing Things)
102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes
So, you're a Republican that hates taxes? Well, since you do not like taxes or government, please kindly do the following:
1. Do not use Medicare.
2. Do not use Social Security
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with tax dollars.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
6. Do not call the police to stop intruders in your home.
7. Do not summon the fire department to save your burning home.
8. Do not drive on any paved road, highway, and interstate or drive on any bridge.
9. Do not use public restrooms.
10. Do not send your kids to public schools.
11. Do not put your trash out for city garbage collectors.
12. Do not live in areas with clean air.
13. Do not drink clean water.
14. Do not visit National Parks.
15. Do not visit public museums, zoos, and monuments.
16. Do not eat or use FDA inspected food and medicines.
17. Do not bring your kids to public playgrounds.
18. Do not walk or run on sidewalks.
19. Do not use public recreational facilities such as basketball and tennis courts.
20. Do not seek shelter facilities or food in soup kitchens when you are homeless and hungry.
21. Do not apply for educational or job training assistance when you lose your job.
22. Do not apply for food stamps when you can't feed your children.
23. Do not use the judiciary system for any reason.
24. Do not ask for an attorney when you are arrested and do not ask for one to be assigned to you by the court.
25. Do not apply for any Pell Grants.
26. Do not use cures that were discovered by labs using federal dollars.
27. Do not fly on federally regulated airplanes.
28. Do not use any product that can trace its development back to NASA.
29. Do not watch the weather provided by the National Weather Service.
30. Do not listen to severe weather warnings from the National Weather Service.
31. Do not listen to tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake alert systems.
32. Do not apply for federal housing.
33. Do not use the internet, which was developed by the military.
34. Do not swim in clean rivers.
35. Do not allow your child to eat school lunches or breakfasts.
36. Do not ask for FEMA assistance when everything you own gets wiped out by disaster.
37. Do not ask the military to defend your life and home in the event of a foreign invasion.
38. Do not use your cell phone or home telephone.
39. Do not buy firearms that wouldn't have been developed without the support of the US Government and military. That includes most of them.
40. Do not eat USDA inspected produce and meat.
41. Do not apply for government grants to start your own business.
42. Do not apply to win a government contract.
43. Do not buy any vehicle that has been inspected by government safety agencies.
44. Do not buy any product that is protected from poisons, toxins, etc…by the Consumer Protection Agency.
45. Do not save your money in a bank that is FDIC insured.
46. Do not use Veterans benefits or military health care.
47. Do not use the G.I. Bill to go to college.
48. Do not apply for unemployment benefits.
49. Do not use any electricity from companies regulated by the Department of Energy.
50. Do not live in homes that are built to code.
51. Do not run for public office. Politicians are paid with taxpayer dollars.
52. Do not ask for help from the FBI, S.W.A.T, the bomb squad, Homeland Security, State troopers, etc…
53. Do not apply for any government job whatsoever as all state and federal employees are paid with tax dollars.
54. Do not use public libraries.
55. Do not use the US Postal Service.
56. Do not visit the National Archives.
57. Do not visit Presidential Libraries.
58. Do not use airports that are secured by the federal government.
59. Do not apply for loans from any bank that is FDIC insured.
60. Do not ask the government to help you clean up after a tornado.
61. Do not ask the Department of Agriculture to provide a subsidy to help you run your farm.
62. Do not take walks in National Forests.
63. Do not ask for taxpayer dollars for your oil company.
64. Do not ask the federal government to bail your company out during recessions.
65. Do not seek medical care from places that use federal dollars.
66. Do not use Medicaid.
67. Do not use WIC.
68. Do not use electricity generated by Hoover Dam.
69. Do not use electricity or any service provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
70. Do not ask the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild levees when they break.
71. Do not let the Coast Guard save you from drowning when your boat capsizes at sea.
72. Do not ask the government to help evacuate you when all hell breaks loose in the country you are in.
73. Do not visit historic landmarks.
74. Do not visit fisheries.
75. Do not expect to see animals that are federally protected because of the Endangered Species List.
76. Do not expect plows to clear roads of snow and ice so your kids can go to school and so you can get to work.
77. Do not hunt or camp on federal land.
78. Do not work anywhere that has a safe workplace because of government regulations.
79. Do not use public transportation.
80. Do not drink water from public water fountains.
81. Do not whine when someone copies your work and sells it as their own. Government enforces copyright laws.
82. Do not expect to own your home, car, or boat. Government organizes and keeps all titles.
83. Do not expect convicted felons to remain off the streets.
84. Do not eat in restaurants that are regulated by food quality and safety standards.
85. Do not seek help from the US Embassy if you need assistance in a foreign nation.
86. Do not apply for a passport to travel outside of the United States.
87. Do not apply for a patent when you invent something.
88. Do not adopt a child through your local, state, or federal governments.
89.Do not use elevators that have been inspected by federal or state safety regulators.
90. Do not use any resource that was discovered by the USGS.
91. Do not ask for energy assistance from the government.
92. Do not move to any other developed nation, because the taxes are much higher.
93. Do not go to a beach that is kept clean by the state.
94. Do not use money printed by the US Treasury.
95. Do not complain when millions more illegal immigrants cross the border because there are no more border patrol agents.
96. Do not attend a state university.
97. Do not see any doctor that is licensed through the state.
98. Do not use any water from municipal water systems.
99. Do not complain when diseases and viruses, that were once fought around the globe by the US government and CDC, reach your house.
100. Do not work for any company that is required to pay its workers a livable wage, provide them sick days, vacation days, and benefits.
101. Do not expect to be able to vote on election days. Government provides voting booths, election day officials, and voting machines which are paid for with taxes.
102. Do not ride trains. The railroad was built with government financial assistance.
The fact is, we pay for the lifestyle we expect. Without taxes, our lifestyles would be totally different and much harder. America would be a third world country. The less we pay, the less we get in return. Americans pay less taxes today since 1958 and is ranked 32nd out of 34 of the top tax paying countries. Chile and Mexico are 33rd and 34th. The Republicans are lying when they say that we pay the highest taxes in the world and are only attacking taxes to reward corporations and the wealthy and to weaken our infrastructure and way of life. So next time you object to paying taxes or fight to abolish taxes for corporations and the wealthy, keep this quote in mind…
"I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Source)
A Note to the Local ABC Affiliate
I think your "investigative journalists" need to go work for an organization where their talents can best be utilized. I was thinking perhaps the Weekly World News. I swear that if your stories don't involve sex, children or animals (hopefully all three, because you will have hit pay dirt that you can milk for days) it isn't news.
How about paying attention to the fact that Bush is thumbing his nose at the will of Congress and the American people? Or maybe that our civil liberties are being eroded on a daily basis in the name of the "war on terrah"?
That would be too hard, I know. It's much easier to take a hidden camera into an adult bookstore to film all those nasty ol' queers having sex under a screaming headling of "Protect your Family!"
And I know that reporting on actual NEWS that might question the edicts of Beloved Leader would be too much to ask, since it's obvious from simply WATCHING your programming that your network is nothing but a shill for the White House.
Quote of the Day
Seems to me the Repubs are in a bit of trouble. 70% of the country, give or take, is just bitterly opposed to everything the party has done for the last six years—but that other 30% are the people who are going to show up at primaries and pick a candidate. So the candidates have to play to the radical nut cases, which is great, because whichever old white guy wins, everything he says now while trying to appeal to the 30 percenters is going to be repeated over and over and over and over on YouTube and The Daily Show and all over the Internet during the actual campaign.
So go ahead, old white guys. Spin your fantasies about banning abortion, and science, and Muslims. Spew all the sewage you want about how we're going to bomb and shoot people until they agree to live in suburban houses with white picket fences and 2.4 children and an adorable dog, the way God—our God, the REAL one—tended people to live. Tell us all about how you're going to roll the clock back to the Eisenhower administration. Every word along those lines that oozes out of your mouth is one more voter in the primary, and 100 less in the general election. It's music to our ears, over here on the left."— LegalCat at Huffington Post
No Lesbian Sex in the Stacks, Please!
From Violet Blue, special to SF Gate:
It probably started out like any other serene, sunny, safely heterosexual day in the Bentonville Public Library. But the lives of some Bentonville, Ark., residents changed forever on that fateful day, after a wrong turn down the dark back alley of a card catalog led to a nefarious lesbian sex guide that would steal their innocence, stain them with the gay agenda and probably totally show them where the G-spot was. We can only begin to imagine the harrowing ordeal Earl Adams and his 14- and 16-year-old sons, Kyle and Ryan, went through after the boys discovered "The Whole Lesbian Sex Book" — an ordeal fraught with anatomical drawings and lesbian relationship advice at the hands, nay, lubed fists, of local lesbian author Felice Newman. Unfortunately, it's an ordeal that resulted in the book's removal and a threatened lawsuit for obscenity.
Two weeks ago, "The Whole Lesbian Sex Book" was removed from the Bentonville library shelves at the e-mail request of Earl Adams, after his sons allegedly had found the sex guide while browsing for "military academy" reading materials. It no doubt took the boys hours of page-turning trauma in the stacks to fully register their horror — and we can only guess that once they learned about female ejaculation, the damage was done.
Being a concerned father who would in no way want his adolescent sons exposed to any shred of accurate sex information outside of the abstinence curriculum in public schools, or examples of lesbianism that conflict with what his sons will later pay to see in strip clubs across town, Adams initially e-mailed a complaint to Library Director Cindy Suter. She responded by relocating the book to a less accessible spot, perhaps in the football-field-size NSFC (Not Safe for Christians) section.
But for Adams, the threat posed by the safer-sex sections in "The Whole Lesbian Sex Book" evidently plagued him night and day. When he tucked his sons in at night, visions of happy lesbians with strap-ons danced in their heads, he was sure of it. Adams sent a deliciously retro letter and fax to Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin, threatening a lawsuit if the book were not removed, a book Adams said was "patently offensive and lacks any artistic, literary or scientific value" (neatly copying and pasting from the Wikipedia entry on the Miller test, minus the inconvenient "political value" part).
For some inexplicable reason, Adams could not stop thinking about the lesbian sex book and the deep personal tension it caused him — release, he knew, could only be found with total elimination of the book. Oh, and a $10,000 settlement per child, the maximum allowed under the Arkansas obscenity law.
Adams had stated in a previous complaint e-mail to McCaslin, "My sons were greatly disturbed by viewing this material and this matter has caused many sleepless nights in our house." After the Library Advisory Board voted unanimously April 3 to remove the book from circulation, Adams stated, "God was speaking to my heart that day and helped me find the words that proved successful in removing this book from the shelf."
One could argue that shelving "Whole Lesbian" in the West Point section could happen to anyone. Or that separating the sex and military shelves with a couple of copies of Boys' Life might give someone the wrong idea. And that anything that makes young men fantasize about lesbian sex is surely a threat to the very fabric of society. Of course, no one would know these things better than Felice Newman, author of "The Whole Lesbian Sex Book," co-founder of local, quarter-century-old, woman-run, human sexuality/gender studies/human rights publisher Cleis Press, and Bay Area resident. I got a minute to get her comments about the lawsuit and whether trading her handsome flattop for a flowery dress might get her book back in the good graces of Bentonville's heterosexual agenda.
Violet Blue: Did you know your book was in public libraries?
Felice Newman: Definitely. Library Journal recommended "The Whole Lesbian Sex Book" for all collections. Many public and university libraries have ordered the book.
VB: How do you think it ended up in the military section? Don't ask, don't tell? Or is there a section on uniforms in the book?
FN: Perhaps the book ended up in the military section because the boys hid it there. Or perhaps, having found the book in its proper section, the boys were reading it in the military section, where they had told their father they would be researching military academies. Someone catches them smack in the middle of the fistf-ing chapter and they make up the story as an alibi.
VB: According to Adams, his two sons, ages 14 and 16, were "greatly disturbed" by their discovery and apparently underwent "many sleepless nights" as a result. Do you want to comment on these statements?
FN: I imagine they went through a change of bed linens as well. Do you think the court will award them damages for a nice set of military-themed boys' bedsheets from Wal-Mart?
VB: What could they have learned from the book? Safer-sex techniques for lesbians?
FN: The first five or so chapters are really a general guide to women's sexuality. So I hope I've helped those lads find their way around a vagina and clitoris and G-spot and anus and know what to do with them.
VB: Adams is also accusing you of "pushing an immoral social agenda" in your book. So what are the juicy highlights of that agenda? Can you pencil us in?
FN: Everyone should enjoy ample pleasure, frequent and copious orgasms. Every person should know how she or he best likes to get off and should be able to tell partners in great detail just how to make that happen. Everyone deserves to feel proud of his or her fantasy life. Every woman should experience my fist buried deep inside her … er … oh my, I'm getting carried away …
VB: What's your opinion on people leveraging religion to censor the content of public libraries?
FN: Libraries are meant to be free of censorship. Librarians are professionals who sift through book catalogs and reviews of the tens of thousands of books published each year. It's best left to them to figure out what will make a well-rounded collection that will serve the public. Well-rounded, by the way, means that there should be something to piss off just about everyone, and that includes you and me. So if the hysterical Christian right wants to write a book about their ideas, I say, fine. Let the good librarians shelve it in the open stacks. If you or I wish to write a rebuttal, they can shelve that, too.
VB: Library Director Cindy Suter stands by her decision to carry your book. Library Advisory Board member George Spence thinks it's "crude" and "ought to be replaced by something more clinical." What does the notion of making LGBT sexuality more clinical say to you?
FN: Well, for starters, I'm not sure what Spence means by clinical. Some people say my book is pretty clinical, in that it gives basic health info, etc. But if by "clinical" Spence means boringly technical, I can't see who is going to write it, let alone read it. Really, even if someone wrote a lesbian sex guide that read like a car manual, he'd still object to it, wouldn't he? ("Insert phallus-shaped object into the lowermost anterior bodily orifice …")
VB: Any other thoughts?
FN: Finally, here's what I think: If there was one teenaged lesbian or bisexual girl in America who didn't know there was a book about the sexual experiences she so desires, she knows now. Thank you, Fox News.
Gingrich Admits Extramarital Affair During Clinton Impeachment
Pronunciation: hi-'pä-kr&-sE also hI-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -sies
See Republican.
Etymology: Middle English ypocrisie, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin hypocrisis, from Greek hypokrisis act of playing a part on the stage, hypocrisy, from hypokrinesthai to answer, act on the stage, from hypo- + krinein to decide — more at CERTAIN
1 : a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion
2 : an act or instance of hypocrisy
Worst Person in the World
Yes, even worse than Preznit McFuckwit. Ann Coulter, the walking, talking, mass of festering pus who put the c in cunt has been at it again. No need to repeat her hate speech here. Suffice to say it's already circled the planet at least a dozen times, but this time it's not playing very well anywhere except in the vacuous skulls of the hate-filled "christians" of the far reich wing. No two ways about it, every time this attention- starved meth-head opens her twat piehole, nothing but toxic waste gushes out. If there's one person even more deserving to be taken out by an errant meteorite than the wanking chimp himself, it's this skanky ho.
At least someone at CNN is paying attention.
There are those who will undoubtedly say that by calling her names I'm stooping to her childish level.
I. Don't. Care.
The Democrats seem to have have this twisted view that they need to be above all the name calling and mud slinging that the Republicans are so well known for. On a purely philosophical level I definitely agree with that. It's a lesson that was drummed into most of us by our parents when we were growing up. "Don't sink to their level." But on the other hand, the only way to take on a schoolyard bully is to stand up to him and kick him in his fucking nuts. And someone needs to do that very publicly to Coulter and her ilk. If the Dems would show even half the spine that the American people apparently believed they possessed when they voted them back into the majority last November, the entire Bush administration would be buried in subpoenas by now and would be lawyering up against imminent impeachment proceedings. But sadly, that isn't so. Because Democrats are "nice," we get toothless non-binding resolutions that can't even be brought up for discussion, much less the full-fledged purging of the Executive branch that this country is crying out for.
Jeezus Fucking Christ! Is it any wonder that most of the people in this country are walking around seething with anger? It's not because of our fellow citizens; we're for the most part united in the belief that our country is being led down a very wrong path by an administration that has exhibited no respect for the rule of law and has demonstrated time and again the only thing it excels at is incompetence. We're angry because of what is (or rather, what is not) happening in Washington!
More Hypocrisy from the Bible Thumpers
"Pastoring to Police." Oh that's what you call it now.
Rev. Lonnie Latham, a notoriously anti-gay Southern Baptist Convention heavyweight who resigned his post after being arrested for "offering to engage in an act of lewdness" (read: seeking meat whistle lessons from an undercover cop posing as a male prostitute), has now asserted his right to solicit sex from that cop. And he's enlisted the anti-Christian commie pinkos at the ACLU to help him.
Sometimes you have no choice but to just laugh at these nutjobs.