Dear you:

I am sure you have heard that quietude can lapse into a form suppression, which can then fuse into a form of censorship  – which the  good, Sophisticated people, like you, call omission.  Things Fall Apart, now that’s a good book! How about No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God. Totally ommited. But go on ahead, sir, take your position. Achebe didn’t think so fondly of Conrad. Why don’t we talk about that? Omitted. Just some examples, which you may need – I understand you mistake Fitzgerald and Steinbeck for artists. Make me laugh: I know this – a man go to do what he got to do.  Jeeze.   It works out well how you all love the books on the pre-subscribed reading list.  But hey, your hands look really clean. My nails are short. You should have called.   I told noone yet everyone knows. Repression. I thought I extended you my hand. If I did, or if I didn’t, you didn’t trust it. And I don’t have anything left.  I know your not answering anymore then I’m coming back. Go ahead, take your position. Did I say I’m not angry?

Politicians share personality traits with serial killers

Bush, Obama and Cheney

LA Times Blog
June 15, 2009

“While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government.“- Andrew Malcolm

There’s stuff everywhere.

Stuff that is a cruel joke:

The 5th International! has been declared at long last by…Hugo Chavez. This will unite the forces of revolutionary socialism world-wide. In Chavez’s view, of course, the forces of revolutionary socialism include…Mugabe. And Ahmadinejad. And the Chinese Communist Party. And…wait, what?

Thing is, I could sort of understand these sort of vile endorsements before – though I’m not too motivated to insist on a charitable reading of Chavez’s words, such a reading was available: he’s kissing ass because he wants/needs international allies. He wants a bit more security against threats from the US and its allies. It’s not what you’d expect of an ‘internationalist’ in the genuine sense but then, why would we expect such things from Chavez? The point is, it’s entirely standard and expected from a government. It’s exactly what every other government does.

But actually proclaiming a Socialist International, and then sending your people to receive ideological training in China, is…well, a cruel joke.

Stuff that is also a cruel joke:

Pardoning turkeys. So there’s a special day on which millions of turkeys are to be killed and ritually eaten. You get one or two of these turkeys and, with great publicity, and great fanfare, decline to kill them. This provokes hearty laughter. After all, you can’t spell slaughter, without laughter!

Stuff that is hardly even funny anymore:

In Nepal, there has been a grand religious festival of death, in which a few hundred thousand animals of various sorts have been killed by pious God-fearing folks from all over the country and beyond.

Quote: “I slaughtered around 20 buffalo in 2004. This time I managed to behead about 70. I wish the sacrifice has not ended.”

And: “I do it for spiritual satisfaction.”

Note: roughly the same number of animals have been slaughtered in the world for food since you started reading this post. With the precision of ‘roughly’ tied to how fast a reader you are.

Question: is it more disturbing that people do this sort of thing for spiritual satisfaction, or that they do it with complete casual indifference?

More Cruel Jokes:

You remember the world’s biggest war? Yeah, still going on. Currently some people are expressing concern that the peace-keepers are actually keeping war, and troops sent to protect civilians are actually protecting people who are massacring civilians. The Congolese government has said “That’s really what we can call an exaggeration”. Well then. Thanks for that.

In fact, it looks suspiciously like the actual international response is largely a series of actions to prop up and support the government, and take no action against the companies funding violence for resource access, surrounded by high-pitched humanitarian trills and whistles.

And Thanksgiving, which itself is a somewhat cruel joke. We exterminated you, but there was a brief period of amiability early on! Let’s celebrate that!

What lesson can we draw from all this? From the jovial celebrations, ironic mercy, grand revolutionary pronouncements, grand humanitarian pronouncements, and perhaps most of all from the ’spiritual satisfaction’ – what they seem to illustrate is that humans have a striking ability to take violence and cruelty and destruction and give it pretty much every positive emotional spin you can think of.

With the ‘leaked emails’ confirmed as authentic, many experts are sifting through the materials and analyzing them.  One thing which has been highlighted was the discussion about tree ring studies, from which the (now infamous – you can get T-shirts with it) ‘hide the decline’ phrase comes from. Here, I would like to explain what the ‘tree ring’ and ‘multi-proxy reconstruction’ thing is all about, and why it really, really matters. When constructing the graphs of global temperatures, the scientists ran into a tiny little problem:  how do we know what the Earth’s temperature was like, say, 1 500 years ago? There were no ’standardized measurements’…. So, how do we ‘know’? Aside:  my explanation is going to be a simplification for the sake or clarity, which runs the danger of being an over-simplification.  Please, consider it to be a starting point for your own inquiry, not anything more. The idea is that there are other ‘indicators’ of the Earth’s temperature than just ‘direct measurements’, like we can make today. For example, ‘tree ring data’.  Each year’s growth can be measured on each tree, because tree-trunks grow radially outwards:  the latest year adds the newest (out-most) ring to the tree.  By looking at the rings, scientists can see which ones are thicker (meaning that the tree added ‘more growth’ that year) and which ones are thinner (meaning the tree grew less that year). The reasoning goes something like this:

1. The years when the weather is nice and warm, plants do well and grow more.
2. Trees are plants, therefore trees do well grow more:  the warmer a year it was, the bigger the tree’s growth ring for that year will be!
3. Therefore, looking back and comparing the size of tree rings will tell us when it was warmer and colder.

Sounds good, right? So, that is what they did.  (By ‘they’, I mean the scientists who promote the ‘Anthropogenic Climate Change’ agenda and on whose scientific work the current political policies are based.  I shall refer to them as ‘the IPCC cabal’) They took core samples of very, very old trees and looked at their rings, counted the years and centuries, compared them, analyzed them, assigned temperature values to various ring thicknesses – and they came up with a nifty little graph. Because it does not measure the temperature directly, but uses a ‘proxy’ (a substitute) – the growth of trees – this nifty little curve was included on the graph they submitted to the IPCC report as one of the ‘proxies’ for actual temperature records from long ago. Except that…. During the time period when we have had the most reliable actual temperature readings, say, from 1960 to now, the tree ring growth did not correspond to the temperatures the scientists measured!  To the contrary:  while these scientists measured an in increase in temperatures, the tree ring ‘record’ from 1960 to now shows a DECLINE in temperatures! The scientists did notice this divergence:  one set of readings went up, the other down. That can clearly be seen from the email exchanges between them – and from the graphs they exchanged, which I linked to above. Now, at this point, a real scientist would look at their data and say:  ”We have actual, measured temperatures going up, while the temperatures reconstructed from tree-ring temperatures are going down!  Obviously, there are other factors at play here:  either some of our measurements are wrong, or the method how we are using to figure out temperatures from tree rings is wrong.  Therefore, either have to figure out what we are missing or figure out where we have made a mistake:  either way, this data cannot be used as is!” Alas, that is not what happened. Instead, they decided that since the first ‘divergent’ year that the ‘common data’ was available for both the actual measured temperatures and the tree-ring proxy temperatures was 1960, they would simply stop showing the tree-ring data from 1960 on!!! Then, nobody could tell that the tree-ring data showed something different than what they were claiming! This is hard to believe.  Please, consider the picture below:

The bigger graph was what these people submitted to the IPCC thing.  The picture on the right (or below – depending on your browser and settings) is a close-up of the last few decades of the graph.  It shows the actual temperatures measured in modern times (black), and the ‘proxy’ temperatures as they were gleaned by the ’scientists’ for the past dozen or so centuries. The ‘tree-ring data’  - the temperatures they figured out the Earth ‘had to have been’ based on the thickness of the tree-rings from those years – is the pale blue line. When one looks at the enlarged view of the graph, it becomes obvious that that line stops a few decades before the other ones do:  1960, to be exact…. And, the email exchanges show that the only reason that this data was excluded – why the line was not continued – was not because they did not have the data….it was because they did not like what the data showed!!! And THAT is FRAUD! By excluding the data, by stopping the blue line on that graph in 1960, even though the data since then exists, the IPCC Cabal of scientists PROVED they knew they were committing fraud! And THAT is why so many respectable scientists are so very, very angry.  Disappointed, and angry.

Students from all UC’s (UCI, UCSD, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCD, UCSB, UCSC, UC Merced, UCR) gather to address the fee hikes induced to widen the education gap between the privileged and less so.
UC Regents Pass 32% Fee Increase on Students, Sparks Outrage

Daily Nexus
November 19, 2009

UCLA

UC Berkeley

Asking myself, “How crazy can this world get?”

By Michelle Malkin

Nov. 22, 2009

Original article at:

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/22/barbie-meets-sharia/

The Burka Barbie

One of the world’s most famous children’s toys, Barbie, has been given a makeover – wearing a burkha.

Wearing the traditional Islamic dress, the iconic doll is going undercover for a charity auction in connection with Sotheby’s for Save The Children.

More than 500 Barbies went on show yesterday at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy.

…The company director of Laird Assessors from The Wirral, Cheshire, said: ‘Bring it on Burkha Barbie, I think this is a great idea.

“I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.”

Brief descriptions of queerphobia, transphobia, racism, and violence follow.  Nothing too graphic.

I am queer by choice.  I am trans by choice.  I’m speaking for my experiences, and I know that some folks would like to argue with me about this.  I don’t mean to speak for anyone else.  I am interested in hearing others’ experiences, but I ask that others not speak for me.  A lot of people think of themselves as trans and queer genetically, or from birth, or socialization, or for a political statement, or that it doesn’t matter, and many other beautiful ways and reasons.  I affirm and honor others’ experiences, and I think that my experience of being queer and trans by choice are congruent and mutually affirming with others’ ways of being.

The world is built to pressure me into being a cisgendered straight woman.  As a person with white and normatively abled privilege, if I had continued to identify as a cisgendered woman and if I had identified as straight, my choices and identities would have been affirmed and upheld as natural, right, and true by my society and most of the people, cultural forms, and institutions I interacted with.  So, I do not have to be queer or trans.  If there is anything in this world I have to be, it is a cisgendered straight person.  I choose not to give in, not to concede to every pressure, every checkbox I don’t know how to fill in, every mispronoun, every street harassment.

I make the choice, against all of that violence and pressure, to be trans and to be queer.  That is sheer fighting bullheaded stubbornness.  Holy shit, that means I am really strong, to withstand a world that says I do not exist, or if I do exist, that I should not.  I am powerful, and I don’t give in.   Being queer and being trans is so beautiful and though it’s difficult, I feel blessed that I can choose to be who I am: is there anything else more wonderful?

My position as a trans and queer man is informed by my privileges, as a white, U.S.-born, normatively able-bodied person, and all of these things make it easier for me to be out, in comparison with a lot of other trans and queer people in the world.  Experiences of racism, colonialism, and ableism, among others, change the modes and probability of different kinds of queerphobic and transphobic violence, and I do not mean to say that my privileged position applies to all trans and queer peope.  I honor the needs and choices of people who are not out or who express their queerness in different ways, and I recognize their strength, as they work to survive.

Now, I know that a lot of queerphobic and transphobic rhetoric relies on queerness being a choice.  The argument goes,”Well, you choose to be queer or trans, so you should choose to be straight and cisgendered.”  A lot of counter-arguments  are based on the helplessness of queer people to control whether or not we turn out queer.  I have problems with that counter-argument, because it concedes the point: queerness is an affliction, but my goodness, we can’t help it, and so please let us continue existing.

My counterargument (and I’m plagiarizing a bit from my sister) is that yes, I choose to be queer every day.  Also, folks who think my choices should change can kindly fuck off.  I don’t go into their bedroom and attempt to convert them to the virtues of sodomy.  Now that I think of it, maybe someone should do that for them.

In the November issue of The American Spectator Burton Folsom, Jr., author and professor of history at Hillsdale College, has produced a wonderfully informative essay titled, “Obama’s Vision, Through History”, from which I have freely borrowed in constructing this post and suggest that anyone who is concerned about our future take the time to read in its entirety.

Prof. Folsom makes his argument by using as examples the policies of such  “constitutionalists” as Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan and comparing their effectiveness against the “interventionist” policies of the likes of Herbert Hoover, FDR, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George Bush and now Barack Obama.

The “constitutionalists” advance the concept of limited government that allows entrepreneurs and the freemarkets to create and spur growth, whereas the opposite side of the coin, the “interventionists” embraces Government planning, massive federal spending, wealth redistribution, the creation of government jobs, and a Keynesian fine-tuning of the economy.

A key component of the “constitutionalist” approach is the reduction of income tax rates and slashing federal spending thereby unleashing the entrepreneurs, reducing the federal debt, and expanding the release of the human energy so necessary for economic recovery.

Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury under both Harding and Coolidge,  and a banking genius who had helped launch Alcoa and Gulf Oil (along with other successful corporations) was the first to make the then astonishing claim that cutting tax rates might actually increase revenue.  He insisted that, “it seems difficult to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government and that more revenue may be obtained by lower rates”.

He was supported by President Coolidge, who stated, “I agree perfectly with those who wish to relieve the small taxpayer by getting the largest possible contribution from people with large incomes.  But if the rates on large incomes are so high that they disappear, the small taxpayers will be left to bear the entire burden”.

With the help of a Republican Congress, income tax rates were chopped across the board, leaving the wealthiest Americans paying at a 25% marginal rate.  This resulted in the 1920’s budgets showing surpluses every year, unemployment plummeting to 2.4 percent by 1923 and from 1921 to 1929 the GNP rose 48 percent, one-third of the national debt was erased and the “average annual earnings of employees” rose 34 percent.  Equally important, “Entrepreneurs enjoyed one of their most creative periods in U.S. history: from radios to sliced bread to Scotch tape, inventors marketed new products” while “older inventions secured the capital required to emerge”.

Herbert Hoover succeeded Coolidge and immediately put into practice his previously-rejected (while serving as Secretary of Commerce in Coolidge’s cabinet) beliefs that targeted intervention could improve the economy without affecting the gains achieved from free markets.  He also imposed the highest tariff in U. S. history and began federal subsidizing of farmers, bankers, industrialists and the unemployed.  The Federal Reserve then joined in, lowering  interest rates and shrinking the money supply.  These actions all contributed to the Great Depression.  Hoover reacted by raising income taxes to a top rate of 63 percent, insuring that jobs would increasingly disappear to the extent that when FDR arrived on the scene in 1932 as the Democratic nominee for President umemployment stood at 25%.

Prof. Folsom  characterizes these developments by postulating that, “You can’t create jobs by taxing one group and giving to another – you can only redistribute existing wealth.  To create wealth, you have to cut tax rates, not raise them.  That was the chief premise of the constitutionalists”.

This concept was further re-enforced by the actions of FDR who after  campaigning against Hoover’s deficits which he described as, ” so great that it makes us catch our breath”, once being elected proceeded to practice the art of “full-scale interventionism” by indulging in projects such as the AAA which paid farmers not to produce (resulting in crop shortages necessitating in importation of cotton, corn and wheat in massive amounts).  He continued to inflate the government sector through the WPA, shifting what could have been private jobs into the public sector, limiting the creation new jobs and doing little to jump-start the economy.  In 1939, the unemployment rate has reached was almost 21 percent, prompting Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s good friend and his Secretary of the Treasury to confess, “We have tried spending money.  We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…..I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much enemployment as when we started….And an enormous debt to boot!”.

With the exception of our last “constitutionalist” President, Ronald Reagan, all of the other men sitting in the White House have been influenced to varying degrees by the lure of  “interventionist” philosophy.  It is no coincidence that during his years as President the U.S. GNP grew by one-third while inflation and unemployment plummeted.

Bill Clinton, goaded by a Republican-dominated Congress, did cut capital gains taxes and sign welfare-reform legislation and the country enjoyed prosperity, a low misery index and, in the last years of his administration, even budget surpluses.

Barack Obama fancies himself a history buff, but insists on ignoring the results that history provides  when he subjects our country to the same failed economic and leadership policies that he so fervently now espouses.  Has he learned nothing from the abandonment of these failed policies by the Soviet Union, Ireland, New Zeland, Sweden and Germany, who revised their tax policies after watching the economic growth of the United States become the model for the rest of the world?

Obama Hood and his merry band of tax cheats, assorted shysters and grifters, would-be communists, revolutionaries and other assorted ideologues continue their headlong rush to rob the poor (and most everyone else) to give to the rich and well-connected, leading America deeper into the swamp of overwhelming debt and insistent government intervention.

Figures. Obama Commie Czar Wants Hannity & Rightwing Websites Censured
November 24, 2009 by Gateway Pundit

One of the communist-supporters and kooks working with Obama in the White House wants Sean Hannity and rightwing websites muzzled.
Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein wrote this in his latest book.
World Net Daily and FOX Nation reported:

Websites should be obliged to remove “false rumors” while libel laws should be altered to make it easier to sue for spreading such “rumors,” argued Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar.

In his recently released book, “On Rumors,” Sunstein specifically cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers.

He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”

Ayers became a name in last year’s presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years. Obama also was said to have launched his political career at a 1995 fundraiser in Ayers’ apartment.

Has anyone asked Mr. Sunstein what would have happened to Dan Rather during the scandal about Bush’s National Guard records had these proposed laws been in effect?

Democrats, bias, bigotry, censorship, discrimination, elitism, free speech, government, hate speech, hypocrisy, intolerance, left wing, liberalism, marxism, nanny state, oppression, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, politics, propaganda, scandal, socialism

Pa. university students upset about fitness class
November 21, 2009 by KATHY MATHESON

PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania university’s requirement that overweight undergraduates take a fitness course to receive their degrees has raised the hackles of students and the eyebrows of health and legal experts.

Officials at historically black Lincoln University said Friday that the school is simply concerned about high rates of obesity and diabetes, especially in the African-American community.

“We know we’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic,” said James L. DeBoy, chairman of Lincoln’s department of health, physical education and recreation. “We have an obligation to address this head on, knowing full well there’s going to be some fallout.”

The fallout began this week on Lincoln’s campus about 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia, where seniors — the first class affected by the mandate — began realizing their last chance to take the class would be this spring.

Tiana Lawson, a 21-year-old senior, wrote in this week’s edition of The Lincolnian, the student newspaper, that she “didn’t come to Lincoln to be told that my weight is not in an acceptable range. I came here to get an education.”

In an interview Friday, Lawson said she has no problem with getting healthy or losing weight. But she does have a problem with larger students being singled out.

“If Lincoln truly is concerned about everyone being healthy, then everyone should have to take this gym class, not just people who happen to be bigger,” she said.

bias, culture, discrimination, diversity, education, elitism, government, health, health care, ideology, left wing, liberalism, nanny state, oppression, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, scandal

 

Ontario stands firm on street racing law Toronto Star  A judge overturned the stunt-driving conviction of Jane Raham, 62, of Oakville who accelerated past a truck to get out of its blind spot. A second Ontario judge has ruled that the province’s stunt driving legislation is unconstitutional, but provincial police say they will continue to lay charges under the so-called street racing law.A street-racing charge automatically leads to a conviction, which can carry a minimum fine of $2,000, an immediate driver suspension and vehicle impoundment, as well as a maximum jail sentence of six months.Justice Peter West, a provincial court judge in Newmarket, found that an accused driver’s Charter rights are “clearly infringed” by the potential jail time because the law doesn’t permit the person to put forward a defence. More than 15,000 drivers have been charged under the stunt driving laws since they were introduced in 2007, Ont. street-racing law constitutional, says AG CTV.ca

Judge tosses stunt-driving charge as unconstitutional National Post

EVEN COPS DO NOT THINK SPEEDING IS A SERIOUS CRIME…

Feb. 10 2009 4:35:51 PM  The Canadian Press  TORONTO — It appears no one is exempt from Ontario’s street racing law — including the police. A provincial police officer in an unmarked vehicle was stopped on Highway 403 on Jan. 31 for driving 65 km/h over the limit. Det.-Const. Heidi Fischer was charged after an investigation determined she was “not within the lawful execution of her duties at the time.” Because she was charged with exceeding the speed limit by more than 50 km/h, her driver’s licence was suspended for seven days — and her police vehicle was also impounded for a week..

ALL THESE HARSHER POLICE DEMANDS ARE MAKING CANADA  A  POLICE STATE

It is not the rapists, drunk drivers that mostly  fill the courts calendars, docks it is mostly the revenue generating traffic tickets.. if the government wants to get tough on crime, as it purports, it should go after the real criminals. Drunk, impaired drivers too.  After all speeding is not the major cause of vehicular accidents, what you did not know that yet? and the police Chief himself did not tell you? What is then the cause of major car accidents? Drunk driving, road rage, impaired driving, distracted while driving…. and what the revenue generating traffic division has not gone after all this mostly instead yet too? and why Not? The Cops becoming judge and jury, now taking the law into their own hands  even when they still say “ In most cases, our cops are the best to judge if stunt driving is really stunt driving. Or, is it simply speeding. If that is the case, they should charge accordingly or face more legal challenges.” And them the cops still being continually soft on drunk drivers is cause too many cops do  drink alcohol now too?  http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/speeding-is-not-the-major-cause-of-car-accidents-still/

http://picasaweb.google.com/anonconformer/Thenonconformer# OR http://www.mininova.org/tor/3176107

And do see  also the other posts here about bad cops, alcohol and speeding.. 

http://postedat.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/the-unfortunate-facts-of-life/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/bullies-free-speech/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/drink-alcohol-and-die/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/alcohol/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/third-police-vehicle-impounded-under-hypocrtical-speeding-legislation/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/drunk-driving-arrests-jump/

http://postedat.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/a-blatant-tax-on-the-motorist-speed-cameras/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/call-it-what-you-want-but-it-is-not-about-safety/

http://thenonconformer.multiply.com/journal/item/1/No_cop_is_above_the_law

http://postedat.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/paradoxically-despite-all-the-dangers-warnings/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/pretentious-incompetent-in-real-life/

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/speeding-is-not-the-major-cause-of-car-accidents-still/

Cop charged for crashing into car killing 2 teens

Huffington Post
November 18, 2009

The officer has been charged with manslaughter but is on paid leave from the department.

Protester Knocked Out Cold by Nightstick

Imagine if this was your daughter at the police station

Reuters photo

They look the same to me: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is surrounded by clerics during his swearing-in ceremony in Tehran in August (above). Although Ahmadinejad holds the title of president, it is Iran’s clerics who hold the power and call the shots in Iran. Below is a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops earlier this month in Baltimore. The bishops’ conference is doing all that it can to sink U.S. health care reform unless its demands regarding abortion rights are met.

Associated Press photo

That a council of clerics calls the shots in the Muslim nation of Iran is ridiculed by the majority of Americans as oppressive theocracy, yet in the United States of America — “the land of the free” — we have shit like this (from The Associated Press today):

The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

A top Obama administration official is praising the new Senate health bill’s attempt to find a compromise on abortion coverage — even as an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says Sen. Harry Reid’s bill is the worst he’s seen so far on the divisive issue.

The bishops were instrumental in getting tough anti-abortion language adopted by the House, forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to accept restrictions that outraged liberals as the price for passing the Democratic health care bill.

Reid, D-Nev., now faces a similar choice: Ultimately, he will need the votes of a handful of Democratic senators who oppose abortion to get his bill through. Republicans hoping to block the health bill in the Senate are relishing the Democrats’ predicament….

Reid has steered the Senate bill in a direction that abortion-rights supporters can live with: allowing coverage for abortion in federally subsidized health care plans, provided that beneficiaries’ own premiums are used to pay for the procedure. But abortion opponents say his compromise would gut current restrictions that bar federal funding of abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother….

But Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops’ conference Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said Reid’s “is actually the worst bill” on [anti-abortion] issues….

On Friday, the bishops’ conference sent each senator a letter saying the Senate bill violates federal policy on abortion funding and must be changed. “If that fails,” the letter said, “the current legislation should be opposed.”

Reid’s bill would forbid including abortion coverage as a required medical benefit. However, it would allow a new government insurance plan to cover abortions and let private insurers that receive federal subsidies offer plans that include abortion coverage.

In all cases, the money to pay for abortions would have to come from premiums paid by beneficiaries themselves, kept strictly separate from federal subsidy dollars. Supporters say that would keep government funds from being used for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother as allowed under a current law known as the Hyde amendment….

Of course, there’s no question that things like Viagra and other boner-inducing drugs and vasectomies and other forms of male birth control should be covered in every health care plan, right? It’s only abortion that is the problem. No misogyny or patriarchy there!

Worst, though, is that we have Catholic clerics dictating U.S. government policy – giving a brand-new meaning to the term “American Taliban.”

Politico notes:

The big player here isn’t Reid or Pelosi but the Catholic Church, which helped get the Stupak [anti-abortion-rights] amendment into the House [health care reform] bill. Any abortion language may have to win the backing of the church for members to sign on – and the church is sticking by a tough anti-abortion stance that angers many liberals.

So the fate of health care reform is not up to our elected officials but is up to the Catholic church? Even though only about a quarter of Americans identify themselves as Catholic (and about 15 percent of Americans identify themselves with no religion at all or identify themselves as atheist or agnostic)?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: fuck the Catholic Church. That we non-Catholics still are battling these theofascists in the year 2009 is incredible.

First the Catholic church, with its partner in crime, the Mormon cult, pumped millions of dollars into a campaign of fear, hatred and lies that denied same-sex couples equal human and civil rights in my home state of California — equal human and civil rights that the California Supreme Court already had ruled belong to same-sex Californians.

Now, the Catholic church threatens national health care reform unless it contains prohibitions on abortion, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that first-trimester abortion is a legal medical procedure (and that later-term abortions are legal if the mother’s life is in jeopardy by the pregnancy).

If Catholics, Mormons and other “Christo”fascists want to enforce their backasswards beliefs among their own members, that’s fine – people (adults, anyway) have the option of leaving such dysfunctional, ironically anti-Christian organizations. But for the “Christo”fascists to force their backasswards beliefs upon all Americans is theocratic and is against the principles of the United States of America, which include the separation of church and state.

It’s time that we non-Catholics (and non-Mormons) do something about the theocracy that is being shoved down our throats. It’s past time, actually, to push back. 

I, for one, refuse to be dragged back to the Dark Ages.

New Global Internet Treaty — as bad as everyone’s been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.

BoingBoing.com
November 20, 2009

There is, however, little detail in the bill on how the government will stimulate broadband infrastructure.

Cop Tasers girl for resisting bedtime

The Star
November 20, 2009

Medlock said he will attempt to gain sole custody of his daughter.

Obama Allies Want New Tax To Pay For Cost Of Protecting Afghan Opium Fields, Bribing Taliban

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
November 20, 2009

Any war surtax will merely go straight to maintaining the agenda that Obama inherited from Bush, the continued looting of Afghanistan under the pretext of a “war on terror” that, as revelations about bribing the Taliban prove, doesn’t even exist.

Obama care’s final cloture vote passes Senate

The Heritage Foundation
November 21, 2009

What Reid thinks about Americans. . .

The Senate voted this evening by a 60-39 majority to commence debate on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bill that would radically expand government control over private health care decisions. The bill is over 2000 pages long, costs an estimated $2.5 trillion over the first ten years of implementation and carries a half trillion dollars in new taxes. Many Americans have to be thinking right now — they have heard from their dissenting constituents at Town Hall meetings and have seen the poll numbers for Obama’s health care bill dropping like a rock so why would they keep moving this bill forward?

This debate will center around many issues including huge taxes increases, economy-killing employer mandates and:

1. Abortion: Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) offered an amendment to the House bill to ban all federal funds flowing into the health care system from funding abortion. Senator Reid put language in the bill that allows some funds to go to abortion services by using an accounting gimmick. This issue could take the bill down, because the House approach is far different from the Senate approach. If this bill becomes a referendum on abortion policy, it may fail.

2. Cost: Senator Reid has promoted his bill as costing the federal government $849 billion and as a budget cutting bill. Conservatives in the Senate have pointed out that the costs are more accurately $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years of implementation because the benefits are not even scheduled to be paid out until 2014. There is a huge disparity between the two sides as to the cost of the bill and if it gets bigger and bigger on the Senate floor, then it may suffer a legislative implosion.

3. The Public Plan: Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) has pledged to support a filibuster of any bill containing the public option. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) will only accept a public option with a trigger. Other Senators have expressed reservations about different permutations of the public option. A bill with a too strong public option may not have the support to pass the Senate.

4. Wild Card: As with all these debates, there may be an issue that comes out of the blue and becomes central to the bill. There were debates over “death panels” during initial stages of the debates and controversies over coverage for illegal immigrants. Some other issue may be offered as an amendment or may be buried in the 2000 pages of the bill that may become the next controversy to prevent passage.

The week after Thanksgiving, the Senate will start the process of considering and voting on amendments to the bill. This process may go in one of two directions. It is possible that Reid uses the amendment process to buy just enough votes to pass the bill through targeted special interest amendments. Expect Connecticut, Nebraska, Arkansas, and, yet again, Louisiana to receive special treatment in the amendment process. If Senator Reid is able to buy support during this process, the bill will pass and the President will sign Obamacare before his State of the Union.

Scenario two kicks in if opponents of the bill play hardball. If opposing Senators offer non-germane amendments, like the legislation to restore the 2nd Amendment in the District of Columbia or a resolution of disapproval for Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Kahlid Sheik Mohammed in federal courts, then the Senate would be mixing some volatile issues into the health care mix. Regardless the course of action, this bill will either pass or fail as a direct result of the actions of a handful of Senators.

CBO: By 2019, Taxpayers Will Pay $196 Billion A Year for Obamacare, But 24 Million People Will Remain Uninsured

CNS News
November 19, 2009

In 2010, the year of the next congressional election, the gross cost of the subsidies is expected to be $0. In 2012, the year of the next presidential election, the gross cost of the subsidies in the bill is expected to be only $4 billion. But in 2014, the costs are expected to dramatically escalate to $48 billion for the year. From that point on, the costs increase every year, jumping to $147 billion by 2016 and then to $196 billion by 2019.

Dark sunshine is dripping from the ceiling to the floor
Like curing drops of blood singing in my core
No curtain that is dividing my skin from yours
Only the hijab of death that keeps me away from my Lord

I can’t even feel myself anymore
Life is just a dirty toilet
Without a door

Living outside my soul I am dying to know
Even one of my darkest thoughts
I can’t think any more
Like my ruh’ and my body
Both are crawling in another pool of filth on the sticky floor

You don’t know me
And I don’t blame you
This is just too dark
For the brightest camera to see
Like my skin has already melted with my qabr
It’s ok, I don’t even want you to see

Raging winds howling in my scattered mind
Dry tears stripping down the skin of my heart
Seeing clear images of paradise and hell at the same time
Shoes and laces of the blackest naar’
Cooking the brains in my forgetful head
Feeding myself with cups of creamy white milk
One dip in the rivers of the amazing rivers of Jannah
Will make us all of this forget.

‘’If I was a flag you could raise me
Tie me up where the wind of immorality has the power
To fly through my soul
But I am not a nation
I am a belief you cannot control.’’

Khansa(R.A)

‘‘Being handcuffed and tied up to the ceiling, with no privacy in any way, women detainees forced to use dirty toilets in front of men, the most intensified mental torturing methods, the secret cells, the keeping away of the media, the experiencing of almost dying several times, the shame, the despair, the crying of the hearts, the nightmares in daylight, the dreams, the hopes..of our beloved imprisoned brothers and sisters.’’

The truth revealed.

Source: cageprisoners.com

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