The earth is getting fracked to death and other excitements...

Killing whales in search of oil.

Voices in a train station singing an old Icelandic hymn.

"Saving" our schools.

Getting up off the floor.

Hobbit number 2!




How watching Breaking Bad helped a woman dump an abusive boyfriend.  

Josh Marshall discusses Ted Cruz.

The difference between Republicans and Democrats described by one day in October.

Radioactive wastewater from fracking found in Pennsylvanian stream.

Dabs and dollops

How not to be a creepy harasser.  What a GOP controlled government would be like for women.  Besides... there is no war on women by the Republicans. Nope, nope, no way.

Eat less meat and save the world.

Emergency responder  cyber cockroach... which will inevitably be used to spy on humans....

Romney's religion will control him more than he acknowledges.

Hungary tosses out Monsanto and the IMF.  And speaking of Monsanto: Roundup Herbicide Linked To Parkinson’s-Related Brain Damage

Ralph Reed:  Hypocrite

Selling out the public education system.

 How to cope with suddenly being homeless.

Why would people be taking sexual advice from these people?

Revelations of the sexual abuse of children by priests at Catholic institutions have swept across Europe and into Benedict's native Germany. The pope himself has come under fire for a case dating to his tenure as archbishop of Munich and another dating to his stint as the head of the Vatican office responsible for disciplining priests.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, a top Vatican official, acknowledged in an interview published Saturday that church authorities had on occasion maintained silence over cases of sex abuse. But he defended the pope, saying Benedict "was the first one who — already as a cardinal _felt the need for new, harsher rules."

Harsher rules? Like hitting them with bigger rulers?

Yet we have people in our own secular government who want to give weight to what a bunch of these old men in funny hats have to say about the reproductive control of women.



(click pic for link) Read the quote bubble in the left hand corner.

You do what you want, Rep. Stupak. Just leave me and my family out of your plans, thanks.

You damned hussy!!

It's ALL your fault!

Blame the victim: Religious leaflet claims ‘ungodly’ dressed women provoke rape

Canter handed her “Women & Girls” and Yates started reading.

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”

She was obviously asking for it? What century are we in again? Burkas for women?



And this will prevent men from rape?

No.

So, nice try, you horny fundamentalist. Realize society expects you to control yourself, not the women around you.

When adults have unquestioned power over children

It often is misused:

DUBLIN (AFP) – A shocking new report has identified hundreds of victims of child sex abuse by Irish Catholic priests, officials said Tuesday, two months after a landmark study found "endemic" mistreatment.

A government-appointed commission of investigation headed by a judge has been probing allegations of abuse by priests in the archdiocese of Dublin -- the country's biggest -- since March 2006.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has warned that the report -- presented to Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on Tuesday -- would "shock us all."

It is the first time the state has investigated how the once-powerful Church in mainly Catholic Ireland has run its affairs.

It probed whether the Church reported abuse allegations or attempted to "obstruct, prevent or interfere with the proper investigation" of complaints.

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said the Church authorities had identified between 400 and 450 people that allege they were abused by one of 152 Dublin priests since 1940.

"I would like to stress that that is a very conservative estimate and is likely to rise," she told AFP.

Will the Catholic Church actually learn from this? Is it possible? We can only wait and see....

I can't believe we're still having to explain this.

Thank you for being brave enough to make this video. It breaks my heart.

Update: Why we need doctors to know how to do late-term abortions.

Longing for the days when men were men

And women were chaste... *sheesh*:

Ann of Feministing:

I can't believe we missed this. Last week, after a debate over legislation that would amend the state constitution to say that it does not guarantee the right to abortion or require funding for abortion, Tennessee state Sen. Doug Henry (at right), said,

“Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse. Today it’s simply, ‘Let’s don’t go forward with this act.’ ”

In the modern era, now that all women are dirty whores, rape is really no big deal. After all, women can just say no!

Perhaps we should write Sen. Henry an email or two and let him know what has and hasn't changed about sexual assault in this country?

Apparently women being in charge of their bodies has made rape so much harder to define or something. Damn those hippies! At this very moment, Sen. Henry is receiving an education from women across the US. (Read the comments to Ann's post.)

Happy Valentine's Day to you, sir!

A peek into future corporations

If we hold no one accountable for their actions:

Former Halliburton/KBR employees have described an atmosphere of “rampant sexual harassment.” Poe has also confirmed that his office has heard from multiple other women who were victims of sexual assault while working for KBR in Iraq.

But... no one will pursue Jamie Leigh Jones' rape case:

The Bush administration has been anything but cooperative. Both the State and Justice departments refused to give Poe “answers on the status” of the investigation. The DoJ “refused to send a representative” to a Congressional hearing last month, and the State, Defense and Justice departments all missed Nelson’s deadline for answering questions.

Now, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense has written to Nelson and other lawmakers, saying that his agency will not investigate the allegations:

In letters to lawmakers, DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter said that because the Justice Department still considers the investigation into Jones’ case open, there is no need for him to look into the matter.

“[T]he U.S. Justice Department has issued a statement that they are investigating the allegations,” wrote Kicklighter’s office to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who had requested he look into the matter. “No further investigation by this agency into the allegations made by [Jones] is warranted.”

Creating all that new 'reality' really went to their heads:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The 'new empire' has been run by barbarians who have little regard for human suffering.

Rapists rape people.

It does not matter nor do they care what the victim was wearing at the time.

Update 12/18: No consent. There is nothing gray about it. No consent means rape.

Rape needs to be called rape. Not gray rape. Not date rape. Not "a disagreement between two lovers over whether there was consent on one particular occasion." There's really no need for anything fancier when it simply describes after all, in every situation, a terrible act for which there was no consent.

Faith-based idiocy still fully funded

Pigs in a trough sprinkled with holy water:

Over the past six years George W. Bush's faith-based Administration and a conservative Republican Congress transformed the small-time abstinence-only business into a billion-dollar industry. These dangerously ineffective sexual health enterprises flourish not because they spread "family values" but because of generous helpings of the same pork-heavy gumbo Bush & Co. brought to war-blighted Iraq and Katrina-hammered New Orleans--a mix of back-scratching cronyism, hefty partisan campaign donations, high-dollar lobbyists, a revolving door for political appointees and a lack of concern for results.
[snip]
With Democrats now controlling Congress, this faith-based feeding trough may soon run dry. At press time, Democrats are poised to cut off one $50 million abstinence-only funding stream, through Title V, which requires renewal by June 30. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who chairs the House government reform committee, is considering hearings on Bush's abstinence programs--hearings that could expose the conservative pork barrel they've become. Since February--perhaps to avoid those Waxman subpoenas--three ACF directors have resigned. First to leave was Jeffrey Trimbath, who jumped to a fundraising post with the Heritage Foundation. A month later Keroack vacated his post. Then on April 2 Wade Horn announced his resignation. But the revolving door of influence-peddling is still turning. Horn hired on with Deloitte Consulting, where according to a Deloitte statement he "will be a key advisor to health and human services clients of Deloitte Consulting's state government practice." Horn's former boss at HHS, Tommy Thompson, already heads Deloitte's Center for Health Solutions.
[snip]
Without oversight and defunding from Congress, the money will continue to flow for the next five years into Raymond Ruddy's extended family of antiabortion, anti-condom, anti-gay, abstinence-only Protestant evangelicals and Catholics--a radical consortium that threatens the health of millions.

They're just making little soldiers for the next war

Why should we care?

Did you know that women in the US armed forces are currently denied access to legal reproductive options?

About 350,000 women currently serve in the military, making up about 15 percent of all active-duty personnel. But federal law does little to protect their reproductive rights. Not only are servicewomen banned from accessing abortion care at all military medical facilities, many can't even obtain emergency contraception at their base pharmacy and thus have no effective access to Plan B contraceptives.

Timely access to emergency contraception is important for military women, especially since nearly 3,000 incidents of sexual assault were reported in the military last year-- an approximate 24 percent increase from 2005. Congress has an opportunity to improve health care for women in the military with a bill sponsored by lawmakers in both parties supporting the addition of Plan B to the list of medications that must be stocked at every military health-care facility.

3000 sexual assaults? A 24% increase? They're supposed to lie back and think of America? WTF????

Explaining the boob wars and sexism on the net

NTodd has the timeline. (And the following link)

Jessica Valenti, editor of Feministing.com, reports about sexism on the net:

Jill Filipovic, a 23-year-old law student who also writes on the popular blog, Feministe, recently had some photographs of her uploaded and subjected to abusive comments on an online forum for students in New York. "The people who were posting comments about me were speculating as to how many abortions I've had, and they talked about 'hate-fucking' me," says Filipovic. "I don't think a man would get that; the harassment of women is far more sexualised - men may be told that they're idiots, but they aren't called 'whores'."

Most disturbing is how accepted this is. When women are harassed on the street, it is considered inappropriate. Online, though, sexual harassment is not only tolerated - it's often lauded. Blog threads or forums where women are attacked attract hundreds of comments, and their traffic rates rocket.

Jessica concludes the article:

Thankfully, women are fighting back. Sparked by the violent harassment of Sierra, one blogger started a "stop cyberbullying" campaign. This was picked up by hundreds of other bloggers and an international women's technology organisation, Take Back the Tech, a global network of women who encourage people to "take back online spaces" by writing, video blogging, or podcasting about online harassment.

It won't mean the end of misogyny on the web, but it is a start. Such campaigns show that women are ready to demand freedom from harassment and fear in our new public spaces. In the same way that we should be able to walk down the street without fear of being raped, women shouldn't have to stay quiet online - or pretend to be men - to be free of threats and harassment. It is time to take back the sites.

Update: Stop Cyberbullying site has info and coping techniques.

Didn't we go through this with George Senior, too?

A boy sex scandal involving Abu Gonzales and a massive cover-up:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, both already under siege for other matters, are now being accused of failing to prosecute officers of the Texas Youth Commission after a Texas Ranger investigation documented that guards and administrators were sexually abusing the institution's teenage boy inmates.

Among the charges in the Texas Ranger report were that administrators would rouse boys from their sleep for the purpose of conducting all-night sex parties.

(Via Tengrain of Mock Paper Scissors.)

Update: Just in case you think I'm just picking on George Senior for fun:

"Gannongate," which is only barely mentioned by the mainstream news media, threatens to expose a GOP pedophile and male prostitution ring dating back to the 1980s and the administration of George H. W. Bush. James D. Guckert, using the name Jeff Gannon and possibly other aliases, was also running gay porn sites, one with a U.S. Marine Corps theme that solicited males for prostitution.

And:

The following archive paints a chilling portrait of what is really going on in the upper echelons of the ruling elite here in America. The story involves children from orphanages in Nebraska being flown around the United States by top Republican officials in order to engage in child sex orgies with America's ruling elite. It is a fact that during the 1980's, child sexual services were provided by top Republican officials to key, bureaucrats and diplomats but most importantly, there is a chilling proximity of all of these events and personalities, to the President of the United States at the time, George H.W. Bush. And there have been victims who claim that the President himself engaged in the activities. It is a tale of child sex, murder, espionage, blackmail, and huge payoffs. And all the players are involved. From the White House to the CIA to the media barrons to the Republican elite - right down to the orphanages where they procured their victims.

Interesting, isn't it?