Going backwards into the Dark Ages

Where women are either pure and virginal, or sluts and should never be allowed to control their own bodies.... like this 11 year old Romanian girl who was raped and impregnated by her uncle. And doing God's work means this: Polish anti-abortionists get a 14 year old rape victim taken away from her mother.

What will come if abortion is ever outlawed. Making the medical procedure unavailable will not stop desperate women. There will just be more deaths. Which is apparently what many 'right-to-lifers' want. Shame, shunning, the scarlet letter, and baby as punishment.

These people are even working on trying to stop birth control and any other contraceptives, arguing that the pill kills babies (which it doesn't). So no sex education, no sex outside of marriage, no sex without babies, no birth control pills, no condoms, no abortions, no day care, no welfare.... no sex education....



Update 6/28: Mapaghimagsik has an excellent cartoon that fits this post! Click to go to her portfolio.

Friday Hoping

Phila of Bouphonia reminds us there are those who work for humanity instead of against it.



Except for certain cats...

We can thank the car companies for the oil fix we're in

Look at the background of this cute Norwegian car called a Think: (my bold)

Think's journey to the world market has been similarly full of detours. The company (previously called Pivco) began in 1991 and by 1998 had built more than 1,000 small and charismatic electric runabouts, sold mostly in Norway (where you still see a few on the road). Then, in 1999, the company was bought by the Yankee giant Ford Motor Co., which was scrambling at the time to comply with California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, essentially requiring automakers to build fleets of electric vehicles. Ford renamed the company Think Nordic and began a complete redesign of the car. When, in 2003, the American automakers succeeded in modifying California's mandate, Detroit's flirtation with electronic vehicles ended. General Motors Corp. famously killed the EV1 program, and Ford sold Think to a Swiss electronics firm.

"The lawyers stopped us," says Ole Fretheim, the factory's manager. Think went bankrupt in 2006.

The irony is that Ford had already poured $150 million into the Think City project, engineering among other things the car's rigid steel space frame, the crash structure. If and when it comes to the U.S. market -- the company opened an office in Menlo Park, Calif., earlier this year with plans to sell cars stateside in 2009 -- the Think City will be a rarity: A full-speed electric car meeting U.S. and European crash standards.

"The car was 95% complete when Ford stopped development in 2002," says Fretheim. In the long run, he says, the down time might have been a good thing. "When we started work again we had better options for batteries."

95% complete. We almost were there and the automakers tubed it. Why? Why? Why?

In response, here are five electric cars you can buy right now. (link via NTodd at Dohiyi Mir)

Knock on wood!

McCain is weirdly superstitious to the point of changing the campaign headquarter's elevator's number 13 to M.

So who gets to tell him our flag has ... THIRTEEN stripes?



Can we tell him it would be really really bad luck to bomb iran?

It goes without saying....

It's not always about you, George.

Awash

Early estimates suggest that the extent of the cleanup will be unlike anything some of the flooded cities have experienced. And some of what the water left behind is toxic, experts said, possibly tinged with raw sewage or chemical runoff from agriculture.

In Cedar Rapids alone, it is estimated that the 4,200 flooded houses are producing about a ton of debris each, mostly heavy appliances, electronics and furniture. Beyond that, businesses, schools, hospitals, churches and government offices are flooded, bringing the city’s total flood-related garbage load to about 300,000 tons, officials estimated.

A typical garbage truck can handle about four tons of trash.

“We’re looking at 10 to 15 times as much garbage as we’ve ever dealt with, so this is huge,” said Mark Jones, the superintendent of the city’s solid waste and recycling division. Backup trucks are arriving from across the state. “As you could see, it would take us forever to do this,” he said.

Lives destroyed by flooding occurs in the ocean as well:

Des Moines, IA (AHN) - The marine dead zone resulting from the Midwest flooding is expected to expand to over 10,000 square miles, according to researchers from the Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

The water in the dead zone, approximately the size of Massachusetts, does not have sufficient oxygen at depth to support marine life. Since 1990, the zone, located off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, usually covers 6,000 square miles, varying according to the flow of the Mississippi River.

Take a look at the army we have, Mr. Rumsfeld

And the war you wanted.

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The Defense Department's repair bill for dilapidated and destroyed equipment, weapons and vehicle is expected to exceed $100 billion this year. But if it settles the behemoth bill, the military may place in peril its plans to increase the size of the nation's armed forces.

Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House panel that oversees defense spending, blamed the rush to upgrade the military's equipment and facilities to the failure of Pentagon to plan for a long and costly Iraq war. The Defense Department wants to bolster the size of the military with 92,000 new soldiers and Marines.

To pay the $100 billion plus military repair bill, Pentagon has no choice except to cut on its personnel budget, Murtha said.

The Bush administration's war of choice. Their quagmire. Their blunder. Bush's legacy.

Proving that politicians are politicians the nation over

In both parties, on both sides of the aisle:

(The Politico) House Democrats who flipped their votes to support retroactive immunity for telecom companies in last week’s FISA bill took thousands of dollars more from phone companies than Democrats who consistently voted against legislation with an immunity provision, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org.

In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity. But last week, 94 Democrats who supported the March amendment voted to support the compromise FISA legislation, which includes a provision that could let telecom companies that cooperated with the government’s warrantless electronic surveillance off the hook.

The 94 Democrats who changed their positions received on average $8,359 in contributions from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint from January, 2005, to March, 2008, according to the analysis by MAPLight, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the connection between campaign contributions and legislative outcomes.

Retroactive immunity could squash about 40 lawsuits pending against telecommunication companies that helped the government monitor the telecommunications traffic of Americans without warrants. The telecom industry has lobbied hard to insure that the provision is included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act update Congress is currently considering.

And here's a list.

Excellent overview of FISA

Part one, part two and part three excellently well explained by David Kris for Balkinization.

The ACLU. Facts and myths.

Another excellent PR move by Blackwater

Camden County Sheriff Tony Perry defended his department on Monday in the wake of allegations that Blackwater Worldwide consummated an arms deal with it that skirts federal firearms laws.

The Moyock-based private security contractor has been able to keep 17 AK-47s at its armory under a deal that sidesteps federal laws prohibiting private parties from buying automatic weapons, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Sunday. The newspaper found that Blackwater purchased 17 Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmasters — and then gave ownership of the guns to the Camden County sheriff.

Camden is not using the AK-47s, but Blackwater is allowing people to train with them at their Moyock firing range.

In the summer of 2005, Blackwater CEO Gary Jackson signed two agreements with Maj. Jon Worthington of the Camden Sheriff's Office.

Worthington has worked as a firearms instructor for Blackwater.

"Blackwater has financed the purchase of 17 Romanian AK-47 rifles for the Camden County Sheriff's Office for use by Sheriff's Office," the agreement says. "The Camden County Sheriff's Office will have unlimited access to these rifles for training and qualification, and state of emergency use." Camden Sheriff Perry said Monday that his department initially was interested in possibly using both of the automatic weapons for its new SWAT team. But the sheriff's department later settled on only using only the Bushmaster XM15 E2S automatic rifles after deputies tried out the AK-47s on the Blackwater range and didn't like them for SWAT-team use.

Blackwater CEO Gary Jackson and company owner Erik Prince told the News & Observer that the Moyock-based company has used the weapons in training for police officers and military members to familiarize them with the gun if they encounter it while making an arrest or on a battlefield.

And more:

The AK-47 would be a poor choice of weapon for a SWAT team, said John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, the national organization of SWAT officers.

As a combat weapon, the AK-47 is too large and powerful for SWAT teams, Gnagey said. It is rugged but relatively inaccurate.

"And there's the perception problem," Gnagey said. "Every terrorist attacking the U.S. is armed with AK-47s. "

Most SWAT teams use the H&K MP5 submachine gun or the Bushmaster M4, he said.

Under federal law, only government agencies - military or law enforcement - are allowed to acquire and possess automatic weapons. There is an exception for automatic weapons purchased before May 1986, when the law went into effect.

Firearms dealers are allowed, under strict conditions, to acquire an automatic weapon if they need to demonstrate the weapon to a police department or other government agency interested in buying the weapon.

Under federal law, it is illegal for a person to receive or possess an automatic weapon that is not registered to that person in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. The 34 weapons are registered to the Camden County sheriff. Seventeen AK-47s and five Bushmasters are stored and used at Blackwater. The other 12 Bushmasters are assigned to Camden County deputies, the sheriff said.

Why does this not make me feel safer?

Update 7/10: Interesting. John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association shows up in connection with a shooting of an unarmed doctor.