This one from Malawi, where gay activists have been struggling mightily to achieve progress in basic human rights for gay people.
In a display of profound ignorance of his own privilege (or quite possibly simple malice), government official Kingsley Namakhwa* said that it was illegal to mount such campaigns anonymously, and that the activists should come out publicly.
He also mentioned that, of course, homosexuality remains quite thoroughly illegal in Malawi, and that any activists who do come out will be prosecuted fully, as is indeed happening to two very brave men (Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, long may their love - and lives - last) who initiated proceedings to marry.
Uh-huh. Gee, I wonder why the activists don't want to declare themselves publicly?
The Malawi authorities have told gay activists who put up posters and distribute leaflets on the streets anonymously to "come out in the open".
Government official Kingsley Namakhwa said it was against the law to mount such campaigns anonymously.
But he also pointed out that homosexuality was illegal, and anyone promoting it would be prosecuted.
As is usual for me on these international posts, I'd like to direct your attention to
this page, which lists addresses for places you could write to protest this campaign against gay people. As ever, I recommend firm but polite.
* As I am unaware of Mr. Namakhwa's status as a cis- or trans- person, or his orientation or indeed ethnicity, I have omitted describing these traits.
Tip of the CaitieCap to MzR for the link.
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Every year around Valentine's Day, someone writes a piece about the dating and/or relationship rules that can be gleaned from mainstream romantic comedies. (Which is probably why it feels like I've written this post five times before.) In today's Daily News, Patrick Huguenin writes about what he has discerned as the "12 universal romantic comedy truths."
I suspect—nay, I am certain!—that we can come up with more. Like, for example, that if you're a Thin White Straight Lady Looking for Love, you'd better have a sassy fat, black, and/or gay friend to make laconic but insightful quips and call you "girl" (acceptable variation: "girlfriend"), or else you ain't never finding NOBODY!
Have at it, Shakers.
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...create a dartboard with the word "BIPARTISAN" on it and then throw eighty metric fucktons of napalm at it:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_____________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 11, 2010
Statement From the Press Secretary on Release of the Draft Bipartisan Senate Jobs Bill
"The President is gratified to see the Senate moving forward in a bipartisan manner on steps to help put Americans back to work. The draft bill released today by Senators Baucus and Grassley includes several of the President's top priorities for job creation, including a tax incentive to encourage businesses to hire, a tax cut to make it easier for small businesses to invest and expand, further measures to keep people at work repairing our nation's roads and bridges, and extended unemployment insurance and health care assistance for Americans who are out of work.
"The American people want to see Washington put aside partisan differences and make progress on jobs. The House has already passed a constructive set of measures and the President is hopeful that the draft language presented today will lead to a bipartisan Senate bill. The President looks forward to working with members from both parties on this bill and on the additional job creation measures he has identified, including incentives for energy efficiency investments and increased access to credit for small businesses."
###
OMG. It's the
return of the Corporate Pandertron 6000: I AM THE CORPORATE PANDERTRON 6000. I LOVE BUSINESS. GLEEP GLORP! SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS! COMMUNITY BANKS! BEEP BOOP! SMALL TAX CREDIT! CUT TAXES TO BUSINESSES! GLEEP GLORP!
I give the fuck up.
Infrastructure Repair + Jobs = WIN, though. Too bad that idea progressives have been suggesting for more than a decade didn't get moving
a year ago, but better late than never, I guess.
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I spotted this today, upstairs in the cafeteria here at work, pinned to the community bulletin board. I guess you can post whatever you want on it, so long as it doesn't impinge on anyone's constitutional guarantee of liberty, freedom and the right to sell scented candles.
For those who can't see the image, the note reads "Freedom is what makes our country GREAT! Respect others — Don't cover up the signage —". I don't know what covering up someone's guitar lessons flyer has to do with freedom, but maybe in places like China or Cuba they don't have bulletin boards. Or if they do, you can only post stuff about Trotskyite healthcare rallies.
Okay, I'm off to the chili cook-off! Or, as I like to call it, Office Fart Day.
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I don't mean the Obama administration; I mean that Americans hate the way their entire federal government works:
Two-thirds of Americans are "dissatisfied" or downright "angry" about the way the federal government is working, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. On average, the public estimates that 53 cents of every tax dollar they send to Washington is "wasted."
...Public dissatisfaction with how Washington operates is at its highest level in Post-ABC polling in more than a decade -- since the months after the Republican-led government shutdown in 1996 -- and negative ratings of the two major parties hover near record highs.
...Eight in 10 conservative Republicans hold negative views about the way government works, but by contrast, 59 percent of liberal Democrats said they were "enthusiastic" or "satisfied" about the role government was playing.
Which means that 41% of liberal Democrats
aren't satisfied, despite the executive and legislative branches of the federal government being under Democratic control.
Cue Democratic strategists interpreting this as a message to run even further to the right and utterly miss the reality that
they are bleeding progressives.
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A couple of weeks ago, while driving a friend to the airport in Buffalo, my car began to make this weird peeping noise. High-pitched, like an alarm or something, but little tiny chirps.
Friend: Why is it beeping?
Cait: I don't know.
(Cait turns on radio)
Friend: Why did you do that?
Cait: Um...well, to appease the God of Random Noises.
Friend: (laughs)
(peeping stops)
Cait: Aah, you laugh at my gods, but they do the bizness, don't they?
Friend: (ponders) Let's see...there's the God of Traffic Clearing*, and the Goddess of Counting Smarties**, and the God of Random Noises...yes, I guess you're right.
Cait: Don't forget the God of Wedding Chaos***. That worked too.
Never did, by the way, find out why the car was peeping. It stopped, though, and that's good enough for me.
* God of Traffic Clearing: appeased by the shouting of "I'm Moses, damnit, get out the fucking way!" Not always effective, but usually leaves the supplicant at least feeling invigorated by the shouting.
** Goddess of Counting Smarties: appeased by the careful consumption of Smarties in the approved manner (having to do with the order of eating, which basically goes by constantly recalculating the mode with regard to the current set of Smarties). You don't want to know what happens if I eat the Smarties in the wrong order, but I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "the bluniverse blends".
*** God of Wedding Chaos: I insisted that I must invite some Chaos into my wedding last September, because if I didn't, then Chaos would gate-crash, and we'd have a right mess. So we had no formal photographer chosen or engaged, instead encouraging our friends to take as many pictures as they wanted. It worked beautifully, we had many, many pictures, and almost no uninvited Chaos. Just remember how often fairy tales start with some bad person who wasn't invited to a ritual, and starts flinging curses about like stupid memes on Facebook. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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Suggested by Shaker Nolittlelolita: Which TV series or movie has the most wasted potential? How would you fix it?
I don't know that this one technically has the absolute most wasted potential, but it was the first one that came to mind (and I've commented at least twice about this in the last two years, so it's a decent contender): The first three-quarters of the Steven Spielberg-Stanley Kubrick collaboration A.I. was brilliant. If it had ended at the bottom of the sea, in front of the Blue Fairy, it would have been a classic. Instead, it's total shit.
So, yeah. I would have 86'ed the dumbass aliens.
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The White House is on damage control after the President's disastrous comments that he doesn't "begrudge" bank CEOs' for their multi-million dollar bonuses. The WH asserts that the quote was taken out of context, but I'm not sure, exactly, how the extended transcript is meant to make us feel better:
QUESTION: Let's talk bonuses for a minute: Lloyd Blankfein, $9 million; Jamie Dimon, $17 million. Now, granted, those were in stock and less than what some had expected. But are those numbers okay?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, first of all, I know both those guys. They're very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That's part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we've seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.
QUESTION: Seventeen million dollars is a lot for Main Street to stomach.
THE PRESIDENT: Listen, $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money. Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don't get to the World Series either. So I'm shocked by that as well. I guess the main principle we want to promote is a simple principle of "say on pay," that shareholders have a chance to actually scrutinize what CEOs are getting paid. And I think that serves as a restraint and helps align performance with pay.
Call me kooky, but the fact that there are baseball players making more than $17 million who don't get to the World Series doesn't actually make me feel any better about the President saying he doesn't "begrudge" his "savvy business
men" (ahem) pals their success and wealth, because, hey, that's part of the free market system.
Free market system, my tax-paying ass, Obama.
Krugman speaks more truth
here:
[F]irst, baseball players didn't trigger a global economic collapse, and second, the baseball industry isn't the beneficiary of a massive and continuing taxpayer bailout (continuing because banks would be in deep trouble even now if it weren't for the belief that they have a government backstop).
...We don't begrudge wealth in the free market system — OK, but this wasn't about free markets, this is an industry that survives only thanks to taxpayer backing.
...Just to be clear: what freaks me out about this isn't what it says about Obama's policies, it's what it says about failure to read the mood of the country. The president seems solely concerned that someone might think that he's anti-business, without — in this interview, at least — appearing to consider it necessary to say a thing about the pervasive sense of unfair Wall Street privilege. He doesn't have to bash bankers every step of the way, but to respond to a question about bonuses solely by praising free markets and comparing bankers to baseball stars is … clueless.
Indeed so. And, frankly, it strikes me as utterly devoid of empathy, too, for the millions and millions of working Americans who will never see a salary anything like a professional baseball player's or a Wall Street CEO's, and are
okay with that as long as their tax dollars aren't being used to subsidize that cavernous disparity.
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Des Moines Register: "A pregnant Burlington woman said this week she was falsely accused by police of trying to kill her fetus after she confided under duress to hospital emergency workers that she wanted to end her pregnancy."
I don't even know where to begin with this article. I can't even decide if I'm more horrified and infuriated by the phrase "fetal rights movement," or by the casual note: "Taylor's case raises questions about confidentiality of conversations between pregnant women and health care providers, experts say."
Doctor-patient privilege is apparently not a right, but a courtesy you may or may not be extended, if you're a pregnant woman.
[H/T to Shaker Julie.]
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...it's De-lurk Day! We haven't had one of these in ages, so all you Shaker lurkers who rarely or never pipe up, don't be shy; say hi!
Cheeky devils!
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Strips
One,
Two,
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104,
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106,
107,
108,
109,
110,
111,
112. In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.
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[Trigger warning.]
In case you'd forgotten in the last two seconds that John Mayer is a huge dipshit who emits a constant stream of fuckery from his squalid mouth, he's just done a new interview with Playboy in which he shares, among other gems:
1. "I could have fucked a lot more girls in my life if I hadn't been trying so hard to get them to like me."
2. "Once you put aside girls and money, it forces you to realign your motivation for being a musician."
3. "Pornography? It's a new synaptic pathway. You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora's box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 vaginas before I got out of bed."
4. "What if I meet a woman and it's love at first sight, and this woman has the greatest night of her life by telling me to fuck off because she knows my reputation? I always say, 'Turning me down is the new sleeping with me.'"
5. "It's like I come on very strong. I am a very…I'm just very. V-E-R-Y. And if you can't handle very, then I'm a douche bag. But I think the world needs a little very. That's why black people love me."
6. "My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock. I'm going to start dating separately from my dick."
7. "My ability to go deep with somebody is old soul. My ability to commit and be faithful is old soul. But 32 just comes roaring out of me at points when I don't see it coming. I want to dance. I want to get on an airplane and be like a ninja. I want to be an explorer. I want to be like The Bourne Identity. I don't want to pet dogs in the kitchen."
8. "I feel like women are getting their comeuppance against men now. I hear about man-whores more than I hear about whores. When women are whorish, they're owning their sexuality. When men are whorish, they're disgusting beasts. I think they're paying us back for a double standard that's lasted for a hundred years."
9. "I get less ass now than I did when I was in a local band. Because now I don't like jumping through hoops. It's been so long since I've taken a random girl home. I don't want to have to submit myself for approval. I don't want to audition. I'd rather come home and edge my shit out for 90 minutes. At this point, before I can have sex I need to know somebody. Unless she's a 14 out of 10."
10. "There are people in the world who have the power to change our values. Have you ever been with a girl who made you want to quit the rest of your life? Did youever say, 'I want to quit my life and just fuckin' snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to fuck you, I would start selling all my shit just to keep fucking you.'"
11. "Here's what I really want to do at 32: fuck a girl and then, as she's sleeping in bed, make breakfast for her. So she's like, 'What? You gave me five vaginal orgasms last night, and you're making me a spinach omelet? You are the shit!'"
12. "I hate other men. When I'm fucking you, I'm trying to fuck every man who's ever fucked you, but in his ass, so you'll say 'No one's ever done that to me in bed.'"
13. "The only man I've kissed is Perez Hilton. It was New Year's Eve and I decided to go out and destroy myself. ... I remember seeing Perez Hilton flitting about this club and acting as though he had just invented homosexuality. All of a sudden I thought, I can outgay this guy right now. I grabbed him and gave him the dirtiest, tongue-iest kiss I have ever put on anybody—almost as if I hated fags. I don't think my mouth was even touching when I was tongue kissing him, that's how disgusting this kiss was."
What an absolute charmer he is.
[H/Ts to everyone in the multiverse. Related Reading: John Mayer Thinks Rape Is Hilarious, The Wanker King (Literally).]
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"If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet 'the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.' We're doomed."—Paul Krugman.
Read the whole thing, as they say.
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Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...
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In this one, credit where it's due: LJ's badgerbag did the first verse, and I picked it up from there. It's a self-deprecating little number, to the tune of Malvina Reynolds' Little Boxes. Posted, as ever, for my own amusement (and hopefully one or two others', too!).
Little bloggers on the internet
Little bloggers made of ticky boxes
Little bloggers making polls,
Little bloggers all the same!
There's some lolcats and a survey
and a meme that you've been tagged for
and they're all made out of ticky boxes
and they all look just the same!
And the bloggers on the Internet
All dropped out of university
Where they were put in classes
And expected not to game
Now they're slackers and waiters
And Starbucks baristas now
And they're all made out of ticky boxes
And they all look just the same
And they all play gothy music
And drink all their absinthes dry
And they don't have any children
But their cats have poets' names
And they all go down to Burning Man
Then home where they visit food banks
Where they get free food in boxes
And whinge loudly just the same
And the boys watch bukkake
And are glad that they have no family
Of children ticking ticky boxes
And their clothes look all the same
There's a black shirt and some black pants
And a trenchcoat which is also black
And some black Docs
And a black hat
And they all look just the same
Copyright CaitieCat 2009.
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