Camp Runamok

[Trigger Warning for Christian supremacy.]

Looking for a fun thing for your kids to do this summer? This does not sound like the place.

TAMPA — Here's another option now that the kids are out of school: a weeklong seminar about our nation's founding principles, courtesy of the Tampa 912 Project.

The organization, which falls under the tea party umbrella, hopes to introduce kids ages 8 to 12 to principles that include "America is good," "I believe in God," and "I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable."

Organized by conservative writer Jeff Lukens and staffed by volunteers from the 912 Project, Tampa Liberty School will meet every morning July 11-15 in borrowed space at the Paideia Christian school in Temple Terrace.

"We want to impart to our children what our nation is about, and what they may or may not be told," Lukens said.

He said he was not familiar with public school curriculum, but, "I do know they have a lot of political correctness. We are a faithful people, and when you talk about natural law, you have to talk about God. When you take that out of the discussion, you miss the whole thing."

So Mr. Lukens doesn't know anything about the public school curriculum, but he assumes its filled with evil political correctness, like the revisionist history about Paul Revere and how the Founding Fathers believed in the separation of church and state. What could be wrong with that?

So what are these freedom-loving little campers going to learn this summer?

One example at Liberty: Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the "banker" will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.

"Some of the kids will fall for it," Lukens said. "Others kids will wise up."

Another example: Starting in an austere room where they are made to sit quietly, symbolizing Europe, the children will pass through an obstacle course to arrive at a brightly decorated party room (the New World).

Red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown. But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.

Still another example: Children will blow bubbles from a single container of soapy solution, and then pop each other's bubbles with squirt guns in an arrangement that mimics socialism. They are to count how many bubbles they pop. Then they will work with individual bottles of solution and pop their own bubbles.

"What they will find out is that you can do a lot more with individual freedom," Lukens said.

And the way to learn about individual freedom is through indoctrination. Works every time.

Isn't it ironic that they feel the need to call it "Liberty"?

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof. HT to SFDB.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Laibach: "Geburt Einer Nation"

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Wow

[Trigger warning for racism; misogyny; ableism; violence.]

I have seen some despicable political ads in my life, many of which we've discussed in this space over the last seven years, but nothing that even approaches this attack ad against Democratic Congressional candidate from California Janice Hahn, created by Republican operative Ladd Ehlinger, Jr. and his new political action committee Turn Right USA.

TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro aptly describes the ad as "Willie Horton on steroids. The 90-second clip accuses Hahn of being too cozy with gang criminals in the past, a charge she's faced for a while and her campaign says has been thoroughly debunked."

Although the ad features black actors as the gang members with whom Hahn, represented as a stripper offering cash out of her panties to gangters, is supposedly too cozy, McMorris-Santoro also notes: "2005 statistics from the LAPD reported that the vast majority of L.A.'s gang population is made up of predominately Latino gangs."

These fucking racists can't even do their racism right.

And though the racism and misogyny in this video is extreme, it's the implied violence at its end which is even more chilling.

As words in a vampiric red font litter the screen around a picture of Hahn, highlighting words from the voiceover, a male voiceover says, "In an insane effort to reduce gang violence, Janice Hahn hired hardcore gang members with taxpayer money to be 'gang intervention specialists.' She even helped them get out of jail, so they could rape and kill again." Hahn's eyes go red. Across the bottom of the screen, a line of text reads: "Visit http://HahnsHomeboyz.org for more info!"

A grainy piece of footage from what looks to be a police interrogation video shows a black man saying, "I started working with Janice Hahn, ya know what I'm saying."

A white woman with short blonde hair (like Hahn) wearing a black bikini walks onscreen with her back to the camera and grabs a stripper pole, as two black men holding rifles start to rap-sing, "Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the streets." Cut to a close-up of the stripper's butt, on which is emblazoned a mugshot of a tattooed man; in the background "Janice Hahn Hates Guns [Hearts] Gangs" is "graffitied" onto a cinderblock wall.

The men rap-sing "Give me your cash, bitch, so we can shoot up the streets / Give me your cash, ho, so we can buy some more heat" over and over, while mugshots of men we are meant to assume are gang members are superimposed over the butt of the woman dancing at the stripper pole, and black-and-white images of white gangsters like Al Capone and famous criminals like Charles Manson float around the screen.

The stripper waves her ass in the air, and the rappers pull dollars out of her waistband. A video of Hahn is superimposed over the stripper's genital area, implying Hahn is a cunt, in which Hahn is saying, "It does take a different kind of person to be able to speak the language."

"Congress has enough gangsters," says the male voiceover, as the same bloody words appear on the screen, surrounded by a Photoshopped image of Nancy Pelosi appearing to get a facelift, an image of Harry Reid, an image of Charlie Rangel sleeping on the beach, an image of Anthony Weiner, an image of Chuck Shumer, and finally Weiner's infamous grey-briefs crotch shot.

The stripper spins around and a headshot of Janice Hahn has been superimposed over her head. "Janice Hahn: Bad for Los Angeles. Bad for America," says the male voiceover, as the camera zooms in on the reddened devil eyes of Hahn's image.

The image then switches to a semi-automatic rifle, accompanied by the sound of a rifle shooting. The image lights up, implying the pictured rifle is firing. "Let's keep her out of Congress, homies," says the voiceover, which, coupled with the image, clearly exhorts violence against Hahn, even as the voiceover continues, "Donate now!"

On the final screen, as the rifle continues to "fire," words onscreen read: "Paid for by Turn Right USA. Definitely NOT authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. So suck it, McCain-Feingold."

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This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

[Trigger warning for fat hatred and body policing.]

I know it's early, but I'm pretty sure there's not going to be anything worse than this horrendo Daily Fail article about getting liposuction to fix your cankles.

Good lord.

Whenever I hear the word "cankles," I am reminded of a former acquaintance of mine who once groused to me that it was no fair that she was skinny (her word) but had cankles and I was fat and had "nice ankles," followed by this plaintive look as if she expected to me apologize, or, perhaps, offer to exchange ankles with her in acknowledgment of the injustice that a skinny girl was forced to envy a fat girl.

Instead, I told her, "There's nothing wrong with your ankles."

"You WOULD say that," she sneered disgustedly in reply.

My fervent hope is that, in the interim, she has found body acceptance. Or, failing that, doesn't read this article.

[H/T to Shaker JPlum.]

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I Found Me an Upside!

All we have to do is keep Michele Bachmann thinking she has a shot at the presidency through next June!

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's not running for re-election in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District while she's campaigning for the Republican nomination for president.

However, state law would allow her to drop out of the presidential race and seek re-election for her current job by June 5, 2012.

[H/T to ThinkProgress]

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Twitter

Are you following Shakesville on Twitter? If not, you should be! Our twitter feed is @Shakestweetz, on which I tweet content updates but also other good stuff I'm reading, watching, listening to that I don't have the time or inclination to write about.

And, quelle surprise, frequently Deeky and I tweet very silly things to each other.

Some of the other contributors and mods have Twitter feeds, too, which I'll let them promote in comments, if they're so inclined. :)

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Open Thread

Hosted by a breaching humpback whale.

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Question of the Day

Is there any word you compulsively mispronounce, because you got it into your head it was pronounced one way, and even though you've found out it's totally not pronounced that way, the mispronunciation refuses to unstick?

Capillary. Which is correctly pronounced KAP-uh-ler-ee, but which I persistently mispronounce ka-PILL-er-ee. I also routinely mispronounce rhetoric as reh-TOR-ic, like rhetorical missing its last syllable.

Iain is famous for these. He has one of the most prodigious vocabularies of any person to whom I've ever spoken—it's genuinely impressive. It was also gleaned almost entirely from a voracious reading habit, so he's often never heard these words actually spoken by anyone but himself, and it turns out he's not the greatest pronunciation-deducer of all time. My favorite ever is you-BICK-tchoo-us, which is how ubiquitous tumbles out of his mouth.

Another favorite is his mispronunciation of lascivious, which he pronounces, as though it is perhaps a desert destination town founded by a punk rocker, Las Vicious.

I should note, in case it isn't obvious, that I find this habit to be one of the most charming, utterly endearing things evah about him.

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Reason to Believe

While I'm not generally a fan, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has always struck me as an incredibly astute politician.

This afternoon, Cuomo unveiled a bill to make marriage gender-neutral. He's previously insisted that he wouldn't do so unless he was confident there were the 32 votes necessary for Senate passage. (The Assembly has been on board for a while.) On Monday, he stated that "I've had enough conversations with enough legislators. I believe the votes are there."

Also this afternoon, Senator Roy McDonald (R-ight on) became the 31st Senator to announce his support for Cuomo's bill, which includes various exemptions for Jesus et al.

Not only will gender-neutral marriage happen in New York, it appears entirely likely that it will happen this year.

Happy Pride Month, Archbishop of New York Timothy Michael Dolan.

On a related note, GENDA is stalled in committee. Because bathrooms. Still, this is good news.

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In Case You've Forgotten...

...Gwyneth Paltrow is THE WORST [trigger warning for fat hatred and body policing]:

Last November, Gwyneth Paltrow gave Ross Mathews, the late night TV comic from Chelsea Lately – a little tough love.

"We were taping a Chelsea special," Mathews, 31, tells PEOPLE, "and she pointed at my tummy and said, 'What's going on here? I love you. Get it together.'"

That was all the motivation needed by Mathews [who has now lost 40 pounds].

Gwyneth Paltrow, you are SO GOOD at fat-shaming! You should win an Oscar for Best Shamer!

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Quote of the Day

[Trigger warning for homophobia; Christian supremacy.]

"Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people."—Archbishop of New York Timothy Michael Dolan, in a piece titled "The True Meaning of Marriage" which, naturally, excludes from its definition same-sex couples. But those beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination! Because he says so!

Okay, player.

The definition of "discrimination" is not the only thing about which Archbishop Dolan is a little confused. He also appears to need some assistance understanding the concept of representative democracy:

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to "redefine" rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of "family" and "marriage" means.

But, please, not here! Our country's founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.

Whooooooooooooooops. Voting!

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News from Shakes Manor

There is a major roadwork project going on outside our house, which is super annoying for reasons ranging from noise pollution to having found our roadside mailbox shattered into 10,000 pieces on the ground. But the most annoying part (so far) is the further destruction of the perilously wrecked sidewalks which we must use to walk the dog. That's our main use (and many of our neighbors'): Other neighbors use them for walking/jogging/children's biking, and kids use them, during the school year, to get to the middle school that's just down the road.

Since the start of the project, I've fallen four times tripping over construction detritus or walking into unmarked holes in our yard or the sidewalk. A couple weekends ago, Iain fell into an unmarked hole in the sidewalk that they'd filled with sand, which had turned into quicksand after another torrential storm. He sunk in instantly to mid-thigh:

He's a strong dude in his 30s, and he struggled to free himself. Our next-door neighbors are a couple in their 80s, both recovering from cancer. The hole was just past their driveway.

On the other side of the street, they've completely torn out the sidewalks altogether. The nearest cross-street to our west has no sidewalks at all. The nearest cross-street to our east has them only on one side of the street.

Yesterday, a representative of the city came to my door to talk about the ongoing project, which was supposed to be finished by this fall after a year and a half, but now probably won't be finished for at least another year. I noted that sidewalks were a reasonable amenity to expect to be maintained, especially in an area with the outrageously high, regionally-inappropriate property taxes we pay. He agreed. And then shrugged. Because I live in a garbage state with a garbage governor.

The sidewalks, they keep telling us, are going to be fixed. They won't be left crumbled. But there are rumors that the sidewalks will never be repaired. New sidewalks take time, cost money.

Anyway, there is a point to this sidewalk rant, and here it is: My little exurban Indiana town is not the only place with crumbling sidewalks. There are crumbling sidewalks all over this nation. (And, as an aside, as First Lady Michelle Obama takes her "Let's Move!" campaign all over the country, I hope she will take notice of the number of places in which moving is next to impossible because so many US townships don't give a fuck about whether their people are able to move, unless it's in a car.) Yet our government—and this is true of both parties—by and large continues to pretend that our streets are paved with gold.

We're at war in five countries, there is "no appetite" for the kind of progressive economic policy that makes meaningful differences in people's lives, our standard of living is moving backwards, the real unemployment rate is 15.8%, and we've got crumbling sidewalks, which should be a basic amenity in any residential community in a global superpower.

On May 17, 2006, I wrote a piece about the governance (or lack thereof) of then-President George W. Bush:

We aren't being led forward. We aren't growing, or moving toward a glimmering future, or blazing a new 21st century trail. We are stagnating. And the first signs of decay are starting. I look around my community (and others like it)—a middle class suburban town that borders increasing urbanization toward Chicago on one side and rural farms for endless miles on the other—and I see a community in decline. Subtle things, that no one else seems to notice, as they happen ever so slowly. The schools and the library and other public buildings aren't quite as clean, quite as kept-up, as they used to be. The streets aren't quite as clean. The potholes and the cracked sidewalks don't get fixed as quickly, or at all. There are more houses around town that need fresh paint, more vacant retail spaces. Little things. Little degrees of difference. But they're everywhere, when you really look.

They're the little things that indicate that salaries aren't keeping up with inflation, that local and state governments don't have the funds they used to. Belt-tightening everywhere. The house can go another year without paint. The City Hall can go another year, or two, without tuckpointing. We can get rid of a couple of sanitation trucks, give up a couple of salt trucks in the winter. We don't need two toll booths onto the interstate open; one is fine. Little things that no one really notices, to stave off the rot for as long as we can.

Little things that happen in communities like mine before crime starts to go up in communities that aren't as fortunate, communities that don't have any give in their belts to begin with.

I keep hearing about this great economic recovery we're having, but what I see is different. What I see is people readjusting to a new circumstance—and that can't go on forever. We're going to need some governance. We're going to need someone to care about putting money—and attention—back into America again.

Five years later, it's still true.

And every time I step into quicksand through our crumbling sidewalks, I can't help but think of it as a bitter metaphor for the state of the American Empire, the governors of which aren't governing with anything remotely resembling reason or decency.

"We are not being governed," I wrote in 2006. And we are not being governed still.

I sure hope those sidewalks get fixed.

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Random YouTubery: Viscous Liquid Moving Machine!

The viscous liquids being moved by this machine are very grody-looking. But the fact that they are being moved while retaining their shape is very cool! SCIENCE!

Video Description: Scenes from FOOMA Japan 2011, the international food machinery and technology exhibition, of a young Japanese man demonstrating SWITL, a "pick-up and conveyor system using unique technology." It looks like a hand-held vac with a sort of flat tongue that zips out, underneath a pile of ketchup and mayonnaise (aka barf), and picks it up, without changing the shape of the pile of barf. Yow! That is very cool! (And gross, because they are using barf in their demonstration!)

The rest of the video repeats this demonstration, and then shows other applications of the Barf Robot, like moving assembly-line lunchmeat and packing containers of sol-gel products for shipment. It's very hard to describe! But very neat!

[Via Kelly.]

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Daily Dose of Cute

YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWN!



"I yawn in your general direction! YAWN!!!"

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Blog Note

It's not just you: It's taking a couple of minutes for comments to show up on the page again. They appear to post immediately, but, if you refresh the page, they're gone for a couple of minutes.

There's no need to resend them; they're just taking awhile to post.

Hopefully Disqus will resolve the problem soon. My apologies for the inconvenience.

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Anti-Choice All the Way

[Trigger warning for discussion of right-to-die law for terminally ill people.]

Below is video of the exchange that Misty mentions in her letter, of which the quote she highlights is the most egregious part. But also note his reference to "dignity of people at the end of life."

CNN Moderator John King: Let's go back down to the floor here. Jennifer Vaughn has a question.

Jennifer Vaughn, WMUR Anchor: Thanks, John. Senator Santorum, staying with you for a moment, if I may, you are staunchly pro-life. Governor Romney used to support abortion rights until he changed his position on this a few years ago. This has been thoroughly discussed. But do you believe he genuinely changed his mind, or was that a political calculation? Should this be an issue in this primary campaign?

SANTORUM: I think, I think an issue should be, in looking at any candidate, is looking at the authenticity of that candidate and looking at their, at their record over time and what they fought for. And I think that's, that's a factor that, that should be determined.

You can look at my record. Not only have I been consistently pro-life, but I've taken the, you know, I've not just taken the pledge; I've taken the bullets to go out there and fight for this and lead on those issues. And I think that's a factor that people should consider when you, when you look—well, what is this president going to do when he comes to office?

A lot of folks run for president as pro-life and then that issue gets shoved to the back burner. I will tell you that the issue of pro-life, the sanctity and dignity of every human life, not just at birth, not just on the issue of abortion, but with respect to the entire life, which I mentioned welfare reform and, and the dignity of people at the end of life, those issues will be top priority issues for me to make sure that all life is respected and held with dignity.

Santorum was not, as I'm sure you've guessed, signaling his support for giving people end-of-life choices, but, in fact, restricting those choices. Michele Bachmann also weighed in her support of "the dignity of life from conception until natural death. … I stand for life from conception until natural death."

As the right-to-die movement gains momentum in the US, social conservatives are staking out their position in opposition to giving terminally ill people the choice on their own terms. (Note: For a fair and exceptionally moving treatment of Oregon's trailblazing right-to-die law, I highly recommend How to Die in Oregon.) The forced birthers are, unsurprisingly, forced drawn-out-deathers, too.

Anti-choice all the way.

"Pro-life" is, by any reasonable reckoning, a meaningless term when it does not concern itself in even the most cursory way with quality of life. They believe in the sanctity of life, they assured us at last night's debate, as they rotely intoned their alleged respect for the dignity of life—but what is sacred about an ebbing life that even the person living it no longer wants?

And what could be more private, more personal, more individual by definition than control over one's own body and life? Conservatives love to talk about giving people control over their money and their healthcare and whatthefuckever in support of fiscal policies that benefit corporations, but never is their mendacious lipservice to individual liberty more obvious as the manifest horseshit that it is than when they stand on a stage and speak their support of laws dictating what people can and cannot do with their own bodies and lives.

[Commenting Guidelines: Although discussions of right-to-die laws routinely refer to patients' death as "physician assisted suicide," right-to-die laws are really not about suicide, which is the intentional taking of one's own life. Terminally ill people's lives are already being taken by disease; they are just being given control of the "when" of their deaths. Please bear that distinction in mind in this thread and be careful not to conflate "suicide" with physician assisted choice to die—which really shouldn't be at issue, anyway, because the topic is not "debate right-to-die laws," but "discuss the GOP's garbage ideology."]

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I Write Letters

[Trigger warning for violence.]

Rick Santorum,

Last night in the GOP debate you said:

"Not only have I been consistently pro-life, I have not just taken the pledge, but I've taken the bullets to go out there and fight for this and lead on those issues."

People disagreeing with you on the issue is not the same as being shot. People thinking you're a hideous, woman-hating, policy-horror-show is not the same as being shot. Yes, you were using a rhetorical device, we know. Still? Completely and totally inappropriate to the point of being extremely fucking offensive.

You see, people who go out there and fight for women are the ones who are shot. Actually shot--and sometimes actually killed. Also? Being shot is not the only danger they face.

So you? Can go fuck right off you reprehensible, morally reprobate douchecanoe.

With extreme disgust,
Me.

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This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

Another winner from CNN's resident auditor of other people's behavior, LZ Granderson: "Are Weiner's women blameless?"

Here is but one gem from this clusterfucktastrophe:

If Weiner's a bad guy, if Arnold Schwarzenegger's a bad guy, if John Edwards and Newt Gingrich are bad guys, then why aren't we calling out these willing accomplices as "bad girls" with the same fervor? Why do they seem to be catching a break in the realm of public opinion?

Yes, the men in these scandals all made stupid mistakes and deserve what they got.

But their girlfriends -- cyber or real -- are not all innocent victims. Particularly the ones now coming out of hiding, seeking cameras in the wake of their playmate's public demise. Those are the ones I really wish would shut up.

I admire Granderson's magical powers of deduction. Personally, I cannot discern which women, if any, are "seeking cameras" versus those who have reluctantly granted interviews in the hopes of being left the fuck alone by the media who started searching out every woman with whom Weiner had public communications once he publicly tweeted a picture of his cock.

But, then again, I'm not a Very Wise Man, like LZ Granderson.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

White Lion: "When the Children Cry"

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Number of the Day

$6.6 billion: The amount of money for which federal auditors simply cannot account, i.e. that has gone missing, in Iraq.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.

Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.

For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."

Whooooooooooooooooooooooops!

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