Spelling Bee contestant Lena Greenberg (left) of Philadelphia celebrates with fellow competitors after she correctly spelled her word during round 6 of the 84th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee competition May 31, 2012 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Nine spellers, including Greenberg, have advanced to compete in the final of the competition. [Getty Images]
[Content Note: Rape culture; anti-choice medical abuse.]
Annie-Rose at Think Progress: Oklahoma Doctor Refuses to Provide Rape Victim with Emergency Contraception.
An Oklahoma emergency room doctor refused to provide emergency contraception to a 24-year-old female rape victim because the medication violated the health provider's personal beliefs, a local CBS News affiliate reports. The hospital also denied the victim a rape kit, noting that it had no appropriate nurse on staff to administer the test.All perfectly legal, because Oklahoma law "shields providers from offering the perfectly legal medication under a 'conscience clause' which could significantly hinder women's [and other people's] access to contraception services."
"I will not give you emergency contraceptives because it goes against my beliefs," the doctor allegedly told the rape victim and her mother, Rhonda. "She knew my daughter had just been raped. Her attitude was so judgmental and I felt that she was just judging my daughter," Rhonda told the news station.
Below is the trailer for the major motion picture event, The Expendables 2, which is literally the best film trailer I have ever seen. "Literally?"—You. Yes, literally. And I don't mean that in a figurative way! Whoever put together this trailer should be promoted, given a raise, bestowed with all the awards for trailer-making, and gifted a permanent guest room in Sylvester Stallone's home, overlooking the commissioned bronze statue of Sylvester Stallone.
(True Fact: I read about that statue in a Nov. 1997 issue of Architectural Digest, and I still remember it! Good job, Sylvester Stallone!)
ANYWAY. What I was saying is that this trailer is a straight-up work of pure genius, but you don't have to take my word for it! Let's watch it! Or read my paraphrase of it!
"Barney Ross," hisses Bruce Willis as he walks into some sort of submarine prison (?) in which Barney "Sylvester Stallone" Ross has been interred since the last time he saved the world, for which he was obviously severely punished, because the US hates heroes. "You made me a deal," Bruce Willis continues, as Sly stands up and gives max poutface. "I coulda put you in the deepest, darkest hole, but I kept you here, because I knew that one day would come where you were gonna pay me back, and today is that day." Sly looks...rueful? I guess.Now, I realize you might be thinking: That is not a perfect trailer. That trailer makes me think this movie has no plot and is just about a bunch of mostly-white muscle dudes running around blowing shit up. Plus Jet Li.
Great exposition. Very naturally delivered. Professional acting.
Now comes the very elaborate Expendables 2 logo, which is a shiny silver skull leaning backwards, and then two daggers whose handles form the Roman numeral II slam into its eye sockets, then they get absorbed into the skull as it tilts forward, and the blades shoot out the sides of the skull, followed by an array of other shiny weaponry that forms wings on either side of the skull. I'm describing this in so much detail because it takes up nine seconds of a one-minute trailer.
STALLONE says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Sylvester Stallone pointing a gun.
STATHAM says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Jason Statham aiming the gun on a tank.
LI says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Jet Li looking at something.
LUNDGREN says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Dolph Lundgren peeking around a pillar with a machine gun.
NORRIS says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Chuck Norris walking through rubble and removing his shades.
CREWS says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Terry Crews holding a machine gun.
COUTURE says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Randy Couture walking.
HEMSWORTH says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Liam Hemsworth (whoooops!) looking up from the sight of a rifle.
ALSO VAN DAMME says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Jean-Claude Van Damme holding a rocket launcher (or something).
WITH WILLIS says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a half-second clip from the movie of Bruce Willis lowering a machine gun.
AND SCHWARZENEGGER says glowing gold text onscreen, followed by a three-quarter-second clip from the movie of Arnold Schwarzenegger firing a machine gun.
Text Onscreen: TheExpendables2Film.com. Summer 2012.
Chapter 4, page 46: "I took my classes seriously and worked hard. ... And I made friends and played hard. The students at Yale came from all different backgrounds and all parts of the country. Within months, I knew many of them."
Welp, we've finally made it to Chapter Four, Privilege and Balls and Yale "Yale and the National Guard." Exciting stuff! I can't wait to hear George W. Bush talk even more about how popular, likeable, hardworking, and generally awesome he is.
Nicknames for everyone!
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Zero: What the effective tax rate should be on corporations, according to Honeywell CEO David Cote.
LOL. Sure.
Cote, as you may recall, was part of President Obama's Catfood Commission Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission, because no one looks out for the US people better than our corporate overlords.
Last year, President Obama instructed the Justice Department to cease defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court.
In February, the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal definition of marriage, is unconstitutional.
Today, the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled "that the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies federal benefits to married gay couples, a groundbreaking ruling all but certain to wind up before the US Supreme Court. In its unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman deprives gay couples of the rights and privileges granted to heterosexual couples."
The dominoes are falling. DOMA's days are numbered.
"Make no mistake, this battle is about self-determination by women of the direction and course of their lives and their family's lives. Abortion is about women's hopes and dreams. Abortion is a matter of survival for women."—Dr. George Tiller.
The Abortion Gang is collecting posts memorializing Dr. Tiller on the third anniversary of his murder. Stop by and check it out.
[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism; violence.]
Dear President Obama:
Today marks three years since Dr. George Tiller, a reproductive rights advocate and one of the precious few physicians in the country who performed lifesaving late-term abortions, was murdered at his church.
The day after his murder, I wrote you a letter, begging you to "stop relying on dangerously dishonest rhetoric about abortion, its supporters, and its opponents," and to stop drawing an equivalency between the pro-choice and "pro-life" positions, as if both sides have an equally valid point, and as if activists who defend reproductive rights and activists who seek to subvert them are somehow two sides of the same coin.
Since that time, the Republican Party has, on both the state and federal levels, endeavored to undermine access to abortion, to contraception, and even to woman-centered healthcare providers. A record number of anti-abortion restrictions were enacted across the nation last year, at least one in every single state legislature. More than half of the state legislatures have considered restrictions on private health insurance plans to disallow them from paying for abortions. At least one state legislator has suggested that women should have to bear the cost of a separate insurance policy in case of needing an abortion in the event of being raped.
All of this has been done under the auspices of "valuing life," despite the fact that forcing a person to carry to term an unwanted or unviable pregnancy against hir will is the opposite of a respect for life, if the definition of "life" is to have any meaning at all.
Last week, a second suspicious fire broke out in a reproductive clinic in Georgia, and, this week, a women's health clinic in New Orleans was burned to the ground by an arsonist. These are only the latest examples of anti-choice terrorist acts in this nation, and they didn't happen in a void. They happened in a political climate in which it is considered an acceptable position to value a blastocyst over a living, breathing, sentient, existent human being.
They happened in a country in which every state legislature, and the national Congress, are trying to find ways to limit access to abortion—and in which our ostensibly pro-choice president remains silent on that matter. Except, of course, when you're bragging about ceding ground to anti-choicers to pass legislation, while insisting it's "not an abortion bill."
They happened in a country in which we are expected to trade everything away, including our civil liberties, in exchange for protection from the existential threat of nebulous foreign terrorists, but in which one of the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaigns in America, its co-ordination and orchestration frequently done right out in the open—at meetings, on websites, in email alerts—and potentially affecting the lives of more than half the population, is ignored by one party and mainstreamed as a central plank of its party platform by the other.
Mr. President, the vicious murder of Dr. Tiller was an act of terrorism committed by a terrorist. It should have been a wake-up call to this nation, and to you, to acknowledge the ugly reality that the anti-choice movement is a serious domestic threat.
Instead, the anti-choice movement has gained momentum with the unilateral support of the Republican Party, turning what was once a radical fringe movement into nothing less than state-sponsored terrorism, in defense of an inherently violent ideology.
And in response to this onslaught of violently misogynist activity by people who seek to rob people with uteri of their agency, their bodily autonomy, their right of self-determination, their access to a legal medical procedure, their ability to do that most basic of life management in the modern world—control their reproduction—your party has been all but silent.
Mr. President, you have failed to give an address centering reproductive rights, failed to give even a passing mention to reproductive rights in your "Women's Equality Day" proclamation, failed to give even a passing mention to reproductive rights in your "Women's History Month" proclamation, failed to acknowledge this war on agency in your State of the Union address, failed to prioritize science over religion, failed to prioritize healthcare over religion, and failed to be generally clueful on the issue of reproductive rights.
You are failing us.
Two years ago, I told you I was crying because I was sad and scared and angry. Today, sir, I cry because you have allowed Dr. Tiller's murder to happen in vain.
With colossal contempt,
Melissa McEwan
P.S. I will keep writing this letter every year, as long as I have to.
Fun fact: Jonah Goldberg likes to start every chapter with a quote or two. Well, when in Waldenbooks...
Part of his trick was being an absolutely terrible writer (a trick countless postmodern academics figured out an emulated). With considerable effort he could manage to be merely dry and boring. But his more substantial philosophical prose reads like a bunch of German words were dipped in maple syrup and dragged across a linty floor before being badly translated back into English by someone with a less firm grasp of idiom. - Jonah Goldberg, explaining why John Dewey is a conniving asshole
He [Marx] explains it here, but reading the passage will only give you a headache. - Jonah Goldberg, explaining why I won't understand the English translation of a passage by Karl Marx
Now when it comes to enlightenments I've long followed the rule of the dad in So I Married an Axe Murderer: "If it's not Scottish, it's crap." By this I mean that a conservative in the Anglo-American tradition tends to revere folks like Adam Smith and John Locke and, of course, Edmund Burke (only one of who was in fact Scottish) while looking askance at the events on the continent because of the whole French Revolution, the birth of totalitarianism, the debut of socialism, the Terror, and all of that unpleasantness. - Jonah Goldberg, explaining
[Content Note: Food policing; fat hatred.]
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is at it again: New York Plans to Ban Sale of Big Sizes of Sugary Drinks.
New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity.Even if that something is total garbage.
The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.
The measure would not apply to diet sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; it would not extend to beverages sold in grocery or convenience stores.
"Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, 'Oh, this is terrible,'" Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview on Wednesday in the Governor's Room at City Hall.
"New York City is not about wringing your hands; it's about doing something," he said.
It turns out Fox News isn't fair and balanced after all. As you can imagine, I am devastated by this shocking news.
I am fully one hundred years old, so I remember a time when there was a thing called the Fairness Doctrine which would have prevented the airing of this sort of biased nonsense under the guise of "news." But thanks to Patron Saint of Conservatives Ronald Reagan, we don't have to worry about that anymore.
Originally posted by Paul the Spud: What is something you regularly do that people might consider "old fashioned?"
I cook virtually all our meals (including sauces and many condiments) from scratch, which a lot of people consider "old-fashioned." But it's a necessity, to avoid HFCS, and I'm fortunate I've got the privilege of time and access to fresh foods to do it.
[Content Note: Rape culture.]
CNN: WikiLeaks' Assange loses sex case [sic] appeal but will fight on.
The British Supreme Court on Wednesday denied Julian Assange's appeal against extradition to Sweden over sexual abuse allegations, but the judges left open a surprise avenue for the WikiLeaks founder to fight on.Emphasis mine. Just what this case needed—some more sympathy and special treatment for Julian Assange, lest he suffer the incomprehensible indignity of being questioned about alleged misconduct.
Assange will take it, his legal team said, arguing that the judges made their decision based on issues that were not argued in court.
Assange has been fighting for a year and a half against being sent to Sweden for questioning about accusations of sexual abuse.
Two women in Sweden accused Assange in August 2010 of sexually assaulting them during a visit to the country in connection with a WikiLeaks release of internal U.S. military documents.
The Supreme Court appeared Wednesday to clear the way for him to be sent to Sweden for questioning, then unexpectedly gave his legal team two weeks to file an appeal.
Assange lawyer Gareth Pierce said after the hearing that he would request a new hearing.
"The majority of the judges decided that custom and practice of the European community in effect trumped the law," she said. That "was not argued in court and that in itself would be a breach of the (European Convention on Human Rights) Article 6 guarantee to a fair hearing."
It is very unusual for the court to grant permission to appeal its rulings, which are supposed to be final in Britain.
Ladies, gentlemen, and gender-rebels: I give you Canteloupe the Italian Greyhound.
Canteloupe the two-year-old Italian Greyhound loves to steal things from her owner’s desk, so a friend decided to set up a camera and catch her red-pawed.
CamelsAndFriends, the YouTuber behind the doggie surveillance operation, writes:
It got me wondering how exactly she gets up there and how she chooses what she steals, so I decided to start filming! I left the camera on a tripod pointed at the desk and a week later these are my results of Cantaloupe’s exploits.The evidence is clear, ladies and gentlemen. You must find this dog guilty of being cute.
From the Telegraph: This image captures a white collared kingfisher's flight sequence. The ten action shots were all caught within half a second by award-winning photographer CS Ling while on a river wildlife photo safari in Borneo. The photographer said: The shutter speed of 1/2000s was just right to freeze all ten different wing postures of the kingfisher. [C.S. Ling / Rex Features]
[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual objectification; heterocentrism.]
"There's two kinds of men. There are men who are fucking misogynist pigs, and then there are men who just really love women, who think they're the most amazing people in the world. And that's me. Maybe the reason I was promiscuous, and wanted to sleep with a lot of them, is that I love them so much."—Adam Levine.
LOL FOREVER! I love the idea that there men who are misogynist pigs, and men who love women, and, according to Adam Levine, the men who sexually objectify women and fuck tons of 'em are in the latter category. Sure.
Not being a misogynist pig is not defined by fucking lots of women. It's not defined by loving women, or even liking them. Not being a misogynist is defined by respecting women.
Which Adam Levine clearly does not.
[Previously: The Voice of Misogyny.]
