David Bowie: "Life On Mars?"
In The News
[Content note: Racism, violence]
All The News In Fits and Spurts:
Five people were killed and four critically injured late Thursday afternoon in a workplace shooting in Minneapolis.
Confirmed: Mars once had water: Curiosity team scientists determined that flowing water was once present near the Gale Crater landing site based on the telltale size, shape and scattering of pebbles and gravel nearby.
A judge in Cook County, Illinois on yesterday dismissed over 90 cases against Occupy Chicago activists on the grounds that they violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Bo Xilai has been expelled from the Communist Party in China and relieved of his duties for abusing his power and making severe mistakes in a much-publicized killing.
Members of an Ohio tea party group are taking it upon themselves to police make-believe voter fraud, launching challenges to a targeted list of voters that includes hundreds of college students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans in counties President Obama won in 2008.
In a rare public apology, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a letter to customers acknowledging complaints about the company's new Maps application.
Russia suspended the import and use of Monsanto's genetically engineered corn, following a study released last week that found serious health problems in rats fed this corn.
What happens when your camcorder is stolen by a seagull? This.
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five Best Inventions Ever. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
Todd Akin Is the Worst
[Content Note: Misogyny; rape culture.]
Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin, Republican Senate candidate from Missouri, recently debated his opponent, incumbent Democratic Senator Clare McCaskill. Afterwards, Akin had this to say:
I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent. She had a confidence and was much more ladylike [in 2006], but in the debate on Friday she came out swinging, and I think that's because she feels threatened.1. Why is this guy still talking? Someone give him a one-way ticket back to whatever wormhole from the 12th century he crawled out of.
2. Everything that anyone with a modicum of decency who's seen this quote would say about his retrofuck definitions of the behavior befitting "a lady."
3. Leaving aside whether McCaskill actually "felt threatened" (unlikely) or was unreasonably "aggressive at the debate" (no), there aren't enough rage-snorts in the world for this guy, a dude who believes there's such a distinction as a "legitimate rape," complaining about a woman responding "aggressively" when she "feels threatened."
I guess Akin would have preferred McCaskill to lie back and think of England, like a proper lady.
Global Safe Abortion Action Day
Pathfinder International, who provided the above image with that great quote from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is marking Global Safe Abortion Action Day by sharing stories of what abortion looks like in parts of Africa, where reproductive rights are not guaranteed. As we know, reproductive rights aren't guaranteed anywhere, not even in the US, without fierce defenders among policymakers. Securing reproductive rights globally is an active, ongoing pursuit.
Pathfinder is doing fundraising through the 30th that's being matched by a generous donor, if you'd like someplace to point your teaspoon today.
Other suggestions for donations, volunteer opportunities, and other ways to wield your teaspoon: Planned Parenthood. Doctors Without Borders. The Lilith Fund. Care. The Guttmacher Institute. The National Abortion Federation. The Feminist Abortion Network. Choice USA. European Pro-Choice Network. NARAL. Catholics for Choice.
There are many other organizations around the world marking Global Safe Abortion Action Day in different ways. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to other pro-choice orgs marking the day and/or additional teaspooning opportunities.
Good Morning! (Or Whatever)
Video Description: Gandalf nodding his head on a loop to a Europop beat.
Question of the Day
What is your favorite tongue-twister?
She sells seashells by the seashore. My sibilant s just makes it sound an awesome mess.
Audio Description: Me saying "she sells seashells by the seashore."
Today in Mitt Romney Is Terrible
David Corn for Mother Jones—New Romney Video from 1985 Shows Mitt Romney Saying Bain Capital Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits:
Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.
Transcript: Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit.This would probably be as good a time as any to recommend "Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital," of which you should definitely read every last stinking, infuriating word, if you haven't yet read it.
[edit]
The fund was formed on September 30th of last year. It's been about 10 months then. It was formed with thirty-seven million dollars in invested cash. An additional fifty million or so of what I'll call a call pool, which is money that we can call upon if the deals are large enough that they require more than a two or three million dollar initial investment. Why in the world did Bain and Company get involved in this kind of a business? We're not particularly noted for having years and years of experience in financing. Three reasons.
We recognized that we had the potential to develop a significant and proprietary flow of business opportunities. Secondly, we had concepts and experience which would allow us to identify potential value and hidden value in a particular investment candidate. And third, we had the consulting resources and management skills and management resources to become actively involved in the companies we invested in to help them realize their potential value.
Asked for comment on this newly unearthed video, current Republican candidate for the US presidency and former corporate raider Mitt Romney was quoted as saying:
First
It is a function of my privilege that this passage, in an LA Times article about President Obama's relationship with Native American tribes, surprised me: "[Obama] is the first president to hold an annual summit with leaders from the 566 federally recognized tribes."
I don't think it's a coincidence that it is our first African-American president who was the first president to hold an annual summit with tribal leaders.
...Which is why I want to rage-quit the world every time I read that Mitt Romney is on the campaign trail dog-whistling racist shit like "I want us to get back to being America."
[NB: Native American tribes are not collectively nor internally monolithic, and there are among them many different feelings about President Obama.]
The First Border House Virtual Game Jam Starts Today!
by Alex, a regular contributor to The Border House, who posts some of her sewing projects and cosplays on her Tumblr; you can also find her babbling about sewing and games and Parks and Recreation on Twitter.
I'd like to invite you to participate in the first-ever Border House Game Jam, which begins today!
What is a game jam?
If you don't know what a game jam is, basically it is an event where people get together to make a game under very strict time restraints. Most game jams are weekend events where participants spend 48 hours straight just making a game. Since this game jam isn't a physical meetup, I'm giving you one week. Your goal is to make a game using TWINE, a tool that enables the creation of Choose Your Own Adventure-style games.
Why Twine?
First of all, it is very easy to use. Anna Anthropy recently published a great tutorial for it. You don't need to know how to program to make a working game using Twine.
Secondly, the output of Twine is a single HTML file, meaning it is very easy to distribute. TBH will be happy to host your game if you'd like, or you can post it in your own space, and we will link to it in the wrap-up post.
So how does this work?
Starting today, make a game! Submit your HTML file or a link to your game to editors-at-borderhouseblog-dot-com by the following Thursday at midnight (your local time) and we will post it on the blog. Then check out the games the rest of the folks in the community made!
How can I possibly make an entire game in a week?
You can totally do it! Trust me.
The spirit of a game jam is just to make games–any kind of game. It doesn't have to be long, or technologically impressive, or deep, or innovative, or polished. It just has to be yours. Because more personal games should exist for their own sake. For art's sake.
If this interests you at all, please spread the word. Feel free to ask questions or collaborate with others in the comments here or in the TBH IRC channel. And if anyone has any suggestions for an (optional) theme, please leave a comment at the kick-off post.
I Hope You're Sitting Down on Your Fainting Couches
It turns out that living on food stamps isn't the life of indulgent luxury that we keep hearing it is. (No!) Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton (D) was challenged "to live on a food stamp budget for a week to mark Hunger Awareness Month" and found that it was no picnic. Literally.
Stanton kept a diary on the challenge, which allotted him roughly $29 a week, the same amount 1.1 million Arizonans receive from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) each week.There are conservatives, lots of them, in this country (and not a few liberals, too) who genuinely believe people aspire to live on food stamps, who believe that being poor is easy, who believe that we've got a social safety net that is providing well for the people who need it.
By day four, Stanton noted that he was "tired" and "it's hard to focus" after leaving the house for work without time to scramble eggs or eat a decent breakfast:
OK- ran out the door today with no time to scramble eggs or even make a sandwich. So I'm surviving on an apple and handful of peanuts, and the coffee I took to the office until dinner. I'm tired, and it's hard to focus. I can't go buy a sandwich because that would be cheating- even the dollar menu at Taco Bell is cheating. You can't use SNAP benefits at any restaurants, fast food or otherwise. I'm facing a long, hungry day and an even longer night getting dinner on the table, which requires making EVERYTHING from scratch on this budget. It's only for a week, so I've got a decent attitude. If I were doing this with no end in sight, I probably wouldn't be so pleasant.
Mitt Romney, for instance: "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."
This insidious myth that poor people are doing fine, that they're just a bunch of lazyasses who don't want more out of life, this bootstraps bullshit, is one of the grossest stories told by the Republican Party.
You try "lifting yourself out of poverty" when you aren't eating enough for your brain to work. Try lifting anything. It isn't easy when your body's devouring its muscles to stay alive.
These are easily discernible facts about poverty and our garbage social safety net. I mean, most USians probably know someone who is or has been on food stamps (if we haven't used them ourselves). Most USians don't need to Google this shit, which goes to show you how out of touch Mitt Romney really is.
Then again, Mitt Romney thinks people are not entitled to food. MITT ROMNEY THINKS PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO FOOD!!! So.
Blog Note
As many of you have noticed, every day around this time for the past week or so, comments have started going wonky—comments take forever to appear on the page, and/or they appear and then disappear.
It makes having a conversation difficult, and I know it makes commenting frustrating, because you don't know if your comment got saved and will eventually appear, or if it's lost in the ether—and many of you have emailed me thinking your comments got deleted for some reason.
Comments are being saved. They're just taking a while to appear (or reappear, as the case may be).
It's a known technical problem that Disqus is working on. Last night, Disqus let me know via Twitter "it might be rough for next few days to a week until some of our planned improvements come online."
So, I just want to say again that I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and hopefully it will be resolved soon.
The Many Faces of Schmidt
So, it became apparent in the thread about my spite-fandom for Zooey Deschanel that many of you also love New Girl, and thus love Schmidt, because DANGER lulz. (It also became apparent that some of you DO NOT love New Girl, and I am sorry that this post is not for you! Win some; Schmidt some.)
Anyway! I thought the Schmidt-heads would enjoy this fun pictorial in Entertainment Weekly of Schmidt (the amazing Max Greenfield) hero-posing for a slide show that was supposed to premiered at his rebranding party, "but time constraints left that sequence on the cutting room floor."
Schmidt as Ponyboy omglol. The rest are here. Enjoy!
In The News
{Content note: homophobia, police brutality, death, murder]
All The News In Fits and Spurts:
French President François Hollande urged the UN to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Homosexuality is currently illegal in 76 countries and punishable by death in eight, including Iran, Mauritania, Sudan, Saudia Arabia and Yemen.
A transgender third-grader in New Hampshire will be allowed to wear clothing and use the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity while at school.
Newt Gingrich issued a harsh assessment of the GOP nominee's campaign strategy yesterday, saying Romney's presidential bid was struggling in key battlegrounds because of a messaging failure. LOL! These guys, they're the best!
J.K. Rowling has launched her long-anticipated first book for adults. The Casual Vacancy went on sale today in London.
A website tracking the use of gay slurs on Twitter has tracked more than 2.5 million instances of usage of the word "faggot" on Twitter in the last two months. If this rate remains consistent, the homophobic slur will be used more than 15 million times in the course of a year.
Sons of Anarchy actor Johnny Lewis was found dead yesterday outside the Los Feliz home of a woman who was found murdered inside. It is still unclear how Lewis died and how the deaths are connected.
Young African Americans ages 12 to 20 see far more alcohol ads on television and in magazines than youths in general.
The University of California regents will pay about $1 million to twenty-one current and former UC Davis students who were pepper-sprayed during a peaceful campus protest last November.
Today marks National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, which the Centers for Disease Control has commemorated for the past five years as a time for us to reflect on the heavy toll that HIV takes on gay and bisexual men across the country and to recommit to fighting the disease. Get tested, if you can.
Related: The OraQuick home HIV test is now available at CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreens drugstores, along with Kroger and Walmart.
Mexico has captured one of the country's most-wanted drug traffickers, Ivan Velazquez Caballero, known as "El Taliban."
Want a $100,000 stove? Sure you do. Comes with an optional mixer, deep fryer, vacuum sealer, induction zone, and a USB port. Of course it comes with a USB port!
"If you want Lestat to come back, can you tell me why in one sentence?" — Anne Rice. "Because I don't have enough softcore vampire porn to jerk off to." — Deeky
"Where is the weirdest place you've ever gotten the urge to make whoopie?"
HA HA OUCH. Also: Accurate!
Shaker pbrim dropped a link to this in comments: It's a video of Mitt Romney's "Too Many Americans" ad spliced with footage of him from other places contradicting his own message of purported compassion. Awesome.
Now Mitt Romney: Too many Americans are struggling to find work in today's economy.Perfect.
Then Mitt Romney: I like being able to fire people.
Now Mitt Romney: Too many of those who are working are living paycheck to paycheck.
Then Mitt Romney (making a bet with Rick Perry at a debate): I'll tell ya what—ten thousand bucks?
Now Mitt Romney: President Obama and I both care about poor and middle class families.
Then Mitt Romney: I'm not concerned about the very poor.
Now Mitt Romney: The difference is: My policies will make things better for them.
Then Mitt Romney: And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
Text Onscreen: Mitt Romney's "Romney: Believe in America" logo. The words "half of" are written in between "in" and "America."
Mitt Romney: I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message.
Text Onscreen: Paid for by the Democratic National Committee. Democrats.org. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Quote of the Day
"Frankly at this early stage, polls go up, polls go down."—Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, as Taegan Goddard notes, is "apparently not aware the election is 41 days away."
Do you love all the conservatives complaining about the media fixing polls? I love it. Mostly because WHO CARES. For all the conservative voters who see Mitt Romney trailing and think, "I won't bother voting, because he's definitely going to lose," there are liberal voters thinking, "I won't bother voting, because Obama's definitely got it in the bag." And still other conservatives who think, "Shit, I've really got to get out there and vote to help Romney."
There aren't a lot of people who vote based on polls. It's foolish to pretend that there are, and further foolish still to pretend that polls only motivate people in a single direction.
Though, admittedly, not as foolish as asserting we're in the "early stage" of the election.
Daily Dose of Cute
Guess what?! We have another new baby! We've been going back and forth on getting another kitty and yesterday I randomly browsed petfinder (as you do) and saw this sweet baby. Well, we could not resist and she was equally as charming when we went to meet her. Presenting...Lady Jane!
The Man with the Plan
Anything Mitt Romney can do, Barack Obama can do better. He can do talking directly into the camera better than you! Yes he can, yes he caaaaaan!
During the last weeks of this campaign, there will be debates, speeches, and more ads, but if I could sit down with you, in your living room or around the kitchen table, here's what I'd say: When I took office, we were losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month and were mired in Iraq. Today, I believe that as a nation we are moving forward again. But we have much more to do—to get folks back to work and make the middle class secure again.And P.S. good luck finding Governor Romney's plan, because he doesn't have one. Unless you count: "Trust me, I've definitely got a plan, which I will totally tell you once you elect me."
Now, Governor Romney believes that, with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he'd double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.
So what's my plan? First, we create a million new manufacturing jobs, and help businesses double their exports; give tax breaks to companies that invest in America, not that ship jobs overseas.
Second: We cut our oil imports in half and produce more American-made energy—oil, clean coal, natural gas, and new resources like wind, solar, and biofuels—all while doubling the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks.
Third: We ensure that we maintain the best workforce in the world, by preparing 100,000 additional math and science teachers, training two million Americans with the job skills they need at our community colleges, cutting the growth of tuition in half, and expanding student aid so more Americans can afford it.
Fourth—a balanced plan to reduce our deficit by four trillion dollars over the next decade. On top of the trillion in spending we've already cut, I'd ask the wealthy to pay a little more, and, as we end the war in Afghanistan, let's apply half the savings to pay down our debt and use the rest for some nation-building right here at home.
It's time for a new economic patriotism, rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class. Read my plan. Compare it to Governor Romney's. And decide for yourself. Thanks for listening. I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
I'm always going to be way to the left of either candidate in either party, so at least 56% (rough estimate) of the stuff in President Obama's summarized plan here is stuff I find wholly uninspiring, or straight-up garbage, either because just no or because lulz priorities, but I have respect for him for making his case straightforwardly and with integrity.
Which is more than I can say for Mitt Romney.
