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Is there anything more defeating than cute bats?
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The current Pope, who was complicit in shuffling the pedophile priests to different parishes has joined with Kimberly Daniels at the Christian Broadcasting Network in issuing his own warning about Halloween: it's dangerous to not just your waistline but your eternal souls.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/10/30/pope-nixes-halloween/#more-16729
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"I feel relevant!"
After all, what's 43,000 dead Americans every year if Joe Lieberman doesn't feel important?
I'm really getting tired of having this country's well-being held hostage to men's psychological issues. If it isn't chastity and abortion bans advocated by men who can't keep it in their own pants, it's wars started by a president with daddy issues so serious he needs a steamer trunk to hold them all, or one who's so used to trying to tiptoe while straddling two divergent worlds and keep everyone happy that he seems temperamentally unable to achieve his own goals in today's fractious political environment.
And then there's the senior Senator from Connecticut, a pathetic, whiny little man who uses Jewish grievance to further his career; a man so insignificant that if he were not able to hold a Democratic president hostage, he seems to feel he might disappear altogether.
Keep reading: http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/11/after-all-whats-43000-dead-americans.html
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The Rude Pundit: The Health Care Debate: Abortion as the Last Arrow:
So during the endless discussion over what was going to be part of the health care reform bill coming out of the House of Representatives, some Blue Dog Democrats voiced their fear that hard-earned cash money from them or their constituents might be used to pay for eeeevil abortions in any public health insurance exchange. So Representative Lois Capps, Democrat from California, proposed an amendment in committee. That amendment said, in so many words, "Okay, f**kers, you're so worried about a totally legal medical procedure? How about this: the only way the public health insurance option can pay for an abortion with federal funds is under the ways allowed by the backwards-ass Hyde Amendment from way back when. That means the usual trio: rape, incest, mother's life in danger. And, just to make sure your precious tax dollars, which you have no problem being used for killing civilians in wars, don't in any way, shape, or form go for abortions, we'll set it up so that the public option and the private insurance companies in the big-ass exchange can't use any federal money for abortions, only the premiums paid in by individual members. So, in other words, not a single federal dollar will pay for an un-Hyde abortion. Good?"
The amendment passed the Energy and Commerce Committee and was included in the final bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced yesterday. And it does, indeed, explicitly ban federal funds from being used for abortions, except as the Hyde Amendment allows.
So, of course, the pro-lifers all over the political map have declared that the bill is "mandating abortion services."
See, the way that these anti-choice conservatives see it, even if no federal tax dollars are ever used for abortion, the simple fact that any of the plans in the exchange cover abortion means that federal funds would be used for, say, colds and cancer and paper clips, thus evilly freeing up other money to be used for abortions. Or, as an amendment pro-life Democrats, led by Michigan's Bart Stupak, are demanding be voted on in the House says, no federal funds may be used "to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion" except in cases of the trio mentioned above. And that goes even if one plan out of, say, a dozen in the exchange covers abortion.
You got that? Even though tax money can't be used for abortions, the right is gonna say it's being used indirectly for abortions, thus it's being used for abortions. It's like saying that if you and your buddy go to a strip club and he decides to get a lap dance, his girlfriend says it's your fault he came home with sticky pants.
In the next week, this is where the battle is gonna be. Sure, a lot is gonna be made about the price tag, but that'll fade, as will the stupidity over the actual, physical size of the bill. But, you know, we're an idiotic nation that has a juvenile discomfort with women's bodies and the rights that we can't seem to understand are settled law.
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The US House of Representatives is expected to vote Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to reject the UN's Goldstone report, which accuses Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes in Gaza.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_Congress_to_vote_on_UN_Gaza_repo_10312009.html
FYI:
The U.S. is providing Israel with at least $7.0 million each day* in military aid and is giving the Palestinians $0** in military aid during Fiscal Year 2009.
| Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel |
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"Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain."###
More facts Americans should know here: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
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SCUZZLEBUTT QUITS NY-23 RACE! The communist liberal abortion-loving ACORN Stalinist ("moderate conservative") Republican candidate in the NY-23 special congressional election, Scuzzlebutt, has dropped out only a few days before the election. She was sick of getting yelled at by wingnuts. More likely, though, is that the RNC applied severe pressure on her ("Just get your quit on, baby") so it could claim a Conservative Party victory as its own. The possibilities for bipartisanship in Congress have never been better. AP
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Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), who receives the finest free health care in the country, calls for health care protest rally in D.C. next week: "We're going to have a big party': http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/31/bachmann-house-call/
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Now it's the death penalty for acring weird - watch your ass
From Suburban Guerilla, via Digby, yet another predictable result of letting cops depend on weapons instead of non-violent enforcement.
Fiorino called for backup, and she and responding officer David Burk considered taking Oliver in for a psychiatric evaluation, because they thought he might be mentally unstable.When Burk tried to get Oliver to cross the street, Oliver "struggled and pulled away from him," according to the ruling.
Without warning, Fiorino Tasered him in the stomach, bringing him to the ground. Once the five-second pulse wore off, she Tasered him again. The witness said Oliver never got up after the first Tasering, and never hit, punched, kicked or threatened the officers.
Oliver, who was lying on the hot asphalt, allegedly screamed that it was "too hot." Fioriono said she may have Tasered Oliver 11 or 12 times, explaining that she kept pulling the trigger until he stayed on the ground. Her Taser log showed eight times in two minutes, with each shock lasting five seconds.
After officers handcuffed Oliver, he began foaming at the mouth, according to Fiorino. She said she was unable to remove all the Taser prongs from his body.
This is the logic that pervades the taser argument: The taser isn't harmful so we shouldn't be held responsible for killing people with them.Actually this court decision is a step in the right direction. They at least held that there should be some probable cause before you kill someone with a taser. It isn't much but it's better than the idea that these deaths are "accidental" or caused by the police custody disease called "excited delirium." At least they acknowledged that police can't electrocute and kill citizens for no reason whatsoever.
Maybe someday we'll even reach a point where courts will acknowledge that cops aren't allowed to kill anyone for any reason but self-defense and that electro-torturing people into compliance is excessive force. It's hard to believe it isn't obvious that allowing police to commonly and reflexively use this level of pain, no matter how transient, is an authoritarian method worthy of the worst dystopian nightmare, but since huge numbers of people in this country seem to think the screams and terror they cause are really, really funny I guess you can't really blame the cops for assuming it's perfectly acceptable. The killings though, that might just be a step too far even for the jokesters. Maybe.
Here's the crime for which the man I'm sure those officers still call the "perp" received the death penalty: He waved down the officer, requesting help because someone across the street was shooting at him. Then he refused to accompany the officer who wanted to detain him for psychiatric evaluation.
Unfortunately, the lesson likely to come out of this unjustified homicide is not the desperate need for police training in non-violent methods, but the importance of immediately and cheerfully obeying any police order, no matter how unnecessary, unjust or potentially dangerous.
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FBI documents detail CIA torture The DoJ released hundreds of pages of documents yesterday that, in spite of heavy redactions, leave no doubt that the CIA was engaging in heinous methods of torture, including manacling suspects to the ceiling by their wrists and blaring loud music at them non-stop. FBI agents inspecting a site in 2002 were appalled and threatened to arrest the CIA thugs doing the torturing. More's the pity they didn't.
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Rush repeats Lizzies lie Again - neither that chickenshit fuckwit or her golem father ever went to salute the dead on their final journey home. Not. Once.
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