Monday, August 20, 2012

Headlines - Monday August 20

 
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Oh, do shut up:

The Boston Globe is calling on Vice President Joe Biden to apologize for telling an audience at a campaign rally, made up largely of African Americans, that Republicans "want to put ya'll back in chains."

"[I]magine if Republican Paul Ryan uttered comments like that. Mitt Romney's pick for vice president would be pilloried for racial insensitivity — and so would Romney," the Globe's editorial board wrote in today's paper. "In the fight for civility and substance over pointless hyperbole, Biden may not be the worst offender. But he's an offender nonetheless, and he should apologize."

I did a quick Google search, and I don't recall the Boston Globe demanding that Mitt Romney apologize for Romney surrogate and Orange Supremacist Donald Trump's crazy racist birther bullshit.

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In the Dominican Republic, a nine-week pregnant girl was diagnosed with leukemia. The girl's mother pleaded with doctors to "allow" her daughter to get an abortion so the girl she could begin chemotherapy immediately. "I know abortion is a sin, but my daughter's health comes first," she cried.

The doctors responded by forcing her and her daughter to view ultrasounds so the two women could see that the baby was healthy.

Three weeks after the girl was diagnosed, the doctors finally began chemotherapy, but still would not end the pregnancy. Ultimately, the young woman miscarried the pregnancy, hemorrhaged, and died.

She was 16 years old.

[read full post at ABLC]

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Todd Akin is a douchebag

By now, you know what this asshole has said about 'legitimate rape' and pregnancy. Here is the quote:

It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare [pregnancy from rape]. If it's a legitimate rape, uh, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think that there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.


First of all, Imma need the names of those doctors Akin mentioned because otherwise, this falls into the category of pulling bullshit out of one's ass – which is exactly what he's done. Or, he's reading too much of this and/or this. The first link is for a website of purported pro-forced-birther physicians, so it's conceivable that they are the doctors Akin so cavalierly dropped into the interview. If you don't want to dip yourself in the filth, the link basically throws out a bunch of stats and crams them into a preconceived notion. In other words, utter bullshit. A 1996 study has shown that 5% of rapes result in pregnancy. Here's a link to the abstract of the study. Please note, roughly 32,000 pregnancies from rape a year occur, according to the study.. Contrary to Akin's bullshit, that is not 'really rare', and I doubt the numbers have substantially changed since then. Understandably, it's not easy to determine exactly how many pregnancies are a result of rape, but I will take the numbers from the study over the bullshit fantasy numbers from Physicians for Life any day. More » 

And in a related story: Akin's Spiritual Mentor: Women Occasionally Invite Rape, Victims Are 'Hysterical'

Way to live up to the stereotype, Israelis. As Bibi rattles his sabers and the warmongering becomes more and more shrill, some Israelis are having second thoughts. Not about attacking another country on specious grounds because it isn't possible to prove a negative, but because they're concerned about how much it would cost. 

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Breaking down nearly a century of the growing income gap between the 99 percent and the top 1 percent, and the role the marginal income tax rate played:

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Douchebag Hank Williams Jr. called President Obama a Muslim who "hates" America during a concert at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand on Friday, eliciting enthusiastic cheers and applause from the audience. The comments came after Williams played "We Don't Apologize For America": "We've got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the US and we hate him," he said. In 2011, Williams sparked controversy for comparing Obama to Hitler and describing him as "the enemy."   

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Hero Elections Officials in Ohio Save Voting Process From Black People

I voted sticker

It is kind of an open secret these days that the GOP is marching ever closer towards becoming a far-right nationalist movement that self-legitimates using Biblical discourse combined with claims to a monopoly on expressions of American authenticity. So we shouldn't really be too surprised every time a prominent Republican says something overtly racist, in an email, to a member of the press, about voting rights and who should have them and on what schedule. And yet we ARE surprised! We are kind of shocked actually! Not just this time, but every single time! We think this is probably because we are bleeding heart liberals who do not watch Fox News and are thus shielded from what America has become, although we welcome other theories. Anyway, Franklin County (Ohio) Elections Director William Anthony Republican Party chair and elections board member Doug Preisse (sorry, don't know how we fucked up that one!) is firm on preventing early in-person voting because it is only "fair" and "reasonable" for voting to take place on a schedule that fails to accommodate urban people, by which he means black people, which he is actually kind enough to state outright in an email to a reporter with the Columbus Dispatch:

Many [African American leaders in Ohio] probably thought this battle ended last week when Secretary of State Jon Husted, after encountering harsh criticism from sources as varied as The New York Times and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, directed Ohio's 88 county elections boards to keep uniform hours for early in-person voting. He ordered the boards to stay open to 7 p.m. the final two weeks before the election but nixed weekend hours.

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"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine," said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. "Let's be fair and reasonable."

He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others "bullshit. Quote me!"

To be fair, he sounds totally reasonable, doesn't he? And just because they allowed early voting in 2008 doesn't mean they should allow it now–don't you remember how it "contorted the voting process"? If anything is going to "contort" the voting process this time around, it's going to be the Supreme Court, and not minority voter turnout. This is America, after all!

[Columbus Dispatch]

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Republican Congressmen really love Israel. And sometimes, when elected officials love a country very much and have built up a special relationship based on demagoguing that country's interests, special things happen, like booze-fueled parties where one dude just really has to skinny dip.

The FBI probed a late-night swim in the Sea of Galilee that involved drinking, numerous GOP freshmen lawmakers, top leadership staff – and one nude member of Congress, according to more than a dozen sources, including eyewitnesses.

During a fact-finding congressional trip to the Holy Land last summer, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of members, their families and GOP staff during a night out in Israel, the sources told POLITICO. Other participants, including the daughter of another congressman, swam fully clothed while some lawmakers partially disrobed. More than 20 people took part in the late-night dip in the sea, according to sources who were participants in the trip.

Of course, everyone has different reasons for why they needed to defile the holiest sea you ever did see, because this is America and we are individuals. Drunk, religious, overheated (horny) individuals.
READ MORE »

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Mitt Romney keeps saying that President Obama "robbed" Medicare of $716 billion in order to pay for Obamacare.

He also keeps saying that the $716 billion are cuts to Medicare services and benefits.

Both statements are flat-out lies.

As I've explained over and over and over, the "cuts" to Medicare come from savings, reductions in waste and fraud, and ending taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies. Mitt Romney promises to put the $716 billion back into Medicare, which necessarily means Mitt Romney wants to increase fraud and waste in the Medicare system.

Then again, it is no surprise that Romney favors waste and fraud since he and Bain Capital profited from such waste and fraud: Mitt Romney actually sat on the board of a company that plead guilty to charges of defrauding Medicare and agreed to pay the largest healthcare criminal fraud fine in history at the time – more than $35 million.

From blue aardvark at Daily Kos:

From the delightful gift that is John McCain's opposition research on Mitt (courtesy of namelessgenxer) comes the sordid tale of Mitt's tenure on the board of Damon Clinical Laboratories, which plead guilty to charges of defrauding Medicare and agreed to pay what was at the time the largest health care criminal fraud fine in history – $35,300,000. They also agreed to larger civil fines which totaled $83,700,000.

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