F*&# YEAH GORE VIDAL

Photo

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:00:47 -0500

A caller to today’s On Point voices her support for...

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:59:09 -0400

A caller to today’s On Point voices her support for Mississippi’s proposed anti-abortion “personhood amendment.” She then goes on to decry sex education in public schools as “too mandatory… too socialist.” When asked about the conflict here—opposing “mandatory” government restrictions over one’s choice while supporting very mandatory controls over individual reproductive rights—the caller is at a total loss for words.

thomasdraco: >implying the Constitution doesn’t allow states...

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:52:00 -0400

thomasdraco:

>implying the Constitution doesn’t allow states to have their own laws

Shows how much about the Constitution Liberaltards know.

Nothing about this implies that “the Constitution doesn’t allow states to have their own laws.” Rather, it’s a comment on Perry’s rhetorical hypocrisy.

If government is to be painted as a source of oppression in the absolute (a philosophy which Perry has adopted on the campaign trail) then there’s no reason this philosophy shouldn’t apply to state governments as well, which leech power away from local governments and property owners and centralize it elsewhere. If you believe any governing body has the right to choose whether you live or die, you don’t believe in “small government,” period.

Rick Perry: government control, literally, over your life.

…the first four comments on a Fox News story about the...

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:40:00 -0400

…the first four comments on a Fox News story about the repeal of the military’s ban on gay servicemembers. Let’s see what we’ve got…

1) Gay people are diseased and can’t control their sexual urges in professional situations (which straight people ar e so awesome at).

2) The repeal is not about equal rights, in fact, and is actually a secret ploy to raise YOUR taxes (…somehow).

3) God is angry and will strike down all the gays (bonus points for getting in a “God… oops, I mean ‘NATURE’” jab at the PC police; by applying pretend censorship to your own comments you get to re-cast yourself as a victim in a story that has nothing to do with you! Bravo!)

4) “They” made us go to school with black people, and pretty soon “they” will make us go to school with gays! (bonus points for unironic, “old-school” racism).

Seriously… I got “gays are promiscuous,” “gays are evil,” “secret Obama plot to raise taxes” and “why do I have to interact with black people?” in the first four comments?!

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Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:38:33 -0400

http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed http://alecexposed....

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:43:41 -0400

http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

If you have an opportunity, check out this month’s issue of The Nation (and, while you’re at it, this episode of Fresh Air featuring John Nichols). It’s a double-issue devoted to ALEC, the “legislative exchange council” comprised of corporate leaders and legal teams that write laws for state-level politicians. They’ve existed since the 70s and have written legislation to privatize schools and prisons, add permanent revenue caps to state constitutions, deregulate everything, etc. They have unprecedented influence in our politics and their agenda is basically designed to dismantle our government and return the money to the private sector. So this is worth knowing about.

Relax... you've got privilege!

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:42:46 -0400

I was driving behind a car with this bumper sticker the other day (well, it wasn’t exactly like this… it had the same text but featured a cartoon cat instead of cartoon penguins), and it made me suddenly, indescribably angry. This might seem innocuous on its face (how could cute cartoon animals be offensive?), but my first thought was this: if you have your own car on which to stick a bumper sticker, you are probably more privileged than most of the people living on this planet. And with that comes the privilege of being able to relax. For example, one of the millions of people who must walk three hours every day just to get clean drinking water does not have the privilege of relaxing, because she was not born in a place where clean drinking water (let alone SUVs) are widely available.

So this is highly offensive because, yes, it’s a slap in the face to those who are the victims of global poverty/genocide/sexual assault/natural disaster and any number of other atrocious, uncontrollable circumstances. But there is a greater societal harm: in endorsing and advertising the Relax… God is in control attitude to others (which is exactly what bumper stickers are designed to do), we are essentially saying don’t bother worrying about things that seem unfair or unjust, because everything is as it’s “supposed” to be. And it’s “supposed” to be that way because a Christian God (supposedly benevolent and kind) wants it to be that way.

This is, in my opinion, the problem in general with Christianity (and theism writ large); while in theory it preaches tolerance and equality, in practice it encourages apathy, discourages self-reliance and efficacy, and prevents people from questioning and acting against established systems of oppression and privilege (like Christianity itself).

stfuconservatives: Submitted by fyeahgorevidal I like it Hey!...

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:27:08 -0400

stfuconservatives:

Submitted by fyeahgorevidal

I like it

Hey! stfuconservatives accepted my submission. They’re the best.

Another Strong Stand For Equality From President Obama

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:19:28 -0400

Another Strong Stand For Equality From President Obama:

timetruthhumor:

George W. Bush refused for a number of years in the past to endorse a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of gays and lesbians around the world in an effort to make it a worldwide policy.

Well, we do live in the present and it has been indeed a time for CHANGE where America is witnessing a sea of changes and broad transformative short and long-term policies being implemented by the Obama Administration in a wide range of issues affecting Americans.

Yesterday was one of those days again where the Administration stood tall and drew the line stating that human rights “are the inalienable right of every person, no matter who they are or who they love” acknowledging that discrimination against gays and lesbians around the world is unacceptable and must be fought and stopped.

Obama administration calls on United Nations to support gay rights by Julie Mianecki, Washington Bureau:

“Human rights are the inalienable right of every person, no matter who they are or who they love,” Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, U.S. ambassador to the council in Geneva, said in a statement. “The U.S. government is firmly committed to supporting the right of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals to lead productive and dignified lives, free from fear and violence.”
//snip

Last weekend, in a statement with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, President Obama announced the creation of a government position to monitor gay rights in the Western Hemisphere.

Fred Sainz, vice president of communications at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, said the U.S. was finally stepping into the role it should have held all along as a worldwide leader in promoting equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

“For those who have been denied their equality for decades, change will never come soon enough,” Sainz said. “But there should also be no doubt that in the past two years more positive change for and on behalf of gay people has been made than ever before.”

[…]

Google ads from a Boston Herald article about Mitt Romney.

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:13:19 -0400

Google ads from a Boston Herald article about Mitt Romney.

This week: the most depressing news week ever?

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:48:19 -0500

Monday: Opposition forces in Libya are losing ground, preparing for a long and bloody battle.
Tuesday: James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas creates an insensitive fake-Muslim front-group to get a fundraising director for NPR to say that tea party groups have a racist element (true). This will likely rally support for a movement to cut funding not just to NPR but to rural, local community radio projects everywhere.
Wednesday: Wisconsin State Senate uses procedural rules to eliminate rights for public workers unions despite absence of a quorum.
Thursday: A hearing is held to discuss “radicalization within the Muslim community.”
Friday: Fifth-largest earthquake in recorded history hits east coast of Japan.

Seriously, what the hell? This has been a landmark week of suffering, accusations and marginalization for already suffering, accused and marginalized people… while, on the other hand, it was a wonderful week for the forces of ignorance, arrogance, privilege and fear.

Mother Jones magazine on Tumblr: How the GOP House Cut Spending Today:

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:50:28 -0500

Mother Jones magazine on Tumblr: How the GOP House Cut Spending Today::

motherjones:

A rundown of other amendments in the bill that House Republicans used to kill Planned Parenthood’s budget:

Eliminated cancer screening and basic health services for millions of poor women.

Prohibited EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

Cut financing for the Reagan-era US Institute of…

nanner: Yes. Make it small enough to fit in a uterus.

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:12:48 -0500

nanner:

Yes. Make it small enough to fit in a uterus.

I Stand With Planned Parenthood

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:17:35 -0500

I Stand With Planned Parenthood:

librarysciences:

Did you hear? The House voted to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding. They cut funding for HIV tests, cancer screenings, birth control, and more, putting millions of women and families at risk. We can’t let it go unanswered. It’s time for you and me to stand with Planned Parenthood. Sign the open letter to the reps who voted for this bill — and to the senators who still have a chance to stop it.

http://www.ppaction.org/IStandWithPP

[via benjaminstein].

I'm as Liberal as they come...

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:27:25 -0500

evangotlib:

But when you see what Unions have done to America…it’s hard to feel for the folks in Wisconsin. Have you been to Detroit? Have you really dug into the US Public School system? Utter disasters.

Detroit will come back. The school will be saved. But unions need to go in order for this to happen.

You’re not ”as liberal as they come,” though, are you? You can’t say you’re as liberal as someone can be and then say something like “unions need to go” (not reform or make concessions, but cease to exist entirely)— a position that, in my opinion, is basically tantamount to a belief that individuals should not have a right to the power to help determine what their value is worth in the process of bargaining with huge systems, be them private corporations or the U.S. education system. If you think unions are solely to blame for the economic situation in Detroit then I believe you are an apologist for corporate greed and mismanagement, and you’re totally ignoring the role that Wall Street played in bringing about our current financial crisis.

As for the U.S. school system: did it ever occur to you that the reason it’s an “utter disaster” has less to do with unions and their right to organize than it does with the fact that we don’t fund it nearly as well as we ought (check out this chart)?

I will readily admit that I am not an expert on unions, and I will also admit that in many cases unions can be corrupt or overstep their boundaries. If you are truly of the opinion that these problems are unilaterally caused by unions then that is your opinion… but please, please do not call yourself a liberal, because in doing so you are re-defining liberalism (and, by proxy, centrism and other labels) even farther to the right than our already-conservative norms.

If the most liberal people in our country now have hard-line conservative stances, this means that liberalism is dead— and I think statements like yours contribute to that.

A few words about Rep. Lee

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 09:52:15 -0500

“…homosexual relationships, unlike marriage relationships, are characterized by instability/promiscuity rather than stability/fidelity.”

~Homosexuality “fact sheet” published by Defend the Family (Abiding Truth Ministries)

In the wake of Mr. Lee resigning over a scandal involving Craigslist and creepy shirtless photos, I’ve been trying to reconcile my feelings that, as many people have been quick to point out, it’s not always fair to scrutinize others’ private lives with the sense of justice I cannot help but feel when a politician who opposes the personal freedoms of gays and women falls victim to his own hypocrisy.

Here are two conclusions I’ve drawn:

(1) As long as we are the most sexually repressed of all developed nations, we will always harbor this fascination with the private lives of our public figures. Whether fair or not, it is a reality that these things go hand in hand— and, in a way, conservative politicians nurture this repression by denouncing normal sexuality as deviant and immoral.

(2) While someone’s sexual choices are rarely, if ever, a factor that affects their job performance, hypocrisy is a factor that affects congresspeople; if you are chosen by the people to lead based on certain values you claimed to identify with, and then you are found to have lied about those values, your ability to do your job (represent the people) effectively is scrutinized.

Pursuant especially to number (2), I will always feel justified in illuminating hypocrisy in our political leaders. And when someone supports an ideology or a specific policy that suggests that those of us who deviate from arbitrary social-sexual norms should be restricted specifically because of the perceived negative effect they will have on “the moral fabric of our society,” he should be culpable for his own negative effect on said moral fabric. Given that straight, white males are capable of moral forays just like the rest of us, when will the GOP begin creating legislation that protects our fragile society from their evils?

"Rape isn’t a ‘natural hazard’ like a cliff edge that women must be careful to avoid when drunk - it..."

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:59:26 -0500

“Rape isn’t a ‘natural hazard’ like a cliff edge that women must be careful to avoid when drunk - it is a wilful act of violence perpetrated by another human being and the responsibility lies with the perpetrator not the victim. Drinking alcohol is not illegal or wrong. Perpetrators are in control of their actions. A woman is never responsible for a man raping her. But society’s morals and logic currently display a yogic ability to bend over backwards to accommodate, accept and normalise the reality of violence against women. Studies show that people who display high levels of sexism are more likely to accept the idea that women can be to blame when a man rapes them. This propensity to blame victims and often to absolve the perpetrators allows the cultures that breed sexist violence to go unchallenged. Victim-blaming must also end for the real cause of sexist violence - gender inequality - to come into full view.”

- The Equality Illusion, Kat Banyard (via petitefeministe)

A THOUSAND TIMES THIS

(via beingemmalee)

ALWAYS reblog.

(via stfusexists)

Yay! Advertising! I love being advertised at, especially when...

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:45:00 -0500

Yay! Advertising! I love being advertised at, especially when they just throw together a bunch of random cultural signifiers (Star Wars! Cute kids!) for no reason! That’s my favorite! This really speaks to me. Advertising is great. Let’s buy cars! And beer! Yeah, beer! Those guys in the beer commercials are just like me! They have scruffy beards and laugh and objectify women and go fishing and everything! It’s just like my life! God, I love advertising. It makes me feel warm, and accepted, and at home.

Sorry, I’m bitter.

Super Bowl Rant

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:30:00 -0500

I have so many problems with the Super Bowl, and the cult of the Super Bowl, I don’t even know how to organize this.

Let’s start, as I often do, with Fox. The Super Bowl is always a veritable orgasm of marketing and ad dollars, directed at a massive audience that equals half of the U.S. population. But Fox, like no other, knows how to wring every disgusting penny out of cross-promoting racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes.

Full disclosure: I only saw about forty minutes of the Super Bowl. My partner and I go out for Mexican food every Super Bowl Sunday; it’s a tradition we started because, I think, we get a kick out of the post-modern absurdity of a Super Bowl ritual that is not actually connected to the Super Bowl. However, due to our favorite Mexican restaurant’s minor ‘sports bar’ element, it does afford us an opportunity to get a glimpse of the event we generally find so distasteful. But forty minutes is enough. I saw in forty minutes everything I hate about football, Fox, and hyperbolic, hyper-patriotism that has been completely commodified and drained of any meaning. It is the implicit void of anything meaningful in the name of commodification, and we celebrate it with the reverent vigor of a religious holiday.

The game started with patriotic songs sung by a cast-member of Glee and Glee-featured pop singer Christina Aguilera. Glee aggravates me like nothing else. I’m particularly upset by the slew of awards and back-patting that Fox receives for having a show with openly-gay main characters. While I do generally support gay characters on television as a way to make American audiences more comfortable with a normal element of the population that has existed and functioned with them since the beginning of human history, spending any amount of time watching Fox’s sister-cable-news channel makes it abundantly clear that Fox’s aims are not to spread tolerance and acceptance of lgbtq people, but to profit from a perverse, voyeuristic American fascination with gay culture. What’s worse is that it’s working— Glee is a beloved and accepted show watched by people at both ends of the political spectrum who, apparently, didn’t get enough of “Don’t Stop Believing” when it was done by Journey.

So before the game even starts, we’re profiting from homophobia and a contrived, hyper-real patriotic spirit that includes blatantly wasting jet fuel and other resources by flying fighter jets over the stadium, to remind us all that we still a dominant military power, and, talk of fiscal conservatism, deficit reduction and ‘small government’ aside, to oppose military expansion is to be as un-patriotic as, well… not watching Glee (Tuesdays on Fox!).

And of course, as is customary on all network television programming all the time, we were bombarded by advertising. The major difference is that, during the Super Bowl, for some reason, we as a nation collectively enjoy this everyday inconvenience. I think we saw four commercial breaks in half-hour-plus, most of which were from advertising mainstays Anheuser-Busch, Frito-Lay and Pepsico., the latter of which managed to marry both racism and sexism in their “love hurts” ad, in which a man’s freedom to eat and drink nutritionally-empty garbage is constantly being undermined by his “nagging woman” girlfriend (a sexist stereotype that is often particularly delegated to black women), who has the gall to care about the health of the person she loves. Their relationship seems like total misery, except for one shining moment when they agree on one thing: his decision to drink some new strain of Pepsi that is supposedly not going to give him diabetes or cancer (I’d like to see some research). The punchline of the commercial comes when their bliss is broken by the man’s inability to avoid drooling over a jogger who sits on a bench next to them. The jogger, of course, is svelt, blonde and light-skinned— now here’s a woman attractive enough to objectify! The wife/girlfriend then develops a scowl that indicates she has switched from the predictable “nagging woman” stereotype to the even more predictable ”jealous woman” stereotype, going into such a blind rage that she throws a can of Pepsi at the jogger, and they both run off leaving the jogger unconscious (concussed? dead?). This violently comical denouement was supposed to funny, I guess, but the whole thing just left me feeling uncomfortable for having witnessed it in a public place with other people.

So Pepsi makes an offensive, stupid commercial, and then pay Fox (a subsidiary of News Corp.) an outrageous amount of money to air it. Fox, who has been spending the past year tirelessly priming the pump by sending out messages designed to make us feel comfortable laughing at offensive stereotypes (because otherwise you’re just some maladroit, “political-correctness” -obsessed, “war on Christmas” -type loser, like me), makes an inflated profit to beam these images into the homes of many, many Americans. Said Americans, comforted by Fox News commentators and Family Guy reruns that assert that racism is really not a very big deal after all, continue to buy Pepsi and Glee cast recordings in record numbers. Fox gets paid, Pepsi gets paid, poor people get sick, marginalized people stay marginalized, Americans everywhere celebrate with bean dip. Same as it ever was.

I wish I knew why this is applauded, let alone acceptable, but I really can’t figure it out. I don’t even know how to conclude this, because, well, what conclusion should I draw? Should I be upset, get angry, feel guilty? Those emotions, while applicable, aren’t really helpful. But I want to know why this acceptable, and why we perpetuate it, and, most importantly, what barriers exist to stopping what seems to me like a vicious cycle of profit from hate, and ignorance as virtue.

predatorywaspobserver: - Ray Bradbury in an interview (Paris...

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 08:50:27 -0500

predatorywaspobserver:

- Ray Bradbury in an interview (Paris Review, 2010)

I’m made uncomfortable by such reactionary/conservative views of the Kindle. To write off the Kindle because it doesn’t smell like a book just doesn’t make sense. For many, the Kindle makes books easier to find, cheaper to obtain, and more mobile (contrary to Mr. Bradbury’s assertion, you can take e-books with you; and while they’re not permanent… neither are real books).

I think it’s close-minded to write off technology that can make information easier to access for people because you have a romantic attachment to its technological predecessor. E-books are very much books, in that books are not so much paper bound together as thoughts and ideas compiled in an accessible way.