Matthieu Ricard: Habits of Happiness

Iran Govt. Shuts Up Media After Election

Iran curbs media after election.

In America, a democracy, the government doesn't have to shut up the mainstream media.

The media whore media here are already blind, deaf and dumb.

GOP Reichwing Hatespeak Alive & Well in South Carolina

Freedom of speech means prominent Republican activists get caught having Macaca moments. Not to worry. This one was just "jesting" with racist comment.. Haha. Really. Just joking. Do not get panties in a twist.

Trey Walker, an advisor to S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, posted an innocuous Facebook update about this morning’s escape of a Western Lowlands Gorilla from Columbia’s Riverbanks Zoo.

Walker’s harmless update, however was followed by a highly-questionable comment from longtime SCGOP activist and former State Senate candidate, Rusty DePass.

“I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless,” DePass wrote.

An early South Carolina supporter of former President George W. Bush, DePass has been active in Republican politics in South Carolina for decades.

Department of Oh Who Really Cares About the Post-Born?

Caring for the post-born is waay too pussy. Let's just keep on weeping for the feti.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

The thing speaks for itself.

VastLeft: An Atheist's Lullaby

From the inimitable Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy:

An Atheists' Lullaby

Fetal Sentimentalist & ProlifeKiller Warns of More ProlifeKiller Death to Come

Yes, that's what he said.

Krauthammer: Sotomayor Is a Racist

So Sonia's a racist, is she, Charlie?

Not to worry, dude.

Hillary was a racist, too.

Same mud. Different face.

Pakistan Refugee Crisis

Queen Noor of Jordan:

Yesterday in Cairo, President Obama eloquently underscored the importance of human security, and the need for everyone to have a safe, dignified and prosperous place in the world. Realizing this aspiration is a daily challenge in the face of widespread human rights violations and vulnerability caused by persecution and conflict.

One challenge to the world's capacity to care for its citizens is taking place right now in Pakistan, where the conflict between the government and militants in the northwest has forced almost three million people from their homes. According to the UN Refugee Agency, this is the most rapid large-scale displacement the world has witnessed since the movement into the Congo after the Rwandan genocide.

More than 80 percent of the displaced are staying with host families, posing a tremendous burden to already poor people, and making it difficult for humanitarian agencies to reach the most vulnerable. While food needs are largely being met, there are severe shortages of shelter, medicine, clean water, and sanitation facilities.

Reports from relief workers in daily contact with the displaced suggest that they are discouraged by the meager response to their plight so far. A crisis of such proportion has the potential to create a mass of people who, out of despair and hopelessness, might become part of another vicious cycle of frustration and violence. The risk to Pakistan's overall stability is very real, and this ultimately poses risks to the United States and its interests in the region as well.

As someone deeply committed to refugee causes for many years, in the Middle East and beyond, and as a member of the Board of Directors of Refugees International, my plea is that the world respond more effectively to this crisis than it has to date. The most immediate need for action is simple -- for funding to be made available to agencies that can deliver assistance directly to the refugees at the village level .

Donate here:Interaction: American Council for Voluntary International Action.

Department of Better Late Than Never

See previous post(s).

HuffPo Smears the Secretary of State -- Again.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.




Not sure how long they'll keep it, but right now there's a huge headline at HuffPo about an embassy couple who've been spying for Cuba. Its sole illustration is a picture of the Secretary of State, above.


Follow up is an article-- and its sole illustration is a picture of -- the Secretary of State.















Interesting philosophy of illustration they got there goin' at HuffPo. Walter Ken Myers -- no pix of the perp?


What, they couldn't get a picture of a palm tree? Or Gitmo?

Think Arianna's got um -- CDS issues?

Huffington Post Posts Sexist Post Because None Dare Call It Sexist?

Don't get your panties in a twist, ladies.

Or gentlemen.

As the case may be.

Just want to assure you that it's SO not sexist to write articles where readers get to rate the clothing of the Secretary of State of the United States.

Along the prettiness/non-prettiness continuum.

Because -- why not? It's a free country!

We used to do it for Henry Kissinger and George Schultz and Colin Powell!!

All-the-time.

Really. Don't you remember? Sure you do.


"COLOR HIM BAD . . . AND GOOD. VOTE FOR AL HAIG'S PRETTIEST AND NOT-SO-PRETTY PANTSUITS"

Department of Karma, Cause & Effect: O'Reilly's "Tiller the Baby Killer" Rant

Malicious words. Like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, is it not, Billy?

Bill O'Reilly has blood on his hands for this nasty piece of work: Tiller the Baby Killer.

I have never agreed with Billy's fetal position: that fetuses trump the post-born in terms of being worthy of our compassion.

Bill O'Reilly, in addition to being a sexual harasser, is a loudmouth and a narcissist. One who conducts himself in a way that makes him complicit in murder by domestic terrorism. As is Cheney, and the rest of the shrieky hysterical mirror-neuron-deficient, pro-torture, anti-life Talibangelical terrorists: by their works shall ye know them.

How can anyone claim to be Christian, yet fail to follow the golden rule?




---
Jesus' General on O'Reilly, God's Destroying Angel.

Sexism and Judge Sotomayor

Really, you've gotta love this.

Hat-tip to Tennessee Guerilla Women.

The evolution of headlines at the New York Times.

Sotomayor's Sharp Tongue Raises Issues of Temperament 5.28

Sotormayor's Blunt Style Raises Issues of Temperament 5.28

And then there's this one, not available online, but available as an actual newspaper arrived at our doorstep yesterday. Love that sub-head.


Assertive Style Raises Questions on Demeanor
Colleagues Call Sotomayor A Potent Force


Oh my.

Clueless Self-Injurious Behaviorist Gordon Liddy Fears Sotomayor: re: Riding the Cotton Pony!!

Little Gordy don't know much about women, do he?

bwahahaha.

How embarrassing for him. Someone needs to send him a book on physiology, do they not?



hat-tip to bluegal.
Corrente: big tent watch

US Military Rape: STFU

The rightwing Talibangelical government-forced maternity crowd likes to protect a rapist's right to breed. Now the government is protecting rapists' identities.

There are pictures that depict the US military, carrying out the "get tough" orders of George W. Bush, using warcrime rape as a weapon of torture.

There are pictures. Videos. We heard of them long ago. Haven't seen them.

The still unreleased photos relate to abuse alleged to have taken place between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Taguba, now retired, supports Obama’s decision to block the release of the photos, which Obama had previously said would be released according to a court ruling in support of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba told the Telegraph. “I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it,” Taguba said.

Horrendous. Right. The description is enough.

Hunh? They're too awful for anyone to see? So we really really have to keep them secret. Because if everyone saw what the US really did, they'd really might get their panties in a twist, and hey, that would really suck.

Yes, it's heinous. So heinous. Just calling the pix "heinous" is really enough.

But not heinous enough to prosecute the rapists, for example. Why not? The pictures are just too hot to handle? They'd just make everyone upset? Obama's ok with helping everyone to just STFU?

Why would shutting up about atrocities be a good thing? Why would letting people get away with comitting atrocities be in any way acceptable?

If there are images, there are victims and perps.

Why are happy to have our tax dollars spent protecting a rapist's right to rape?

Iscellany-may

Your tax dollars at work: Detainee Describes His 7 Years at Guantanamo.

Welcome Back to Pottersville, Supreme Court Edition.

James Dobson: Jesus Hates

Darth Cheney: Suddenly Scared About Karma, Cause & Effect

So morally bankrupt torture enthusiast and mirror neuron retard Big Dick Cheney's scared about going to jail?

So he should be.

The Pussy Frame: Just Like the Nigger Frame Except It's Acceptable

It's all about insult.

You want to insult a guy, you call him a girl.

If you're the governor of california, you call a guy a "girlie-man." If you're a politician, you call a yappy little dog you don't want a "girlie-dog" or you call a woman "sweetie." And you can get away with it.

If you're casting aspersions on candidates, you imbue them with female characteristics: you tar them with stereotypical female qualities/weaknesses: vanity, superficiality, etc. -- complaining about their haircuts, clothes, their color choices: Edwards as "Breck girl," Gore's "earth tones," Clinton's $400 haircuts, Kerry windsurfing like a sissy. You're about to fake-waterboard some loudmouth Con radio host, you tell him he's gonna "moan like a little girl." You want to justify torture, you frame your opponents as wimps and wussies.

You want to insult the [female] Speaker of the House of Representatives to further your rightwing political agenda, you call her a pussy.

And -- you can get away with it.

Mancow Waterboard

People who do not suffer from Mirror Neuron Retardation Syndrome don't have to BE waterboarded like this guy had to, in order to realize that waterboarding is torture.

Is it "torture"?

Watch conservative Radio host Mancow attain sudden and complete enlightenment.




Waterboard Cheney. Waterboard Rummy. Waterboard Rush, Bush. Waterboard Geoffrey Miller. Waterboard the whole entire pro-torture crowd. Then we'll talk.

Al-Gonzo Okays Torture Prior to Torture Memo Saying Torture Is Okay

Maybe Alberto needs to get all lawyered up?

GOP Cons End "Era of Apology" -- Without Even Apologizing

Michael Steele Hails End of "Era of Apologizing."

You have to give them points for creating their own reality. As in unilaterally ending an era it just unilaterally created.

But then you have to take all them points away for their destroying our reality.

I just wish they would shut up and slink off. Really, I do.

Oh Lookee -- Sadists4Christ Have Been Running an UnConstitutional Theocracy All This Time!!

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Separation of Church and State. Well, sorta. But, you know, sometimes there just isn't, and so we have to do stuff we don't really wanna do. Like not having a separation of church and state. And like torturing people. We know it's wrong, but we do it anyway, because we had to. I mean, we had to.

Like Rummy had no choice when he blatantly shamelessly resorting to using specifically Christian battle themes and quotes as Bible propaganda to propagandize his message to the troops.

Sure, it's illegal. And unconstitutional. But God told him to do it? Well, I don't know what God did, reallly. I dunno. Does Rummy think that God's been updating His communication stream? Why separate church and statet when you can update church as state. It makes a brave new world, don'tcha get it? Next thing you know, Christ won't get tortured and die on the cross, He'll get tortured and then waterboarded to death. (Then we'll all be forced to wear little golden waterboards around our necks. . . ?)

Anyhow. Wow. This blatant bible stuff is real disturbing. I mean, sure looks like Rummy's got issues.

Hands up, boys and girls, if you think that little Donny Rumsfeld got the living crap beaten out of him on a regular basis by a big powerful omniscient omnipotent Daddy, one who told little Donny that it was all his fault that Daddy (or maybe Mommy) had to make little Donny pay for his misdeeds with pain?


---hat-tip to Revpaperboy at The Woodshed.

Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto . . .

Department of "No, we can't care for the children we already have, so let's browbeat women into having more and more little unwanted children regardless of ability properly to care for them, and if guilt-tripping women doesn't work, there's always the laws of government-forced maternity which protect a rapist's right to breed, because really, so what?"

VICTORVILLE, Calif.—Investigators say the parents of a 2-month-old boy have been jailed for child abuse after the infant was hospitalized in Victorville with broken legs, wrists and ribs.

Yvette Barragon took the infant to St. Mary Medical Center with a swollen leg earlier this month, saying her toddler pulled too hard on the infant's leg.

Further examination determined the infant had a two broken femurs, two fractured wrists, a break in his lower leg and four broken ribs.

San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Karen Hunt says the 23-year-old mother and the child's father 29-year-old Gilbert Scott were arrested and booked for investigation of willful harm to a child.

But wait! There's more!.

A 28-year-old San Mateo man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to beating his 7-year-old son for getting two minuses on his report card, a prosecutor said.

Solomona Tafao allegedly struck the child with a belt 10 times, punched him in the shoulder and kicked him multiple times, said San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. Tafao is scheduled to go to trial June 29.

During an earlier attack, prosecutors say Tafao hit the boy in the head for speaking disrespectfully to his grandmother. The child's head then struck the corner of the kitchen table, Wagstaffe said.

So Daddy hits his son in the head for "speaking disrespectfully" to Grammy? Is that where Daddy got his awesome parenting skills from? Or did they just spontaneous arise? Will Little Johnny be recruited for for the CIA/Gitmo Future Torturers of America?

The theme: people who love you get to hit you and hurt you.


Link here.