The Evil Petting Zoo

The US Army has now officially banned the use of privately purchased body armor, claiming that Marines were buying "inadequate" or "untested" armor from private vendors, and wanting them to keep their money.

Keep in mind that the armor that is currently being supplied to our troops, the Interceptor OTV model, has a tendency to break when dropped on the ground. If I'm going to play Russian Roulette, I'd rather pay for a gun with one bullet in it than take a gun with three bullets for free.

Why does the army hate our troops?

I've spent many a day frittering away the time at Leonard's LJ. Be it dissection of cultural artifacts ir ripping James Lileks a new one, he fails to disappoint.

Yesterday, he posted about Michelle "Slap the Jap Right Off of the Map" Malkin's latest braindropping, talking about those uppity- I mean, "rebellious" Latinos protesting against H.R. 4437 in LA, and the "Latino supremacism" of people waving the Mexican flag and signs that read, "BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL" (Christ, just wait until Cinco de Mayo, Malkin will probably think there's a fucking coup going on). On the latter, Malkin asks, "Can you imagine if someone had come to the rally holding a sign reading 'WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL'?"

And therein lies the problem with Malkin and many other conservatives. You know the type I'm talking about; the kind who rail against rap music in all its forms, or bitch about how ridiculous Kwanzaa is, or talk about how it's right to be afraid when Arab musicians get on your plane. They want everyone to be white. They want every person in this country to act like they have the same cultural background, cultural interests, and opportunities as your average middle class white person.

As anyone who actually knows about the history of race in this nation could tell you, this is a ripe pile of bullshit. Latinos have been brought into this country mainly for jobs paying less than minimum wage, going back to the implementation of braceros among migrant workers. Japanese-Americans were shuffled away to prisons and had their property taken away from them on the grounds that they looked like the enemy. Black people... oh, Jesus, black people. Everything from the slave trade to Jim Crow to the KKK to fucking Katrina. With all this hanging over their heads, how can anyone with a working knowledge of American history begin to think that everyone has the same background, just different skin?

And there's the thing. As long as this is known, the argument falls apart. That's why there are people who try to make it look like people of historically oppressed races have no ground to stand on. This is why Michelle Malkin wrote about how internment camps were justified. This is why people argue that slavery wasn't that bad, or how blacks should be thankful that slavery gave them the chance to get to America. By attempting to downplaying the factors that explain why these people might want to celebrate their heritage, they hope that it will make those who stand up and realize the truth about how the deck's not stacked in their favor look "uppity."

Well, I say, fuck them. Wave high your flags, be they Mexican, Japanese, Irish, or Saudi. Realize that, despite all the shit you've been through in the past, you should be proud that you weathered it all and survived. And most importantly of all, give Michelle Malkin a reason to lose her shit.

That does it. I have officially lost all respect for John McCain.

U.S. Sen. John McCain - a likely 2008 presidential candidate who once labeled the Rev. Jerry Falwell an “agent of intolerance” - will be Liberty University’s graduation speaker on May 13.

“I was in Washington with him about three months ago,” Falwell said. “We dealt with every difference we have. There are no deal breakers now. But I told him, ‘You have a lot of fence mending to do.’”

[...]

Christian conservatives, including Falwell, are concerned about efforts by homosexual groups to have civil unions between same-sex partners recognized as marriages. McCain previously has said the matter of defining marriage should be handled by state legislatures, but now concedes that a federal statute may be necessary, Falwell said.

Is there anyone in this country who will actually stand for the issues they say they do? Or are we all just audiences for their little plays, given Shakespeare when they need our support and Punch and Judy shows when they don't?

I'm tired of being jerked around. Especially by a man who claims to have ideals. Fuck you, McCain. Fuck you right in the ear.

Beer-and-chocolate ice cream. Motherfucking beer-and-chocolate ice cream.

Obviously, the next thing we must do is figure out a way to blend sex and pizza. And not in that weird, foot fetish-y way.

Didn't you hear? There's a war going on. No, not in Iraq; right here on American soil. Apparently, there's a war on Christians.

I know; I haven't seen the bombs, or the guns, or even the Gestapo-like intimidation tactics associated with war. I haven't seen any real legislative oppression against Christians. Oddly enough, being a Christian, I am told that, by being gay, I am declaring war on myself.

Fundamentalists hucksters of all stripes have declared that they are being warred upon. "The War On Christmas," when they had to be confronted with shop clerks saying, "Happy holidays," instead of, "Merry Christmas." "The War on Easter," based around the fact that some stores are naming the Easter Bunny the "Spring Bunny" (I'm not shitting you). These sins are obviously much greater than anything happening to Christians in Sudan or China.

And now, fundamentalists have responded to being the target of imaginary wars to declaring imaginary war:

"This is more than a spiritual war," Luce said. "It's a culture war."

Military metaphors abound in Luce's descriptions of the struggle. He tells young people of how "an enemy has launched a brutal attack on them." At a pre-Battle Cry rally Friday afternoon on the steps of City Hall, Luce told his mostly teenage audience that "terrorists of a different kind" -- advertisers -- were targeting them and that they were "caught in the middle of the battle."

"Are you ready to go to battle for your generation?" he asked, and the young people roared "yes!" and some waved triangular red flags flown from long, medieval-looking poles.

I'm not amused anymore, okay? All right, I wasn't amused before, but at least then people weren't declaring war on me because, in their eyes, my very existence was the equivalent of a Japanense bombing of their spiritual Pearl Harbor. Now, I have congregants telling their charges that the growing possibility that I might be able to marry the man I love in my lifetime is a sign of the Apocalypse.

How fundamentally screwed-up do you have to be to see war everywhere you go?

A state appeals court in Ohio has ruled that the state's gay marriage amendment blocks prosecution of some forms of domestic violence.

Again, I say to the unmarried straight people of Ohio: I forgive you. But now that we're all in the same boat, wanna do something about it?

Damnit, can I please go eight months without being infected with something horrible?

I noticed on Saturday night that there was a slight swelling in my left elbow. I instantly went, "Oh, shit," as three-and-a-half years ago, I had a similar swelling, which turned out to be cellulitis. Sure enough, it's cellulitis. I had to spent six hours at the hospital yesterday waiting to get IV antibiotics, and I'm going back again later today.

Exactly what am I paying you for, immune system?

So, Bush signed the Patriot Act back into law... and put in an addendum telling Congress to mind their own beeswax about what he does with the FBI.

We no longer have a president. What we have in his stead is a solipsistic, power-hungry dictator. The rules set out by the Founding Fathers of this proud nation mean nothing to him. He just wants his secret police and his atmosphere of paranoia.

Democracy is dying every day, and Bush is inflicting the fatal wounds.

What the living fuck?

BROOKLYN, NY (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a 'first' for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the "ideal" model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn's Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April.

Strangely enough, Britney's the ideal model for "pro-life"; a girl who marries a man for 55 hours, marries a second man whose idea of classy involves wearing a velour tracksuit with "King Pimp" on the back during his wedding, speeds while her baby is in the car, and seemingly has no self-esteem whatsoever (seriously; ever see the start of the video for "Overprotected", where the news anchor talks about how Britney made an ass out of herself again? I think it was the first sign of this long, downward spiral).

I may not know art, but I know what's shit.

I found this cut-and-paste into a topic on RPG.net. If anyone can tell me where it came from, then please, tell me. Because I want to send that person the biggest fucking bouquet of flowers they've ever seen.

Once upon a time, the Washington Post was one of the most prestigious newspapers in all the land. They always had guts, always stood up to conventional wisdom, and, with the aid of Woodward and Bernstein, brought down a president.

Now, Woodward is the Washington intelligentsia's lapdog, and the Post has thrown all illusions of balance out the window. They've hired on Ben Domenech, a young conservative blogger whose claim to fame is being Bush's youngest appointee. Apparently, he's meant to offset "liberal" columnists like Dan Froomkin and Dana Millbank. Never mind the fact that the Post already has experienced conservative columnists like Charles Krauthammer and George Will. Never mind the fact that the Post isn't talking about hiring a liberal blogger. It's all for balance, of course.

Katherine Graham must be doing the lambada in her grave.

EDIT: Well, this is just beautiful. Apparently, Ben Domenech- or, as he's known at Red State, "Augustine"- made a post calling Coretta Scott King a "Communist." On the day of her fucking funeral. That's our liberal media for you.

By some sheer stroke of fortune, my Discover Journalism teacher decided we should watch Bush's press conference yesterday. What I saw was nothing special, but still made me sick.

Helen Thomas started off by asking Bush about why we were in Iraq if his main reasons for going in all turned out to be false. His answer was basically, "9/11. 9/11. Global war on terror. Taliban. Al-Qaeda. Iraq." The longer version was even more distressing, acting as a masterwork of evasion that probably left some lesser journalists unable to find their ass with two hands and a flashlight. When asked later about the timetable for getting out of Iraq, Bush said, "That, of course is an objective, and that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq." So, as far as he sees, no time while he's still in office.

I'm a little saddened that none of the other journalists descended on Bush for blatantly bullshitting Thomas, but I'm even more saddened by the mess that is our government. 2008 can't get here soon enough.

Someone at the Ministry of Truth was asleep at the switch. (Courtesy of Crooks and Liars)

How does this fucker sleep at night?

Digby nails it absolutely. The spin and bluster by Democrats who are too afraid to back up Feingold is what's going to cripple this party, not Feingold's own "extremism." There are people in the Democratic Party who think that we have to play nice with Bush and the rest of the Republican establishment, who think that codependence is the best way to get results.

Guess what, Democrats? The Republican establishment does not like you. Most of them will not until they can lead the Democratic Party onto the Senate floor on a leash. Karl Rove, the man behind the White House, shat on you publicly. Ken Mehlman, voice of the RNC, thinks that you're all clueless-- well, except for Joe Lieberman, who's two steps away from neo-con as it is. As Digby's quote from Grover Norquist shows, the Republican establishment won't be happy until the Democratic Party is saying, "You're my daddy."

Appeasement is not what America wants. It's what the powerbrokers of the Republican Party want. Don't give it to them.

Did Bush's wiretap authority extend to physical searches as well? God, I hope not. I'd really like to think not, at least. I mean, there's a wide line between spitting on the Fourth Amendment and folding it up and using it to wipe your ass.

Then again, what do I expect? Bush has cited that he has full authority over whatever he wants during this war, which his insiders are now calling "the long war". There's no crown and throne, but you know we're getting there.

So the Missouri House decided yesterday that the poor aren't in the position to fuck, but rather, to get fucked. They emphasized this by voting not to resume birth control in community clinics.

The House voted 96-59 to delete the funding for contraception and infertility treatments after Rep. Susan Phillips told lawmakers that anti-abortion groups such as Missouri Right to Life were opposed to the spending.

"If you hand out contraception to single women, we're saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that," Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.

This movement's not about life. It was rarely, if ever, about life. It's about control. It's about saying to people, "What you do is wrong, and you must be punished." It's about ripping the roof off of people's houses, staring right down into their bedrooms, then saying, "Oh, don't mind me."

And once again, the poor suffer. Some people can't afford birth control pills, and they are the ones who are directly affected by this. Birth control has been denied to those who are least likely to have the resources to raise a child should something go wrong. The purpose, she is defeated.

To the "pro-life" people, life is not precious. It's a burden to be granted to those filthy, filthy sluts who spread their legs too much. If only they'd come out and say it.

So Donald Wildmon, head of the AFA, has proposed to respond to Soulforce's Equality Ride, a tour of Christian campuses to call awareness to how gayness isn't all that bad, with a fundamentalist tour of bath houses. Now, let's look at the disparity of this, shall we? The Soulforce riders visit a location where a bunch of evangelical Christians get together to do hundreds of different things: study, pray, eat, play sports, and all the other activities of daily life. As a result, Wildmon proposes to take evangelicals to a place where gays do only one thing, and that thing is what evangelicals already think gays do 24/7. For comparison, this would be like if the Soulforce riders made a tour of Pentecostalist hell houses during the Halloween season.

Of course, it wouldn't be Donald Wildmon without some loosely veiled anti-Semitism:

BENSON: Yeah, I mean, this is -- this is what you call -- what? -- chutzpah. This is -- this is --

WILDMON: That's a Jewish word, right? Be careful.

"Yeah, don't you know? Say five Jewish words, and the Gefilteman pops out of the mirror and uses your blood for his matzo!"

Yeah, I know, real surprise. Donald Wildmon is a narrow-minded anti-Semite who has no fucking clue how gay people really function. It's just, the depths some so-called "moralists" can sink to amaze me.

Well, it looks like the Bush Administration officially opposes HPV vaccines. Why? Because if we prevent a form of cancer that's sexually transmitted and not blocked by condoms, then damnit, we give the go-ahead to twelve-year-olds hitting each other up doggy style in the bathroom between classes.

I may find some of the oppositions to scientific advancement and sexual safety embraced by conservatives and the Bush Administration repulsive, but at least they make some sense. You could argue that embryonic stem cell research does mean that babies will never be born, or that clean needle exchanges encourage drug use.

This is not one of those cases, however. This is cancer. This is a disease that kills hundreds of people, and renders thousands of others unable to bear children. We have a vaccine that will save us a lot of suffering, and it can't be used, because apparently, it will make some people think that sex carries no risks.

Well, guess what, Bush? If your "abstinence-only" education programs did their fucking job, then people would know that sex carries risks. Hell, I'm fully in support of comprehensive sex ed and doing whatever you want as long as you're protected and consenting, and even I know that sex isn't 100% safe. Condoms are going to break, spermicides will be used past their sell-by date, birth control pills will be replaced with Tic-Tacs by mischevious little brothers, whatever. I support comprehensive sex ed programs, however, because they tell people what they can do to minimize some of those risks. It's never going to be 100% safe, in the same way that even if you avoid sleazy bars, lock all your doors and windows at night, and don't stop to help seemingly charming young men stranded on the side of the road, there's still a chance a serial killer will get you. But at least we can minimize the risks.

What Bush and his sex-crazed cronies want, though, is to increase the risks. They keep talking about how it's all about keeping kids safe, but when something comes along that actually prevents a disease, they turn it down. Why? Because they need one more boogeyman to hold up their false beliefs.

Remember. This is just HPV. Imagine what's going to happen if someone develops an AIDS vaccine while Bush is still in office.

So, V for Vendetta. I know it's not going to be loyal to the original graphic novel (and I know Alan Moore's been going bitch crazy about that), but from what I've seen so far, I'm looking forward to it.

Which brings me to the topic of people who have not been looking forward to it at all- that is, certain conservative media critics. John Podhoretz of The Weekly Standard attacks the film* in the most juvenile manner possible, describing it as an adolescent power fantasy, insulting both nerds and gays, and calling attention to the more questionable aspects of Larry Wachowski's personal life for no other reason that because. A good number of other conservative media critics have decried the movie as well, and I've just got to quote someone from the RPG.net forums on this one:

"When did fighting Nazis engaged in genocide become taboo?"

Seriously. The film, like the book, follows a man who strikes back at a fascist government that has used biological weapons on its people and rounded up and executed "dissidents" purely because of who they were. This has little to do with Bush and everything to do with liberty and freedom. This is the situation where every decent American man and woman should pick up their guns and fight back.

And the sad part is, not only do these critics not realize what the message is, but they automatically assume that the message attacks Bush. In the wake of the wiretaps, it poses an interesting question: How far does Bush loyalty go for some people?

*I'm using the RPG.net link because I'd need to register with The Weekly Standard to access the review from their website, and hell, no.

This editorial has to be one of the most jaw-droppingly awful things I have ever read in my entire life:

The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves.

Yes, nothing like a dumpy white woman telling black people that they should be grateful for the blatant abuse of human dignity that was the slave trade. After all, we all know that the Jews have a holiday celebrating Hitler, because without him, there'd be no Israel!

I never thought we'd get to the point where we saw slave trade revisionism, but here it is. Forget the hundreds of deaths that stemmed just from the transport of slaves across the Atlantic. Forget the forceful separation of families for profit. Forget the beatings, the whippings, and the fact that some slaves gladly chose death over servitude. Let's just focus on how nice it is that black people got a chance to come over here.

God. Some people.

Sometimes, I want to beat the Democratic establishment with reeds:

"Republicans are going to be the ones who look like extremists," says former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who lost his seat in 2004 after being beaten up on the abortion issue for years. That does not mean, however, that Democrats are rushing to call attention to the Republicans' dilemma. In the upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats don't plan to spend a dime on ads highlighting the abortion issue, according to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the savvy Chicago pol who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He wouldn't spell out the reasons, but a top party staffer (who declined to be quoted out of deference to his bosses) told NEWSWEEK: "These guys are gun-shy because they're used to getting clobbered on the issue."

"Oh, yeah, the anti-choice movement has really overstepped their bounds and is threatening the personal freedom of every woman in America, but what are we going to say about it?"

Listen to me, people: The majority of Americans want Roe v. Wade upheld. This bill, as it is, forces a woman to carry her rapist's child. A state senator who upheld this issue went on TV and said the only conditions under which he'd allow a girl to have an abortion would be if she'd been raped, was a virgin, was religious, was planning on saving herself for marriage, and was sodomized (in other words, the image of every "good religious girl"). Pro-choice members of the Republican Party have basically bended over in order to support Samuel Alito.

This is your issue. Act like it is.

So, Bush's teenage nephew wrote a letter in support of the Dubai ports deal. This is understandable, if nepotistic. Then The Today Show interviews him about it.

This ties somewhere with "Condi-cise" on the list of "News Stories That Should Not Be." Somehow, American TV journalism has become a knockoff of British journalism, devoted to the royals to the point of following everything they do. I guess we can at least be thankful they haven't caused any fatal accidents yet.

Slobodan Milosevic is dead.

Now, I still stand by what I said earlier about respecting the dead. He's dead, and I'll leave it at that. No direct attacks until six months have passed.

So...

Six months...

Five months, thirty days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-nine seconds...

Five months, thirty days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-eight seconds...

Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

Fuck you.

Fuck. You. The President of the United States broke the law. He directly violated due process in order to prop up a spying program that netted absolutely nothing and violated the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. He went around a court that would grant a warrant to anything reasonably terrorist-related, because many of his wiretaps did not deal with terrorists.

And you're backing him up on this? You're giving him the right to circumvent the Justice Department. And why?

A spokeswoman for the White House, Dana Perino, called the Republican senators' proposal "a generally sound approach."

"We're eager to work with Congress on legislation that would further codify the president's authority," Ms. Perino said. "We remain committed to our principle, that we will not do anything that undermines the program's capabilities or the president's authority."

See, I think the president's authority was pretty much undermined when he flouted the law.

God. Does anyone really care anymore?

Colbert gets his geek on.

Now, compared to Colbert, I am a mere novice: I have yet to get a paladin to Level 21, only to see him fall to a mind flayer. Hell, I have yet to play a paladin. Still, it does my geeky heart good to see him share the d20 love.

No, Chris Matthews, you're not being insistent at all.

Why does this man still have a job that's at all related to journalism?

When I grow up, I want to be a Patriot Guard Rider. Okay, so one of Mother Cognito's little rules for her sons is "No motorcycles", and I can't exactly promise I wouldn't punch Fred Phelps in the throat upon direct confrontation. Still, I'm glad to see that someone is standing up for the dead.

I'm sorry about the absence. I've just been a bit distracted by my return home for Spring Break. I promise everything will be (relatively) back on schedule for now.

Oh, and one more thing:

"And finally, I would say that, you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing. We're the ones who talk about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I'm proud to be a part of this Academy. Proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch."

George Clooney, at the Academy Awards

Rock, Mr. Clooney. Rock.

This video... it instills a strange feeling in me every time I watch it. What's a good way to describe it...?

Oh, yes. Gutfuck-inducing rage.

Bush stood there while Brownie practically shat himself with fear about what Katrina could do, and he asked not one question. He swore the government would do everything they could about Katrina, then stayed on vacation when the storm hit. Worst of all, one of the experts at the meeting expressed the "grave" possibility that the levees would, indeed, burst open like John Hurt in Alien, and four days later, Bush claims that no one could've predicted it.

Impeachment proceedings started because Clinton lied about banging Lewinsky. When Clinton lied about Lewinsky, however, thousands of people didn't die. Let's hang this fucker out to dry.