Mock, Paper, Scissors

Today, the inbox at MPS has been not exactly flooded, but has had some reaction to the snarky news item from last night. To recap, the pink-washing* enterprise known as the Susan G. Komen For The Cure has defunded and separated itself from Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood probably provides more breast cancer screenings than anyone, and certainly more to under-served communities who are much more likely to need their services. The so-called bad side of town almost always is where the environmental hazards that correlate highly with breast cancer also resides. Go figure that the rich part of town is rarely on top of a superfund cleanup site.

But I digress…

It seems that an anti-choice woman named Karen Handel–who is the failed candidate for 2010 Georgia governor’s mansion who ran on the promise to defund Planned Parenthood–is the Komen’s vice president for public policy. How this came about we can only speculate. Anyway, to make a not too fine a point, she is the person who made the decision to de-partner with Planned Parenthood, saying that Planned Parenthood no longer “best meets the needs of women [Komen] serve.” So funding breast exams with Planned Parenthood no longer meets their goals. Wait… what?!

It is rather amazing to watch an organization with a noble goal publicly commit ritual Seppuku. This strange moment also should be an object lesson for those squishy liberals who strive to find common ground with those who would destroy us (and then eat our livers with fava beans and a nice Chianti). There is no common ground, quit trying to find it.

The point here is that the fundamentalist forced-birth crowd are single-issue wingnuts. They would rather see a woman die of breast cancer than have her live to maybe need contraception or (gasp!) a Karen Santorum-style life-saving abortion. They cannot demand an abortion if they are already dead. Problem solved.

We’ve long been supporters of Planned Parenthood here at Tengrain’s Little Hut, and I’ve written about my Planned Parenthood story several times. We’ve never been a supporter of Komen’s, well, anything. We believe firmly that if you want to donate to any charity, knock yourself out. That said, we believe even more firmly in donating directly to that charity and not through umbrella organizations like Komen, Avon Walk, Ride for AIDS, and even the United Way. Give to your charity of choice directly, they will get more of the money without having anything skimmed of the top for Administration. Komen, for instance, skims about 25% off the top. That $10 bucks you raised was actually only $7.50.

(Full disclosure: my mother died of ovarian cancer. She lived for six weeks after being diagnosed. During that time she was bombarded with (Komen?) pink crap, and it only served to make her even more furious that she was being told to cheer up. She found Barbara Ehrenreich’s Welcome to Cancerland in the November 2001 Harper’s Bazar to be essential reading.)

PS – Scissorheads, encourage all the women in your lives have a breast examination. Just do it. It’s not a snarky joke, it can save a life especially if there is a lump found early. And gents, this can also happen to us, along with the prostate exam we need to be aware that we are not immune from breast cancer. Make an appointment today. Just do it.

*About Pink Washing: it is a term that is similar to green washing. It gives public relations cover to corporate donors. So let’s say Company X lets their employees raise funds via Komen and then Company X gets a press release out saying that they raised $X for The Cure. Except that they didn’t. The employees did. Company X almost never matches or donates. Check the shareholders meeting minutes, or the annual report.

Nigeria’s anti-corruption police said on Tuesday it may drop bribery charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and oil services company Halliburton after the company offered to pay a fine.

(reuters)

vs.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was set for another night in a British jail on Tuesday after he first won bail but prosecutors then said they would appeal the decision.

(AP)

The Prince of Darkness is going to go free, and, um, the Duke of Transparency is going back into the pokey?

Katarina Stoltz/Reuters
The infamous sign over the gates at Ausschwitz, seen in 2005, reads “work sets you free.”

Sign Over Auschwitz Gate Is Stolen

No snark, just sorrow. Twelve people are confirmed dead, 30 wounded, and it appears that one of the shooters (also in the military) was a psychiatrist named Major Malik Nadal Hasan. Expect the usual suspects to go nuts in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Update 1: Told ya.

Update 2: The Blog at Poo Corner never lets you down. Here’s the post, so you don’t have to go there:

Update 3: Fox News: (I’m trying to find video…)

Shep Smith: “[the shooter's] name tells us a lot, does it not, Senator?”
Hutchison: “It does, it does, Shepard.”

So what does it cost the lobbyists to buy Senators? Who knew that you could buy a Senator for as little as $160,000? Olympia, we’ve already established your morals, we’re just quibbling over the price.

These are the contributions that the so-called Gang of Six have received over the years from the insurance companies and big pharma. And these are the Senators who are striving to find a compromise for healthcare reform.

Just as a side note, the percentage of the population that these 6 Senators allegedly represent, total, amounts to 2.74% of the US.

UPDATE 1: Rachel Maddow

We are so screwed.

…as Satan calls home another favorite son. Yes, Robert McNamara has died at the age of 93, thus proving once again that only the good die young.

McNamara was fundamentally associated with the Vietnam War, “McNamara’s war,” the country’s most disastrous foreign venture, the only American war to end in abject withdrawal.

Henry Kissinger, are you next?

GQ is reporting that Donald Rumsfeld put Bible quotes on the covers of the daily briefings he gave to Chimpy. Probably the only part that Chimpy ever read.

Does anyone doubt that Chimpy saw this as a Crusade?

(Hat tip: JD’s Fucked-up Cousin Clyde)

…I think that Congress is getting what it deserved after 8 years of Chimpy screwing over us proles. I just cannot get myself worked up to an outrage that (at least) one of you elites got caught up in his damn warrentless wiretaps. Where were you (and all the others) when it was just little folks being walked over?

Cry me a fuckin’ river.

Getty Images — this is why you should hire only licensed plumbers.

Joe the Plumber booed by plumbers. Oh, forsooth! When plumbers turn against one of their own… or did they?

When fake plumber Joe Wurzelbacher took to the stage to appear as an average worker against EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act), he was booed by real plumbers, and forced at some point to admit that he was not a licensed plumber.

“The public loves Joe the Plumber,” said Americans for Prosperity spokesperson, Mary Ellen Burke, to The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent. “They see him as a role model.” …Asked whether Joe the Plumber had any particular knowledge or expertise about EFCA that might explain the decision to enlist him, Burke said that he was being enlisted to provide a ‘grassroots perspective’ and ‘the working perspective’ on the measure. Pressed on whether Joe the Plumber has any particular claim to being a spokesperson on the issue, Burke replied that ‘he represents the American worker.’”

Joe was paid to appear, by the way, but the terms of his grassroot perspective were not released.

…they eat ramen noodles too. Harrod’s Pot Noodles ($43) come in a hand-flocked gold leaf cup.

“I told you so: God will smite abortionists!”

I guess that there is no tragedy too great for the Xristian Xraxies to exploit for cheap, political points. But this one goes way too far. You see, the tragic plane crash in Montana carried members of the extended family of a man who provides abortion services. The plane crashed near (and I am not making this up) The Tomb of the Unborn.

We warned him, for his children’s sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if “you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you.” (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their 2 surviving children on Monday. As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don’t want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual “I told you so” moment* , but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp’s – Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow – and I think of the haunting words, “Think of your children.” I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the Tomb of the Unborn?

And that is enough to get this morbid and freakish Xraxie off and running at the mouth.

* Liar. Yes you do.

(Indirect hat tip: Nicki2337 via Twitter.)

…dishing with substance about A – I – G!

Reuters

“You can’t resolve [AIDS] with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

– Pope Rat, former Hitler Youth and noted sex educator

The ironies here multiply. Ratzi also said that the Catholic Church is at the forefront in the fight against AIDS.

UPDATE: found a vid

Reuters

So, let’s recap shall we?

AIG maintains that it must pay bonuses to certain executives who admittedly are the ones that drove the company into the ground. CEO Edward Liddy says that it is a contractual obligation and that his hands are tied.

Poor baby intends now to spend more than a billion of our taxpayer dollars handing out bonuses, or “he will lose the executive talent.”

Let it rip.

Lose the talent.

Where else will these crooks find jobs? It is an empty threat, at best.

So what is Little Timmy doing about this, well, blackmail? Any contract, anywhere, is subject to litigation, and given the extraordinary circumstances here, with massive fraud, a world-wide economic meltdown, and now colossal sums of taxpayer money going to bail out this allegedly capitalist market, litigation is truly called for. Let AIG go to a jury of US citizens and see what happens…

But all that aside, why isn’t someone, somewhere looking into criminal prosecutions against these executives? This whole debacle seems clearly like fraud on a massive scale. Instead of bonuses, there should be handcuffs.

Geithner is not so much up for confrontation, and the real tragedy here is that like Payout Paulson before him, Little Timmy Geithner is part of the problem. If the Federal Government is too afraid to take on these crooks, then who will?

This situation with AIG (and others) is to Obama as the Iranian hostage crisis was to Carter. Obama needs to act, decisively, immediately, or this whole thing is a PR nightmare and he becomes a one-term president.

UPDATE 1: Here’s a petition from Firedog Lake – Tell Congress — no more money for banks until they tell us where it has all gone. We’ll be delivering your comments personally to members of Congress this Wednesday, when Barney Frank’s Financial Services Committee holds an AIG hearing on Capitol Hill. Or better still, call the White House and yell: 202-456-1111

UPDATE 2: Called the White House and spoke with a very nice person and registered my disgust with the situation and said that the contracts with AIG should be litigated.

A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.

“It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated,” he said.

OK, I’m not religious — I think that is well known by now — but honest to gods, this kid was being raped, repeatedly, by her stepfather. And now, to top things off, she’s had an abortion and an ex-communication from the so-called loving church, which I might add is headed up by an ex-Hitler Youth.

Can someone, somewhere, please explain to me why this is sane?

BBC

The US defence department has lifted a ban on news organisations showing pictures of the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(Hat tip: Scissorhead Lurker, and yes, Lurker it is about time that the US got to see the human cost of this horrible and illegal war.)

5 More Friends

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Elsa Prince, mother of Erik Prince — Blackwater’s founder and early funder — has contributed $450,000 to support Proposition 8. Elsa and Erik Prince also sit on the board of a family foundation that has donated $8 million to Christian groups involved in the “Yes on 8″ campaign.

The New York Times reports that:

“Preachers from other parts of the country have dropped everything and moved to California in recent months. Lou Engle, who leads The Call, a charismatic prayer ministry in Washington and Kansas City, Mo., with a large following among youth, moved with his seven children to California in September. He is holding large prayer rallies up and down the state, urging people to pray and fast for the 40 days leading up to the election. Some people are giving up solid foods; others are giving up clothes shopping or their favorite television shows.”

This is the scary YouTube from The Call:

Folks, this is what we are up against. Please find it in your heart to vote. And if you have any time and/or money, this is the time to give.

Remember to use your manners, kids. There’s no telling who might be on the other end. I guess we now officially live in a police state.

Bowing to President Bush’s demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

Goddamn, spineless, democrats have sold us out again – Why are these circle jerks so freakin’ scared of Chimpy McStagger, the most loathed (unelected) president in history?

The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity. And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power. Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration.

— Russ Feingold

Call Steny and tell him his ass is grass:

Washington DC: (202) 225-4131
Greenbelt office: (301) 474-0119
Waldorf Office: (301) 843-1577