Archive for January 31, 2012
Mitt Romney Campaigns For His Millionaire Donors
Who is Willard Mitt Romney campaigning for? You? Me? No. He’s campaigning for the folks who give to his SuperPAC, Restore Our Future, Inc.
Restore Our Future Inc.? A more appropriate name would be, Restore Rich People’s Future Inc.
Details here
Gingrich and Paul are In — Let The Games Begin!
This would be Newt tonight:
Bamneycare?
I love the word. Problem is, I’m thinking:
And this would be Ron Paul’s website:
What? This is what his site looks like tonight? After Florida? I thought he had legions of young people working on his campaign. This is the best they can do?
Lingerie Bowl This Weekend!
Don’t forget, the Lingerie Bowl is this weekend!
(The background on this pic is here, which I wrote during my days at the NewsHounds.)
More on family values Fox News Porn here.
URGENT: Willard Wins Florida
“URGENT:” Willard “Mitt” Romney wins in Florida.
Woohoo.
Give it a week. Tonight will be a distant memory.
British Banking Crook Stripped of his Knighthood
Fred Goodwin, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s former chief executive officer, was stripped of his knighthood by the U.K. authorities after he led the 285-year-old lender into the world’s biggest bank bailout.
Britain’s Honors Forfeiture Committee met last week and decided that Goodwin should lose his knighthood for services to banking in the light of the collapse, the Cabinet Office in London said in a statement today. He was awarded the honor, entitling him to call himself Sir Fred, in the name of Queen Elizabeth II in 2004.
“This decision, not normally publicized in advance, was taken on the advice of the Forfeiture Committee, which advised that Fred Goodwin had brought the honors system into disrepute,” the Cabinet Office said. “The scale and severity of the impact of his actions as CEO of RBS made this an exceptional case.”
Edinburgh-based RBS needed 45.5 billion pounds ($71.7 billion) of U.K. government money after Goodwin, now 53, led its takeover of Amsterdam-based ABN Amro Holding NV in 2007.
According to the article, stripping someone of a knighthood doesn’t have any particular legal repercussions; the significance is the humiliation factor. But hey, that’s more than any of the robber barons on this side of the pond have experienced.
In the fall of 2008, while George W. was slinking out the door, We the American people bailed AIG out to the tune of $187 billion. So far? Nada.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation Joins Republican Effort to Destroy Planned Parenthood
The nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates — creating a bitter rift, linked to the abortion debate, between two iconic organizations that have assisted millions of women.
The change will mean a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.
Planned Parenthood says the move results from Komen bowing to pressure from anti-abortion activists. Komen says the key reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Congress — a probe launched by a conservative Republican who was urged to act by anti-abortion groups.
So, conservative congressional Republicans launch a “probe” of Planned Parenthood and then they turn to the Komen Foundation and pressure it to withhold donations to Planned Parenthood because they’ve launched a “probe?” How deceitfully, viciously clever.
Are the Komen people that stupid? Don’t they get that Republicans want to destroy Planned Parenthood altogether because they want to impose their American Taliban-like beliefs on all of us; that they don’t want women to have the freedom to chose?
Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has depicted Stearns’ probe as politically motivated and said she was dismayed that it had contributed to Komen’s decision to halt the grants to PPFA affiliates.
“It’s hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women’s lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying.”
Exactly.
And I say this to the Republicans conducting that “probe:” It takes two to get pregnant:
Scathing Letter From a Freed Slave to his Former Owner
Powerful stuff:
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).
✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
Read the whole thing, all the way to the last paragraph, which is the best.
(I’m going to bookmark the blog where I found this letter: Letters of Note. Fantastic site.)
The Starting Lineup for the…Puppy Bowl!
I can hardly believe it but here is a serious-as-a-heart-attack article about the “starting lineup” of the Puppy Bowl:
Not into football? Check out the starting lineup of the 2012 Puppy Bowl! Animal Planet’s eighth annual event will be broadcast at 3 p.m. EST/PST on Super Bowl Sunday.
Who knew?! There’s a “Kitty Half-Time:”
And “piglets cheer on the pups:”
Check out the 28 accompanying photos at the link above.
(Now you know why I named this blog what I did.)
Corporate Logos Already Seared into the Brain of a 5-Year-Old
This is both adorable and disconcerting.
The undeniable power of advertising: “A fun Sunday project with my daughter on brand logos.”
(Via.)
Bullied and Rejected to Death
One of my brothers committed suicide in 1988 at the age of 32, so stories about suicide tend to catch my eye. This one is particularly dreadful:
A gay teenager who committed suicide earlier this month claimed he had an exorcism performed on him by his Christian parents before they kicked him out of the house.
Eric James Borges, 19, took his own life on January 14 after suffering years of physical and verbal abuse at school and rejection from his ‘extremist’ family who made him leave home for being gay.
A friend read from the suicide note he left at one of several memorial services held for the young man in San Joaquin Valley, California last week. In it, he thanked friends for their love and support and mentioned Lady Gaga for being ‘a fearless, relentless, proud LGBT advocate’.
San Diego Gay & Lesbian News writer Melanie Nathan read from the teenager’s note, which said: ‘My pain is not caused because I am gay. My pain was caused by how I was treated because I am gay.’
He explained: ‘I was raised in an extremist Christian household. My earliest recollections of my experience with the relentless and ongoing bullying was in kindergarten, but of course to a lesser degree.
‘Throughout elementary, junior high and high school it got progressively worse. I was physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally assaulted on a day-to-day basis for my perceived sexual orientation.
”I had nowhere safe to go, either at home or school… My parents told me that, among other things, I was disgusting, perverted, unnatural and damned to Hell. About two months ago they officially kicked me out of my house.
‘My name was not Eric but “Faggot”.
‘And I know what it feels like to live in a world of government-sanctioned homophobia. But I refuse to be treated as a second-class citizen.’
(My emphasis.)
Go here to read more and to see an “It Gets Better” video Mr. Borges made, as well as his short film titled, Invisible Creatures.
What a sad, sad story.
Eric James Borges, you sound like an amazing guy.
Newsweek is Pathetic
This is the real cover of the February 6, 2012 issue of Newsweek magazine:
Our presidential campaigns consist of nine second sound bites. Never mind a real discussion of the issues. And instead of being a check and balance on that tragedy, the media encourages it.
