Shorter Excerpts

Nov 09 2009 ∞

“ The Stupak amendment was designed to do just that, a power move easily predicted by anyone who has watched the way policy victories are managed over the last couple of decades. The one consistent characteristic is that they are never unambiguously positive for the left. The arguments are always self-servingly pragmatic —- “blue dogs have to vote their district” —- but the real purpose is to drive home the absolute certainty that liberals are never really in charge. That is why there is never any desire among the ruling elite to sell the idea that liberalism itself — its philosophy, its values, its ideology —- is something positive with which a majority of people, including Blue Dogs, can identify. If the public ever came to believe that, who knows what might happen?

— Hullabaloo

+ ∞

“

There are only 76 women in the House out of 435 —- 17%. 59 of them are Democrats and 17 are Republicans. Three of the Democrats are non-voting members (DC, Virgin Islands and Guam.)

Out of the 56 women in the Democratic caucus, only two voted for Stupak. All 17 Republican women voted for it.

What this adds up to is that 97% of the Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment were male. 90% of the Republicans were male.

I would have to guess that if more than 17% of the congress were women, there would be a little bit less likelihood that women’s rights would be so often used as a handy tool to placate neanderthals. That’s just a guess. Habits are hard to break.

— Hullabaloo

+ ∞

elvira:

copacetic:

guillee:

CSS Ninja t-shirt.

+ ∞

“ Obama and the Democrats have no real vision for a transformed health care system, so they’ve gone for a slightly modified version of business as usual. They’ve cut backroom deals that win a few meager concessions toward the public good, while at the same time ensuring the profits of the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and other health care profiteers by entrenching their control of the health care system and rewarding them with larger markets and fatter profits. They’re doing what Democrats have done since at least the Clinton years—acting like kinder, gentler Republicans rather than the defenders of the common people. A whole lot of Americans don’t like the current health care system, and a whole lot more hate insurance companies. The Democrats should have been able to translate that into some kind of populist support for real change. Instead, they dithered and compromised, and failed to invoke any compelling ideology. Health care ought to have nothing to do with profits or even with “affordability.” It should be a basic human right in a civilized society. But that’s precisely the kind of statement the Democrats are unwilling to make—so they end up saying nothing at all.

—

Obama’s Unhealthy Victory (via azspot)

And, in the event they lose seats in 2010, they’ll wonder how it all happened, and, sadly, assume they need to run more “centrist” (re: conservative, further right) to win people back.

+ ∞

aewsome:

molls:

take a look @ me now.

I promise not to make a habit of reblogging Phil Collins, HOWEVER, this song reminds of a great episode of This American Life about break ups. If you have ever broken up with anyone ever, you should listen to it. Especially the part about this song.

+ ∞

allcreatures:

Giant octopus - extreme animals - BBC wildlife

The octopus gets a little close and personal.

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

motionsensorsoundtrack:

liquidnight:

M83 - “Teen Angst” - from Before the Dawn Heals Us

Gorgeous.

Ah the trailer to A Scanner Darkly, and my first exposure to M83.

+ ∞

lenorebeadsman:

katiepalooza:

“Further unsettling is the detachment with morality from pro-choice supporters. What happened to the coda of “Safe, legal and rare?” When did it become, “Safe, legal and my goddamn-given-right?””

—

I Can See New York City From My House: “I’m angry too,” but…

When people kept getting in the way of my goddamn-given-right. The PP I go to to pick up my BC pills every month? Surrounded by high gates with black tarp wrapped around it and intense security. To even get to the clinic you have to be buzzed through three sets of doors. Why? There’s always protesters lining the streets/sidewalks. It’s intimidating enough just going to pick up my BC.

It became my goddamn-given-right when people started KILLING DOCTORS AND NURSES because of it. Because it is their goddamn-given-right to practice legal medicine in a safe and effective manner.

It became my goddamn-given-right because the people who control the laws of this country, at least one major group of them, can apparently be bought with the argument that it ISN’T my goddamn-given-right to do what I want with my body.

Pro-choice is just that - pro-CHOICE. As in, “choose what you want to do with your body.” And leaving out funding for a medical procedure that can and does save women’s lives every year? That’s despicable. Especially because the people who won’t be able to afford them are the same people who already don’t have health insurance and therefore can’t file claims to cover the procedure.

In my ideal world? Abortions wouldn’t be necessary. Everyone would have access to affordable birth control and knowledge about safe sex practices. People would be paid a living wage so if they DID get pregnant by accident they would be able to support themselves and their baby. Both men and women could get parental leave so they wouldn’t have to worry about losing their job when they actually have to push the baby out. Hell, in my perfect world you could just incubate the babies in external wombs so you can just come by and visit and say hey every so often for 9 months until you can take your baby home.

That’s not the reality, however, and it’s really easy to put your morality on someone else when you CAN afford an abortion without insurance coverage and don’t have to worry where your next meal is coming from or “What the hell am I going to do since my babysitter is sick and if I miss this shift I’m going to get fired?”

Katie, your righteousness shines like the full, white moon on a dark night.

Also, allow me to throw out the sobering statistic that abortion services are currently unavailable in 87% of US counties according to the Guttmacher Institute.

+ ∞

“ I was simply trying to assert that what there is in common between a particular fact and the sentence that asserts this fact can itself be put into a sentence.

— Gerry Canavan quotes Don DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star, the origin of the “MIT Language Riots” referred to in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (a novel that partly deals with the differences between signifiers and signifieds). (via nickdouglas) (via counterforce)

+ ∞

bblove:

… The one thing I miss when I’m not in love are the little trips you get to take together … hotel sex, staying in bed all morning, having coffee and brunch, holding hands walking down the street.

And with a hook-up, at best only half of these are really feasible. (I mean it’d be very weird to have brunch and hold hands with someone you have no real intention of dating right?)

+ ∞

“ You think abortion is wrong? Don’t have one. I think killing people is wrong, so I’m not in the army. My tax dollars still go to fund it, though (in fact about 21 cents of each of my tax dollars). My tax dollars also go to keep prisoners on death row even though I think the death penalty is morally wrong. My tax dollars fund Guantanamo and Bagram, extraordinary rendition, and Jim DeMint’s salary, all of which I find disgusting. So why is abortion, a legal medical procedure, so remarkably different that we have to go overboard making sure tax dollars don’t fund it?

—

GlobalComment » Hey Stupak, women’s bodies are not bargaining chips, by the kickassed Sarah Jaffe (via pcquotes) (via)

Well this is a good point.

(via bryonmcdonald)

I’m trying to find strong enough ways of sharing this information with people. Please please please reach out to your Senator or (as Planned Parenthood is suggesting) President Obama himself to stop this amendment before it is finalized.

(via shinyredballoon)

+ ∞

“ We’re not analyzing the media on Mars, or in the 18th century, or something like that. We’re dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving, because of policies that we are involved in – we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and responsible for. And what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the interests of suffering people and not the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that’s dripping from their hands because of the way they’re allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.

— Noam Chomsky (via blocksonblox)

+ ∞

“

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.

— Paul Krugman, “Paranoia Strikes Deep” - The New York Times

Nov 08 2009 ∞

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

As Tall As Lions - “We’s Been Waitin’”

They closed their set with this at the Tabernacle. I was disappointed the set wasn’t longer, but this sucker cooks live.

+ ∞

skeetonmischa:

This was one of the best films of the 2000s.

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