April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

General

Plumbing the depths

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Sewer Rat
The Star has an excellent editorial today outlining just how low the Harper Government™ has sunk.

Apparently taking pitches from sewer rats, Canada’s New Government™[sic] has taken Canadian politics to a whole new low.

We know that the word democracy is not on this governments agenda, we know equality has been struck a death blow, apparently the truth is just another victim.

Another week, another string of cheap political attacks from Stephen Harper, who sounds less prime ministerial with every passing day.

After savaging Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion with attack ads that suggest he is a “traitor,” Harper continued this past week to play fast and loose with the facts, levelling baseless patronage charges against two Liberal Members of Parliament.

In debate over changes to the Immigration and Refugee Board, Harper accused MP Marlene Jennings of putting her spouse on the board and Lucienne Robillard, a former immigration minister, of appointing her ex-spouse. If true, these would be serious breaches of ethics.

But Robillard’s husband was appointed to the board in 1990 under a former Conservative prime minister, Brian Mulroney. And Jennings’ husband joined the board before she was even elected to Parliament.

Read the rest here

A Feminist’s Pledge:

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I saw this fantastic article today. I think this is a pledge we can all support.

I will on reprint part of it go to the link to read it’s entirety.

  • We will not make laws that affect your medical care and rights to govern your own body. We will cover your prescriptions in health insurance and treat you with respect when you come to the pharmacy to fill your prescriptions. We will not turn you away or humiliate you.
  • We will include you in medical research to see if our biological differences result in different health outcomes, just like researchers found that males and females suffer differently in heart attacks.
  • We won’t consider you freakish for being single or childless. Your choices will be respected. We can’t all be married with 2.2 children, a house and a dog.
  • We will ask that you take more responsibility for reproductive choices. You will ask if our health insurance plans cover the pill, and be willing to get a vasectomy — so much easier and cheaper than a tubal ligation. You will also be willing to accompany us on an abortion, if needed. Just going to a family planning clinic can be dangerous.
  • We will not blame you for causing divorce, gaining profits from divorce, marrying for money, being a bad single parent, or smoking around children or pregnant women. We must find the roots of problems and work on potential solutions together.
  • We will not have scientists, educators or philosophers find reasons for your supposed inferiority. We will not abuse our public role to insult you like Socrates, Freud, John Belushi, Bobby Riggs, Lawrence Summers, et al have done. We will seek answers, not justifications.
  • We won’t spend a fortune on marketing that targets you and then turn around and call you materialistic. We won’t blame you for being consumers because you take on the majority of shopping responsibilities. And we won’t use insulting, derogatory ads that, in fact, target you as the buyer.
  • We will represent you and give you a voice in all forms of media — newspapers, radio and TV. We will include you in history and represent you fairly in textbooks and other written material. We won’t deny or belittle your contributions.

  • We will name our streets, parks, and town squares after both men and women. We will erect statues and monuments that represent both sexes fairly.

  • We will hire you in elected offices because we value your contribution and seek to represent all the diverse views of society, not because “we’re ready.”

Full article

Boys willingly submitted to rape according to O’Reilly

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How can you willing submit to rape?

Well only a mind as complex as Billies can answer that.

He has been asked to be a key note speaker at a missing and exploited children’s group fund raiser.

As he is exploiting these boys regularly on his show I suppose he is a natural choice. That is if you are trying to understand the mind of someone who exploits children.

Article and Olbermann video take on the subject at News Hounds

Oh noes!! I see wires

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Post 9/11 seems to have become code for “We’re stupid, paranoid, overzealous idiots”

“Everyone can play a part by holding Turner Broadcasting to account for today’s events,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said. “Viewers, advertisers, license holders, can and should make clear to them this sort of behavior is reckless, irresponsible and illegal.”

“Commerce was disrupted, transportation routes were paralyzed, residents were stranded and relatives across the nation were in fear for their loved ones in the city of Boston,” Conley said.

Two men have been arrested and a lawsuit is pending against Turner broadcasting, all over an advertising stunt.

Boxes resembling Light Brights were set up in strategic locations to promote the Cartoon Network show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Two men involved in planning and executing the stunt have been arrested, the Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley has confirmed. The charges they face include a felony – placing a hoax device that caused panic – and a separate count of disorderly conduct.

snip

It remains a mystery as to why a full security alert was called on Wednesday over advertising devices that had been present in Boston – and other major US cities including Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles – for the past two weeks, although Coakley attributed it to the devices having a “very sinister appearance” and “wires”.

OMG!!! WTF!!!!!111!! BBQ!!!111!! It’s got wires run!!!!!!!11