American Fascists

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The Republican War on Women continues

ThinkProgress: Earlier this week, an Arizona Senate panel approved HB 2800 on a party-line vote. The Arizona Senate Committee on Healthcare and Medical Liability Reform’s move came on the heels of support from the Arizona House, which approved the legislation earlier this month.
If HB 2800 is indeed passed by the full Senate, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) is expected to sign the legislation into law, stripping state funding from any group such as Planned Parenthood that performs abortions.
Unfortunately, the move would have a pronounced impact on poorer Arizona women who rely on places like Planned Parenthood for many of their health care needs. As the following chart shows, abortion accounts for just 3 percent of the patient care provided by Planned Parenthood. The other 97 percent included mammograms, STI treatment, and other health services.

If passed, Arizona will join a growing list of Republican-led states to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. The largest was Texas, who last year stripped the women’s health provider of approximately $47 million in state funds. As a result, 12 clinics were forced to shut their doors, many in rural areas with few other health care providers. Other states, such as New Jersey and Wisconsin, have taken away funds as well.

George Will Mocks 'Depressing' GOP Response To Rush Limbaugh

TPM Livewire:

"It would've been nice if they had shared that with the larger public, the Republican leaders," Will said on ABC's This Week. "Instead, Mr. Boehner comes out and says, Rush's language was inappropriate. Using a salad fork for your entree, that's inappropriate. Not this stuff. I mean, and Rick Santorum says well, what he says was absurd, but an entertainer is allowed to be absurd. No. It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right in its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses in their own side. And it was depressing, because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they're afraid of Rush Limbaugh."

If Santorum and Romney don't have the courage to stand up to an "entertainer" they aren't fit to be President.

women's health experts

according to the Republican party.  bow your heads to the patriarchs, my dears.

Limbaugh forced to eat his own balls

Rush Limbaugh Apologizes To Sandra Fluke | TPM Livewire: "My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir," Limbaugh says in the statement. "I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

ha ha ha - more like this please!

Wilmington City Council Passes Resolution Urging 'Personhood' Rights For Sperm: The Wilmington City Council has a message for men -- sperm are people, too.

The council for Delaware's largest city passed a resolution by an 8-4 vote Thursday calling on the Delaware legislature, other state legislatures and the U.S. Congress to pass laws granting "personhood" rights to eggs and sperm. The resolution was authored by councilwoman Loretta Walsh as a protest in the current battle over women's health care access.

"[E]ach 'egg person' and each 'sperm person' should be deemed equal in the eyes of the government and be subject to the same laws and regulations as any other dependent minor and be protected against abuse, neglect or abandonment by the parent or guardian," says the resolution. "[L]aws should be enacted by all legislative bodies in the United States to promote equal representation, and should potentially include laws in defense of 'personhood,' forbidding every man from destroying his semen."

Four charged over Danish newspaper 'massacre plot' - InterAksyon.com

Four charged over Danish newspaper 'massacre plot' - InterAksyon.com: COPENHAGEN -- Danish prosecutors have charged four men for "attempted terrorism" over plans to kill the staff of a newspaper that carried controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a judicial statement said Friday.

The four men, all residents of Sweden and arrested on December 29, 2010, had planned to "kill a large number of people" at the Jyllands-Posten daily, it said.

the Republican War on Women's Health

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as long as they're not offering contraception

is the occupation a "moral abomination"?

Let's hear from an Israeli veteran

Live-Blogging The Fox SC Debate

The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast: 10.26 pm.

A reader writes:

I tuned in for only one minute, then had to turn it off immediately. This is all I saw, and it was enough for this recovering Evangelical: They cheered Newt for his simplistic rule of "killing America's enemies," and they booed Ron Paul for his rational and Christian-minded rule of doing to our enemies nothing worse than what we would want done to us. What a sick, sad thing for Christians to ignore Jesus' most basic and essential teaching.

Jesus was far more radical than the Golden Rule. He told us to love our enemies. These people would kill all of them, a declared war or not.

The religion of peace, indeed.

Israeli Girl at Center of Tension Over Religious Extremism

NYTimes.com: An Israeli weekend television program told the story of how Naama had become terrified of walking to her elementary school here after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not adhere exactly to their more rigorous dress code.
The country was outraged. Naama’s picture has appeared on the front pages of all the major Israeli newspapers. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Sunday that “Israel is a democratic, Western, liberal state” and pledged that “the public sphere in Israel will be open and safe for all,” there have been days of confrontation at focal points of friction here.
Ultra-Orthodox men and boys from the most stringent sects have hurled rocks and eggs at the police and journalists, shouting “Nazis” at the security forces and assailing female reporters with epithets like “shikse,” a derogatory Yiddish term for a non-Jewish woman or girl, and “whore.”

Deadly Nigeria bomb attacks condemned by world leaders

BBC News - Deadly Nigeria bomb attacks condemned by world leaders: The first attack, outside St Theresa's Church in Madalla, near Abuja, killed 35 and wounded more than 50.


The church and surrounding homes were badly damaged.

Father Christopher Barde told AFP news agency the blast occurred as the Christmas morning service was ending.

"It was really terrible," he said. "Some [wounded] people ran towards me [saying] 'Father anoint me'."

Crowds grew angry over the attack and the slow response of the emergency services.

Reuters reports that thousands of youths have erected roadblocks on the road from the capital to the largely Muslim north, and are being tackled by security forces firing tear gas.

In Jos, a blast close to the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church was followed by gunfire that left one officer dead, government spokesman Pam Ayuba told the Associated Press news agency.

Two explosive devices found in a nearby building were disarmed as military were deployed to the site.

Afghan woman being forced to marry her rapist

RAWA News: Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan prosecutors announced Wednesday that a young rape victim, jailed for adultery after reporting the crime and pushed into marrying her attacker, would have her sentence reduced from twelve to three years. The prosecutor said she would, for now, remain in jail -- with her child -- for not reporting her attack fast enough.

Gulnaz is in Kabul's Badam Bagh jail, serving out her sentence with her rapist's child. (Photo: CNN)
In a remarkable case that is all too common in Afghanistan but has drawn international attention, 21-year-old Gulnaz was attacked by a relative two years ago, but sentenced to 12 years in jail for adultery.
She has since given birth to a girl from the attack. Because of the dishonor of sex outside of wedlock, she had been given the choice of marrying her attacker to get out of jail and legitimize her infant daughter in the eyes of Afghanistan's conservative society.
The child is imprisoned with her at Badambagh Prison on the outskirts of Kabul.

barbarism

unfit for the presidency

rick perry threatens a jew with lynching:

To my mind, the following statement disqualifies Perry from the race:

If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion.

Yes, as Talk Progress notes, treason is a capital offense. And there is no doubt what a bully means when he says someone should be treated "pretty ugly" in Texas. There you have the mindset of a man who could issue a death warrant for an innocent man and who would bring back the most brutal torture techniques he could get away with.

More death threats from religious folks

at Why Evolution Is True:

Yesterday Blair Scott, communications director for American Atheists, was on the FOX News show America Live with Megyn Kelly. You can see the show here; sadly, I can’t watch it in Russia.

As soon as Scott returned home after the show, his inbox began filling up with hate mail and threats. Equally distressing, the Fox News Facebook page was soon inundated with death threats aimed at Scott and atheists in general, comments that are being taken down rapidly (see the report by William Hamby in the Atlanta Examiner).

here is the screenshot of the FB comments:

 ahh the religion of peace

The Teen Suicide Epidemic in Michele Bachmann's District

110% absolutely guaranteed hetero 

Is Michelle Bachmann fomenting teen suicide ? Via Pharyngula:

Mother Jones: "The first was TJ. Then came Samantha, Aaron, Nick, and Kevin. Over the past two years, a total of nine teenagers have committed suicide in a Minnesota school district represented by Rep. Michele Bachmann—the latest in May—and many more students have attempted to take their lives. State public health officials have labeled the area a 'suicide contagion area' because of the unusually high death rate.

Some of the victims were gay, or perceived to be by their classmates, and many were reportedly bullied. And the anti-gay activists who are some of the congresswoman's closest allies stand accused of blocking an effective response to the crisis and fostering a climate of intolerance that allowed bullying to flourish. Bachmann, meanwhile, has been uncharacteristically silent on the tragic deaths that have roiled her district—including the high school that she attended.

Bachmann, who began her political career as an education activist, has described gay rights as an 'earthquake issue,' and she and her allies have made public schools the front lines of their fight against the 'homosexual agenda.' They have opposed efforts in the state to promote tolerance for gays and lesbians in the classroom, seeing such initiatives as a way of allowing gays to recruit impressionable youths into an unhealthy and un-Christian lifestyle."

Horrible people.

Theravada Buddhist monks walk away from sex-abuse allegations

chicagotribune.com:

"A Tribune review of sexual abuse cases involving several Theravada Buddhist temples found minimal accountability and lax oversight of monks accused of preying on vulnerable targets.

Because they answer to no outside ecclesiastical authority, the temples respond to allegations as they see fit. And because the monks are viewed as free agents, temples claim to have no way of controlling what they do next. Those found guilty of wrongdoing can pack a bag and move to another temple — much to the dismay of victims, law enforcement and other monks.

'You'd think they'd want to make sure these guys are not out there trying to get into other temples,' said Rishi Agrawal, the attorney for a victim of a west suburban monk convicted of battery for sexual contact last fall. 'What is the institutional approach here? It seems to be ignorance and inaction.'"

reaping the whirlwind

I love the whinging that's going on in the anti-jihadist, Christian Right corner of the sty. After years of tarring muslims, liberals, environmentalists, etc with every imaginable slander and accusation, they squeal over the notion that they be associated with their..er...associates. Check out this from Tim at THE BLACK KETTLE (one of my favorite winger sites):

"I, and many others, have spent the past few days deconstructing the slanderous meme in the media that Breivik is a right-wing extremist fundamentalist Christian. He was none of those things. He was a deranged xenophobe. The writer of the above article nails it when he writes ‘the media employs guilt by association by deliberate design.’ This should put to rest any presumption by the general public that the media is either objective or ideologically neutral. The MSM is an organ of anti-Christian/conservative propaganda and it must be changed by rooting-out the problem in the schools of journalism which consistently turn out these radical, left-wing demagogues."

On Friday he said:

"A case in point is that islam as a religion is a problem as I see it (I have read the Koran). "

Constantly tying a billion muslims to terrorism and doctrinal literalism. Apparently he hasn't read the Bible, if he believes it provides christians with particular moral cover. it doesn't, unless you are a fan of slavery, polygamy, and genocide. (I have read the Bible)

When Christianity becomes lethal

On Faith - The Washington Post

A more comprehensive view of the mutually-reinforcing role of extremist Christianity and extremist political views is essential, given the spread of right-wing extremism and its lethal capacity “not just in Norway but across Europe, where opposition to Muslim immigrants, globalization, the power of the European Union and the drive toward multiculturalism has proven a potent political force and, in a few cases, a spur to violence.”

The rise of this type of right-wing extremism is not confined to Europe but is also a growing threat in the U.S. It is therefore even more alarming that the Southern Poverty Law Center is calling attention to the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has apparently scaled back its department “responsible for analyzing security threats from non-Islamic domestic extremists.” According to Daryl Johnson, the principal author of the April 7, 2009, report “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” the focus on domestic, non-Islamic terror threats, was cut back after his report was leaked. The leaked report precipitated a “firestorm” of protest from conservatives who “wrongly claimed it equated conservatives with terrorists.”
Especially in light of events in Norway, it is clear Mr. Johnson was just doing what Homeland Security is supposed to do, namely track dangerous domestic extremism, regardless of the source, in order to prevent violent extremism.

The religious element in terrorist extremism cannot either be ignored or overblown. It is an important part of the whole equation. In this Norwegian case, conservative Christianity and right-wing, nationalist political ideologies mutually reinforced and tempted each other, and the acts of a person like Anders Behring Breivik were apparently the result. Looking closely at theological interpretations can illuminate how the mass killing of people to accomplish a political end can be justified as right and even a moral imperative in the eyes of individuals and groups wanting to impose their political views through violence.

It is absolutely critical that Christians not turn away from the Christian theological elements in such religiously inspired terrorism. We must acknowledge these elements in Christianity and forthrightly reject these extremist interpretations of our religion. How can we ask Muslims to do the same with Islam, if we won’t confront extremists distorting Christianity?