My father, bless his backward heart, saw fit to forward me one of those annoying anti-Obama emails. This one has a subject line of "Stupid is as stupid does" but might as well be titled "Wake up, white people." It consists of a ridiculous list of Bad Things--from hijackings to assassinations--attributed to "Muslim male extremists between the ages of 17 and 40."

It then goes on to point out that:

"According to The Book of Revelations:

The Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of
MUSLIM descent , who will deceive the nations with persuasive language,
and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people
will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and
when he is in power, he will destroy everything.


And Now:
For the award winning
Act of Stupidity
Of all times the People of America want to
elect, to the most Powerful position on the face of the Planet --
The Presidency of the United states of America

A Muslim
Male
Extremist
Between
the ages
of 17 and 40."


Okay. I'm going to type *reeeeeeal slow* for my relatives who probably won't get it anyway. For the hundred-thousandth time: Barak Obama is not Muslim.

And while I'm on the subject, the obsessive use of his middle name as an attempt to encourage negative associations also needs to stop. We don't shun everyone named Adolph or George--let's leave the Husseins of the world the fuck alone.

Every single candidate in this race has *plenty* of legitimately negative qualities and closet-skeletons we can criticize--fabrication and inflation are entirely unnecessary.

( (The entire email is behind this cut, if anyone cares to wade through it.) )

Via hughcasey, and others...

A booth at the Texas Republican Convention was selling buttons that read, "If Obama is President... will we still call it the White House?" (Brought to you--unsurprisingly--by the people who sold an anti-Hillary button reading, "Life's a bitch--don't vote for one.")

This is disgusting on so many levels that I can't bring myself to analyze it in any depth. Thankfully, it is so obviously reeking of vile stupidity that I hardly need point it out.

(Via mutster101.)

I picked this up at an antique shop for $1. The back is blank. No names, no unit, no way to find out what's become of any of these men.

This is the fifth Memorial Day of the war in Iraq. In fifty or sixty years, maybe someone like me will shell out a couple dollars for an anonymous photo of some soldiers clustered around a tank in the desert. But maybe there's a date on the back. May, 2008. "These are the lucky ones," future-me thinks. "The war was over by June."

And wouldn't that be brilliant?

I remain torn between the Master and Cthulhu. (But Saxon *is* the lesser of two evils...)

(Via supergee...)

"Somewhere a Fox News editor's history teacher is weeping."

The money quote: “Rich people, God bless us. We deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue to the next generation.”

(NWS)

Oh, and there's a sizable bit of dick, as well.

(It's in the details.)

We have met the enemy, and he is elected.--Lloyd Jones, 2003

Fuck censorship. Just fuck it. And fuck fundie-fuelled censorship twice as hard with a pointed stick.

Via Wired:
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.

Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.

The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like "Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births," and "Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005."

But on Thursday, a search on "abortion" was producing only the message "No records found by latest query."

( Rest of article behind the cut, or via the link, above. )

There are tons of posts and opinions about this Day of LJ Silence business, so I'm not going to bother getting into the background. Suffice it to say that while I find the comments made by the representative of our new overlords to be rude and thoughtless, I also bow to the beauty and wonder that is capitalism. I like my ad-free journal, and I pay to keep it that way. I also pay for additional user pics, even though I rarely use many of them. I feel for the slighted, am annoyed at the unthinking, and don't give a flying fuck about slactivism. And really--lessening the load on LJ's servers for 24 hours is closer to a favor than a slap. And to quote someone who replied to a related post in kradical's journal, "Hell hath no fury like the uninvolved."

Enough said. I'll read and post if the 'net connection permits, and I am moved to do so.

Ralph Nader has announced that he is joining the presidential race.

Do I really need to mention party affiliation...?

I thought not.

cearbhaill found the Best. Death notice. Ever.

Died: SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY, at the late residence of his father, J. Davis, Richmond, Virginia, aged 4 years. Death caused by strangulation. No funeral.--Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 April 1865

Baby traveling to US for heart surgery dies after being held in Honolulu airport.

This is disgusting. Why, WHY did they detain all three of them instead of releasing the two legal travelers and just holding the mother? (Who, as it turns out, was also here legally.) I can understand paperwork--I can understand rules and regulations, but if we've sunk so far in the mire of bureaucracy that we can't be compassionate (or even practice common sense, in this case, and release the legal visitors) we don't deserve to call ourselves "civilized". There's no excuse for this.

But wait, I forgot--this is a Christian nation. We only care about babies *before* they're born.

(Via supergee.)

This 5 minute film appears to summarize the major wars of the mid-to late 20th and early 21st centuries using indigenous food products.

If Huckabee wins this election, I think my ovaries will pull an Alien and drag me out of the country by force.

"If the Goverment is a car setting out to give everyone a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.

And they do this so that they don't have to chip in on gas."--Lance Mannion

(Via supergee.)

One noticed, as the address began, that it wasn't a matter of Bush waiting for the applause to *stop* before he continued speaking so much as a rather obvious refusal to speak until applause had begun in the first place.