Debbie Does
ArchPundit
Seriously? That passes as acceptable in any company when talking about a woman who had cervical cancer?
ArchPundit
For More Context
Debbie Halvorson had a hysterectomy because she had cervical cancer.
The best way to explain to high school students the consequences of their actions is to teach them comprehensive sex education including the biology, the relative risks of behavior choices, abstinence, safe sex, and ultimate consequences. Jill Stanek and her ilk are on a bizarre and strange path that would fit nicely in the world of the Scarlett Letter regardless of whether it is good public health policy. It only matters to them that we punish women for having sex.
Secret Plans
“I am convinced, but I cannot base it on any necessary evidence right now,” Kissinger told the senators, “that the president will want to move toward a bipartisan consensus” to stabilize Iraq through diplomacy.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was suspicious of such assurances. “Is there any place that you’re familiar with where the administration has articulated this strategy?” he asked.
“I don’t know any place where the administration has articulated this particular strategy,” the octogenarian diplomat admitted. But he added: “From my acquaintances with some of the people, I think it is possible that they will come to this strategy.”
Obama asked Kissinger if “you are suggesting that they have some secret strategy that we have not been made privy to.”
“I would be disappointed and surprised,” he reiterated, “if they did not accept some of the elements of what has been discussed here.”
The world goes beyond parody.
There Is Nothing They Can’t Say And Not Be Taken Seriously
The Illinois Review is happy to show off stupidity and just vileness on a regular basis:
So when state Sen. Debbie Halvorson admitted she had HPV and worried others might get it, you would think she’d focus on her behavior that caused her to contract that sexually transmitted disease.
Halvorson would be most helpful by discussing the health consequences of pre- or extra-marital sex. Here are some potential topics:
* Halvorson could discuss the number of sex partners she has had throughout her lifetime and how each one increased the likelihood of contracting HPV.
* If Halvorson even had only one sex partner aside from her husband, she could discuss how one can contract HPV from a sole encounter.
* Halvorson could discuss whether she realized at the time her sex partner carried HPV, which most trusting, vulnerable women don’t.
* Halvorson could disclose whether it was her husband who passed HPV on to her after sleeping with other women, demonstrating another reason for chaste behavior outside the marriage bedroom.
* More uncomfortably, if Halvorson contracted HPV through rape, she could discuss ways to avoid rape.
You know, I’m actually of the mind that there isn’t a need to require the vaccine since, though I have to wonder how stupid a parent would be to not have their daughters vaccinated. However, the nutter brigade as represented above has me wanting to reflexively back the idea. Of course, the law does have an opt-out clause.
The last one really gets me though:” if Halvorson contracted HPV through rape, she could discuss ways to avoid rape”
Blaming the victim. What a peach!
Today’s Tosser
John Ruskin at the Illinois Review:
But the fact is, words are cheap. And Obama’s words don’t comport with his actions. He’s failed to condemn the hateful words of Al-Husainy. He’s failed to condemn the hateful words of his “spiritual adviser” (Obama’s words) Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Instead, calling him [Wright] “moderate” and “tolerant” within the context of the African-American experience. And Sun Times Kool-Aid drinkers aside, he’s failed to fully explain how his boyhood madrassa – run by Wahhabists – was “moderate” or “tolerant” as defined by average Americans.
Lying sack of crap.
Let’s start this again. The Saudi expansion of Wahhabist madrassas occurred starting in the 1970s when Obama would have been in Hawaii. This is a simple fact that historical literacy would make obvious.
Second, it wasn’t a madrassa. It was a sekhola–and a public school at that.
Third, radical Islam didn’t have any serious presence in Indonesia.
Fourth, we have yet to identify any hateful words uttered by Jeremiah Wright unless by hateful one means doesn’t like Dear Leader.
Fifth, to the Chicago press. This is where the anti-Obama stories are starting before they make it into your news stories. Do you see the problem?
Of course, Husham al-Husainy’s background is a bit more complex than Debbie Schlussel or Ruskin would have you believe. Like in pushing Iraqis to make a civic pilgrimmage to vote in the Iraqi elections and appeared at a rally supporting the war with Paul Wolfowitz.
That’s some bad judgment all right.
PastorDan on Middleclassness
Street Prophets Pastor Dan addresses the ridiculousness of the Trinity story
Shorter GOP: religion in politics is good when we agree. It’s divisive and wrong otherwise. Judging by how far they’re stretching to find some kind of dirt to pin on Obama, I’d say they’re pretty worried about his potential.
My bet–teh gay!
Bowen 1 – 1 With Bets
His bets always seem to show up on blogs…more importantly, Rick has a good discussion of Facebook in Presidential politics.
Petey on the Radio
Petey’s upset that people make fun of his obsession with everything gay:
“The little trick is activists like Wayne Besen and Pam Spaulding — who’s sort of a nutty lesbian blogger…She jokes about me, she calls me Porno Pete and they joke that I have some sort of fondness for sadomasochism, just because we’ve exposed this sort of weird stuff.”
It’s not just activists, Petey, I think just about everyone makes fun of you for your obsessions. I have gay friends, I right for a GLBT local newspaper, and have lived in neighborhoods with relatively high levels of GLBT populations and let me say that Petey is the best source of information for sexual practices that are not, ahem, typical.
Petey thinks his point is made by making fun of Besen for when Besen said he had never heard of fisting until Petey brought it up. I don’t think the example quite did what Petey thinks it did.
It’s quite explicit about a gay web site in Massachusetts as well. Apparently, they spend a lot of time on it. A lot.
Info-Pimping
Charles Madigan writes a good defense of the the media in general and while I tend to get particularly annoyed as of late with some of the stories I see coming out (David Broder saying Democrats aren’t sympathetic to the military for example) I think it’s important to praise those who do good work.
Madigan, Zorn, Miller, Sweet, and Chapman strike me as exceptionally good columnists and very good at fact checking. Chambers, Fornek, McDermott, usually Pearson, and Zeleny (now at NY Times) (and I’m sure I’m forgetting some people so don’t whine like bloggers to me) all are very good reporters who get their facts straight and despite caterwauling primarily from the right, are excellent observers of the political scene.
As I’ve said before, I’ve fallen victim/perpetrated info-pimping and try and be as straightforward with readers when I screw up with those incidents.
The problem many liberal activists and bloggers perceive and I think does exist is that over time the right wing has established an echo chamber that is particularly good and working the refs. The answer to it for most of us is to work the refs too. It’s a problematic solution because it adds to the postmodern notion that facts are relative to one’s view of the world. By doing the same thing, the notion that both ‘sides’ are the same is reinforced and we get more he said-he said journamalism that doesn’t try and accurately portray reality–hello global warming skeptics hacks.
But what else is the answer? Today we see a stupid meme from Fran Eaton and the Illinois Review show up in a fairly long story in the Tribune discussing how conservatives are arguing that Trinity is a black supremacist church that has weird beliefs on the middle class.
This despite a document on the church web site I found several weeks ago explaining what is meant by Trinity’s 12 precepts which does explain the statements very clearly. There is a reality underlying the accusations and it’s not friendly to Eaton yet the community paper Eaton writes for published her commentary and the Tribune picked up the story.
All the facts are correct in the story (except that the web site doesn’t have further context), but it still leaves the impression that there is something advocating weird views on the middle class or is even black supremacist. The story about the ‘controversy’ furthers the purpose of the story in the first place to make Obama sound out of the mainstream even though the values under the Black Values System are very mainstream points of view.
The journalistic practice of being fair and finding opposing viewpoints furthers the purpose of those trying to push the story. I don’t know how to fix this problem. I have a lot of respect for many journalists and while I criticize the profession, I’m glad the good reporters are there for the very reasons Madigan cites, but too often we are dealing with freak show stories that shouldn’t even be in the media and the media reports on them because of the ‘controversy.’
Sharpton aims to be the Voice of Reason
The controversy triggered by Jones was picked up by CNN Monday, and the Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN that Jones “could offend people by saying you got to unite just because someone is your race.”
Sharpton noted that Obama endorsed Mayor Daley for re-election over two black candidates, so it would not follow to ask blacks “to do something for Obama that he himself is not doing at home.”
Hysterical.
Rich has a good take on it over at Capitol Fax as well.
Rich says it well, and I say this not to criticize Stoller here, but to point out this is why local bloggers are essential to covering stories with local angles. I didn’t even take the bit about patronage politics seriously from Jones because he’s Jones. I like Jones, I just am not naive enough to buy that he wouldn’t make the exact opposite argument if he was in Joe Bruno’s job.