Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

One more Youtube, just for kicks.

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Colors of the Wind

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GPS monitoring for stalkers who violate protective orders

This is a fantastic idea.

Under this bill, victims of domestic violence and stalking could be warned as soon as the perpetrator gets too close to or enters a restricted zone near the victim’s home or place of work

When my mom was divorcing my dad, he used to call in the middle of the night and tell her he was going to burn the house down with us all inside. (Luckily, she got it on tape and used it against him in court.) If he could've been fitted with a GPS tracker, we would've slept a lot easier.

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Long-dead corpse still annoying the "pro-life" movement.

Photo credit: Rick Watson

Memo to the "pro-life" movement:

Margaret Sanger died over forty years ago!

Franks wrote, "Without her, eugenics itself would have become the sideshow, largely limited to the self-important musings and designs of academic societies and conferences."

Eugenics has become a sideshow! It was discredited and discarded decades ago by the scientific community. Nobody supports or advocates for eugenics anymore! Has Angela Franks been living under a rock for the past 80 years, or what?

Even today, nearly 130 years after Sanger's birth, black women are disproportionately affected by abortion, with black women more likely to have pregnancies ending in abortion than white women are.

Even today, 140 years after the Fourteenth Amendment gave black Americans their citizenship and 44 years after segregation was outlawed, black women are still disproportionately poor and disadvantaged in American society, putting them at disproportionately high risk for everything from heart disease to infant mortality. It makes no sense at all to blame doctors and medical clinics -- especially those willing to build in low-income areas and provide charity care -- for this continuing disparity. Planned Parenthood is part of the solution, not the problem. Planned Parenthood prevents millions of abortions every year by providing free and low-cost birth control to low-income patients who don't want babies right now. What has the anti-choice movement done to help low-income people who don't want babies avoid unwanted pregnancy, other than telling them not to have sex with their spouses and partners?

Not a goddamn thing, that's what.

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Go, Danica, Go!

Congratulations to Danica Patrick on winning her first IndyCar race -- the Indy Japan 300 -- and becoming the first woman to win a major auto race!

Patrick passed two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves three laps from the finish to take the lead as the front-runners pitted.

Patrick, Castroneves and Ed Carpenter had pitted five laps after the front-runners, including Scott Dixon, who dominated the second half of the race.

"It's a long time coming," Patrick said on ESPN's television broadcast. "Finally!"

After Dixon and others pitted, Moyer told Patrick that Castroneves was the only driver that could deny her, and she did the rest. Having saved a considerable amount of fuel in the final segment, she stood on the gas and blew past the Brazilian on the 198th lap.

"I knew he was the one to beat," Patrick said. "I was not going to make the mistake of not (going for it)."

Too bad Bob Margolis felt the need to shit all over her victory in his column: (Via.)

Danica Patrick’s first IndyCar win in the Japan 300 was more a triumph in public relations than auto racing.

It didn’t happen as the result of a final lap, wheel-to-wheel battle, one that many close observers of the sport feel she will never win.

It instead was more a battle between the race engineer’s computers on the Andretti Green team and that of her rival Helio Castroneves’ Penske Racing team. It was a matter of who would get the best fuel mileage in the final handful of laps of the 200-lap race.

Both drivers had made their final pit stop on Lap 148, and when race leader Scott Dixon was forced onto pit road for a final splash of fuel, it became an opportunity for both Patrick and Castroneves to win – in a fuel mileage battle.

Castroneves is the IRL points leader and was racing with that in mind. Instead of gambling on running out of fuel or making a pit stop which would have had him finishing farther back in the field and scoring fewer points, Castroneves instead lifted his foot off of his gas pedal just enough to save fuel and reward Patrick with the victory.

The win was the result of a well-calculated move – pure and simple.

However, to her and her team’s credit, a win is a win no matter how you get it. And Patrick did execute the team’s strategy perfectly.

It seems that Bob feels a win isn't really a win unless it comes down to a "final lap, wheel-to-wheel battle." All this fuel-mileage stuff is sissy girly technical winning. Unless the driver is equipped with a penis, I guess, because this is from Bob Margolis' April 13 column:

Are you a fan who likes fuel mileage races? I think it separates the men from the boys and shows which team can best make use of their resources. Whenever there’s a race finale that has unlimited fuel and tires and everyone can run full out, it usually involves just a couple of cars. On Saturday night, with a dozen laps remaining, it was nearly impossible to determine who might win. I like that kind of racing. How about you?

I like that kind of racing, too. Especially when it separates the women from the boys.

Cross-posted.

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Erykah Badu - Honey

I love this song so much! <3

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420 blogging

It's 4/20, so I'm blogging about it.

• In 2006, 43.9% of the 1,889,810 total arrests for drug abuse violations were for marijuana -- a total of 829,627. Of those, 738,916 people were arrested for marijuana possession alone.


• As of Sept. 30, 2006, federal prisons held a total of 176,268 inmates, of whom 93,751 (53%) were drug offenders. In state prisons, 249,400 out of 1,274,600 adult inmates (19.6%) were drug offenders. Incarcerating drug offenders costs the federal government $3 billion and state governments more than $6 billion per year.


• Of the 249,400 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses at the end of 2004, 45.1% were black, 20.8% were Hispanic, and 26.4% were white. This, despite the facts that black people are only 12.1% of the population and 15% of admitted illicit drug users.


• Annual deaths attributed to marijuana: 0

America's war on (some people who use some) drugs is insanity and a goddamn shame.

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Expelled Exposed

I spent much of this morning reading this fascinating site that debunks Ben Stein's new anti-science flick, Expelled. (Via.) From there, I wound up re-watching this amazing NOVA about the fight that erupted when the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania tried to introduce creationism in to science class. It's damn good TV, well worth an hour of your time. It really exposes what an absolute fraud intelligent design is.

Cross-posted.

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"Get high for free, out of the medicine cabinet!"

Speaking both as a parent of a school-age child and as someone who has lost a very dear relative to prescription drug abuse way before his time, these ads just rub me the wrong way. I mean, I usually think anti-drug PSAs are annoying and patronizing, but these ads are something else entirely.

This has been bothering me for a while now, ever since the drug dealer one started airing. The guy says, "Half my customers don't even need me; they get high for free, out of the medicine cabinets!" Then the narrator repeats it: "Kids don't need a drug dealer to get high."

I just recently started seeing the one with the kid bragging about all his pills. "Getting drugs can be as easy as opening your medicine cabinet." Is that really the message we want kids hearing on government-funded ads?

I get that these commercials are aimed at parents, but how many parents are unaware of the existence of recreational pill abuse? Everyone sees these ads, not just parents. Maybe it's just me, but when I see these ads, I get this awful gut feeling that they're probably more likely to encourage younger kids to experiment with pills than to inform parents. Neither of these ads warn about the dangers of taking pills (which actually ARE real and serious, unlike the silly stereotypes I see in so many anti-marijuana ads); they just talk about how easy and free it is to get high on pills. Am I the only one who thinks this is NUTS?

Cross-posted.

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Trailer park for the homeless

This plan to house 150-175 of Austin's homeless in a new RV park sounds great, to me! Sure, an RV isn't the best housing there is, but it's got a shower, a kitchen, a bed and air conditioning, all private, so it's clearly a huge step up from a shelter. And I LOVE the amenities they're planning on providing on-site:

Graham's park, Park Place Village, would be a gated community with 100 recreational vehicles and 50 cottages of 144 square feet. It would have a central laundry, restroom and shower facility, as well as a main lodge and chapel, Graham said. The park would house 150 to 175 people who are chronically homeless, which is usually defined as having been homeless for more than a year.

About 600 of the 4,000 to 6,000 homeless people in Austin are chronically homeless, Graham said.

Volunteers would help build the cottages and regularly mentor and visit residents to have dinner with them, teach them job skills or help them plant a garden, among other activities.

"The idea is to restore their dignity and build a community where (the homeless) can be welcomed and understood and rediscover a purpose in their lives," Graham said.

Residents would pay $100 to $375 a month and could stay there permanently.

The land is a third of a mile from a Capital Metro bus stop, so residents could get to jobs and social service providers. Mobile Loaves & Fishes would hire two case managers to help residents access services such as drug counseling and job training.

It sounds like a really good plan to get a lot of people off the street permanently. It's hard to get a good job if you don't have an address or anywhere to shower and hang your clothes. If it works out as well as intended, more of them could be built until everyone in Austin has a home.

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Mexican women having American babies on the taxpayer dime!!!!!

Gag. I just watched this awful CBS Evening News piece about Mexican women crossing the border to give birth in America on the taxpayer dime, and I just have to voice my disgust.

CBS News' Byron Pitts interrogated one of these shameless monsters:

"So your son is an American citizen. What does that mean to you?" Pitts asked.

"I am very glad that he was born. That's why I came here - so my children, my husband and I could have a better life," she said through a translator.

THE HORROR!!!!!! What kind of mother does everything in her power to give her children a better life??

Back in December, when she was six months pregnant, Fabiola, her husband and their two daughters - ages 4 and 11 - crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the U.S.

Once on the other side of the river they walked for two hours in search of a better life and free medical care for their unborn child.

They walked two hours in search of a better life and lifesaving medical care for their children! Obviously these people are just lazy freeloaders!!! y/y?

"Do many women in Mexico make the choice to have their children in the United States?" Pitts asked.

"Yes," she said through a translator. "I know people who have done that. Things are much better here in the U.S. because they help children so much more."

It's a "better" life ... that American taxpayers help pay for.

You're goddamn right it's a better life! (I can't believe they put quotes around "better." WTF?) And you're goddamn right we pay for it, because we don't want to live in a third-world country where mothers and babies die preventable deaths, either! Who would?

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said: "It is not fair to the taxpayers who have to foot the bill."

OK, so apparently Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas wants to live in a third-world shit-hole where mothers and babies die in the streets. Good to know.

Many Americans who struggle to take care of their own families think it is unfair that they should take care of a family and they are not U.S. citizens.

"I don't understand the resentment," said Fabiola. "I know that God will help them, too."

I don't understand the resentment, either. The story says taxpayers pay "an estimated $1.1 billion per year" for health care for undocumented men, women and children (according to something called "the Rand Corporation"). But according to this table (.pdf) from the US Department of Health and Human Services, federal, state and local governments spent a total of $970.3 billion on health care in 2006.

(1.1 / 970.3) * 100 = 0.1%

So if those numbers are correct, health care for undocumented immigrants amounts to one tenth of one percent of all government health care spending. I think we can afford one tenth of one percent to keep undocumented immigrants from dying preventable deaths while picking our tomatoes or building our houses or giving birth to the next generation of tax-paying American citizens. Why all the resentment?

Why? Probably because we have ridiculous national news broadcasters stirring up unwarranted, racist outrage over non-issues like this.

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If you can't ban abortion, ban information about abortion?

Looks like the Bush Administration is up to it's old tricks again (PDF).

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."

The manager of the site, Debbie Dickson, confirmed that searches for "abortion" have been blocked, because "as a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now." Apparently, when you accept federal funds, the First Amendment goes right out the window. Who knew?

Ugh, January 20, 2009 can not get here soon enough.

UPDATE: Via Feministing, "abortion" has been unblocked.

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George W. Bush Sewage Plant

This gave me a really good laugh. (Via.)

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