There’s a Reason We Call Him Douche Hat

Douchehat haz a sad.

Ross Douchehat, New York Fucking Times:
Government and Its Rivals

I am thoroughly convinced that the New York Times is engaging in a long-running trolling of modern conservatives. Ensuring that no matter what year it is, there is always a prominent reminder that any conservative who talks about a meritocracy or complains about “affirmative action” has a ready example proving them completely full of shit.

The current sacrificial example is of course the Chunky Witherspoon fearing, poor man’s Jonah Goldberg that is Ross Douthat.

Today he is whining because after 30 years of surviving on bullshit and scare-mongering in the suburbs, real people are starting to notice that all the government scare-mongering has just left them with a shitty economy, no safety net, and collapsing cities.

I’ll let him explain.

When liberals are in a philosophical mood, they like to cast debates over the role of government not as a clash between the individual and the state, but as a conflict between the individual and the community. Liberals are for cooperation and joint effort; conservatives are for self-interest and selfishness. Liberals build the Hoover Dam and the interstate highways; conservatives sit home and dog-ear copies of “The Fountainhead.” Liberals know that it takes a village; conservatives pretend that all it takes is John Wayne.

Yes, when liberals aren’t pounding their heads against the table at the prospect of having to argue with a simple-minded toadie who sleep-walked his way to a 6-7 figure salary, they sometimes like to point out that government isn’t actually a nickname for a gigantic troll monster that eats children, but rather that it’s a word we use to describe a creation of the people, by the people, and for the people to keep everything running so the rest of us can get back to our day jobs of looking up strange new forms of erotica and sampling bubble wrap.

In this worldview, the government is just the natural expression of our national community, and the place where we all join hands to pursue the common good. Or to borrow a line attributed to Representative Barney Frank, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”

Yes, this fantasical, strange “worldview” and its zany crazy views of the world working the way it does.

Many conservatives would go this far with Frank: Government is one way we choose to work together, and there are certain things we need to do collectively that only government can do.

But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

Oh of course, I know that when I let the government keep me from dying from preventable causes, that my meetings with the local rotary club go down the crapper and my D&D group gets seized by the FBI.

See, the problem with the constant attempt by conservatives to sell the idea that government is somehow against liberty, is the constant fact that reality keeps contradicting them. When the government is allowed to keep people from starving or dying in the gutters, the Churches don’t magically cease to exist and social clubs don’t stop meeting, aren’t broken up, or infiltrated on, unlike when anti-government zealots try and seize control.

And since he’s basically doing a slow-burn to arguing that churches are being “brought down by the Man, man”, I’m going to skip ahead and note that Churches have the most “coercive power” with regards to their stations, often tying charity aid with proselytization or mandatory conversion, removing social support from anyone who becomes a “member in bad standing with the Church”, not to mention demanding political orthodoxy as a requirement for a sense of community.

But then, that’s the feature, not the bug.

Zealots like Douchehat want people to be dependent on the Church so that people like him can feel better knowing that there are a whole bunch more suckers stuck with him.

Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches. Every program the government runs, from education to health care to the welfare office, can easily become a kind of taxpayer-backed monopoly.

Yes, every tax dollar is a dollar that doesn’t go to charity. Because you see, every dollar spent in America goes to charity, church, or taxes.

Wait, that sounds insane. Let me instead argue that it’s because tax and charity are directly related and people give a set amount no matter the situation, so when you give people a tax cut, they immediately give that money to charities and churches as we saw with the Bush tax cu-

Damnitt! Just pretend this makes sense and isn’t an obvious and poorly played three-card monte to setup a “Church good, Government bad” retread later on in the post.

But sometimes the state goes further. Not content with crowding out alternative forms of common effort, it presents its rivals an impossible choice: Play by our rules, even if it means violating the moral ideals that inspired your efforts in the first place, or get out of the community-building business entirely.

This is exactly the choice that the White House has decided to offer a host of religious institutions — hospitals, schools and charities — in the era of Obamacare. The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient. A number of religious groups, led by the American Catholic bishops, had requested an exemption for plans purchased by their institutions. Instead, the White House has settled on an exemption that only covers religious institutions that primarily serve members of their own faith. A parish would be exempt from the mandate, in other words, but a Catholic hospital would not.

HOW DARE THEY!

The nerve!

Demanding that institutions which take federal dollars have to actually-I can hardly say it-actually follow the federal rule of law governing such funds.

Is it not the very founding moral character of religious institutions that they have a right, NAY a calling, to fleece the public chest without a single action binding them in anyway?

Truly this is exactly akin to having Churches banned from any form of community building of any form or having all the religious members of an institution denied a voice in government or something that would be akin to actual oppression rather than having your abusive over-reach and attempt to evade the law mildly rebuked.

Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not. The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”

Uh yeah! If a religion can’t deal with being part of a general secular society and wants to selectively discriminate against the public, then they don’t get to be a public service receiving public money.

Your Catholic Hospital can hand out a sign saying “No Protestants need apply” and decide that medicinal drips only go to people who affirm their belief in the Trinity, but then they don’t get federal money designed for making sure everyone gets actual medical care.

You want to play in the big pond, then you have to follow the Big Pond rules. You can’t just say, I want in the Big Pond and then start pissing wildly and trying to molest all the girls. People are going to throw you out and send you back to the Fundamentalist Mormon swimming pool where you belong.

The regulations are a particularly cruel betrayal of Catholic Democrats, many of whom had defended the health care law as an admirable fulfillment of Catholicism’s emphasis on social justice. Now they find that their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism, and threatens to regulate it out of existence.

Yes, I’m sure Catholic Democrats totally agree with your life-long crusade to try and make Chunky Reese Witherspoon’s life as miserable as possible and aren’t more concerned with that Father McWanderingHands scandal.

Critics of the administration’s policy are framing this as a religious liberty issue, and rightly so. But what’s at stake here is bigger even than religious freedom. The Obama White House’s decision is a threat to any kind of voluntary community that doesn’t share the moral sensibilities of whichever party controls the health care bureaucracy.

SEE! If you take away the religious right’s ability to selectively ignore any laws it doesn’t like while still stealing public money that could go to people who actually want to help the public good, then you take away that right for everyone.

How will your Superbowl Party be able to survive not being able to steal federal funds to discriminate against proper football fans? And your neighborhood Sewing club, how will it continue to meet without an ability to take federal money while discriminating against that damn Mrs. Thoraday and her radical cross-stitchings?

Don’t you see the community-less anarchy that would be created in that nightmare world?

Please support the Religious Right’s right to fleece non-members of its religion. It’s the right thing to do. (Paid for by an anonymous PAC that is totally not the Koch Brothers and their newly founded religion Graftism).

The Catholic Church’s position on contraception is not widely appreciated, to put it mildly

Yes, trying to force every citizen of America to do without contraception because of the precepts of a Mad Pope who has been blocking any investigation to the continued rape of children as an attempt to end-run around a decades-long settled public debate about the issue was indeed “not widely appreciated”, “to put it mildly”.

Let’s make it a game and cite other events that are “not widely appreciated, to put it mildly.”

For instance, Ross Douchehat’s hiring at the Times was “not widely appreciated, to put it mildly.”

and many liberals are inclined to see the White House’s decision as a blow for the progressive cause. They should think again. Once claimed, such powers tend to be used in ways that nobody quite anticipated, and the logic behind these regulations could be applied in equally punitive ways by administrations with very different values from this one.

The more the federal government becomes an instrument of culture war, the greater the incentive for both conservatives and liberals to expand its powers and turn them to ideological ends. It is Catholics hospitals today; it will be someone else tomorrow.

Are you fucking serious?

After 50 years of nothing but non-stop Culture War all the time by you greasy retrobates, you now want us on the abused and battered side to surrender our arms and stop because we are mildly resisting your attempt to continue a culture war you lost by other means.

I’ve got a song by Lily Allen for you on that.

The White House attack on conscience is a vindication of health care reform’s critics, who saw exactly this kind of overreach coming. But it’s also an intimation of a darker American future, in which our voluntary communities wither away and government becomes the only word we have for the things we do together.

Well, that’s fair.

I mean, not your complaint, your slippery slope horseshit, or the way your flaccid attempt to call secular community groups to your cause after you’ve spent decades trying to eliminate them off the face of the planet reminded you of how your latent homosexuality and lack of self awareness prevents you from any satisfying amorous encounters.

But why you needed to pull out this pile of weak sauce. When the Big Bad Health Care came to pass and it turned out that the sky didn’t fall and it ended up just being a naked giveaway to the Insurance companies that doesn’t really change much at all for the better, you fuckers ended up needing something, anything to grasp onto.

After all, you pinned so much of your 2012 campaign chances on your resistance to the mild attempt at a Health Care Bill, so there needs to be something catastrophic about it to get the scared grandmas and soccer moms to piss themselves and fill in the R U INSANE? box.

But hey, it’s okay that this failed, I’m sure, the community spirit of Mother Church will be there for you when the Times moves on to the next Affirmative Action hire.

 

Comments: 478

 
 
 

Would you believe FIRSTIES!!!

GO CERB!

 
 

the rest of us can get back to our day jobs of looking up strange new forms of erotica and sampling bubble wrap.
Brilliant Cerberus

 
 

Secondses: Awesome!

FIRSTIES: Awesomer. GO DKW!

 
 

Aw Damnit!

 
 

the rest of us can get back to our day jobs of looking up strange new forms of erotica and sampling bubble wrap.

Brilliant Cerberus

 
 

Ross. Ugh.

So, a number of interesting items. As outlined in Cerb’s magnificent takedown, teh question of what should teh gubmint be doin. Ross is expanding teh scary ooga-booga Nanny State monstar to include any and all interactions between people. Probs because as a Godbothering moral scold, this is his actual ultimate fantasy. But realistically speaking, isn’t looking after teh health of her own citizens something teh State should be interested in? I mean WTF! If there were a thing that fell under teh mandate of teh gubmint, isn’t it healthcare?

Two. One of my personal bugaboos. Why can’t private organizations do it? This. This is why. So we don’t get bullshite like small but resource wealthy individuals having complete control of everything (I mean even moar so). If only teh Catlick Church were providing healthcare, well tough luck homos. Also please to be converting before your anti-biotics, nothing personal or anti-semitic, just official policy.

Thrice. I forget teh third one. Wait, it’s been a while, are we still using this joke?

Fifth, teh number four is unlucky.

Six. Again, as noted in OP – FFS! Being obligated to provide comprehensive health insurance is not a pogrom. And it’s only for, as admitted by Ross, institutions that aren’t primarily serving their own faith. ie, Ross means that teh Catlick mandate to fuck up teh lives of others shouldn’t be limited to Catlicks. If teh Catlick hospital that Ross is so agog up in teh grill of hires an atheist doctor or a Protestant nurse or Pastafarian lunch lady, well wev eh? Working for teh Pope means playing by Pope rules. Screw all them secular “render unto Caesar’s” or whatnot, they’re Catholics now.

Seven, and this is my only nitpick. I think Ross is fretting over teh required provision of insurance – not teh providing of services. Even under teh new Obamacare law, Catlick hospitals would not have to provide teh morally repugnant to Catlick orthodoxy services. They would only have to ensure that their not-necessarily Catlick employees weren’t denied an insurance plan that did cover those things.

Eight. Still, awesome post Cerberus. Great piece of snarktastic wonderful to come back to.

 
 

And Douchehat once again exhibits the muddled thinking that landed him his place at the Times, and manages to get everything ass-backwards, claiming that an infringement against an institution’s desire to impose its opinions on others is a more serious offense than an institution imposing its opinions on others – and not just any opinions, but religious opinions. It’s all fine and good for the Catholic church to have a bronze-age attitude towards birth control (ok, well, not really, since the last thing the planet needs is more people) and insist that its followers observe this quite frankly insane position. But not everyone who works at a Catholic hospital is Catholic, and the church has no business imposing its opinion on them by denying them access to certain types of health care. If the church can’t handle that, they shouldn’t be running businesses so complex that they can’t be completely staffed with Catholics. I kind of doubt they force everyone who works at the Catholic hospitals to sign waivers of faith in the One True Church when they’re hired; as such, they’ve got no fucking business imposing that faith upon their employees through back-door tactics that – just coincidentally – also allow them to unload health care costs onto employees that other employers are required to underwrite for their employees.

You get to be a church or a business, one at a time. You don’t get to be both at the same time.

 
 

Anywho, on to teh game.

Teh War in Iraq? Not widely appreciated, to put it mildly.
Waterboarding? Not widely appreciated to put it mildly.
Ross’ mom? Very widely appreciated (also very wide) to put it mildly.

 
 

Also too, before anyone gets their concern troll panties twisted about how teh Catlicks aren’t only about pedophilia and teh child molester shielding thing is non-sequitur wev and such, please note:

They are teh same thing. Teh Church has proclaimed itself “not bound by teh lesser laws of Man” and should be exempted. From any and all regulation. Because God. That’s teh argument.

Except in this case, it’s not even aboot wot teh Catlicks are doing to themselves (and their obviously non-consenting children) but that they are being denied their right to foist their bullshite on others.

 
 

I will never catch up.
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Wow. Guess I’m trying to make up for teh absence with teh thread hogging.

Anywho, re: my nitpick aboot teh non-clarity about providing insurance and providing services, (which I mentioned because of teh Big Pond rules bit). I retract. It’s easy to conflate even if you don’t mean too. I just noticed that I did it myself.

Why?

I blame Doodoohead. A Catlick hospital. Why’d he pick a hospital, of all things?

 
 

You know, teh Catlick church is technically anti-war. Does Ross have a problem with his tax monies going to such Catlick anathema as the not widely appreciated (to put it mildly) War in Iraq?

If Ross has a problem with Obamacare he should fucking argue against it on its merits and not just fall back on “it might hurt Ratzo’s feefees”. FFS, it’s not like Obamacare don’t have shit tons wrong with it.

 
 

Okay. I’m done. All y’all can have your thread back.

 
 

The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

Jeezus, please tell me this is an excerpt from an address he gave to a seventh grade class somewhere. I have to admit i’m rolling my eyes and snickering behind my hand just reading this “logic.” Guess I never got far past 14 myself.

Also, Pol Pot’s killing fields were not widely appreciated, to say the least. I’ll leave Hitler to someone else.

Ross Douchehat’s articles aren’t widely appreciated, to say the least.

 
 

Zealots like Douchehat want people to be dependent on the Church so that people like him can feel better knowing that there are a whole bunch more suckers stuck with him. force the “lower orders” of society to live lives of grinding poverty and subservience to Douch-bob’s cruel ideology, all whilst offering their forced-born boys to the priests for “moral instruction.”.

Fixxed slightly improved that for you.

 
 

See, the problem with the constant attempt by conservatives to sell the idea that government is somehow against liberty, is the constant fact that reality keeps contradicting them.

Indeed.

Anyhoo, as I get older and more conservative I have become more open both to the idea that the US Government is far too powerful and to the idea that religion serves any kind of purpose at all. And in that spirit, I’d like to write the following open letter to Ross Douthat:

FUCK.

YOU.

Yeah, government can tend to be a monopoly. You know what else can do that? Health plans! And you know what else could be considered a coercive attempt to get everybody to play by the same rules? Forcing people to buy a God damned health plan that doesn’t cover all the health problems they might encounter!

For some reason this column made me really, really angry. It’s not like it’s any worse than what he normally writes. Maybe it’s because I’ve become more sympathetic to supporters of small government and religion, and I would prefer him to make an argument that shows he’s put any amount of thought whatsoever into either of those things.

 
 

The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

“In many cases”. Ah, weasel words, removing the need to provide examples or arguments! The only thing that separates us from the animals! Except weasels of course.

 
 

From the previous thread.

I feel like I’m doing good if I’m just keeping up.

Jennifer, you do so much more than “just keeping up” honey. If I may, I would list you among my top ten favorite commentators in the blogoverse.

Smut, thanks for reminding me of one of my favorite Simpsons quotes:

Marge, don’t discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.

Now I shall gird my loins, don a wetsuit or three and see what the former snake-handler, converted Catlick (love it DKW) has emptied into his diaper protected underoos.

May the FSM preserve me…
*splash*
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Thankee kindly P_UNE™LAGH_SIST&M_A_RBT but I done stoleded it from Thers.

 
 

Also, I know I said I was done, but wev.

I thought teh only thing that separated us from teh animals was teh law, except in New Jersey.

 
 

“Maybe it’s because I’ve become more sympathetic to supporters of small government and religion, and I would prefer him to make an argument that shows he’s put any amount of thought whatsoever into either of those things.”

No variety of Conservatoid is really against Big Government–they are against Big Government That They Don’t Wholly Control.

I wouldn’t describe a healthy suspicion of consolidated power to be a “conservative” value–on the contrary, it should be instilled in the populace by the end of Grade School (along with a solid understanding of the many, many times its abuse has led to tragedy and suffering), at the very latest. Conservatoids, on the other hand, seem to find that interferes with developing a healthy Worship of Authority and Fear of God.

 
 

I would add that applies to religion, too. Conservatoids love ’em some hierarchical, international, monolithic religious structure. What they don’t seem to love is allowing people to express spirituality in any kind of personal way.

It’s GroupThink all the way to the bottom, baby!

 
 

The current sacrificial example is of course the Chunky Witherspoon fearing, poor man’s Jonah Goldberg that is Ross Douthat.

I’ll admit that this one stopped me in my tracks, conundrums were unleashed and I am not even remotely sure how I should approach this (the third wetsuit and hazmat gear along with thirty foot pole are indicated).

Conflict and conundrum.

Apologies in advance, but untill I can make it past this sentence and the mental vapor-lock it engenderedI feel like it would be impossible to move ahead.
“…poor mans Jonah…” (I can’t for the life of me believe that I am gonn have to say this) DoubtThat can write circles around GoldBrickLoadPants, that said, so can most of the commentariat hereabouts write circles around them both.

Also, too, I would imagine that as far as earning is concerned DouchHat likely makes more than JoadPants in at least a take home pay fashion, although I have only a gut feeling that this is the case. A weekly column at the NYT has got to pay more than the occasional LAT + NRO gig, Granted there are the advances (astronomical with regards to the level of talent demostrated [Lucianne must have mastered the movement of a golf ball through a garden hose–nothing else makes sense]) for books yet written (and soon to be remaindered) that probably places DoughLoad in another tax bracket, which might justify the “poor” part, however in simple terms of writing ability D-bag is vastly superior to G-bag though their reasoning skills are of a similar level.

I shall now attempt to keep the fine breakfast down, attempt a cleansing of my soul, for I never thought, in a million years, that I would ever offer even the faintest of praise for the likes of DoucheNozzle.

Only the thought of cheetoh’s stained underoos with interior (and secret) racing stripes will allow me a way out of this madness.

And a deep breath….

Serenity now.
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“conservatives sit home and dog-ear copies of “The Fountainhead.” Liberals know that it takes a village; conservatives pretend that all it takes is John Wayne.’

Did those Hollyweird types dis da Duke when they cast Gary Cooper in “The Fountainhead?”

 
 

…but I done stoleded it from Thers.

Well you do it proudly.Thers and I go back a ways, and I have had the most excellent pleasure of meeting his lovely better half in what the kids call meatspace.

Back on T: I will have to give begrudging praise in the turn of phrase department for “…dog-ear copies of ‘The Fountrainhead.'”.

Something tells me that this is gonna be a long day or that I desperately need to get a hold of some sweet leaf. Pretty much both, I’d say.
.

 
 

Did those Hollyweird types dis da Duke when they cast Gary Cooper in “The Fountainhead?”

Mopre likely protecting the brand…Can you really see “the Duke” possessing the range to pull off a Randian Architect. Wayne was a one trick pony, Cooper could actually act.

Oh jeezus, it is clear that I waoke with underoos twisted, failed to notice the urine in my cheerios, and appear to have a bug or three up my ass…

I need to relax. But first I need to put the Sanke-handlers charm and come hither glances behind me.
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When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good.

And since I know this target, I can state without equivocation that gay folk, womenfolk or the browns are not remotely included in the consideration of alternative, and that quickly to follow will be examples of white dudes, steeped in privilege, suffering a form of mind rape that is taxation.
.

 
 

Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churcheshookers and blow.

Fixed that for ya FuckHat!
.

 
 

I thought I closed that strike tag…but on further review, I copied the initial strike, had to get my bold on and forgot to position the slash.

/hangs head in shame whist figgering that y’all got what I was attempting to do there…
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The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient.

Shut the Fuck Up Ross! On the morning you wake up and discover that your man tit’s have been supplemented with the addition of a Vagina and a Uterus, I might at least listen for a second, before telling to to fuck right off!
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Douchehat, yet again with “it’s religious oppression if we’re not allowed to oppress people” argument. It was horseshit the first time I heard it, it’s still horseshit now.

 
 

The only thing that separates us from the animals! Except weasels of course.

The only thing that separates repubs from weasels is a crowbar.

 
 

…the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral…

Bombs, Ross, bombs. Predator drones, cruise missles, ICBM’s and War, Ross. A few things (among others) that I find morally repugnant (and many others, I imagine). And yet a not insubstantial amount of every tax dollar I pay serves to feed the most immoral of beasts, the Military Industrial Complex.

Fuck you and the Invisible Sky Buddy you rode in on, Ross.
.

 
 

I desperately need to get a hold of some sweet leaf.

Gonna blow some sweet smoke yer way through the internets toobz, Provider. I’d like to get stoned wit yoo sometime.

Legalize it !

At the very least, make medical marijuana legal. I use it as a self-medication (in addition to a proscribed anti-depressant and a mood-stabilizer.) I can testify that the sweet smoke helps me. Were medical marijuana legal in Maryland, I am sure my psychiatrist would write a scrip for me.

 
 

Thank dog that that is over…Nice work Cerb.

Douchehat, yet again with “it’s religious oppression if we’re not allowed to oppress people” argument

I think that DoughyGuyWithManTitsHat is closing in on arguing that it is religious oppression if priests are not allowed to rape kids territory with this column.

I only hope that in some parallel universe, that Digby, Driftglass, Cerberus and other talented voices occupy many column inches in the papers of record. Meanwhile Brooks, Friedman, Modo, Fred Hiatt, Jennifer Rubin, the Kagans, and the rest of the lot, struggle to get by paycheck to paycheck working jobs at fast food restaurants…Of course in that universe it is highly likely that there is Universal Health care and a 3 day work week (24 hours a week is considered full time).

If I ever had the opportunity to visit such a place, I don’t think I would ever return.
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Thank you Fenwick, and back atcha, friend!

I have a scraping mission to execute though I fear that this is the last time I will be able to dip into that well…
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I picked the wrong year to stop smoking weed…. *sigh*

But…

My ass… widely appreciated, to put it mildly.
My performance … well, ditto.
My hugs … awww…. I hope so too. 🙂

 
 

N_B: I hope the Awful Crud leaves you alone pronto. There seems to be some nasty Awful Crud abroad this year. Are you in quarantine? Is Mini_B okay?

 
 

Mini__B is fine, Mrs__B is not 100% but is back at work, I’ve been in bed since Sunday, with short but numerous trips to the bathroom.

 
 

Shut. Up. Numpty!

Shut up FIFA!

Be champions.

 
 

“In this worldview, the government is just the natural expression of our national community,”

I would never say it is “just” that, or “natural,” but please, continue in this blithely stupid manner.

“But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge.”
Maybe not always, but we talk about these tradeoffs incessantly, seriously, moreso than some people I could mention. Some people can go on about “free markets” damn near forever without mentioning anti-competitive practices that’ve existed in fact and have been ameliorated at times by liberals’ policies, ones explicitly framed as involving tradeoffs.

 
 

The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

It’s always a zero sum game with these people. Hey, maybe that’s his problem with government “intrusion,” he thinks that the more government “intrudes” the less intrusion will be left for traditional intrusive groups like the church!

 
 

Cerberus: it was a good firey takedown. It’s been a long time since I bothered expressing approval.

“… get back to our day jobs of looking up strange new forms of erotica and sampling bubble wrap.”

Synergy: two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.

In this case, the fulfillment of a very strange “bag” or “thing,” a different stroke for differently-wrapped folks, erotic adventurers who could be shipped cross-country mid-coitus without suffering wear and tear, to their outer surfaces at least.

 
 

It’s GroupThink all the way to the bottom, baby!

Well, many of them do think about bottoms a lot, that’s for sure.

 
 

If only there were some way to control this monster of government, like, say, voting.

 
 

The tree of liberty must be watered by wing nuts pissing on it.

 
 

Also retrobate is my new favorite word.

 
 

Have you trobated?

 
 

If only there were some way to control this monster of government, like, say, voting.

Just not The Blacks, The Latinos, The Poors, The Youngs and The Ex-Cons. They just cause trouble.

 
 

Have you trobated?

Kind of a personal question, dontcha think?

 
 

Some are first-time trobaters, some are master trobaters.

 
 

I find that a trobe light sets the perfect mood.

 
 

In a previous life, I was occasionally required to perform abatements. I became quite proficient. I was a master abater.

 
 

Why would you want to trobate? Teh tro’s come round plenty often enough as is.

 
 

hey, can anyone tell me? is dkw back?

 
 

The tros won’t eat the hooks without trobate.

 
 

Hang on…when was the last time a government seized a Catholic hospital?

I’m thinking Damascus, 1483, but I might be understating the case a little.

 
 

Have you trobated?

Often! Sometimes I do it more than once. Since I live in a Latino neighborhood, I like to call it “mas trobating”

 
 

The only thing that separates repubs from weasels is a crowbar.

You have your pitchers and catchers confused.

It’s a pair of salad tongs.

 
 

There seems to be some nasty Awful Crud abroad this year
Mini__B is fine, Mrs__B is not 100% but is back at work, I’ve been in bed since Sunday, with short but numerous trips to the bathroom.

oooh…friends of ours who have two wee ones and a third on the way have been stricken all at the same time…and they only have one bathroom…

 
 

Just thought a bit moar about teh whole other spheres thing and it’s pretty much balls.

Wot does teh gubmint do currently? Taxes of course. But that hasn’t stopped all sorts of private wealth extraction tithing from going on. Teh army. But that hasn’t stopped all sorts of militia groups from conducting exercises in teh backwaters whilst plotting secession. Is teh third one teh EPA? And yet “beats emissions standards” has become a major selling point. Is there anything teh gubmint does where private enterprises are shut out? Even space exploration, firefighting, roads. Heck even teh dreaded Fed. Consumer loyalty programs anyone?

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising from Doodoohead. Something that sounds vaguely plausible right up to teh point where you give any thought to what he’s saying.

 
 

is dkw back?

Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years,
Rocking’ my peers’ moms to adoring cheers.

 
 

okay, i’ve really only put just a teensy bit of thought into this, so summas gotta help me out…

if tithing to your church (unspokenly wink, wink, nudge, nudge) brings you good things…wouldn’t it follow that giving to the government would also bring you good things?

so what is ross’ prob? maybe he should discuss this with mittens…

 
 

“if tithing to your church (unspokenly wink, wink, nudge, nudge) brings you good things…wouldn’t it follow that giving to the government would also bring you good things?”

No. That would be double tithesation.

 
 

Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years,
Rocking’ my peers’ moms to adoring cheers.

hey…you started it…*

Eight. Still, awesome post Cerberus. Great piece of snarktastic wonderful to come back to.

*dammit…i fogot how tho make the thread zap back to the post in question…

 
 

No. That would be double tithesation.

yeah, but…double your tithing, double your fun?

 
 

if tithing to your church (unspokenly wink, wink, nudge, nudge) brings you good things…wouldn’t it follow that giving to the government would also bring you good things?

A rising tithe lifts all boats.

 
 

Oh, my stars and garters, Douthat is such a moron that this piffle he writes isn’t even worthy of calling it sophistry. It’s too fucking childish for that.

And wait a minute. He hates big government EXCEPT the big government of his fucking Church, which is far more venal, corrupt, totalitarian, and vile–and of course non-democratic–than the USA could ever even imagine.

If you want to bend over and take your Pope cock in the butt, Ross, that’s fine. But we don’t.

 
 

Yeah, if “small government is good government” and the church is so great, wouldn’t a small church be even better than either? Obviously having that much power in the hands of a single unaccountable entity is a threat, and monopolies have little incentive to work in the interests of those they’re ostensibly serving. The Trinity is a step in that direction, but you still just wind up with an oligopoly, or really a cartel, because they’re definitely in cahoots, and that’s not much of an improvement in practice.

 
 

I’m still stuck on “every dollar paid in taxes is a dollar less for charities”.

Aren’t charitable donations…you know…tax deductible in the US? Doesn’t Ross have this sentence exactly backwards?

 
A Lisping Liberal, ten times fast
 

A writhing tithe lifths all boat(h)s.

 
 

You know, if Douthat is so hot for proclaiming the superiority of his Catlick God, and he is, then can we expect that at some point in the next few months that he might do a compare and contrast with Romney’s God? I will not pretend to know much about either, but I fervently believe that Catlicks would find it strange that Mitt has professed that he has already been to heaven and has come back to earth to round up the heathen (all non-LDS), as per my Salon link from yesterday.

 
 

dogearing the Fountainhead.

 
 

Obviously having that much power in the hands of a single unaccountable entity is a threat, and monopolies have little incentive to work in the interests of those they’re ostensibly serving.

I thought rightwingers were all over the whole “international law trumping Amurican law” nonsense. Isn’t the Pope the ultimate “international law” figurehead?

 
 

Aren’t charitable donations…you know…tax deductible in the US? Doesn’t Ross have this sentence exactly backwards?

why, yes they are…as i toil in the non-profit field i was also struck by this dumbassery…and the folks that have the big bucks really know how to use those tax-friendly vehicles…and i would further argue that the donors who make small but steady contributions to their local charities, do so because they truly believe in the mission and will find other things in their lives to cut back on…

 
 

Aren’t charitable donations…you know…tax deductible in the US? Doesn’t Ross have this sentence exactly backwards?

As Boon says to Otter, “Forget it. He’s rolling.”

 
 

You know, if Douthat is so hot for proclaiming the superiority of his Catlick God, and he is, then can we expect that at some point in the next few months that he might do a compare and contrast with Romney’s God? I will not pretend to know much about either, but I fervently believe that Catlicks would find it strange that Mitt has professed that he has already been to heaven and has come back to earth to round up the heathen (all non-LDS), as per my Salon link from yesterday.

from what i gather, they have more in common than one would think…besides the financial commitment expected, both are expected to give of themselves to their church…catlicks with the altar boys, priesthood, nuns, etc. and the mormons with taking a leadership role within your congregation or spike or whatever the hell they call it…and both religions like to subjugate their women folk, so there’s that too…and really, if the catlicks really belive in transsubstantiation is it really so hard to believe in mitt’s aliens and magic underwear?

 
 

“Forget it. He’s rolling.”

this reminds me…i watched ‘black swan’ last night…that was one effed up movie…

 
 

Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches.

Well, as an atheist, I certainly am not in the habit of giving my dollars to churches.

 
 

I want to thank Douthat for pointing out that “We the people” doesn’t mean what is says.

 
 

The more the federal government becomes an instrument of culture war, the greater the incentive for both conservatives and liberals to expand its powers and turn them to ideological ends. It is Catholics hospitals today; it will be someone else tomorrow.

Ah. Of course. “Both sides do it equally.”

Fuck you, Ross.

More importantly, wow. It’s almost like 2001-09 never happened, or something. The last administration’s only use for gummint, outside of killing furriners and shoveling cash into the vaults of their buddies, was as the nastiest weapon in the culture war that they could make it. Seriously. Firing US Attorneys for not prosecuting along party lines? Check. Hamstringing any and every government function that doesn’t further the ideology? Check. Staff every fucking position that comes open, from the DOJ lifer HR manager to the motherfucker stabbing the gum wrappers on the National Mall, with toadies whose only qualifications are that they hate liberals and government and were “educated” at certain religious colleges known to crank out reliable zombies? Check.

Fucking hell. Really, Ross? You can even pretend that none of that and much, much more actually happened? Without precedent. And say with a straight face that “both sides do it”?

Fuck you in the neck with a rusty Garden Weasel.

—————

Okay. Not what I started out wanting to mention, but further review required it.

On to the other bit.

—————

I was going to mention the whole “Faith Based Initiative” thing as relevant to weaponizing the church in their culture war. How Douchehat and his ilk saw no problem letting mother church sidle up and take some big long pulls offa that government udder. Separation of Church and State? Don’t be silly. Why would you want that? It’s not like once the government has you by the purse strings they’ll yank you which ever way they want you to go. Wups.

I seem to have exhausted my ya-yas for that quote already, though.

 
 

An now for another round of “Guess that Party Affiliation!” Today’s contestant is suspected of brutally strangling a 23-year-old woman in her bedroom back in 1979! What party does he belong to?

No fair peaking before you answer!

 
 

Fuckin’ weasels get a lot of action today.

 
 

“Well, as an atheist, I certainly am not in the habit of giving my dollars to churches.”

I’m surprised you do it at all.

 
 

The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

[citation needed]

 
 

The Spanish Inquisition? Not widely appreciated to put it mildly.
The Albigensian Crusade? Not widely appreciated to put it mildly.

 
 

No fair peaking before you answer!

too late, I done peaked a long time ago

alternate :

whoa! I’m peaking!

 
 

No fair peaking before you answer!

well, i try NOT to peak before i “answer” but sometimes…you know…HEY STOP JUDGING ME!

 
 

Police finally cracked the case after receiving money through a federal grant program that allowed them to tie DNA evidence from the crime scene to Hopkins, who admits that Walsh had been his lover but denies that he is the murderer.

ahahahahahahah! karma, baby…karma!

 
 

The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

Well, it’s true. The minute the government legalized gay marriage, the jackbooted thugs came right into my home, tore me away from my wife and child, and forced me to marry a leather daddy named Stu.

 
 

“No fair peaking before you answer!”

In all fairness, it’s very hard to tell exactly how long the acid will take to really kick in.

 
 

Well, since we are given that it is in the bedroom, with a rope, that it is a “she”, it must have been Miss Scarlet. Therefore, the answer is: Republican.

 
 

Late contribution to some earlier riffing in the thread.

The tithe goes in. The tithe goes out.

 
 

Well, since we are given that it is in the bedroom, with a rope, that it is a “she”, it must have been Miss Scarlet. Therefore, the answer is: Republican.

that’s some circular logic you got going there…i argue that if it is in the bedroom, with a rope and that it is a ‘she’ that it must have been professor plum (who was a no good elitist ghey abortionist) and therefore the answer is: republican

see where you went wrong?

 
 

I suppose it never occurs to the Catholic prelates, hospital administrators, etc., or their mouthpieces like Douhat, that the only reason this is an issue is because among their employees, a demand for contraceptives exists in the first place? If anyone is holding down good Catholic nurses, hospital secretaries, etc., and force-feeding them birth-control pills, it hasn’t come to my attention.

In other words, they can’t convince their own employees to follow their ridiculous bullshit rules, so now they want the government to create obstacles on their behalf. And if that doesn’t happen, they’re the victims.

(I’m on my lunch break and haven’t had time to read the whole thread. If you must ahem me, be gentle.)

 
 

If you must ahem me, be gentle.

Which reminds me, of course, of the old,

“I’m going to numb you now Ma’am.”
Numnumnumnumnumnumnumnum…

 
 

Peaking early.

Premature identification.

 
 

“I suppose it never occurs to the Catholic prelates,”

I like the catholic term “primates” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_(bishop))

It now seems to say: I am in no way related to apes or the like, surprised you would think that, of course it’s a latinate term having to do with my status in the one true church, and in no way silly-sounding.

Douthat reminds me of the type of interweb Catholic who would hang out (in my long ago experience) on fark.com to complain about Papalmonkey’s screen name, while giving Leathermidget a pass.

 
 

Douthat reminds me of the type of interweb Catholic who would hang out (in my long ago experience) on fark.com to complain about Papalmonkey’s screen name, while giving Leathermidget a pass.

If the name is any indication, he may have had an affinity for leather…and midgets.

 
 

his fucking Church, which is far more venal, corrupt, totalitarian, and vile

Whoa there, pardner. Anyone ever tell you about John-Paul II’s role in the liberation of Easteran Europe? Care to square that with ‘totalitarian’ and ‘vile’?

Plus it’s sort of a crappy thing to say. (Play the ‘substitution’ game, and it becomes a phrase Pammycakes might have written.)

 
 

From the comments at Tbogg’s post on Douchehat’s latest,

All roads lead you straight to the inferno, but my guess is the culprit is Professor Douthat, in the study, with a copy of Men’s Health. Three times a day.

Just to go with the Clue theme.

The comment is in response to the observation,

By the way, Ross Douthat has been married for three and a half years. In that time : one child. I know Catholics are adherents of the rhythm method but Ross looks like one of those white guys who can’t keep a beat. Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.

Indeed.

 
 

Anyone ever tell you about John-Paul II’s role in the liberation of Easteran Europe?

Meh. That role was overrated and predictable. The head of a reactionary organization was against Communism, and that’s supposed to be a surprise?

It would have been a genuine surprise if he, or any of his predecessors, had come out against Franco or some other dictator who had reached and stayed in power with the Church’s support.

 
 

dogearing the Fountainhead.

Your first-place trophy will be shipped forthwith, Mr. Chowder.

 
 

that the only reason this is an issue is because among their employees, a demand for contraceptives exists in the first place?

i think this is what really sticks in their craws…because they have to face the fact that their beliefs aren’t everybody else’s beliefs…and it smacks a bit of sexist subjugation being that most people who will avail themselves of these services arguably would be women…

 
 

I know Catholics are adherents of the rhythm method but Ross looks like one of those white guys who can’t keep a beat.

Funny. All those used Kleenex in his trash can suggest he’s adept at beating it.

 
 

Anyone ever tell you about John-Paul II’s role in the liberation of Easteran Europe?

i am cynical enough to think they were looking for more members…

 
 

“see where you went wrong?”

Actually, I am Clue-less.

 
 

and it smacks a bit of sexist subjugation being that most people who will avail themselves of these services arguably would be women…

which, DUH…catholic church=male hierarchy…but still this is a new thought for me…i just had to show it off!

i am cynical enough to think they were looking for more members…

HA! this works on a couple of different levels…

 
 

‘I like the catholic term “primates”’

I guess the Pope would be the alpha male…………

 
 

Working different levels.

 
 

clueing smedley in…

 
 

Douthat’s writing reminds me of my first few essays in junior high, where I started out with some sort of idea and ended up drowning in my own tangential verbiage and bullshit.

It must be difficult to spend your whole life trying to prove that falsehoods and silly bullshit are true.

 
 

But, if it was Professor Plum, where are the wetsuits and dildoes? Hmm?

 
 

the donors who make small but steady contributions to their local charities, do so because they truly believe in the mission and will find other things in their lives to cut back on…

This.

I imagine this is especially true of non-profits helping in more sparsely populated areas like yours, bbfk. You’ve mentioned your non-profit work in several threads. What is the name of the organization and what are its goals? How did you become involved with them?

Also one more from the insatiable Fenwick Question Machine: How is hubbfk?

 
 

All this talk of peaking makes me nostalgic for LSD. Peaking was curiouser and curiouser.

At some point early on you’d think, surely this cannot get any better/worse. But then it would for quite some time. The acid would pull a progression of white rabbits out of madder hats. Finally you’re on a plateau or in an abyss for many hours, moving glacially toward normalcy.

Ah well, I would not look for it, and even if I had some, there’s nobody to do it with. My wife has “don’t give this person psychedelics” written all over her. I suppose I do as well, but that never stopped me before.

I don’t mean to imply it’s a fifty-fifty bet, but I usually erred (late 1980s) on the side of an overdose, which IS such a bet, or worse, and foolish.

(This train of thought is partially inspired by watching the “Workaholics” have a surreptitious psilocibin sleepover in their telemarketing office. There’s a sitcom you wouldn’t see on regular TV.)

 
 

But, if it was Professor Plum, where are the wetsuits and dildoes? Hmm?

colonel mustard took them…

 
 

we are still waiting for all the results to come in on hubbkf…which is aggravating…so, he’s still twitchy…and that makes him…

I imagine this is especially true of non-profits helping in more sparsely populated areas like yours, bbfk. You’ve mentioned your non-profit work in several threads. What is the name of the organization and what are its goals? How did you become involved with them?

i work for a small non-profit that raises funds for our local hospital…used for educational loans, capital expenditures and mostly physician recruitment…that be the short answer right now…i have to run…i am meeting the daughter for some shopping, eating and college basketball watching…you can find out more about my exciting career here in the meantime…

 
 

Meh. That role was overrated and predictable

I stand corrected. The liberation of Eastern Europe was entirely due to Ronald Reagan.

 
 

Can we agree that the pope stands above the other primates?

 
 

The liberation of Eastern Europe was due to the Soviets, specifically Gorbachev, realizing that they couldn’t hold Eastern Europe at gunpoint forever.

Yes, the Solidarity folks and others drew inspiration from the Pope. But cheerleaders inspire football teams, too. It’s the players who make the tackles and score the touchdowns.

 
 

Whoa there, pardner. Anyone ever tell you about John-Paul II’s role in the liberation of Easteran Europe? Care to square that with ‘totalitarian’ and ‘vile’?

Pius XII. Checkmate.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

Iffen you want your schadens freuded go read the comments to this piece of dreck in the Times. The pasty little putz is raked over the coals good and proper.

 
 

Damnit…Hoyer is leaving the door open for a Keystone compromise…when will these guys learn that they aren’t dealing with mature, rational adults?

 
 

“In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not.”–Douthat

Not even close. If they don’t want THE REST OF US to pay as well– that’d be accurate.

 
 

Can we agree that the pope stands above the other primates?

You forget….

SASQUATCH ISREAL!

 
 

“SASQUATCH ISREAL!”

They should call a meeting. I would, in either of their positions. But what do I know, I protested the Iraq war.

 
 

They should call a meeting. I would, in either of their positions.

If Pope Benedict wears his mitre, he might be as tall as SASQUATCH, but then SASQUATCH could just get a telephone book and stand on that.

Oh wait. You might not be old enough to remember telephone books…they were these big books that the phone company distributed every year, see, and….

 
 

“You might not be old enough to remember telephone books”

I don’t remember why the current phone company or companies gave me four of them, but yes, I remember.

Are the advertisers really getting that much return at this stage? Color me baffled.

 
 

The liberation of Eastern Europe was entirely due to Ronald Reagan.

Everybody remembers when Reagan drove into Moscow with the 82nd Airborne.

 
 

Are the advertisers really getting that much return at this stage? Color me baffled.

I have a friend who sells ad space for Yellowbook. While she’s not nearly as well off as she used to be, she still makes a living wage and then a bit more.

 
 

I remember when Reagan flew into Moscow with the 7th Cavalry.

 
 

I worked in adbvertising (low-level copywriting) about twenty years ago. As an unemployed person I wonder about getting back in, expanding the search. But I don’t relish writing that crap for those people. You gotta serve the market, and mostly they don’t know what’ll sell their stuff. Nor do I: I’d be bullshitting them, which is a skill a have, but god the whole scene sucks.

 
 

“adbvertising” : I am drunk, yes, during the day. Typing is a point of pride.

Damn this unemployment. Idle hands, Devil’s work, yada yada.

Hereby signing off off for hours, 2:11 central. You’ve had enough of me.

 
 

Shore iz a lotta kathlick hatin goen on. Imma tolerant sorta guy, so Imma gonna bail out of the ugliness.

Also I’m feeling sort of inadequate as a commentator; some people understand the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union so much better than I.

 
 

re: the dollar is a dollar thing

Fucking bullshit. Complete and total fucking bullshit. It’s teh other part of teh “why can’t private charities replace gubmint services?” festering pustule asshole shitbag fuckwad ARGGHH!!!!!

Here’s a thought experiment, teh gubmint gives you x dollars. Wanting to share your good fortune, you donate y dollars to charity. Ross’ claim is that for every single tax paying individual n teh US, x = y. Total fucking bullshit.

Teh second round defense of ths sociopathic let them all fucking die mentality is that private charities are so much moar efficient than big evil gubmint. Which, of course is also total fucking bullshit. I railed on about this at teh end of a dead thread a while ago, but can’t be arsed to find teh linkee.

Wev. Fact of teh matter is that for Medicare and Social Security, gubmint is like, twice as efficient as private groups. I’m sure teh same goes for any part of teh safety net. Added, if you count on churches doing this for you, how much of those dollars defined as going into services are actually for proselytization?

 
 

Shore iz a lotta kathlick hatin goen on. Imma tolerant sorta guy, so Imma gonna bail out of the ugliness.

It’s a good thing you don’t cross-dress, too.

 
 

Also I’m feeling sort of inadequate as a commentator; some people understand the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union so much better than I.

A lot of factors contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

One of the more important ones came from an unlikely source:

Saudi Arabia broke ranks with OPEC and massively ramped up their oil exports. This resulted in a glut of oil on the world market and the low prices we saw in the 1980s, and into the 1990s.

Since the Soviet Union’s major export was oil, this seriously impacted their economy. Much more so than anything we did.

In fact, they never really even tried to keep up with our increases in defense spending. So the idea that the Reagan arms buildup “broke their back” is more myth than reality.

 
 

Fenwich, we don’t hate Catholics. Or I don’t, anyway. I just get annoyed when the Church gets adulation out of all proportion to its achievements (John Paul II) while getting a pass on its egregious historical sins (Pius XII, as noted above).

What really pisses me off is when some Catholic prelate compares abortion to the Holocaust. A pregnant woman in 2012 is a little easier to push around than a Nazi in 1943.

 
 

Are the advertisers really getting that much return at this stage? Color me baffled.

Apparently there’s some weird regulatory thing going on where they either have to publish them, or there’s some sort of enormous tax incentive for them to do so. Someone explained it to me once, but I don’t remember the details because it didn’t make any sense. Assuming I didn’t dream the whole thing.

 
 

I’m kind of annoyed at Catholics for continuing to be Catholic through all the child-rapiness and thereby lending support to the Pope who wanted to cover up the child-rapiness, but maybe that’s just me.

 
 

Is it okay to hate Catholicism but not Catholics? You know, like loving teh sinner (heh heh. I loved teh sinner in you mom last night) while hating teh sin.

Wait. Doodoohead is a Catholic. I guess there are some Catholics that I hate.

 
 

You know, like loving teh sinner (heh heh. I loved teh sinner in you mom last night) while hating teh sin.

Hey. I’m still American even tho we torture and assassinate people. I don’t condemn Catholics for wanting to keep their faith.

BTW, your mom says hi. She’d say more, but the ball gag is back in.

 
 

“Well, as an atheist, I certainly am not in the habit of giving my dollars to churches.”

So why ARE you wearing the nun suit?

Police finally cracked the case after receiving money through a federal grant programt hat allowed them to tie DNA evidence from the crime scene to Hopkins

Now fewer churches will get grants for DNA lab work. The real culture war!

 
 

I’m kind of annoyed at Catholics for continuing to be Catholic through all the child-rapiness and thereby lending support to the Pope who wanted to cover up the child-rapiness, but maybe that’s just me.

No, its not just you.

 
 

Hey. I’m still American even tho we torture and assassinate people. I don’t condemn Catholics for wanting to keep their faith.

Its a lot easier to quit giving money and going to church than it is to move to another country altogether and renounce your citizenship.

 
 

Fenwich, we don’t hate Catholics.

I do, probably in large part because I was raised Catlick. Nah, don’t hate on ALL of them, just the ones like Papa Ratzo, all the bishops that covered up the kiddy rapers, the nuns that abused all those kids, Bill Donohue, Rick Santorum, and the vast majority of them who don’t speak out against the horrors but fucking _defend_ them. So, like most of them I hate, I guess.

Also too, the fucking Jesuits. I went to a Jesuit run school for a while. Fucking Jesuits, I hate them all.

 
 

A lot of factors contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Exactly. I get fed-up with simplistic, one-dimensional ‘analysis’.

(No one has mentioned the Soviet-Afghan War, btw.)A lot of factors contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

 
 

What really pisses me off is when some Catholic prelate compares abortion to the Holocaust.

Apparently it’s worse or they’d sign a concordat with abortion doctors then pretty much ignore abortion from then on.

 
 

Apparently it’s worse or they’d sign a concordat with abortion doctors then pretty much ignore abortion from then on.

For those not so familiar, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat

 
 

we don’t hate Catholics. Or I don’t, anyway.

I believe that.

 
 

Exactly. I get fed-up with simplistic, one-dimensional ‘analysis’.

Dude. You’re the one who played up JPII’s role in the liberation of Eastern Europe, as if that makes amends for the rightward lurch of the Church during his run.

I too was raised Catlick. I don’t hate Catlicks but I sure as fuck hate the church.

 
 

Now they find that their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism, and threatens to regulate it out of existence.

I don’t see anything that stops religious groups from banding together to form their own insurer. This insurer will of course have to abide by the federal laws, but since no member of the various denominations who are upset would ever use such services they wouldn’t, then, be subsidizing others in their sin.

Heh heh heh…

 
 

Its a lot easier to quit giving money and going to church than it is to move to another country altogether and renounce your citizenship.

I’m not sure I agree with that. After all, how many Muslims you know gave up Islam in the wake of 9/11? Probably not as many as moved to Canada during the draft for Viet Nam (or even during the Iraq war, for that matter)

 
 

I have read on the intertrons that leaving Opus Dei is not easy, what with getting kicked out of the order’s housing without a penny to one’s name, no references and a history of work experience that is largely useless outside of that particular role.

 
 

After all, how many Muslims you know gave up Islam in the wake of 9/11?

Islam doesn’t have a heirarchy with Al Qaeda at the top of it.

 
 

Now that I think about it, I think the more deeply one is committed to any faith, the harder it would be to leave it. It sounds obvious now that I state it, but leaving any kind of devout community must be pretty tough. Devout communities, whether they are convents, monasteries, cult compounds or underground Thugee mines provide a lot of structure, community and sometimes even professions for their occupants, while simultaneously discouraging the independence needed to put together some cash and some job skills to allow one to make ones own way in the world. Are there halfway houses for ex fundamentalists/scientologists/devout people?

 
 

It seems to me that an enterprising prosecutor could use the RICO statutes to go all Henry VIII on the church’s ass. On-going criminal enterprise, soliciting funds to support said on-going criminal enterprise, very large real estate holdings, lots of assets, all untaxed. In these dire budgetary times it would make a tempting target just as it was in Tudor England.

Of course I had upwards of 780 mornings of my life blighted by putting on silly clothes and nodding out listening to tripe with incense on it.

 
 

tripe with incense on it.

Sounds offal.

 
 

it ended up just being a naked giveaway to the Insurance companies that doesn’t really change much at all for the better

Insurance companies being required to provide birth control counseling, mammograms and routine pap smears without a co-pay, and having that apply to Catholic hospitals as well is nothing? Insurance companies being no longer allowed to exclude people under the age of 19 who have pre-existing conditions is nothing? People being able to stay on their parent’s plan until the age of 26 is nothing? All people being able to be insured in spite of pre-existing conditions by the year 2014 is nothing? The insurance companies no longer being able to put a cap on benefits is nothing? The states getting large sums of money to help the keep insuring the poor and elderly in their states is nothing?

It’s not “nothing,” it’s the best we could get, and anyone who wants better should really be campaigning and contributing to the campaigns of congressional candidates that would love to make it better. They’re out there.

 
 

tripe with incense on it.
Sounds offal.

Sounds like a BBBB sandwich.

Now fewer churches will get grants for DNA lab work.
Now I will never get my vat-grown godmeat.

 
 

Islam doesn’t have a heirarchy with Al Qaeda at the top of it.

No, but radical Imam after radical Imam has proposed jihad against America.

Or weren’t you paying attention in the nineties?

 
 

Now that I think about it, I think the more deeply one is committed to any faith, the harder it would be to leave it.

There’s also a social component to it (Catholics hang out with Catholics, and so on,) and certainly there’s a self-identification component that would require some massive reintegrating of who you think you are versus who you have to become.

It’s pretty hard werk.

 
 

Sounds offal.

Menudo n’t know what yer talkin’ about.

 
 

No, but radical Imam after radical Imam has proposed jihad against America.

When you can find the radical imam who’s the boss of Islam let me know.

 
 

[…] thing I read all day: Cerberus at Sadly, No! eviscerates Ross “Do That Thing” […]

 
 

Sounds offal.

Fortunately, these puns appeal with their innard beauty.

 
 

Also too, found teh link I couldn’t be arsed about earlier in re: private charities versus gubmint services. Caveat, I talk a lot.

 
 

Douchehat is getting his pasty white ass handed to him in the comments.

Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches.

… & every church-directed dollar teh government fails to tax is one less dollar for Islamic Gay Secular Humanist Abortion-Slurpees. Take THAT, liberals!

As for Mother Church, well, thank Gog & Magog they don’t still go in for that whole mass-murder thing … that is, if you don’t count those death-squads in Central America … or the ones in South America … or those wacky nuns in Rwanda.

Which many to this day do not – because everyone knows Christianity is a religion of peace, unlike barbaric MUSLINS & their SHANIA LAW.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good.

That is, the common good for a select few in society… the queers, darkies, immigrants, trollops, et cetera, ad nauseam can go to hell.

 
 

That is, the common good for a select few in society… the queers, darkies, immigrants, trollops, et cetera, ad nauseam can go to hell.

Indeed. Further demonstrated by the fact that when those damn dirty queers/immigrants/darkies/trollops/et cetera form a privately run charity to address issues they face thanks to the successful fearmongering by people like Ross, the right-wing collectively trips over their own feet in the mad rush to run to the same government they claim to hate to try and smash and eliminate the organization off the face of the Earth.

They aren’t particularly subtle about wanting the world to work in such a way that only “Elect” members get social services of any kind while the rest of us die (but not before giving “proper folk” all our money and cheap-to-free labor).

 
 

STOP THE PRESSES! Romney wins Florida.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not.

Ya know, I don’t recall the Good Samaritan attaching any conditions to his aid.

The regulations are a particularly cruel betrayal of Catholic Democrats, many of whom had defended the health care law as an admirable fulfillment of Catholicism’s emphasis on social justice.

Ross is so concerned about those Catholic Democrats.

 
 

Ya know, I don’t recall the Good Samaritan attaching any conditions to his aid.

And I seem to recall that the religious non-Samaritans crossed to the other side of the road, possibly in accordance with rigid, legalistic interpretations of scripture, and preferred to remain “pure” to providing the help that was needed. I can’t imagine how that might apply.

 
 

re: Romney in Florida

Von Drehle made the observation in TIME a couple weeks ago, that what teh Repubs do is nominate teh guy who came in second last time. W is teh “exception” but not really for obv. reasons. Srsly, teh pattern holds back to something liek 1976 – with one other notable exception.

So teh real question we should all be pondering is whether or not Newt is going to get teh Buchanan exception in 2016, or if we’re lined up for eight moar years of Democratic Administration.

 
 

So teh real question we should all be pondering is whether or not Newt is going to get teh Buchanan exception in 2016

I can’t remember how long ago I called Mitt…but the field is unbelievably weak.

 
 

I mean, it’s hard to believe these people are competing for anything at all that requires calculation.

 
 

I mean, it’s hard to believe these people are competing for anything at all that requires calculation. human contact.

fuqqst

 
 

Is it because his name vaguely sounds like “Douche Hat” and its fun to call people who act like douches “douche” on the internet?

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

FYWP, I now need to re-create my witty and clever comment of RAGE that you ate.

The “morning-after pill” (aka Plan B) is not not not not notnotnotnotnotnotnotNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOT *gasp* NOTNOTNOTNOTNOTNOT the abortion pill.

Fuck you with a rusty pitchfork, Douchehate.

I really hope there is a hell (maybe run by benevolent pan-dimensional beings with a sick sense of humour, and only fundies and religious oppressors will go there), just so that when Douchehat dies, he can be stopped by St. Peter at the gates of heaven, who will say “What? You thought you were coming in here?!” and wet himself laughing as Douchehat is prodded onto the slow elevator to hell by giant vulvas with teeth.

I’m not much of a believer (I think because I grew up Catholic), but it would be worth believing in hell if assholes who do believe, and use that belief to hurt other people, end up there.

The rest of us get cupcakes and marshmallows. And rainbows and unicorns! Or whatever floats your boat. Vulvas with teeth, even.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Is it because his name vaguely sounds like “Douche Hat” and its fun to call people who act like douches “douche” on the internet?

People have called him other names based on how his name sounds, but I believe in calling it like it is.

 
 

Is it because his name vaguely sounds like “Douche Hat”

Come to think of it, it does, doesn’t it?

 
 

Florida is sad news. I wished Newty could have won and stuck around to make more trouble.

 
 

I mean, it’s hard to believe these people are competing for anything at all that requires calculation.

I first read this as “ejaculation.” what is WRONG with me?

 
 

I first read this as “ejaculation.”

Come on.

 
 

I would douche anything for love
But I won’t douche hat

 
 

I wished Newty could have won and stuck around to make more trouble.

He was promising to. Let’s hope he fulfills that promise.

HA HA HA.

 
 

I don’t see Newt dropping until there ain’t any cash left to squeeze out of teh candidacy.

 
 

He claims he’s going all the way to the convention. So you naughty Newt cheerleaders should be ok for awhile now.

 
 

ella, which can work as an abortifacient.

It’s the weasel words again. “Can work” covers the hypothetical case, “might have an effect if the dose is exceeded by several hundred percent”.
Douthat is paid to propagandise for religious jurisdiction over women’s bodies, so “truth” is not part of his remit.

 
 

I don’t see Newt dropping until there ain’t any cash left to squeeze out of teh candidacy.

I wonder if he’ll still get funding. Maybe he can do a reality show. Flavor of Newt.

Mind you if he’s got money built up that’s a lotta snazzy hotel rooms until the convention.

 
 

Mind you if he’s got money built up,,,

Not everyone can have Jon Huntsman’s dad underwriting things. Newt’s gotta keep in teh race and pretend to be viable for as long as there are d00ds like these around.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

It’s the weasel words again. “Can work” covers the hypothetical case, “might have an effect if the dose is exceeded by several hundred percent”.

From what I know of the thing, it prevents ovulation, which isn’t much help if you’re already pregnant, or even already ovulated, with a vag full of live sperm (sorry for that image). It’s a concentrated dose of the regular contraceptive pill that a lot of women use, a combination of estrogen and… other ‘gens I can’t remember right now and am too lazy to look up. The most that will happen if you take a massively concentrated dose of them (like, say, a year’s worth) is that you will dose the fetus with a heavy load of sex hormones, which will probably have a deleterious effect health-wise, but still won’t make a womb give up its cargo.

So he fails even at weasel words, but are we in the least bit surprised? He hates women and thinks they have cooties, so lying to them so that they think every kind of contraception causes an abortion is par for the course.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Not everyone can have Jon Huntsman’s dad underwriting things.

Not to mention Newt’s “lines of credit” will have to be paid off somehow. After all, PAC money is much easier to con out of people than “speaking” engagements.

 
 

I don’t see Newt dropping until there ain’t any cash left to squeeze out of teh candidacy.

That will not be happening for a long long time: the casino tycoon Edelson, Newt’s main Sugar Daddy, is worth something like $20 billion. He effectively swung S. Carolina for him with a piddling $5 million (five big ones is what one of his casinos makes in ONE DAY … the proportional equivalent to me doling out about a buck & a dime from my chequing/saving accounts). Also, at least up to today, he’s been in the lead in total votes. Let’s wish him all the best in Nevada.

SLITHER NEWT SLITHER!

 
 

Newt’s main Sugar Daddy, is worth something like $20 billion.

It’ll be cool if he keeps throwing money down the drain.This sounds tentative:

UPDATE: Hammond told POLITICO’s Ginger Gibson that the campaign had $600,000 cash on hand left when they arrived in South Carolina but fundraising since then has boosted their coffers. He wouldn’t say just how much is left now on primary day in Florida.

“I continue to get paid, the bus had gas and there are ads on the air,” he said.

 
 

Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign is more than $1 million in debt, according to a Federal Election Commission filing.

Bad news for her congressional campaign:

Contributions and debt are transferable between presidential and congressional campaigns, meaning Bachmann will start her re-election bid nearly $450,000 in the red.

gosh, and she seemed so fit to run the country’s finances!

 
 

also, too…hubbkf got word today that he has to go back in for more nerve testing…this time in his arms…wth? when should i officially begin to worry?

 
 

Oooooops … it’s Adelson with an A.

SPELLING IS THEFT!

 
 

Actually, I think teh interesting quote from Substance’s link is this one:

It will be interesting to see where he’s been spending his money, since relatively little has ended up on television.

Why is that intersting quote about what’s interesting so interesting? Of interest.

 
 

Too bad ACORN wasn’t a church.

 
 

when should i officially begin to worry?

Hearing a mechanical hum or seeing red LED lights with the lights out, even though you have no electronics in the room, would in my opinion be not so good.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

bbkf, best wishes to you and hubbkf. Is it the conductive nerve test? They’ll stick needles with electrodes in his arms to see how well the nerves conduct sensation. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn’t – I’ve had it done three times (thank you, overactive nerves that don’t know when to shut up), and it’s been different every time. It will last about ten minutes, and they should have some kind of definitive information for you (about the nerves in his arm) when they’re done.

Good luck!

 
 

address my envelope, lips! said,
February 1, 2012 at 5:50

ehhh…that would blow to have to got through it more than once…he had an emg and the needle test done a week ago on his legs, which have been twitching 24/7 for months now…

okay, so overactive nerves? what’s that all about?

 
 

Hearing a mechanical hum or seeing red LED lights with the lights out, even though you have no electronics in the room, would in my opinion be not so good

i think this would hold true in just about any situation…

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

okay, so overactive nerves? what’s that all about?

The nerves in my arm tell me that I’m deathly wounded very time they touch something, or I sleep on them funny, or someone grabs my elbow. They aren’t, but no-one can persuade them otherwise. All the usual Fibromyalgia-type treatments don’t work – I’ve tried every off-label anti-seizure medication and every anti-depressant that I can manage, and nothing works but sweet, kind, painkillers. I also get burning numbness and a deep “bone” ache on a regular basis. It’s in both arms, and believe me, I’d *love* it if it was psychosomatic, because then it could be fixed with anti-depressants. A friend has had good results with Cymbalta – I went into a deep depression and stopped eating for more than three months, and the pain never stopped.

Stupid arms. Despite all that, I’m not in the least depressed – my life is awesome, no joke. I can save all my scorn and rage for the Intarwebs, where it so rightfully belongs (with a little left over for the current political race).

My last doctor thinks it’s basically that the nerves have re-learned their function, and interpret everything as pain (it’s a different pain from the osteo-arthritis in my knees and finger joints – that’s just arthritis from years of epee and then historical fencing). I manage okay now with a combo of drugs and lidocaine patches, but I get the usual tsk’ing disapproval from health nuts who think that if I just quit the opiates and thought happy thoughts, I’d be fine.

 
Spengler Dampniche
 

I was all up in the comments like the slack-titted meat Wurlitzer that I am and I was all “ahahaha that one is funny” so I went “where is the ‘like’ button” and now I bid you farewell because I must kill myself.

 
 

My last doctor thinks it’s basically that the nerves have re-learned their function, and interpret everything as pain

Wow. That sucks.

My life isn’t so bad
My life isn’t so bad
My life isn’t so bad
My life isn’t so bad

 
 

yeah…i got the fibromyalgia…but it’s manageable for the most part…i take zoloft and amitriptyline for that…i tried lyrica…did.not.like.

 
Spengler Dampniche
 

Before I go, I get a weird tingling feeling in my penis sometimes, and it gets terribly swollen and stiff. Has anyone else had this problem? Ross?

 
 

I get a weird tingling feeling in my penis sometimes, and it gets terribly swollen and stiff.

Is it accompanied by spasms in your right arm?

 
 

Probs shouldn’t be sharing Spengler. Apparently they stick needles with electrodes attached for that sort of problem.

 
 

oh, you boys and your juvenile wenis jokes…you make me laff…thanks!

 
 

Oh that my wee-wee could be juvenile again. Sex would be finished like THAT!

 
 

GOODNIGHT…

 
 

I have an overactive imagination but nobody prescribes any medication for me.

 
 

I thought right-wing douchebags claimed to love the Constitution to bits. Didn’t it create, like, a national government?

 
 

“– that’s just arthritis from years of epee and then historical fencing)”

Interesting. So in a nutshell, what’s different about historical fencing? Does it involve different swords, or an archaic style with something like an epee? I can imagine answers, I can Google, but you’re here, or will be again, so the questions stand, even as I go to bed.

 
 

Methinks the morning after pill keeps a fertilized egg from implanting with massive doses of hormones. So, if the condom breaks and you suspect you’re around ovulating time, it makes sense, unless it doesn’t. It does NOT make sense to take it whenever you think you just might have a chance of maybe being pregnant, because MASSIVE DOSES OF HORMONES. There is always time to wait to take a home pregnancy test, or to see if you miss your next period, which shan’t be more than a month away; and if you do miss it, THEN you have options. Already there’s talk like a woman who doesn’t take the morning after pill at the first suspicion is a slob that can’t be trusted with children anyway.

Some women can’t take the pill at all because it causes depression and/or mood swings, so the morning after pill does not sound like a welcome relief to them.

CHOICES. WE HAVE CHOICES. WE WANT TO USE THEM AS WE SEE FIT FOR OUR BENEFIT.

 
 

Some women can’t take the pill at all because it causes depression and/or mood swings

I get those. Does that mean I’m on the pill?

 
 

Dude. You’re the one who played up JPII’s role in the liberation of Eastern Europe, as if that makes amends for the rightward lurch of the Church during his run.

Well, I mentioned JPII’s role, to be sure; if you want to expand that into “played up” to fit your narrative, okay. ‘Amends’? What does ‘the rightward lurch of the church’ that have to do with the price of cheese in China? It surely has notihing to do with historical description or political analysis of the liberation of Eastern Europe.

Let’s get something clear, okay? I’m not an apologist for the Church. I find some doctrines–especially transubstantiation and worship of the Virgin and saints–very hard to comprehend. I’ve never been comfortable with the authoritarian hierarchy. ((Also, too, and moreover, may I suggest that ‘authoritarian’ is a much better descriptor than ‘totalitarian’?))

I strenuously disagree with the Church dogma concerning homosexuality and human reproduction. I was / am appalled at the widespread sexual abuse of children … and infuriated at the Church’s long-time deceit and enabling of it. And I know the blood-soaked and rapacious history of the Church.

So can I get some anti-Church cred, here? Sadly, that seems necessary if you want to walk the mean streets of Sadlyville.

Florida is sad news. I wished Newty could have won and stuck around to make more trouble

I totally agree with you on this, Mr. Scribe!

 
 

I would douche anything for love
But I won’t douche hat

Laughter in Charm City, vs.

 
 

So tonight as we getting ready to leave Winnipeg the Captain (who actually is a decent guy) said “I saw that Romney is ahead of Gingrich in Florida”

I replied “Oh, you mean disgraced former Speaker Gingrich?”

The conversation went downhill from there.

 
Lurch, of the Church
 

Thou rangeth?

 
 

Envelope: The Fenwick Question Machine chimes in: Can we haz swashbuckling epee and sabre stories, pleez? Also moar about fencing with history?

bbfk: The docs need another data set. More tests. The important thing is to identify what is going on with hubbfk. Hang in there, you two.

Also, fibro is more widespread than I realized. (My sister’s partner has a severe case.)

 
 

So teh real question we should all be pondering is whether or not Newt is going to get teh Buchanan exception in 2016

Newt’ll be what, 73? Not even St. Ronnie was that old. Hell, Newt’s about as old now as Reagan was at this point in his campaign. And Newt, sir, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

This is his last hurrah. At least when he loses this and goes slinking back under some rock on K street we can rest well knowing that’s the last we’re going to see of that filth.

 
 

Spengler !!!

 
 

I’m feelin’ jaunty this morning. What is the bestest wingnut site for watching Gingrich supporters and Romney supporters tearing into each other? (With a sprinkling of Paulbots, if possible?) Any suggestions?

 
 

knowing that’s the last we’re going to see of that filth.

Unless you watch TV, in which case you will be subjected to him pretty much weekly.

 
 

Zealots like Douchehat want people to be dependent on the Church

This.

The only difference between the government and all those other centers of power is that the government answers to the people every two years, and they can toss it out on its ass if they don’t like the way it’s running things. There’s no such mechanism to restrain the churches, no such mechanism to restrain the corporations, or any of the rival “centers of power” whose virtues Douthat extolls.

The one thing I do like about his column: he actually acknowledges the existence of “rival” centers of power to the government, and acknowledges that this big-government/small-government argument is in fact a tug of war between centers of power. The standard conservative line doesn’t even acknowledge those other centers of power – it frames the whole thing as a tug of war between Teh Big Government and Teh People/Individual, and if only Government had less power, the people would have more, because there’s no way anyone else could possibly step in and oppress them when the government’s gone…

Once you acknowledge that it’s all about centers of power, the difference is simple – liberals want to concentrate power into the hands of a COP that’s actually answerable to the people, conservatives want to concentrate it into the hands of COPs that answer to no one but themselves. Hello again, aristocracy.

Onto the comments…

 
 

“So can I get some anti-Church cred, here? Sadly, that seems necessary if you want to walk the mean streets of Sadlyville.”

I just wish we could get some Mormons here who could share their magic underwear with us……….

 
 

amitryptyline? I was given that for a separated shoulder and took a dose while visiting family. My mother said I looked like a zombie right out of the movies. I remember not being able to move or communicate my thoughts. The only thing that did anything close to that was a muscle relaxer (flexeril) that made me forget a whole day.

 
 

I’m feelin’ jaunty this morning. What is the bestest wingnut site for watching Gingrich supporters and Romney supporters tearing into each other? (With a sprinkling of Paulbots, if possible?) Any suggestions?

I am pretty sure that the anti Romney Free Republic has had to set out all of the fainting couches and cots they have in inventory, and that there will be a lot of drive by freudenshade on display…Just guessing…And I am sure that the moderators will be going nuts trying to delete all the fun…So if you visit, take screen grabs.
.

 
 

Man, I was prescribed amitryptyline as a migraine prophylactic, which did nothing so the dr upped the dose. I was awake all night with crawling skin, tingling extremities, and brain whirring with the same thoughts and images in a short, fast cycle. One of the worst nights of my life and I STILL had migraines for the next couple of days.

 
 

the casino tycoon Edelson, Newt’s main Sugar Daddy, is worth something like $20 billion.

Yeah, but won’t Romney be able to neutralize him by promising to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, or something?

 
 

RIP Don Cornelius

I wonder what will happen to his souuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuul.

 
 

I was awake all night with crawling skin, tingling extremities, and brain whirring with the same thoughts and images in a short, fast cycle.

I solved that by chewing my hand off and sneaking back to my place.

 
 

I was all up in the comments like the slack-titted meat Wurlitzer that I am and I was all “ahahaha that one is funny” so I went “where is the ‘like’ button” and now I bid you farewell because I must kill myself.

Odd. I haven’t seen you much on Facebook either.

Welcome home.

 
 

Is it the conductive nerve test? They’ll stick needles with electrodes in his arms to see how well the nerves conduct sensation. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn’t

Oh man, but when it hurts, it really hurts. I had that done in conjunction with some testing on my elbow after I smashed my funny bone into a windowsill. Turns out it was just a mild neuralgia and I was able to pain management it into a dull roar, but the test hurt worse than the damage.

 
 

amitryptyline? I was given that for a separated shoulder and took a dose while visiting family. My mother said I looked like a zombie right out of the movies. I remember not being able to move or communicate my thoughts. The only thing that did anything close to that was a muscle relaxer (flexeril) that made me forget a whole day.

Man, I was prescribed amitryptyline as a migraine prophylactic, which did nothing so the dr upped the dose. I was awake all night with crawling skin, tingling extremities, and brain whirring with the same thoughts and images in a short, fast cycle. One of the worst nights of my life and I STILL had migraines for the next couple of days.

oh, you lightweights! no, actually i’m on a super low dosage…helps with nerve pain of which i have plenty of…i take it at night along with the zoloft, of which i am on the max dosage, and it helps with sleepy bye time…most of the time…sleep disruption is the MOST annoying thing about fibromyalgia…that and the fibro fog where you can say, look at a cat…know it’s a cat…but can’t make the word ‘cat’ come out of your mouth for anything…this was most troublesome when i was in radio…a full day on the air w/out being able to string a coherent sentence together made for a very long day…

 
 

this was most troublesome when i was in radio…a full day on the air w/out being able to string a coherent sentence together made for a very long day

Hasn’t hurt Glenn Beck’s career any.

 
 

Hasn’t hurt Glenn Beck’s career any.

Well, his radio career, no.

 
 

Methinks the morning after pill keeps a fertilized egg from implanting with massive doses of hormones.

Actually, no. The morning-after pill works like a chemical condom for women — it’ll stop you from busting a follicle right up in your fallopian tubes, but if you’ve already ovulated, too late. (Just picture an ovary in a showercap, if that helps.) Actually, considering that the morning-after pill is basically the same stuff as they give women who’ve just had IVF to help them catch, if you’ve already ovulated, you’re actually more likely to get preggers, not less. Uncle PeeZed the biologist over at Pharyngula wrote about this a couple years ago, hereabouts. Special bonus anti-wingnut enzymes also, too.

Hey, Envelope, I go for a nerve conduction test tomorrow afternoon, and I’m really nervous because me and electrical conduction just don’t get along. I was on a Van De Graaf generator once, and my hair not only didn’t go up, I got a lottabuncha shocks from it, and every time I get a static shock (like from a doorknob) it damn near paralyses my entire arm… 🙁 🙁 Got any advice?

 
 

Hasn’t hurt Glenn Beck’s career any.

dammit! where were you six years ago and why weren’t you my agent?!?!?

 
 

Hey, Envelope, I go for a nerve conduction test tomorrow afternoon, and I’m really nervous because me and electrical conduction just don’t get along. I was on a Van De Graaf generator once, and my hair not only didn’t go up, I got a lottabuncha shocks from it, and every time I get a static shock (like from a doorknob) it damn near paralyses my entire arm… 🙁 🙁 Got any advice?

you have my best wishes…hubbkf didn’t enjoy it one bit…my advice: wear your rubber underwear…

 
 

my advice: wear your rubber underwear…

Aw, the rubber underwear guy dumped me about 10 years ago.

I gots teh fibro too, or something very like it (hard to say because I also gots teh cerebral palsy, which SUCKS DISEASED REPUBLICAN ASS, incidentally), and the fibro fog is pretty bad, too. With me it mostly zaps my short-term memory, which is already pretty freakin’ bad. Tellya, if I didn’t have two monitors to work from here at Posh, Inc, I’d be like totally in a world of hurt sometimes. I also really hate the thing where my muscles hurt right at the places where they connect to my joints. WTF is up with that?

Thank goodness I’m Canadian, so I don’t have to deal with this “health insurance” bullshit. Single-payer all the way, baby. Given that I seem to be intermittently unemployed (hopefully to change now, insh’allah, bli neder, and all that stuff), it’d suck to have to depend on whatever company to, well, keep me alive, dammit.

Also, too, Douchehat has an extremely punchable-looking phiz, don’t he?

 
 

interrobang…how weird…my daughter has teh cp as does a nephew and one of my cousins…my daughter’s affects her mental capacity and some fine motor things, but she’s very high functioning…my nephew is smart as a freaking whip, but cannot walk…my cousin just has some spasticity issues and minor learning disabilities…

yeah, the ‘joint’ pain really blows…and i hate the burning muscle pain…and the short term memory? don’t even get me started…

wait…what were we talking about?

 
 

Also, too, Douchehat has an extremely punchable-looking phiz, don’t he?

everywhere on douchehat looks extremely punchable…but not junkpunchable…i have a feeling he’s a bit like a mud turtle in that regard and his peepee is permanently in hiding…

also, too…i’m sorry rubber underwear dude dumped you…he’s a real tool…

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Interesting. So in a nutshell, what’s different about historical fencing? Does it involve different swords, or an archaic style with something like an epee?

Well, I’m an SCA dork of 23 years fine standing, so that’s where the historical comes in (no, I swear, some of us actually do research n’ stuff). We use swords that are close in balance and weight to Italian rapiers of the 1600s, and the fighting is in the round, rather than back and forth on a straight line. We’re not allowed to grapple or pommel-punch (more’s the pity), but use stabbity and slashes to “kill” our opponent. I was pretty good before I had to stop. Some purists (like one of my students) study the individual masters of the era and fight purely in that style. It’s mostly fun and giggles, until you get an asshole that whines.

 
 

We use swords that are close in balance and weight to Italian rapiers of the 1600s, and the fighting is in the round, rather than back and forth on a straight line

Ah, someone’s watched “Masters of Defence,” I see.

 
 

Also, too, Douchehat has an extremely punchable-looking phiz, don’t he?

He looks sad and lumpy. I’ll save my punches for Jonah. Now, there’s a punchable face. Still, neither of them make me feel as punchy as James “It’s Easy Out There for Pimp as Long As You’re a Conservative White Frat Boy” O’Keefe. OMG, forget my little fists of fury, just hand me a fucking shovel.

 
 

Medieval fencing styles are really pretty interesting and as envelope points out, different from the Olympic styles you see today. You tended to square up to your opponent, and often carried two swords, your primary striking sword and a main gauche (literally, left hand) in your belt. That was more like a dagger than a sword.

Some would carry a buckler (thus the name “swashbuckler” for garish fighters), a small shield on the left wrist and forearm to block and parry blades. And of course, the gauntlets, which helped with that and protected both hands from cuts.

It’s funny watching movies like Flynn’s Robin Hood and realizing “Ur doin’ it rong”. Still, they are fun to watch.

 
 

It’s mostly fun and giggles, until you get an asshole that whines

this sums up my world-view pretty well…

 
 

gauche (literally, left hand)

i am ashamed to admit that i did not know the translation of this word…damn, if i was a lefty, i would be pissed…

 
 

gauche (literally, left hand)

i am ashamed to admit that i did not know the translation of this word…damn, if i was a lefty, i would be pissed…

It gets worse. Maladroit literally means “bad with the right” [hand].

 
 

It is decidedly NOT easy out there for a pimp, VS. You don’t even KNOW.

 
 

bbkf: Wow, you have a lot of experience with CP, indirectly, I guess… With me, I’m just sorta spastic and I walk funneh, and my eyes kind of point off in opposite directions (I am like the human Derpy Hooves), but aside from some maybe unrelated learning disabilty stuff, I’m okay. I even lift weights and stuff. (Actually, weight training is great for spasticity. It’s like power stretching for the stretch-impaired.)

I’m also an ex-SCA dork of the research-doing school. My things were medieval rhetoric, and heraldry. I also actually got my equestrian certification. 😀

I wouldn’t punch Douchehat in the junk; that’d involve getting my fingers far too close to areas of him I don’t even want to think about, let alone touch. Government OR charity…Wingnuts sure do love them some false dichotomies, don’t they?

 
 

damn, if i was a lefty, i would be pissed…

Sinister, isn’t it?

 
 

I also actually got my equestrian certification

Color me jealous. I was lucky that I could find SCA folks in the city. I would have killed for a horse cert.

Literally 🙂

 
 

Sinister, isn’t it?

There’s a left-handed compliment if I’ve ever heard one

 
Pupienus and I mean Maximus
 

Is it because his name vaguely sounds like “Douche Hat”

Aha, now I get it!

Also. No more mention of Newt droppings please.

 
 

It is decidedly NOT easy out there for a pimp, VS. You don’t even KNOW.

I’m not gonna feel sorry for you if you persist in not buying that low rider that says “White Chocolate” on it. Without it, you have no business model.

 
 

Wingnuts sure do love them some false dichotomies, don’t they?

right? it’s almost like it’s a…condition or something…

i’m glad you’re to function and have a pretty full life…that’s one of the things i’m grateful for with my daughter…she’s my biggest joy and biggest heartbreak…lots of times you wouldn’t think there was a thing in the world wrong with her, but there it is…she’s an amazing girl…i have not seen anyone who literally has friends wherever she goes…when she was being treated for cancer six years ago, you could hardly move in her hospital room for all the flowers, gifts, visitors and cards…so it really breaks my heart when she mentions to me that some kid that she works with out at the college uses the ‘r’ word on a regular basis..

and my nephew…literally tons of talents but doesn’t get a lot of second looks because of his mobility…it makes me very junkpunchy sometimes…

sigh…okay, i take back my earlier comment about my world view…

 
Pupienus and I mean Maximus
 

Sinister, isn’t it?

You should levo it alone.

 
 

“White Chocolate”

okay…let’s play a game! who wants to hazard a guess at how many white (and red & pink) peanut m&ms i’ve consumed this morning?

 
 

and I mean Maximus

I was curious why you had downsized. I assumed it was an economic decision.

 
 

Does anyone ever set up battles between a bunch of SCA types and a bunch of civil war re-enactors or LARPers ? or is there some inter-groups-that-run-around-in-silly-costume rivalry that makes that unlikely?

 
 

Bain Capital ruins everything.

 
 

I’m not gonna feel sorry for you if you persist in not buying that low rider that says “White Chocolate” on it. Without it, you have no business model.

Would a Pacer with ‘Nilla Brutha’ work?

 
 

or is there some inter-groups-that-run-around-in-silly-costume rivalry that makes that unlikely?

It’s the obscure fourth law of thermodynamics: that much stoopid in one place would have consequences beyond this dimension

 
 

oddly enough, vs, both of your guesses are correct!

 
 

I know I’m late to the party here but …

“Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities”

Doesn’t it work the other way around actually? Doesn’t he know about tax deductions? If he thinks that charities will do a better job than gummint, he can donate money to charity — and guess what, the government will take less of his money.

“Oh of course, I know that when I let the government keep me from dying from preventable causes, that my meetings with the local rotary club go down the crapper ”

Actually this is, AFAIK, somewhat true — with government taking care of things, people no longer need to belong to mutual aid societies, thus their membership goes down. While some, even some liberals, would argue this is a bad thing as it decreases people’s personal experiences with democracy in action and tends, e.g., to make people more susceptible to anti-democratic rhetoric (of the sort that Douthat’s political friends spew), the key reason why you have government “crowding out” other charitable organizations is really not from the coercive power of government (government doesn’t, for example, say to the IOOF to stop doing charitable acts or else) but do to plain, old competition: if charities were better at providing a safety-net, they would receive more of the safety-net providing business. The reason why government is able to “crowd out” mutual benefits societies is simply that government does a better job.

So you’d think “competition is good and the free market rules” conservatives would love them some government safety nets because government is able to crowd out the competition — and yet this is why the right claims to be distrustful of the safety net? At the very least, having a safety-net allows the tight-rope walker to take risks: with a robust safety-net in place, people are freer to experiment and engage in entrepreneurship and companies can do business without having to spend $$$ on benefits to attract talent. So you’d think the pro-corporate right would be all over single payer health care, etc. just for the sake of the bottom line.

And yet the right here reveals its true colors as being more interested in maintaining privilege (and low taxes) for the de facto aristocracy than they are even in good business and in the free market and capitalism!

 
 

Would a Pacer with ‘Nilla Brutha’ work?

“Brutha’ with a ‘Nilla Mutha” is the only way to go, clearly.

 
 

It’s the obscure fourth law of thermodynamics: that much stoopid in one place would have consequences beyond this dimension

I think it’s unfair to call it stupid. I think they are missing out on a giant revenue stream. Who wouldn’t want to watch the nerds of the magic raven kingdom take on the dregs of the neo-confederate wannabes? Or we could even throw in Elvis impersonators vs furries in a best of 3 yiffing-singing-boxing tournament. in the era of reality tv, I think this might be a golden opportunity.

 
 

Does anyone ever set up battles between a bunch of SCA types and a bunch of civil war re-enactors or LARPers ?

I’d join this:

Historical Preenactment Society

 
 

This is very pure wow. Hats off to you Cerberus, this post is stroke after stroke of win. I have commandeered my gf’s iPhone here above Bourg-St Maurice and it is costing me (her) a main and a jambon to access this but

10 IF douchehat = sad THEN
20 exfordlegs = happy
GOTO 10

 
 

Also GOOd to see you back Spengler dampniche having said that I expect that you don’t waste your time while away from sadlyno

 
 

while (douchehat = sad)
{
exfordlegs = happy;
}

Fixed for modernity.

 
 

According to the Wiki, DoucheHat converted to Pentecostalism as an adolescent and later (with the rest of his family) to Catholicism. Dude is only 32 in an era when 32 is this era’s 19.

I think DoughyTits, got my share of the god botherin’ gene and then some.
.

 
Pupienus and I mean Maximus
 

while (douchehat == sad)
{
exfordlegs = happy;
}

Fixxxed for correctness.

 
Pupienus and I mean Maximus
 

Also PENIS.

 
 

exfordlegs := happy;

FiC+sed.

 
 

I think it’s unfair to call it stupid. I think they are missing out on a giant revenue stream. Who wouldn’t want to watch the nerds of the magic raven kingdom take on the dregs of the neo-confederate wannabes? Or we could even throw in Elvis impersonators vs furries in a best of 3 yiffing-singing-boxing tournament. in the era of reality tv, I think this might be a golden opportunity.

as do i…the stupid part anyways…THIS always cracks me up, tho…

 
 

Also PENIS.

Entrance for brothers.

heh.

 
 

also, too…i forgot from earlier in the thread…

tigris said prophylactic!

 
 

“Let us gingerly touch our tips”

 
 

tsam said,
February 1, 2012 at 19:52

Well done.

 
 

Actually this is, AFAIK, somewhat true — with government taking care of things, people no longer need to belong to mutual aid societies, thus their membership goes down. While some, even some liberals, would argue this is a bad thing as it decreases people’s personal experiences with democracy in action and tends, e.g., to make people more susceptible to anti-democratic rhetoric (of the sort that Douthat’s political friends spew), the key reason why you have government “crowding out” other charitable organizations is really not from the coercive power of government (government doesn’t, for example, say to the IOOF to stop doing charitable acts or else) but do to plain, old competition: if charities were better at providing a safety-net, they would receive more of the safety-net providing business. The reason why government is able to “crowd out” mutual benefits societies is simply that government does a better job.

i will throw in the argument that in some areas of our country, the government is turned to because of lack of resources…i know i bring this up all the time, but it’s a very real problem in my neck of the woods…we have an aging and declining population…therefore resources that rely on people actually delivering goods are hurting. all of our charitable and service oriented groups are seeing a decline in membership…well, except the catholic ones (why is that?)…part of it is because older members move off or die off, younger folks move away to greener economic pastures or just to stave off boredom, and the ones in the middle who are left can only commit to an x amount of time consuming projects/groups…

so we suffer the affects of lack of bodies, burn out, limited resources…we don’t have big aid societies helping out around here…we’re too small of potatoes for that…so, we must take advantage of any government resource or help we can get…

 
 

“Let us gingerly touch our tips”

ha, ha…on it’s own merits…and also because it reminds me of the conversation i had with my daughter this morning regarding the oaf in the dishroom who kept using the word retarded…

i asked her if she said anything to her supervisor about how that word makes her feel bad (since she is, but not enough for her to not know she is)…and then she told me that she didn’t think he was going to be working with her anymore…and then she was like, ‘oh my goodness, mom! he just wasn’t good to work with!’ and i asked why. ‘he is a total red head!’ as is her father, but wth? so i asked what she meant. ‘oh, he always asks a bunch of questions about everything and never remembers what we tell him!’

i’m not sure if she’s just anti-ginger, which would be odd since she adores her dad or if she was confusing red head for blonde and was making a joke…she’s a mystery, that one…

 
 

Bain Capital ruins everything.

They even managed to ruin ruining stuff. Stupid jerks.

 
 

so we suffer the affects of lack of bodies, burn out, limited resources…we don’t have big aid societies helping out around here…we’re too small of potatoes for that…so, we must take advantage of any government resource or help we can get…

My cage fighter training takes up all of my free time.

 
 

Well done.

& # 9876 ;

For your future use, if you happen to cross swords with another guy like the one who was trolling you the other day.

 
 

“the oaf in the dishroom”

Methinks this has potential. Kinda like “The People under the Stairs?”

 
 

That’s SO badass

 
 

possibly most startling comment i’ve ever read (from pryme’s link):

jonnyj — 2/1/12 7:39am My first wife was like that.

She’d come home after being gone for 2 days and accuse me of cheating on her…when I was home with the baby!

She makes (and is) a good Repug; Twelve (12) abortions before they tied her tubes (not a misprint). Now has AIDS and HEP-C.

d00d has some problems…republicans being the least of them…

 
 

& # 9876

i suggest this is used as shorthand for touche…and yes, i don’t know how to make the accent mark over the e…

 
 

&#9876

heh…

 
 

Crap. funding fell through so my younger sister can’t get in to grad school for the spring semester, and will have to find a job for the next 6-7 months. I’m confident she can find a job, but if anyone knows of fantastic opportunities in Chattanooga, TN for a woman who wants to get her PhD in entomology, has a black belt in Han Mu Do and speaks Thai, please share.

 
 

I think it’s unfair to call it stupid. I think they are missing out on a giant revenue stream. Who wouldn’t want to watch the nerds of the magic raven kingdom take on the dregs of the neo-confederate wannabes?

You have heard of Deadliest Warrior, on Spike TV, right?

 
 

fantastic opportunities in Chattanooga, TN for a woman who wants to get her PhD in entomology,

oooh…she should go to knoxville and work at the body farm!

 
 

OK, now is there a big key somewhere with a bunch of other cool symbols like that? *imploring eyes*

 
 

stop mocking those of us who are symbolically challenged!

 
 

Look up Unicode character sets, cut and paste, convert here:
http://mikezilla.com/exp0012.html

I use this in Firefox for work-related endeavours: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/abctajpu/

It has an incomplete set of Unicode characters and it’s kind of a pain to hunt through them, but it’s free.

 
 

Note that some browsers/systems like really exotic characters, some don’t. Evidently the Mac users get more stuff than the Windows users.

 
 

…THIS always cracks me up, tho…

As does this.

 
 

Evidently the Mac users get more stuff than the Windows users.

Hear that, Windows users?!!!!!

Thank you, Substance. Subby-on-the-spot.

 
 

It doesn’t render in Opera. … Nor in Chrome.

 
 

Actually, one thing that amazes me about the “big gummint is crowding out private charity — we need to go back to private charity like how things worked in the old days” argument is how little people who make this argument seem to understand about history. Do they really want us to go back to an era where regular economic panics would result in mass unemployment, starvation, and when people lived in crowded tenements and died in horrific workplace accidents?

Um, well, never mind … I think I know the answer. And that should tell you all you need to know about the so-called “pro-life” right.

 
 

Actually, one thing that amazes me about the “big gummint is crowding out private charity — we need to go back to private charity like how things worked in the old days” argument is how little people who make this argument seem to understand about history.

You’d think the very fact these programs were forced to be implemented by people far more conservative than we would be a clue that the first 150 years of this nation saw a rather shameful poverty and death crisis.

 
 

And I typed in an umbrella and got a question mark. Dammit.

 
 

Anyway, sorry for clogging up the thread with my dumb playing. Everyone carry on…

 
 

i didn’t see a coffin, but i saw a butthole right off the bat…

 
 

dammit! how do you make these little symbols?!?!?

 
 

d00d has some problems…republicans being the least of them…

Problem 1: He’s a lying h8r.

 
 

bbkf: follow the &#9876 with a semicolon.

 
 

dammit! how do you make these little symbols?!?!?

You were all good until you forgot the semicolon. That’s like an on-switch for cool shit.

 
 

i have a sad, icky feeling that this probably warmed the cockles of douchehat’s tiny, shriveled, cold and empty heart…

 
 

“i didn’t see a coffin, but i saw a butthole right off the bat…”

Sounds like some kind of Rorschach…………So, tell us bbkf, how long have you wanted a penis?

 
 

“big gummint is crowding out private charity — we need to go back to private charity like how things worked in the old days”

Gotta love the argument, because as soon as people go to “private charities” the response is, “Get a job, you bum!”

 
 

yay!!! thanks, everybody!

 
 

i have a sad, icky feeling that this probably warmed the cockles of douchehat’s tiny, shriveled, cold and empty heart…

and i mean the funding cut…the other part, where it calls for action probably would cause him some massive butthurt…

 
 

Sounds like some kind of Rorschach…………So, tell us bbkf, how long have you wanted a penis?

ever since i learned that boys get to pee standing up…

 
 

Can you see the coffin here? I can’t at the moment.
Teh list of Unicode symbols displays an absence of ‘goatse’. I feel safer now.
Though there is “Hot springs” ♨ .

 
 

“ever since i learned that boys get to pee standing up…”

Yeah, well if it’s 4:00 AM and you’d been drinking and were wakened by a bladder the size of a football, you’d find that’s not such a good thing……..

 
 

Teh list of Unicode symbols displays an absence of ‘goatse’.

the butthole i was referring to earlier ☀ clearly shows an important part of goatse…

 
 

Yeah, well if it’s 4:00 AM and you’d been drinking and were wakened by a bladder the size of a football, you’d find that’s not such a good thing……..

that’s not a picnic sitting down either…

 
 

i’m mostly jealous cuz boys can pee just about anywhere…

 
 

heh…uranus…

you will now rue the moment you gave me the key…

 
 

Yeah, well if it’s 4:00 AM and you’d been drinking and were wakened by a bladder the size of a football, you’d find that’s not such a good thing……..

One of many reasons I prefer hard liquor.

 
 

i’m mostly jealous cuz boys can pee just about anywhere…

Other library users are just jealous.

 
 

ever since i learned that boys get to pee standing up…

That’s only one of the million anatomical advantages we have over you.

The only problem we have is that you have the boobs. We want the boobs.

 
 

ever since i learned that boys get to pee standing up… – bbfk

I think they make a device that enables women to pee standing up. Anyway, I would imagine if you really have to go, so long as the flow-rate is high enough, it’d come out far enough that you could pee standing up more or less, couldn’t you?

 
 

So Romney goes all, “Poor People? They’re the one’s without money, right? Fuck ’em!” and after the ‘nets and media start going after him for his comments, he gets his subordinate to send this lame-ass excuse (emphasis mine):

President Obama has destroyed the middle class,” she said in an e-mail. “His policies have given us a stagnant economy, high unemployment, declining wages, increase in poverty, and record amounts of new debt. President Obama is so detached from what is happening in the real world that he finds it hard to believe an unemployed engineer can’t find a job. President Obama calls the plight of the unemployed ‘interesting.’ Mitt Romney calls it ‘inexcusable.’ We look forward debating President Obama on how his policies have failed the middle class.”

To which I say: (1) how could you destroy an entire social-economic class in 3 years?; (2) Project much? and (3) BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

They actually think they can take a guy who’s pretty much the poster boy for the 1% and a caricature of every rich cartoon villain ever made, do a photo op of him holding laundry detergent, and POOF! He’s Mr. Middle Class! Amazing.

 
 

I think they make a device that enables women to pee standing up. Anyway, I would imagine if you really have to go, so long as the flow-rate is high enough, it’d come out far enough that you could pee standing up more or less, couldn’t you?

they do…it’s called ‘you go, girl!’ yeah, i spose you could get some projection there…but then you got the…uh…dribbling problem once your done…

good lord, the things we discuss!

 
 

i’m mostly jealous cuz boys can pee just about anywhere…

Peeing into the USB port is one of the exceptions I guess.

 
 

Mitt Romney calls it ‘inexcusable.’

why? because he wasn’t in on ALL the firings and layoffs?

 
 

Looks like the coffin is in Miscellaneous Symbols U+2600 – U+26FF (9728–9983)

go to http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u2500

scroll down to find a font with that character range (actually, a typeface but that’s just an old peeve of mine) then acquire and install.

 
 

That’s only one of the million anatomical advantages we have over you.

why do you continually urge me to junkpunch you?!?!?

The only problem we have is that you have the boobs. We want the boobs.

oh, i think given enough calories and time you will make your own boobs…

 
 

bbkf et al., you know that you too can pee standing up, and just about anywhere, right? It’s just a matter of neatness is all.

 
 

I don’t know how much effort you want to put into that font acquisition and such – if the character isn’t in a commonly installed font, very few opeople other than yourself will see what you intend.

 
 

The only problem we have is that you have the boobs.

Speak for yourself.

 
 

Yeah, well if it’s 4:00 AM and you’d been drinking and were wakened by a bladder the size of a football, you’d find that’s not such a good thing……..

Some of us have passed the age where we can take a miss at drinking and still enjoy the pleasures of this.

And women have one overwhelming anatomical advantage. They can masturbate sitting in a chair without taking an article of clothing off by rocking back and forth on the ankle they’ve crossed under the other thigh.

Learned that one while working with blind teenagers.

 
 

That’s only one of the million anatomical advantages we have over you. – tsam

Actually the penis is both a blessing and a curse. Teenage girls don’t have to worry about hiding a stiffy upon standing up at the end of 2nd period (of course, they do have to worry about being prepared in case of the start of a, well, period). A lady friend of mine once dressed up as a man for Purim and she went all out, including stuffing her pants. About a half hour into the Purim party she removed the stuffing element declaring “I don’t understand how you men are able to walk around with those things — don’t you find that they just get in the way and are generally annoying?”.

 
 

This thread is about Douchehat. You knew it was going to come around to moobs at some point.

 
 

Powerful anti marriage equality speech.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Maryland Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on Tuesday from advocates and opponents of the marriage equality bill currently pending in the state legislature.

Among those testifying were 14-year-old Sarah Crank, who told legislators that it “would be the best birthday present ever if you would vote no on gay marriage.”

“I really feel bad for the kids who have two parents of the same gender,” she said. […]

“They have no idea what kind of wonderful experiences they miss out on.”

“People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice. People say they were just born that way, but I’ve met really nice adults who did change.”

“It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislature or the court can change the definition of any word they want,” she added.

“If they could change the definition of marriage then they could change the definition of any word,” said the home schooled teen.

I am shocked, shocked to find a home schooled teenager pleading for release from horrible persecution.

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/01/maryland-youngster-asks-legislators-to-vote-no-on-gay-marriage-for-her-birthday/

 
 

actor212 said,

February 1, 2012 at 23:22 (kill)

Jean Cocteau was said to perfom hands free “masturbation” as a parlor trick. He’d lie with his back on the floor, so the story goes, surrounded by a cheering audience and bring himself off with no genital contact of anything.

 
 

“I don’t understand how you men are able to walk around with those things — don’t you find that they just get in the way and are generally annoying?”.

i ask this question of hubbkf quite often…i am glad my lady parts are neatly packed away…i would not like having a dang-ger flopping around…or squished into whitey tighties…

 
 

“People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice.

when o when will they ever understand that IT HAS FUCKALLTO DO WITH THEM!!?!?!?!?!?

 
 

“I don’t understand how you men are able to walk around with those things — don’t you find that they just get in the way and are generally annoying?”

It’s easy when they’re really really tiny.

 
 

surrounded by a cheering audience and bring himself off with no genital contact of anything.

voyeur with a highly tuned imagination…

 
 

Also, you can pee standing up, bbkf. I’ve seen it done.

 
 

Jean Cocteau was said to perfom hands free “masturbation” as a parlor trick

The hint is right there in the name, Poops! Cock! Toe!

 
 

why do you continually urge me to junkpunch you?!?!?

Why do YOU keep talking about my junk?

 
 

i ask this question of hubbkf quite often…i am glad my lady parts are neatly packed away…i would not like having a dang-ger flopping around…or squished into whitey tighties

yes, but the ladeez have two bulbous floppies that have to be secured with all manner of fabric and wire. no thanks.

 
 

People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Michele Bachmann, 2.0

I’m not sure how, even allowing her false assumption of gay is a choice, that affects her, first and what the hell does this have to do with marriage between two loving and consenting adults?

 
 

Also, you can pee standing up, bbkf. I’ve seen it done.

Hell, I’ve seen women write their names on a wall.

Lady Charlotte Huffenstouffer had quite the bladder, I might add.

 
 

A lady friend of mine once dressed up as a man for Purim and she went all out, including stuffing her pants.

One Halloween, this guy I know put on a pair of pantyhose (remember that stuff?) and stuffed two oranges and a banana into the crotch in the arrangement you’re thinking of. He then put on a raincoat and voila! Instant flasher.

One of the party guests he “flashed” was the 14-year-old daughter of the host. Her eyes got huge. Poor kid probably was scared to date for years.

 
 

ladeez have two bulbous floppies that have to be secured with all manner of fabric and wire.

Hey, now, that’s a choice. If it was up to men, those girls would be flopping in the breeze.

 
 

anti marriage equality speech.

Bleah. Teh good news is: WA is about to allow gay marriage.

Gaybortions can’t be far behind! Yaay!

 
 

“People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice. People say they were just born that way, but I’ve met really nice adults who did change.”

1: No you haven’t

2: If you don’t want to be affected by it, stop sucking dudes’ dicks. Seems pretty easy to me.

 
 

It’s easy when they’re really really tiny.

Yes it is. That’s what a friend tells me, anyway.

 
 

“I don’t understand how you men are able to walk around with those things — don’t you find that they just get in the way and are generally annoying?”

Kind of makes you wonder if after they got done designing the male anatomy somebody said “Hey! We’ve got these extra parts left over. What if we just stick them here?”

 
 

yes, but the ladeez have two bulbous floppies that have to be secured with all manner of fabric and wire. no thanks.

you bring up a good point…bras suck…

 
 

Why do YOU keep talking about my junk?

because YOU keep shoving it down my throat!

oh…
.
.
.
wait…never mind…

 
 

Gaybortions can’t be far behind! Yaay!

the only thing that would be better is BLACKgaybortions!

 
 

“Hey! We’ve got these extra parts left over. What if we just stick them here?”

You’re arguing for unintelligent design, I see.

 
 

“I don’t understand how you men are able to walk around with those things — don’t you find that they just get in the way and are generally annoying?”

Actually, no. With the right combination of underwear fit, jean fit, and the right material, you can get a sort of rubbing action going that feels quite nice.

 
 

because YOU keep shoving it down my throat!

How do you talk with it shoved down your thrOUCH!

 
 

How do you talk with it shoved down your thrOUCH!

ventriliquism…

 
 

When I look at the current crop of republican candidates, I ask myself, ‘where is Junkpuncho when we need him?’

 
 

you can get a sort of rubbing action going that feels quite nice.

so, really, it IS always about the weenis ALL the time…

 
 

The only problem we have is that you have the boobs. We want the boobs.

Got a larf out of me this did.
.

 
 

i have a sad, icky feeling that this probably warmed the cockles of douchehat’s tiny, shriveled, cold and empty heart…

Unfortunately for him that burning sensation in his chest will turn out to be moob cancer, and the chemo will cause him to lose his pride and joy, his glorious neckbeard.

“would be the best birthday present ever if you would vote no on gay marriage.”

Veruca Salt continued that she’d also like the neighbor kid’s new puppy and all the ice cream in the world.

 
 

so, really, it IS always about the weenis ALL the time…

**sigh**

yes.

 
 

Veruca Salt

GREAT song. You all must listen.

 
 

Bleah. Teh good news is: WA is about to allow gay marriage.

Meanwhile in New Joisy, Christie makes classic non-apology apology.

♫ Slow down, you post too fast ♫
♫ You got to make FYWP ♫

 
 

“It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislature or the court can change the definition of any word they want,” she added.

Home schooled, eh? Her teacher should be fired.

 
 

Bleah. Teh good news is: WA is about to allow gay marriage.

Which, of course, fills me with pride.

That is, until I remember that Iowa beat us by a couple of years. But WHATEVER.

 
 

Fun with ellipses!
you men […] just get in the way and are generally annoying

 
 

“It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislature or the court can change the definition of any word they want,” she added.

Hear hear! Replacing every smurf with “smurf” has really smurfed up dining out.

 
 

You’re arguing for unintelligent design, I see.

[Obligatory joke about a playground right next to a sewer]

 
 

And what I did was, by saying those things, I left them open to misinterpretation and obviously there are some folks out there whose feelings I hurt or sensibilities I offended. And I apologize for that, because that’s my job. My job is to clearly communicate all the time.

what the hell is his job? to say things and leave them to open to misinterpretation? or to apologize for doing so? or to clearly communicate all the time?

GAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! i don’t get what he’s trying to tell me!!!

 
 

“People have the choice to be gay, but I don’t want to be affected by their choice.

J.K. Galbraith got it wrong. The oldest exercise in moral philosophy — so beloved of the modern conservative — is in fact the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness minding everyone else’s business.

 
 

Veruca Salt

GREAT song. You all must listen.

Every once in a while, y00tube commenters dish up the LULZ0RZ:

It’s unbelievable as to? how many socks I ruined as a teen while watching this vid.

 
 

Hear hear! Replacing every smurf with “smurf” has really smurfed up dining out.

Why do I find this so smurfing funny?

 
 

tigris said,

February 2, 2012 at 0:08

Veruca Salt

Nuh uh…

Veruca Salt

 
 

It’s rather scary to think that when I grow up the legislature or the court can change the definition of any word they want

See also: Racist = liberal

 
 

Why do I find this so smurfing funny?

You’re exhausted. You’ve been smurfing non stop for days. That’s the pitfall of being the only girl smurf in the village.

 
 

It’s unbelievable as to? how many socks I ruined as a teen while watching this vid.

I KNOW–that lead singer is beautiful. I don’t use socks though. Mom finds them and…well, let’s just say she doesn’t enjoy my habit as much as I do.

 
 

I watched a few minutes of the Newtsters speech after the Florida primary. And staying OT for this post, he stated that on his first day as president he would issue an exucutive order repealling all laws that limit religious freedom. Of course, his supporters gathered around him cheered wildly. But I was thinking they would not be so enthusiastic if they just took a moment to realize that were cheering in support of repealling all anti-sharia laws. Also they are cheering for the repeal of all anti-polygamy laws, which I’m sure Newt’s down with but I’m not so sure about his base. The upside is, in order to not limit the religious freedom of the Rastafarians, that would also mean the legalization of pot.

The other thing I took away from the Turned-me-into-a-Newt’s speech is that he would save us a lot of money on the federal budget. I watched about ten minutes of speech and in that time he mentioned about a dozen executive orders that he would execute on his first day in office. All of them would either make new law or change or repeal old laws. Apparently under a Gingrich administration we will no longer need Congress. I’m guessing that would cut a pretty big chunk out of the budget.

 
 

You’re exhausted. You’ve been smurfing non stop for days. That’s the pitfall of being the only girl smurf in the village.

You smurfmen are going to have to start doing your own fucking cooking. That’s what you meant–cooking, right?

 
 

Veruca Salt

I’m partial to tsam’s version.

 
 

Apparently under a Gingrich administration we will no longer need Congress.

oh, good…i can’t wait to start with the ‘newt has pissed all over our constitution!’ and ‘newt is a dictator!’ ‘we need to take amurka back!’

 
 

I’m partial to tsam’s version.

BAD EGG

 
 

Apparently under a Gingrich administration we will no longer need Congress. I’m guessing that would cut a pretty big chunk out of the budget.

Sacking any judges whose verdicts he dislikes will also save a lot of money.

 
 

[Obligatory joke about a playground right next to a sewer]

Pup, you may think you’re being funny, but where I’m from, the one thing you can count on seeing next to a sewage-treatment plant is a park, usually with a playground. It’s because they have to build a buffer around the plant to keep it from depressing nearby home values too badly.

 
 

You’re exhausted. You’ve been smurfing non stop for days. That’s the pitfall of being the only girl smurf in the village.

Let someone else have a turn with the magic flute.

 
 

So here’s a weird thing…I was talking to my father on Skype a few minutes ago…and it turns out he and my Stepmom are making this epic trip along the west coast. Here are the cities they are hitting…and I shit you not, these are the places they are going…L.A., Portland, Spokane, Seattle, and some place in Canada called Nelson.

Apparently they are going to visit all my S,N pals, but I am not invited to come along.

THANKS, PARENTS.

 
 

Apparently they are going to visit all my S,N pals, but I am not invited to come along.

OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO GO ALONG

 
 

Nelson, B.C. is awesome. Spokane, not so much.

 
 

I know! How fun would it be say hi to you lovable weirdos?

Now, I shall have to do research on Nelson.

 
 

That’s what you meant–cooking, right?

That’s one of the many accepted terms for it, yes.

 
 

Nelson is pretty and hippie-friendly.

The road there.

 
 

I know! How fun would it be say hi to you lovable weirdos?

Probably a lot more fun for us than for you…

 
 

No way, I love yous guys (and gals). Though I think most the ladies here are in the East and Midwest.

 
 

That video is SO COOL. And my parents will fit in perfectly.

 
 

Though I think most the ladies here are in the East and Midwest.

Yeah, what’s with that?

 
 

Thank you, Substance. Now I want to go to Nelson.

 
 

Downtown Spokane

The main drag through the center of town. That cool old building you see at the end of the street is our local fascist newspaper. I especially like the crooked lines on the street. If you’re taking a field sobriety test, you’re money in downtown Spokane.

 
 

I think this piece is even more interesting in light of the Komen/Planned Parenthood withdraw of funds. Not only are the right wingers telling us we can’t use government/tax dollars to fund health care services, now we’re being told we can’t use charitable donations for it, where an unrelated service provided by the organization receiving the funds is distasteful to them.

Isn’t that their big thing? “We wingnuts don’t oppose health care or other help to the poor, so long as we don’t have to pay for it, and some other dumb bastard does by donating to non-government charities.”

 
 

is there a big key somewhere with a bunch of other cool symbols like that?

For us lazy sods, I recommend “copypastecharacter.com” (in my browser (FF) there’s no http, no www, zilch) – click the character to grab it & then just paste it … although some of them aren’t FYWP-compatible:

? ? ?? ?? ? ? ? ? ………… ? ? ? ?? ?? ? ?? ? ?
All these show up in preview but no way will FYWP let them all through.

Also, there are several other possibilities (the last one is a bit of a bizzitch to navigate since they changed the site around, but still nifty).

 
 

Jim: run your characters through the Mikezilla page and most of ’em are gonna display.

 
 

LOL, zero for circa fifteen!

Eff Ewe Dubya Pee.

 
 

[Obligatory joke about a playground right next to a sewer]

New York exported its abattoirs to NJ in the 1800s to heighten the effect.

 
 

And then heightened the effect to heighten the effect.

 
 

No, the Jerseyites did that for us.

 
 

Nelson is pretty and hippie-friendly.

I thought Nelson was Canada’s Branson.

 
 

Thanks … let’s try that again (with several different ones): ☁ ☮ ☣ ❦ ⍨ ✺ ♅ ৳ ⅀ ϟ ƒ ⓙ ☄ !

Of course, you also have the option of just grabbing it once someone posts it in a thread too (though I bet FYWP can screw THAT up too).

 
 

(though I bet FYWP can screw THAT up too)

It will, because it still wants the &# characters. It’s those or nothing.

 
 

Ages since I’ve been there but yeah, Nelson is pretty sweet.

Boggles the mind that they have a Polar Bear Swim just like English Bay in Vancouver does. SRSLY HARDCORE.

 
 

address my envelope, lips! said,
February 1, 2012 at 6:21

My last doctor thinks it’s basically that the nerves have re-learned their function, and interpret everything as pain (it’s a different pain from the osteo-arthritis in my knees and finger joints – that’s just arthritis from years of epee and then historical fencing). I manage okay now with a combo of drugs and lidocaine patches, but I get the usual tsk’ing disapproval from health nuts who think that if I just quit the opiates and thought happy thoughts, I’d be fine.

Wow, that’s some mighty suckage there, lips. It’s a pity you can’t give the nerves a good talking to – the human body is a wondrous thing in all its multitudinous functions, but when something goes awry it’s a right scary fucker.

Viz the happily non-thinking health nuts, they’re quite content to suggest thinking happy thoughts to cure anything from cancer to ingrown toenails, but actual science and medicine seems to work better (or perhaps I’m just wearing my cranky pants). My mother had polymyalgia for some years (along with RSI and a bunch of other things), and got quite tired of the “think happy thoughts” meme. The basic message is that it’s all in your head, which is about as insulting as it gets.

 
 

Boggles the mind that they have a Polar Bear Swim just like English Bay in Vancouver does.

I swam (waded, flailed, whatever) with the Coney Island polar bears in 2000. There’s nothing like having some grandmother from Brighton calling you a wimp to keep you in the water a little longer.

 
 

New post, ya commie pinkos!

 
 

Boggles the mind that they have a Polar Bear Swim just like English Bay in Vancouver does. SRSLY HARDCORE.

They have one here in Coeur D’Alene too…Crazy motherfuckers

 
 

I thought Nelson was Canada’s Branson.

Y’know, we just don’t have anything like Branson. I mean look:

List of entertainers associated with Branson

Ann-Margret
Moe Bandy
Jim Barber
Norman Bergen
Pat Boone
Boxcar Willie
Kirby Van Burch
Glen Campbell
Captain and Tennille
Conlan Carter
Johnny Cash
June Carter Cash
Charo
Dick Clark
Petula Clark
Roy Clark
The Comets
John Davidson
Phyllis Diller
Barbara Fairchild
Mickey Gilley
Robert Goulet
Dino Kartsonakis
Gladys Knight
Cristy Lane
Brenda Lee
Lennon Sisters
Shari Lewis
Rich Little
Barbara Mandrell
Irlene Mandrell
Louise Mandrell
Wayne Newton
Oak Ridge Boys
Tony Orlando
Osmond Family
Gary S. Paxton
Charley Pride
Kenny Rogers
David Silverman
Yakov Smirnoff
Jim Stafford
Ray Stevens
Shoji Tabuchi
Mel Tillis
Bobby Vinton
Lawrence Welk
Andy Williams
Muse Watson

We just don’t have enough igloos to hold all that talent.

 
 

THANKS, PARENTS

Hopefully they will bring back one of those “…all I got was this t-shirt” t-shirt.
.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Hey, Envelope, I go for a nerve conduction test tomorrow afternoon, and I’m really nervous because me and electrical conduction just don’t get along. I was on a Van De Graaf generator once, and my hair not only didn’t go up, I got a lottabuncha shocks from it, and every time I get a static shock (like from a doorknob) it damn near paralyses my entire arm… 🙁 🙁 Got any advice?

Interrobang, I’m so sorry I missed this! I’ve been in the woods all afternoon, and the intarwebs is spotty in my neck of said woods. I hope your test went well, and it’s not really electrical like a Van de Graaf, more like a really weird acupuncture session. Hopefully you got one of the newer doctors who knows how to work the needles, not a damn sadist who wiggles those fuckers until you scream (if the doc does that, tell him tapping gently works just as well, and doesn’t leave emotional scars). Good luck, and I hope it’s nothing serious!

Envelope: The Fenwick Question Machine chimes in: Can we haz swashbuckling epee and sabre stories, pleez? Also moar about fencing with history?

There I was, in a five-man team, all my team-mates “dead”, and all the opposing team very alive. I fought, my husband tells me, so fast my blades were a whirring death machine, and I took out three of them and brought another to her knees before they finally wised up and took my legs, then formed a V-shaped wedge and sliced me up. I matrixed as long as I could, but they finally took me. Apparently, they thought I was cheating and not calling their blows on me, because they left the field without shaking my hand. After I had caught my breath, Hub walked me back to my stuff, and they all came up, looking very shamefaced, and shook my hand. I think the Marshal (referee-type person) gave them a talking-to. 🙂

I’ve been five on one before, but that was the only time I took most of the opposing force before they got me.

 
 

I’ve been five on one before, but that was the only time I took most of the opposing force before they got me.

*sips herbal tea*

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Wow, that’s some mighty suckage there, lips. It’s a pity you can’t give the nerves a good talking to

I wish. Welp, the happy pills of pain-removing do a pretty good job of calming everything down. As for the “think happy!” people, I suppose they’re into victim-blaming (like “The Secret” assholes, and Republicans), because that’s easier than caring.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Heh. You’ll need more than tea to keep your strength up, Whale Chowder.

 
 

100 points to gryffendor.

Well done Sir, well done.

 
 

damn, if i was a lefty, i would be pissed…

Sinister, isn’t it?

An Internets Toobz will be shipped to you shortly, tigris.

 
 

List of entertainers associated with Branson

The Simpsons actually did a song about all the Branson performers being people you thought were dead.

 
 

I fought, my husband tells me, so fast my blades were a whirring death machine

Relevant:

 
 

From Eamonn McCann’s book Dear God: The Price of Religion in Ireland: ‘Brother D was a Kerry man and known as ‘Mad Jack’. He used to call the time when the meal was over. He’d clap his hands and everybody had to freeze. You could have a spoon in your mouth and if you moved an inch you were dead.
‘A favourite of his was to lift a kid up in the air by the ears and then hop him off the dining room floor, which was a cement floor with tiles. Then he would proceed with the leather. I would say now that Brother D was insane.’

This is the testimony of someone who was placed into an orphanage run by the Christian Brothers for the terrible act of being born outside marriage in Ireland in the early 1950s. I mention it in the context of Douthatt’s attempt to suggest that non-state actors with no democratic oversight like, say, a Church, would be better than an actually democratically mandated agency like a well-run social services department.

Note: I’m not saying being Catholic makes you a bad person. I’m saying that there is no replacement for democracy in vital social services. As should be obvious. And now I’ll stop being all serious and that and go drink something.

 
 

Yes, I’m sure Catholic Democrats totally agree with your life-long crusade to try and make Chunky Reese Witherspoon’s life as miserable as possible and aren’t more concerned with that Father McWanderingHands scandal.

lolwut.

Strawman is straw-ey. God, Dout-hat, I’m guessing you mean the 2% of sexually active Catholic ladiezzz who don’t use modern birth control will be butthurt about HHS sticking to its guns?

Douchehat apparently missed the memo that while his leather satin daddy Bishop Dolan was running up to Obama with a lot of big talk about how American Catholics wouldn’t stand for the imposition of birth control coverage, private citizens of the Cat-o’-Lick persuasion were quietly flooding the administration with letters in support of the law and repudiating the bishop. As Rob Boston of Americans United stated, if Timmeh Dolan and his gang (The Ad Hoc Committee To Get Us Some Gummint Cheese) are having trouble keeping their “flock” in line, that’s not really the Federal government’s problem…

 
 

Please support the Religious Right’s right to fleece non-members of its religion. It’s the right thing to do.

Hearted. I mean, I would have done if this were a website where you could heart other users. And had it logins and users. Or upvotes or tipjars or any coin other than verbal cyber-fellatio and snark.

 
 

Btw, I started donating to Americans United for Separation of Church and State last year after many years’ lapse. Their monthly newsletters are really good and the work they do in the media and before Congress countering the greedy bishops’ lies is invaluable. Plus, they sue these motherfuckers constantly. The ones posting ten commandments in front of courthouses and forcing kids to sit through graduation prayers, and so on.

Back in the day we were all a-scared of Jerry Fartwell and his hate-fueled empire, not to mention the evil Pats (Robertson and Buchanan) who wanted to create a theocracy. Well, meet our new bugbear: since the RCC child rape coverup scandal, the Catholic leadership has gone far right and they are desperate for government money to make up for all the multi-billion settlements they had to pay and the rapid dry-up of weekly collections. Actual Catholics don’t want to give them a dime these days, which is why they have to sneak around and steal our tax dollars instead, while using clowns like William Donohue to claim any objection is “anti-Catholic bias”.

The sad thing is that the more they pull this ridiculous and disgusting shit, the more I find myself agreeing with old school Episcopalian/Anglican rhetoric against the Catholic Church. (The kind of stuff I used to think from my sheltered, American Catholic background, to be lies made up from whole cloth.) The child-rape apologists need to rediscover that old-time religious value, SHAME, and go the fuck away for a while.

 
 

Islam doesn’t have a heirarchy with Al Qaeda at the top of it.

No, but radical Imam after radical Imam has proposed jihad against America.

Um, actor? That’s like saying Episcopalians should have staged a mass exodus from the pews after Pat Robertson blamed the devastation due to hurricane Katrina on gay people. You can’t compare a top-down authoritarian organization like the Roman Catholic Church, which does not hesitate to censure, punish, and silence priests, professors, nuns, hospital administrators, and even politicians who get out of line to the fractious and diverse world of Christianity in general. Islam, too, is no monolith and contains a number of competing (and philosophically discordant) schools of thought. I don’t know enough about the history of Islam to tell you if there are cults within the Muslim world which compare in organization and tactics to the RCC, even in microcosm, but I would be more surprised if there were not. It seems to be human nature for some members of the community to seek out this authoritarian snake oil. The Mormon church, though created by a man who came from a mainline Protestant community, resembles the Catholic Church closely in many aspects. Self-perpetuating, viral* memeplex, y’all.

*you know, that’s a bit of a mixed metaphor. er, scratch “viral”… Mormanism is more bacterial I think, spreading in a biofilm, and so is Catholicism, trying to inject its genes into other religions and vice-versa. Plus both religions like to take over by fiat. “Oh, we own this town now, so get busy bowing down to our god.”

 
 

brrrrrr, Christian Brothers

Australia has similar stories

There is a very ugly side to the adoption industry. Even in this country there was a history of essentially forced adoption which those agencies would loooooove to bring back. That’s not happening, though–more and more grown women are having their children out of wedlock.

These scumbags have an interest in:
*outlawing abortion
*outlawing birth control
*slut-shaming unmarried women
*banning IVF (so infertile couples must adopt)
*fighting open adoption laws (which are needed so adoptees have access to their medical history–the agencies want adoptions closed so that adoptees won’t find out that their birth mother was coerced into giving them up or so the birth mother won’t change her mind)

I think it’s a great thing that a flap over same sex marriage is getting Catholic-controlled groups^1 out of the adoption business. They’re for all the same things but the last because dried up old prune prelates are furious that all the willful females in their pews don’t listen to them.

1-NB that until Ratzi took office as Pope, many of these groups were semi-independent and full of well-meaning, progressive laity and people of the cloth (especially nuns). However, towards the end of JPII’s tenure and especially once he was invested, Ratzi has been on a tear demanding ideological purity and obedience from every Catholic-affiliated organization and every priest and nun.

He must have learned that from his days in the Hitler Jugend — Gleichschaltung was a major project of the Nazi government in the 1930’s.

 
 

Yes, I know this was a dead thread. But Google sees all, Google knows all. Had to get that stuff off my chest. Also. Too.

Additionally.

 
 

[…] good defense of the HHS ruling was made by Joan Walsh, Katha Pollitt, and Sadly, No!. Advertisement GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]

 
 

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