you know how i said my last posting was unbelievable?

well this one is JUST as unbelievable if not MORE so. let's just say i believed the story the police are giving. the one where the 86 year old BEDRIDDEN woman pulls a knife out from under the covers (i find that unlikely but let's just say i DID believe it). you are going to tell me a MESS of cops couldn't subdue her. they had to TAZE her (don't taze my grandma bro)

(as a side note, i usually DO agree with the side of the officers. if someone pulls a gun or a knife on them, in MOST cases, well they are trained to do what they have to do. but an effing 86 year old bedridden disabled woman on oxygen?????????????/ NO FUCKING WAY)

Oklahoma granny gets shocked by Taser; sues El Reno police

BY NOLAN CLAY, Staff Writer, nclay@opubco.com 

EL RENO — Police officers here are being sued for using a Taser last December to subdue a disabled grandmother, then 86, in her apartment bed.  Her grandson pleaded with officers, "Don't taze my Granny!" according to the lawsuit.
"I wouldn't want it to happen to anyone else," Lona M. Varner, now 87, told The Oklahoman Thursday.
She and her grandson, Lonnie D. Tinsley, on Monday sued the city of El Reno, officer Thomas Duran, officer Frank Tinga, officer Joseph Sandberg and other unknown police officers.
Varner and Tinsley allege in the federal lawsuit in Oklahoma City that their civil rights were violated. They also allege the city has failed to adequately train and discipline its police officers.
A city attorney, Roger Rinehart, said the city would have no comment. Assistant Police Chief Kevin Wilkerson said, "With the federal lawsuit, we can't make any comment on it right now."
Police have admitted using a Taser to incapacitate the suicidal woman Dec. 22. Officer Duran wrote in a police report she pulled a kitchen knife from under her pillow and threatened to kill him. "I tried talking to Varner and calm her down but nothing would work," he reported.......

Read more: http://newsok.com/oklahoma-granny-gets-shocked-by-taser-sues-el-reno-police/article/3471297?custom_click=masthead_topten#ixzz0ryWLSqUb

 

sometimes you just CANNOT believe how evil people can be

 i am not even talking about the molester here. i'm talking about the SCHOOL DISTRICT WHO BLAMED A 17 YEAR OLD WITH CEREBRAL PALSY for her caregiver molesting her

School district blames disabled student for own molestation

By Muriel Kane

When a teacher's aide at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, CA was arrested for molesting one of the special-ed students under his care, the school district's first impulse was to cover the incident up and hope no one would find out.

Now the student's parents have sued the Santa Ana Unified School District for negligently keeping on an employee that other parents had been complaining about for years. The district's lawyers have responded by not only blaming the mentally disabled girl for her own abuse but asking that the judge dismiss the charges and make the victim's family pay the district's legal fees.

The seventeen-year-old victim, who has cerebral palsy, has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old and is confined to a wheelchair. Because she is unable to speak, no one knows exactly what was happening when another school employee found her alone in a room with Alonso Manuel Gonzalez, with her shirt pulled up and her breasts exposed, but the incident resulted in the aide's arrest for a "lewd act with dependent adult.".............

 

fuck japan (on this one)

sort of like fuck mexico and fuck spain on bullfighting. i love those countries and MOST of their culture. i cannot and will not accept killing whales and killing bulls in bullfighting. 

that said, i do watch whale wars on an infrequent basis (no tv. i watch in places other than my house). i am inspired by it. i'm not sure i agree with everything they do, i just think they are some of the most dedicated and courageous people i've ever seen.  i  would love to possess some of what they do. laying their lives on the line (literally mind you) for their beliefs. 

anyway, FUCK JAPAN on this one (and FUCK interpol and the international whaling commission and any and everyone else who allow japanese whaling to go on). japan, you're not fooling ANYONE. you are not killing whales for research. you're killing them to eat and to use as 'medicine' or cosmetics or whatever.

Anti-whaling leader on Interpol wanted list

By Agence France-Presse

TOKYO — Interpol this week placed the head of US-based anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd on an international wanted list at Japan's request, authorities in Tokyo said Friday.

The Japan Coastguard was informed by Interpol Thursday about the listing of Canadian Paul Watson, 59, for allegedly conspiring to harass whaling ships in Antarctic clashes in February, a coastguard spokeswoman said.

The coastguard filed the request with the French-based police service in April as part of Japan's long-running battle with militant environmentalists from Watson's Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Kyodo News said Japan had asked Interpol to issue a so-called blue notice, asking national police forces to provide information on Watson's whereabouts and activities, but not a red notice requesting his arrest...................

the sea shepherd conservation society 

clownwars

via

all takes place IN a vagina

PRIVATES: action-packed reproductive health edu-game (in your naughty bits)
Cory Doctorow

what a GIANT load o' steamin' shite

eff ALL of this crap! you, wapo actually have the nerve to present a NON-SATIRICAL video (linked on the first page of your website) to an interview with some cheesy jewelry designer (i've nvere heard of) who comments on women in power and leadership roles in the government? i went to this creatures website and splashed right there is 'as seen on/in (whatever) sex in the city'. well right there that tells me what i'm in for.

here's one of her items. the mudflap grrrrl with ruby nipples. yup. i'm going to trust someones opinion of women who thinks something like this (again, in a NON satirical way) empowers women or sheds a good light on women. and please take special note of the title of the 'article'. this is embarrassing wapo.




and for those who believe they'll become too sickened by the video, here's a link to the transcript Transcript: Wendy Brandes on why fashion 'torments' women leaders
pic (of the hunk o' jewelry objectifying women, from the  wendy brandes website

yes!

via

we can spend thursday with the mountain goats too!

i dunno, i rather LIKE this piece

SECRETAIRE A ABATTANT D'EPOQUE LOUIS XV ESTAMPILLE DE PIERRE ROUSSEL

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

nice gun 

god almighty!

fascinating!

The amazing—animated—story of the writer who couldn't read

Maggie Koerth-Baker at 6:52 PM Wed 

One morning, novelist Howard Engel went to get the paper and found that the English language suddenly looked like gibberish to him. Letters no longer had meaning—they were just incomprehensible marks on a page. And, yet, he could still write.

There's a fascinating (and beautifully animated) video that explains what happened, and how Engel has managed to re-teach himself to read. I'd post it here, but the code provided keeps giving me an embeded audio interview, instead. It is very much worth following the link. Naturally, this is an Oliver Sacks joint, along with NPR and artist Lev Yilmaz......

pic:

Lev Yilmaz for NPR

bob cesca has got a few words to say about boss hogg

Governor Haley Barbour: A New Level of Stupid

Bob Cesca

I never thought I'd write this, but I think we've discovered a new level of stupid below the heretofore impenetrable Sarah Palin floor.

It's not unlike the discovery of a previously unknown species of protohuman deep within a cave somewhere, revealing some new twist in the constantly expanding canon of human evolution. There is, in fact, a Republican of national prominence who makes Sarah Palin seem brighter and less contradictory by comparison. That's not to say Palin has miraculously become smarter or better spoken, it's just that the idiot curve is now redrawn in her favor.

Yes, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi is arguably the new king of all Republican stupids. Palin must now relinquish her Twitter feed, her fork cork and her trident. For Haley Barbour has arrived................

 

 

raining oil

via

thursday with everything but the girl

absurdity

nothing more to add to this story. 

GOP senator’s ‘women’s issues’ aide sliced girlfriend with knife and threatened to kill her

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter accepted the resignation of a longtime aide Wednesday after a news report disclosed repeated brushes with the law dating to the 1990s, the Republican's office said Wednesday.

ABC News reported that the aide, Brent Furer, pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges stemming from a knife-wielding altercation with an ex-girlfriend and still is wanted on an open warrant in Baton Rouge stemming from an unresolved misdemeanor DWI charge.

The report said Furer eventually pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges, including threatening harm and destruction of property, in connection with the altercation with his ex-girlfriend.

Vitter spokesman Joel DiGrado said Vitter's office was aware of that incident two years ago, and that the aide left the office for several months during that time as the court adjudicated the case, ordering a fine and community service.................

i don't think it's funny or cute OR clever

 their apology is the BEST. do they think we're THAT stupid? well yes, i guess they do. and some of  us ARE

Spirit Airlines Ad Objectifies Women, Mocks Oil Spill

 

Via Jezebel:

Today Spirit Airlines came out with this advertisement for coastal flights, featuring a greased-up woman in a bikini, with the header: “Check Out The Oil On Our Beaches.”

This ad is particularly tacky for multiple reasons– exploiting women as well as the oil crisis. This time, it’s not just the feminists who are upset. Spirit received so many complaints, it took down the ad and posted this apology on its site:

It is unfortunate that some have misunderstood our intention with today’s beach promotion.  We are merely addressing the false perception that we have oil on our beaches, and we are encouraging customers to support Florida and our other beach destinations by continuing to travel to these vacation hot spots..

 

wow is just about all i can muster up to say here

The Lives of Lepers in ‘60s Iran: Forough Farrokhzad’s Powerful Film The House is Black
Posted by Ron Nachmann

There may be a short film that’s quite as vivid, courageous and intense as poet Forough Farrokhzad’s Khaneh Siyah Ast (The House is Black)—her 1962 portrait of a leper colony in the northwest of her native Iran—but I can’t think of it. Farrokhzad was a Tehran-born female poet born in 1935 to a career military officer and married off to the satiric writer Parviz Shapour at age 16. Farrokhzad divorced Shapour two years later and lost custody of her one-year-old child.

As much as it surfaces the sufferings of a rejected population, the 22-minute Khaneh… (excerpted below) clearly but subtly reflects Farrokhzad’s own attitude about autocratic Iranian society’s disapproval of her as a strong woman poet. The twenty-something scribe weaves her verse in voiceover throughout the footage, and her raw editing style moves agilely between long studies and quick cuts. The film would inspire the Iranian New Wave in cinema that flourished starting in the late’60s..............

used to be? USED to be? hmmmmmmmm

via

suddenly i don't feel like taking that dip

via

isn't there some sort of saying about

about the inmates running the asylum? normally that wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing unless of course the inmates are bp and they're controlling not only the coast guard BUT the louisiana police departments as well


Louisiana Police Pull Over Activist at Behest of BP
-Mac McClelland

Everyone knows by now that BP is still blocking press access to oil-spill sites even though they're not supposed to anymore. I've been blathering about it for weeks, and it's been all of three days since four contractors wouldn't let me through the Pointe Aux Chenes marina outside Montegut, Louisiana. And though as of June 16 the federal government was saying helicopters could fly reporters as low as 1,500 feet around spill sites, on June 17 I was on a helicopter that was prohibited from flying below 3,000 feet (and whose pilot flipped silent birds at the "military guys" coming over the radio and hassling him about being in the area at all). But Louisiana state police pulling over a video camera-wielding private citizen because the head of BP security wanted to ask him some questions is a whole other level of alarming.

Last week, Drew Wheelan, the conservation coordinator for the American Birding Association, was filming himself across the street from the BP building/Deepwater Horizon response command in Houma, Louisiana. As he explained to me, he was standing in a field that did not belong to the oil company when a police officer approached him and asked him for ID and "strongly suggest[ed]" that he get lost since "BP doesn't want people filming":.......

here's the actual rolling stone piece

The Runaway General

By  Michael Hastings

This article appears in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010, on newsstands Friday, June 25.

'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him. 

"The dinner comes with the position, sir," says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn. 

McChrystal turns sharply in his chair.

"Hey, Charlie," he asks, "does this come with the position?".........

pic:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, works on board a Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft between Battlefield Circulation missions. 

U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Mark O’Donald/NATO

i believe i posted the picture

a while ago. here it is again

thinkgeek
received (in their own words)

Officially our best-ever cease and desist

 

Recently we got the best-ever cease and desist letter. We're no stranger to the genre, so what could possibly make this one stand out from the rest?

First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds.

But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it's for a fake product we launched for April Fool's day.

It wasn't the iCade, or the Dharma Initiative Clock, or even the Tribbles 'n' Bits Breakfast Cereal.

No, it was the Canned Unicorn Meat.

The very special but also very real letter is from the National Pork Board, who claims we're infringing on the slogan "The Other White Meat," a slogan they're apparently thinking about phasing out anyways. A screengrab of the product page is below.

 

the picture is entitled awesome fence

and it sure as shite IS!

via

what?

this is how i drive



via

my favorite

of the 10 'weirdest' sleeping bags?

why this one of course!

mary mccarthy

Photo by Nina Leen, 1944 - LIFE

via

it's shake your moneymaker tuesday here at ravings

via

me at the kitchen table

via

uh ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 sure do hope the book publishers didn't print these new fiction textbooks yet.

Texas Can’t Afford To Buy New Far-Right Textbooks, But Rick Perry Still Resists Federal Aid

 By Guest Blogger

For the past year, far-right members of the Texas Board of Education have been overhauling the state’s textbook standards. The changes include “pushing for inclusion of more…Confederate glorification,” re-naming the Atlantic slave trade the “Atlantic Triangle Trade,” prioritizing “a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified,” and raising doubt about climate change.

However, the Texas Observer now reports that the state can’t afford to buy the new books:

The state normally replaces textbooks on a rotating basis every 10 years. With Texas facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion in 2011, the money isn’t going to be there. Textbooks covering the new science standards would have cost $400 million, and the Legislature is already expecting a bill of $888 million for textbooks already ordered.

To ensure that students can still be exposed to “proof, supposedly, of evolution’s fallibility,” the Board is trying to secure funding for special “supplements for science classes from fifth grade through high school.” Social studies textbooks aren’t up for replacement until 2013 — by then, Texas might have enough money to teach their students about Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.

if the wild and wacky re-pug-lickins of texas

EVER got this to pass, THEY would be the first ones thrown in the click. if you don't believe some of 'em engage in 'sodomy' you are either naive or STUPID

this is ALMOST funny (but it's not)

TX GOP platform: Re-criminalize sodomy, make gay marriage a felony

By Stephen C. Webster

Texas Republicans are a conservative lot. Still, it's difficult to imagine mainstream GOP voters demanding their neighbors be jailed for engaging in a little hanky-panky behind closed doors.

Nevertheless, the state's Republican party has voted on a platform [PDF link] by which their candidates will stand, and it includes the reinstatement of laws banning sodomy: otherwise known as oral and anal sex.

The party's platform also seeks to make gay marriage a felony offense, which may be confusing to most given that the state does not sanction or recognize same sex marriages, meaning any such ceremony conducted does not bear the weight of law. Whether this means the GOP wants gay couples married in other states to be pursued through Texas as dangerous criminals, the party did not specify.

"We oppose the legalization of sodomy," the platform states. "We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy."..................

 

i wonder how the repug-lickens will react to this?

i don't really. i KNOW they'll welcome this. however, if this happened to king george, they would have called for both heads to roll AND heads on platters. no one, literally and figuratively would be safe from their purges. 

 me? now i don't mind complaining about the bosses now and again. it's only natural. i wouldn't trust someone who was happy with everything. BUT and it's a giant BUT, YOU NEVER EVER let an outsider (i.e. a reporter) know you're not happy with the powers that be (if you're on active duty that is). what a bunch o' chumps. an apology isn't enough for me. HEADS SHOULD ROLL (simply for the stupidity factor)

Top allied commander apologizes for magazine profile

Ernesto Londoño

Washington Post Foreign Service  

KABUL -- The top U.S. general in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday over a magazine article that portrays him and his staff as flippant and dismissive of top Obama administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy.

The profile in Rolling Stone magazine, titled the "Runaway General," is certain to increase tension between the White House and Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

It also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander Obama appointed last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.

McChrystal and some of his senior advisors are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted calling national security adviser James Jones a "clown.".............

are we not men?

we are kitties!

how many times do i have to tell you?

NO socks, NO socks, NO socks! (and i MEAN IT)

 from

via

sorry, lots of shots of my friends and i

via

my bumbershoot and i are on the left

pam has quite the comprehensive posting on this

What do BP, its PR disaster and the LGBT community have in common?

by: Pam Spaulding 

Hilary Rosen. The former honcho of the HRC, the RIAA, and now-former political director of Huff Post is knee-deep (or is it neck-deep) in this BP quagmire as part of its image clean-up effort, which surely pulls in big bucks for her.

 

After the spill, the company brought on crisis communicator Hilary Rosen, former Democratic congressional staffer, former chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, and a current editor-at-large for HuffingtonPost.com. Ms. Rosen heads the Washington-based office of U.K. communications firm the Brunswick Group. Public records are not yet available on the new Brunswick contract. Ms. Rosen declined to be interviewed on the record.....................

careful with that superglue

from

via

my friends and i acting all coy and what not

via

you SHOULD

totally apologize to bp

via

da LIEbs is a giant wad (but we all know that)

do i believe this?

yes, i sure as shite do

from joe my god


 LAS VEGAS: Gay Wal-Mart Worker Forced To Wear Special Vest

An 18 year-old employee at a Las Vegas area Wal-Mart says that after his bosses forced him to confirm his gayness, he was made to wear a special yellow vest and was shunned by his co-workers.

Back in March, 18-year-old Fernando Gallardo got a seasonal job at a Las Vegas Walmart, hoping to make a few extra dollars. But a few weeks into the job, Gallardo says, his immediate supervisor asked him "point-blank" in front of four of his coworkers if he was gay, and from then on alienated him from the 50 other associates at that location. "I told her yes, and after that she was very rude and short with me," he tells The Advocate. Gallardo says that soon after the incident, he was stripped of many of his daily duties and asked to wear a yellow vest and walk around the store. By mid May his supervisor and two other managers stopped talking to him completely...............

oh sookie, you ever been to la?

ok, this IS funny. especially the sookie BLING

i don't have an opinion on this yet

i DO wish  to thank dr ehlers for her work though. a rape victim haunted her for forty years. she promised a rape victim 40 years ago she'd do something. dr ehlers HAS done something. i'm not sure it's the right thing. it very well MAY be. i don't know. i have to think about this a bit.

South African doctor invents female condoms with 'teeth' to fight rape
By Faith Karimi, CNN

(CNN) -- South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers was on call one night four decades ago when a devastated rape victim walked in. Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse.

"She looked at me and said, 'If only I had teeth down there,'" recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. "I promised her I'd do something to help people like her one day."

Forty years later, Rape-aXe was born.

Ehlers is distributing the female condoms in the various South African cities where the World Cup soccer games are taking place.

The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside and attach on a man's penis during penetration, Ehlers said.

Once it lodges, only a doctor can remove it -- a procedure Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest...........

pic: Dr. Sonnet Ehlers shows a spiked female condom, whose hooks she says stick on a man during rape.

stunning

see all the photos of infrared trees here

via

like flush ever ever ever knew hunger

More reaction to Limbaugh's child hunger joke

by Chris in Paris 

 

As if Limbaugh would have any idea about poverty or hunger. Of course he's saying these comments to provoke reaction but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be called out for it. Better still, his vocal supporters in Congress and beyond ought to be asked if they agree with his remarks.

More from James Weill, President of the Food Research and Action Center on the HuffingtonPost.com:When schools close their doors for the summer, millions of low-income children lose access to school meals. Hunger spikes in the summer months, and so does childhood obesity when kids don't get healthy school breakfast and lunch. It's likely that this summer will even be worse for families still reeling from the recession. Fortunately, there are programs that exist that help many -- but not enough low-income children get healthy lunches when school is out.

In his comments, Rush Limbaugh suggests that children instead should seek cheap fast food or dumpster-dive to stave off hunger in the summer..............  

one of my favorites

Edward Gorey

via

nice set of japanese art at 'a journey round my skull'

Japanese, 1927 magazine cover

via

murder? i think it is

CORPORATE MURDER?

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

A mass murder has taken place in another American workplace, taking 29 lives. The authorities know who did it, so shouldn't that person be made to pay for this heinous crime?

Yes! But the killer is one of America's largest coal corporations, Massey Energy Company, and you can't give the death penalty to a corporation. Can you? Well, the Supreme Court has ruled that a corporation is a "person" – so why not?

Massey – headed by its right-wing multimillionaire CEO, Don Blankenship – has spent millions of dollars on lobbyists and lawmakers to fend off any effective regulations to protect mine workers. By using its political clout to muzzle the federal watchdog, Massey has been able to flaunt the law. Last year, it had nearly 500 safety violations in just one of its mines, including life-threatening violations. It's punishment? Fines totaling a mere $168,000 – chump change to an outfit with $56 million in profits last year.................

the headline speaks volumes

but NOT to worry, bp DOES care about the little peeps

https://nytimes.com/2010/06/20/us/20spill.html?hp">BP Chief Draws Outrage for Attending Yacht Race

pic:

Chris Ison/Press Association, via Associated Press

Tony Hayward’s yacht, left, sailed in the J. P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race on Saturday.