Dead babies

You'll note that the alleged "pro-lifers", the most dishonest term a group ever labeled itself with, are mot screaming and freaking about about this. Probably hard to get their heads around anything that doesn't make them feel super-cool and all jesusy. Fucktards.
I'd like to know what they're prepared to do about it. The US has a better record on infant mortality, in the industrial world, than...Latvia. Nothing against Latvians. But, err, you know...wealthiest country in the world, all that. Of course, "doing something" would require helping poor people. And BROWN PEOPLE! Oh mah gawd, if rich white xtians started helping brown people, then where does it stop! Next thing you know they'll be raising families and having a longer life expectancy! Getting good paying jobs! Where will our serfs come from?! Won't anyone think of the serfs!
Nah, instead, we'll just let babies die, because we don't want government running healthcare. Never mind that a single-payer system has nothing to do with government running healthcare and everything to do with people helping each other. Let's just stick with that "rugged individualist" bullshit the lying "conservatives" and pie-in-the-sky libertarians yammer about.
Bunch of shitsuckers.

scry? cream?

the two words that immediately leap to mind for combining scream and cry are taken, so i'll just say, reading THIS made me do all four. Seriously, read the whole thing.

Here's the best part:

"In this post-911 era, it is the absolute responsibility of the FBI to follow through on any tips of potential terrorist activity," Parris says. "Are people going to take exception and be inconvenienced by this at times? Oh, yeah. ... A certain amount of convenience is going to be offset by an increase in security."

Convenience? FREEDOM. Freedom to move, to go through your day not under surveillance, to read what you choose without intimidation. Who's the fucking stooge who called the FBI, I wonder?

We should all call the FBI, every day. Every chance we get, we should tell them something suspicious. Basically ratchet up that noise to signal ratio til spying on American citizens in our own country becomes useless.

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
Benjamin Franklin

Greg

HURRICANE GEORGE:
How the White House Drowned New Orleans ^{(fuckin donate -ed)}

by Greg Palast ^(Youtube)
[Thursday, August 23] It's been two years. And America's media is about to have another tear-gasm over New Orleans. Maybe Anderson Cooper will weep again. The big networks will float into the moldering corpse of the city and give you uplifting stories about rebuilding and hope.

Now, let's cut through the cry-baby crap. Here's what happened two years ago - and what's happening now.

This is what an inside source me. And it makes me sick:

"By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."

^{(fuckin donate -ed)}


The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistle-blower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA and the Army Corp hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe - and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

^{(fuckin donate -ed)}

Van Heerden revealed:

"FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2p.m. they flew over he 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.

That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God - but a catastrophic failure of the levees is a act of Bush. That is, under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage - and the deaths - a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, that "these people must be compensated."

The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi levees to withstand known dangers - or pay the price when they fail.

^{(fuckin donate -ed)}

Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes, New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the flood waters wiped away 190 homes. The feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million apiece - the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.

There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes, the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks. Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home Guantanamo - with no plan whatsoever for their return.

And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from Hurricane George.

^{(fuckin donate -ed)
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iowa poll

leading into the far-distant iowa caucuses, which show us what...iowans....think about presidential prospects, we find that 51% of Iowa Republicans want us out of Iraq in six months.
Not "51% of California Liberals" or "51% of New York Elites" or "51% of Miami Beach Crossdressers"
Those are Midwestern conservatives. People who, in a very real way, are responsible for getting our people in there where they are killed every day. People who helped us to achieve George W. Bush.

Why isn't Congress bringing them home?

Congress won't do it. They won't even entertain the idea of impeachment. The Executive branch, wholly-owned subsidiary of GOP Inc and the Halliburton Corp, won't. They don't give two fucks. They like watching people get killed, it's fun on the teevee.
The Judicial branch won't do it. They are a minor holding of the above companies.

The only people who can do it are We the People. We have to engage in direct and indirect activities to get A) war-profiteering Democrats and 2) Cowardly congresscritters of any stripe OUT of congress, and get real Americans with some spine in. 2006 was a start...but it didn't work. Congress rolled over on FISA, ran from the Bush Escalation, and won't even THINK about impeachment. They practically need a lie-down every time Bush says "veto!" We need fighters and scrappers in congress, ones without the milky teat of corporate money clenched firmly between their teeth. The good part? We can elect them! WE can, not the corporate-owned media. But WE have to get off our asses. If the Dems won't do it, the only logical reason is that they, or their masters, are profiting insanely from this disgusting meatgrinder they've built in Iraq. And they want it expanded into Iran and Syria!

So stand the fuck up and stop crying. We have 2008 coming up, and we have pressure we can bring til then. It's Americans that got these fools elected and it's Americans that will have to whip some ass if they don't do what we want. Iowa Conservatives, California Liberals (hi!), New York Elites, and Miami Beach Crossdressers, everything between, beyond, and to all sides of them...If we don't, no one will.

eh

not a whole lot of questions to get much of a nuanced answer, but i agree with the outcome.

You Are 100% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

le Rique

Cuz I effin well can.

Joe Strummer talks about "If I Should Fall From Grace with God" and then the Pogues play it. Shane seems a lil bit off...but I think much of his life was a little off. In a good fuckin' way.

The Pogues
"If I Should Fall from Grace with God"
If I Should Fall from Grace with God

If I should fall from grace with god
Where no doctor can relieve me
If Im buried neath the sod
But the angels wont receive me

Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

This land was always ours
Was the proud land of our fathers
It belongs to us and them
Not to any of the others

Let them go, boys
Let them go, boys
Let them go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

Bury me at sea
Where no murdered ghost can haunt me
If I rock upon the waves
Then no corpse can lie upon me

Its coming up three, boys
Keeps coming up three, boys
Let them go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

If I should fall from grace with god
Where no doctor can relieve me
If Im buried neath the sod
But the angels wont receive me

Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry

family, right

Karl Rove to retire. Claims he wants to spend more time with his family...his son in college. while your child is away at college is surely the most likely time you'd want to spend time with him. nothing like having your dad wandering around campus...hey wait...wasn't that in American Pie? i think that Rove would wanna be the one porking a baked good, but only if it was in the shape of a firm boy bottom. it's almost a requirement of bigoted douchebag republicans to be closeted gays now isn't it? no wonder they promote nasty undead creatures like ann coulter so rapidly

mitt romney is a huge douche

here he is on why his sons haven't served:

"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

Stupid son of a bitch. Kind of nicely encapsulates the GOP in its current form. It's good for muckin Fitt, so it must be good for the country. Proceeds directly from the current barnacle clinging to the white house furniture. Stupid fucking bastards.

Wowowow

Ok, my new host is interesting. I apparently can publish via ftp to blogger, but only if i'm willing to wait 9 hours for it to complete uploading, and occasionally have my entire site deleted, like happened last night.

this has been quite a journey. almost wish I'd just paid globat the 50 bucks they were trying to extort from me. if they'd ever once said anything other than "tough shit, pay up" to me, i would have. assholes. now i hate them again. good old anger. you can always rely on it in times of worry.

here i'll be

til the new hosting is set up.

http://babyfightblog.blogspot.com/

my host is a fucktard

I may go offline for a bit. you can use my other accounts to contact me or AIM. my host added a "promo pak" to my account, despite my repeated strident requests for them to not do it. still, they added $50 on to my bill. i've actually called them and told them not to do it ever, and yet here they are. they claim it's part of my user agreement. i agreed to pay for a certain amount of hosting, and that's it. so i may get shitcanned by the evil shitsucking assholes at GLOBAT web hosting.
if babyfight disappears for a while, that's why. never, ever use GLOBAT WEB HOSTING. They will lie to your face and attempt to extort money from you.

bridges

the Twin Cities I-35 collapse is horrifying...but it's just one of either 36 or 37 collapses since 1989 (i can't remember exactly), according to a dude on NPR. that's two bridges a year... a member of the American Association of Civil Engineers stated that the only way to fix this is to...fix them. he also said it's sad that it had to be a disaster this big to get people's attention. but that's not true...the levees in New Orleans were a civil engineering failure, and there was a steam explosion in Manhattan that was the same. These are the inevitable result of long years of anti-government policies, shrinking of spending on infrastructure, and a general loss of the "we're all in this together" attitude that characterized the New Deal (which is when a lot of this failing infrastructure was built, by the way).
so either we're in it together, and we pull together and fix and properly maintain our shared assests, ie the infrastructure...bridges, tunnels, pipes, dams, canals, powerlines and other stuff, or we fall apart even worse, and slide back into a primitive tribal state.
what do you think is best?