01/28/11
Gay Activist Murdered in Uganda, American Christians partly responsible.
UPDATE: But, some of my best friends are… Story identifying the three American Christians who went to Uganda to stir up anti-gay sentiment. “But, I didn’t mean THAT.” The problem with fomenting discrimination: you never know where your audience will stop, or, in this case, not stop.
01/29/11
Republicans redefine “rape.” Caution, not for those with weak stomachs. The images of porcine white guys defining rape under the direction of Agent Orange are enough to drive any sane person to nausea. But, of course, we’ve been through this before.
01/30/11
Racism is often a function of what people do say, but it can also pop up in what people do not say. Even as the mainstream press has been eager, as they should be, to cover the nine year old girl who died in the recent attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords, another nine year old girl died recently in a shooting, but no one seems to care. Can the vast difference in the amount of attention these two incidents have received be completely unrelated to the fact that the unfamous girl, Brisenia Flores, was the Hispanic daughter of Mexican immigrants, and her alleged killer is a total white (trash) woman who is part of the Minutemen militia group who had gone “operational,” meaning that they were looking for money and weapons to steal from drug dealers at the border (two wrongs make a right?), so they entered the Flores’ home on the pretext of being law enforcement officers (three wrongs make a right?), then shot Flores’ father, then young Brisenia, whose last words allegedly were, “Why did you shoot my mom?” The only good news in all of this is that the woman who allegedly murdered poor Brisenia is currently on trial for her crime.
UPDATE: Murderer convicted. Praise Buddha.
01/31/11
Your favorite Tea Party Bimbo and mine, Michele Bachmann, wants to sacrifice the health and well-being of veterans to her budget-cutting fantasia. Conservatives are very quick to scream, “support our troops” any time anyone criticizes their stupid, irresponsible wars, but they refuse to acknowledge the distinction between supporting the troops and dissenting from the dumb decisions of the political leaders who send them to war, and even as they’re ever-eager to start more wars, they are the ones who consistently fail to support the troops by trying to compensate for their idiotic tax cuts as panacea policy position by cutting veterans benefits. George II did the same thing. This is just grotesque. There can be no better illustration of the profound hypocrisy and cynicism of Republicans who intone piously about the enormous sacrifice troops make in combat for their country, then proceed to make that sacrifice even greater by yanking the rug out from under them when they come back, often gravely wounded, psychologically and physically, and deserve all of the first-rate health care they can consume at no cost for the rest of their lives. If Republicans wish to avoid incurring the cost of such care, they should quit starting wars.
01/31/11
Pay China First. A Republican member of Congress will introduce a bill requiring the U.S. government to make payments to holders of government debt before paying anyone else — e.g., veterans, Social Security recipients, doctors who care for Medicare patients, etc — if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. It has a kind of twisted logic to it,if you’re the sort who favors business above all else, as we know the Republicans do. Seems like bad politics to me, though. Lots of American citizens will get really pissed off if they do this.
02/01/11
Ain’t that about twisted? I think few things are quite as grotesque as using sentient creatures as commodities. String these folks up.
Blame the victim. This butthole says Gabrielle Giffords is to blame for getting shot, since she appeared in public with no security, and that leftists are exploiting the attack on her for political advantage, although the story cites a Tea Party group in California that is raising funds off of it. Klassy with a capital K, as a friend of mine used to say.
02/02/11
Not sure that this one quite qualifies as an Outrage compared to the other entries on this page, but it’s pretty bad, and although this story only addresses conservative PACs, there’s no reason to doubt that some liberal PACs do the same thing, so, donor beware. You can always ask anyone who solicits a donation, so, just how much of the funds you raise do you spend on political activity, and how much on administration?
Boy, those reich-wingers and their zeal to discredit Planned Parenthood just never quit. When I was working on clinic defense in Nashville in the early 1990s, a group of the zealots snuck in the back door to steal the financial records in order to “prove” that Planned Parenthood actually turned a profit, and was therefore ineligible for non-profit status.
02/05/11
You’re funding jobs in India. Ain’t that swell?
02/06/11
The Reflublicans’ vote to repeal the health care reform act doesn’t quite qualify as an outrage simply because it was a completely pointless political gesture. It was at least as outrageous for the complete waste of public funds involved as for the substantive effort to repeal health care reform.
02/08/11
UN Panel removes “sexual orientation” from list of reasons to refrain from “arbitrary executions.” Huh? Meaning, apparently, that there is ever such a thing as a valid, arbitrary execution? Um, since when? Given that all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is arbitrary in lacking any reasonable justification in public policy or law, then in principle, one should not need to add sexual orientation or gender identity to lists of categories of persons who should not live subject to “arbitrary executions,” apart from the basic fact that no one should live subject to “arbitrary execution.”
02/09/11
THIS is truly outrgeous. This kind of shit (with apologies to my dear Mother, but there is no better word for it) does not happen to married couples. SHAME.
02/10/11
Hey, I know her! That’s Marisa Richmond, my male-to-female transsexual friend from Tennessee. Her picture’s on the cover of this report on discrimination against transpersons.
Six murders of transwomen in recent weeks in Honduras, with apparent official indifference in this still heavily Catholic country. Big surprise. The Catholic Church is only good at keeping track of its own child-molesting priests, and then only to move them from parish to parish.
Probably not budding transperson, but only time will tell. As one who used to cross-dress as a small boy (as Mrs. Glontz, no clue where that came from), and whose mother just sort of took it in stride, I find these posts fascinating. I first ran across this story soon after it started, around Halloween, then just saw the follow up today. You’ll need to read earlier posts, which she has conveniently linked for you, to get the full story, but I say, you go girl. Way to stand up for your kid.
Can you say, “unconstitutional”? Forcing soldiers to see a chaplain after suffering characterization as a “spiritual failure”? Um, I don’t think so. Not acceptable. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….” U.S. Constitution, Amendment One. Interesting to note this soldier’s explicit claim that the Army’s treatment of him has made him MORE likely to kill himself, rather than less. Maybe not making this poor boy go back into combat after multiple Purple Hearts would improve his morale a bit. Um, I have an idea: let’s withdraw all of our combat troops from Afghanistan and Iraq immediately and, of course, stop sending more over.
02/11/11
It never ceases to amaze me that administrators and teachers can turn a blind eye to bullying in their schools. As if bullying of any sort for any reason were ever consistent with the educational mission of any school that is worthy of the name.
Conservatives don’t like evidence, especially the historical kind, because it so often points up the parallels between their contemporary bigotry and the horrors of the past. So it is that when those great patriots of the Tea Party got their way with the purely symbolic reading of the U.S. Constitution on the opening day of the House of Representatives in January 2011, they carefully omitted the passages that addressed slavery, albeit obliquely. Similarly, conservatives in 2011 will not like having their language in opposition to the LGBT civil rights movement compared to the Nazis’ demonization of Jews in the years before and during World War II. But they won’t like it precisely because the comparison is so very apt.
So sad to see Americans’ bad habits spreading around the world. A six year old Swedish boy has suffered stabbing in the neck because he likes to wear pink. Make sense to you? Doesn’t make sense to me. Sad that the annoying bad habit of bullying school children who defy gender norms, which are inherently stupid to begin with, has spread to an otherwise civilized European nation.
02/13/11 – ongoing
The protests in Madison, Wisconsin against the Governor’s proposed union-busting bill have been going on for eight days now. I think this is truly thrilling, so I’ve devoted an entire page to the topic.
02/24/2011
The kid has the right to his opinion, and to publish his opinion, but I think we need to keep an eye on this school to make sure they treat any opposing view with the same respect.
02/25/11
I thought we’s gonna have a slow day here at Outrage du Jour, but then I ran across this article, about ol’ Newtie Patootie calling for impeachment of another Democratic President. After all, he had such good luck with that the last time he tried it. One has to wonder if he just hasn’t read the Constitution, or if he can’t count. Everyone knows that, according to the Constitution, a two-thirds majority vote is required in the Senate to remove any official by impeachment. When they impeached Clinton, the Reflublicans had a majority in the Senate, but not a two-thirds majority, and of course, no Democrat was going to vote to remove their party’s President from office. This time, the Reflublicans don’t even have a simple majority in the Senate.
02/26/11
Just when you thought it was safe to go visit with your Member of Congress again, you have to be careful to distance yourself from the whack-job in the next chair.
03/04/11
This ‘uns goin’ in two places on my web site, here, and over at my quasi-history of the Sleeping Bag Revolution.
03/06/11
This ‘un isn’t really an Outrage du Jour, because it’s been going on for weeks or months now. The proposed congressional inquiries into Muslims for alleged “radicalization” bring to mind the notorious House Unamerican Activities Committee, which used the supposed threat of communism as a cheap excuse for trampling on many citizens’ Constitutional rights, especially their right to freedom of opinion, expression, and association. Sounds as if King is doing the same thing, but with the focus on trampling Muslims’ right to freedom of religious belief and practice.
Update: In the days after the actual hearing, the reviews have not been good.
03/08/11
The “ex-gay” folksare a standing outrage to all sensible people. Every major mental health organization in the country has declared so-called “therapy” to change sexual orientation ineffective, but these “Christian” charlatans keep right on.
03/09/11
This ‘un’ll go up in two places, here, and over to The Madison Revolution, ’cause it turns out the boys (a term I use advisedly) over to the Wisconsin State Senate finally fessed up that their union-busting measure was not a budget issue anyway, so they could just make it a bill all its own that they wouldn’t need any Democratic votes at all to pass. At least one member of the Wisconsin Assembly asserts that they violated the state open meetings law by doing it as they did it. We shall see.
03/11/11
Weeeelll doggies. I dunno ’bout you, but I’ve spent enough time in my life working with, or trying to work with, state legislators, that I don’t have a very high opinion of the breed. We have two outrages du jour for today. Actually, one of them is just further video evidence of the 03/09 entry, but it’s remarkably chilling for video of a meeting of state legislators. But first, from New Hampshire, a Hitler sympathizer in their state legislature has an idea for dealing with the mentally ill. Once you’ve recovered from that tidbit, check out this video from the bowels, literally, of the Wisconsin state capitol:
03/14/11
Guess which party the Kansas state legislator who suggested eliminating the state’s immigrants in the same manner as they propose to eliminate feral swine. Fun. Bearded pig.
This ‘un isn’t really quite an outrage so much as an amusing face-palm by a “conservative” who wants to return us to our founding values, if she can figure out what they are.
03/15/11
Why do I suspect that these Republicans were totally silent when John Ashcroft, W’s Attorney General, decided on policy grounds to settle the anti-trust prosecution of Microsoft, the political and policy equivalent of Obama’s decision to cease defending DOMA.
This ‘uns a little old, but it’s so outrageous it deserves lots of attention. It’s hard to decide which is worse, the attack on the young man, or the threats to prosecute the guy who released the video. Both are profoundly fascistic.
Tragedies tend to bring out the best in people, or the worst, in the case of those persons who have no best in them. So it is that a Florida legislator, while dilating on the topic of appropriate dress for students at school, described a recent 11 year old victim of a gang rape as being dressed like a “prostitute.” I shan’t bother to specify which party this, ahem, woman (to be more charitable to her than she was willing to be to a rape victim) affiliates with, except to say that she won election with support from her local Tea Party on a platform of “reducing government interference in our daily lives and business,” except, apparently, when it comes to how your daughters dress. The New York Times’ coverage of the original story has drawn widespread condemnation for suggesting that the girl invited the gang rape by the way she was dressed, and seeming more concerned with the impact the accusations will have on the young men who stand as suspected of having raped her than the impact on the victim herself. The complaints produced agreement with the criticism from the Times’ own Public Editor.
03/18/11
Ain’t this swell? Those wacky Tea Baggers who want to get the gummint off their backs also want to have IRS agents start inquiring into women’s histories of rape and incest if they’ve had an abortion.
Republicans just seem to enjoy picking on women, especially poor women.
03/19/11
Those biblical literalists are such fun. As I’ve said before, the problem with fomenting intolerance and discrimination against any population is that you never know when your less thoughtful followers will stop, or not stop, as in this case.
Yikes. Yet another example of unintended consequences, one hopes, anyway, from zealotry in public policy
03/20/11
This is truly outrageous. Supreme Court Justices should not scream at each other this way, and I freely admit that Abrahamson may have been a bitch, or worse, acted like a man. God forbid.
Can you imagine, going through the difficult business of having an abortion, only to have the IRS come natter you about it? So much for smaller, less intrusive government. And this is only one of the most egregious examples of the Republicans’ war on women.
03/24/11
Yet more bullying of a gay student. I can only assume that these teachers and administrators are unaware of their district’s potential legal liability on this issue. I find these stories maddening enough when students bully each other, but it really enrages me when teachers get in on the act.
03/25/11
I suppose we should not be surprised that several Republican members of the House of Representative have introduced a bill that would, inter alia, prohibit families with any member on strike from receiving food stamps, or, if they were already receiving food stamps prior to going on strike, from receiving any increase in allotment as the result of the loss of income from being on strike.
03/26/11
Perhaps it is only because I, too, am a professional historian, although nowhere near as distinguished as Professor Cronon, that I find this outrageous. In a classic case of shooting the messenger, or shooting at the messenger, the Republican Party of Wisconsin has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the e-mails of William Cronon, historian at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Cronon recently published a very well informed piece in the New York Times placing the Madison Revolution into the larger context of Wisconsin’s particular history as a state. Cronon has apparently also blogged separately about the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in distributing right-wing legislation around to all of the states. Apparently the Republicans don’t like having their sleaze exposed to public view.
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