Gee, is Mitch McConnell a fan of the slime pit?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) got in a few yucks during his 2013 CPAC speech Friday morning, telling a crowd that he thinks the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential field is looking like “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls.’”

“Don’t tell me the Democrats are the party of the future when their presidential ticket in 2016 is shaping up to look like a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’” he said. The crowd erupted with laughter.

Ahahahahaha – that’s so funny. Old; geddit? Women who are old. Hilarious, right? Stupid bitches – they should just die instead of hanging around getting old.… Read the rest

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A guy got beaten up by shouty racist bully-boys on a Manchester tram packed with football fans, and nobody helped, instead everybody just watched, as if it were an entertainment.

Prakash Patel, 56, from New Moston, was on a tram with his daughter Devyani  at Trafford Bar when he suffered a tirade of racist abuse followed by a sustained vicious assault. He was punched in the face and head more than 18 times and suffered two black eyes and concussion.

He tells what happened.

WE had been to the Fulham match at Old Trafford. We go as often as we can because we are big fans, we’ve been going for 25 years and never had any trouble. There were

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Keep the title in mind.

It’s a beautiful spring afternoon here, one of the first we’ve had, and I went out into it, and not ten minutes along I saw a dog get hit by a car.

I probably could have prevented it, and I failed to.

There’s this scenic walk a couple of minutes from where I live, overlooking Puget Sound and the mountains. Where the street curves from south to east, there’s a little open park overlooking the view and diagonally across the street a little closed park that used to be a private garden. It’s a busy spot on days like today. I was approaching the curve and the open park when a boxer came racing out … Read the rest

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Physioproffe said let’s for fun post pictures of our bookshelves so I said ok so here’s my picture.

… Read the rest

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Metametameta coverage – reactions to the Steubenville verdict, reactions to reactions to the Steubenville verdict, [continue the series].

Too much sympathy in court being shown for these disgusting little rapists. It is not a tragedy when a rapist is found guilty.#Steubenville

— Radical Feminist (@RadicalFeminist) March 17, 2013

Is there? I looked for coverage and haven’t found it yet but did find commentary on the tears and sobs of the rapists themselves. The anchor (a woman) in the studio asked the commentator (a man) outside the courthouse about how gut-wrenching it all was, and he said the boys “didn’t realize that what they did was so serious.”

They didn’t?

Well why the fuck not?

Did they think … Read the rest

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Both were found guilty of rape; Mays was also found guilty of disseminating a naked photo of a minor.

Richmond’s father told CNN that his son was doing OK.

“I told Ma’lik to put all his trust in God. God will see him through this,” Nate Richmond said. “I told him that I love him, basically. And to be strong.”

I wonder if Richmond’s father told him anything about not raping.… Read the rest

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QED has released the video of the panel “A Question of God” from last March. The panel is moderated by Paula Kirby and has Maryam Namazie, DJ Grothe, and me. Ironic, isn’t it.

It’s as I remembered it – fun, congenial, entertaining, interesting. That’s why I was so surprised when a few months later Paula Kirby called me a Feminazi and Femistasi. Watching that panel, she doesn’t seem like that kind of person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gdewF7tMk

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How…quirky. Brazil’s House of Representatives elected a racist homophobe as the new chair of its Commission for Human Rights and Minorities. Kind of defeats the purpose.

Marcos Feliciano is known for his homophobic and racist declarations:  “Africans descend from an ancestor cursed by Noah. This is a fact,” he wrote. “Noah’s curse on his grandson, Canaan, lingers in Africa,  therefore leading to all the hunger, diseases, ethnic wars.”

This is a fact? What would a fiction look like then? If an old story in an old book is “a fact” then what criteria do you use to detect a fiction?

Marcos  Feliciano’s image has been further tarnished by the exposure of his  behavior during his fund-raising sermons at the ‘Resurrection 

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Bjarte’s stick figure has discovered “civility.”

1. So you think you should not be treated like a public toilet and I disagree. [butterfly, flower, smiley]

2.Surely that’s a legitimate difference of opinion over which we can have a polite conversation. [birdie, musical note]

3. *@! no, because:

context
facts
values

analysis
logic

conclusions

4. #FTBullies blabla “*@!” blablabla uncivil blablabla uncharitable blabla tone blablabla rather than engage in civil dialogue!… Read the rest

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There’s a gallery in a little neighborhood shopping area about half a mile from where I live, not the main top of the hill shopping area, but a smaller one, with a miniature grocery store, and the dentist I go to, and a great bakery-coffee shop called Macrina, and a taco place, and an orthodontist with witty signs (“if you have more tattoos than teeth, come see us”), among other things – quite a humming little spot really.

The gallery is the Fountainhead Gallery. I went past it yesterday and looked in the windows as I always do, and then looked some more and then went inside. They’re having an exhibit called Frontline Heroines, by Judith Larsen. The … Read the rest

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The CBC doesn’t seem to consider internet harassment just “drama” or “playing the victim card” or similar. The CBC takes it seriously enough to report on it, at least.

An Alberta man found out just how ugly an online debate can become when someone hijacked his identity and went on a crude Facebook rampage.

He joined a Facebook page about preserving an Edmonton airport – whoa, controversial, right?! – and things got heated.

One of the users started harassing him, using profane language, so Ken blocked him.

This only angered the man and he recreated Ken’s Facebook profile, stealing his real profile pictures, his name and even where he worked.

The man then started posting racist, homophobic and exceptionally

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Legal reform is not enough to end violence against women, Katherine Brickell observes.

Despite what Unifem (the UN agency for gender equity) claims have been 20 years of “unprecedented progress” on the issue – including an increase in the number of laws – many women around the world still have no knowledge of their rights and even fewer of how to lay claim to them.

Brickell leads a research team in Cambodia, which has a law (passed in 2005) on the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Protection of the Victims.

The law starts by defining its dual purpose as protecting victims of violence, and “preserving the harmony within the households in line with the nation’s good custom

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Soraya Chemaly has some trenchant thoughts on the Steubenville rape case and the culture that enables such cases.

While teaching people about consent isn’t going to change the behavior of predatory serial rapists, it will cultivate a culture that encourages effective bystander intervention and teaches both women and men how to reduce risk.  What we have now and by default are subtle and overt messages that teach children, like the two Steubenville boys and the kids who watched them, to treat other human beings — disproportionately female ones — as dehumanized prey instead of as people for whom they should feel compassion.

Seriously, what is that? Why did everyone else just let it happen? Why didn’t anyone stop it? How … Read the rest

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What we’re learning from the Steubenville rape trial.

We’re learning that there were text messages. Lots of text messages.

A state forensics investigator, Joann Gibb, methodically quoted from text messages that she said came from the phone of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, 17, and from the phones of friends and classmates. The messages described the inebriated girl as “dead” or as a “dead body” and stated that Mr. Mays acknowledged penetrating the girl with his fingers.

Because that’s what you do. If there’s a girl at a party who passes out from drinking too much, you stick your fingers up her.

The texts read from the witness stand by Ms. Gibb suggested that Mr. Mays and his

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