arse poetica

DO.NOT.GET.ME.STARTED.

Why do I keep thinking one day I will wake up in a world that does not obsess over women and their wanting to assert control over their own lives and bodies?

Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore ‘Abortion’.

Johns Hopkins University said Friday that it had programmed its computers to ignore the word “abortion” in searches of a large, publicly financed database of information on reproductive health after federal officials raised questions about two articles in the database. The dean of the Public Health School lifted the restrictions after learning of them.

[snip]

Mr. Parsons said the development agency had expressed concern after finding “two articles about abortion advocacy” in the database. The articles, he said, did not fit database criteria and were removed.

Quoi? What f*cking criteria would that be? Suffocating fetishist godbag mania to control women? Oh yeah, that.

Employees who manage the database instructed their computers to ignore the word “abortion” as a search term.

After learning of the restrictions on Friday, the dean, Dr. Michael J. Klag, said: “I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the Popline administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.”

[snip]

Dr. Klag said the school was “dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge, and not its restriction.”

Ted Miller, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, said: “The public has a right to know why someone would censor relevant medical information. The Bush administration has politicized science as part of an ideological agenda. So it’s important to know if that occurred here.”

Let me save you some trouble, NARAL (and why the F does the NYT insist on not capitalizing its acronyms?): The Bush administration politicized science as part of an ideological agenda serving hysterical fetishist godbags who seek at every turn to impose their pathetic controlling fantasies on the bodies of all women. Not to put too fine a point on it.

Heckuva Job, Bushie

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track.

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.

Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off.

It was not reported if that 4% worked at Halliburton and its subsidiaries.

Robber Barrons Unite

Dear lord!

Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster.

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher. (emphasis mine)

The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.

Shut yer lying piehole, you vile huckster.

Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10 percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929.

Can't have another Gilded Age. What should we call this one? Maybe the Gelded Age? Don't see the (neutered) Dems doing f*ck-all about B*shCo's rampant looting.

It's Just Not Fair

The world could be run by decent people of conscience. It could, right?

He's got my vote (until such time as the Dem nominee--obviously not this man--is chosen when I, again seized w/ disgust and dismay, will vote for said namby-pamby nominee in hopes that RoveCo has not already stolen the "election").

Sob.

You, Too, Can Profit On the Backs of the Working Poor!

Extracting the maximum profit from the working poor. Finally, a lobby we can all get behind!

Predatory Lending Association (PLA).

Take that, grandma! Who says you need heat all winter?

Take that, family of 5 living on minimum wage! Scrambling for food will make you more competitive in the marketplace! Bootstraps, people, bootstraps!

Some people call them "debt traps," we call them opportunities!

Verizon Finds Spine, Remembers 1st Amendment

Assholes. I'd already sent my email informing them of my decision to find a new provider, since they thought they were living in some fascist information-controlling state. Ahem.

Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Messages.

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless last week rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

But the company reversed course this morning, saying it had made a mistake.

“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect, and we have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, said in a statement.

“It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy,” Mr. Nelson said. “That policy, developed before text messaging protections such as spam filters adequately protected customers from unwanted messages, was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children.”

Mr. Nelson noted that text messaging is “harnessed by organizations and individuals communicating their diverse opinions about issues and topics” and said Verizon has “great respect for this free flow of ideas.”

They have great respect for the free flow of money. Let's not pretend.

There Are Good Books and There Are Bad Books

And the government knows which are which. They also know where you're going and with whom you're staying. Now, don't you feel more safe love Big Brother?

Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented.

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.

Wow. I wonder what camp I'll fall into if I'm reading the Koran, Michael Moore's latest screed, and whomever was declared the Unpatriot of the Week.

I'm reminded of something...what is it? Oh, right, it's this: Fourteen defining characteristics of fascism.

[photo credit: Library of Congress, created back when the government functioned for (some) good.]

Samantha Bee for President!

Damn, I needed that laugh. I love Kim Gandy, Lady President of that ladies' thing!

Clips: Is America Ready For A Female President? Just Ask Carrie Bradshaw.

Also, LaShawn Barber: not that bright, sad to say. She is working some kind of tragic Men Are the Stronger Sex nonsense that wouldn't sound right coming out of the mouth of some creepy "men's rights" advocate. Oh. Well, then. 

We're #42! We're #42!

Offered w/o comment.

US slipping in life expectancy rankings.

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier....

Where to begin? An equitable and just health care program predicated on prevention would be a nice start. Okay, so one comment.

Hey, W! Bin Laden (Still) Determined to Strike in U.S.

Good one, MoDo. You just know RoveCo.'s hating -- and I mean, viscerally hating -- this headline. (Sorry, behind the Times' paywall.)

Hey, W! Bin Laden (Still) Determined to Strike in U.S.

Oh, as it turns out, they’re not on the run.

And, oh yeah, they can fight us here even if we fight them there.

And oh, one more thing, after spending hundreds of billions and losing all those lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re more vulnerable to terrorists than ever.

And, um, you know that Dead-or-Alive stuff? We may be the ones who end up dead.

Squirming White House officials had to confront the fact yesterday that everything President Bush has been spouting the last six years about Al Qaeda being on the run, disrupted and weakened was just guff.

"Guff" being the polite word for it. Why hold back now, MoDo?