Where are you, Joanna Zhang?

I made a mistake some years ago, and I lost a friend. It’s a real long shot, but if you see this, call me. You know my number.

Here's one for the Republicans.

Today, CNN online had this story: Authorities puzzled about mother in deaths of children left in hot car - CNN.com. It’s about a poor single mother who left her children in her car while she worked a double shift. They both died. “Terrible mother,” you think, right? “Should have known better.” “Deserves to go to jail for child abuse,” right?

Here’s what the article has to say about it:

Sametta Heyward was in a bind. The single mother was scheduled to start a double shift at 3 p.m., and her baby sitter had just canceled.

“She was either told to come to work or be fired, or she was afraid to call in sick — one of those things,” said police Lt. Michael Fowler.

She made it to her job at a county-run group home July 29, a typically warm summer day. After eight hours, she called a supervisor and said she had to leave because of child-care issues.

According to her employer, she didn’t tell the supervisor or a co-worker that for all that time, she had left her 1-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son in her Chevy Cavalier hatchback, parked on a residential street.

She had left Triniti and Shawn with battery-powered fans, food and drinks, but it was not nearly enough to combat the sweltering conditions inside. She later told relatives that when she got to the car at 11:30 p.m., the children were unconscious and had weak pulses.

A day later, police found her at her apartment wailing, “Oh, my babies!”

What would have happened had there been free or cheap subsidized public daycare?

At least the Republicans will be happy: there are two fewer poor children in South Carolina, and a poor, single mother who will be going to jail. Out of sight, out of mind.

Yep.

It is indeed the truth.

And the janitors win.

It looks like despite the best efforts of the Houston Police Department, the new union scored a contract.

-On the heels of a string of victories in Miami, Los Angeles and Boston that have resulted in dramatic gains for families, more than 5,300 janitors in Houston won higher wages, more hours, and health insurance in their first city-wide union contract. The contract will lift hundreds of janitors out of poverty, more than doubling their income within 24 months and guaranteeing secure affordable health care.

Bravo.

Fuck Houston.

Via Majikthise : Houston janitors brutalized in custody, Anna Denise Solís’ story.

Among the worst of it:

One of the protesters had a fractured wrist from the horses. She had a cast on and when she would fall asleep the guard would kick the cast to wake her up. She was in a lot of pain. … The guards would tell us: ‘This is what you get for protesting.’ … One of the guards called us ‘whores’ and if we talked back, we didn’t get any lunch.

Of course, those cops will get off scot-free. They were “just following orders” like good little brownshirts.

Fascism is alive and well and living in Houston.

"Tar Baby."

What David Zink said.

I’ll continue to use the phrase in its appropriate sense, thankyouverymuch, and those idiots who claim that it’s “racist” can go fuck themselves. It ain’t.

(I may not like Tony Snow very much, but apparently he’s slightly more literate than those who have been so hysterical over his use of the phrase.)

No surprise there...

A bortion.

I have a Google News alert for the words “botched abortion,” as I wait for the current climate to have its inevitable effect of death and disfigurement of women. Today it triggered on an op-ed piece in the Arizona Star by one Cynthia Duell, “Emotion shouldn’t drive decision to abort.”

She’s, um, anti-abortion.

So I decided to reply with a letter to the editor, CC’d directly to her, gcombsc@comcast.net. For what it’s worth, here it is in its entirety:

This is a response to your recent opinion piece by Cynthia Duell; I am also sending a copy directly to her.

Ms. Duell, while I appreciate and agree with your assertion that one should make decisions such as those relating to abortion rationally, the fact remains that pregnancy brings with it emotion. Whether those feelings are positive or negative depends entirely upon the individuals involved and their circumstances. An unwanted pregnancy, whether due to failure of birth control (even the Pill isn’t completely reliable) or to simple carelessness, is going to bring with it extremely strong feelings. Those feelings will influence the decision, no matter what you or I may say.

Further, the decision to have an abortion can indeed be a perfectly rational one. You may assert that such an act is “a transgression of common morality and common sense” but that is, I’m afraid, your opinion only. There are many who find that act to be the least bad of a number of terrible alternatives.

Make no mistake, the decision to have an abortion is a weighty one and one that no one enters into lightly, no matter who might claim otherwise. Unfortunately, in many cases it is is, as I said, the least bad of the possible choices.

Personally, I do not pretend to know how someone else may choose. My morality isn’t yours and my choices are not yours. I will not try to make your choices for you and I expect the same from you. The choice to have an abortion is in fact one that is too important to be left to politicians, judges and the clergy. It is such an important and momentous decision that it can only be made by the woman involved.

Finally, I think that you grossly overstate the case when you refer to potential complications of abortion. Might I also point out that all of these are in fact also potential complications of miscarriage, which happens without a doctor involved, and many are complications of pregnancy itself! Also, when you claim that statistics of complications related to abortion are “without a doubt” incomplete, because “abortion doctors” underreport those complications, I must demand that you back up your assertion with proof. I believe that this is only your opinion, which you are stating as if it is fact.

Thank you for your attention.

Yours,
Frank Mayhar
Redondo Beach, California

Just turn your back.

On Friday I took my wife to her naturalization ceremony in downtown Los Angeles. There were some 4000+ people being naturalized just in that session, with another 4000+ having been naturalized in the morning session. It was an exciting event for those who were becoming new citizens, but more than a little tedious for someone with little patience for pomp, circumstance and long demonstrations of patriotism. It was basically a rah-rah moment for the United States government as far as I was concerned. That was okay, though, since I’m sure most of those being naturalized were feeling pretty “rah-rah” just about then.

It only got painful at the end. True to the demonstrations of “patriotism,” they took time for a videotaped speech by Bush. (Not that he would lower himself to actually attend one of these things, but whatever.)

If you’ve read any of my writing here, you’ll know that I find Bush vile, despicable, venal, selfish, smallminded, bigoted and a fool. On a good day. So I was less than thrilled to have to watch his smarmy, insincere face mouth platitudes to a video camera. Without really consciously thinking about it, I just turned my back. I stayed exactly where I was, I just turned my back. As I stood there with his voice droning on, I realized that what I had done was exactly the right answer to Bush, to his cronies and to the Republicans as a whole. They only deserve our contempt, so show it. When they speak, don’t protest, don’t carry signs, don’t say a word. Just stand up and turn your back.

Why should we applaud the scum that are fucking our country? I would love to see the Democrats in the House and Senate just quietly stand and turn their backs every time a Republican spoke. It’s quiet, it’s dignified and it sends an unavoidable message, that the person speaking is not worth our attention.

When I turned my back on Bush on Friday, almost no one noticed and the few that did just looked confused. When more do so, though, it will be noticed. And if even one Senator were to turn her back on Frist or Cheney while they were speaking, it would send a message that they couldn’t ignore.

Religious folly.

Shakespeare’s Sister wants to know if there’s

a good reason for US to side with the reactionaries rather than the defenders of free speech?

Um, no, there isn’t. It’s very damned simple: Islamic fundamentalists have gotten their panties in a twist over a few cartoons that they should have simply ignored. They’ve whipped their public into a frenzy, as if those cartoons are somehow “attacking” Islam. Said fundamentalists are vile, as is the burning of embassies in Syria and Lebanon.

The appeasement by the Christian fundamentalists of the United States is equally vile. It’s of course to be expected, as these fundamentalists desire the same ability, to provoke riots in order to destroy those to whom they are opposed (that is, rational folks like myself, Shakespeare’s Sister and all the others). One fundamentalist is pretty much exactly like any other, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever.

They’re all fucking insane and insanely self-absorbed, to the point that they can’t see reality for their delusions.

CNN online has a poll just now asking which is more important, “respect for religious beliefs” or freedom of expression. Thirty percent of the respondents seem to think that you shouldn’t be allowed to express yourself if such an expression would show “disrespect” for religious beliefs.

Personally, I respect no religious belief, so I guess these idiots would want me to just shut up entirely.

Not. Fucking. Likely.