Monday, October 09, 2006

Monday Morning Blogroll: "Via" Edition (Part 2)

Before I end up throwing my computer through the nearest wall because Blogger keeps eating this post, let's get on to Part 2! Has this been happening to anybody else lately? The last two weeks have been dreadful...either the "word verification" thing comes up as a big red X (making it pretty hard to type in the word verification, no?) or I get it to publish, and it just keeps repeating "0% published" over and over. Am slowly become enraged. Hopefully Attempt #346 is the charm...

Via
Upyernoz, I see that Bush made another one of them there signing statements in which he said, “If I wanna hire the most incompetent person possible, by God I’m going to do so.”

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Via
Attaturk and Pandagon, I’ve stumbled across the story of Biting Beaver, failed birth control, and the American Taliban. Attaturk summarizes:

Summed up this way. Birth control fails, worried woman attempts to secure emergency preventives that are supposed to be legally available. She gets the run-around and the "oh you shameful, shameful slut" routine from care providers, and NO preventatives.

Now she's pregnant, and
being threatened.
Amanda expounds:

I think an important point worth considering here is that every doctor who turned his nose up to her requests for EC had good reason to know that this is what would happen—she would get pregnant, she’d have to get an abortion, she’d have to pay for it out of pocket, and she’d have to tolerate picket lines of people screaming insults at her about how her gender makes her worthless in their eyes. So basically, they set her up to be humiliated and put out like this, on top of the physical suffering that comes as a side effect of RU-486. Being doctors, they can’t claim to be innocent of the knowledge that this was going to happen, but they consoled themselves that it was okay to make Beaver suffer because she “deserved” it; she wouldn’t be in this situation if she hadn’t had sex, right?

What strikes me as interesting about that line of thought is it’s exactly the excuses that apologists for torture are making about the people they “get” to torture. Hell, they must have done something wrong, even though we have no court of law to prove it. The excuses are thin as paper, but just enough to make someone feel justified in power tripping on another person.
This seems like a good place to mention that, via olvlzl at Echidne, we find an interesting new blog with an interesting cause.

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Via
Left Coaster, we find ZNet's masterful “The Age of Terror.”

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Via
Demosthenes, we get the latest on the battle for leadership of Canada’s Liberal Party.

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Via
FDL, we find the latest from Colin McEnroe on Joementum and his lack of, well, Joementum.

With each passing day Lieberman depends more and more on the least motivated voters. Least motivated to turn out, I mean. A Republican or conservative-unaffiliated who doesn't like the war, who doesn't like Bush and who is now appalled by the Foley scandal, has less incentive to go to the polls. That voter thinks: Jodi Rell doesn't need me, and I don't like anybody else.
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Via
Gadflyer, I find that everyone’s favorite racist idiot Senator from Virginia is also a financial sleaze. I really hope he runs for the Republican nomination in ’08 (if he’s not in jail, anyway). Just keeping this guy on everybody’s TV screen is one of the best things that could happen to Democrats.

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Via
Fired Up! Missouri, I find this WaPo write-up of the Talent-McCaskill debate. Sadly, I’d totally missed that they were doing this...would have actually watched Meet the Press for once.

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As always, Len Hart gives us
a lovely summary of one of the week’s major topics. This week, it’s the myth of America’s “mission” in Iraq.

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Via
Alicublog, I just threw up.

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And since we too watched this movie last night, I’ll finish with a link to Mannion’s
X-Men 3 review. I basically agree. I didn’t think Halle Berry was as stiff and uncomfortable as he did, but that’s about the only disagreement I have (though I can’t disagree with the “about to throw up” part because I think I heard that too).

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And finally, via Chicago, here's a clip of Wilco's "Via Chicago."