(no subject)

So I went looking for my iPod in my purse this morning and it wasn't there. I don't recall removing it. I know it was in there when I left for work yesterday. I am attempting not to panic.

If I tear the apartment to shreds tonight and still can't find it then there will be panic.

Then weeping.

Possibly some cursing as well.

(no subject)

Ok so a couple of weeks ago a 12 year old boy did a radio address in favor of S-CHIP which basically helped save his life:

If it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today. … We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. … I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.

The gibbering monkeys of the right wing immediately flew into action. Even Limbaugh has joined in the carrion call, and, believe it or not, Michelle Malkin has just posted about stalking the boy and his family.

Zsa at Sadly, No! sums this whole thing up nicely:

There are certain lines that don’t get crossed in a civil society. The welfare of our children is one of those lines.

Bush and his 29% crew clearly do not care about children receiving adequate healthcare. That’s not a surprise.

But attacking the 12-year-old and his family is indicative of their true intent. It’s not about whether millions of kids have healthcare. If it was about healthcare policy they would actually be talking about, you know, healthcare policy. Certainly Bush has reasons for his veto, however mean-spirited.

But it’s not about that. It’s about intimidation of your political opponents. It’s about scaring the population into submission. We are witnessing the birth of brownshirt tactics. Speak up about a policy issue and they visit your home, your work, they gather outside your home and scream insults at your children.

I’m not sure if the Gathering of Eagles and the Freepers have decided to picket the Frost house yet, but this sort of bully-boy tactic is not far off. Apparently Malkin visited the father’s workplace today. If you simply object to S-CHIP as a policy, why do you even care about the family of some kid who was helped by the CHIP program? On the other hand, if you desperately want to stifle legitimate dissent, this is exactly the type of thing you do.

And they’ll pat themselves on the back as heroes and patriots. Let’s have Confederate Yankee in here to tell us why investigating the kid’s family is such a noble task.

I would dearly love to see the media pick this up as a story about the Freepi and their thuggish response to Graeme Frost. The wingnuts are harassing the Frost family for the crime of speaking up about a policy issue.

I think the really depressing thing about this is that they'll totally get away with this kind of thuggishness against a family, and against a 12 year old boy in particular. They won't get a single reprimand from the media or the American people outside those of us who actually care about this kind of partisan bullshit. Indeed they'll get pats on the back. And the thing is they know it, they know there's nothing to fear because nobody's going to visit any reprisals on them. One hopes that karma will play some factor but I'll be damned if I can find any evidence of it in American politics these days.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein chimes in on the whole debacle

Something has really gone wrong on the Right. Become sick and twisted and tumorous and ugly. To visit Michelle Malkin’s cave is to see politics at its most savage, its most ferocious, its most rageful. They say they’ve spent the past week smearing a child and his family because that child was fair game — he and his family spoke of their experience receiving health care through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. For this, right wingers travel to their home to inspect its worth, they insinuate that the family is engaged in large-scale fraud to receive government benefits, they make threatening phone calls to the family.

This is the politics of hate. Screaming, sobbing, inchoate, hate. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to drive to the home of a Republican small business owner to see if he “really” needed that tax cut. It would never, not in a million years, occur to me to call his family and demand their personal information. It would never occur to me to interrogate his neighbors. It would never occur to me to his smear his children.

Where do you go from here?

I...

Huh...

Dead Reverend’s Rubber Fetish
Autopsy: Pastor found in wet suits after autoerotic mishap

OCTOBER 8–An Alabama minister who died in June of “accidental mechanical asphyxia” was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report.

Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge’s death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery’s Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge’s two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister’s rubber briefs. [Ed note: Spoiler alert! Dildo, condom, anus]

But wait, it gets better:

Immediately following his death, church officials issued a press release asking community members to “please refrain from speculation” about what led to Aldridge’s demise.

At this point does anyone really need to speculate? Well, ok, I will admit I'm speculating away when it comes to wondering just how in the hell this guy died completely alone but also hogtied. And if anyone can explain why one wetsuit wouldn't be sufficient...wait, on second thought I don't think I want to know...

Have to admit, though, that on some level I just have to respect that level of dedication to getting off. Hell I can't even be bothered to schlepp down to the store to pick up some extra batteries if I'm out...but this guy. Well, damn.