Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
- Health Care Factoid
- (title unknown)
- Time for liberals to stop politicizing politically-motivated killings
- The Climate Sceptics Party
- Noah, theophilosophy and climate change
- On Safe Spaces and High-Hoping Fools
- Late Abortion Care Will Return to Kansas
- Another round-up
- M@ Did Not Rape You. He Just Drew a Diagram About It!
- Perhaps Peaches Geldoff Got Lucky
- Pro-Life Politics And The Erasure Of The Pregnant Woman
- A week in the life of Ozstrla
- Surveillance Cameras in British Classroom Spark Student Walkout
- If the GOP wants to resurrect itself, it needs to cure its addiction to hate and bigotry
- A penny for your thoughts
- Holocaust denial and hate
- Late night fears
- Linkfest!
- Oprah’s Vajayjay
– “But the overall figure hides another very important figure. The US government already spends about 6.6% of GDP on health care. The interesting thing about that number is that it is about what the governments of most other Western countries spend on health care for their much more universal systems. The OECD average is only 6% of GDP. The UK spends 6.4% for their universal system. Canada spends 6.7% for their universal system.
Essentially the US government already spends enough money to have a universal system, but only actually covers about 27% of the population. “
– Just Don’t Call It Terrorism – by digby. Short and to the point.
– Michael Bérubé does what only he does, so well.
– GrodsCorp checks out the fine print
– “In brief, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a segment of the anti-AGW science crowd whose belief derives from internalised faith about the mythological Noachide covenant — God’s promise to Noah that God will never again destroy the world in a flood. The rising sea-level scenarios of AGW science are a direct physical challenge to this belief.”
– Melissa’s response to criticism of the recent hiatus and its fallout on Shakesville
– Dr Carhart will be opening his own clinical practice in Kansas to provide the same services as Dr Tiller did.
– from the F-word blog
– Beatdown! “As I read the Internet, I come across M@. He’s just my type: the sort of dude who writes graphic fantasies about raping and killing women, then is surprised and petulant when people are angry about that.”
– “In a rant reported by the Daily Mail regarding the alleged domestic abuse situation between Chris Brown and Rihanna Drumney stated, “’We’re guys who have been hurt by women and I’m glad people like Chris Brown are finally taking it back and hurting women.’ “
– “…when pregnant women are depicted, they are often faceless, voiceless, or shown without any agency. Oftentimes they are not depicted at all, and the fetus is used as the cartoonist’s mouthpiece.”
– Bernice Balconey finds an obstreperating collection of stories
– “The students at Davenant Foundation School discovered the cameras when they arrived in class one Monday morning — they had not been consulted on, or even informed of, their installation. Seventeen of eighteen students in the class walked out.”
– “Are statements like this directly responsible for the murder of Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns? No. What the mainstream GOP has to take responsibility for is the fact that its continued reliance on the politics of division that gives extremist views safe harbor.”
– bluemilk asks for suggestions of Australian charities for feminism/women’s health issues etc on behalf of a reader
– A thoughtful post full of links from Orac
– The pain of choices doesn’t invalidate those choices
– from Unapologetically Female
– “the word “vajayjay,” as used by Oprah and her ilk is indicative of the way Oprah addresses women’s health issues in general: dumbed down, wishy washy, cutesy, pseudoscientific. She is creating a world in which the word “vagina” is too dirty to utter”
Categories: linkfest
The 109th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
The 105th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
Hoyden About Town 
I found this fascinating visual factoid.
Have no familiarity with the reliability of the hoster but it appears to be a genuine MSNBC show and might be worth embedding on Hoydens for those interested in the links between Operation Rescue and the alleged murderer of Dr George Tiller (including the report that their Senior Policy Advisor is a convicted felon who conspired to bomb an abortion clinic in California).
Maddow is a genuine MSNBC anchor with a rare dedication to asking the hard questions, even if the news bits she uses are often broken on blogs first! At least she fully investigates and adds even more depth as well as bringing them to a broader audience. She’s also an open lesbian, so you can imagine what the wingnuts think of her.
And what about the conspiracy theorists’ take (in comments on your link) on why there were no such assassinations during the Bush administration? Many progressives see this as evidence that when the right-wing thinks the govt is on their side, they are not spurred to action but when the govt swings to the Dems they feel the need for a violent response. The wingnuts see it as proof that Bush kept these extremists under control, and the Dems are deliberately letting them take lives in order to frighten the populace to better control them. Wow.
I wrote about the troubles at Shakesville and the perspective I got from Joanna Russ’ essay on power relations in feminist communities. Basically, Russ pointed out that women are not supposed to be powerful, to succeed, to achieve any kind of acclaim in the public sphere. But if we insist on doing such an unfeminine thing, we’re expected to make up for it by devoting ourselves wholly to serving other people’s interests.
I love Joanna Russ; she’s such a lucid thinker.
kathmandu.dreamwidth.org/’s last blog post..The situation at Shakesville
From the Oprah thing – as a person who comes from a family that uses a nickname for everything from “air conditioner” to “thank you”, I just didn’t see an issue with Vajayjay. Not the cleverest slang, but I figured if it meant you could say it on day time TV, it helped.
Not that I’m disputing that analysis, just shows my bias. I also wonder whether sometimes we need a bit by bit path from where we are to where we need to be. I mean, at least vajayjay isn’t actually derogatory, even if it is infantilising.
OK, by “we”, I mean mainstream American media.
And what about the conspiracy theorists’ take (in comments on your link) on why there were no such assassinations during the Bush administration? Many progressives see this as evidence that when the right-wing thinks the govt is on their side, they are not spurred to action but when the govt swings to the Dems they feel the need for a violent response.
Well the obvious reluctance of the Bush administration to enforce the “Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act” (four prosecutions nationally in a YEAR vs dozens under Clinton) certainly demonstrates that all the legal protection in the world isn’t worth a damn unless it’s enforced.
I’ve been comparing pro-life terror campaigns to those of animal rights groups in a new post over on Skepticlawyer.
@ shonias.blogspot.com/:
Were/are people unable to say “vagina” on US daytime TV? That astonishes me. Still, I was amazed to hear on a show imported from cable in the US where the word “blow” was bleeped simply because it was being used as a bawdy euphemism in a joke. No way would a double entendre ever get bleeped in this country.
Australian TV routinely airs words not heard on US TV, sure, but I don’t think anyone here’s ever even blinked at people using the anatomically accurate words for genitalia in a segment discussing matters in a clinical fashion.