Okay, for the rest of the show we are turning to one our regular - and perhaps most popular - segments, called "Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages."
Going first, as we usually do, with the clowns, we note that Mifeprex, also known as RU-486, is a widely-used medication to induce a medical abortion. It's even included on the World Health Organization's list of Essential Medicines.
However, blockhead right-winger Ted Cruz is pushing to have the FDA declare it "dangerous." His reasoning?
Quoteth he: “Pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness, and the abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease.”
Um, what? Pregnancy, while not properly called an "illness," most certainly can be life-threatening.
The CDC says “about 700 women die each year in the United States as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications” and that around 50,000 experience serious complications, some with long-term consequences.
Meanwhile, the WHO reports that around the world, nearly 300,000 women die yearly from complications of pregnancy.
And you know what is deadlier than RU-486, what is associated with orders of magnitude more deaths but seems of no concern to Cruz? Viagra.
Now, what with Cruz only having the support of 20 Senate GOPpers, not even half the caucus, it seems unlikely this will go anywhere, at least for now, but what this does is prove yet again that Republican men talking about reproductive issues are both hopelessly ignorant and thoroughgoing clowns.
-
Next up: So - on September 10, the NFL opened its season with the Houston Texans playing the Kansas City Chiefs in KC.
Before the opening kickoff, the players on both teams joined together, linking arms in what was billed as a "moment of unity" in support of racial equality. A nice, symbolic, if quite anodyne, quite inoffensive, moment.
At least you'd think it would be anodyne. But what could you clearly hear from the stands during that moment? Boos.
That's right: Although in fairness it clearly wasn't most of the fans, a significant number of those in the stands were booing the idea of racial equality.
Color me unsurprised. And color them clowns.
-
Finally, here we offer proof that having liberal, even progressive, credentials is no protection against being a doofus.
Frederick Joseph, a former national surrogate for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and regarded as a respected commenter on race in America, rented an Airbnb in the Catskills but then claimed on Twitter that he and his family had to flee the house because they were, his word, "terrified" of what they claimed was evidence of "satanic items and stuff for witchcraft rituals."
He was particularly incensed - he put it in all caps - at finding A BAPHOMET STATUE.
Baphomet is a deity that the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping in the early 1300s and subsequently was incorporated into occult and mystical traditions.
The small statue in question is actually a so-called "Sabbatic Goat." The image is intended to represent what its 1856 creator called the "equilibrium of opposites" - half-human and half-animal, male and female, good and evil, on and off, and so on. In the years since its creation, the image has become associated with the name Baphomet.
Other "terrifying" supposedly satanic items included, among others, a really tacky plastic toy of a woman having sex with a dog, two small framed photos, a man and a woman, both topless, a taxidermy pheasant in a plastic bag, and some candles - in other words, a bunch of kitsch.
Wait! Joseph said there were satanic makings on the floor of the basement! Um, except that when Vice.com was able to go on a video tour of the house with the owner, they looked a lot more like paint smudges. Oh well.
One last this: He apparently was also set off by, quoting, "a bridge from the woods behind the house to the back patio." Why that would be threatening is unclear to me, but when it turned out the this "bridge" was a board someone threw over a stream and was not even connected to the patio, that really sealed Joseph's status for me:
Frederick Joseph: a progressive - and a Clown.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment