Conservative: person who has had their sense of empathy surgically removed

TBogg found a fairly vile screed trying to explain why right-wingers don't care about kids not getting health care but are up in arms over gay rights and global warming. Or, uh, something. Basically, her argument boils down to "poor people don't exist."

No, seriously.

That's why I don't care about the poor. They're no more real than Bigfoot.

These mythical poor exist only in foggy glades, or out-of-focus films, and are only rumored to exist:

No one I know uses food banks. No one THEY know uses food banks.

Well damn, that settles it! This one snot-nosed brat hasn't seen a poor person, therefore they don't exist. Just like how I've never seen Europe, therefore it doesn't exist.

But what about all these poor people that you hear about? Well, they're not really poor. They're just stupid. And lazy. And they chose to be poor by not being Kathy Shaidle, apparently.

If they're "poor" it's because they were too lazy and stupid to a) finish high school and/or b) keep their pants on. Jesus had something to say about folks who didn't properly manage their money or other people's, and who squandered free gifts and good will. He told the adulteress to sin no more, not to find herself another baby daddy.

He also told his followers to sell all their worldly possessions; to give to the poor; to help the needy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the sick; and said that it was impossible for a rich man to get into heaven.

But hey, who's counting? It's like Al Franken says: "I've noticed that the only Biblical parable supply-siders ever mention is [the Parable of the] Talents."

Why do "right wing Christians" seem to "care" more about abortion, or terrorism, or gay marriage/adoption or even the hoax known as global warming, more than they "care" about the poor? I plead guilty -- because there are more radical gays and feminists and global warming hoaxers than there are poor people in North America. These activists want to brainwash our kids, or worse. And terrorists want to blow them up. In the face of such threats, forgive me if the fact that Lakeesha can't afford a new weave this week cuz she spent all her money on a new cell phone fails to get me humming "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night."

Yeah. There are a lot more terrorist attacks than poor people out there. (It's also interesting that right-wingers are "care" about abortion while mocking poor people as promiscuous, baby-making losers. But then, they "chose" this.)

And besides, with names like "Lakeesha", poor people are obviously black. And lazy. So, well, fuck 'em. It's what Jesus would do.
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"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."

George W. Bush: We are not at war with Islam.

Tim Walberg: The fuck we're not.

To offer respect for a major religion is one thing, but to offer respect for a major religion that has been behind the Islamic jihad, the radical jihad, that has sworn war upon the United States, its free allies and freedom in Iraq, is another thing.

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No title I give for this would beat Digby's

Recall that 12-year old kid that the Democrats used to gain support for SCHIP? And how right-wingers went berserk over the idea that Democrats would dare use a kid who needs health insurance to illustrate the fact that there are kids out there who need health insurance?

Well, it wasn't enough for the nuts to attack the Democrats for this stunt. No, they had to go after the kid and his family, too. Whiskey Fire has a couple of posts on this, while ThinkProgress highlights the information that these bastards omit in their disgusting attacks.

And of course, Digby has some choice words for this sordid spectacle.
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Not just Romney

But also could you imagine, say, John "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation" McCain delivering a speech like this?

Or, say, Tancredo, Brownback, and Huckabee? Or how about Alan "our allegiance to God and His authority that has been the foundation stone of our nation's life" Keyes?
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Now if they'd just do their own research instead of appropriating the research of real scientists

Any bets as to how long until intelligent design propagandists proclaim this as "proof" of intelligent design?

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to an online report in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most bacteria are good and help digest food.

But the flora in the intestines sometimes die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix's job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a co-author of the study. Its location — just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating good germs, Parker said.

That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person's gut flora die, they usually can repopulate it easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said.

But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

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Who's more progressive than the U.S. this week?

Colombia!

Gay couples in Colombia won the same social security rights as their straight counterparts in a court ruling called a major advance for homosexuals in this conservative Roman Catholic country.

In a decision embraced by rights groups but opposed by the church, the Constitutional Court said on Friday it extended health benefits long enjoyed by heterosexuals in common law marriages to same-sex couples.

The first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America, the measure allows homosexuals to include their partners in their health insurance plans.

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Friday Dead Racist Blogging: You're Too Good For Them Edition

During World War I the French government received a formal complaint from the U.S. military command that the French people were treating black American soldiers too well, and U.S. military authorities gave the French government instructions on how to treat black soldiers in discriminatory fashion.

--Joe Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, p. 64

These instructions, written by either John Pershing or Colonel Linard of the AEF, were titled "Secret information concerning the Black American Troops" and were issued on August 7, 1918. Here's the text, translated into English:

It is important for French officers who have been called upon to exercise command over black American troops, or to live in close contact with them, to have an exact idea of the position occupied by Negroes in the United States. The information set forth in the following communication ought to be given to these officers and it is to their interest to have these matters known and widely. disseminated. It will devolve likewise on the French Military Authorities, through the medium of the Civil Authorities, to give information on this subject to the French population residing in the cantonments occupied by American colored troops.

1. The American attitude upon the Negro question may seem a matter for discussion to many French minds. But we French are not in our province if we undertake to discuss what some call "prejudice." American opinion is unanimous on the "color question," and does not admit of any discussion.

The increasing number of Negroes in the United States (about 15,000,000) would create for the white race in the Republic a menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has been made between them.

As this danger does not exist for the French race, the French public has become accustomed to treating the Negro with familiarity and indulgence.

This indulgence and this familiarity are matters of grievous concern to the Americans. They consider them an affront to their national policy. They are afraid that contact with the French will inspire in black Americans aspirations which to them appear intolerable. It is of the utmost importance that every effort be made to avoid profoundly estranging American opinion.

Although a citizen of the United States, the black man is regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible. The black is constantly being censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack of civic and professional conscience, and for his tendency toward undue familiarity.

The vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American who has to repress them sternly. For instance, the black American troops in France have, by themselves, given rise to as many complaints for attempted rape as all the rest of the army. And yet the soldiers sent us have been the choicest with respect to physique and morals, for the number disqualified at the time of mobilization was enormous.

Conclusion

1. We must prevent the rise of any pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black officers. We may be courteous and amiable with these last, but we cannot deal with them on the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter. We must not eat with them, must not shake hands or seek to talk or meet with them outside of the requirements of military service.

2. We must not commend too highly the black American troops, particularly in the presence of Americans. It is all right to recognize their good qualities and their services, but only in moderate terms strictly in keeping with the truth.

3. Make a point of keeping the native cantonment population from "spoiling" the Negroes. Americans become greatly incensed at any public expression of intimacy between white women with black men. They have recently uttered violent protests against a picture in the "Vie Parisienne" entitled "The Child of the Desert" which shows a woman in a "cabinet particulier" with a Negro. Familiarity on the part of white women with black men is furthermore a source of profound regret to our experienced colonials who see in it an overweening menace to the prestige of the white race.

Military authority cannot intervene directly in this question, but it can through the civil authorities exercise some influence on the population.

Taken from here.
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Rich white kids come out ahead? Whoda thunk it?

"Affirmative action means that well-qualified (white) kids won't get to go to the school of their choice because of some ill-qualified (colored) kid!"

Oh, wait. No it doesn't.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.

A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

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Everyone's after our wimmin

The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarfskin, or in the scarfskin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black woman over those of his own species.

Uh, yeah. Actually, as it turns out, the "Oran-ootan" prefers blondes, too:

Sibu the orang-utan has miffed his Dutch keepers by refusing to mate with females and showing sexual interest only in tattooed human blondes.

Apenheul Primate Park hoped Sibu would become its breeding male when he arrived two years ago, but orang-utans aren't his type.

"He chases them, or ignores them, but he doesn't do what he should do," said a spokeswoman for the park.

Instead, Sibu fancies his female keepers, especially blondes. That, the spokeswoman said, was common for orang-utans but Sibu has a fetish for tattoos, harking back to a heavily tattooed keeper who reared him.

"Orang-utans have special interests in special subjects. Sibu happens to like tattoos," she said.

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This just in

"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A Minnesota judge has denied Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's bid to withdraw his guilty plea in an airport men's room sex sting."

Nyah.
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