Feminism.
What the fuck is feminism nowadays anyway?
When “feminists” find it perfectly OK to attack a woman because she belongs to the wrong party, because she doesn’t 100% agree with their views and because she is basically choosing to run her own life the way she sees fit, well then they can take that branch of feminism and shove it up their own hypocritical ass.
So, we have heard that Amagad, Sarah Palin charged victims for their own rape kits when se was mayor of Wasilla. Even people I used to respect like Shakes’ Sister and so on went along with this.
Guess what ?
it’s kinda not true.

As in “it’s a lie”

As in

“you have spread a lie in order to discredit Sarah Palin”

as in

“you fucking suck”

behold

Wasilla Police Chief Angela Long says:

I found no documents within the police department showing sexual assault victims
were billed for forensic exams. Nor have I been able to find any documentation
regarding a decision to bill those victims. Case reports don’t contain financial
billing information.
Financial records are retained by the Finance
Department, and the Finance Director was unable to find any records of billing
within records still being held.

The Wasilla PD can find no evidence that victims were billed for rape kits. The only other city government entity (the Finance Department) that would possibly have such information only keeps billing records for six years, and is therefore of little use, as it no longer keeps records that would have been created under Palin’s administration.
Outside of Wasilla, however, other government officials and experts have testified that there were no known instances of rape victims being bill for examinations, and the best evidence of this may be the minutes of the committee that helped draft the state legislation.
On March 6, 2000, Del Smith, the Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Public Safety, testified in support of HB 270 (the bill outlawing the billing of rape kits) and the minutes noted:

He commented that he does not think that a victim ought to even see a bill
related to sexual assault whether it is on their insurance form or not. He
emphasized that a police agency investigating a crime should pay because that is
the cost of doing business in the collection of evidence no matter what the
crime; he does not know of any police agency that has requested payment.

Testifying in front of the same committee, Lauree Hugonin, Director, Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (ANDVSA) noted that “billings have not come from police agencies but have come from hospitals.” Trisha Gentle, Executive Director, Council on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault noted that police departments were willing to pay for the exams, but that it was an internal decision on the part of the hospital as to who pays the hospital bill.
Despite the spin recently being applied by astroturfing Obama supporters, there was never any evidence that victims were being charged by any police departments including Wasilla’s Police Department under Palin. Testimony instead indicates it was callous hospitals that attempted to bill victims on rare occasions of insensitivity.
It is also true that protective mechanisms were in place in Alaska that would have picked up the cost of such kits, even if State law had not changed in 2000.
The State of Alaska Violent Crimes Compensation Board (VCCB) was “was established in 1971 by the Alaskan Legislature to help bring financial relief to innocent victims of violent crimes in Alaska.”
Among the things the VCCB would pay for are the medical bills of victims of violent crimes (including sexual assaults), counseling, and transportation to medical and counseling services.
A former worker with VCCB notes via email:

Rape kits and other medical expenses of this type would be paid by the VCCB,
100% guaranteed. The City of Wasilla could have technically ‘charged’ the victim
but even if they did, the VCCB would have paid the bill in full. I still know
the a few of the Board members and the supervisor and I can tell you that they
are very liberal with the way that they pay the victims bills.
Despite
claims to the contrary, there is no record that the Wasilla Police Department
ever charged rape victims under Sarah Palin’s leadership, nor were State law
enforcement or sexual assault victim’s advocates aware of such attempts anywhere
in Alaska as the proposed bill was being discussed.

As committee minutes show, the offenders experts were worried about were hospitals, not police, and not Sarah Palin.

Yes this comes form a Republican Blog. Sadly, considering that the people who used to be our friends and allies ( KOS, TalkLeft, Taylor Marsh) are no longer to be truested, maybe it is time to look farther than under our proverbial noses. His facts are solid and doccumented.

Wow. it’s like… so this was a lie that many people I used to trust and respect spread willingly without even bothering to check it?

Really?

WTF world do we live in?

Were you so fucking eager to smear her that you’d believe any fucking lie? Really?

What the fuck kind of womanhating scum are you then?

I do not like Michelle Obama. I hated her hypocrisy in the primary, her lies about her and Barack growing up poor and her attacks on Hillary. I disliked her convoluted discourse at the DNC Convention in which she went quite a logn way to insert the racially charged “brother” and “sister” in her speech. Dogwhistling is an art, and that wasn’t particularly subtle about it.

I dislike her chanelling of Jackie O, and her very obvious submissiveness. I dislike the fact that a woman who is so proud of her race still feels the need to burn and straighten her hair in order to make it “look white” (this was pointed to me by a woman of color I used to work with- who also straightened her hair. She said ” you know, I HAVE to straighten my hair, I need the job. She doesn’t. She’s rich. If she was so proud of her race she should have at least accept her hair”. ABB, whose hypocrisy I decry since turning Obamazoid, had a long time ago a good piece of writing about the politics of black hair).

However, I do not HATE her. It was pointed to me by some people that, by virtue of looking somewhat Caucasian, I enjoy privilege she didn’t have. I don’t know about that- it might be. I don’t know what it’s like growing up black in the USA, but I’m pretty sure growing up Jewish in communist Romania is not quite what some third wavers understand by “white privilege”.
Living as an immigrant who has to put up with being regarded as “not white enough to be white in the UK” might also be a bit out of their area of experience or expertise. In the USA I was labelled Latina and that was that.

But that’s not the point. The point is that while I dislike her, I do not hate her.

At my blog I wrote extensively about my recently departed aunt. I remember being about 14, and one of her daughters had somekind of argument at school with another girl. said daughter manipulated the guys in her class to attack that other girl with the most vile and disgusting insults, to the point where the poor girl had to change schools to escape.

Upon finding out what was going on, my aunt gave both her daughters and me ( just by virtue of being there I guess) a speech. She had a raspy voice from smoking 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, she was tiny and her face wrinkled and she was strong like old trees are strong.

” Do you think these boys like you? Do you think you’re special and you’ll never be treated like that because you’re cute? You’re a fool. Anyone who thinks of one woman like that thinks it about ALL women. They won’t tell it to you while they find you useful, but don’t you ever forget that these boys hate women, and they hate you too. When you won’t be useful to them you will find it out.

You’re not special, and you’re not even human to them. For these boys, hating women is like a drug- they tasted it once and liked it because everybody likes to feel that they are inherently better than someone else. That girl is not in your school anymore, but they will find someone else to hate, and one day that person will be you.

They don’t hate ONE woman, they hate ALL women. We’re nothing but cunts to them, to fuck and throw away and nothing more, or maybe if we’re good enough and meek enough to clean after them and put up with them and wash their shit streaked pants and stinky socks.

What they said to that girl? That is what they think of you, and me and every other woman on the planet. And they’re gonna think that until the day they die, because that’s how life is. “

The women who indulge in hating Sarah Palin the way Michelle indulged in hating and attacking Hillary or worse? They should know better. They are just fanning the fire that will one day burn them as well.

I don’t hate Michelle Obama. She is rich and married to a guy who might just become the president of the USA. I’m a poor white collar immigrant living from paycheck to paycheck. I live in a small flat that gets so cold at night that water freezes in the ducts. Sometimes I have to make a choice between a buying a bus ticket or getting lunch.

However, I have it better than she does. I can go out and speak my mind. She did that in the primary. She isn’t allowed to do that anymore. I’m not forced to look like a dead woman and act like a demure little thing to serve a man’s political ambition. Also, unlike her, I didn’t have to have a man accompany me to a job interview to supervise it.

I wonder if she realizes that the same people who attacked Hillary like rabid dogs- for her husband’s profit- will attack her in the same manner without one second thought. I wonder if the alleged feminists who indulged in Palin and Hillary bashing understand that when they allowed and contributed to that, they smacked in the face any woman who may have considered entering politics.

I wonder whether they understand that the message they sent out- that it’s OK to drag a woman through the mud if we don’t like her, translates into it being OK to harass and drag through the mud any woman that someone doesn’t like. Which is all women.

Courtesy of Donna Darko
http://donnadarko.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/whats-wrong-with-anti-racism-part-9/

carmonn: One thing that gets on my nerves is the need to make everything into a feminist issue, as if feminism is a catch all for all social justice issues.
Violet: And of course what’s really going on there is the patriarchal
brainwashing that women’s rights don’t deserve to be an issue on their own, and “good” women should instead be concerned about other issues (ones that involve men).
So every issue gets its own movement: gay rights, racism, anti-war,
poverty, prison reform, environmentalism — except women’s rights. Women can’t have a movement just devoted to women’s rights. No, in order to be intellectually credible to the patriarchy they have to focus on cleaning up all the OTHER messes.
Then, after the men have eaten and left the table, maybe
the women will get to sit down. After they’ve done the dishes of
course

Now me and the Queen have butted head about this more than once. Go read DD’s piece, I have nothing more to say than what she already said.

My blog can current;y be foudn at http://soopermouse.blogspot.com. It is no longer at http://enfc.blogspot.com. Please update your blogrolls 😀

And I fell off my chair laughing. Because, no offence? This is like the wolf endorsing the shepherd. I guess, as the lovely peeps at Corrente have put it, “Anti Iraq” joins the rest of us under the bus.

But seriously, Colin Powell? Who’s next, Pat Buchanan? Oh wait. He already did.

Fuck me. Backwards.
So the guy who runs for presidency because he gave a speech anti Iraq at a time when he risked nothing by doing so, followed it with no action whatsoever and still has the audacity to claim he was right is now asking and receiving an endorsement from one of the Iraq War’s architects?

Hillary was a bitch because she voted for AUMF, but Biden isn’t. And Obama’s anti war stance goes only as far as saying he’s against it. Who’s next to endorse him? Bush or Condi Rice? Too bad Saddam is dead. And Stalin. Boy, I would have loved to see those endorsements.

The ridiculousness of this is beyond words.

Except for the fact that it fits. Powell’s dirty record started in Vietnam, ad still continues. Maybe it makes sense that one corrupt pol would endorse another. Doesn’t it?

If it would not fuck up the whole world, I would wish nothing worse on the Obama supporters than to have Obama win. Then I would sit comfortably in my democratic country, drink the coffee I can afford in my affordable flat without fear of a heart attack, since, after all, we do have nationalized healthcare, and laugh at them getting what’s coming to them. Loudly.
But it doesn’t work that way. Thus, the problem.

This is who you are, this is who you are associating with, this is what you are endorsing. Don’t you fuckign dare turnyour eyes and complain about the violence. If you even for a second consider voting Obama in the generals- you are that guy.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uN2eZtAPLiY

Do you see the pattern?

if you even dream of voting for Obama

These are the people you are voting for. These are YOUR people. I don’t care if you are reluctantly voting for Obama, don’t like him but will vote for him anyway just because he has the D tag, etc. By voting for him, you are endorsing and rewarding this behaviour.

By not calling it out and exposing it for what it is, you are accomplices to this attitude. YOU are one of THEM regardless of your motives. Your humanity ends when you accept any part of this. When you reward the behaviour and the mentality behind it with votes, you are one of them.

And don’t give me the crap about “Obama cannot be held responsible for his supporters’ actions”. Yes he fucking is, because he hasn’t denounced it, because he profits from it, because he is where he is now because people like YOU allowed him to get away with the mysoginy. If you lay with the pigs… and all that.

Here’s how I would remake the educational system in America:

1. Nationally standardized curriculum. Make it at international equivalent level. Remove the fluff. To hell with this “holistic” shit that ends up having parents do the kids’ homework. Have homework that is doable by the kids. Keep the “build this and that shit” stuff in kindergarden. It’s not working anywhere else. Have teachers discuss the national curriculum at yearly professional forums. Update as appropriate.

2. Teachers. Regulate them. Pay them decently. Make being a teacher an actual career. Give them the respect the people who mold the future of a nation deserve. Create a system in which teachers are hired by exam. Even substitute teachers should be qualified and have pedagogy degrees. Have the teachers undertake bi-yearly courses to actualize their knowledge. Offer tenures even for highschool teachers.

3. Have skills training in highschool for various trades so that kids come out of highschool with a tradeskill they can make a living from. Specialize the highschools according to what they offer.

4. Nationally standardized tests at the end of highschool that meet the requirements for college entry.

5. Offer serious funds for schools. Provide them with all the materials they need. Free books, free school computers. Fuck the sports, put the money into books and computers and educational materials. Remove highschool performance sports altogether.

6. Free school dinner. It will work wonders in bringing poor kids to school.

7. Remove all politics from schools. Have qualified teachers run schools, not obtuse managers saving money on pieces of paper

Just off the top of my head. Add yours.

While running my eyes thru leftbloggistan I noticed something I haven’t seen in 4 years: leftie blindness and wishful thinking coupled with utter ignorance to the facts who disagree with their pinkie colored reality view.

1. “Troopergate”? seriously? she wanted to fire a guy who tasered her nephew and made death threats to her father, not to mention being a wife beater. GO ahead democrats, defend a wifebeater. Just do it. Then allow the republicans to run you into he goud by discussing real abuse of power, like Obama asking the state for money for Rezko.

2. Her daughter? Convenient how everyone ignores that Palin is pro contraception, not to mention that her daughter is 17 and thus entitled to her own choices. Or are you guys telling us that she can’t possibly be making a choice if we don’t like the choice? Morons!

3. McCain receives benefits plus a veteran pension and disability? Horrible guy that he is… why that’s almost as Joe Biden spending 1000 dolars a week from the taxpayer’s money to fly to and fro Delaware. Right?

4. Palin wasn’t vetted? She sure has a lot less skeletons than Obama doesn’t she?

5. Palin is irrelevant? Tell that to the polsters that have Obama not only lacking the much expected convention bump, but also the headlines his shitty speech was bound to have.

Wake up and smell the coffee: one of the parties has disaffected unhappy members likely to stay home or vote third party. After 8 fucking years of republican rule and against McCain of all people and Obama fails to have a lead bigger than the margin of error?

Say it after me, President McCain. The Obama campaign, the morons in the DNC backing Obama and the idiot sheeple following their lead have brought you this. I hope McCain thanks them in his inauguration speech.