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July 31, 2005
They Don't Vote For A Reason, Mr. Luce
According to a poll done by Time, 13-year-olds are more conservative. They also only have an 8th grade education.
Posted by emily at 9:40 PM | Comments (0)
I Respectfully Am InKlined to Kick Your Ass!
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has subpenead records from Planned Parenthood in Kansas. What he is trying to do: mandate that parents be informed if their children under sixteen are sexually active. Problem: Most of the records he has subpeaned are from adult woman. Plus, he has not subpeaned any records from local hospitals, although he claims he has done so. Local hospitals would have records of people under sixteen giving birth. Planned Parenthood would have records of people under sixteen having abortions. Planned Parenthood has not given him any documents.
47% of girls under 18 who attend family planning clinics would no longer do so if their parents were notified. 99% would continue having sex. (Above stats acording to a 2002 AMA study.)
Planned Parenthood, I would hope y'all are aware, counsels, gives birth control, tests for STDS.. they don't just direct the thirteen year old to the wire hanger. In order for their services to be most effective, they need to remain private. Who is Kline protecting by having parents notified?
NOW just aired this report and I must say the most sickening part of it was one of the pro-life women they interviewed. They implied that a thirteen-year-old who was the victim of both rape and incest should not get an abortion, because that would only encourage the perpetrator to rape the girl more. "Clean them out and use them again," is what she said, somewhat paraphrased. And they call us the sick ones? They want the young girl to remain pregnant WITH AN INBRED CHILD because then they'll be evidence of the rape and incest? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
Naturally, the host had nothing to say on that whopper.
Posted by emily at 9:26 PM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2005
Add Blues Harmonica...
The Roseanne cast reunited in a bowling alley to celebrate the release of the first season on DVD. Think back, you remember Roseanne Barr Arnold Thomas Barr Spielberg. And her husband, Walter, whose resounding cries of "Shut the Fuck Up, Donny!" kept us in stiches for twenty years at ABC. Wasn't that made into a T-Shirt, along with "Eat My Shorts" and Ross Perot's pie chart?
The late eighties and the early ninties... the era of big Hammer pants is over, my friend. We cry.
They are also releasing "A Different World" to DVD. My question is why. We cry.
Back to RBATBS, our "domestic goddess" before Martha Stewart turned the phrase into something blond, thin and felonious. (And before America turned blond, thin and felonious as well.) This was a great television show, a great, great television show. Funny and cutting. Truthful and painful. Until the last season, where we collectively gasped and fainted at how horrible something could become so quickly. That was until "The West Wing." But even that doesn't have Donna winning the lottery... yet.
The Connor family... welcome to DVD land. May you not make the two-sided disc mistake of the afore mentioned "West Wing." I will not be purchasing the first season, but I will probably have to buy the season where you lost the bike shop, the daughter and the electricity. As RBATBS so deliciously put it,
"Well, middle class was funnn!"
It was, indeed.
Posted by emily at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
Global Struggle Against Extremism?
Now you're just fucking with me.
Posted by emily at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
Goodbye, Larry, Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow
How I will miss the post game press conferences, your Brooklyn accent making my yearnings for home all too bittersweet. How I will miss your "thinker" stance as you watched Chauncey and our men. We were two New Yorkers in a Michigan world and some, like Bill Davidson, did not understand your Hamlet-like ponderings. Go home. Go to the Knicks. Ride the "6" train (well, I'm sure you won't be doing that). Eat at Gray's Papaya and think of me. The Staten Island Ferry blows its weary foghorn for the both of us. You will be able to see our beautiful promised land once more.
Posted by emily at 9:57 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
Roe V Wade
If you want to read the the opinion, here's the link:
http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZS.html
Sorry. I am lame and can not hyperlink shit.
Posted by emily at 3:08 PM | Comments (0)
As NARAL says, "Don't Let His (George W.) Choice End Yours", Do Not Let Them Confirm John Roberts!
Let's not lie to ourselves.
Yes, it may seem unlikely they would overturn Roe. Why? Even though the country is split on abortion, overturning Roe is an unpopular option. The half that are pro-choice will become galvanized, perhaps in a way the Iraq War and Plumegate, Social Security and Terri Shiavo (which was an important issue of states rights) have not yet inspired. I see mass protests. I see people brandishing wire hangers in the streets.
And it will happen. Because Roberts wants to overturn Roe. And he, Scalia and Thomas will attempt to do so. With Congressional and White House backing.
He said so in a 1990 brief when he was principal deputy solicitor general (under then-solicitor general, our old buddy, Ken Starr.) "Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled. [T]he Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."
We turn to our trusty Bill of Rights, Amendment Number Nine (Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, as the Beatles say): "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Justice Blackmon, Roe V. Wade, 1/22/73 Section VIII, Paragraph II "This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
Seems like Harry was able to find some constitutional backing in his opinion after all, Johnny Boy. Blackmon, by the way, was a Methodist appointed by Nixon.
You may not want an abortion yourself (and if you are a man, let me tell you, it'll be very hard to find a doctor to perform one for you.) You may hate that idea. But this isn't about your moral indignation and belief about "when life begins." (I say at eighteen.) It is about privacy, doctor/patient confidentiality and our basic liberties. If you, like myself, have no compunction about abortion and this misbegotten idea of "pro-life" (and how many children have been killed in Iraq, Mr. Bush? Oh, they're not American children. I see.), you can easily see that this is about women's rights, population control (don't cringe; I'm not suggesting we become China), honest family planning and economic stability.
Monkey Face was never going to appoint a Thurgood Marshall Two or a Earl Warren Two. But don't let the relative blank record of this man WHO WORKED UNDER KEN STARR (a man always associated with fairness and judicial restraint) fool you. Like when the holographic doctor from Star Trek Voyager guested on West Wing as the Supreme Court nominee with no opinions, Roberts will be described to us as someone who will roll with the judicial punches. A lie. He will overturn Roe.
Get out the wire hangers, kids. It's back to the good old days.
Posted by emily at 2:07 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2005
Lili Marlene
Not many of you know that Fat Charlie is a wee bit obsessed with Marlene Dietrich. Many of you probably don't even know who she is.
FUN FACTS:
She was born the same day as Fat Charlie (well, not the same day, dumbass. She's a classic movie star.) December 27. 1901 in Berlin.
She slept with JFK.
She caused traffic jams in Paris in the thirties when she dared to venture out in the streets wearing "slacks."
She slept with Jimmy Stewart.
She denounced Nazi Germany and became an American citizen mere months before the start of WWII. (She applied for citizenship in 1934.)
She slept with Gertrude Stein.
She was not a feminist. In fact, she hated "women's lib" as she called it, ignorant of the fact that she would be seen by many women to be the ultimate liberated woman.
She slept with Edith Piaf.
She did not like her most famous song "Falling In Love Again" nor did she like the movie that made her a star "The Blue Angel."
But she did sleep with Jo Von Sternberg, the director.
She never won an Oscar.
She slept with Yul Brenner
She died a recluse in Paris in 1992.
She slept with Edward R. Morrow
Gwenyth Paltrow will be playing her in her biopic.
She did not sleep with Hemingway.
Posted by emily at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2005
Poem #535
how do you like your dark lord now, mr. bush
now that vultures are circling
but you can shoo them away
like a itty bitty slice of yellow cake
yum!
world wars are so intoxicating
your podium is so beautiful
and you rap like a porn star
and we all clap our hands like small children
delight!
don't look into the eyes now, mr death
you are beady not a sequin in sight
suits are over, when will britches come back in
when will camus write his sitcom pilot
laugh track (insert here now)
and the free judith t-shirts
replace the free winona t-shirts
stenciled onto the free o.j. t-shirts
and we all stink a bit more
clap! applause!
how do you like your blue-eyed son now, mr. plagerism
and i could write of supermarkets
like the homosexual buddhist jew
but the dream of milk and cantalope is over
howl! kaddish!
books, nothing
we watch predator news
and see ourselves be vindicated
and let us not forget karl rove
howl! kaddish!
don't forget the terrorist are coming, mr. western nations
coming with large knives and sean penn
to cook us some magnificent sushi and steak
let us all turn to the book of reverberations
madonna and child, in us weekly!
i need the best minds of my generation back
so we can hold the previous one accountable
i need robert macnamara to give me the recipe
so we can bake revolution at four hundred degrees
i need all hacks to get off the stage
so we can give an emmy award to martin sheen
i need sweet soul music and the dancer, karl rove
so we can do the jitterbug to the sound of lies
Posted by emily at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
Don't Call It A Comeback
Fat Charlie Has Re-opened!
Posted by emily at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)