F**k H**kabee

"Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care."

Thus spake Mike Huckabee.

Wonder if good ol' Mike ever read a statistic that didn't jibe with his RightWingNutJob views?For example, this:

The United States enacts a minimum wage (as do some individual states) that tries to establish a floor for what can be paid as a wage by firms. The current minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. In 2008, the official U.S. poverty level for a family of 4 was $21,834 ( Census Bureau "Poverty Thresholds"). With a 40 hour week, a family of 4 with one minimum wage earner would earn $15,080, only 69 percent of the poverty level. [...]

Studies of families that stop receiving TANF [Temporary assistance to needy families] show that 60 percent of former recipients are employed—typically at poverty-level salaries between $6 and $8.50 an hour—while 40 percent are not employed. Lack of available child care can well keep single mothers from working as required, for example.

Too bad those manufacturing jobs that once provided employment - and benefits - for US citizens were moved "off-shore" by greedy conglomerate pigs like the Kochs who thus increased their profit margin yet still enjoy generous corporate welfare.

As another critic of Huckabee's mis-spakes observes here:

Huckabee has involuntarily blurted out something certain to resonate with right-wing pathologies, only to try to quickly take back its particulars. When he recently made the false claim that Obama grew up in Kenya, only to later clarify that he misspoke, he merely revealed that he had screwed up in the particular manner in which he blew the conservative dog-whistle, not that he never intended to blow it at all.

Can't blink.

In the hilarious stand-up comedy monologue below Janeane Garafolo - about whom it is claimed that she bears a slight ressemblance to fern hill in the same way that Patsy Stone looks like deBeauxOs - refers to US rightwing religious fundamentalists Con zombies using the expression "Can't blink". Garafolo riffs about that, and Stevie Spiteful.



I suspect the expression "Can't blink" was borrowed from military jargon, and it's exploited in the RepubliCon discourse just as terms such as pre-emptive strike and collateral damage are deployed.

Nonetheless, it reveals a political reality in the US - and elsewhere, as events in Northern Africa and the Middle East demonstrate - that one should remain vigilant with regards to the actions of ideological opponents.

fern hill's post about the US RepubliCons' MASSIVE push to re-criminalize abortion with legislature that limits women's access to abortion exposes the depth of their hypocrisy. As this NYTimes op-ed says:

House Republicans are preparing to push through restrictions on federal financing of abortions far more extreme than previously proposed at the federal level. Lawmakers who otherwise rail against big government have made it one of their highest priorities to take the decision about a legal medical procedure out of the hands of individuals and turn it over to the government. [...]

A separate Republican bill would deny federal funds for family planning services to any organization that provides abortions. It is aimed primarily at Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of health centers, which also provide many other valuable services. No federal money is used for the abortions. This is a reckless effort to cripple an irreplaceable organization out of pure politics.

Remember how ReformaTory HarperCon backbenchers' Preacher Vellacott and Rod Bruinooge kept introducing private members' bills to impose legislated restrictions on a legal medical procedure and re-criminalize abortion in past parliamentary sessions?
From another NYTimes op-ed:

The objective is to provide the Supreme Court’s conservative majority with a new vehicle for further tampering with Roe v. Wade’s insight that the decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy is best left to women and their doctors pre-viability.

Americans who support women’s reproductive rights and oppose this kind of outrageous government intrusion need to respond with rising force and clarity to this real and immediate danger.

This incremental erosion of women's right to choose when and if to procreate in Canada is a toxic spillover from US rightwing zealotry - and bigotry. Don't blink, because the HarperCons are following the lead of their ideological brethren in the US.

Deliberate hoax or political spin?

From here:

After two suspicious packages were delivered to Sen. John Cornyn's (R-Texas)offices in the Dallas area on Wednesday, local station CBS 11 reports that bomb squad technicians detonated the two devices.

According to the Texas-based outlet, the office space was evacuated after the mail arrived.

Shortly thereafter, CBS11 said that no explosive or incendiary materials were discovered in the packages.

Wait a minute! How can a package containing no explosive or incendiary materials be detonated? Could they mean 'disarmed'?

OK. To recap, testerical staff in RepubliCon senator's office believe packages are *suspicious* (no return address?). They call the bomb squad - so now rightwingnutz can claim their politicians are also targets.

Nyah, nyah.

Hot spin?

Yesterday Hot Shit Minister for Natural Resources Lisa "I bathe in Evian" Raitt told the opposition in the House of Commons that the CNSC had assured her that the radiation was linked to medical isotopes and had nothing to do with a Dec. 5 leak at the Chalk River nuclear plant 185 kilometres northwest of Ottawa. That nuclear facility is located upstream of the Ottawa River.

From the CBC:

The sludge that was recently quarantined near the Canadian border tested positive for radiation because of the presence of a medical isotope, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. ...

Since then, the sludge has been stored at Third High Farms, a waste storage facility in Iroquois, Ont., and consultants have been called in to investigate. The culprit appears to be the isotope iodine 131. The CNSC has said the isotope, which is used for medical procedures, is most likely the source of the radiation detected in the sludge.

More information here.

Still, nowhere does it say if truckloads of biosolids have been refused entry to the US previously, because of radioactive levels. Presumably, iodine 131 has been flushed consistently into the sewage system for decades now. What caused the recent spike?

Behold the Stephen Harper Excrematorium.

Isolated biosolids discarded by the city of Ottawa’s water treatment facility have been refused entry into the US for disposal because they were found to be radioactive.

More here. I'm betting that Lisa Raitt has been drinking and bathing in bottled water since December.

How to go about suggesting that the nation’s capital raw sewage treatment plant be re-named the Stephen Harper Excrematorium …?

Update: Make that the Stephen J Harper Excrematorium. That J. adds gravitas, don't you think? The Ottawa Citizen has more today.

eh. The city is hiring a "nuclear sleuth", a Toronto expert on radiation.

I'm still betting on Hot Shit Minister (thanks pseudz!) for Natural Resources Lisa "I bathe in Evian" Raitt to stage a diversion away from the Chalk River facility.

"Over there!!! Look!!! A shiny, radiating, terrist object!!!"

Further update: Hot Shit Minister for Natural Resources Lisa "I bathe in Evian" Raitt scolded the opposition for creating public panic when she was asked whether there was a connection between the radioactive biosolids produced by the Stephen J Harper Excrematorium and leaks reported at the nuclear reactor. She said "there is almost certainly no connection between radioactive sludge in Ottawa and a reactor leak at Chalk River some 200 kilometres upriver." Almost certainly no connection ... And she hammered the point home by adding: How do I know? The Bible Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission tells me so.

Wow, I feel so much better already.

Grand merci to J.A.Baker for the idea.

It looks like there's no "fun" in fundamentalists.

It’s a rare moment when a RepubliCon wannabe pundit hits the right funny note. As observed at Canadian Cynic, this is not one of those moments. Why are Con sycophants tone-deaf, when it comes to playing in the scale of wit and humour? They persist in banging out flat, discordant notes in the misguided belief that they are amusing. Besides the glaring spelling mistakes, errors in fact, and mis-use of the word ‘satiate’ (unless the meaning intended is "to supply with anything to excess, so as to disgust or weary"), is there anything remotely interesting in the Blogging Tories' head cheerleader

Stephen Taylor's plodding piece?

Sandra Buckler as a Senator? Wouldn’t that force her to leave her job in the lucrative lobbyist industry?

As for Québec, surely there must be one or two decrepit Union Nationale relics to be found, not yet 75, who could keep the Senate seats warm for future RepubliCon appointments.

Yup, it sure looks like there's no "fun" in fundamentalists. But then, was there ever?

After snark: Bill Shatner is one of the senatorial candidates suggested by Stephen "Stevie" Taylor. Will he share his crowning glory secrets with Mike Duffy?