Category: Evil

It’s Stalker in a box!

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There is an iPhone App called Girls Around Me, and it is way beyond evil.

Basically, it integrates Facebook and Foursquare to allow you to find easy girls:

………

It’s an app that can be interpreted many ways. It is as innocent as it is insidious; it is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears; it is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers.

Girls Around Me is a standard geolocation based maps app, similar to any other app that attempts to alert you to things of interest in your immediate vicinity: whether it be parties, clubs, deals, or what have you. When you load it up, the first thing Girls Around Me does is figure out where you are and load up a Google Map centered around your location. …

…Immediately, Girls Around Me went into radar mode, and after just a few seconds, the map around us was filled with pictures of girls who were in the neighborhood. Since I was showing off the app on a Saturday night, there were dozens of girls out on the town in our local area.

………

“How does it know where these girls are? Do you know all these girls? Is it plucking data from your address book or something?” another friend asked.

“Not at all. These are all girls with publicly visible Facebook profiles who have checked into these locations recently using Foursquare. Girls Around Me then shows you a map where all the girls in your area trackable by Foursquare area. If there’s more than one girl at a location, you see the number of girls there in a red bubble. Click on that, and you can see pictures of all the girls who are at that location at any given time. The pictures you are seeing are their social network profile pictures.”

………

I tapped on Zoe. Girls Around Me quickly loaded up a fullscreen render of her Facebook profile picture. The app then told me where Zoe had last been seen (The Independent) and when (15 minutes ago). A big green button at the bottom reading “Photos & Messaging” just begged to be tapped, and when I did, I was whisked away to Zoe’s Facebook profile.

“Okay, so here’s Zoe. Most of her information is visible, so I now know her full name. I can see at a glance that she’s single, that she is 24, that she went to Stoneham High School and Bunker Hill Community College, that she likes to travel, that her favorite book is Gone With The Wind and her favorite musician is Tori Amos, and that she’s a liberal. I can see the names of her family and friends. I can see her birthday.”

“All of that is visible on Facebook?” one of the other girls in our group asked.

“More, depending on how your privacy settings are configured! For example, I can also look at Zoe’s pictures.”

I tapped on the photo album, and a collection of hundreds of publicly visible photos loaded up. I quickly browsed them.

“Okay, so it looks like Zoe is my kind of girl. From her photo albums, I can see that she likes to party, and given the number of guys she takes photos with at bars and clubs at night, I can deduce that she’s frisky when she’s drunk, and her favorite drink is a frosty margarita. She appears to have recently been in Rome. Also, since her photo album contains pictures she took at the beach, I now know what Zoe looks like in a bikini… which, as it happens, is pretty damn good.”

My girlfriend scowled at me. I assured her Zoe in a bikini was no comparison, and moved on.

“So now I know everything to know about Zoe. I know where she is. I know what she looks like, both clothed and mostly disrobed. I know her full name, her parents’ full names, her brother’s full name. I know what she likes to drink. I know where she went to school. I know what she likes and dislikes. All I need to do now is go down to the Independent, ask her if she remembers me from Stoneham High, ask her how her brother Mike is doing, buy her a frosty margarita, and start waxing eloquently about that beautiful summer I spent in Roma.”

And if it doesn’t work with Zoe, you have a dozen other women at the club for whom you also have a dossier.

Let’s be clear:  If you were stalking A girl, it probably wouldn’t help you much, you would already have her data from Facebook and Foursquare.  This allows you to go after every girl in the immediate vicinity.

This is not quite digital roofies, its victims, assuming that they are adults, have a lot more independent agency than someone who has been drugged, but seriously, this is some  evil sh%$.

It’s beyond creepy.

If They Get Arrested, I Will Pay for the Gloves

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By a 5-4 majority, the Supreme Court has said that authorities can strip search you whenever they arrest you.

When juxtaposed with another ruling that allows cops to arrest you for anything, (Seriously, not fastening a seat belt, because the cop in question had a vendetta, and for taking a sip of coke eating one french fry on the DC subway) it means that Rush Limbaugh’s constant refrain of, “Grab your ankles,” has become reality.

OOPS!!!

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The FBI had to rush and arrest Khalifah al-Akili after he sent out an email to his friends and the Guardian newspaper that he was being targeted for entrapment by them:

The arrest of a Pittsburgh man described as a Taliban sympathiser has sparked allegations that the FBI deployed a notorious confidential informant used in previous controversial stings on suspected Muslim radicals.

Khalifah al-Akili, 34, was arrested in a police raid on his home on March 15. He was later charged with illegally possessing a gun after having previous felony convictions for drug dealing. However, at his court appearance an FBI agent testified that al-Akili had made radical Islamic statements and that police had uncovered unspecified jihadist literature at his home.

But, in a strange twist, al-Akili’s arrest came just days after he had sent out an email to friends and local Muslim civil rights groups complaining that he believed he was the target of an FBI “entrapment” sting. That refers to a controversial FBI tactic of using confidential informants – who often have criminal records or are paid large sums of money – to facilitate “fake” terrorist plots for suspects to invent or carry out.

In the email – which was also sent to the Guardian before al-Akili was arrested – he detailed meeting two men he believed were FBI informants because of the way they talked about radical Islam and appeared to want to get him to make jihadist statements. According to his account, one of them, who called himself Saeed Torres, asked him to buy a gun. Al-Aikili said he refused. The other, who was called Mohammed, offered to help him go to Pakistan for possible Islamic radical training. Al-Akili also refused.

It looks like the FBI was was trying to manufacture some more terrorists, and when this guy started realized that some weird sh%$ was going down, and emailed the press, they busted him.

Let’s be clear, he is being charged with breaking the law. It is allied alleged that as a felon, he did break the law when he fired a friend’s rifle at the range 2 years ago, but he’s being held without bail because prosecutors are alleging that he is a terrorist.

This isn’t making us any safer, and I cannot imagine how this can do anything but feed distrust of law enforcement among among American Muslims.

And We Are Supposed to Trust the Cable Companies Because?

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Yes, they are moving to the gated garden, where favored vendors receive priority bandwidth:

It looks as if Comcast is preparing to move from a limited beta test to a wide release for its long-promised Xbox Live streaming video app, with some details appearing on the company’s support pages. Probably the biggest revelation about the service is that streaming Comcast’s On Demand videos through the Xbox 360 will not count towards customers’ 250GB monthly data limit.

Comcast says the Xbox app gets special treatment because the video is “being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet.” This gives the service a potentially large advantage over not just other video streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but also over Comcast On Demand content streamed through the company’s website and mobile apps, both of which count against the data limits.

Enjoy your 3rd party streaming while you can, because it is not going to work reliably much longer.

I expect them to start f%$#ing with 3rd party IP telephony in the next few years as well, so buh-bye Skype.

H/t Harold Feld.

Orwell Much?

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It looks like Samsung has come up with a telescreen that has cameras and microphones that it can use to watch you:

Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

While Web cameras and Internet connectivity are not new to HDTVs, their complete integration is, and it’s the always connected camera and microphones, combined with the option of third-party apps (not to mention Samsung’s own software) gives us cause for concern regarding the privacy of TV buyers and their friends and families.

Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets. And while there is no current evidence of any particular security hole or untoward behavior by Samsung’s app partners, Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.”

…………

A Samsung representative showed how, once set up and connected to the Internet, these models will automatically talk to the Samsung cloud and enable viewers to use new and exciting apps.

These Samsung TVs locate and make note of registered viewers via sophisticated face recognition software. This means if you tell the TV whose faces belong to which users in your family, it personalizes the experience to each recognized family member. If you have friends over, it could log these faces as well.

In addition, the TV listens and responds to specific voice commands. To use the feature, the microphone is active. What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.

Seriously Eric Arthur Blair must be spinning in his grave at sufficient velocity to power all of Totnes on Devon.

Yes, we have a TV that watches you back, just like Big Brother in 1984.

Any bets on how long before the NSA hacks the cloud that this interfaces, so they can spy into people’s homes?  Certainly, the TOS described here would allow it, so perhaps they would not even have to hack into the system.  They just need to twist some arms at Samsung.

Lovely.

H/t Slashdot.

At Least, there is Symmetry

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The good folks at Westover “G-d Hates F*gs” Baptist are now looking to support Rush Limbaugh by purchasing ads on his show:

There’s something so deliciously ironic, so perfectly just in this. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Rush Limbaugh has a new sponsor anxious to buy up lots of ad space on his show: Westboro Baptist Church. Is there anything more delicious than the idea of the haters advertising on the hater’s show?

Premiere Networks has released a statement saying they will not accept any ads from the group. Who knew they had standards of what Limbaugh maligns as “political correctness.”

I don’t understand why they won’t take the ads, it’s a match made in heathen heaven.

Obama Conspiring to Lock Up Foreign Journalist

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Seriously.

Yemeni journalist proves that military operations in his country are actually US drone strikes, and gets sentenced on trumped up charges to 5 years in prison.

A few months after the kangaroo court, President Saleh had a pardon for him prepared, but Obama pressured him to keep him in prison:

On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama “expressed concern” over the release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said “had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP.” It turned out that Shaye had not yet been released at the time of the call, but Saleh did have a pardon for him prepared and was ready to sign it. It would not have been unusual for the White House to express concern about Yemen’s allowing AQAP suspects to go free. Suspicious prison breaks of Islamist militants in Yemen had been a regular occurrence over the past decade, and Saleh has been known to exploit the threat of terrorism to leverage counterterrorism dollars from the United States. But this case was different. Abdulelah Haider Shaye is not an Islamist militant or an Al Qaeda operative. He is a journalist.

Unlike most journalists covering Al Qaeda, Shaye risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al Qaeda and to interview its leaders. He also conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. Shaye did the last known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a CIA/JSOC hit list. “We were only exposed to Western media and Arab media funded by the West, which depicts only one image of Al Qaeda,” recalls his best friend Kamal Sharaf, a well-known dissident Yemeni political cartoonist. “But Abdulelah brought a different viewpoint.”

………

While Shaye, 35, had long been known as a brave, independent-minded journalist in Yemen, his collision course with the US government appears to have been set in December 2009. On December 17, the Yemeni government announced that it had conducted a series of strikes against an Al Qaeda training camp in the village of al Majala in Yemen’s southern Abyan province, killing a number of Al Qaeda militants. As the story spread across the world, Shaye traveled to al Majala. What he discovered were the remnants of Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs, neither of which are in the Yemeni military’s arsenal. He photographed the missile parts, some of them bearing the label “Made in the USA,” and distributed the photos to international media outlets. He revealed that among the victims of the strike were women, children and the elderly. To be exact, fourteen women and twenty-one children were killed. Whether anyone actually active in Al Qaeda was killed remains hotly contested. After conducting his own investigation, Shaye determined that it was a US strike. The Pentagon would not comment on the strike and the Yemeni government repeatedly denied US involvement. But Shaye was later vindicated when Wikileaks released a US diplomatic cable that featured Yemeni officials joking about how they lied to their own parliament about the US role, while President Saleh assured Gen. David Petraeus that his government would continue to lie and say “the bombs are ours, not yours.”

So, a journalist revealed a US lie, and the worst constitutional law professor ever decides that this guy needs to remain behind bars forever, because he embarrassed our military/intelligence services.

Truly repulsive.

Just When Thought that the ‘Phants Could Not Get Any More Repulsive…

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The Republicans in Arizona are trying to pass a bill allowing your employer to fire women for using birth-control pills for ……… birth control:

Law Will Allow Employers to Fire Women for Using Whore Pills

A proposed new law in Arizona would give employers the power to request that women being prescribed birth control pills provide proof that they’re using it for non-sexual reasons. And because Arizona’s an at-will employment state, that means that bosses critical of their female employees’ sex lives could fire them as a result. If we could harness the power of the crappy ideas coming out of the state of Arizona, we could probably power a rocket ship to the moon, where there are no Mexicans or fertile wombs and everyone can be free to be as mean a cranky asshole as they want at all times! Arizona Heaven!

Because allowing employers to afflict their hatred of women on their employees is freedom!

Seriously, this people, and I mean people, the sponsor, is a woman, Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, have an attitude towards women that makes the Taliban look like the editorial staff of Cosmopolitian.

They really hate the idea of women having any sort of freedom.

I have a suggestion for dealing these rat-f%$#s, that we go classic Greek theater on their asses.

More specifically, I suggest that their significant others go Lysistrata on their asses.

Not Enough Bullets…

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And Louis Freeh is at again, trying to make sure that the money stolen by the banks from MF Global customers stays stolen.

In this case, he is attempting to pay hush money large bonuses to MF global executives:

Three top executives at MF Global Holdings Ltd kept on since the commodities firm’s collapse could receive performance-based bonuses under a retention plan being prepared by a court-appointed trustee, people close to the trustee said.

Trustee Louis Freeh plans to ask a bankruptcy judge to approve the employment agreements, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan is still being crafted.

The plan will include bonus payouts for Chief Operating Officer Bradley Abelow, General Counsel Laurie Ferber and Chief Financial Officer Henri Steenkamp if they meet certain targets.

The formation of a plan does not necessarily mean bonuses will ultimately be paid or that the executives will earn as much total compensation as they have in the past.

Still, it has garnered attention from at least one key politician. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement it was “hard to believe that Mr. Freeh would consider bonuses to these select few while customers and investors are still trying to recoup their losses.”

Because, of course the people who stole the money in the first place.

Seriously, the casual corruption of Loius Freeh and His Evil Minions™, which are in tern a reflection of the endemic levels of corruption of our financial system, just boggle the mind.

It’s got me agreeing with a Republican Congressman, Timothy Johnson, wants blood:

I would wager the combined assets of these executives, along with those of Mr. Jon Corzine, would go a long way towards paying back their customers. That’s what would happen in the world I grew up in.

And on the other end, where we have another trustee allegedly trying to recover money for account holders, we have the other end of the bankster protection racket:

MF Global Inc.’s trustee asked futures customers to release claims on the defunct brokerage in return for money they are owed, demanding an “unwarranted” transfer of legal rights, a group of customers said.

The customers, including William Fleckenstein, Thomas Wacker and Summit Trust Co., said in a court filing yesterday that they were notifying the judge supervising the firm’s liquidation of their “concern” in case he wasn’t aware that trustee James Giddens had mailed his demands to some customers along with his determination of their claims. One of Giddens’s demands may require customers to release claims made in class- action lawsuits, they said.

“It may be interpreted to release claims being asserted in the numerous class action lawsuits filed by aggrieved customers,” the customers said in the filing. “It could also potentially be asserted as a bar to recovery by some or all of the defendants joined in these lawsuits, including claims in the suits against parties alleged to be responsible for the misappropriation of customer funds.”

I’m not sure which is worse, the level of corruption, or the brazenness with which they operate.

H/t Atrios.

It Appears that Hypocrisy is Required for Conservatism

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Hoocoodanode? The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Obamacare that is most likely to make it to the Supreme Court went bankrupt over medical bills, dumping those costs on the rest of us:

Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama’s healthcare law because she was passionate about the issue.

Brown “doesn’t have insurance. She doesn’t want to pay for it. And she doesn’t want the government to tell her she has to have it,” said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business. Brown is a plaintiff in the federation’s case, which the Supreme Court plans to hear later this month.

But court records reveal that Brown and her husband filed for bankruptcy last fall with $4,500 in unpaid medical bills. Those bills could change Brown from a symbol of proud independence into an example of exactly the problem the healthcare law was intended to address.

………

The business federation, along with other critics of the law, calls the insurance mandate a “threat to individual liberty” that violates the Constitution.

Obama administration lawyers argue that the requirement is justified because everyone, sooner or later, needs healthcare. Those who fail to have insurance are at high risk of running up bills they cannot pay, sticking the rest of society with the cost, they argue. Brown’s situation, they say, is a perfect example of exactly that kind of “uncompensated care that will ultimately be paid by others.”

Seriously.  The hypocrisy is mind boggling.

Eric Holder Argues that Assassination is Legal

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Jeebus. It’s now OK to murder an American citizen because the President says so:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it’s legal to murder people — not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president.

…………

By “government” Holder means the president, whether President Obama or President Romney or President Santorum or any man or woman who later becomes president, and nobody else. That one person alone is to decide what is appropriate and lawful and feasible. If the Vice President thinks it is feasible to capture somene, too bad for him. He should have gotten a better job if he wanted to be a decider. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, tough tamales. He shouldn’t dress in his bathrobe if he wants to be taken seriously. If the United States Congress objects that the president’s “surgical strikes” tend to kill too many random men, women, and children, well they know what they can do: Run for president! If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings has objections, well — Isn’t that SPECIAL? And the American people? They can shut up or vote for a racist buffoon from the bad party.

…………

But you see, this is all OK, because Barack Obama is a good guy, so no countervailing government structures, or for that matter any public access to information needs to be allowed:

A consensus has emerged during the presidency of Barack Obama. His administration is increasingly regarded as the worst on issues related to freedom of information and transparency.

Today, Josh Gerstein of POLITICO has a story that gives voice to this emerging consensus, which more and more open government advocates hold despite the fact that the Obama Administration maintains it is committed to “openness.”

Gerstein’s story features a quote from a Washington-based lawyer “who’s been filing” Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests since 1978. The lawyer, Katherine Mayer, says, “Obama is the sixth administration that’s been in office since I’ve been doing Freedom of Information Act work. … It’s kind of shocking to me to say this, but of the six, this administration is the worst on FOIA issues. The worst. There’s just no question about it.”

Think about this for a second: This is all predicated on the idea that the Executive is a good guy who won’t abuse power, and so there is no need for checks and balances.

This is why I call Barack Obama the worst constitutional law professor ever.

Poenitentiam agite*

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In South Carolina, the Laurens County Republican Party is demanding that all of its candidates sign a pledge that they have not had premarital sex. This is kind of a surprise to me, since the way that Republicans propose marriage is to say, “You’re what?”:

Before you can join the Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina and get on the primary ballot, they ask that you pledge that you’ve never ever had pre-marital sex — and that you will never ever look at porn again.

Last Tuesday, the LCGOP unanimously adopted a resolution that would ask all candidates who want to get on the primary ballot to sign a pledge with 28 principles, because the party “does not want to associate with candidates who do not act and speak in a manner that is consistent with the SC Republican Party Platform.”

Among the principles, according to Vic MacDonald & Larry Franklin of the Clinton Chronicle, is standard fare like opposition to abortion and upholding gun rights, as well as “a compassionate and moral approach to Teen Pregnancy” and “a high regard for United States Sovereignty.

I’m done for the night. This is just too f%$#ing weird for me.

*Oh, come on! Aren’t you aware of the Apostolic Brethren, or their successors, the Dulcinian movement, then you’ve read The Name of the Rose, or seen the movie version with Sean Connery? Seriously†

†OK, I admit it, I’ve just seen the movie, and this is the most obscure title I’ve ever put on a blog post, and I’m just f%$#ing with my reader(s). My bad.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot

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H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS  for the pic

Andrew Breitbart is dead. It appears to be natural causes.

Normally, this would be the place where I take the high road, and when someone has died, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything, followed by a couple of inches of white space.

But I remember what he said when Edward Kennedy died:

Andrew Breitbart, a Washington Times columnist who oversees Breitbart.com and BigHollywood.com, tapped into the anti-Kennedy vein in the hours after the senator’s death was announced, posting a series of Twitter messages in which he called Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.”

“I’m more than willing to go off decorum to ensure THIS MAN is not beatified,” Breitbart wrote. “Sorry, he destroyed lives. And he knew it.”

So, I will follow his example, and note that the only thing that he ever did to make the world a better place was to leave it.

I hope Shirley Sharrod continues her suit, and manages to get his damn fillings.

Not Enough Bullets…

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Seriously, if I read one more story about these parasites complaining because they can’t do whatever they want whenever they want, I’ll go postal:

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard,” Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

“I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

…………

If they feel so bad about driving a “Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet (the Volkswagen of supercars.)”, or to go to a market in Brooklyn to score cheaper salmon, I have a suggestion for them, be the guy from Fight Club.

You know the one:

And this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into colleagues and co-workers. This might be someone you’ve known for years. Someone very, very close to you.

Save one round for yourself, and you will do the world a favor.

The Aliens are in Retreat

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It was Jon Stewart that Killed the Beast

So the space the aliens* more commonly known as the Virginia Republican Party, following extensive coverage, or no small amount of ridicule, have started to walk back from the bill requiring that women be probed in genitals if they want an abortion:

Virginia governor Bob McDonnell has performed a U-turn on a controversial bill which would have forced women seeking first trimester abortions to undergo an invasive transvaginal ultrasound.

McDonnell had previously said he would sign the bill if it was passed by the general assembly. But faced with growing opposition, McDonnell released a statement on Wednesday minutes before the bill was debated in the House, in which he said that, after discussions with lawyers, physicians and legal experts, amendments were needed to “address various medical and legal issues which have arisen.”

Critics had pointed out that the bill, if passed in its original form, would have obliged doctors to carry out a procedure that risked breaking a state sex crime statute known as object sexual penetration.

State lawmakers passed the amended bill on Wednesday afternoon. It now explicitly states that no woman will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily. Instead, it requires women seeking an abortion to have an external, transabdominal ultrasound.

The changes also include having a doctor ask the woman if she wants to see an image from the ultrasound rather than requiring a copy to be attached to her medical file.

The upside is that they are retreating because their ideas on this are completely toxic.

What I fear is that they will keep coming back to this, and in a few years, it will be considered a legitimate area of dispute, as opposed to the rantings of bat-sh%$ insane Taliban wannabees.

*Basically we know that aliens conduct involuntary probes of their captives, and so do the Republicans in Virginia, QED Virginia Republicans are space aliens.

Wanker of the Day

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John Corrigan, who thinks that people deserve to have their home stolen by the banks:

That can lead to confusion over who had the legal right to process the foreclosure. But it doesn’t mean the foreclosure itself was unwarranted.

So, foreclosing on someone who doesn’t have a mortgage, or for a mortgage that doesn’t belong to you, or illegally evading billions in title fees, or defrauding investors in mortgage backed securities is all OK, because you are robbing bad people.

H/t Atrios.

Virginia Republicans Are Aliens

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I don’t mean foreigners, I mean malevolent creatures from another world.

Think about it. The only time you hear about involuntary probes, it is because of alien abductions.

Virginia republicans want to mandate involuntary vaginal probes for women:

Inserting something into the vagina of an unwilling woman is a violation in every sense of the word. But not to a majority of Virginia’s Senate.

This week, the Senate passed a bill, largely along party lines, that would require a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound and wait as long as a day for the procedure.

The ultrasound requirement may evoke images of the abdominal sonograms standard in most pregnancies, fuzzy black and white pictures conjured by a wand passed across a woman’s stomach.

But those ultrasounds are ordinarily done fairly late in pregnancy. In the beginning, particularly the first weeks, an abdominal ultrasound may not be sensitive enough to detect anything.

That’s why doctors in many cases use a transvaginal ultrasound. In plainspeak, they insert a condom-covered probe into a woman’s vagina to obtain an image.

In order to satisfy the goals of the legislation – which includes a requirement that a doctor determine the gestational age of the pregnancy- a transvaginal ultrasound may be the only reliable course.

The bill, among the most invasive ever passed in Virginia, is the result of frustration by lawmakers opposed to abortion. Unsuccessful in making abortion illegal and unwilling to be frank about their goals, they have tried by technicality and obfuscation to make it harder for a woman to terminate a pregnancy.

Every so often, I hold the delusion that Republicans cannot get any more contemptible.

They always manage to disabuse me of this.