Angry Black Bitch on Health Care Bill Passage

Celebrating? Hardly.

Over the weekend, at 11:15 p.m. Saturday night, the House of Representatives voted to fuck women when they passed a health insurance reform bill with an anti-choice amendment that includes a ban on private abortion coverage and would prohibit it in the public option. Despite countless attempts to lobby the House, enough members caved to anti-choice freaks ‘cause some Dems managed to convince themselves that passing a health care reform bill that leaves women flattened by a bus is a legislative victory.

Let me once again denounce the American "left's" reliance on the Democratic Party that trembles at defending civil rights. How they turned their backs on queers in Maine! How they traded away a woman's rights to control her body and health!

Health Care Reform Bill Passed House

Now, does anybody know what exactly's in there? See The Field Negro's concerns.

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1] - - - - - - - - - -
“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2] - - - - - - - - - -
“Criminal penalties Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual: • Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

Umm...

And just how royally did women get screwed? Pretty thoroughly. Thanks, Nancy. What a difference it makes having a female running things.

One for the girls

Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley was the hero at Fort Hood, bringing down the gunman after he went on a shooting rampage.

On Wine

Most American bottles are little more than grape-based processed food products. Uh huh. Shocker.

The article should also have mentioned how common it is for "winemakers" to add a bunch of sugar to their juice to ratchet up the alcohol when the grapes weren't ripe enough or the year was bad, or put it in centrifuges when on the contrary they want to get rid of excess alcohol because they picked the grapes at the wrong moment of ripeness, or clear the must. Sometimes they actually add flavorings. I'll have wine-flavored wine please.

Marie NDiaye Takes the Goncourt

UPDATED.

One of the best writers anywhere takes France's top literary prize, the Goncourt.
(Here's a much better article in the Guardian.)

What's the world coming to? First Herta Muller then Marie NDiaye. What will I have left to complain about?

Previous post.

Generation Y

One of the best blogs out there, from Cuba.

Looking at the FBI's Powers

Worth checking out this NY Times article looking at how much additional leeway agents have been given in the post-Sept. 11 era, and how

even if agents find nothing, the personal information they collect during assessments can be retained in F.B.I. databases, the manual says.

When selecting targets, agents are permitted to consider political speech or religion as one criterion. The manual tells agents not to engage in racial profiling, but it authorizes them to take into account “specific and relevant ethnic behavior” and to “identify locations of concentrated ethnic communities.”

Add that to the Obama administration's continuation of Bush's Homeland Security policies eroding civil liberties, plus their cover-up of Bush admin war crimes, and voila, a perfect example of why we should all read Herta Müller.

Nobel Prize In Literature

Updated

A bit late posting this, but worth noting Herta Müller won the Nobel prize for literature.

In her essay, Securitate in all but name she describes what it was like to be a writer under Ceausescu in Romania, and how even after his execution decades ago his secret service is still active.

There's a pretty good bio of Müller by Verena Auffermann in SignandSight.

Chronic Problems with CDC

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. In "A Case of Chronic Denial" about the news that once again, research shows that a retrovirus is responsible for the lamely named Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Hillary Johnson reminds us that

Congress has appropriated money for research on chronic fatigue syndrome, too, though in far smaller amounts, but the C.D.C. has seemed unwilling to spend it productively. A decade ago, investigations by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services and what was then called the General Accounting Office revealed that for years government scientists had been funneling millions meant for research on this disease into other pet projects.

Furthermore

Hints that a retroviral infection might play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome have been present from the beginning. In 1991, Dr. Elaine DeFreitas, a virologist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, found retroviral DNA in 80 percent of 30 chronic fatigue patients. The C.D.C. went so far as to try to replicate her effort, but refused to follow her exacting methods for finding the virus. In addition, the centers’ blood samples became contaminated, and some people at the agency said that administrators ended the research prematurely. Rather than admit any such failure, the C.D.C. publicly criticized Dr. DeFreitas’s findings.

That episode had a chilling effect on other researchers in the field, and the search for the cause was largely abandoned for 20 years.

Fuckers.

Ontological Confusion in New York