Last Call

Upon further speculation, President Obama has decided to seek a leash on oil speculation driving up prices at the pump.  Hey, Dodd-Frank allows that kind of thing now.

On Tuesday, the White House laid out five ways to crack down on oil market manipulation, one of the elements it blames for high fuel prices.

Civil penalties for firms involved in market manipulation would rise to $10 million from $1 million and would be assessed for each day the manipulation occurs rather than on a per-violation basis under the new proposal.

Maximum criminal penalties would rise to $10 million as well.

The White House also asked Congress to give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority to require traders to have more collateral when they trade oil in an effort to reduce risky trading.

Obama is also calling for more funding to increase CFTC surveillance and enforcement staff and to improve technology.

"At a time when American consumers are feeling pain at the pump, it is critically important to ensure that illegal manipulation, fraud and market rigging are not contributing to gas price increases," the White House said in a statement.

Republicans of course completely ignored the President and sided with the oil companies, which was the point of the entire exercise.  Expect yet another Senate vote soon putting Republicans on record in Big Oil's pockets, the the surprise of no one.

Bonus points if wingers are stupid enough to say "But Uppity McDark here said there was little the White House could do about $4 gas!"

Which is why has asking Congress to give the CFTC the power to do something about it, guys.  Which of course the Republicans won't dare to do.

Clown Hall Beclowns Itself Again

It's just all Obama Derangement Syndrome over there, all the time.  Any piece that ever starts off with these words...

Operation Fast and Furious is the deadliest and most sinister scandal in American history. A scandal so big, it’s worse than Iran-Contra and makes Watergate look like a high school prank gone wrong.

...Can be and should be dismissed out of hand for such a myopic and purely ignorant view of American history that it beggars belief that it's not parody. Let's go back to the fact our chief Iraqi intelligence source on Saddam Hussein's WMD freely admits to lying, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney got us into a war where literally tens of thousands of people died for no good reason. Meanwhile, the death toll of the entire Fast and Furious scandal is...a border patrol agent. In a program that George W. Bush's administration started. But FF is the worst scandal in the history of America? You have to be either high, stupid, or so blind with Obama hate than you can't take a hard crap without cursing the man for five minutes straight.

This is also ignoring everything before the 21st century, too.

These people need psychiatric help.  Seriously.

The Poll Position

And the first batch of polls since Rick Santorum dropped out and left Mitt Romney as the presumptive GOP nominee are out.  CNN has Obama up by 9, but Gallup has Romney up by 2 among registered voters.  The real killer is ABC/WaPo's poll on likeability, with Obama ahead of Romney by a staggering twenty-one points.

Thirty-five percent of Americans see Romney favorably, while 47 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the former Massachusetts governor. He's the first likely nominee to be underwater -- seen more unfavorably than favorably -- in ABC/Post polls in eight presidential primary seasons over the past 28 years. 

Romney's gender gap in vote preferences in an ABC/Post poll last week -- he trailed Obama by 19 percentage points among women -- is reflected in his new favorability scores as well. Just 27 percent of women see Romney favorably, compared with 44 percent of men -- his lowest rating to date among women, and highest among men, in a dozen ABC/Post polls since September.

Obama, by contrast, has no such gap between the sexes; he's seen favorably by 56 percent of Americans overall, including 58 percent of women and 53 percent of men, surpassing Romney in both groups.

Romney also has an enthusiasm gap: Just 12 percent see him "strongly" favorably, about half as many as see him strongly unfavorably. Intensity of sentiment on Obama is more even, tipping slightly to the positive -- 30 percent strongly favorable, 26 percent strongly unfavorable.  

Romney at negative 12 where Obama is plus 14 is pretty awful.  The real killer is Romney is at a mind-numbering negative 25 points among women (27%-52%).  Women despise the guy.  And a gender gap that big seriously makes me question Gallup's polling.  Gallup also shows Romney slightly ahead in the enthusiasm gap, 80% to 76% over the President, with voters for each respective candidate saying they will definitely vote in November.  That's hogwash compared to pretty much every other poll out there.

Nobody believes that.  Not for a second.  There's no way Romney has a gender gap issue that horrific and still is ahead in the polls.  We'll see how that continues to play out, but right now I'm very leery of any poll showing Romney ahead (and Gallup almost never shows their crosstabs like everyone else does either).

If this is the starting point of poll season, Romney's in a deep hole.

A Special Place In Hell... Just... Argh

DENVER (AP) — A 3-year-old is back with his parents after he knocked on a stranger's door in the middle of the night following the hijacking of his father's car at a Colorado Springs, Colorado convenience store with him in the back seat.

"Help me, I'm cold," the toddler told Traci Gilbert, who answered the door.

She said she heard her doorbell ring about 2:15 a.m. Sunday and got up to check. Gilbert looked through the peephole and didn't see anyone, so she opened her door. Outside, she found the 3-year-old covered in snow and sleet, wearing nighttime diapers and a thin jacket.

"He wasn't crying. He never shed a single tear the whole time. That boy is a hero to me," Gilbert said.

Gilbert said Monday she is still amazed that the toddler made it up 14 slick steps to her front door on the second floor of a duplex, carrying a plastic bag that held a container of soy milk, a Sippy cup, two diapers, wipes and pajama bottoms.

That anyone could put a little boy out on the road in the middle of the night is deplorable.  With snow and ice factored in, it moves from criminal to unforgivable.  That child could have frozen, been kidnapped, or run over. Instead, he showed that awesome bravery that you see in kids and took care of it himself.

It's unlikely they'll catch the guy, but if they do he'd better hope that nobody finds out what he did or it will be a looooong sentence.

Strippers Get Bum Treatment

Kimberly Smedley traveled extensively and injected silicone into the buttocks of her clients, a vast majority of them were exotic dancers.  There were just a few small problems with the plan.  She's not a doctor.  She's not a nurse, she's not licensed to inject people with anything.  And then there's this little bit of horror from The Smoking Gun:

Smedley faces a maximum five-year prison term when sentenced in mid-July. A plea agreement indicates that federal prosecutors will seek a $250,000 fine, in addition to about $8000 in restitution (that Smedley has agreed to pay).

Pictured above, Smedley is not a licensed medical practitioner. She also falsely represented to customers that the silicone she injected (which was stored in a plastic water jug) was medical grade. Instead, prosecutors disclosed, she used a substance intended for “metal or plastic lubrication, as an additive for paint and coatings, and furniture or automotive polishes.”

Food and Drug Administration agents determined that Smedley ordered “over 4920 pounds” of the substance “from one manufacturer alone” since 2003.

A water jug.  That may haunt my dreams for quite a while.  Here's more. She used Super Glue and cotton balls to keep it from leaking back out.  A dancer became very sick after a "treatment" and led to an investigation.  It's hard to tell at this point how much trouble Smedley  went through to pose as a medical professional.  Were the women aware that this was an "alternative" treatment?  Or did they think she was a legitimate professional who stayed in hotel rooms with water jugs of silicone?  Were women knowingly risking their lives for some extra booty?  Please say it ain't so.

Game Of Chik'n

For some reason, this story really annoyed the hell out of me this morning.

Whenever a new Chick-fil-A opens, hundreds of its devoted fans walk in after spending days, sometimes weeks, outside the front door. Some devotees will wait in line at multiple restaurant openings, just to say they were among the first to eat at that Chick-fil-A. They must really love the chicken sandwiches there, right?

They do, but there’s another reason why they do this. At each grand opening, Chick-fil-A hands out coupons for one free Chick-fil-A Meal per week for a year (52 meals) to the first 100 people in line. For the most devoted Chick-fil-A fans who attend multiple openings, that means having free lunch and dinner for weeks, months or even years.

This leads us to Christina Heise and Matthew Robinson. They are regulars at Chick-fil-A openings, showing up to more than 70 combined. Eventually, they met and started talking. One chicken sandwich led to another, and now they’re engaged to be married.

Oh yes, NOW I remember why this story pisses me off.

As Equality Matters has reported, Chick-fil-A’s WinShape foundation has given millions of dollars to organizations that oppose marriage equality (Marriage and Family Legacy Fund, Family Research Council), bully gay students (Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Focus on the Family), and promote harmful ex-gay therapy (Exodus International). In addition, the company has a score of 0 on HRC’s corporate equality index, offering absolutely no protections to LGBT staff and even firing employees who engage in “sinful” behavior. Compare that to how many Fortune 100 companies offer non-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation (94 percent) and gender identity (69 percent).

Free waffle fries, free bigotry.  Yeah, that pretty much sums up America The Beautiful.  I wonder if they'd honor the coupons for Christina and Matthew here if they were Christina and Madison, or Christopher and Matthew, engaged to be married.  I'm thinking no.  But then again, I'm thinking they wouldn't be in line anyway...then again, taking 52 free meals from these guys on the company's dime seems like a pretty good entry into the sweet revenge column to me.

Romney Will Run Government Like He Ran Business...

...into the ground.  ABL has R-Money pegged when she says:

Romney seems to be taking the same approach to government as he did to his business ventures at Bain. 

Absolutely:

“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go,” Romney said. “Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I’m not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we’ve got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states.”

Asked about the fate of the Department of Education in a potential Romney administration, the former governor suggested it would also face a dramatic restructuring.

“The Department of Education: I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller. I’m not going to get rid of it entirely,” Romney said, explaining that part of his reasoning behind preserving the agency was to maintain a federal role in pushing back against teachers’ unions. Romney added that he learned in his 1994 campaign for Senate that proposing to eliminate the agency was politically volatile.

When conservatives say "Run government like a business!" they mean "Get rid of the parts of government that help the little people!"  Those are cash sinks, you know.  Mitt wants to do to the federal government what he did to all those companies in Bain Capital:  chop them up, get rid of all the employees, and raid what's left for cash. 

It's code for "scrap the safety net", just like "give the program to the states" is.  In Romney's world, states are competing for the one percent's favor by seeing who can screw over the 99% the hardest and make them even more dependent on the private, for-profit services they rule over.  Government serving the people has no place in R-Money's America.  If you're not making the one percent money, you've got to go.

Remember when Romney was a moderate?  Do you think he still is one?  You'd better wake up.

StupidiNews!

• As expected, the GOP blocked the Buffett Rule in the Senate that would have made America's wealthiest taxpayers pay more.
• Wisconsin's Supreme Court will not take up the issue of the state's blocked voter ID law, for now leaving the law in limbo.
• More and more state officials say without a federal highway bill, states will have to turn to making the US Interstate Highway system into a series of toll roads.
• The "too-big-to-fail" banks are even bigger now than they were before the financial crisis when it comes to total assets.
• A Toledo, Ohio man has been charged with hacking police websites under the banner of an offshoot of hacker group Anonymous.

Last Call

Dear winger nutjob public officials writing stupid bigoted stuff on social media:  Hi there!

The Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue Department opened an investigation into a racist post on one of its captains’ Facebook page. According to The Grio, Brian Beckmann, a captain in the Miami-Dade fire department, posted a rant on his Facebook page suggesting that Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman was unjustly accused and that Martin’s killing can be blamed upon poor parenting by “urban” parents who are “welfare dependent”.

Naah, people don't read Facebook or anything. Your lousy racist screed? Nobody will see it. You know, except for possibly anyone on Facebook. Or on the internet. But what are the odds of that, right?

So, we'll be in the "public apology" phase by the end of the day, followed by the "suspension pending investigation" phase, the "close-minded PC Libtards are afraid of the truth!" phase and eventually the "hope people have forgotten about it/quietly reinstated" phase, when it will all be repeated by the next bigoted slimebucket who wants to "tell the truth" about those people, just like it's been going on for the last four years now in the spotlight and long since before out of it.

But what do I know, I'm just a ghetto hoodie hood rat with shitbag parents. Bonus points for packing in misogyny, class warfare and the media too, and it's even spelled correctly. Hey, that's why he made Captain, right?

I also see that Charles Pierce goes Level 3 Super Combo on this one and crushes it out of the park.

The hell of it all is, I am not surprised by anything anymore, except for the stubborn stupidity of people who believe that anything they post on Facebook, or tweet around the Twitterverse, is in anyway private. It's like those politicians who affect shock when they discover that the camera's on, or that the tape recorder actually works.

One might be forgiven for thinking after the 4067th time or so, that they feel confident enough in the "It pisses off the libtards!/You'll fail upwards!" outcome probability that they're doing it on purpose now.

Cries And Laughter

Analia Bouter and her husband had been told that her premature baby was stillborn when she gave birth in Argentina's Chaco province on 3 April.

When they went to the refrigerated morgue 12 hours later, they found the little girl trembling in the coffin.

In an interview with TeleNoticias, Ms Bouter said: "I moved the coverings aside... and I touched her hand and then uncovered her face. That's where I heard a tiny little cry.

"I fell to my knees. My husband didn't know what to do. We were just crying and I laughed and cried, cries and laughter."

Five employees were suspended due to the mistake.  The little girl is in improving condition but as of Sunday night's update still considered critical.  That she put up such a fight for life, and that it came to a mother's wish to touch her face and say goodbye, is so touching.  Whether you chalk it up to fate, God or random coincidence, that little girl was meant to be here.

Loyalty: You're Doing It Right

LA PUENTE, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles county animal control officials are heralding the loyalty of a black Labrador retriever that braved traffic to stay by another dog that was fatally struck by a car.

A motorist who saw the dogs on a La Puente street Wednesday morning put down traffic cones to alert other drivers and shot video of the dogs. The video released Saturday showed the female Labrador lying next to a motionless, yellow Labrador as vehicles pass dangerously close to them.

The Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control says the 2-year-old dog, who animal shelter staff and volunteers have named Grace, appears to have been well cared for. However, nobody has come forward to claim her so she is up for adoption.

Considering how many lessons humans need in loyalty and compassion, it would do everyone good to ponder on that for just a second.  I hope she is adopted, she'd be a credit to any family.

We Don't Need No Stinking Cure

I highly recommend that you read the entire article.  It is packed with information, too much to include here.  I'm just going to hit the highlights that I feel paint the picture.

For nearly 15 years, Thillen Naidoo's life was ruled by crack cocaine. Growing up in Chatsworth, a township on the outskirts of Durban in South Africa, he was surrounded by drugs.

After a troubled childhood and the death of his father, he turned to cocaine.

Though he held down a job as a carpenter and could go for days or even weeks without a hit, his wild drug binges often ended in arguments with his wife Saloshna and sometimes even physical abuse.

By the time he met Dr Anwar Jeewa at the Minds Alive Rehab Centre in Chatsworth, Naidoo had tried to quit several times and failed. "Those were dark, dark days," he says.

Thillen Naidoo and his wife were desperate and willing to try anything to ease his addiction Jeewa offered a radical solution, a hallucinogenic drug used in tribal ceremonies in central Africa that would obliterate his cravings. But Naidoo was anxious. "I didn't know what this ibogaine thing was," he says. "I never expected it to work."

After several medical tests he was given the pill. A few hours later he lay in bed, watching flying fish swarm above his head. He felt the room move around him and a constant buzz rang in his ears. Scenes from his childhood flashed up briefly before his eyes and each time someone approached to check he was OK he felt a rush of fear.

When the drug wore off, he was free of his addiction to cocaine.  Six months later, he is still clean.  Sixteen years later, the original patients who took the drug are still clean.  Thousands have been spared the scourge of addiction after a single dose of this hallucinogen.  It seems to affect people in two ways, fixing the receptors in the brain that are responsible for feeling the craving, and during the time of hallucinogenic experience patients confront the memories or feelings that trigger the need for the drug in the first place.  In other words, you don't feel pain or withdrawal at all, and you come out of it with less emotional and mental baggage.  Win-win-win-win-win.

It works.  It really really works, and when it does work it seems to have permanent effects from a single dose.  So why aren't drug companies all over this?  There's no money in it.  There is no repeat business, so there is no profit.  There is no incentive to develop a medicine that, while beneficial for hundreds of millions of addicts, because they won't be able to crank out a monthly refill.

I understand the needs of business to turn a profit and grow.  But we are talking about a cure for heroin and cocaine addiction with an unbelievable long-term success rate.  This is something that has torn apart countless families, ruined millions of lives over the years, and costs government billions in rehab and law enforcement. If they find the cure for cancer, would it only be useful if it turned a profit?  Before reading this, I would have had faith that on a global level we were better than that. Now I'm not so sure.

I started smoking when I was thirteen, because I was stupid, as most teenagers are.  I wanted to quit, I was terrified of cancer and emphysema, but I couldn't do it.  I tried several times, it was brutally painful, so much so that my nonsmoking husband would buy me a pack because he couldn't stand to see me suffer the withdrawals.  I had a chance in the early days of Wellbutrin to participate in a reduced rate program.  I jumped on board, and when I quit I was totally freaked out by the fact that it was painless.  I have never smoked since, and am healthier than I've been since junior high school.  I can't imagine addiction to coke or heroin, something that can reduce relatively normal people to mere monsters chasing a fix.  But I know what it's like to be be trapped, scared, and unable to stop.  This won't cure every single person, and not everyone wants to be cured of addiction.  But for those who do, they'll have a fighting chance.  There is finally hope for those trapped in the hell that only an addict knows, of wanting desperately to quit but stuck in a trying-and-failing cycle that never ends.

You know when people try to be all smarmy and suggest that there are better things to spend government money on?  Well, this is one of them.  This is important enough to demand our funding and our respect.  It can spare families so much suffering!  It can be given to repeat offenders as a choice, a therapy at rehab centers that can spend more energy teaching people how to live drug free because there is no need to battle withdrawal symptoms.  For those it saves, they only have to want to quit long enough to take it once.  After that, they don't crave the drug and in some cases are forever unable to feel the normal experience of users.  There's no reward in it for them, and they feel no physical need to have it.  That is a cure, folks.  I can only hope that research backs up the findings and gives us a way to help people around the world.  I'm totally flummoxed that it comes down to funding, a crude and avoidable obstacle.  If it worked but caused your skin to turn purple, or the recipients went blind, that's an obstacle that might kill the victory in the war on heroin.  But cost of research to back very promising results?  Holy shit, where's the telethon for that?  The worst criticism I heard was "it didn't work for me" but even modest research should be able to improve results on increasing the number of people it reaches and fighting any side effects.

Does government really want to win the war on drugs?  You can't win from the supply end of things.  As you kill the supply, you increase the demand to a point that it becomes unbeatable.  This is a chance to kill it from the demand end of things, a permanent and real solution.  Without demand, the rug is yanked out from under drug cartels, and the competition for what little remaining business there is would put all but the top out of business.  Drug lords would do law enforcement's job, taking out their own kind and reversing the numbers so that cops can hold their own.  Education, availability and the desire to quit would be able to make a difference, as people learn that they can quit, win forever, and it won't even hurt.  Can it really be that money is the only thing in the way of putting this to use?  One way or another, I gotta call BS.  Either they are misrepresenting the findings or governments can't see a good opportunity staring them straight in the face.

Marriage Trend Requires Understanding And Planning

WASHINGTON — Unmarried couples who live together are increasingly likely to have children, with the rate nearly doubling since 2002, according to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Twenty-two percent of first births from 2006 to 2010 were to women in a cohabiting couple, up from 12 percent in 2002, the study by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics said.

The increase came even as the picture for U.S. births and parenthood remained largely unchanged from the 2002 data, the report said. Gladys Martinez, the study's lead author, said a reason for the greater number of children born to unmarried couples was the rising number of men and women living together.

"More people are cohabiting. It's more likely that they are going to have children when in cohabiting unions," she told Reuters.

The increase is important because children born out of wedlock generally suffer more instability and grow up with fewer resources.

This is important for several reasons.  First, it's a sign that for millions of children just being born, they will have fewer resources.  Second, it's a  good time to protect those kids from Republicans who consider lifestyle a reason to deny citizens government rights and protection.  It's a sign that our culture is changing, and for the sake of those kids and families we need to adapt and understand what they need so we can build a country that includes them as a significant portion of the people... because in a few years they will be.


From the dawn of mankind until now, we've never seen traditional families change so much.  It's a great thing that lets people choose how they will live, and reduces the stigma of being in a different family style.  Knowing this, we need to stay on top of these trends and incorporate them into government programs and build social undertanding.  Otherwise the kids will pay, while the adults scratch their heads and wonder just how living lawfully still backfired and put them in a mess.  

Cold, Bitter Tea

Yet another poll is showing that the Tea Party has lost a lot of steam since the 2010 election. and that Americans have quite a bit of buyer's remorse about putting the GOP back in charge of the House two years ago.

A major force in the 2010 midterm elections, the movement has stalled in public popularity, its support well below a majority and decidedly lukewarm. And Americans by a broad 23-point margin say the more they hear about the Tea Party movement, the less they like it, rather than liking it more.

That negative buzz has worsened from a 9-point gap in an ABC News/Washington Post poll as the movement was gathering speed two years ago. And its avenues for resurgence may be limited: Interest in learning more about Tea Party is down 7 points from spring 2010.

This poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that six in 10 Americans aren’t particularly interested in additional information about the Tea Party, and 41 percent aren’t interested “at all.” Thirty-nine percent have at least some interest, but just 9 percent are very interested. Among those with interest, moreover, more than six in 10 already support it.

See PDF with full results and charts here

All told, 41 percent of Americans identify themselves as supporters of the movement, compared with a high of 47 percent last September. Forty-five percent oppose it; 14 percent have no opinion. Support has dropped disproportionately among young adults in that period, down 20 points from 51 percent to 31 percent.

While overall support is roughly balanced with overall opposition, “strong” opponents outnumber strong supporters by 2-1. But perhaps most damaging is the buzz: Fifty percent of Americans say the more they hear about the Tea Party, the less they like it; just 27 percent say they like it more. That compares with a much closer (albeit still negative) 43-34 percent split on this question in April 2010.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party gets overwhelming support from conservative Republican evangelical men age 30-49, and significantly less from everyone else.  The War on Women and attacks on Latinos, African-Americans, and the LGBT community has absolutely shut down Tea Party support among Americans under 30.  Two years ago, America's younger voters were willing to at least entertain the notion that the Tea Party was about economic fairness.  Now they see it for what it is:  the last gasp of the 20th century where the Mad Men era is the future, not the past.

That's good news for the Democrats at least, and the disaffected youth has launched the Occupy movement in the wake of this Tea Party curiosity...and the Tea Party's outright rejection by young voters.  Now's the time for the Democrats to make their case, because America is willing to listen again.

Stand Your Ground (But It's Tough With All The Bodies)

Meet the woman behind Florida's Kill The Darkies "Stand Your Ground" law:  Marion Hammer, first female president of the National Rifle Association and the lobbyist force behind pushing laws like this in Florida since 1978.  Florida Republican Dennis Baxley, who sponsored the law, recalls the story:

Baxley, who worked closely with Hammer on Stand Your Ground, considers her "a tremendous inspiration."

The case of 77-year-old James Workman inspired the law that became Stand Your Ground. The retired oil worker from Pensacola was living in a trailer outside his hurricane-damaged house when he shot and killed 35-year-old Rodney Dean Cox on November 3, 2004. His wife was on the phone with 911, and he had fired a warning shot first.

Prosecutors declined to prosecute Workman, ruling the shooting was justified under the legal theory that homeowners have a right to defend themselves and their property from imminent harm.

"It was months before he knew whether or not he was going to be charged with a crime for simply defending his own life and his property," Baxley said. "That is not right, and Marion talked to me about this bill that would firm up the self-defense posture."

Hammer sold the legislation like no one else could. She presented an emotionally compelling case, telling lawmakers: "You can't expect a victim to wait before taking action to protect herself, and say: 'Excuse me, Mr. Criminal, did you drag me into this alley to rape and kill me or do you just want to beat me up and steal my purse?'"

She blasted the bill's opponents as "bleeding-heart criminal coddlers."

"She's so determined," said Baxley, a funeral director. "She's very clear on what her concerns are for people, and she's absolutely tireless in any political fight. She doesn't want to see anybody victimized. She is absolutely vibrant in protecting the Second Amendment."

You know, victimized like Trayvon Martin, who is dead.  But hey, you gotta break a few eggs in the Gunshine State, where you can carry a concealed weapon even with an arrest record, like George Zimmerman had a permit for, because he hadn't been convicted of a violent felony.  That law that's been on Florida's books now for 25 years.

In fact, some 6% of Florida adults have a concealed carry permit, far more than twice the average of any other state in the nation.  In fact, as long as you pass the class and don't have a violent felony on your record, you get the permit.

Bang bang bang.

StupidiNews!

• The search for 4 Coast Guard sailors lost Friday night off San Francisco has been suspended after two days of investigation for the missing craft.
• King Juan Carlos's hunting accident in Botswana has put him in the hospital and the Spanish Royal Family on the front page of austerity-ravaged Spain.
• Mass protests are planned as all three top candidates in Egypt's upcoming Presidential elections have been disqualified by election officials.
• European officials are traveling to the International Monetary Fund seeking more money to combat Spain's growing debt crisis.
• Database giant Oracle finally gets their day in court this week against Google, and there's a lot at stake in the "patent trial of the decade".

Last Call

Everything old is new again as this generation's young Catholic women are rolling out what their distant ancestors used as the new hipster choice in birth control:  "Natural family planning".  Meet Ashley McGuire:

McGuire, 26, of Alexandria, is part of a movement of younger, religiously conservative Catholic women who are trying to rebrand what may be Catholicism’s most-ignored teaching: its ban on birth control methods such as the Pill. Arguing that church theology has been poorly explained and encouraged, they want to shift the image of a traditional Catholic woman from one at home with eight kids to one with a great, communicative sex life, a chemical-free body and babies only when the parents believe the time is right.

The movement sees an opportunity: President Obama’s decision this year to require most religious employers, like employers in general, to provide contraception coverage. The move angered Catholics so much that it cracked open a discussion about contraception that has been largely taboo for decades because there’s so much disagreement about it.

“More priests have given sermons on this in the past few weeks than in the last 50 years,” said Janet Smith, a conservative theologian who teaches at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

The new movement’s goal is to make over the image of natural family planning, now used by a small minority of Catholic women. But natural family planning, which requires women to track their fertile periods through such natural signs such as temperature and cervical mucus, is seen by many fertility experts as unreliable and is viewed by most Catholics as out of step with contemporary women.

Meet the new phase in the War on Women, folks.  The pill is slavery and if charting your fertility periods was good enough for women before the 1960's, well it's good enough for GCB's like Ashley here.  They're "chemical-free" ladies, you see.  That makes them better than you, and of course if women didn't use the pill, it would just go away, and then we can reframe the argument of whether married women having sex for pleasure is a sin or not (of course it's evil for unmarried women to have sex!)

We've gone from "Should society have to fund the pill as a women's health issue" to "Do REAL Christian women even need the pill?"  One is a policy issue, where Democrats can win.  The other is a morality issue, where Democrats can fight all they want to, but they'll lose to slut-shaming every damn time.  How nice of the Washington Post to accept this reframing of the argument to the absolute benefit of the Austerity Party.

There's a lesson here, but I'm thinking most liberals will miss it.  Just like they'll miss being able to have affordable birth control in a GOP world.

The Girls Are Not Alright

The UK Daily Mail gets into the "Ann Romney is right, real women are stay-at-home moms whose husbands are rich enough to support them staying home" nonsense with a study that shows that the more men are in an area, the more women want to get married.  Shocking, I know.

Forget ambition, financial security and that first-class degree.

A controversial study has concluded that the real reason women pursue careers is because they fear they are too unattractive to get married.

The research team, made up of three women and two men, said that when men are thin on the ground, 'women are more likely to choose briefcase over baby'.

And the plainer a woman is, they claim, the more she is driven to succeed in the workplace.

Central to their argument was the idea that women have evolved to become homemakers and men, providers.

They said this means that when men are scarce in a particular area, women, and particularly less attractive ladies, may decide they need to provide for themselves with a well-paid career.

What the study really means is that women who have had body issues pounded into their heads all their lives that they're not attractive, that they're not valued in society other than as adjuncts for powerful men and as baby factories, tend to buy into the horrible images that society lays out for them. Surprising, I know.

The Daily Mail smugly declares feminism the resort of "unattractive" women who can't find a man, so real women stay at home.

Which is of course the exact opposite of what Mitt Romney said in January.

"I wanted to increase the work requirement,” said Romney. “I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.”

The dignity of work.  Good enough for your family and Michelle Obama.  Not for Ann Romney, who is a "real woman" for not working a day in her life.

Questions?

Kelly Osbourne, Meet The High Road

Read the whole article on People.com.

Don't expect Christina Aguilera to get an apology from Kelly Osbourne. 

The Fashion Police cohost, 27, infamously called The Voice mentor, 31, fat on TV, and she's not retracting any time soon. 

"She called me fat for years," Osbourne, who dropped 50 pounds in 2010, tells Glamour magazine. "I said, 'F––– you, now you're fat, too! ... Now you know how it feels!" 

"I'm sorry," she continues, "but I stand by that." 

And Osbourne would have no problem telling that to Aguilera directly. 

"I make a point on the show never to say anything about anybody that I wouldn't say directly to their face," she says. "I'm famous and she's famous. It doesn't mean I can't stand up for myself. I took it for 10 years, and finally decided to be like, 'You know what? I'm done.' " 

Few things here.  First, are we really still a society where name calling is effective?  I've been called everything from fat in elementary school to a child killer because I'm pro-choice.  Having been called names my entire life, I learned early on that it doesn't change a thing.  The "you did it to me so I'm going to do it to you" mentality is also frightening, and makes Osbourne look like a fat girl who never got over herself.  Which is pretty much on target.

Just because you would say it to someone's face doesn't make it right.  Just because you're on top of things at the moment doesn't mean you squash someone who is having a rough patch.  Aguilera has come a long way, from a trashy teen grabbing headlines to a woman, mother and even activist.  Maybe she has grown up.  Kelly Osbourne sure hasn't.

Yabba Dabba Waitaminute

I was really excited when I learned Seth MacFarlane was going to redo The Flintstones.  It was one of my favorites (I'm old enough to remember Saturday morning cartoons) and there was a certain magic about a big burly guy with a heart of gold, and a loyal friend who joined in every time.  Even as a kid, I realized they missed the chances for some great jokes, most likely due to the time period.  After all, in the 60s television was far more conservative than it is now.  However, it's been put on hold due to MacFarlane's incredibly busy schedule, so the 2013 launch date was pushed back.

MacFarlane hasn't quit on the project, he's just enjoying a streak of good fortune.  Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show all got picked up for a new season, plus he is working on a project related to Carl Sagan's Cosmos.  I hadn't heard about the latter, but for those who are disappointed there will be new material to watch while we wait for Flintstones to make it to the screen.