Eideard

Look – it’s the Antichrist in chrome and glass!

Students at Shippensburg University in central Pennsylvania can get the “morning-after” pill by sliding $25 into a vending machine installed at the request of the student government.

The Etter Health Center at Shippensburg, a public school of 8,300 students in Appalachia’s scenic Cumberland Valley, provides the Plan B One Step emergency contraceptive along with condoms, decongestants and pregnancy tests. The pill is available without a prescription to anyone 17 or older, and the school checked records and found that all current students are that age or older, spokesman Peter Gigliotti said.

The machine was installed after a request from the student association. The pill’s availability in a vending machine appears to be rare, if not unprecedented…

“The machine is in a private room in our health center, and the health center is only accessible by students,” Gigliotti said in a statement. “In addition, no one can walk in off the street and go into the health center. Students proceed to a check-in desk located in the lobby and after checking in are granted access to the treatment area.”

Taking Plan B within 72 hours of rape, condom failure or just forgetting regular contraception can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. It works best if taken within 24 hours.

Some religious conservatives consider the emergency contraceptive tantamount to an abortion drug…and like everything else which offends religious nutballs, they believe women don’t have the right to make a choice.

The drug isn’t covered or subsidized by the school. Its price at the vending machine is set by the school’s cost to the pharmaceutical company and is less than at off-campus pharmacies.

Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Republicans made a stink about cut-price pharmaceuticals. After all, they’re locked into their belief that nothing is more important than maximizing profits.

This will be a delightful object lesson for the students about asking permission from some church-or-other before they make a decision.

Here’s the Tea Party mayor on equal rights for all Americans

Officials are already doing damage control after City Council’s vote late Monday to scrap a federally funded transit center project.

Troy Chamber of Commerce President Michele Hodges says the controversial decision is causing some fallout in the business community, which was outspoken in its support for the project. The transit center would have combined train, bus, taxi and future light rail service at a three-acre site near Maple and Coolidge…

In a private email to Hodges that went viral Tuesday, Frank W. Ervin III, the manager of government affairs for Magna International Inc., thanked the chamber president for her efforts, adding it’s disappointing that Troy’s legislators are “narrow minded when it comes to the future of Troy and the future of Southeastern Michigan.”

In the email, Ervin also informed Hodges that he plans to draft a memo to all Magna group presidents and corporate executives “strongly recommending that Magna International no longer consider the City of Troy for future site considerations, expansions or new job creation.”

He added that he’ll also recommend “that where ever and when ever possible we reduce our footprint and employment level in Troy in favor of communities who act in the best interest of both the residents and business and not simply use their public position to advance their own private agenda…”

State transportation officials have said that if Troy turned down the federal funding for the transit center, it would be reallocated to another rail project, possibly in another state…

The decision to forfeit the $8.4 million in federal funds passed by a 4-3 vote after the panel listened to about 40 residents and stakeholders share their views for and against the decade-old project…

The center was to be a regional transportation hub and would be built around Birmingham’s Amtrak line and station and provide a transfer point to SMART bus service, taxis and limousines. The facility would include a bridge, elevators, four SMART bus slips and reconfiguration of 116 parking spaces behind the Midtown Square shopping center.

Construction would have required no local or state funding. Just jobs for the folks hired to buid the project – and there would have been DOT funds to aid in hiring fulltime employees after completion in 2013.

Presumably, the citizens of Troy will have sufficient sense to kick the Kool Aid Party types off the city council before then – not that it will do much good at reviving the project months down the road.

It has all the hallmarks of a traditional Christmas: an ornate tree piles of presents and a pair of lovingly clasped machine guns.

A gun club in Arizona is cashing in on its members fondness for their weaponry by offering them the chance to be photographed holding their armaments and their loved ones.

Visitors to the Scottsdale Gun Club can pay $5 – $10 for non-members – to be pictured with a pair of heavy weapons and a slightly nervous looking Santa Claus.

In the backdrop of the photos is a Garwood Minigun, which can fire up to 6,000 rounds per minute…

The club’s website exhorts readers to “Get your holiday picture with Santa & his machine guns!“

Several of the example pictures include young children either holding guns or sitting in Santa’s lap as their parents pack heat.

This is not a joke, folks. I know that our readers around the world – especially those who have suffered the pain of war, the invasion of their homeland by political criminals like Hitler, will wonder if all the citizens of the United States are as irresponsible, demented and foolish as this lot?

I’ve been a gun owner most of my life. There have been periods when I truly enjoyed handgun hunting – though I don’t hunt anymore. I have always supported registration, licensing and legitimate questions associated with gun purchases. The kind of thing these nutballs never approve of.

On November 8, Mississippi voters will not only decide who should lead the state, but also indicate whether they agree with the candidates about the status of embryos. The Initiative 26 ballot measure proposes to amend the state’s constitution to redefine ‘person’ as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof”. If approved, the amendment would effectively bestow human rights on fertilized human eggs, making abortion illegal in the state in most, if not all, circumstances.

“The unborn child in the womb is scientifically proven to be a human being, and when it comes down to it we are a human-rights organization,” says Jennifer Mason, communications director for Personhood USA…Ms. Mason, like most of her peers, is deluded, a hypocrite, a liar.

By defining personhood so broadly, the measure would also have an impact beyond abortion—for example, it could rule out research using human embryonic stem cells and put doctors who offer in vitro fertilization (IVF) in a dubious legal position, because not all embryos created during fertility treatment survive the procedure.

“This is a dangerous and extreme government intrusion into women’s health, women’s rights and families’ health,” says Stan Flint, a consultant to Mississippians for Healthy Families, based in Jackson, which opposes the amendment.

Similar propositions have been put to voters in the United States twice before—during statewide campaigns in Colorado, where the personhood movement first emerged as a strategic challenge to abortion laws. But in both 2008 and 2010, personhood initiatives were roundly defeated, respectively winning only 27% and 29% of votes cast…Mississippi could be very different…

The Mississippi vote itself will have little direct impact on human embryonic stem-cell research, because the state is not a major player in the field. The potential threat to reproductive technology is more immediate…

As the campaign for Initiative 26 heads into its final days…defeat of the Mississippi initiative would be a turnaround, but an increasingly vocal opposition movement has thrown predictions of an easy victory for the initiative into question. “Starting from a dead stop at two months out, we have put together a major campaign,” says Stan Flint. “The momentum has swung strongly towards the opposition to this amendment.”

Just as fundraising for organizations like Planned Parenthood were an absolute necessity in the days spent fighting for a woman’s right to choose an abortion, for everyone’s access to birth control – here we are, again, faced with religious nutballs trying to enforce their 14th Century ideology on the Land of Liberty.

Thanks, Ursarodina

Akron Children’s Hospital has opted to drop “OMG” from future advertising after a few complaints over its new billboard in the Montrose shopping area.

The billboard reads “OMG! There’s an Akron Children’s ER in Montrose!” and looks down upon the busy intersection of Route 18 and Cleveland-Massillon Road.

Blogger Cindy Orley felt the sign was a slam against God and began writing about it last week. She and her father, a local minister, voiced concerns to Children’s Hospital.

Hospital leaders say they meant no disrespect and received few complaints but, nevertheless, they will drop OMG from future advertisements.

I wouldn’t expect a typical hospital administrator to have more backbone than a marshmallow – or Akron, Ohio to be the center for sophisticated communications; but, rolling over and playing dead for offending some local religious nutball should be disgusting to the remainder of thoughtful adults in the region.

You are out there aren’t you?

The National Rifle Association has filed a lawsuit challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, contending that the Obama administration exceeded its powers by imposing the rule last month without Congressional permission.

The N.R.A. is bringing the lawsuit in the name of two firearms dealers in Arizona. Its complaint asks a judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia to issue an injunction barring enforcement of the rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“N.R.A. has always viewed this as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda through back-door rule-making, and the N.R.A. will fight them every step of the way,” said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the gun rights group…

“We think that the action we have taken is consistent with the law,” Eric Holder told reporters, “and that the measures that we are proposing are appropriate ones to stop the flow of guns from the United States into Mexico.”

The rule requires licensed firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to report within five days whenever someone buys more than one weapon like a variant of the AK-47 assault weapon. The rule covers any semiautomatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine and ammunition larger than .22 caliber.

The rule is meant to make it harder for Mexican drug cartels to obtain military-style weapons and smuggle them to Mexico, where they are illegal to sell to consumers. American weapons — often bought by “straw buyers” who have a right to buy them for themselves — have been flooding across the Southwest border for years, fueling drug violence in Mexico.

We’ve blogged about “straw buyers” before. None of this means much of anything to the monomaniacs running the NRA. There was a time when they were a useful organization supporting sensible practices for hunting and sports gun owners. Now, they’re the military center of the nutball brigade.

Plus – I get to crap on people who really defame my background. Just as I can joke about flying with my wife’s family full of pilots – I come from an extended family full of gunsmiths, trap shooters and hunters. Some of the best fun I’ve had in the Southwest was handgun hunting when I lived in the Navajo Nation. Would I join the NRA? Not even with counterfeit money from the Koch Bros.

Why negotiate with terrorists?

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took…

America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined the denominator.”…The spending cuts will shrink growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession.

Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved. What is astonishing is that both the president and House speaker are claiming that the deal will help the economy. Do they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, tried to rein in federal spending. Cutting spending spiraled the country right back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the stimulus package known as World War II. That’s the path we’re now on. Our enemies could not have designed a better plan to weaken the American economy than this debt-ceiling deal…

My own view is that Obama should have played the 14th Amendment card, using its language about “the validity of the public debt” to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Yes, he would have infuriated the Republicans, but so what? They already view him as the Antichrist. Legal scholars believe that Congress would not have been able to sue to overturn his decision. Inexplicably, he chose instead a course of action that maximized the leverage of the Republican extremists…

As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible thing. Apparently, that’s their problem.

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

And they don’t give a damn how many Americans have to commit suicide to satisfy their crusade.

Thanks, Helen

Vince Cable never has learned to be polite to idiots

Vince Cable has launched an extraordinary attack on “rightwing nutters” in America who are trying to block the raising of the US government’s debt ceiling and who are, he said, a bigger threat to the world economy than problems in the eurozone…

He said: “The irony of the situation at the moment, with markets opening tomorrow morning, is that the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few rightwing nutters in the American Congress rather than the eurozone.”

Negotiations on raising the US government’s debt limit above its current level of $14.3 trillion collapsed in acrimony late on Friday over details of a package of spending cuts and tax rises that would help to pay for such a move…

A visibly angry Barack Obama attacked the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, for refusing to return his phone calls and said he had been “left at the altar” in trying to reach an agreement. Most experts agree that if the US were to default on its debt payments, stock and bond markets worldwide would plunge, threatening a new great recession. The deadline for agreement is just over a week away, on 2 August.

On the crisis in the eurozone, Cable said the coalition government wanted to see the euro succeed, even though Britain was not a part of it.

With GDP figures this week expected to suggest that growth has stalled, the senior Liberal Democrat conceded that the state of the economy was “not great”.

“It is not surprising that it isn’t great because of the problems we inherited,” he said, while dismissing the idea of easing the coalition’s austerity measures. The UK was in a “German rather than Greek” position because there was confidence in the country’s finances, he said…

The same fools who think the United States operates in a vacuum are twins to those who think nothing should change in how the American economy functions, e.g., they want dependence on consumer spending, ballooning housing prices, reliance on credit spending to continue to rule the way our nation lives.

Just us folks, that’s all. No Wall Street analysts or Congressional/White House campaign organizers. Not anymore.

An American Christian organization spreading the gospel of a May 21 judgment day is the latest in a line of doomsday groups older than Noah himself, says a religion expert who’s confident we’ll still be here on May 22.

Prof. Richard Ascough, who teaches an apocalyptic literature course at Queen’s University’s School of Religion, says Family Radio’s international billboard campaign and mission play on a consistent human belief that the current generation is somehow unique.

“Throughout history, every generation has had… some interpretation that places the end times within their own generation,” he told CTV.ca in a recent interview, days before doomsday as predicted by the fringe group. “I get the worrying sense from their material that they would be as surprised as their followers that they are still here May 22.”

According to Family Radio’s website…”On May 21, 2011 two events will occur… A great earthquake (that) will be so powerful it will throw open all graves. The remains of the all the believers who have ever lived will be instantly transformed into glorified spiritual bodies to be forever with God.

“On the other hand the bodies of all unsaved people will be thrown out upon the ground to be shamed. The inhabitants who survive this terrible earthquake will exist in a world of horror and chaos beyond description.”

Family Radio has mounted an extensive campaign to share its discovery, posting thousands of billboards warning of the May 21 Judgment Day in cities throughout North America, including Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, Kingston and Quebec City. It has also organized missions to Iraq and Turkey, where volunteers are asked to use their final days on Earth handing out leaflets. RV caravans have been tasked with spreading the word across North America — including one that will end its journey in Vancouver on the big day…

Such rhetoric also adds to the atmosphere of fear in today’s society, says Ascough, who points to former U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as leaders who often used doomsday language when pushing for drastic measures.

Religious nutballs will continue to morph their way through each temporal failure. Collecting money from very ignorant people along the way. They work at achieving no improvement in the lives of anyone. They leave no useful knowledge behind.

Thanks, Ivonne, for being the first to warn us about the prediction

Italians are to leave Rome over fears a giant earthquake is coming following a seismologist’s 1915 prediction that “the big one” would hit the capital on May 11, 2011. Here is a list of end of the world predictions:

Oct 3 1533 – Michael Stifel, a German associate of Martin Luther, urged his small band of followers to sell all their property after becoming convinced by his mathematical study of the Bible that the end of the world was approaching. On the appointed day he led his followers to the top of a hill so they could be delivered to heaven. A few hours later, with the world very much intact, he hurried down the hill and had to be locked in a local prison for his own protection.

Oct 22 1844 – Millerites, followers of the American Baptist preacher William Miller, became convinced that the end of the world had been predicted in Daniel 8:14. After a few false dawns, the date was set as Oct 22 1844. That day is now known, for obvious reasons, as the Great Disappointment…

1914 – Jehovah’s Witnesses have now stopped predicting exact dates for the end of the world after a string of high-profile failures. Charles Taze Russell, who founded the Watch Tower magazine, calculated that Jesus Christ would impose his rule on earth in 1914. The outbreak of the First World War seemed to lend support to his Armageddon prediction, but there was no Second Coming.

RTFA – for more of the same.

At this site, it will continue to be treated as the crap ideology it always has been. Maniacs and hustlers accumulating the life savings of people ignorant enough to be led by their noses into a grand celebration of death is about as low as it gets.