Django's Daughters

Gas Prices Affect Health Care Access

Rising Gas Prices Affecting Home Health Care Workers

Gasoline prices have increased by more than 80% in the past 18 months, and experts say it is "a particularly knotty problem for nurses, aides and other employees of home health care agencies -- many of whom are responsible for their own travel expenses and depend on government reimbursements that haven't yet caught up with the rising prices at the pump," the AP/Tribune reports. A survey by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging found that 50% of home care employees said they have already cut back on home visits because of fuel costs and 90% expect to make cuts in 2009.

Scribefire Beta

ScribeFire - QuickAds Beta

My favorite blog tool, Scribefire, has rolled out a beta version to incorporate ads into posts.

Stay tuned. I'll be posting my impressions over the next few weeks.

HD 62 Candidate Randy Jackson OK with Gay Bathroom Sex

The Pueblo Chieftain

Colorado recently enacted SB 200, a bill that adds sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination statute. No longer can the LGBT community be legally ousted from the same public opportunities enjoyed by everyone else.
Naturally, this resulted in a cosmic wedgie to that christofascist in Colorado Springs, James Dobson, who spent a chunk of his not-for-prophet dough on publicity criticizing the bill, claiming it legalizes men in the ladies room, and predicting little girls will be savaged by grown men of icky persuasion, who now have the legal right to enter the "public accommodation" mentioned in the law's text.
I don't worry overmuch about James Dobson. His day has passed, and the brand of vicious bigotry he espouses will die with him. But now comes Republican candidate Randy Jackson, an apparently well-meaning oaf that has seized on the lies in the evangelical Dobson's ads to attack his Democratic opponents.

SB200 basically implies labeling restrooms as gender specific is discriminatory; hence, any man can now enter the little girl’s room if he feels like a woman, or for any other perverse reason.

There's a problem, of course. Despite Jackson's apparently sincere objections, SB 200 has nothing to do with legalizing men in the ladies room. It seems this has always been legal in Colorado.

It’s not Senate Bill 200 that makes it legal for a woman to walk into a men’s bathroom or for a man to walk into a women’s bathroom. That’s always been legal in Colorado, according to Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger.

It’s what a person does once they’re in the bathroom that could lead to an arrest.

There are a couple of layers of irony to this issue. First, nobody has demonstrated any episode of little girls assaulted by icky perverts in public restrooms (I am discounting a dubious claim made by an un-named Focus on the Family staff). Dobson and Jackson seem up in arms over an event nobody can show happened.
The second layer, one that should tickle the funny bone of any rational person, is that even though Dobson, and by extension Jackson, worry that "even a homosexual. . . might walk in and relieve himself" in the presence of little girls, SB 200 does nothing to outlaw behavior of the gay kind.
Maybe these fundamentally manipulative guys should worry less about a transgendered person using the appropriate facility and more about who's in the next stall. You never know - it could be Larry Craig.

MSNBC Makes Us Wait for Rachel

News Corpse » Rachel Maddow At Top Of List For Show On MSNBC

The boss man at MSNBC says

“At some point, I don’t know when, she should have a show. She’s on the short list. It’s a very short list. She’s at the top.”

So what's the hold up? Having dumped the whiny Tucker Carlson and retained part-time sock puppet Chris Matthews, MSNBC needs a bright, witty woman with an incisive mind and beautiful smile.

Planned Parenthood Ad - Birth Control or Viagra, Senator?

This ad is about to hit the Colorado media:

The Dobsonites will likely have foaming conniptions, but I'm doubtful this will change many minds here. "Health care" means considerably more than "birth control."

Techcrunch Writer Disses NPR

NPR Launches API That Serves Up 13 Years Of Content

National Public Radio has set a high bar for major media concerns by releasing an API they say will allow developers to utilize NPR-controlled media.

But Jason Kincaid seems upset that access to NPR content back to 1995 isn't as broad as he'd like:

Video content is excluded entirely from the API, along with a number of programs . . . the lack of video is frustrating.

Uh, Jason, it's National Public Radio.

I'm Terrified, Aren't You?

Gitmo Interrogation Video Released For First Time

Ironically, this release date coincides with uber-weasel Doug Feith testifying before Congress.

War crimes, anyone?

Animated Theology

Well, I liked it, anyway: http://dailymotion.alice.it/video/x1x36c_lanimateur_fun

Animated Theology

Well, I liked it, anyway: http://dailymotion.alice.it/video/x1x36c_lanimateur_fun

Sad Day

FOXNews.com - Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary and FOX News Anchor, Dies at 53

While I often thought he was an infuriating sock puppet for a corrupt administration, Tony Snow was also a smooth master of public discourse. He was the sort of person you'd love to debate, and that debate would always take unexpected turns along the way.

Best wishes to his family. I know I'll miss Tony on the tube.

The New iPhone

A terrific product.

AT&T: Complete bullshit network.

The bad: AT&t

The good: 3rd party software might let other 3G nets log in.

You Say It Like It's a Bad Thing

Catholic University of San Diego Honors Radical Non-Christian Feminist With Theology Chair

This year the University of San Diego has awarded an honorary chair in its Catholic theology department to a radical eco-feminist theologian, who calls God "Gaia," supports abortion and contraception, and a host of other views that put her in conflict with essential Catholic and Christian beliefs

But has she blown an altar boy?

Pixelated Homophobia

'Gay' McDonald's prompts boycott
The happy paranoids at the American Family Association, Dandy Don Wildmon's principal source of outrage and revenue, is now aghast at McDonald's is not running away in horror from gays. My earlier post covers that bit of silly, but a new wrinkle on an old controversy arrived in this afternoon's email.

Conservative News Alerts is pushing the AFA v Ronald McDonald issue, but with even prissier circumlocutions. Where the AFA, quoted by that paragon of accuracy, World Net Daily, says,

"This boycott is not about hiring homosexuals, or homosexuals eating at McDonald's or how homosexual employees are treated. It is about McDonald's, as a corporation, choosing to put the full weight of their organization behind promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage," said AFA chairman Donald E. Wildmon.

the right-thinkers at Conservative News Alerts can't seem to quite spit out the topic under revulsion:

"This boycott is not about hiring h_________, or h_________ eating at McDonald's or how h_________ employees are treated. It is about McDonald's, as a corporation, choosing to put the full weight of their organization behind promoting the h_________ agenda, including h_________ marriage," said AFA chairman Donald E. Wildmon.

What If Jesus Wants a Big Mac?

Gay-Marriage Opponents To Boycott McDonald's - washingtonpost.com

A group that opposes same-sex marriage has called for a boycott of McDonald's, saying the fast-food giant has refused "to stay neutral in the cultural war over homosexuality."

The American Family Association (AFA) launched the boycott yesterday because McDonald's joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce several months ago and placed an executive on the group's board of directors, in addition to donating to the chamber.

The association asked McDonald's to remove itself from the chamber but the burger-maker declined, leading to the boycott. "We're saying that there are people who support AFA who don't appreciate their dollars from the hamburgers they bought being put into an organization that's going to fight against the values they believe in," Tim Wildmon, the association's president, said yesterday.

"Hatred has no place in our culture," McDonald's USA spokesman Bill Whitman said. "That includes McDonald's, and we stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment."

The radical right continues to lose steam. Dobson's Obama tantrum passed with hardly a ripple and now Wildmon's latest hissy fit seems destined to make no difference at all.

Phew! Glad we're through THAT little spell of Puritanism.