i posted about being depressed tonight on my facebook and THIS MOTHERHUGGER I WORK WITH ACTUALLY COMMENTED ON MY POST WITH ‘BE MORE POSITIVE’ AND OMG TUMBLR PLEASE DON”T LET ME MURDER THIS ABLEST JERKWAD UGH UGH UGH. 

happilyevernow:

lumpyspacepoe:

lydiamartinis:

“Newsflash. Tyler Posey is not the center of the show” are you fucking high right now

#no you’re just racist and bland oh ok glad we cleared this up

#tyler posey is literally the star of the show #he is THE teen wolf

abaldwin360:

The Mormon owners of a Mexican cafe in Denver says that they have gotten death threats, hate calls and fake orders after refusing to allow Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to make campaign stop at their restaurant.

“One person who called said, ‘Watch your back. We know where live and we’re going after you,’” Oscar Aguirre, the son of the owners of Rosa Linda Mexican Cafe, told KMGH. “We just didn’t want our business used as a campaign stop.”

Aguirre explained that callers had been misinformed that the restaurant had refused to serve Romney.

“It was presented to us that [Romney] wanted to do a political stump here,” he said. “[He wanted to] talk about our small business [and] because we share our religious views with the candidate and are Latinos it would be great for him to do a campaign stop.”

“We did say ‘no’ because we are not Republicans, nor are we Democrats. We will welcome any sitting President of the United States. But, we did not want to be a campaign stop.”

The Mexican Cafe has also been flooded with fake orders and canceled reservations, according to Aguirre.

“Two people ordered $150 worth of food for lunch to be picked up today. They called later and said, ‘Oh, you’re the one who doesn’t want Romney in your business’ and they canceled their orders, even though the food had been prepared,” he recalled.

Aguirre said that the trouble began after an article published by Denver Westword earlier this week reported that their mother had refused the Romney campaign’s offer because “religion and politics don’t mix.”

“Since this article came out we have been getting hate emails, from people across the country, people sending us death threats and people calling us telling us we are racist… that they hope we go out of business,” Aguirre wrote in a letter on Wednesday. “If we do go out of business our Annual Thanksgiving Feast to the needy would end. Last year we fed 5500 meals, this year we may serve above 6000 meals.”

read more

Why is it whenever you hear about shit like this happening (the death threats, the attempts to put a small business out of business) it always comes from the right?

The party of “family values” and “morals” will threaten to fucking kill you if you’re not on board with them. 

This needs to go viral. 

why is everything single thing about today the absolute fucking worst?

things that are making me hate my life completely rn:

• everything
• everyone

wilwheaton:

Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R) said that the voter ID law passed by the legislature would help deliver the state for Mitt Romney in November.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation - abortion facility regulations - in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” Turzai said at this weekend’s Republican State Committee meeting , according to PoliticsPA.com.

Dear National Media: Will you please stop pretending that voter ID laws have any goal other than to suppress the Democratic vote?

foulmouthedliberty:

emphysemainacan:

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE TRYING TO BREAK INTO NEWLY PURCHASED HOME

(NEWSER) – The Kalonji family got a nasty surprise when it tried to change the locks on its newly-purchased Georgia home last week: Their new neighbors threatened them with guns, called the police and had them arrested,WSBTV reports. Jean Kalonji says a man and someone who might have been his son pointed a gun at him and his wife. “He say to put the hands up and get out from the house otherwise he would shoot us,” Kalonji said.

The neighbors thought the Kalonjis were breaking into the house, and didn’t believe their protestations to the contrary. When police showed up, the family didn’t have their closing papers with them, so they were arrested and charged with loitering and prowling. Kalonji, who grew up in the Congo, says the experience was all too familiar. “There, they put me down with the gun to my head,” he said. “Here, the same.”

Neighborhood BBQs are going to be awkward.

And who the fuck wields a gun on people who are going into somebody else’s house? Was this dude threatened in any way? No. Do we just not worry about calling 9-1-1 anymore? Stand Your Neighbors’ House’s Ground?

crassenough2care:

She’s a genius.  He’s a wanker.

karnythia:

spastasmagoria:

theangryblack:

This pledge is titled, “THE MARRIAGE VOW: A Declaration of Dependence Upon MARRIAGE and FAMiLY.” … To their partial credit, their pledge opens by acknowledging that one cannot claim to defend marriage without focusing on the high divorce rate, broken families, infidelity and other challenges (besides THE GAYS) “threatening” traditional marriage. … To their discredit, the first bullet point is:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

This is the point at which my brain started to bleed from the anger + incredulousness + assault by batshittery.

Why stop at two-parent households? Let’s celebrate the free housing, healthcare and meal plan offered to every black slave! You know what else slavery did for black people? Exercise! Oh it was just great! We even got to work outside. Speaking of work, today, African-American unemployment is over 16 percent. In Milwauke, Wisc., over one-third of black men are unemployed. But during slavery times, every black man had a job! See, things were better in the past, and now things are bad. Ah, the good old days…

Scope whole thing over at Baratunde Thurston’s blog.

Also, way to rewrite history. Sure children were kept with parents… until a parent, or both parents were sold. Or the child was sold. But OMG SO MUCH BETTER FOR BLACK FAMILIES. Does this woman listen to the things issuing forth from her mouth? Who does she appeal to, exactly? The batsh-t insane, disconnected with reality contingent?

Somebody come tell me the tea Party isn’t racist again so I can get a really good laugh out of this bullshit. I had a ranty moment on Twitter about this & I still ranty enough to have another go. Here’s the thing about politicians romanticizing slavery, they actually have the power to disenfranchise folks to a point where even if they can’t overturn the 14th Amendment they can criminalize enough facets of life (see arresting women for miscarriages, the War on Drugs, racial profiling, differential sentencing, taking away the voting rights of convicted felons, and the push to use prisoners as cheap labor) and slap a paternalistic “It’s for their own good” label on removing agency from the lives of poor whites & POC. Add in the gutting of school systems, social safety nets, & the framing of discrimination as “protecting marriage/the American way of life/children etc.” and you have a recipe for disaster. Bachmann & Palin are the distraction. Time to focus on the actual danger inherent in their movement.

celticthistle:

mohandasgandhi:

thenoobyorker:

“Brisenia Flores, the nine year old girl who was murdered in Arizona, shot by a group of pseudo-vigilantes who forced their way into her home looking to steal drug money that was to be used to finance a citizen border protection organization. They killed her father, wounded her mother and then killed the nine year old for reasons that still make no sense. Basically, it was a group of anti-immigrants who killed a little Latina girl to pay for their anti-immigrant activities. Perfect fodder for Grace and her ilk, no? In fact, the third and last defendant in the Brisenia Flores murder trial, Albert Gaxiola, was being tried at the same time as Casey Anthony. But not a peep in the media.
This isn’t to diminish what happened to little Caylee Anthony. It is a horrible crime that has yet to be solved. But the story quickly went from being sad to being a side-show – amplified by the 24 hour news wheel and the instant Internet repost cycle. We talked about it, we tweeted about it, we linked to it on FaceBook.”

- Caylee and Brisena: Why the difference in coverage?

This.

This, so hard.

thedailywhat:

This Is Important, You Should Know About It of the Day: Republican presidential nomination hopeful Michele Bachmann is the first candidate to sign the “pro-marriage” pledge of conservative Christian group The Family Leader.

According to the Des Moines Register, those who sign “The Marriage Vow” [pdf] agree “to personal fidelity to his or her spouse, the appointment of ‘faithful constitutionalists’ as judges, opposition to any redefinition of marriage, and prompt reform of uneconomic and anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy and divorce law.”

The vow also affirms the signee’s belief that homosexuality is a public health risk and a choice, and on par with polygamy and polyandry.

Worse still is the vow’s shocking suggestion that children born into African-American families under slavery were better off than they are today because they were “more likely to be raised by [their] mother and father in a two-parent household.”

And, finally, for good measure, candidates who sign the pledge must also make a point of rejecting Sharia law.

A spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul has expressed reservations on behalf of the congressman, while Tim Pawlenty’s spokesman said the former Minnesota governor was reviewing the document. Most of the other candidates refused to comment on their plans; only Jon Huntsman has stated (through an aide) that he will not sign the pledge as he “never signs any pledges.” Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats — who was state chair of Mike Huckabee’s Republican presidential campaign in 2008 — said his organization will only support candidates who sign the pledge.

(NB: It should be noted that the controversial passage in the pledge that refers to the “protection” of women and children from “all forms of pornography” may not be a call for the outright banning of porn as some assert, but is certainly worth questioning.)

[dmr / tp / wonkette / mediaite / photo: politico.]

Related: Bachmann compared same-sex marriage to Pearl Harbor in 2004.

karnythia:

jonathan-cunningham:

cognitivedissonance:

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) law dismantling collective bargaining rights has harmed teachers, nurses, and other civil servants, it’s helping a different group in Wisconsinites — inmates. Prisoners are now taking up jobs that used to be held by unionized workers in some parts of the state.

As the Madison Capital Times reports, “Besides losing their right to negotiate over the percentage of their paycheck that will go toward health care and retirement, unions also lost the ability to claim work as a ‘union-only’ job, opening the door for private workers and evidently even inmates to step in and take their place.” Inmates are not paid for their work, but may receive time off of their sentences.

The law went into effect last week, and Racine County is already using inmates to do landscaping, painting, and another basic maintenance around the county that was previously done by county workers. The union had successfully sued to stop the country from using prison labor for these jobs last year, but with Walker’s new law, they have no recourse.

Wow. They’re totally cool with giving prisoners a day pass to do union jobs to save a few bucks. Isn’t this a close cousin to indentured servitude? Aren’t there extra costs for guards or police officers to watch the inmates to be sure they don’t wander off?

This is all in the name of “cost-cutting.” Interesting to see what happens to privatized services. Will they contract inmates instead of paying a work force? This is what happens when the rights of workers are stripped. They’re replaced by a workforce that’s little more than indentured servants. 

Disgusted? I am. 

Indentured servants had many more rights than American prisoners do today. The Pentagon regularly uses slave prisoner labor to construct weapons of war:

Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems…

Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder…

The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. imprisons more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world.

There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local prisons in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and parole. Many tens of thousands of other prisoners include undocumented immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and youthful offenders in categories considered reform or detention.

The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society — from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity — is most brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system.

More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California — which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions — are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South Africa did under apartheid.

The United States couldn’t exploit Africans for slave labor so we passed Jim Crow laws to keep their labor cheap. They organized and did away with those laws, so the U.S. government, under the tutelage of Nixon, created the War on Drugs that resulted in the most prisoners per capita in (to the best of my knowledge) all of history.

Yet when people wrote about prisons as plantations folks acted brand new…