People of the 5th Congressional district in NC, please boot embarrassment Virginia Foxx out
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC5) is a stain on the reputation of my state. She continues to belch out the most ignorant garbage on the floor of the House.
Yesterday she decided to weigh in on the health care reform debate with this doozy. Keyboard protection on.
Rep. Foxx: The Republican plan would "make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."
WTF is she talking about?! Media Matters has to straighten out the mental confusion of Rep. Foxx (since I doubt she's able to navigate the complexities of the subject at hand to actually do anything except regurgitate winger talking points):
The Democratic Legislation Actually Provides Professional Guidance For Seniors' Difficult Decisions - NOT To Encourage Euthanasia Like other Republicans before her, Rep. Foxx is basing her statement on a clause in the House bill guaranteeing seniors free counseling to help them with complex decisions.
"Advance Care Planning Consultation" Would Provide Seniors With Professional Advice On Will Preparation, Power Of Attorney, And Other Complicated Issues. PolitiFact.com reported: "Indeed, Sec. 1233 of the bill, labeled 'Advance Care Planning Consultation' details how the bill would, for the first time, require Medicare to cover the cost of end-of-life counseling sessions. According to the bill, 'such consultation shall include the following: An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to; an explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses; an explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.'" [PolitiFact.com, 7/16/09]
- Medicare Will Pay For Increased Counseling If The Senior Citizen Becomes Ill And Would Like Additional Information. According to PolitiFact.com: "Medicare will cover one session every five years, the legislation states. If a patient becomes very ill in the interim, Medicare will cover additional sessions." [PolitiFact.com, 7/16/09]
- Counseling Is NOT Mandatory. In regards to the "mandatory" assertion, PolitiFact.com reported: "For his part, Keyserling said he and outside counsel read the language carefully to make sure that was not the case. 'Neither of us can come to the conclusion that it's mandatory.' he said. 'This new consultation is just like all in Medicare: it's voluntary.' 'The only thing mandatory is that Medicare will have to pay for the counseling,' said Dau." [PolitiFact.com, 7/16/09]
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You might recall that last year Foxx managed to make KO's worst person in the world for calling the hate crime of Matthew Shepard's murder a hoax:
Rep. Foxx: "The bill was named after a very unfortunate incident that happened, where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it's, it's really a hoax, that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."[House Floor Speech, 4/29/09]
Foxx had to go into serious damage control mode. She issued a standard non-apology after the uproar, saying it was "a poor choice of words," and sent a note to Judy Shepard that said "if I said anything that offended her, I certainly apologize for it and know that she's hurting, and I would never do anything to add to that."
When that went over like a lead balloon, the Congresswoman for the 5th district attempted to play the victim -- she said that she was receiving death threats at her office. However, that tactic didn't exactly work out since the Capitol Police reported that no one in Foxx's office had alerted them about any threats and that there was “no ongoing investigation” of the matter.
Please -- the good people of the 5th, I beg you -- bounce her out in 2010.
"There can be few greater thrills for a genuine dog lover than to take a homeless dog off of life's refuse pile, add love and care, and then see that dog, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, become the great dog it was meant to be. Training such a rescued dog may require a little more time, a little more patience, and a little more skill, but the end result is a dog that has been given back its life. A dog owner can ask for no better companion."
Dog lover that I am (that's my adopted-from-a-shelter pit bull Casey above), there was one blog headline that caught my eye after seeing 
Animal experts were stunned by the Sunday arrest of 19 men in Shelton, charged with organizing a bird-fighting ring using saffron finches and canaries, small yellow songbirds commonly kept as pets. Roughly 150 birds, mostly saffron finches, and $8,000 in cash were seized during the raid on the Ripton Road ranch house. The men taken into custody face charges of cruelty to animals and illegal gambling.
I just want to say up front that this post is not about the guilt or innocence of Ben Roethlisberger, and any attempts to derail the points that I'm making here by making this about his specific guilt or innocence will be considered thread-jacking, which is one of the rules that you could get banned for breaking at Pandagon. With that out of the way, I want to talk about the proliferation of rape apology myths that are exploding in defense of Roethlisberger from fans. Personally, I've never understood why it's so important for people to believe that having remarkable talents precludes having bad morals. If you set that aside, you will suddenly feel both the need to defend artists/athletes whose work you love that have done bad things, and you can also realize that your enjoyment of their work is not a statement about your morals, which is why I've found the cries to boycott Chris Brown's music to be missing the larger point. I think one reason that people get so defensive when it comes out that someone whose work they enjoy is a rapist or a wife beater is that they perceive an obligation to give up their beloved fandom. A better approach would be to use these incidents as teaching moments and opportunities to remake the culture, not as litmus tests for the morality of your enthusiasms. This isn't about how you're a bad person if you like the Steelers, but there is something to be said for the responsibility of organizations like ESPN not to cover this up and reinforce the belief that the world of sports is a sanctuary for misogynists. 
If you are in the St. Louis, MO area on September 25-26, you can stop by the St. Louis Frontenac Hilton and join some luminaries of the far-right fundamentalist conservative agenda at "
We're moving into the phase of the coverage of the Henry Louis Gates incident where people reprimand themselves for caring so much, but I'd like to point out that the reason the incident has captured the public attention is that it touches on so many extremely important issues of daily life in the United States that don't get sufficient coverage, precisely because few things get the immediacy of news coverage like this arrest of Gates has. With that in mind, I'd like to point everyone to 
When you go to an amusement park, you generally don't expect to have a moment more meaningful than figuring out how many times a roller coaster runs in an hour. Yesterday, I was at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Having finished a thoroughly underwhelming meal, I was waiting outside of the restaurant. A bench with four young black men, all in their late teens and early twenties, was sitting on a bench nearby. The word "nigger" tuned me into their conversation.