Have you seen the tragic video of Desiree Jennings, the beautiful 25 year old cheerleader who was struck with dystonia ten days after receiving a seasonal (not H1N1) flu shot? The correlation between the timing of the flu shot and the onset of the disorder is reported in this story as “doctors” saying the flu shot is what caused the dystonia. Apparently, Jennings’ own doctor is not among them: from the LA Examiner article: “Jennings doctor has stated she has come down with the disorder but there does not seem to be a solid connection that it was positively caused by her getting a flu vaccination.”

Irresponsible, sensationalist “journalism” is offensive in and of itself, but in this case, it could very well be murderous. How many people will see this video, and decide against immunizing themselves and their children? Why did Inside Edition choose not to discuss the known causes and contributory factors for dystonia (hint: flu shots/vaccinations not on the list)? They did show us pictures of Mrs. Jennings in her cheerleading costume, in between shots of her demonstrating her bizarre and devastating neurological symptoms. Did they provide any facts at all? Lots of vaguely terrifying allegations that the flu shot did this to her, yes, but did they present any scientific facts? Well, they did mention that this form of the disorder strikes 1/1,000,000 people. (By comparison, the chance of being struck by lightning in any given year is 1/700,000 — no word on how many lightning strike victims had had flu shots, but hey Inside Edition, why not do a story on the possibility vaccinations cause increased electrical conductivity? Hmm?)

A commenter on the LA Examiner story said their grandma had this disorder, and had passed away as a result, and — shockingly enough — it turns out she had had a flu shot that year! What are the chances, a senior citizen getting a seasonal flu shot? And just think about it! Senior citizens probably get more flu shots than any other demographic, and they die of random causes ALL THE TIME. Coincidence? You tell me. Wait — don’t. Instead, please repeat after me: CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION.

There is nothing whatsoever to connect the flu shot to the onset of the disorder except a week and a half. Could the fever have triggered neurological problems? Maybe!!! HOLY SHIT, nothing else ever causes fever at all, so clearly no one should get a flu shot!

The CDC reported today that forty-six states are reporting widespread influenza activity at this time. This many reports of widespread activity are unprecedented during seasonal flu.

Vaccine hysteria has terrible consequences. Before you start throwing pseudo-science at me about it, please, please go read this article. Then check out Michael Shermer’s open letter to Bill Maher, an otherwise sensible fellow who seems to have caught this crazy anti-vaxxor bug. You might also check out Science-Based Medicine. Then go get your flu shot.

who thinks that this war on Fox “News” is treading on dangerous ground? I mean, sure, anyone who possesses the ability to use Google or even FactCheck.org, or a reputable newspaper, or who has watched Out Foxed, or who has been paying any reasonable amount of attention at all, knows Fox is not a “News” outlet. But, at this point, they are still calling themselves “News”, acting as if it’s news they’re presenting, it even says “News”  in the corner of the screen.

And as long as they portray themselves as a news channel, any of the folks who believe them are going to have SO much room to yelp about the first amendment.

I mean, imagine your neighbor claimed he was a billy goat, and kept ramming himself head-first into your house, and a crowd of other neighbors had gathered to watch. And this crowd was being entertained, and after awhile, began to believe the guy ramming the house was a goat, because he kept yelling “LOOK AT ME, I’M A GOAT” and he had GOAT written in red letters on his shirt, and he smelled kinda goat-y, and after awhile, everyone just thought of him as a goat. The first order of business wouldn’t be to go after the goat, it would be to make sure that everyone understood it was really a crazy dude and not an actual goat, right? Otherwise they’d be on about animal cruelty and whatnot. PETA would send naked chicks. It could get ugly, or at least, skanky.

Or am I just paranoid, and simply everyone knows Fox is fake, just like everyone knows wrestling is fake, right?

Alan Grayson has not always been as calm and reasonable as he was doing battle for our health care these past two days. Matt Taibbi has a great story about the time Grayson “went werewolf” on him, illustrating very clearly just how much he’s holding back when he goes after these Federal Reserve weasels.  Here’s the video Matt was referring to, saying “Now for most of last year Grayson’s public appearances didn’t rate any higher than a five or maybe a six on the craziness scale, but he’s a definite seven in this clip, trending toward eight.” And here, for fun, is the video of him absolutely destroying the Federal Reserve Inspector General, who did not come to class prepared and is way, way out of her league.

When he’s not standing up for our interests against economic stupidity, telling us Republicans want us to die quickly or apologizing to the dead, he’s doing other, even more awesome things, including HR 686, the “Teach the Constitution Week” resolution, which passed the House by an overwhelming majority two weeks ago. From his website:

The U.S. House of Representatives approved Congressman Alan Grayson’s “Teach The Constitution Week” resolution today. The bill (H.Res. 686) urges high schools to spend one week each September teaching the United States Constitution to seniors.

Congressman Grayson said, “More teenagers can name the judges of American Idol, and the 3 Stooges, than can name the three branches of government. The Constitution is the highest law in the land. If we are not teaching our children the Constitution, what are we teaching them?”

The passage of the “Teach The Constitution Week” resolution comes three days before Constitution Day. Members of the Constitutional Convention signed the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.

The resolution also encourages seniors to petition the government on an issue of personal importance to them to demonstrate their understanding of their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the United States.

“Too many people have no concept of the principles of this historic document. That is a true disservice to our nation and its citizens, and is the reason that we should promote a better understanding of the Constitution on the part of our nation’s youth,” Congressman Grayson added.

40 House Republicans voted with their Democrat colleagues in favor of this resolution. The other 138 were presumably unhappy with the thought of high school kids being taught to recognize the kind of bullshit their party’s wingnut spokes-douchebags like to spew.

Don’t forget to reward good behavior!

Having read Frank Schaeffer’s analysis, and the Political Carnival’s excellent summary, I think both are absolutely spot on, and am a little concerned with some of the commenters, who felt this point of view was unnecessarily extreme. It is always good to approach any kind of alarmist analysis/opinion with a healthy dose of skepticism, but, having met the progenitors of today’s movement about a quarter century ago, before the far Right Wing became a media sensation, back when they were hawking pamphlets and brochures from a folding table in the mall, I can tell you that there is ample reason to go ahead and be good and alarmed.

My encounter was at the height (or depth, if you prefer) of the Reagan-Bush era, when Greed was Good and tax cuts for the wealthy were sold to the masses as Trickle Down economics, supplemented with community activism (remember a thousand points of light?).  There we were in the midst of a very popular (at least in retrospect) G.O.P. administration, but these extremist Christians were in no way supportive of the conservative leadership in place at the time. They were not comforted by the Great Communicator or his commitment to free-market capitalism, because they were answering to a Higher Authority. Their intent was to … and I wish I was making this up … take over the government. The plan was to start small, with the local stuff – school boards, city councils, etc, and work their way up: political missionaries determined to see their particular ideology implemented as law. They had pamphlets and a grim assortment of passion, fear, and an absolute and unshakable belief in their own divine rights. Remember the Church Lady? Dana Carvey made it funny, but in real life, Church Ladies are plenty scary. Still, let’s take a minute to appreciate some fine, xenophobic humor from that bygone era:

Their plans, while ambitious, were rooted in rather archaic methodologies. These hardy pioneers were hardly professional operatives, and it’s questionable they’d have succeeded in their efforts unassisted. They were, however, ripe for recruitment, and they begat this current generation of embedded separatists. And gradually, during the peaceful and prosperous 90′s, they were absorbed into the the neo-conservative movement, the modern Republican “base”. Savvy political consultants identified them, along with the closely associated post-Confederate racists and combative, gun-totin’ nationalists, as ideal foot-soldiers, and crafted the rhetoric that now rules the neo-con airwaves to mobilize these troops to unwittingly accomplish the same corporate goals that their predecessors had no interest in back in the 80′s. And make no mistake, they have no interest in playing by the rules – the mall pamphleteers had every intention of manipulating the political system to their own ends, and their modern counterparts have this intention plus every advantage money and top-level political strategists can offer.

We might look at the cacophony of fragmented messages being chanted by the 9/12ers and shake our heads in bemusement and dismay, but we must never, ever underestimate them, or the lengths they will go to to take over the government, never realizing on whose behalf they are acting. So, while indulging in a little Rachel Maddow to clear the intellectual palate, never forget what we, as progressives are up against is not nearly so civilized:

if only i were the wishing type, i’d be on about wanting to stay up even later, typing typing typing, or ideally involved in something else which would somehow still enable me to express my self without the tiny annoying tapping noises that might wake the sleeping forces outside of me keeping me now from saying, in fullness, what i am trying to say.

tequila helps. & if only i could hold my self to my new theme of social consciousness, & refrain from this descent into selfish subconsious nonsense, well, that would be good too. this would be a better blog for that, but alas, it is not.

as it is i am the embodiment of the spirit of all my own undoings, & this post will not deviate bravely from that, as most of the last few posts have attempted to do.

it is late. i am alone. any delusions of other than aloneness were purely that, & nothing further. i leave this note to my self to remind me of this, in case i wake from dreams suggesting otherwise. i often do that, you know. i live this life in my sleep wild beyond any i might hope to live awake. i have these dreams real as day, & you can not tell me they do not constitute an alternative to what we consider ‘real’ in the world. i have these dreams as tangible as anything, i really do. but it’s all impulses traveling down the synapses, everything is.

perception isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

i have these dreams, you see.

& on occasion stay up ’till near dawn dreaming them across these keys, in a way that suggests reality but is decidedly disingenuous in doing so. & i am (in this case at least) not alone in this deception, inflammatory influences (for once) not all my own have driven these things to consume most of me & what i perceive to be my physical self. & this, i confess, is sweetness indeed. & for the moment, this moment & the ones just before it & perhaps just a delicious few more, this defines the concept of pleasure to me. but then again words are defined by other words, which means these feelings are as real as these words, & nothing more.

& so i tap them into being on these keys, in order that i may dismiss them like the dreams they are, no matter how well-documented their existence.

existence can not be documented in text, especially at this hour.

it cannot be put into words, & not just because words make typing sounds & it is not the time for that. mostly, it is because the entire pursuit is consumed, by its very nature. by futility.

words. that’s it. nothing more.

civil rights. human rights. inalienable rights. it’s what this great country was founded on, well, that and the graves of the natives we slaughtered so we’d have plenty of room to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. hey, our creator endowed us. US. not them.

it’s human nature to want human rights, and it is also human nature to deny those rights to other humans. how do those who struggle against the rights of others manage to reconcile this in their minds? not just a few stray assholes, mind you.  we’re talking a massive coalition of churches pooling their considerable resources have their opinions written into the rule of law.  “So far, Proposition 8 supporters have poured $19,778,208 to outlaw same-sex marriage, about $1.6 million more than opponents of the measure. Add the two sides together and that’s about $38 million. Imagine the good it could be doing elsewhere.”

so much good that could be done, but instead it’s just the same old evil, the latest in a long history of religious persecutors, fighting these battles along the increasingly blurry line between church and state, bleating about the need to protect the institution of marriage against the ‘wrong people’ getting into it. they do this in the same spirit we used to enforce similar protections against people of color sharing schools, bathrooms, and water fountains, insisting they were ‘separate but equal’.   “California law already grants domestic partners all the rights that a state can grant to a married couple. Gays have a right to their private lives, but not to change the definition of marriage for everyone else.” i thought we covered the whole “separate is inherently unequal” thing way back in Brown v. Board of education, but perhaps not.

marriage can hardly be called a privilege. it’s as much a right as anything else that we’re entitled to do once we reach a certain age. you don’t have to pass a written exam or a road test, you simply present yourself at the courthouse with proper ID, a pulse, and $45, and they’ll issue you a license to wed. hell, death row inmates are allowed to marry, and they are considered property of the state — they don’t even have the right to their own lives, but they can be married in the eyes of god and the government.

my anger (and there is quite a lot of it) stems from the unimaginable arrogance inherent in excluding any minority from anything based solely on their status as a member of that minority. the religious reich, citing the bible, channeling mein kampf. not that i’m making comparisons between our modern godly persecutors and nazi germany! oh hell no! hitler had lousy P.R. people. ‘family values’ would have been a much more effective tagline than ‘master race’. ok, ok, calm down, i am not comparing discrimination to genocide. they are completely different things. totally unrelated. nothing to do with one another. except, you know, the hate. it takes a powerful amount of hate to operate under the set of presumptions necessary to conceive of, and campaign for, something as devastating as Prop 8. these people have nothing personal to be protected against, and no reason other than this hate to fight against the rights of others (it’s not like the law is trying to force churches to perform gay marriages, that’s actually quite unnecessary — there are plenty of churches that will willingly and joyfully officiate over these vows).

the truth is that there are many, many good christians who oppose Prop. 8. there are even organized religious groups who have spoken out against Prop 8. in fact, i feel ridiculously grateful to any and all who have taken a stand against this abomination against humanity and enlightenment and love, because historically, any time a determined group of individuals has dedicated itself to systematically denying the rights of another group of people, it’s been a hell of a fight to set things right.

even if you don’t live in california, you can still speak out against this. the struggle for civil rights affects us all. even if you don’t believe in gay marriage, you can still speak out against this, because it is not about gayness, or really even about marriage — it’s about rights.

“clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared” ~~ Fry (Futurama)

remember that saying, i love my country but i hate my government? well. i live in a country where the majority of its citizens are shocked and disturbed by the sight of a female breast. now ordinarily i don’t care what cliff the masses are hurling themselves over like the good little lemmings they are, but this is just fucking embarrassing. it’s not just the ridiculousness of our collective hissyfit or the stupidity of an FCC investigation, no, it’s the hypocrisy. and the twisted psychology behind it. oh yes we love boobs in this country, in fact we’re obsessed, in a twisted nasty dirty bad mommy sort of way. this is just so freudian. and freud was a sick fuck.

i totally understand why some people move to europe.

it would be one thing if this was some unfortunate, instinctive human trait, to be both obsessed and disgusted with our own bodies, but it’s not. it’s learned behavior, a cultural mandate enforced with shame. to go against this is to risk … well, if you missed the thousands of minutes of media coverage, just check the cover of people magazine. i mean fuuuuuck. we could be outraged over something that mattered, like oh, i don’t know, maybe going to war for no particular reason? the mysterious imaginary vanishing weapons of mass destruction? but no. we’re all atwitter over a breast-sighting. unnecessary killing: eh – happens. the human body: shocking! evil!

i’m not quite as daring as ms. jackson. but i’m doing my bit for the cause.

perspective:

today the daughter & i, struggling to open a bottle of champagne: she tries, hands it to me. i try, i fail. she shows me the bandages, blood draws in both arms (she’s an eggdonor, there are tests & shit). i take the bottle, the cork comes out easy. i have no injuries to my inner elbows caused by rough phebotomists, i have no excuse, therefore, easy, right?

fuckin’ a.

oh & for those of you that missed the state of the union here are some cliff’s notes:

we got saddam! we got ‘im! sheeit, we done got that saddam oh hell yeah we fucking nailed that saddam fucker. the patriot act means freedom. open the borders so we can put plenty mexicans to work driving this economy forward! the american people love a good corporate scandal! get drugs out of the schools & give them to old people! except steroids, don’t give those to anyone! and we got saddam, the american people can sleep safe at night knowing there was no saddam left behind, also saddam is in custody have i mentioned saddam? & nukular shit in general? be afraid while we keep you safe. vote for us.

weapons of mass destruction related program activities. i swearta fucking god a direct quote, i ran to my ‘puter laughing hard & sardonic to make sure i got it word for word, i hurried. weapons of mass destruction related program activities. that makes it alllllll worth it.

fuckin’ a.

ohbytheway

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