Rolling Thunder Rally did not actually invite Sarah Palin

Remember how during her governorship Sarah Palin could never successfully tell anyone where she was going to be at any given time? That’s still happening! In Sarah Palin’s imaginary snowbilly iceverse, she can show up any time, anywhere and the troops will demand she bestow Her Words upon them as their Fairy Grifter Queen. Except that no, that is not how things work. Whoops! Palin’s schedulers (Piper Palin with Magic Markers) decided to start her touring field trip at the Rolling Thunder rally to support troops and veteran’s issues and then forgot to actually call the Rolling Thunder rally people, who are predictably annoyed she is trying to co-opt their event.

“It is a big distraction because my phone’s been ringing off the hook ever since she did that,” says Rolling Thunder spokesman Ted Shpak. “We’re not political. This is not a political event. We don’t want — you know, maybe she’s coming because she knows we have a half a million people in town and thinking she can start her — you know, it’s just the way it came out, she was saying we endorsed her. We’re not endorsing anybody, and she’s not speaking on our stage.”

Poor Sarah Palin, she just wanted to go to your nice rally for one minute so she could say all these people showed up to see her. Is that so much to ask?

 

[Crooks and Liars / Mediaite]

Palin going on 3rd grade American history field trip

Oh, Sarah Palin, you cock tease. This time she’s got everyone ALL WORKED UP because she rented a bus that she plans to drive around on some kind of hillbilly field trip.

The tour, the first of what will be a series of such journeys over a period of weeks, will start on Sunday in Washington at the annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally and work its way north along the East Coast. She will visit other parts of the country later, stopping at symbolically important sites in the nation’s history.

Why is everyone all, “SHE HAS A BUS, SHE’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT?” Don’t people know that this is just what hillbillies do? Are they even sure it’s not an RV? They love to drive those things aimlessly across the country visiting Hog rallies and going to historical sites so they can memorize all the names and basic facts wrong.

[Palin advisers] also would not engage questions about whether the tour is a precursor to a presidential campaign. Asked the purpose of the trip, Tim Crawford, the treasurer of Palin’s PAC said, “Because she wants to see how this nation was built and get fired up about that.”

Poor Sarah Palin, she’s still so illiterate she can’t just read about what happened in American history.

[Washington Post]

Canada misses real point of sex consent debate: is she lying?

Canadians are talking about sex today, which still sounds like your grandparents describing how oral sex was in the fifties, but whatever:

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court has ruled that an unconscious woman can’t give consent to sex.

In a 6-3 decision Friday, the court restored the sexual-assault conviction of a man who performed an unwanted sex act on his female partner in 2007.

Right right right. I mean, this pretty much stands to reason, no? Amateurs. Here in AMERICA, we know what the far more salient question is: how likely is it that she’s totally lying about how unconscious she was?

Moreno acquitted, jury finds a “rape-free window” of victim intoxication

Ta-da, World’s Creepiest NYPD Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata have been magically acquitted of rape charges by the “she wasn’t too drunk to consent but she was too drunk to remember what happened” fairies.

The two officers helped bring the drunk lady to her apartment. Then, because the gentlemanly thing to do is to get into bed with a woman while she’s annihilated and make sure her breasts are still in the right place, Moreno did that. (And then extra-creepily referred to it as “cuddling.”) Mata, good buddy old pal, kept watch in the living room. The lady alleges that Moreno wanted to make sure her vagina was still in the right place, with his penis, but Moreno says, uh, she was too drunk to remember whether I did that or not, but I used a condom.

From the NYT:

Although the defense never conceded that the two had sex, a central point of argument in the case was whether the woman was too drunk to consent to sex….

Defense lawyers pointed to surveillance footage of the woman walking on her own as she entered the building in front of the officers as evidence that she was conscious and able to communicate. They also contrasted what the woman told some friends shortly after the alleged rape — that she thought she was raped — with the certainty that she was expressing on the witness stand. Her spotty recollection of that night, the defense said, was enough to raise reasonable doubt over whether she was raped.

So apparently there’s some kind of “rape-free window” of intoxication where you’re not drunk enough to rule out the possibility of consent, but you’re also too drunk to credibly remember what happened. That’s kind of convenient for a rapist! Watch out for this window, ladies. And watch out for Moreno.

[NYT]

“Beauty is for the logic-impaired” fridge magnets now for sale

This refrigerator magnet is for sale at Forever 21, ladies. Form a line!

PRETTY GIRLS CAN DO MATH, scream scream outrage outrage.  Should we be upset? Or should we reflect that it probably doesn’t go far enough in explaining its thesis? How does one quantify the level at which beauty interrupts neurological function, and who decides when one has passed that level? It’s a vague message. And if too pretty for math, why do other skills like spelling go unharmed? Probably it should read something more like, “im to prettie to Do math.” Or perhaps just “pretty girl ≠ math student” to get more to the point with a bit of an ironic twist. “I’m so beautiful I’m logic-impaired” has a ring to it, too. Like those Kardashians! Hurry while supplies last, you don’t want to let anyone else open your fridge without reminding them you’re a moron.

[Sociological Images]

The case for penis liability insurance

The club of Republicans who challenge themselves to entertain the public with a new joke about abortion each week have come up with a pretty good one this time. Rape is like getting a flat tire, said some guy from the Kansas House, and then added, in an ideal world, women would get raped as often as they get flat tires. So since women are probably going to be (should) get raped all the time, the ladies need to go out and get some “rape insurance” in case they want to abortion the rape fetus.

But, honestly, isn’t this the wrong approach? Shouldn’t men actually just have to get “in-case-I-rape-someone insurance?” Dominique Strauss-Kahn should have had insurance like this. It’s just liability insurance for your penis. We make car owners get liability insurance for when they “accidentally smash into” other people. Why not for penises? They seem about as prone to accidents as cars. We don’t make car crash victims pay to fix their own cars. Of course we don’t! We just like cars better than women.

Study: women still attracted to shameful assholes

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers just got a present for their “it was consensual sex, come on” defense.

From the American Psychological Association journal:

Women find happy men less sexually attractive than those with expressions that show pride or hint that they have done wrong and know it, according to Canadian researchers.

…

The researchers admit they are not sure why men and women reacted differently to smiles. In a man, a big smile may make him appear too feminine or more desperate for sex.

The study also adds fuel to the notion that women are attracted to bad boys.

Brooding douchebags filled with shame are irresistible to women, hello. Big angry naked man lunging for you? Masculine and definitely not desperate for sex. Can someone say expert testimony?

Minnesota House morning prayer now just assigned to anything that talks

Speaking of other amazing jokes from God, Minnesota’s Republican House Speaker was forced to apologize after it let this bizarre genetic mistake calling itself a “preacher” onto the House floor to deliver the morning prayer. This strange vision of a Ted Nugent skid mark in bodily form declared in his “prayer” that Obama probably isn’t actually Christian. I’m more inclined to think this guy isn’t actually human.

[TPM Muckracker]

Maggie Gallagher declares homophobes are being “shamed” into silence

Here in our new post-Apocalyptic America, don’t think everything will be completely terrible. Sure, it would have been better if God had just Raptured away all the wingnuts so America could move on with its life, but God really likes the “hate-spewing Christians” joke and the new NBC fall lineup and the possibility of a Michele Bachmann presidential run and Stephen Colbert, so Earth remains.

God also has a new joke just for the wingnuts, so they don’t feel so bad they weren’t Raptured: 53% of Americans now support legalizing gay marriage. Are you laughing, wingnuts? No, of course not.

Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, said the poll shows her fellow opponents of gay matrimony have been “shamed” into silence.

Oh Maggie G., she of “anal sex will give you an abortion” fame, she isn’t entertained. But does she realize she’s making still more jokes? Maggie says that the people who wish they could shame homos into being invisible are now the ones being “shamed” into hiding! Irony! Maggie could have just said something totally boring like, “God’s wrath will soon rain down upon the amoral promiscuous godless masses,” but no, she went with the one word that would most immediately and powerfully underline the utter hypocrisy of her statement. Maggie and God, a great comic team.

[Reuters]

Things cheaper for the government than accidental children

Following yesterday’s admittedly absurdist mermaid meltdown, today we have some more normal news that probably even sounds a little familiar: unplanned pregnancies cost the government a lot of money! How much? From Reuters:

Studies released by a reproductive rights research group on Thursday show that unintended pregnancies cost U.S. taxpayers about $11 billion a year.

Woah. Let’s do some comparison fun from the FY2011 U.S. federal budget:

• $7.6 billion for Women, Infants and Children nutrition program
• $2.3 billion in applied energy research and development to address climate change
• $11.2 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration
• $1.6 billion for child care funding
• $5.7 billion for the Transportation Security Administration
• $8.1 billion for the FBI
• $5.5 billion for Foreign Military Financing
• $2.1 billion for the Drug Enforcement Administration

So, it costs taxpayers roughly as much to get all those little accidental miracles here in one piece as it does to keep the U.S. safe from nuclear threat. I sure hope it turns out to be a better investment than paying for ladies’ birth control pills!