Please see minneappleemigre.tumblr.com for my personal blog.
Carry on.
Post reblogged from STFU, Conservatives with 3,256 notes
Ever wonder why I’m on a feminist rampage?
Because the media reacts like this when we’re less than perfect. Because our emotional range gets stunted and limited.
Because so many aspects of our culture normalize rape on a subconscious level.
Because Kansas and Arizona pass bills that allows the beliefs of a doctor or pharmacist to trump the health of a woman. And because fetuses are becoming increasingly more important than the woman carrying them.
Because a state representative can compare a woman giving birth to livestock.
Because legislature that criminalizes pregnancy and abortion are being forced into discussion again and again.
Because the rest of the world wants to know why American women aren’t angrier.
Because of bills that limit the time frame of my choices.
Because for some reason, religion is a legitimate reason to interfere in my uterus.
Because the Protect Life Act even exists.
Because women who miscarry or lose their babies are being charged with murder.
Because a woman who tried to commit suicide while pregnant was jailed and charged with feticide.
Because mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound probes are legally defined as rape.
Because ectogenesis technology could further remove birthing rights from a mother.
Because programs like this even have to exist.
Because birth control is suddenly a religious issue. Because women can be fired for using birth control as a contraceptive. Because the benefits of no-cost or inexpensive birth control are overlooked. Because ignorance necessitates posts like this.
Because again and again, organizations like the Medicaid Woman’s Health Program are seen as unnecessary. Because even the Susan G. Komen Foundation tried to stop funding Planned Parenthood. And if you think we’re past that, think again.
Because America ranks among a very small number of countries that don’t have paid, mandatory pregnancy leave. In fact, women routinely get forced out of their jobs for being pregnant.
Because public discourse from men like Rush Limbaugh is insulting and misogynistic and goes mostly unpunished.
Because the U.S. Military has some of the highest rape rates and most reprehensible policies for dealing with them.
Because women are bitches for saying no and sluts for saying yes. Because we are valued by how many or few cocks have been in our vaginas.
Because this is normal.
Because I don’t know a single woman who has not been harassed, derided, assaulted. Because I know many women and girls who have been raped. Because I’ve seen the long term, life long repercussions of sexual abuse.
Don’t tell me there isn’t a war on women. And don’t tell me the economy is more important than this. This barely scratches the surface.
Repeat after Soraya Chemaly: I am a woman and I have these human rights. The right to life. The right to privacy. The right to freedom. The right to bodily integrity. The right to decide when and how I reproduce.
Source: extantecstasy
Post reblogged from It's Okay To Be Smart with 231 notes
Tesla Tussle
- The Oatmeal publishes an awesome comic reminding us of the tortured genius that inhabited the body known as “Nikola Tesla”. It also spent a lot of time calling Thomas Edison a profiteering douche-canoe.
- Forbes (yes, Forbes) published a rebuttal to the Oatmeal comic, fact-checking some of the claims made against Edison. He was downgraded to a douche-kayak, or perhaps even a douche-skiff. The Forbes piece also made efforts to deflate the mythical being that Tesla has become … which is completely expected, considering how he perfectly he delivers the “come-hither look”:
(This is precisely the face I make when I write this blog, FYI)
- So of course The Oatmeal publishes a point-by-point rebuttal of the Forbes piece, throwing down the silk glove of intellectual duelsmanship. Ten paces were walked, Edison (Forbes) and Tesla (Oatmeal) face each other with guns poised … who shall emerge victorious in this modern morality play???
Source: jtotheizzoe
Post reblogged from Truth with 188 notes
The Tennessee House voted 80-18 to make miscarriage - or the killing of any fertilized egg - murder. The Tennessee Senate passed by a 28-2 margin a companion version of the bill - that specifically includes all embryos “at any state of gestation in utero.”
Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Haslam has not indicated if he will sign the bill.
To be clear, this bill goes further than covering, say, a violent attacker harming an expectant mother who then, unfortunately, miscarries. This bill, House Bill 3517 and the Senate’s companion, makes anyone’s actions that presumably cause a miscarriage murder. Opponents of the bill question how law enforcement would actually enforce this law or determine if someone’s action was a direct cause of a miscarriage.
So, adding Tennessee to the list of states I won’t go to.
Source: abaldwin360
Photo reblogged from Truth with 934 notes
Howard Morgan, A Black Cop Who Was Shot 28 Times By Several White Cops, Faces Attempted Murder Charges
As much of the country follows the Trayvon Martin case, activists in Chicago are hoping to bring some of that attention to Howard Morgan, a former Chicago police officer who was shot 28 times by white officers — and lived to tell his side of the story.
Morgan was off-duty as a detective for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad when he was pulled over for driving the wrong way on a one-way street on Feb 21, 2005, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. While both police and Morgan agree on that much, what happened next is a mystery.
According to police, Morgan opened fire with his service weapon when officers tried to arrest him, which caused them to shoot him 28 times. His family, however, very much doubts those claims.
“Four white officers and one black Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad police man with his weapon on him — around the corner from our home — and he just decided to go crazy? No. That’s ludicrous,” Morgan’s wife, Rosalind Morgan, told the Sun-Times.
She was not the only person to doubt CPD’s side of the story. A Change.org petition signed by more than 2,600 people called for all charges against Morgan to be dropped, and now Occupy Chicago is getting involved.
“After being left for dead, he survived and was then charged with attempted murder of the four white officers who brutalized him,” Occupy wrote on their website, adding that Morgan was found not guilty on three counts, including discharging his weapon. The same jury that cleared him of opening fire on the officers, however, deadlocked on a charge of attempted murder — and another jury found him guilty in January.
That jury was not allowed to hear that Morgan had been acquitted of the other charges.
Protesters and Morgan’s family say the second trial amounted to double jeopardy, and claim officers have gone to great lengths to obstruct justice in the case:
“Howard Morgan’s van was crushed and destroyed without notice or cause before any forensic investigation could be done.Howard Morgan was never tested for gun residue to confirm if he even fired a weapon on the morning in question.
The State never produced the actual bullet proof vest worn by one of the officers who claimed to have allegedly taken a shot directly into the vest on the morning in question. The State only produced a replica.”
“If they can do this and eliminate double jeopardy and your constitutional rights, then my God, I fear for every Afro-American — whether they be male or female — in this corrupt unjust system,” Morgan’s wife told the Sun-Times.
Howard Morgan will be sentenced Thursday. He faces 80 years in prison.
Source: occupyallstreets
Link reblogged from shityoushouldcareabout with 4 notes
shityoushouldcareabout: Obama Unveils Online Bill of Rights →
WASHINGTON – The Obama Administration unveiled a proposed “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” in a federal report last Thursday. It’s part of a blueprint to ramp up consumer privacy protections on the internet, but it could also add additional requirements for dealers when it comes to protecting…
Source: shityoushouldcareabout
Post reblogged from STFU, Conservatives with 296 notes
I wonder if the Catholic Church will ever mention to the Obama Administration or the Republican Candidates for the presidency that the same Encyclical that condemns contraception (Evangelium Vitae) also condemns war, the death penalty, and America’s current immigration policy. Also, will the Catholic Church ever mention to Obama and the Republicans that laissez-faire capitalism and pretty much the entire Republican economic program are condemned by the Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum?
Why, when the Catholic Church has actually taken numerous admirable stands in history, does the Church decide to stake its moral prestige on something as ridiculous as preventing affordable access to birth control?
For the most part, people will still get birth control. It will just be a bigger hassle and cost them more money. The Catholic Church was never faced with the possibility of directly paying for birth control. People pay for their own insurance out of their compensation. Yes it may be through a group plan, but the employer is not required to make a contribution. Also, many Catholic universities and hospitals are already offering coverage for contraception without issue.
The bishops chose to pick this particular fight. And the reasons they picked it were political, not moral. If the Catholic bishops had been motivated by morality, there are a lot of other issues they would have picked before they picked this one. Like the death penalty, or war, or immigration, or unfettered capitalism. Issues that affect virtually every human being on this planet in one way or another.
This was a profound and massive moral fail for the Catholic hierarchy.
Source: theworldisconfused
Photo reblogged from Truth with 514 notes
List of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. (Source: Exxon Mobil’s 2009 shareholder report filed with the SEC here.)
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion. (Source: Forbes.com here, ProPublica here and Treasuryhere.)
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS. (Source: Citizens for Tax Justice hereand The New York Times here. Note: despite rumors to the contrary, the Times has stood by its story.)
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009. (Source: See 2009 Chevron annual report here. Note 15 on page FS-46 of this report shows a U.S. federal income tax liability of $128 million, but that it was able to defer $147 million for a U.S. federal income tax liability of $-19 million)
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year. . (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here and Citizens for Tax Justice here.)
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction. (Source: the company’s 2009 annual report, pg. 112, here.)
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. (Source: Bloomberg News here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. (Source: Paul Buchheit, professor, DePaul University, here, ProPublica here, Treasury Department here.)
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2006 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction. (Sources: Profits can be found here. The deduction can be found on the company’s 2010 SEC 10-K report to shareholders on 2009 finances, pg. 127,here)
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent. (Source: The New York Times here)
Source: sanders.senate.gov
Post reblogged from STFU, Conservatives with 308 notes
The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation’s balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that’s crazy.”
Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. “Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver,” he demands, “or less?”
The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: “MORE!”
The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Imagine that. 27 years ago, Obama would have been a hero to Republicans. Now, he’s somehow “un-American.”
Source: blissandzen
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