This Sunday the National Organization for Marriage and their Hateful Nonsense Wagon will be pulling up on Smith Hill to remind us that God only wants certain people to receive health care benefits and death rights.  Their One Man One Woman Summer of Hate tour kicked off yesterday in Maine and drew about a hundred supporters, according to local news reports, and over the next few weeks NOM will be stopping at State Houses from Vermont to Minnesota.  (Except for the 24th, which for some reason they’re planning to spend in the parking lot of Old Dave’s Market in Lima, Ohio.)  The bus comes to Providence on Sunday, and gay marriage advocates are planning to silently counter-protest.  Queer Action is rounding people up at 1:30 on the Smith Street side of the State House; they ask participants to wear red.

In better news, this morning Argentina legalized gay marriage, becoming the first country in South America to do so.  The lower house of that country’s legislature had already passed the bill, and today the Senate approved the measure 33-27.  President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchener rightfully reprimanding the bill’s opponents for framing their argument in the rather frightening terms of a religious crusade.

Oh, and tomorrow (Friday) there’s a benefit for Marriage Equality Rhode Island at the Melting Pot at Providence Place.  It’s $40 per person, $10 of which will go to MERI.  The press release promises interactive fondue.

The haters are coming back!

This time it’s the Family Research Council, who will be in Smithfield next Saturday for the Family Research Council’s “New England Family, Life & Marriage Summit,” hosted by the National Organization for Marriage. Anti-gay organizations from five of the six New England represented, and discussion topics will include such things as “Homosexuality In Your Child’s Public Schools” and “Engaging Students In Pro-Family Activism.”  more »

In “Oh my God this world is going to hell in a handbasket” news, some rassafrassing so-and-so has stolen the wheelchair belonging to a special needs three-year old on the south side.

The ProJo reports that on Monday morning, the boy’s brother brought the chair out to the sidewalk on Congress Avenue, then went inside to help his mom bring the boy outside. In those few minutes, somebody ran off with the $2,800 chair.  The boy, D’Mauri Bonds, can’t walk or talk, and his carless mom can’t drive him to school, so he’s stuck home until somebody returns the chair.  The insurance company won’t cover a new one, either, so mom Latrarcia Bonds is asking for its immediate return.

It’s probably a long shot, but if anybody has any info they can call the family at 401-282-0683.

While we’re at it, let’s have a quick laugh and a quick cry at the Proc Group’s mission statement, and its obscene corporatese, as it effectively tries to wreck the lives of scores of its workers:

To hire, train and nurture the highest quality people and to assure them opportunities for personal and professional enrichment. To challenge and inspire them so that their work ethic is aligned with ours.

To welcome ideas, to be entrepreneurial and to empower co-workers.

To provide ongoing peace of mind for our investors and partners.

To recognize the importance of serving our communities responsibly by committing company resources and by supporting the efforts of our co-workers.

I don’t normally feel the need to link to religious crazies, but there are so many hilarious details in this article from something called ChristWire that I couldn’t help it.  (Also, it took about twenty pages of clicking before I convinced myself that it was real.)

This sanctuary of scum is called the State of Rhode Island. The place that practically proclaims at its borders, “Welcome you hedonistic sex workers and pole dancers, and men and boys too! Now drop your undies and get to work!”

Rhode Island. Most of us couldn’t find this sneaky little street walker on a roadmap. Here’s a hint: it hangs like the diseased genatalia of New England. And sick it is, my friends! The veiny little pouch of debauchery and radicalism is threatening to infect America with its sinful liberal revision of what it means to be free. Prostitution and pole dancing are reputedly one of the few growth industries in this moribund mansack (no pun intended). [Ed. note: Is this even a pun?] What’s worse, when a handful of local Christians suggested outlawing these sins against human decency, the greatest pervs in the world jumped on top of themselves to defend it….

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This is still almost two weeks away, but on the 16th the National Organization for Marriage plans to hold a Marriage And Family Day at the Aldrich Mansion in Warwick, and the National Director of NOM (nom nom nom) is going to be making an appearance. Hopefully the weather will hold out!

It’s free and open to everybody, which I think means we should all go.  I’m not really sure whether I can secure myself a wife and kids before then, but it’s worth a shot, right?  There’s an ice cream social at the end, so it’ll totally be worth it.

(PS: if anyone can find out who the ‘local bands’ are that are playing in the afternoon, I’d like to know.  Thanks!)

And glorious:

Session’s out for somewhere between 2 and 28 weeks, so they say…

After all those terrorism jabs with his right, maybe Cheney’ll throw a nice left hook at Obama on this issue:

Sure, he led a lavish life on the taxpayer’s dime, royally screwed up in his duties as administrator of the House of Commons, and was transparently biased in favor of Catholic Labour MPs from Scotland.  But Sunday nights (or Wednesdays, GMT) won’t be the same without Michael Martin:

Dear The Blonde Lady With The Rhode Island License Plate SPIDEY,

Maybe you live in some sort of alternate universe in which you are a do-gooding superhero who can do no wrong.  Or maybe you just got really excited after catching Death Race 2000 on TV the other day.  I’m not sure.  But either way, I would prefer it if in the future you tried a little harder not to bulldoze pedestrians while you’re speeding around downtown Providence in the middle of the afternoon.

That means, specifically, that you check the crosswalks before you make left turns.  It also means that, if you for some reason forget to check the crosswalks, you try not to look so happy when you almost kill someone that’s spent the whole afternoon risking his life trying to get to the library because nobody in this city plowed their damn sidewalks.* I would have been sooooo mad if I had managed to make it downtown and then broken a leg just because you don’t know how cities and intersections work.

Yours Truly,
Pedestrians Everywhere
(but specifically me)

(*I mean you, 98% of the houses and businesses on Smith Street.)

The mayor of Los Alamitos, California, will be stepping down on March 2nd after sending an e-mail the other day entitled “No Easter Egg Hunt This Year.”  The e-mail itself was a picture of the White House, with the lawn replaced by…are you ready?…a watermelon patch!

Unfortunately for Mayor Dean Grose, he forwarded the picture on to “some close friends,” one of whom, a black woman named Keyanus Price, felt offended by the fact that her mayor thought the image was funny.  Which, let me remind you, was in image of the White House lawn replaced by a watermelon patch. She responded to the e-mail, saying that it wasn’t very nice, and Grose responded, saying “the way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then.”

More people got offended, the news picked up on the story, a smashed watermelon appeared in front of the mayor’s office, and he has now decided to step down. Defending himself, Mayor Grose said that he had no idea that there was a stereotype about black people liking watermelons.  (Which might lead one to wonder what he found so funny…) Of course, even if he were somehow not lying about that, one could argue that complete ignorance of American History might make someone unqualified to be a mayor, anyway.

This ad’s been out on the internet for a while, and is now wrapped up in the back-and-forth over the stimulus package with with Congressman Eric Cantor:

We find it pretty charming, but suppose Cantor’s intentions weren’t benevolent.  It’s hurt him, and helped the union, either which way.  Go AFSCME!

Today Governor Carcieri spoke at an anti-abortion prayer rally, conveniently (for him) located in the rotunda of the State House.  Because, in case you didn’t know, anti-abortion activists have their rallies INSIDE THE STATE HOUSE.  With prayers and everything!

Paying no heed to women everywhere requesting that the governor keep his rosaries off their ovaries, Carcieri apologized for the absence of his Asian-fearing wife and congratulated the crowd on their thoughtfulness:

“You’re on the right side of this issue, you know that. There’s no debate on this issue,” he continued. “It’s pretty clear to me. It’s pretty clear to anybody who thinks about it very long.”

I think no further comment is necessary.

[via the ProJo]

I hate mentioning stories like this, but at the same time I’m sort of fascinated with the weird stuff people put their kids through.

A Pennsylvania couple recently got in a tizzy because the local ShopRite wouldn’t print their kid’s name on a cake.  Because the three-year old in question is named Adolf Hitler.  Adolf Hitler Campbell, to be precise.

Parents Heath and Deborah Campbell scoffed when employees of the grocery store offered a blank cake, so they went to WalMart instead.  Insisting to reporters that they aren’t racists, the Campbells are apparently a little naive about the experience of growing up:

The Campbells said they wanted their children to have unique names and didn’t expect the names to cause problems. Despite the cake refusal, the Campbells said they don’t expect the names to cause problems later, such as when the children start school.

“I just figured that they’re just names,” Deborah Campbell said. “They’re just kids. They’re not going to hurt anybody.”

Heath Campbell said some people like the names but others are shocked to hear them. “They say, ‘He (Hitler) killed all those people.’ I say, ‘You’re living in the wrong decade. That Hitler’s gone,’” he said.

“They’re just names, you know,” he said. “Yeah, they (Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They’re not going to grow up like that.

There’s no explanation about why the family home is covered with swastikas, or any mention of whether it was the family or the ShopRite that called the reporters in on this one.  I wonder what the family plans to do when it’s time for little JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell’s birthday.  I’m not kidding, that’s really her name.

In a scene straight out of Animal Farm, a pig belonging to Pamela Hood of Foster used its snout to lift a gate off its hinges, freeing itself and a family of emus.  The mama and baby emus returned, but papa Emer must be a rollin’ stone, and has been running wild for three weeks now. Last Friday someone phoned in a sighting, and Hood and ASPCA director, Dave Holden, rushed to the scene with a tranquilizer gun. According to the ProJo “They were about 6 feet away when Holden shot the first dart. Nothing. He shot another. The emu was still standing. The owner declared this one a super emu!“.

So now we have an emu who is cold, hungry, and tripping balls on Special-K.  Emer, get help, your family needs you.

Rumors are swirling about the recent hospitalization of former first lady Barbara Bush. The official story is that she had a perforated ulcer, but some completely unsubstantiated reports indicate that she went in for a tubal ligation.  Apparently the thought of another Thanksgiving sitting around the table with her mentally challenged and morally corrupt progeny sent her into a tailspin (uncharacteristic introspection for a Bush). Sources say she decided to act rashly and hastily as is the wont in that family, and put a decisive end to this dismal saga. Let’s review the glorious product of her blighted womb.

Neil: Sat on the Board of Directors of the Silverado Savings and Loan during the Savings and Loan crisis of the 80’s.  It is estimated that the collapse of Silverado cost taxpayers over one billion dollars (that was a lot of money back then).

Jeb: Governor of Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election.  Anyone who thinks that Katherine Harris acted independently prior to the election when she flushed eligible (and likely Democratic) names from the voting rolls, or during all the recount maneuvering, is just too naive to contemplate.  Jeb also known for trying to legislate medical decisions for the Schiavo family with Terri’s Law.

George: I really don’t think I have to list his shortcomings for this audience.

There is this other guy, Marvin, who has kept such a low profile as to make me really nervous.  At any rate, from what we can know, Barbara is batting 0 for 3.  Maybe the son who ran a baseball team into the ground could explain that term to her.  Then again, he probably couldn’t.

(I couldn’t bear to use an illustration of an ulcer, not when Rosie was finally working her way off the front page, but Barbara’s face is even worse. So this pic is just a reminder of Babs’ welcoming remarks to the Katrina refugees created by her own son’s incompetence. She hadn’t counted on them all staying in Texas *gasp*. Boy, I’ll bet he heard about that.)