"There is no God. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you." - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
so it begins. the religious right starts pushing legislation banning abortion with the hope that their cases reach the supreme court and roe v. wade will be overturned. i'd like to shake all those 23 state senators hands in south dakota, and congratulate them for potentially becoming murderers themselves. even if made illegal, abortions will continue to happen, and many women will die along with those treasured fetuses they are so determined to protect. fuck you, usa. you don't deserve to win the olympics anyway.
this is not about saving those "innocent lives", but about men asserting control over women and their sexuality. the thought of being force to carry out a pregnancy that was the result of rape, a 9 month - or even life-long - reminder of that rape? let's just say my heavy bag is going to have a hole in it by the end of tonight.
S.D. Senate Bill to Ban Most Abortions
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By CHET BROKAW Associated Press Writer
February 22,2006 | PIERRE, S.D. -- Legislation meant to prompt a national legal battle targeting Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, was approved Wednesday by the South Dakota Senate, moving the bill a step closer to final passage.
The measure, which would ban nearly all abortions in the state, now returns to the House, which passed a different version earlier. The House must decide whether to accept changes made by the Senate.
"It is the time for the South Dakota Legislature to deal with this issue and protect the lives and rights of unborn children," said Democratic Sen. Julie Bartling, the bill's main sponsor.
Bartling and other supporters noted that the recent appointment of Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito make the Supreme Court more likely to consider overturning Roe v. Wade.
President Bush, a Republican and an abortion foe, might also have a chance to appoint a third justice in the next few years, they said.
Opponents argued that the measure was too extreme because it would allow abortions only to save the lives of pregnant women.
The bill would make it a felony for doctors or others to perform abortions and carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Once upon a time there was a little boy named Reggie and his constant sidekick, Nugget. Poor Nugget had extraordinary mental powers but was unable to communicate this fact to his master. (As the dog's name might suggest, Reggie was not known for his powers of imagination.) To help cope with his leashed existence Nugget self-medicated with snackings on the garden poppies. Nugget's days of idle opiated dreaming were happy ones and calm, but eventually he starved to death from lack of appetite. Reggie, cast into sudden extreme poverty by a Republican-initiated reversal of the Union victory, was forced to eat his dead friend. He sat in sadness after the meal, staring nowhere as his digestive juices silently engulfed the thin strings of retriever meat in his stomach. A strange thing soon took place. The branches of the tree outside his window began to flap up and down; the tree pulled itself up from the earth, leaf-wings straining toward the clouds, shaking off cobwebs of power lines and throwing them with an electric crackle down to the street below; roots yanked up from under sidewalks, buildings, around sewer lines, snaking up from the bowels of the earth and shaking themselves free of dust and dirt and broken chunks of concrete. YOU! said the tree to Reggie. This day, February 23rd, is the date of your rebirth! You shall be one of the chosen! One of the sons of Imagination! Go forth from this day and share your visions with your soulless fellows! Imbue them with dreams and fill their minds with questions and hopes! Captivate their hearts with your poems! Do this, and you will never die. And the tree flapped up into the heavens and Reggie went forth and dreamed of the world.
Happy Re-Birthday, Reggie. May it stand out in your endless life!
In tribute to Reggie on his birthday I give you my review/analysis of The Island.
I watched The Island last night. For me it falls right in the middle of enjoyable escapist sci-fi and total crap. I will now "spoil" it for you, but in doing so, I actually hope to make it more interesting. The "secret" of The Island is that it is a world of clones and, unbeknownst to the clones themselves, they are used for body replacement "insurance" for the original source human, who has paid 5 million dollars to have a clone on standby in case of a critical emergency. If you need a new liver, for example, you take it from your clone.
The amazing irony of the movie itself is that it is composed of ideas, themes and scenes CLONED from other great sci-fi movies. The only thing keeping this movie alive are the vital organs it has copied from originals. That and Ewan Mcgregor and Scarlett Johansson are pleasing to watch.
The Island is: Logan's Run, THX-1138, Blade Runner, there's at least one action sequence on "speeder bikes" from Return of the Jedi, a nick from A Clockwork Orange in the scene of forced video-brainwashing. I'm sure there are others too. Please enlighten me if I've forgotten any. A little Gattica maybe?
Logan's Run is about a guy who finds out his society is putting people to death under the guise of a lottery based prize. But when he finds this out, he decides to escape. So is The Island.
THX-1138 is about a guy named "THX-1138" who decides to escape his world because of its ant-colony-like utopian oppression where there are virtually no freedoms and everything is prescribed for you. In The Island, this is the condition that "Lincoln Echo 6" is suffering.
Blade Runner is about manufactured people who rebel against their lives of slavery, and the semi-retired cop who is hunting them. They have artificial memories from "real people" imprinted to their own brains in order to socialize them. In both movies there is a scene where the Replicant/Clone says "...but I have memories of my childhood." But the human who knows the truth tells them that those memories have been imprinted on them. It's virtually the exact same "sit down and talk about the birds and the bees" scene. And in both movies it's that human who becomes sympathetic to the plight of the Replicant/Clones and helps them escape. The Island also includes a bounty hunter character who eventually switches sides from hunter to helper in order to liberate the clones. And guess WHAT? That bounty hunter is played by African actor Djimon Hounsou; PLUS, Ewan McGregor's characer's name is LINCOLN. HA! Isn't that just charming your first-grade American history lesson's socks off? (There are 2 other odd character names: Merrick and Starkweather, real people made famous as characters in the films Elephant Man and Badlands respectively. The writers even cloned their characters NAMES.)
When the clones in The Island are first born (as fully-formed adults), they are strapped to a table, their eyelids forced open and they are subjected to video images that make them want to go to "the Island" (the false lottery prize that is actually death for them) as the primary motivation in their lives. They are inundated with images and voices telling them they are "special". This technique was used as criminal reform brainwashing in A Clockwork Orange.
So, given all that, I thought it was basically a fun movie: some good action sequences, decent actors, nice looking sets, just without any originality whatsoever. And really the movie makes a thematic case for itself. In the end, the clones are liberated because they are realized to be not "soulless" copies of their originals, not lesser beings because of their unoriginality, but valid beings in spite of their derivative origin. So condemn the makers: the director, writer, producer, but take the product at face value and appreciate it for the sci-f-eye-candy that it is. The title, after all, is The Island, which is the *lie* of the story, it is the thing that does not really exist, and that's what this movie is about: nothing but its cloned parts that its creator hopes you will accept as the real thing.
