Tampon And On And On…

Going to a Halloween party tonight and short of suitably unusual adornments? Then why not make a cute little tampon ghost, to hang from your ears or around your neck? .

Dip it down there if you dare, for added gruesome authenticity.

Because if there’s anything that squicks some men out, it’s periods. Those men must spend an awful lot of time feeling nauseous then. Menstruation is a fact of life: women can have up to five hundred periods in her lifetime of a length that can vary from 3 to 7 days or more. That’s a hell of a lot of tampons and a lot of detritus. Why not have fun with it? If you have a good ear for pitch, you could even make this surprisngly tuneful set of panpipes:,

A must for the planet-conscious, musical menstruator.

These nifty little projects and many more like them can be found at tamponcrafts.com. Fun for all the family.

Comment of The Day

Is by heliograph at Digby, on the sheer viciousness being shown by the Right against the idea of healthcare for poor children:

What we are seeing play out here are the politics of resenting the poor, sick, and injured, which have their roots deep in the principles of Social Darwinism and the ensuing Eugenics movement. People who think of themselves as naturally superior (in this case, right-wing Republicans) resent having to pay for, think about, or otherwise deal with the inferior (people who get sick, have genetically-based conditions, or get into accidents — by definition, such people are inferior losers, plus, they tend to vote for Democrats, which is further evidence of their inferiority).

Areader above has tapped into the core philosphy of this Social Darwinism, via Charles Dickens’ quote about “decreasing the surplus population.” In the mid- to late 19th century, turning one’s back on the ill and poor was couched in terms of letting nature run its course — any intervention by society was seen as un-natural and leading to a proliferation of inferior genes.

Today, denying financial assistance to the needy, ill, or injured is couched by the right wing in terms of free market principles and a philosophy of limited government. But it’s still social Darwinism, and it still has at is base the idea that the superior members of society (the well off, and those who fancy themselves someday as being well off — think Republicans) are doing nature and society a favor by denying help to the needy.

Of course this kind of Social Darwinism in the 19th century led to the Eugenics Movement, which culminated in the unspeakable atrocities of the German National Socialist regime ca. 1933 to 1945. The right wing bloggers and their mainstream beneficiaries and enablers know that today they can’t come out and say what’s really on their minds — i.e., that the poor and injured and sick probably don’t deserve to live at all — so they phrase their thoughts in terms of saying that the poor and injured and sick don’t deserve to be helped by taxpayers and they don’t deserve to live a comfortable life. It would be a little too rash to advocate cutting off health care to “decrease the surplus population.” So instead they advocate making the surplus population suffer by proposing that they sell their houses and businesses, eat cheaper food, give up private schools, forego certain kinds of furniture, autombiles, counter-tops, whatever. But the 21st century hateful outbursts of Malkin et al. basically reflect the same core philosophy as mid-19th century Social Darwinism: Society will be better off if we don’t help these chiseling, undeserving bastards who manage to get poor, sick, or injured.

Check out this poster from the Nazi-era Eugenics movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ima…ePropaganda.jpg

[See above]

It shows a disabled, elderly man and, in advocating for euthansia of the elderly, has this caption:

“60000 RM [Reichsmarks] —

This is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the Community of Germans during his lifetime.

Fellow German, that is your money, too”

Someone explain to me please the difference between the sentiments expressed in this poster, and what we’ve seen posted by Malkin et al. over the past several days as they’ve set out to destroy a 12 year-old boy whose only crime was to get injured, accept help, and then advocate that the fortunate should help the unfortunate.
heliograph | 10.12.07 – 2:49 am | #

Differences? There are no differences except those of time and place. Maybe Malkin should keep in mind that alleged Pastor Neimoller quote (I paraphrase wildly)

“First they came for the sick children parasites, then they came for the moonbats, then they came for the anchor babies…”

To By Those Who Have, Much Shall be Given.Taken

The sick furore created by the self-crowned Bitch-Queen Of All Wingnuttia Michelle Malkin and her legion of flying buttmonkeys over the Frost family’s appearance in a Democrat healthcare policy ad, as ordered by the Republican party, has already coming back to bite her – in the form of her own words. Seems her views were quite different until very recently. Sweet.

Not that this will at all impede her metamorphosis from sloppy dishonest journalist to the La Pasionara of the Fox Brownshirts.

Malkin’s been a good little GOP shocktrooper lately, but in the process of debunking her all sorts of people have been shown to be sucking off the public teat, and guess what, it’s not the poor so much as the comfortably off and those who don’t have to worry about affording things like healthcare because theirs is covered, thanks, and usually by your tax dollars. And that’s without even mentioning corporate welfare. The wingnuts may have opened a can of worms they’d rather have kept closed.

Here’s a couple of cases in point, though there’s no shortage of more. First, via Cliff Schecter’s blog there’s the NY millionaire who has persuaded the courts that the taxpayers should pay for his son’s private school:

Supreme Court: NYC schools must pay private special education for multimillionaire’s son

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Wednesday affirmed a ruling that requires New York City schools to reimburse a wealthy businessman for private special education for his son.

The justices split 4-4 on the case, which means a lower court ruling siding with former Viacom executive Tom Freston remains in place.

Lower courts had sided with Freston against New York City’s board of education, saying the city must pay for educating the learning-disabled student, even though he had been enrolled in private school.

The student’s parents had insisted that public schools were unable to meet the child’s needs. His learning disabilities were diagnosed after he was enrolled in private school.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the link to where this twaddle actually ended up, at the NYT.

I’m not going to link to Malkin, you can find her easily. But here are her words about a family of 6 living on approx 45-55k per year.

The bottom line here is that this family has considerable assets. Maryland’ s S-CHIP program does not means-test (correction: I meant to say assets-test>. The refusal to do assets tests on federal health insurance programs is why federal entitlements are exploding and government keeps expanding. If Republicans don’t have the guts to hold the line, they deserve to lose their seats.

I expect the vilification, stalking and slandering of Viacom Exec Tom Freston to begin immediately.

Don’t hold your breath.

On a less blatant but no less hypocritical note it seems it’s not enough that police on the job have all of their medical expenses covered and workmens’ comp and paid recuperation leave, though no-one begrudges them that becauise many put their lives on the line every day.

But it’s not enough for this greedy Orkando police officer:

Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned
An officer who went to help when a baby fell in a pool says she slipped in a puddle.

CASSELBERRY – In January, 1-year-old Joey Cosmillo wandered into the backyard and fell into the family pool. When his mother hauled him out, he wasn’t breathing. Rescuers were able to bring him back to life, but he suffered severe brain damage and cannot walk, talk or even swallow.

Now, his family faces another burden: One of the rescuers, Casselberry police Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn, is suing, alleging the family left a puddle of water on the floor that afternoon, causing her to slip and fall.

The boy’s grandparents, named in the suit, are mystified and angry.

A family friend today set up an account, hoping to raise funds for the boy’s long-term care. It’s the Joseph “Joey” Cosmillo Assistance Fund. Donors can make contributions at any Wachovia bank branch.

Without the insurance programme that Malkin and her ilk are so vehemently opposing, children like this would have no care at all. This family would have had to sell everything to provide medicine and round-the-clock nursing – and when that money that ran out, what then?

The flying buttmonkeys don’t care. Like the Spartans that they so homoerotically venerate, they think sick children should be considered a societal encumbrance who deserve to be left to die as the obvious defectives they are.

“Eichhorn last week sued Richard Cosmillo; his wife, Maggie Cosmillo; and the boy’s mother, Angela Cosmillo, accusing them of negligence. They were careless, according to the suit, and allowed the home they shared to become unsafe.

As a consequence, Eichhorn broke her knee, something that kept her off the job for two months, according to police Chief John Pavlis.

Joey now lives in a nursing home five miles away, where he gets 24-hour care. He breathes through one tube. He’s fed through another.

“He doesn’t have any abilities — any,” his grandmother said. “He can’t sit. He can’t swallow. He can’t eat. We’re not even sure he can see.”

She and Richard Cosmillo are the boy’s legal guardians. For the first two months after the accident, she remained at his bedside, never once going home.

She has now gone back to work at a furniture store, and her husband keeps watch on the boy. He visits every day.

“This thing,” Maggie Cosmillo said, “has destroyed our lives forever.”

The baby’s mother was the only one home Jan. 9, when the boy slipped out of the house and wound up in the pool, according to a police report.

She plunged in and dragged him out, carrying him inside, down a hallway and into a bedroom. She also called 911.

Eichhorn arrived a few minutes later. As she stepped into the room where rescuers were working on the boy, she slipped and went down on one knee, then stood back up, according to Richard Cosmillo.

Later that day, she went to an emergency care center and eventually to an orthopedist, according to her attorney, David Heil.

While she was on medical leave, Pavlis said, the city’s insurer paid her medical bills and provided disability checks.

Eichhorn, a 12-year department veteran, would not discuss the suit. Her attorney said those benefits, paid by the city’s workers’ compensation carrier, were not enough. The suit seeks an unspecified amount of money.

Eichhorn, he said, is a victim. Her knee aches, and she will likely develop arthritis.

If the Cosmillos had made their pool baby-proof, police would not have been called to the scene, there would have been no water on the floor, and Eichhorn would not have hurt herself, he said.

“It’s a situation where the Cosmillos have caused these problems, brought them on themselves, then tried to play the victim,” he said.

More…

Doesn’t that just about sum up the wingnut attitude?

Anything bad that happens to you must must be your fault, because otherwise that would mean that bad things happen to good people and life is just random – that would never do. After all, weren’t they gifted their own comfortable lifestyles as a reward for being good people? Of course they’re good, mothing bad’s happened to them, QED.

The alternative, that really it’s all just blind chance, not a matter of just deserts and that they’re no better or worse than the rest of us and not exceptional at all is unthinkable.

To admit otherwise is to accept that their God, be it supernatural or the invisble hand of the free market, doesn’t exist. There they stand, they can do no other: the thought that they are not special and beloved, but just ordinary schmucks who got lucky, is just too much for their little heads to cope with.