The Editorial Board of The New York Times explores reforms for work visas. Pair with Green Card Stories – a poignant portrait of a system caught between hope and despair. (via explore-blog)

(Source: , via explore-blog)

girljanitor:

tacticalconscience:

Even if you don’t think vaccines and autism are related … these are some staggering numbers!

YES THESE NUMBERS ARE STAGGERING I WOULD ALSO POSIT THAT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THESE IMAGES AND TEXT ALSO

This is simple statistics. Correlation does not mean causation in the context of a retrospective study.

(via kcdahippie)

instagram:

Thousands Turn Out for Supreme Court Cases on Same-Sex Marriage

See more photos from today’s demonstrations by visiting the location page of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States takes up the first of two high-profile cases on the issue of same-sex marriage, and thousands of people have turned out on the courthouse steps to make their opinions heard.

Today’s case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, involves a challenge to Proposition 8, a referendum passed in 2008 outlawing same-sex marriage in California. Tomorrow, the court will hear a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage for a host of federal purposes, including Social Security benefits, immigration and taxes.

(via ziggystardick)

bemusedlybespectacled:

inothernews:

perzadook:

“We have stepped over the line,” Republican state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) said of the recent push to pass personhood. “North Dakota hasn’t even passed a primary seatbelt law, but we have the most invasive attack on women’s health anywhere.”

If even “pro-life” Republicans are saying fuck this shit then this shit really needs to get fucked.

I CANNOT EXPRESS MYSELF ADEQUATELY WITHOUT UNLEASHING A FLURRY OF SWEARS

THIS IS GODDAMN HORRIFYING

(Source: think-progress, via bellatrixissexy)

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Tomas Young Wants To Kill Himself Rather Than Live With Injuries He Sustained In The Iraq War [TW: Suicide, Suicide Ideation, Violence, Mistreatment of American Soldiers, Depression, Anxiety]

Ten years since the start of the war in Iraq, and nine years since getting shot in the spine by a sniper after being in Iraq for only five days, Tomas Young, a U.S. Army veteran, has decided to kill himself.

Since sustaining his initial injury, Young, who is now 33, has been one of the most vocal members of the activist group Iraq Veterans Against the War, even starring in the award-winning documentary Body of War, which followed him as he attempted to make sense of his circumstances. Unfortunately, Young has also been forced to watch as his body and abilities have slowly withered away, a cruel counterweight to his once boundless enthusiasm. At first he was only paralyzed from the waist down, but in 2008 his condition worsened when he suffered a pulmonary embolism and anoxic brain injury, ailments that further hampered his mobility and his speech. It’s been downhill from there. In November, Young had his colon removed, and his wife, Claudia Cuellar, now feeds her husband liquid food through a tube.

After nine years in and out of hospitals, Young, who lives in Kansas City, told the Kansas City Star this week that he’s decided to end his life, saying simply, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” After trying to help him live for almost a decade, doctors have told Young they can’t help him with his final wish. So sometime in the next few weeks he will start to refuse food, water, and medication. He told the Star he thinks it will only take about three days for him to die after that.

In an open letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney published on Truthdig earlier this week, Young wrote that the two men “may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.”

Young concludes with this:

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

[Image via Democracy Now]

(via setbabiesonfire)

alexandraerin:

deducecanoe:

sweetsweetsweetdivinething:

deducecanoe:

physicsshiny:

…This is the bit where a righteous expression of rage is supposed to go. I’d write one, but I’m honestly too sickened to say anything except “Fuck you” and “This is why we need to smash oppression”.

My father in law’s like… how did the kid know he was gay if he’s disabled? And I have no filter because I am in the middle of a nervous breakdown right now, and I flat out said to his face by that reasoning  I shouldn’t be married to your son because I’m “too disabled” to have sex. Being disabled does not preclude one from having a sexuality. I stopped myself right before “and you know what?? SOMETIMES I KISS GIRLS:” I want to throw things right now. Look, I know it’s not his fault. Society has created this culture in which we do not see disabled people as sexual beings but holy christ I do NOT have the filter or ability to deal with this while I am withdrawing from a very high dose of paxil. 

3 years???

3 1/2 fucking years????

Fuck everything.

Betcha if he were a star athlete that everyone loved with a “bright future ahead of him” they’d have gotten like 20-life. Your sentencing largely has to deal with just how useful the victim is seen to society versus how useful YOU seem to society. 

“Good-natured horseplay”, the judge said. I can’t don’t want to believe it.

(via bellatrixissexy)

scientiststhesis:

Some may doubt the social science research (here’s looking at you, George Will) but the people who spend their days watching over the health of children say marriage equality is good for kids. And beyond that, not allowing same-sex couples to marry is harmful for children. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the country’s most influential pediatricians group, endorsed marriage equality Thursday, saying that children benefit from a two-parent household regardless of the sexual orientation or the gender of their parents, reports the Associated Press.  The academy said it wanted to make its position known before the Supreme Court considers two marriage cases next week.

In a study published online, the academy says kids do just as well in gay or straight families and what matters is whether they’re raised in an overall nurturing environment. And not allowing same-sex couples to marry “adds to families’ stress, which affects the health and welfare of all household members.” The academy’s conclusion “is based in the fact that there’s no evidence at all that same-sex marriage harms children in any way,” says one of the co-authors of the study, according to CNN.

The academy reached its conclusion by spending four years reviewing the available literature. The end result? A 10-page report with 60 citations, points out the New York Times. The stance of the academy is hardly a surprise considering it has joined other groups in supporting marriage equality. And some insist it may have jumped the gun prematurely. One Louisiana State University professor says there isn’t enough data to fully evaluate the situation.

And another professor, I heard, said that having gay parents could make a child “confused” about their orientation.

Can you read between the lines? First, this guy’s saying that people who see a homosexual couple are suddenly going to be insecure about their own preferences. Like, hey, suddenly I think I may like dick because someone else does? What the hell?

Second, he’s implying that being gay is bad. Like, “Oh, my kid may become confused, and then they could turn gay! What’s worse than that?!” And that’s just stupid.

I, for one, believe people should be more confused about their sexualities than they are right now. They should actually self-evaluate, flip the bird to society and say, “Hold on, what do I really want?” Forget the labels, forget the names, just figure out who they love and how, and go from there.

Nowadays, being confused about sexuality, or experimenting, people look at it like it’s some kind of unstable condition, like you don’t know yourself and you should. But it’s a good experience, it’s a journey of self-knowledge. You might leave it feeling that you are, yes, straight, but what if you don’t? You just found out something true about yourself, you know yourself better, and you’ll live better for it.

(Source: foulmouthedliberty)

leahpleah:

rhrealitycheck:

Anti-Choice Kansas Omnibus Bill Passes House With All Amendments Rejected 

Elise Higgins, state co-coordinator for Kansas NOW told RH Reality Check via email. “This 70-page bill has 40 provisions, ranging from restrictions on who can work in schools and 12 new taxes on abortion to a lie connecting abortion to breast cancer. HB 2253 would be harmful on its own, but on top of 20 other abortion regulations in Kansas, it’s devastating. Worst of all is the Kansas house’s overwhelming rejection of an amendment that would have exempted pregnancies resulting from rape and incest from anti-abortion statutes. Kansas government is without compassion or common sense, and women and their families will suffer for it.” 

I lobbied the Kansas congress with Elise Higgins and Sarah Gillooly about this very bill.
This is horrifying.
It includes clauses that require doctors and other healthcare providers to LIE to women about things such as breast cancer risks and other medicinal warnings that are completely falsified.
Not only that but it adds absurd taxes to abortions.

This is a reprehensible piece of legislation.

(via thefataltruth)

farahjoon:

• Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House
• Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
• Aurora Levins Morales’s Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood
• bell hooks’ Cultural Criticism & Transformation
• Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses
• Combahee River Collective Statement
• Dorothy Allison’s A Question of Class
• Judith Butler documentary
• Leslie Feinberg’s We Are All Works in Progress
• Paula Gunn Allen’s Who is Your Mother?: Red Roots of White Feminism
• R.W. Connell’s The Social Organization of Masculinity
• Sandra Lee Bartky’s Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power
• Sandra Cisneros’s Guadalupe the Sex Goddess
• Sojourner Truth’s Ain’t I a Woman? 
• Susan Bordo’s The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity

(Source: aloofshahbanou, via grasstomyknees)