A round-up of political doo-dads that I’m not going to go into a full-length blather about, but which merit a brief mention:
Italian man has to retake driving test due to “sexual identity disturbance”. Is awarded 100,000 euros by a court who pointed out that being gay really doesn’t count as a disturbance.
“There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice.” John McCain was asked to clarify his position on birth control, after one of his “top advisers” made this comment on Monday. McCain has apparently voted against requiring private insurance companies to cover birth control pills in the past, and has supported abstinence-only education plans. His response to the query included the phrases “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer” and “I hadn’t thought much about it.” Well, better to admit ignorance than to bullshit idiotically, but I hope he finds time to at least mull it over at some point in his bid to be in charge of the country. It could be kinda important, a little bit. (Also, the sponsored links on that page are telling me “You have Yellow Teeth”. What do they know that I don’t?)
The US opens its doors to HIV. Or rather, to visitors or immigrants who are HIV-positive, if the bill passes in the Senate this week. Huh. Did anyone else totally miss the fact that the US has had a ban on allowing visitors with HIV into the country since 1987?
South Carolina is so gay. But don’t tell anyone, because the last time someone said that, it led to at least one resignation and an audit of the tourism department’s $10m advertising budget. The Senator seeking the audit thinks the residents of his state will be “irate” to learn that their tax dollars paid for them to be involved in this campaign. The adjective this article uses to describe one of the residents who was asked about this, though, was “baffled”.
US Department of Health and Human Services redefines abortion to include contraception. Women could be denied basic contraception at health clinics because it’s labelled as “abortion”, even when there’s really nothing to abort that doesn’t trivialise the term. It’s only a proposal, but it’s pretty scary.
And acting as something of a showstopper for today: Man cuts off own head with chainsaw. Wow. He didn’t want to move out from his home in a block of flats that was being demolished. So he cut off his own head with a chainsaw. My twisted side wants to say that that’s only slightly less awesome than if he ate his own face because he couldn’t afford plastic surgery. Is it unforgivably sordid to be quite impressed by the logistics of this poor guy’s achievement? I mean, it’s a hideous story, and the way the article describes him as “vulnerable” makes me think that one way or another he might not have been a well man, even before the “complete transaction of the neck”, as the cause of death has it. It really sucks that he felt driven to that, and I feel like kind of a bastard for making light of it at all (though apparently that’s not stopping me). Hell of a way to go, anyway.
