THE Lukas Kaiser

“It does indicate that men who oppose federal spending at the local level are irresistible to women” Republican Asshole Grover Norquist is quoted as saying about the newly ashamed, adulterous Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, by the Washington Independent. Let’s hope Sanford didn’t use stimulus money to fly to Argentina. Or I’m gonna ask for Grover’s balls too, just for making that joke.

[via Ben Smith]

I stumbled across AIDS denialism while reading an interview with the cartoonist R. Crumb in Stop Smiling magazine. A good quarter of the interview was dedicated to Crumb’s belief that HIV doesn’t cause the AIDS virus and that the only thing that does is the government. Apparently, that was the only way they could get Crumb to do an interview—if they indulged his sickening AIDS denialism. That’s awesome… the only way you will interview this fantastic artist is if you portray him in a light that will make people dislike him! Good choice, Stop Smiling.

Anyways, AIDS Denialism is an amazing conspiracy theory, and not just because its believers spit in the face of mountains of scientific evidence. Here’s the sad reason why: HIV does lead to AIDS, especially when not treated. But these AIDS deniers don’t believe that.

Which leads to them not getting treatment and, eventually, them getting AIDS and dying. But after hundreds of deaths in the community, no one has sobered up yet. In fact, the AIDS-related death of an AIDS denier only serves to fire up the community. From the wiki:

In 2007, aidstruth.org, a website run by HIV researchers to counter denialist claims,^[57] published a partial list of AIDS denialists who had died of AIDS-related causes. For example, the magazine Continuum, which consistently denied the existence of HIV/AIDS, shut down when its editors all died of AIDS-related causes. In every case, the AIDS denialist community attributed the deaths to unknown causes, secret drug use, or stress rather than HIV/AIDS.

In the Crumb interview, the interviewer and Crumb were mourning the death of famous AIDS denier and author of the AIDS denilism classic What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong? Christine Maggiore. You might remember Maggiore; she refused to take antiviral drugs while pregnant and passed along HIV to her daughter. And then she refused to treat her daughter, who later died FROM AIDS.

Anyways, rather than take Maggiore’s death as a sign of the futility of AIDS denialism, Crumb simply muttered, through tears, “They got her.” They meaning the government, the scientific community, the medical establishment, the MAN. Anyone who happened to callously believe that *gasp* HIV and AIDS are related.

Barf.

According to a report by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (my favorite of all commissions), it looks like prison guards, NOT INMATES, are committing the most rapes in jail (or “doing the most rapes,” if you will). Here’s a quote from the report:

Former prisoner Necole Brown told the Commission, “I continue to contend with flashbacks of what this correctional officer did to me and the guilt, shame, and rage that comes with having been sexually violated for so many years. I felt lost for a very long time struggling with this… . I still struggle with the memories of this ordeal and take it out on friends and family who are trying to be there for me now.”

Wait, “take it out on friends and family”? Don’t rape your friends! And especially not your family!!

Seriously, though, this shit is scary.

[via Boing Boing]