Malawi has come a Lilongwe in a short time. Last month, longtime autocrat Bingu wa Mutharika died at the ripe age of 78, leaving, gasp, a vacuum of leadership! Enter Joyce Banda. She’d been deposed from Mutharika’s government, yet Malawi’s Constitution called for her to become President. Next thing you know, she overturned the country’s colonial-era law forbidding homosexuality. Like she’d never even listened to the entire Book of Leviticus on Youtube!
Emboldened by Legalizing Gay, Banda went on a roll, repealing broad police powers of search and arrest and the ability of members of Cabinet to shut down newspapers. And there’s an added bonus on top of doing the right thing(s): $$$!
“Malawi is not a poor country but Malawians are poor,” the recently dead Mutharika was fond of saying. Banda’s moves have the UK about to give her country a bunch of money. According to the BBC, Malawi’s relations with donors have already improved thanks to Banda’s actions — and the British government, which had been extremely critical of Mutharika, is now urging other donors to restore funding as soon as possible.
Now everyone in the Great Lakes region of Africa will have rich, gay neighbors just like we do here in America!
In Malawi, not far from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, things are getting fabulous! In America’s Heart of Darkness, the Deep South, we have Mississippi’s Andy Gipson, a man who has most definitely listened to the entire Book of Leviticus on Youtube! He’s all blah blah blah burnt offering sin offering, dunno go read it for yourself. IF YOU DARE!
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Overturning laws against homosexuality and search and seizure laws–how is she going to fight God and terrorists?
Unfortunately, her days are probably numbered. Coupe in three, two, one …
Wait, Malawi doesn't have oil deposits? That'll buy her a week or so.
I imagine the Republicans will be demanding that the US sever relations with her within hours.
Malawi is the new Iran. The bombing begins in five minutes…
Funding for the Lord's Army intervention in 3…2…1
Banda-Obama 2012
The only thing regressive Mississippi and progressive Malawi have in common is they both start with M and end in i.
Hey, I did the right thing once and never got paid!
She sounds good so far…. hope she survives.
Word.
Could we get this lady in the US cabinet, please?
But but but….where is Banda's long-form birth certificate!??!!?!
I hear she was born in Africa
I'll just bet she was really born in Hawaii.
Where is this paradise, Malawi? Near Milwaukee? nah, couldn't be!
In Malawi they get great glee by making fun of Milwaukee.
I listened to the some of video and this is the most boring show on the Food Network Channel. Then again, it didn't have Bobby Flay, so I will have to approve of it.
"And he shall put oil on it…" Make sure it is a "good oil"~Ina Garten.
I listened to all of chapter 1. I'm thinking more along the lines of the Tim Pawlenty Chann …. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
She loves to say "good vanilla," too.
When should I use the meh vanila?
Mr. Fatale has recently gotten into "Chopped," but his first love will always be Robert Irvine, kicking ass on "Restaurant Impossible." (Love those guns!)
Africa: the gayest country on the planet.
EDIT: I'll give 10,000 Romney dollars to anyone who watches the whole video.
I want a minimum of $300K, which in this case really would not be very much money in exchange for watching that crap…
You know? The reader's voice ain't *that* bad. In lieu of a sleep machine I imagine one could do worse.
Marginally related: this very morning the radio alarm went off but instead of the usual rehashed-Pop-Sh!t station, what was coming in was apparently another station whose bandwidth was overlapping[?]. That's right a Christian station but not 'contemporary,' more like the old Lawrence Welk-inspired dreary drip, elderly-sounding singers of almost-hymns, of quality targeting the Paul Harvey crowd. I'm in the South and grew up further south so these stations aren't really new to me; I just listened out of curiosity b/c it's remarkable to be reminded how little some things have changed over 30 years.
EDIT: I posted this as a Reply to the wrong comment of yours, FlamingP. Guess this aging person needs to call it bedtime.
Romney dollars — those are the ones where if you're rich enough to be Mitt's business partner you won't take them, and if you're poor enough to be one of his employees you won't be able to afford the army of lawyers it's gonna take to wring it out of him, right?
And they wonder why I'm not motivated.
Gayest COUNTRY, Governor Palin?
Yes, that was the joke. lol
Oh, internets…
If Obama wins reelection, Michelle should hire her fashion stylist, just to fuck with the Republican Confederacy Party.
Needz moar dashekis.
LOL! @ "Republican Confederacy Party"
Don't know why I never thought of that.
Michelle works hard to keep in shape. She wouldn't cover it up in those caftan like dresses. No way.
She and Sirleaf-Johnson are doing great things in Africa. Miles ahead of the Mississippi GOP.
Why restrict it to just Mississippi?
"The USA is not a poor country. If Americans are poor, its their own damn fault for allowing themselves to be bilked by smooth talking hucksters like me." Mitt 'the gypsy' Romeny
Stupid Calvinist bullshit. "If you're not rich, then you've not worked hard enough and loved god enough"
Makes me want to punch people.
Are there no Poorhouses?
"I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did."
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
I'd not heard that, and I've read a lot of TJ stuff. I love Jefferson.
This only improves my opinion of Jefferson.
I think the only two qualifications I ever had about my enthusiasm for Jefferson were the slave-holding (and also too -banging), and the fact that he provided the scantest of cover for right-wingers' Nullificationist and insurrectionist aspirations, for the subsequent 200 years.
Now, admittedly, the law he argued for Nullification over was basically (the PATRIOT Act)*[(Arizona's SB1070)+(The Chinese Exclusion Act)], but even so, it's quite the blemish to have left.
TJ on religion
If the teatards read the quotes on this linkie, their heads would assplode.
Good lord, that is harsh.
People are predestined to be rich.
Jefferson was in favour of a 100% inheritance tax in order to make sure that people whose industry made them rich were home-grown.
There's no predestination, and yet there's no prize for hard work. It takes luck and opportunity. Opportunity is what society provides, and it's why we need to tax the wealthy.
That includes me.
Didn't Tocqueville praise the American system of splitting estates evenly among all heirs rather than just the eldest son for the same reason?
Maybe the Quiverfull folks are onto something…
Sarah Palin glasses libel!
Banda supports teh gheys? Look at her faaaabulous outfit!
A whole 35 comments on Kirsten's blog post before the next one comes up on teh Wonkette? Guess she's gonna be eating hobo beans for a while here.
She went to the prep school where they learn how to hold down gay kids and cut their homo hair, so she's prolly a billionaire.
I have a theory they all want to be last one to post on any given night so it gets lots of comments overnight.
Not saying it's a bad thing…
What's that thing about the arc of a moral universe? Because it just bent the fuck right over.
Next up, Banda will legalize gambling in Malawi. Too bad there are so many cheetahs.
So when is Madonna going to adopt her?
Hilarious!
This woman is twenty degrees of awesome. Her wikipedia entry speaks for itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Banda
Can she have some relatives emigrate to the US? As of right now?
She has my vote for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
And there’s an added bonus on top of doing the right thing(s): $$$!
Well, yeah, but it's all in homosexual currency.
What happened to Radio? I'm out of the loop.
Long story, but any name-change solidarity you'd like to toss in the hat would be appreciated! Even just for a day.
I must of missed where this was explained, do you have a link?
Thanks for the support…I've got a screen-cap that will make its way to our friend. Now off to hector someone else to be as gracious and good-hearted as you!
Well done, mysterious PV, well done. Definitely an A. We could do a grade change to an A+ with the simple addition of a 'radio' button. ;)
I didn't want to crash the party, but now that I know that we're all invited . . .
Wahoo!! All the screen caps will go where they're most needed. I salute you, Cap'n!
Nice callback. Well played sir.
Three dollar bills?
}:{
somewhere, Dick Cheney is laying in his crypt and smiling.
fuck him too also
No thanks. You go ahead. I won't tell anybody.
OT: Why do these page keep auto-refreshing? What has been changed in the last few days that's making the site all wonkie?
EDIT: It keeps saying in my tab "connecting". The site works, but this makes it even more difficult to navigate than it previously was for me.
Also having problems lately. The new, improved Wonkette!! I hope.
I hope it'll generate more money so we can finally get paid. K. Layne got my account number for direct deposit before he left, but all that happens is various deductions. Damn government.
I'd rather it generate more hoo-haw so we can finally get laid.
But then, on second thought, if that were the case, I'd rather not get any direct deposits from Ken Layne.
Gave up on that . He said I would get laid for every 500 comments. At every milestone I went to various bars, restaurants, malls proclaiming that I had 500 comments on Wonkette and all I got was a warning and a nice walk out with Security.
That was happening to me at work, yesterday. Today it seemed OK. Tomorrow, who knows?
Sometimes I X-STOP it and refresh and that seems to help.
Okay. And now it has stopped. Must have had something to do with the ads. When I first got here, tonight, I had automatic, talking ads playing on the page, and that seems to have ended.
Though often used, it bears repeating: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Oh, hell. Now the hungry ghost of Wonkette is eating all of my posts. It had a long write-up about the Iraq War in the Tweety thread, and it ate every post I typed so I gave up in frustration. I can't even imagine what words called the ghost. There was nothing vulgar or sweary about it; not a single word.
Can we pleaze haz a list of banned words?
OT: California News
Meg Whitman went up against Jerry Brown as governor of CA. She spent tens of millions of her own money, promising she'd run CA like a business etc etc.
I had to vote for Brown for my wife because she served on his committee for governorship and mayorship before and hates him.
Anyway, La Meg just killed seventeen thousand jobs at HP. 17,000 HP jerbs. That's statistically significant even in a whole-US summary.
Between Fiorina's Compaq-HP merger (who ran as senator against Babs Boxer) and Meg's tenure, HP have been fucked.
Of course, these are the people we want to legislate in the US! Of course!
Jesus fuck. I'm glad CA saw sense and didn't elect either of these people, but it was close.
Supposedly those job cuts are worldwide, so I guess they're going to fire a drunken janitor in Beijing and early-retire a customer rep in Ho Chi Mihn City.
I expect it's mostly desktop long-term contract staff and HPUX mainframe shit worldwide.
They can't compete with socialist linux/BSD.
The beautiful trick is there that they can't compete with linux or BSD. Invisible hand and so on.
Personally*, if they made stuff worth buying, they might not be laying people off. I would never buy another HP printer. We have them at work, and I was silly enough to buy one for home, and they're slow, and cranky**.
*No one cares, pdog.
**You just described yourself, pdog.
A few years back, HP bought EDS (Ross Perot's old data management company) from GM. They fired the US based programmers in roughly two waves. First the working level programmers were laid off and the US based programmer/managers were made to try and manage people in India who KNEW they worked for 1/3 the cost and could screw up twice on any programming project before there were any repercussions. About a year later, the US based managers were fired, too, and those jobs moved to India. Karma is a bitch, though, and shortly after the managers were fired, it came out that the head of the Indian company that HP contracted with was a big old crook. I hope he took HP for a massive ride.
Yay! Another Happy Africa story from John! But, needz moar rubber plantations?
Rubber is from South America and, more recently, east Asia, shurely?
I just thought I remembered something about rubber trees from John's last uplifting "Maybe Things Won't Always Suck Everywhere" story on Africa… Here it is: http://bit.ly/KVzYVg
On second read, I don't think the rubber plantations were the point of the story.
Memory like a fucking elephant, my friend. Damn.
and the Kashmir Glacier Park. Weird.
Not recently from South east Asia. Rubber plantations owned by American interests (even before the departure of the French) were a major reason why Vietnam was considered of strategic interest. Oh and containment of those bicycle riding communists. Though by the late sixties many of the plantations had been abandoned because most were in the Mekong Delta which was hard to defend against insurgency.
It's comments like this which make me love teh wonkete.
French Indochina wars weren't all about rubber as you know. However, it was a large part, then it was the fucking idiot US domino theory bullshit.
It's not on their website yet, but my dead-tree version of The Atlantic that arrived in the mail the other day has a pretty interesting article on Vietnam that's worth a read. Things might get a little hot over there in the South China Sea in the coming years.
Where are your rubber plantations?
Rubber comes from a whole lot of places. Liberia was basically a rubber plantation.
And then there's Henry Wickham, who single handedly destroyed the Amazon rubber business and put another feather in the cap of the British Empire.
Mississippi has a hard enough time obeying the "Don't shit where you eat" parts of the Pentateuch.
But what does this have to do with SPACE JEEBUS???!!
President Banda obviously hates freedom.
I wonder if she liberalized the protesting laws, too? I can hear the God Hates Fags people booking a flight as we type. Hopefully it's a clever Rendition trap.
Hah, was also thinking of taking up a collection for Phred Phelps.
PHRED LIBEL!!!!
I'm sorry if any Phreds were offended.
[really, forgot all about that Phred]
O/T, Breaking!: http://www.slate.com/slideshows/arts/should-polit…
Denim, the fabric of the nitwit…
Mitt wears mom jeans that Ann presses a nice pleat into.
Not surprised to see French politicians wearing jeans. The French have a history of Jeans and Valjeans, too, also.
Tonight on Hannity….
Joyce Banda (D).
Well — if Malawi prospers because of implementing equal rights for gays, it will only be reaping the whirlwind, as money is the wages of sin. Completely unlike our blessed American bigots, whose wealth is The LORD's way of saying of them, "This is my child, with whom I am well pleased."
Leviticus is good, but Exodus is so much more badass. You can't beat plagues and death. It's like an ancient action movie with totally RAAD SECKSIE SCENES. Exodus would be rated R, if they didn't invoke God all the time. Food for not-to-think-about-at-all-please-never-do: why can God get away with all that crazy innapropriate stuffs, but South Park is censored before 11pm? CENSOR THE BIBLE.
Spare the god and spoil the ManBearPig?
so much more badass.
Is it this book where Moses gets gypped out of joining them for the Promised Land because he pissed Yahweh off by striking a stick on a rock for water when it wasn't the "proper time" or such?
That might've been the moment when I realized not only is there torture and perversion amongst men and angels rife throughout the bible, but also flat-out sadistic cruelty on God's part.
For sure. But it's not just bad shit— it's HOLY bad shit. Therefore it is totally fine. Like drowning a suspected witch or sacrificing a virgin! GOD LOVES THAT KIND OF THING.
Holy shit, Badman!
Thomas Jefferson censored the Bible. He took out everything he considered crazy, mythological, and stuff he couldn't believe that someone like Jeebus actually said. It's called the Jefferson Bible. You can buy a copy at Barnes & Noble. It's a lot smaller than the original.
I have been told that my stance of Exodus being the most successful terrorism campaign in history is a bit offensive.
If you read it, it's almost impossible to conclude that it's anything else. I mean, we're not just talking about normal old conquering warfare, but instances of genocide. And, we're not just talking about killing people (men, women and children), but their lifestock…just because.
Malawi is Madonna's baby-factory, right?
(Sans snark)
"The reason we have government in the first place, is to solve problems collectively that we can't solve individually."
Fuck you, Grover Norquist.
I bet she's a kenyan too.
Mutharika was not a long-time autocrat, he was elected president, twice, in fair elections. He was severely imperfect, though probably more honest about his power-craziness than our own over-managed politicians. Party members used his presidency as a free-for-all, as they will surely do under Banda. President Banda, for all her good moves, is also a loyal follower of TB Joshua, one of the planet's most shameless and bizarre evangelists. Her move to accept gay rights is a bid to get more western aid in order to develop the power grid, hopefully enticing more western businesses into the country, all in order to continue a century-long pattern of African resources being plundered to enrich a small group of people (usually from the global north). But please, let's simplify everything from our ivory keyboards.
Wow, two good-news stories in one week. The mind boggles. The spirit lifts. (And by all means feel free to lift your own spirits at home.)
At this juncture, I'm gonna dare to dream …
GO FOR THE HAT TRICK!!!1!1
(Oh, and LUV the hat, ma'am, or whatever the proper nomenclature is.)
OT, but here we go again.
Jebus, at least Katie Harris had hair and some knockers.
You know who is just laughing and laughing about this? All those Third World countries that we've had the audacity to demand election observers in. That's who's laughing.
MOTHERFUCKERS!
Once again, China is getting ready to send urologists to Florida to help with electile dysfunction.
OT:
This cracked me up. I think you can handle this late night wonketos:
"Damn, it Feels Good to be a Gangster" by Geto Boys
with slideshow of Obama, Biden and Clintons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm0OtzPU0Zk&fe…
Iburl, could I ask you to pan up to the top of this page and look to the right where it says"tips@wonkette.com hotline" and submit this, please. I think everyone needs to enjoy this. Thanks for posting it.
Nice find.
"And now, a few words from the President…"
OT: RIP, Paul Fussell. Hell of a fine writer. See his amazing 1989 Atlantic article, "The Real War 1939-1945"; his book-length treatment of the same topic, Doing Battle, is one of the best books about war I've read.
EDIT: Actually, Wartime (1989) is the book I was thinking of. Doing Battle (1996) was more of a personal memoir, which I haven't read yet, but which was at eye level on the bookshelf when I posted yesterday.
Steady as she goes…
George Will's totally mad Elizabeth Warren said she was part Native American you guys!
His premise in his own words:
Lofty thinkers and exasperated liberals consider the focus on Warren’s fanciful ancestry a distraction from serious stuff. (Such as The Post’s nearly 5,500-word wallow in teenage Mitt Romney’s prep school comportment?) But Warren’s adult dabbling in identity politics is pertinent because it is, in all its silliness, applied liberalism.
So…this isn't a silly side-show or him beating a dead horse because Romney reportedly bullying people in high school is totally irrelevant to anything and this is totally what liberalism is all about (somehow). Yes?
Is Will losing his mind or did I miss something?
"losing"? It's been gone for some time.
It Was A Long Time Ago and He Said He Doesn't Remember, So We should Be Cool With That, And He SAID He Was Sorry, JEEZE, What More Do You Want, But Warren is a Hideous Liar.
“Malawi is not a poor country but Malawians are poor”
You could say the same thing about America and a lot of Americans, if you were an America-hating liberal.
OT but how come no one mentioned that Duck Dunn died? I didn't hear about it till last night. That sucks (his dying, that is).
Oh Wonkette, where else can I go for BBC news "analysis" in these here united states? You made my morning with your commie foreign world events coverage.
Are you kidding me? 134 comments already? Well, I don't believe for one second that the rest of you watched the whole Book of Leviticus.
That name Banda sounds ominous, I seem to remember that Hastings Banda was President-for-Life of Malawi.
Malawi: More progressive than many American states.
Joyce Banda is not a real American™.
Judging from the pix and the date of death, I'm guessing the McDonalds is strong in Malawi.
The slave-owning and -fucking are hard to deal with, it's true.
He was human and of-the-time flawed.
However, I'd argue that his advancement of thought and America kinda made up for that. Bastard was a true polymath.
My enthusiasm about him has always been tempered by the view he held for the future of the nation, which was pretty much a bunch of self-sufficient farmers. He held an aversion to the urbanization of America. Anyone with any sense could see that was going to happen, anyway, but he held out and pushed the view of us as bucolic philosopher-farmers, anyway. It was a bit too old-fashioned and libertarian for my tastes. It's always been my view that his views are what prevented us from building and keeping strong cities like Europe has. The fall of Detroit wouldn't have been allowed to happen to the extent it has anywhere else in the Western world, and you literally just have to look across the river to a city which experienced very similar circumstances to see that.
Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
That is one of my favourites and as true today as it was then.
More:
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
Locke and also Hume, huge enlightenment thinkers.
TJ would be an atheist today.
de Tocqueville also excoriated Americans for being fools who would vote against their own best interests based on a narrative.
*shrug*
I still love this country.
Now this I'm interested in.
Your claim that Jefferson precluded cities or perhaps was overly bucolic is countered by his love for Paris. He loved Paris and was an interested observer during the Revolution.
Shitmonkeys, I have more to say but I'm interrupted by the dinner I've cooked being ready. I'll come back to it.
ahahaha… "radio button." I like it! So would he, agreed?
;)
Por supuesto!
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