The Victorian Parliament is debating the decriminalisation of sex work today, and Fiona Patten is having fun with it:
I can understand getting the exact location wrong, but I can’t understand getting it “I’ll just click on Iceland” wrong.
The Ukraine as I know it is a neighborhood about seven miles from where I live.
…with this just south of it on the same road. It’s Our Lady of Grace, but it used to be St. Cletus.
…and, on the other side of the road, just a fehttps://mrmiguels.com/w blocks north you’ll find this, an extremely popular Mexican restaurant.
Yggy endorses invading Canada in order to protect corporate profits from industrial action:
Yes, the Canadian trucker thing is right-wing bullshit rather than a real strike. Not the point; Yggy doesn’t care about that.
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Pictured graph is US law schools only, though:
Just an FYI: The federal government is not distributing $30 million worth of crack pipes
Doesn’t seem like something that would have to be clarified, but thanks to Republican lawmakers and their partners at Fox News, it does! Per The Washington Post :
Conservative figures have launched an online furor this week, claiming that the government planned to spend $30 million on pipes for smoking crack cocaine. The heightened concern came months after the Department of Health and Human Services announced a federal grant for local programs that provide myriad “harm reduction” tools, or services that minimize the risks associated with drug use, including distributing drug paraphernalia such as clean needles. Republicans seized on “crack pipes,” causing the phrase to trend on Twitter on Tuesday, the latest in continued resistance from the GOP against harm-reduction techniques at a time when people are dying of drug overdoses at record rates in the United States.
“Biden crime policy: Crack pipes for all. What could go wrong?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) tweeted…. “The Biden administration is going to be sending crack pipes and meth pipes, targeting minority communities,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a video message. “I know that sounds insane, I know that sounds too crazy to be true.”
Of course, that would be because it’s not actually true. As the Post notes, the federal grant will allow organizations to “spend the money over three years on a preapproved list of resources, including referrals to treatment, infectious-disease testing kits, condoms, and vaccinations for hepatitis A and B.” They will also be able to use the money for “safe smoking kits,“ which generally include “a rubber mouthpiece to prevent cuts and burns, brass screens to filter contaminants and disinfectant wipes,” and not, as Cruz and Rubio would have people believe, crack pipes.
“It’s really disappointing that Republicans are trying to win political points by putting lives at risk and creating misinformation about harm reduction,” said Jamie Favaro, who is executive director of NEXT Distro, “one of the groups that applied for the grants,” according to the Post. Speaking to the White House press corp on Wednesday, Jen Psaki shot down claims re: the government giving out crack pipes, saying: “We wanted to put out information to make that clear. The safe smoking kit may contain alcohol swabs, lip balm, other materials to promote hygiene and reduce the transmission of diseases like HIV and hepatitis.”
- from the Levin Report that I get in my email via Vanity Fair.
I know.
BTW: any idea how common “paraphernalia” laws are over there?
Oz cops used to like to bust junkies for carrying needles, which of course incentivised minimising the number carried, which in turn amplified the HIV and Hep B problems by encouraging needle sharing and reuse.
Harm reduction folks here spent ages getting those laws reformed.