"A woman is life without life there is death."
(cartoon posted earlier) Some abortion-related facts (a version first posted 3/9/17): “Since the Supreme Court handed down its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton states have constructed a lattice work of abortion law…” “43 states prohibit abortions, generally except when necessary to protect the woman’s life or health, after a specified point in pregnancy, most often fetal viability..” “19 states prohibit partial birth” or late term “abortions, 3 of those laws apply only to postviability abortions.” - Guttmacher Institute/ 10-1-15 “38 states require parental involvement before a minor obtains an abortion.” “59% of women obtaining abortions are mothers.” - Guttmacher Institute/ 2017 Fetal viability means the “ability of a fetus to survive outside of the womb.” “A preterm fetus of less than 23 weeks gestation has little chance of surviving outside of the womb.” -- medical-dictionary-thefreedictionary.com 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget is spent on abortions, and since 1976 Planned Parenthood abortions cannot be federally funded, but must be funded via other means. 97% of Planned Parenthood’s budget is spent on women’s lives and related health issues. (Washington Post/ 2015) “In 2013, 664,435 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 200 abortions per 1,000 live births.” - Jan 6, 2017/Data and statistics-Reproductive Health/CDC Please give to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Incorporated: 2600 Network Boulevard, Suite 300/ Frisco, Texas 75034/ 972-248-9200
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Today is Good Friday:
"Good Friday is a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. It is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of Passover." - Wikipedia Please give to the Refugee Resettlement Program, Catholic Charities: 851 W. Lake Street, Suite 500/ Chicago, Illinois 60661/ 312-655-7856. “Socio-political international advertising slogans, ah, can be effective too. A couple of our best slogans durin the Cold War at the Washington Post aimed at the Soviets were acts of genius: ‘Better dead than red’ and the ‘Soviets are peckerheads.’ However, as our world has become smaller and more, uh, civilized and advertising more advanced one of the few anomalies left within the formula of selling a regular consumer the lesser of two evils is in politics. For instance: you might vote for someone because she or he is not as bad as the next guy but you won’t drink a soda pop for the same reason -- not unless you’re a dumb shit.” (edited 9/25/18 & 11/18/18)
Incident at a Tasmanian Beach.
posted earlier... Please give to Breast Cancer Research Foundation: 60 East 56th Street, 8th Floor, New York, New York 10022/ bcrf@bcrf.org/ 866-346-3228 “Demonstrators flooded streets across the globe in public protests on Saturday, calling for action against gun violence. Hundreds of thousands of marchers turned out, in the most ambitious show of force yet from a student-driven movement that emerged after the recent massacre at a South Florida high school.
“At the main event in Washington, survivors of mass shootings, including the one in Florida, rallied a whooping crowd — Welcome to the revolution,’ said one of the student organizers — and spoke of communities that are disproportionately affected by gun violence. ‘It is normal to see flowers honoring the lives of black and brown youth that have lost their lives to a bullet,’ Edna Chavez, 17, said of her South Los Angeles neighborhood.” – New York Times/ Tim Chaffee (3/24-25/18) Please see Carbuncle Moon post: 2/15/18 Some of the following data was posted on Carbuncle Moon, 6/21/16 and 10/2/15... Numbers of deaths in Conflict Zones and U.S. Wars, and Gun Deaths in the U.S. are following: Total Deaths of Human Beings in Northern Ireland Conflict 1969-present: Catholic: 1690 Protestant: 894 British Security Forces: 1039 ("Lost Lives" McKittrick, Kelters, Feeney, Thorton)/ all fatalities: 3,568 (London Guardian) Total Deaths of Human Beings in Israeli-Arab Conflict 1920-present (2016): Israeli: 24,969 Arab: 91,105 (Jewish Virtual Library) (1948 to present) Arab: 91,105 Israeli: 24,293/South Lebanese Militia: 1,050 (Wikipedia) Total deaths of Human Beings in Syrian Civil War 3/20/11 to 8/2015: Children: 11,493 (Christian Post) Civilians: 85,404 (The Atlantic) Approximate total deaths: 330,000 (8/5/15 Syrian Observatory for Human Rights)/ 149,016 to 350,760 (8/17/15 Wikipedia/United Nations) Total Deaths of Human Beings from all U.S. Wars: All fatalities: 1,171,177 (Congressional Research Center/research done by Mark Shields) Total Deaths of Human Beings resulting from Firearms in the United States from 1968: All fatalities: 1,384,171 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/research done by Mark Shields) added: 7/3/16 (latest available info at that time) murder and non-negligent manslaughter in U.S. 2012: 14,827 - FBI Uniform Crime Report/World Almanac 2015 Murders U.K. 2012: 550 - Citizens Report Homicide Offences Ireland 2012: 79 - An Phriomh-Oifig Staidrimn/Central Statistics Office Murders: China 2010: 13,410 - nso/undata Vietnam 2008: 1,346 - who/undata Zimbabwe 2008: 1,775 - who/undata Canada 2010: 554 - nso/undata Ethiopia 2008: 20,239 - who/undata Albania 2010: 127 - CTS/Transmoree/undata Japan 2009: 506 - CTS/undata Russian Federation 2010: 14,574 - CTS/undata Botswana 2009: 287 - CTS/undata Columbia 2010: 15,459 -NSO/undata Mexico 2010: 25,757 - NSO/undata Israel 2011: 159 - CTS/NSO/undata Pakistan 2011: 13,860 - NSO/undata Costa Rica 2010 : 527 - CTS/Ministry of Justice/undata Congo 2008: 1,180 - who/undata Turkey 2008: 2,320 - CTS/undata Bangladesh 2010: 3,988 - National Police/undata Added (7/14/16): Four of the countries on the world's top ten homicide list (World Post) are in Central America. Mexico is in North America and not in the top ten. Please see blogs Carbuncle Moon 7/15/14 and 8/27/15. (Posted first on 10/2/18): “Blacks are shot and killed by police at 2.5 times the rate of whites..." "... as of July 9 (2016), whites were 54 percent of the 440 police shooting victims this year whose race was known, blacks were 28 percent, and Hispanics were 18 percent." - Washington Post Please see July 23rd (2016) blog on Carbuncle Moon: "some stuff about violent crime in the U.S.” 3/27/18: There were 134 deaths -- 64 murders by gunfire -- of police officers in 2017. – Officer Down Memorial Page Please give to the Jimmy Fund/ 10 Brookline Place West, 6th Floor/ Brookline, Massachusetts 02284/ 800-525-4669 “Senator Feinstein tried to warn anyone that would listen that it wasn’t the KY Jelly Computer Scare -- when world-wide computers were going to get lubed up by a sexual lubricant virus, um, whereupon the finicky machines would be unable to gain traction-momentum and flip their little doohickeys from the last year of the 20th Century to the first year of the 21st Century -- wasn’t the real threat. Nor afterwards, when all motorized deliveries would cease, cell phones implode, yak sales skyrocket, and life would come to a halt: except for certain survivalist cults led by guys with names like Zigfried, Basil, and Horace. But rather it was the Knuckleheads, which believe such things, that folks really had to worry about. But of course, history proved the Knuckleheads right; the world did end at the very beginning of the Twenty-First Century, uh, even if no one really noticed -- though, after Tower Books shut their doors with their End of the Earth Sale the destruction of the planet was announced on C-Span every Thursday for a year.”
Please give to the Southern Poverty Law Center: 400 Washington Avenue/ Montgomery, Alabama 36104/ 888-414-7752 "At Hotel Jane Fonda men with back hair have to pay a pet deposit."
(a version of this toon was posted earlier) Please give to the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ASPCA: 6201 Florin Perkins Road, Sacramento, California 95828/ 1-916-383-7387/ Or: donate aspca.org/ 1-800-628-0028 The Birth of Her Caitness:
"I remember when my wife, Glucinda, an aquarium blacksmith (does miniature spiral staircases, anchors, octopi with pith helmets), told me that we were going to have our first child. Though the baby yet born was already real to her I had to go out to the pumpkin patch to see the future, and to wonder. I took a six pack. Though I searched my memory for the lessons learned in my 8th grade science class -- for the life of me -- I just couldn’t remember how to ascertain which pumpkin was carrying the child. "I tried nine pumpkins: 'Knock knock,' I’d say and thump a pumpkin with my knuckles but there was no reply. Well, maybe the kid wasn’t going to grow up to be a rocket scientist. I shrugged and downed a beer. What the hell, I had the full term of pregnancy to understand the mystery of childbirth, and if I remembered right that was about 14 months. "In the first months of the hymester things were uneventful. The pumpkins grew; one plumpster more than the others. Coincidentally, it was at this time that my wife inexplicably gained a lot of weight, too. Nearing the nine-month mark she seemed as if she was carrying Paul Bunyan’s bowling ball in her lower abdomen but I didn’t say anything rude and quite naturally I stayed away from using any kind of humongous ball like a beach ball, a basketball, or a medicine ball in a compound sentence. Glucinda got so big that she had to buy all kinds of new clothes which her sister told me were called: 'Maternity-clothes-you-moron.'” - from the Birth of Her Caitness, a short story by Kevin O'Kendley (in the short story section of this blog: Carbuncle Moon). Please give to UNICEF/ U.S. Fund, Children First: 125 Maiden Lane/ New York, New York 10038/ 800-367-5437 Happy St. Patrick's Day. “There is good in the world, simple, uh, complex, dysfunctional. I'm related to outlaws that lived in America during the 1930s, they were bank robbers and horse thieves, uh, not screws -- er, ah, Garda -- or priests and nuns like my family in Ireland. I like to believe that if the O'Brien boys had come across a Klan lynchin they would have risked all, includin their lives to have stopped it: Good isn’t perfect… Slainte.” (a version posted earlier)
To friends and family: “I'll drink to our coffins: may they be built from the wood of a hundred-year-old oak tree that I’ll plant tomorrow.” - author unknown Please give to St. Baldrick’s Foundation: 1333 South Mayflower Avenue, Suite 400/ Monrovia, California 91016/ 888-899-2253/ sbinfo@stbaldricks.org “The experts are wrong: Melania Trump worked with illegal aliens and Governor Jerry Brown -- for free -- in a mannequin factory in Hayward, California, building car wives for Saudi Arabian women who disguise themselves as men -- wearin keffiyehs and false beards -- so that they can sit next to a mannequin car wife and operate motor vehicles in Saudi Arabia without being arrested.” (a version posted earlier/ edited 3/17)
(first posted 3/27/17): Some facts about building a wall on the Mexico border and fences already in place: "The border runs about 1,900 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Some sort of barrier—made from concrete, steel mesh and/or barbed wire —currently stands along about a third of it, in areas U.S. Customs and Border Protection deems vulnerable to illicit cross-border activity." "The hundreds of miles of border that remain unfenced fall into three categories: those deemed too topographically challenging for wall-building because of mountains or other rugged and rough terrain, those on Native American reservation land, and spaces identified for fencing that was never completed because the last project ran out of money. The largest swath of border without a barrier is in Texas." - Los Angeles Daily News/ 2017 Please give to St. Jude's Hospital: Danny Thomas Place/ Memphis, Tennessee, 38105/ 800-822-6344 |
A carbuncle is a roiled mass of skin or a beautiful gem. The incredible gem is pictured in the logo below and at the bottom of the short story section...
Kevin O'Kendley is the owner of Carbuncle Moon, and the author of all original material -- cartoons, blogs, shorts, essays, articles -- on the website (there has been a very limited editorial input in some of my work). All quoted sources are noted. I am responsible for all posts. The only blogs not time-dated are those advertising nonprofits. All nonprofits are vetted, investigated, though after the summer of 2018 my vetting has lapsed: (6/1/21).
Kevin O'Kendley: P.O. Box 172, Winterport, Maine, 04496, and 200 P Street, A-32, Sacramento, California, 95814, ksokendley@outlook.com. Technical help is provided by an evolving computer genius, my son, Conor O'Kendley: A good kid with a great heart who can be reached at P.O. Box 172, Winterport, Maine, 04496. (Conor is in the Navy now, a swabby) Photography provided by a visual artist, my daughter, Caitlin O'Kendley: a young woman with a beautiful soul. (Caitlin is in college now, a media-journalism student) If your nonprofit is advertised on this site and you wish to have it removed please contact me at the above listed snail-mail or email address or use the contact form on the website. If you download a blog, cartoon, a short story -- or for any other reason -- and wish to donate $ to this site, its author and technical support personnel, please send donations to above listed addresses payable to Kevin O'Kendley. My family and I could use the dinero. All cartoons, blogs, and short stories are for sale. Categories |