That’s the running count of how many deaths have occurred due to guns in the United States since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about the not-dead shooting victims.

Like 10-year-old Ka’nard Allen of New Orleans.

He was shot in the face on Mother’s Day during a happy neighborhood parade. This is after his 5-year-old cousin was murdered and he was shot at his 10th birthday party last May. And after his father was killed in October 2012.

This is a national tragedy. And it’s a travesty that this nation doesn’t think it’s a tragedy that 19 people got shot on Mother’s Day.

He wants an adult to start peeling an orange for him because he can’t get it started himself. He wants to dunk an empty juice bottle into a garbage can and launch high, elegant roundhouse kicks at the pail. He wants to get on that black four-wheeler and drive it off the grass speckled with broken glass, watching for traffic, circling on Simon Bolivar — fast. He’ll even give you a ride on the back.

This isn’t the most eloquent way to sum it up, but all I can say right now is, “We fucking suck.”  Hang in there, Ka’nard. People you’ve never met are thinking of you.

[NOLA Times-Picayune]

Normally I’m not a big fan of public displays of affection, let alone high-pressure public marriage proposals, but after hearing some shit news tonight about a friend whose partner suddenly died, I feel the need to post THE.MOST.AWESOME.CASTRO.MARRIAGE.PROPOSAL.EVER.

Beyonce, take it away (and it’s worth watching to the end).

Damn, what a voice.

[NYT]

The photographer who took this picture at the collapsed sweatshop in Bangladesh says it best:

Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.

They are witnesses in this cruel history of workers being killed.

[Time Light Box]

Speaking at the graduation ceremony at Southern Virginia University, a Mormon college in Lynchburg, VA, failed Presidential candidate Mitt Romney advised the students there to get married as soon as possible and get busy making a “quiver-full of kids,”  because young people who wait until their 30s to marry are “going to miss so much of living.”

Mr. 53% went on to note that it’s okay to squeeze out the children even if you aren’t making money because “God doesn’t care if you’re rich.” Okay, good luck with that.

Mother Jones notes that the “quiver-full” reference is a nod to Psalm 127,  and a dog-whistle to the evangelical Christian Quiverfull movement that advocates a virulently anti-contraception position and embraces Biblical patriarchy.

Its followers see feminism as a slippery slope, starting with family planning—which is viewed as women taking unlawful ownership of a body that rightfully belongs to God—and ending with gay rights, abortion, divorce, and witchcraft (really).  Given their view of feminism as “a totally self-consistent system aimed at rejecting God’s role for women,” the movement’s leaders instead suggested a sort of Renaissance woman alternative for conservative Christians: They would be submissive wives, prolifically fertile mothers, and home-schoolers who train their children (especially their daughters) to grow up and do the same. The children of these families, the “arrows,” are the tools of spiritual warfare for a community that envisions a long-term campaign to win the culture wars demographically—by having more children than its opponents.

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we dodged a bullet in that election.

[MoJo: Mitt Romney's Advice]

Did you know that May is International Masturbation Month?

Well, what are you waiting for?

Get going, go on there and celebrate it!

[Good Vibrations via SFist]

Poor widdle Pewwy…Governor Good Hair got upset about this cartoon in the Sacramento Bee:

He said he was “disgusted” by the cartoon and it mocked the deaths of people in West, TX. No, dipshit, what’s disgusting is the unfettered devil-may-care attitude of you and the corporation that disregarded the safety of residents. The editor of the Sac Bee said it best:

The Bee’s editorial page editor, Stuart Leavenworth, responded Friday that the artist, Jack Ohman, “made a strong statement about Gov. Rick Perry’s disregard for worker safety, and his attempts to market Texas a place where industries can thrive with few regulations.”

“It is unfortunate that Gov. Perry, and some on the blogosphere, have attempted to interpret the cartoon as being disrespectful for the victims of this tragedy,” Leavenworth said. “As Ohman has made clear on his blog, he has complete empathy for the victims and people living by the plant.

“What he finds offensive is a governor who would gamble with the lives of families by not pushing for the strongest safety regulations. Perry’s letter is an attempt to distract people from that message.”

[SF Chron]