My mom cut the following snippet out of the newspaper for me, which was part of a wrap-up of weird political news headlined Election Follies:
In June, when Cook County, Ill. elections supervisor David Orr questioned the ethics of the family of Cook County Board President John Stroger, …a Stroger ally called Orr a “little poop butt.”It’s true. Alderman Beavers then made peepee in the sandbox.
Bush Says US Still At Risk of Attack
GREEN BAY, Wis. - President Bush said Thursday that a foiled plot to blow up multiple flights between Britain and the United States shows "this nation is at war with Islamic fascists."So, are they more pleased that the UK was on the ball, and saved lives? Or are they more pleased that they have a new boogeyman? Elections are coming. Get ready for the drum beat.
"This country is safer than it was prior to 9-11," Bush said from the airport tarmac here where he was appearing at events focused on the economy. "We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people but obviously we're not completely safe. ... It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America."
The president laid the blame for the would-be attack squarely on al-Qaida-type terrorism.
"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," he said, his remarks carried live on television.
U.K. Plot Puts Terrorism Back in U.S. Political CampaignsWell, that about sums it up, don’t it?
Terrorism returns front and center to the American political agenda.
Republicans have long planned to make counterterrorism a central theme of this year’s congressional campaign, painting Democrats as weak on the issue. Today’s London arrests force the issue back to the front of voters’ minds, two days after Ned Lamont’s victory in Connecticut over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman sparked a spate of Republican assertions, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, that the results showed Democrats are shirking from confronting terrorists. The RNC released a Web video titled “Weak and Wrong: Meet the Defeat-o-crats.”
Shortly after this morning’s announcement, Lieberman–now running as an independent–released a statement saying “this should serve as the latest, most serious evidence that we are in a war against a brutal enemy that intends to attack us over and over again in the most indiscriminate way.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says a Democratic Congress would better fight terror by enacting more of the 9/11 Commission’s reforms. The plank is the eighth item on a nine-point platform, after gas prices, the minimum wage, health care, and other economic pledges.
Meantime, President Bush plans to make a statement at noon (EDT) about the U.K. plot. Bush will make his remarks during a previously scheduled trip to Green Bay, Wis. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush talked at length to British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the plot on Sunday and again on Wednesday.
Interesting post from The Chemist on 30 Days’ Atheism Episode. His conclusion is precisely what I grouse about all the time, which is that there are far too many religious people in America (not all of them) who don’t believe that an atheist can be moral, or that it’s possible to derive morality exclusively from earthly sources.
As if there’s no reason to think murder is wrong besides “God said so.” There is. And most religious people probably recognize it, so I continually fail to understand why they don’t respect an earthbound morality.
A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said.Okay, so my first question is: How
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, on holiday in the Caribbean, paid tribute to the police and the security services.
He said they had tracked the situation for a "long period of time" and had "been involved in an extraordinary amount of hard work."
BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the plot was thought to have involved a series of "waves" of simultaneous attacks, targeting three planes each time.Hmm. Okay.
He also said the plan "revolved around liquids of some kind".
Bob Orr just said on The Early Show on CBS that the U.S. government has known about this for a few days. He wonders why, if knowledge of this plot is a few days old, additional safety measures to protect travelers have not been put in place until today.Good question.
Why indeed. Why, if you know that travelers are at risk because of a plot to blow up airliners in midair, do you not advise travelers the minute you know?
After investigating peaceful activist groups like the Raging Grannies, it looks like the FBI has finally realized that maybe they should investigate groups fanning the flames of war, rather than the ones trying to end it. And it couldn't happen to a nicer group of dirtbags. Yep, Little Green Footballs has been investigated by the FBI for anti-Muslim threats.
Mercy me, I do believe I have the vapors.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights organization often vilified on Johnson's blog, calls Little Green Footballs "a vicious, anti-Muslim hate site . . . that has unfortunately become popular."Emphasis theirs. More at the link, including Johnson's ludicrous response.
The irony, Hooper says, is that if the same kind of "hatred" that appears on LGF appeared on Muslim sites, it soon would be used by LGF's fans to justify their worldview...
The FBI, according to Hooper, recently investigated several threats of physical harm against Muslims posted by Little Green Footballs readers.
Johnson acknowledges the investigation but says Hooper's organization initiated the complaints to try to stifle free speech on his blog.
Thirty percent of Americans can’t name the year that 9/11 happened.
Thirty.
Fucking.
Percent.
Of that group, six percent gave an earlier year, eight percent gave a later year, and 16 percent admitted they had no idea whatsoever.Let me guess—it’s the same boobs who voted for Bush, a man who has uttered the term “9/11” more than I’ve said the word “fuck,” which is really fucking saying something, but still the date that “changed everything” hasn’t managed to stick in their idiot heads.
This memory black hole is essentially the problem of the older crowd: 48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll.
Suggested by Darryl Pearce: "What 'character' was your high-school dress? Mine was ...uh, the 'explorer'—khaki shirt (with epilates), denims, and hiking boots—and an intense interest in science fiction ...and girls)."
I guess I'd describe mine as goth-geek. Emphasis on geek.
Focus on the Family is a bunch of shitty liars.
How absolutely perfect that they would misrepresent the positions of women’s organizations in a brochure subtitled “Exploiting women in the name of science.”
I can't stop giggling at this. (Are you paying attention, Michael?! Beards rule! Via Monkeys for Helping.)
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $500 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Last month, they donated $287 million “to speed development of an AIDS vaccine.”
Yeah, I know all the “drop in the bucket of his fortune” and “tax deductible” stuff that goes along with anything good Gates does, but I don’t give a shit. Half a billion dollars to fight AIDS globally is just fucking cool.
That is the question. Like Jessica, I was fascinated with the question put to Salon’s advice columnist, Cary Tennis, today. Not so much because I find whether women shave their bits especially interesting, but because I find it curious that it never occurred to the writer (who is so “horrified” by men who like the look of a shaved pubic area—“what did he want with a crotch that looked like a baby's?”—that she refuses to date them) nor Cary (who also references “the infantilizing of the female genitalia”) that perhaps gazers upon the vagina, be they straight men or lesbians, might prefer hairlessness because it enhances the view.
Leaving aside for a moment all the practical and aesthetic reasons women themselves might have for wanting to be shaved, as we’re contemplating why a woman’s partner might prefer it, it’s astounding to me that getting a better look is a less obvious answer than infantilization. (The writer is rather vague, referring to shaving her “crotch,” which I’m taking to mean “vagina,” and not necessarily that triangle of hair on the lower abdomen; if there’s still hair there, there’s no mistaking a woman for prepubescent, and so infantilization is probably wrong as a default logically, too.) That the ability to peer intimately at the female genitalia without the obstruction of hair is not an evident possibility seems indicative of the notion, held by many people of both genders, that, without mincing words, pussies are ugly.
There was an episode of Sex and the City in which prudish Charlotte was charged, as she so often was, with representing the puritanical view, and wrinkled her nose at the suggestion that vaginas are beautiful. No, she revealed, she had never looked at her own. “I think it’s ugly.” A lot of women internalize this perception of their own genitals, and even if they don’t believe their vaginas are ugly, they still find it difficult to believe that anyone could find them beautiful. Our culture has done little to dispel the notion; while penises can be found in artwork at the nearest museum, the first overt display of a vagina women are most likely to come across is in pornography, and the perceived vulgarity of the context is easily transferred upon the opinion of the object at its center. Meanwhile, we are marketed an endless stream of products to “freshen” our genitals, informed that their odor is objectionable. The sense of dirtiness we learn to associate with our vaginas is not suggestive of beauty.
But most sexual partners who are attracted to the feminine finds vaginas alluring. It’s no wonder to me that a man or woman who wants to touch and taste and explore a vagina would find it beautiful, and want to see every fold of its glistening landscape of pink or red or brown as clearly as possible. We shouldn’t be surprised that there are men and women who prefer their partners shaved, but surprised that we don’t consider vaginas lovely enough to want to view unobscured.
And, from a pragmatic standpoint, some of them might want to go downtown without getting a pubic hair stuck in their throats (ref. Larry David; Curb Your Enthusiasm indeed).
As always, to each woman her own. Shaving isn’t for everyone (is anything?). But it’s certainly nothing over which to dismiss a potential partner, for fear s/he is a pedophile in hiding. If I had any advice to give to Cary’s questioner, I would tell her to respond to a partner who wants her to shave by handing him the razor. A bowl of warm water, some soap, and a pussy-loving partner with a steady hand can turn a shave into quite an enjoyable afternoon.
(Side note: I don’t think shaving is just a female thing. I know plenty of men, gay and straight, who shave, or trim, all or part of their genital hair, too—many of whom have also found that turning it over to the gentle hands of a partner makes for spectacular foreplay.)
Didn't take long for it to become official, did it? ABC reports that Joe Lieberman has become, in de facto fashion, The New Republican.
A "close Lieberman adviser" told George Stephanopoulos that Karl Rove "reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: 'The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do.'"
So much for being an "independent" candidate.
Of course, Lieberman could always turn Rove down.
(Cross-posted.)
Very seriously (via Queerty):
Two football supporters have become the first fans to be convicted of chanting homophobic abuse.What else to say? That’s fucking awesome. Sport is, unfortunately, too often a refuge for homophobia and anti-gay sentiments. That Britain is tackling head-on the intolerance perpetuated by the casual use of anti-gay epithets is really admirable.
James Monkhouse and Michael Church, followers of Norwich City, were found guilty by Norwich Magistrates’ Court of disorderly behaviour after reportedly shouting anti-gay chants aimed at Brighton football club fans earlier this year.
The defendants were filmed chanting the word “queer” from the stands, the court was told, and were later escorted out of the stadium by football intelligence officer PC Chris Watts…
Earlier this year the Football Association outlined its opposition to homophobia in the game, the FA’s director of corporate affairs, Simon Johnson, told PinkNews.co.uk: "The FA is leading the way on tackling homophobia in football and our work is becoming recognised across Europe. We underline our opposition to homophobia in our football for all strategy along with race and disability discrimination. Abuse of any such nature can now be tackled by the FA via sanctions and potential bans."
A British fisherman caught a 58lb, 6’-6” swordfish in the North Sea, 3,000 miles away from its usual home in the Mediterranean.
Peter Dent was shocked when the huge fish turned up in his trawler nets.Suddenly I’m having a hankering for Hemingway.
According to the Mirror he said: "I've certainly never caught anything like this before. I was just doing my normal drift-netting when I noticed this huge fish. I didn't know what it was and at first thought it must have been a shark. When I brought it in, I realised what it was. I was absolutely amazed."
The fish was caught off New Biggin-by-the-sea, Northumberland.
Peter added: "These waters are changing and you can get a few surprises these days."
This story just took my breath away:
A new MTV cartoon depicting black women squatting on all fours tethered to leashes and defecating on the floor is drawing fire from several prominent African Americans who call the episode degrading.Critics say MTV, a popular music video channel on cable television, showed especially poor judgment because the weekly animated program "Where My Dogs At?" appeals to young teens and airs at an hour, 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays, when many children are watching television.
Hey, it's all in the service of social satire, or so says Viacom president Christina Norman. Viacom owns MTV. Norman is black, incidentally, which doesn't seem to cut much ice with such critics of the program as professional grouch Stanley Crouch. Oddly, even Crouch's remarks in the NY Daily Post seem somewhat muted, as if he can't quite believe what he's faced with.
What I'm having trouble with is the idea that of all the people involved in the production and scheduling of this show, and this particular episode, that there wasn't one person who said, "Uh...I'm not so sure that this is a good idea."
As for me: I'm hatin' the playas and the game.
More at Feministing.
(Cross-posted.)
According to a close Lieberman adviser, the President's political guru, Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: "The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do."That seems about right.
