From our Now Just Imagine How Much Bellyaching You’d Hear From The Kook Pews If Gay People Were Doing This department…
Color me unimpressed by Mark Penn’s "microtrends" based on Marc Ambinder’s writeup. Penn mostly seems to be playing his favorite sport of defining groups arbitrarily and then finding that if you slice up the population in random ways, you can get interesting-but-meaningless results. That said, this is funny:
Within the past ten years, the number of women who sought younger male boyfriends has quintupled. These are the "cougars," Penn writes.
I’m not sure I understand why they’re cougars? Because it’s an alternative to being a cat lady?
That’s from Matthew Yglesias, who gets himself an education on "Cougars" in the comments to his post. And so did I actually…
Los Angeles is a land where conventional time no longer exists. “There are no seasons, it’s always the same sunny blue sky day after day, so you never feel you’re getting any older,” said a friend, tranquilly. Here you can pause the passing of the years, or even rewind a little — breasts can be pert again, skin taut, forehead uncreased.
Age is no bar to anything in LA, least of all relationships — look at 44-year-old Demi Moore, all glowing and toned on the arm of 29-year-old husband Ashton Kutcher.
So perhaps the rise of the cougars should be no surprise. They’re a new Angeleno phenomenon: rich, powerful and — unlike Demi — predatory older women, whose natural habitat is the high-end shops, bars and spas of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, and whose chosen prey is younger men.
Chris Breed, the Brit maestro of the Hollywood club scene — he looks about 28, but isn’t — has seen them in action. “It’s a complete role reversal,” he said over dinner at Maestro’s Steakhouse in Beverly Hills, a frenzy of mirrors and laughter. “But if you want to get on in this town, you go where the power is, and often the older women have power: power to cast an actor in the right role, power to get a man into the right club.”
“These girls don’t want steady relationships,” said Chris’s friend. “They’ve had that. Some of them have been married four times. They want to keep their money. Their attitude is, I’m rich, I’m in great shape, I don’t give a shit. They shred young men alive.”
“Do the men mind?” I asked. He grinned. “Hell, no.” At that moment, a woman swept in wearing a floor-length leopardskin coat, her hair bleached blonde, her lips cartoon-character colossal and exaggerated with so much lip liner and lipstick, she seemed to be more mouth than face. One hundred per cent cougar. Behind her hovered a slight young black guy, with white trousers slung low, and black beanie hat pulled down in an attempt to keep some street cred.
I later saw her haughtily leave the restaurant, and the doors nearly swung back on the poor guy as he bleakly followed.
“These girls,” the friend continued, “they carry Viagra in their handbags. Viagra and Cialis, the 36-hour drug. They are vicious. They call the shots.”
That’s from an LA Times article, posted up on the website UrbanCougar.Com…a website for older women who like younger men, and lots of them. Take a wee stroll over there, and ask yourself how loudly they’d be screaming about it on Fox News if that was a web site for older gay men who like younger guys. For one thing, no matter how much the operators and users of that site made it clear they weren’t about going after teenagers, let along children, the word all over the corporate news media, never mind Fox, would be that the site was somehow linked to NAMBLA, and was facilitating pedophiles. Middle aged heterosexuals can pursue younger lovers and maybe get an occasional sniff of disapproval, when they’re not getting knowing winks. Homosexuals are presumed to be child molesters.
But…never mind. There’s this foundational myth in western culture about female sexuality being more chaste and demure then male sexuality, and I’ve always been skeptical of it. I went through adolescence in the free love 60s and early 70s, and I’m here to tell you the girls weren’t any less sexually aggressive then the boys. But one of the slogans anti-gay crackpots like to throw out there is how male-female couples naturally complement each other in terms of their sexuality. The female’s less lustful, more maternal sexuality attenuates the male’s predatory sexual nature, while males, provide structure and a firm hand of guidance to the emotionally weak females. This, they claim, is why male homosexuality is so inherently reckless and promiscuous. Men need a female to tame them. Never mind it’s male superiority dressed up in a veneer of junk psychology. With regard to female libidos, it simply isn’t true.
Historically, it wasn’t all that long ago in western culture that the notion that women might actually experience orgasm when they weren’t ovulating, let alone enjoy sex for its own sake, was considered implausible. And even these days, the most rigidly male dominated cultures are without exception also the ones in the deepest denial about female sexuality. The more male dominated and fundamentalist a culture is, the more likely it is to nail female sexuality into a coffin. In Saudi Arabia they put women in burkas. Here in the U.S. we put them into the kitchen and tell them that only boys are allowed to have sex for its own sake, and that’s only because they can’t help themselves…they’re guys. But women like to dance in the arms of eros too.
Early work, both empirical research and theorizing, took a decidedly male-centered perspective on multiple mating, emphasizing how males maximize their paternity by being sexually available to more than one female whenever possible, also competing with each other directly (by bluffing, displaying, and fighting) and indirectly by guarding their mates, as well as by using an array of anatomical, physiological and behavioral techniques – such as frequent copulations – to give them an advantage over other males.
More recently, biologists have begun to identify how females partake of their own strategies: mating with more than one male, controlling (or at least, influencing) the outcome of sperm competition, sometimes obtaining direct, personal benefits such as food or protection in return for these extra-pair copulations, as well as gaining indirect, genetic benefits that eventually accrue to their offspring. A penchant for non-monogamy among males is no great surprise, but as we shall see, the most dramatic new findings and revised science brought about by recent demolitions of the myth of monogamy concern the role of females. Freud spoke more truth than he knew when he observed that female psychology was essentially a "dark continent." A well integrated theory of female sexuality in particular still remains to be articulated…
But that’s half the human race. If men don’t really know all that much about female sexuality, then how can they say they really know their own? The dark continent is sex. Still.
Why are we still so ignorant about this vital part of our lives? Because the status-quo doesn’t like being upset…and nothing upsets the status-quo like sex. Female sexuality has been kept in the closet all this time for the same reason that homosexuals were. Control. The prerogative of power is that you get first dibs on the hotties. Otherwise what good is money and status? In a world without fences, where everyone owns their own love lives, and manages their own sexual affairs for themselves, and are not only free to say Yes, but also No Thanks…then even the powerful have to ask.
That’s why, for so very, very long, so many of us have been taught not to trust our own feelings when it comes to sex. There are others who know what’s best for us. We must always listen to them…never to our own hearts…
For a variety of reasons I try to stay out of the debates over blogs as such, what they’re good or bad at and the rest. But this morning I was alerted to an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Skube, a journalism professor at Elon University. The sum of the piece is that the blogosphere is as rife with disputation as it is thin on information, or more specifically, reporting, writing that demands "time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance."
Skube, as Marshal explains, gives us a fine example of the high standards of professional journalists…
Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he was including us as examples in a column about the dearth of original reporting in the blogosphere.
Now, I get criticized plenty. And that’s fair since I do plenty of criticizing. And I wouldn’t raise any of this here if it weren’t for what came up in Skube’s response.
Not long after I wrote I got a reply: "I didn’t put your name into the piece and haven’t spent any time on your site. So to that extent I’m happy to give you benefit of the doubt …"
This seemed more than a little odd since, as I said, he certainly does use me as an example — along with Sullivan, Matt Yglesias and Kos. So I followed up noting my surprise that he didn’t seem to remember what he’d written in his own opinion column on the very day it appeared and that in any case it cut against his credibility somewhat that he wrote about sites he admits he’d never read.
To which I got this response: "I said I did not refer to you in the original. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples … "
Where Six Years Of GOP Rule Has Brought America To The Brink Of
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help. -Ronald Reagan
Oh…Ya Think, Ron….?
A government plan to use members of the clergy to quell dissent and objections to government orders during a time of national emergency has been revealed by a Shreveport, La., television station.
Sandy Davis, director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said there are several advantages, but primarily, “these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation.”
So government orders to abandon homes, turn over guns, leave livestock behind, or whatever would come to the minds of various officials during an “emergency,” would be easier for people to accept, the report indicated.
The report said one of the biggest tools the clergy members would use would be the Bible itself, specifically Romans 13, where Tuberville said the Bible states “the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the Scripture.”
Civil rights advocates have raised questions about the idea of using clergy in such a fashion, noting the balance clergy would have to maintain when asked to do what the government wants under color of their status as a religious leader.
A blogger for the Christian education site, Chalcedon noted that the training has been going on in secret for over a year already.
In case you’re wondering, Chalcedon is the Christian Reconstructionist organization founded by RJ Rushdoony himself. These folks believe in imposing biblical, as in Old Testament, law on the United States.
The grim irony here is that the above is taken from the right wing kook site, World Net Daily. Gosh…even the wingers are starting to get scared of the republicans now. Well folks…You Fucking Asked For It…! When they come with the local preacher to take your guns away from you, just hand them over quietly. After all, you voted for them, and then you looked the other way while they got busy shredding the Constitution because you always thought that it was only the darkies and the dirty hippies and the faggots and weirdos who had anything to worry and you couldn’t wait to see them all get what was coming to them.
So, yes, I am a supporter of gay marriage and undoubtedly will remain so, since it is consistent with my values of long duration. And, yes, I will continue to agitate for it in my writing and elsewhere. But in return I call on my friends on the Left –- straight or gay -– to help defend that real source of liberalism the Enlightenment, because if we lose and fall under religious law, there not only will be no gay marriage, there will be no women’s rights, no freedom of the press, no basic human rights, not even – as in the case of Iran – any music.
Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States — the Pajamas Media/ right-wing-blogosphere / Fox News / Michelle Malkin / Rush Limbaugh listener strain — actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and “our women” will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have — not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.
To which, Tom Tomorrow points out that the agenda of our own homebrew religious extremists doesn’t look too terribly different. Simon, he of the Moses Wine detective novels, is doing his level best to throw his country to the wolves over here, to save it from the wolves over there. And thanks to the likes of him, and all the other Roger Simons of America, now they’ve got their hands firmly around our democracy’s throat. Far out Moses…
Here’s the KSLA News 12 video, via YouTube. All together now…My country ’tis, of thee….
Hey Roger…don’t worry…it’s okay as long as it’s a Christian sharia law…
This program is not bad at all. I could do things with it…
The color tools work so much more naturally for me then the ones in Painter. Ironically, Painter bills itself as a tool that goes to great lengths to mimic the behavior of traditional artist’s tools…even down to mimicking a wide assortment of paper types. But I’ve just never been able to get it to work. This was my first effort at a color drawing in Sketchbook Pro and I’m very pleased with it. The software never once fought me. I can do some stuff with this…
Still experimenting with Sketchbook Pro. I thought I’d post one in the middle of working on it, so you can still see the rough sketch lines leading up to a finished drawing…
Sketchbook Pro is making it really easy for me to use the Wacom tablet to sketch out a drawing on. Here I’ve tightened up the lines a bit and started to add some color…
I don’t have a fill tool in Sketchbook Pro, so I’m having to add color one brush stroke at a time. But there are layers so what I did was add another layer over my pencil lines and used a pen tool to draw the inks over the pencils. Then I added another layer for color between the two and started coloring in. I’ve started here, to erase some of the lines on the pencil layer to tighten things up a bit.
In retrospect, if I’d had half a brain I’d have done the pencils in a light blue color, so I could easily differentiate between them and the inks on the ink layer while working on it. But I’m not used to using blue pencil like some other artists, so it didn’t occur to me until I was well into the inking process.
There is a marker tool, which works to blend the colors between layers. I’ll start using that later to add depth and texture.
I notice I keep using the terminology of traditional tools to explain what I’m doing, even though it only applies in metaphor. I’m not really creating pencils or inks…just using software tools that mimic how those things work. It seems a bit dishonest to call them "pencils". But I can’t think of another word to use here.
So I decided. Manga Studio is way to complex and its workspace far too cluttered for me to concentrate on a sketch with. Maybe I can us it in some other part of the work flow…like the layout for instance. Its page layout and panel formatting features look really nice. And its got an amazing array of texture screens that I still want to try out. But for creating the initial sketches, it just doesn’t cut it. For my hand, none of the others come close to Sketchbook Pro.
At some point I’ll start producing some cartoons with it. Right now I’m still in a learning curve. I’ll post some more sketches along the way. When I do a complete cartoon in the computer I’ll let you all know which one it was, so you can compare. Hopefully, the only person who notices the difference will be me. As in, no more stacks of layout paper on my drawing board…no more cursing at jammed up Rapidographs…no more inhaling fixative fumes…no more erasers that tear up the paper…
It took only a few hours after news circulated that entertainer and entrepreneur Merv Griffin had died (at 82, Sunday, in Los Angeles) for a drumbeat of wrath—yes, wrath—to begin on some of the Internet’s fringe Web sites, where Griffin was assailed by various contributors for allegedly having been a "closeted" homosexual who should have announced he was gay to the world—though at which stage of his career he should have made the declaration was not specified.
Well…actually one place he could have done it was spelled out. And as it turns out…Shales knows damn well where and when it was, that Griffin could have made a difference…
Whatever, the vehemence and fury in the attacks was disheartening. "A bloated pig like that should burn in hell," wrote one anonymous assailant. Michelangelo Signorile, who runs a Web site called The Gist, wrote that Griffin could have helped prevent the AIDS epidemic if only he had spoken to his friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan about it, but that "it is highly unlikely" he ever did, preferring to remain "shockingly silent" even as "his own people were dying."
The Reagan administration’s reaction to AIDS is complex and goes far beyond Reagan’s refusal to speak out about the epidemic. A great deal of his power base was born-again Christian Republican conservatives who embraced a reactionary social agenda that included a virulent, demonizing homophobia. In the media, people like Reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell portrayed gay people as diseased sinners and promoted the idea that AIDS was a punishment from God and that the gay rights movement had to be stopped. In the Republican Party, zealous right-wingers, such as Representative William Dannenmeyer (CA) and Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), hammered home this same message. In the Reagan White House, people such as Secretary of Education William Bennett and Gary Bauer, his chief domestic advisor, worked to enact it in the Adminis- tration’s policies.
In practical terms this meant AIDS research was chronically underfunded. When doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute for Health asked for more funding for their work on AIDS, they were routinely denied it. Between June 1981 and May 1982, the CDC spent less than $1 million on AIDS, but $9 million on Legionnaire’s Disease. At that point over 1,000 of the 2,000 AIDS cases reported resulted in death; there were fewer than 50 deaths from Legionnaire’s Disease. This drastic lack of funding would continue through the Reagan years.
When health and support groups in the gay community instigated education and prevention programs, they were denied federal funding. In October 1987 Jesse Helms amended a federal appropriation bill that prohibited AIDS education efforts that “encourage or promoted homosexual activity”(that is, tell gay men how to have safe sex).
When almost all medical opinion spoke out against mandatory HIV testing (since it would drive those at risk away from being tested) and the ACLU and Lambda Legal Defense were fighting discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS, Republicans such as Vice President George Bush in 1987 and William Dannenmeyer (in a California state referendum in 1988) called for mandatory HIV testing.
Throughout all of this Ronald Reagan did nothing. When Rock Hudson, a friend and colleague of the Reagan’s, was diagnosed and died in 1985 (one of the 20,740 cases reported that year), Reagan still did not speak out. When family friend William F. Buckley, in a March 18, 1986 New York Times article, called for mandatory testing of HIV and said that HIV+ gay men should have this information forcibly tattooed on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their arms), Reagan said nothing. In 1986 (after five years of complete silence) when Surgeon General C. Everett Koop released a report calling for AIDS education in schools, Bennett and Bauer did everything possible to undercut and prevent funding for Koop’s too-little too-late initiative. By the end of 1986, 37,061 AIDS cases had been reported; 16,301 people had died.
The most memorable Reagan AIDS moment was at the 1986 centenary rededication of the Statue of Liberty. The Reagan’s were there sitting next to the French Prime Minister and his wife, Francois and Danielle Mitterrand. Bob Hope was on stage entertaining the all-star audience. In the middle of a series of one-liners, Hope quipped, “I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS, but she doesn’t know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy.” As the television camera panned the audience, the Mitterrands looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing. By the end of 1989, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States—more then 70,000 of them had died.
Emphasis mine. If the Reagans epitomized Truman Capote’s remark that "a faggot is the homosexual gentleman who just left the room", Shales epitomizes the person who looks the other way when they see it. But Griffin had a chance to put a human face on that joke, and he ether didn’t, or he allowed the illusion of friendship persist, let himself be the "some" in "some of my best friends are…"
One commenter on the TV Week site avers that Griffin, "…was under no obligation to share his sexual preference" and "the GLBT community must realize that, just as they have a right to "come out," they have no right to "out" anyone else- unless that person says one thing and does another." True enough, generally. The struggling gay teen…the poor working stiff who’s just barely making ends meet…the closeted solider torn between the needs of their heart and the needs of their country…the closeted middle manager, struggling to hold on to their career dreams…most all of us need to be left alone to deal with the closet on our own terms, in our own way. But with power comes responsibility. In the face of social indifference to a staggering death toll that many then (and even now still) were saying was nothing more then what homosexuals were due, closeted celebrities like Griffin, people whom pop culture fame had blessed with status and wealth had an obligation, not only to their own people, but to their country, and to humanity, to raise their voices. And Griffin didn’t.
You can’t take it with you…not even your closet. But something that remains behind, long after we’re gone from this good earth, are the things we did to make a difference, that made our world better for our having walked in it. Those remain, long after our names are forgotten. And also, the things we didn’t, that we could have.
Just playing around a bit with a demo version of Sketchbook Pro…
It even seems to smudge like real pencil. But that was all done in the computer, using a Wacom pad. I’m getting a better feel for using that pad to sketch with. It still doesn’t feel quite right…I’m so use to the feel of real lead on paper…but I’m getting to the point now where I’m feeling comfortable enough doing this, that I want to settle on a good all around tool for it. Photoshop really isn’t it. At least, not for me. And the sense I get is that’s not what Photoshop wants to be. Photoshop doesn’t even try to emulate what real artist’s tools behave like on paper or canvas. It’s just a really powerful bitmap editor.
There’s a bunch of tools out there like Sketchbook Pro that try to emulate the tools. Coral Painter even goes so far as to emulate many different kinds of artist’s papers. So far I’m finding that they all have their good points, but they’re all missing something too. I love the way Coral Painter emulates charcoal on paper. But I’ve never been able to get it’s pencils or brushes to feel right on my Wacom tablet.
I’m downloading a trial version of Manga Studio next. It’s the only tool I’ve seen that lets you turn the "paper" this way and that as you draw on it (as opposed to actually rotating the image On the paper). It also allows you to create perspective grid layers you can adjust the horizon line and vanishing point(s) on. Manga Studio also lets you convert bitmap layers to vector layers…which makes resizing line artwork much, Much cleaner.
But I really like the way Sketchbook Pro lets you select and adjust the tools you’re using with tablet pen gestures. It’s quick, and less concentration breaking. There’s a floating tool for resizing your brush/point that’s perfect. It works like you’re dipping your brush or pen or pencil point into a well and then dragging the point in or out to whatever size you want. It’s a snap to do while you’re busy drawing. I wish they all had that.
One of my co-workers, who is also a cartoonist, is involved in an open source artist’s tool project, Inkscape. It’s a vector based drawing tool along the lines of Adobe Illustrator, and it looks really nice. Alas, as of now it’s still lacking Mac tablet support. But if you’re using Linux it’s worth a look.
Note: I changed the IP address below...obviously...
From: <pannunzio@ucdavis.edu>
To: <bruce@brucegarrett.com>
Subject: Funny postcard
Good day.
Your Father has sent you Funny postcard from deepestfeelings.com.
Click on your card's direct www address below:
http:/127.0.0.1/
Copyright (c) 1992-2007 deepestfeelings.com All Rights Reserved
Oh how nice…dad sent me a postcard. Except dad’s been dead now for over three decades. And so has Rod Serling so I doubt that’s a link to a web site running on a server somewhere in the Twilight Zone. Nice idea for a story though. But no…what’s waiting for me on the other side of that helpful link is some sort of spam, probably along with some sort of malicious javascript attack.
Deepest Feelings is it? I have some Deepest Feelings all right. You have to really loath someone who exploits other people’s affections, whether it’s for profit or just because it gives them kicks. In case you haven’t heard or seen one yourself yet, there is a pretty major spam/malicious software attack on people’s computer’s going on now all over the Internet, that uses this greeting card ploy. I’ve seen plenty of others that use some form of intrusive tactical syntax on your feelings. Just as computers are susceptible to malicious code, humans are susceptible to malicious words, the right combination of which can expose all our root functions to other devious humans. To compromise a computer, first you compromise the human controlling it. Oh…dad sent me a card…
But then…when aren’t our feelings under malicious attack these days. Karl Rove. James Dobson. Exodus International. Talk Radio. Family Values. Defend Marriage. Support Our Troops. Question Homosexuality. Don’t you want America to win in Iraq? They’re Taking Christ Out Of Christmas. Save Our Children. About 98 percent of everything you read and hear in the popular media these days is tactical syntax, cynically designed to get past your defenses and into your core where you can be easily manipulated. You’re lucky if it’s only your money they want once they’ve gotten in. The people who write malicious software are just doing to our machines, what we do to each other every day anyway.
We have two flocks of barn swallows that nest each spring and summer in our triple deck parking garage across the street. One flock makes its nests in the second level east side of the garage, and the other on the second level west. Every winter I find myself anxiously awaiting their arrival, as a signal that spring is near.
Well…it looks like summer’s end is on the way. Maybe. Possibly. At least, that’s the mixed message I’m getting from the swallows. It looks now, as though the west end flock has already skedaddled for its South American nesting grounds. But the east enders are sticking around for now. They’re still busily darting around the grounds, their noisy chatter still filling their end of the garage. So someone got the cue to split and someone is still waiting for theirs I reckon. I wish I knew what it was they’re listening to. It’s still hot as blazes out there. You’d never know to be walking out in it, that summer was already throwing out signals that its time is fleeting…
Leroy Greer is a bit of a romantic. He sent a dozen roses and a teddy bear to his girlfriend, with a card reading "Just wanted to say I love you".
Unfortunately the florist sent the receipt to his wife.
How…romantic…
Now the luxury car salesman from Missouri City is suing the firm for $1 million for "mental anguish" caused by the mix-up and his resultant divorce.
The affair was laid bare after his wife received a receipt from 1-800-flowers.com.
Bereft of bouquet, she called the company and requested more information, which not only included the damning card message but the girlfriend’s name and address.
She faxed the receipt to her husband at work with her own note: "Be a man! If you got caught red handed then don’t lie."
Divorce proceedings followed swiftly.
Ya think?
Mr Greer blamed the florist for his divorce and insisted it had told him no receipt would be sent to his home.
No Leroy…it wasn’t the flowers. It’s the thought that counts.
Lifted from Peterson’s comment to his own blog post Here…
Peterson now wants to help others that are referred to the clutches of Exodus. He invited all ex-gay survivors, as they call themselves, to a conference in opposition to the ex-gay movement. They can learn how one can be gay and nevertheless lead a godly life. Michael Bussee co-founded Exodus 30 years ago but came back out of it because he found the methods of the organization questionable. Today he participates in the ‘counter’-conference: “One day a young man came to me. He explained that he’d had anonymous sex and felt so guilty afterward that he mutilated himself. At that point I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t preach against homosexuality anymore if it causes such damage.”
Emphasis mine. You folks who say "love the sinner, hate the sin"…? There’s your love.
An Australian farmer who thought he’d found his perfect soulmate online got a nasty surprise when he travelled to Mali to meet his fiancée – a reception committee of "machete-armed bandits" who held him for almost two weeks demanding an AU$100,000 ransom.
Des Gregor, 56, flew last month to the impoverished African nation’s capital Bamako in search of "Natacha" and a dowry of AU$100,000 in gold bars, Reuters reports. However, he was picked up at the airport by a carload of ne’er-do-wells who whisked him to an apartment full of armed men.
The kidnappers gave Gregor "a good belting" and threatened to chop off his arms and legs unless his family coughed the aforementioned ransom. He recounted: "I was tied, bound by the legs, and that was only probably for a couple of days because they knew that I was going to cooperate. There was always one bloke sleeping at the door, there was no way out."
The gang’s plan unravelled after 12 days when Oz and Mali police duped them into letting their hostage enter the Canadian embassy to collect the cash.
Tales From The Best Health Care System In The World…(continued)
Funny how the same people pushing "free market" solutions to the health care crisis in the U.S. are also the same ones pushing these Religious Exemption laws that allow individuals to refuse to give health care regardless of what their employer’s policies are…
A federal judge’s ruling this week upholds the right of Illinois pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception.
…
Several pharmacists employed by Wal-Mart and Walgreen Co. have been disciplined for either refusing to dispense Plan B or for refusing to promise that they would dispense emergency contraception if asked.
U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott denied a request Tuesday by Wal-Mart to throw out a lawsuit filed by pharmacist Ethan Vandersand. Scott sided with Vandersand, who had claimed he was legally protected from discipline by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act when he declined to dispense Plan B.
Vandersand, who lives in Bluffs, formerly worked at the pharmacy in Beardstown’s Wal-Mart. He was put on unpaid leave after he refused to fill a Plan B prescription requested by a nurse practitioner at Springfield’s Planned Parenthood on behalf of a female patient in February 2006.
Wal-Mart had contended the state’s right-of-conscience law doesn’t cover pharmacists. Walgreen Co. has made the same argument in other Illinois lawsuits filed by fired pharmacists.
But Scott wrote in her ruling, "The statute prohibits discrimination against any person for refusing to provide health care because of his conscience."
Emphasis mine. Note that the law doesn’t limit a person’s right to refuse to give health care to contraception. It can be health care for Anything, according to this judge. Picture someone who has AIDS and needs their medication to keep their viral count low. Picture some religious right bigot behind the counter turning them away because those medications enable homosexuals to escape the consequences of their sin.
Picture that happening to…hell…just about anyone who isn’t living their lives according to the god of the fundamentalists: who isn’t one of their tribe.
You need to keep something in focus here. Take a look back on the history of the rise of the religious right. Abortion was one of their hooks to get votes and money, when school desegregation wasn’t cutting it anymore. Then Anita Bryant showed them how much more effective the homosexual boogyman was, and they’ve been running with it ever since. But this fight has been going on for decades now, and the religious right got involved in politics along with the secular right over school desegregation…and more specifically, loosing their tax exemptions for their segregated private schools. That’s the mindset here. You have to keep that in focus. Abortion…The Homosexual Menace…these are just tools to keep the voters angry. The real agenda, is dividing America into haves, and have-nots. Guess which side of that fence you’re on.
These conscientious objector laws are ultimately about building that fence of have, verses have-not. It isn’t just contraception, and it isn’t just health care. It’s about building that fence. Everything is about building that fence.
Because we don’t deserve the American Dream. This is not our country. It’s theirs. We just work here.
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)
Regarding This Post I did a little while ago, on the Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon media bullshit circus….it gets even better…or the stench much worse depending on whether you feel more like laughing or crying. Glenn Greenwald has the goods …
But the far greater deceit involves the trip itself and the way it was represented — both by Pollack/O’Hanlon as well as the excited media figures who touted its significance and meaning. From beginning to end, this trip was planned, shaped and controlled by the U.S. military — a fact inexcusably concealed in both the Op-Ed itself and virtually every interview the two of them gave. With very few exceptions, what they saw was choreographed by the U.S. military and carefully selected for them.
…
The entire trip — including where they went, what they saw, and with whom they spoke — consisted almost entirely of them faithfully following what O’Hanlon described as "the itinerary the D.O.D. developed."
But to establish their credibility as first-hand witnesses, O’Hanlon and Pollack began their Op-Ed by claiming, in the very first sentence: "VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel. . . . " Yet the overwhelming majority of these "Iraqi military and civilian personnel" were ones hand-picked for them by the U.S. military:
Dig it. Two war supporters go over to Iraq on a trip planned, shaped and controlled by the Pentagon, and when they come back to the U.S. to present their pre-packaged findings they’re lauded by our feckless corporate news media as former war critics who went to Iraq to see for themselves what the conditions there were and then became believers in Bush’s policies. It isn’t just that not a word of it was true…it’s that everyone writing those editorals about how Bush’s policies were winning over the war critics knew goddamned well that none of it was true.
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