Having failed to force Ford Motor company to discriminate against homosexual people via threats of a boycott, the religious right will next attempt to force it to discriminate via shareholder vote…
(Washington) Ford Motor Company shareholders will vote next month on a resolution to drop protections for LGBT workers from the company’s human resources regulations.
The company had fought the motion, submitted by shareholder Robert Hurley of Alton, Ill, but when Alton took the issue to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the commission said the automaker must put the resolution to a vote at Ford’s annual meeting May 11.
The motion calls for Ford to change its policy to exclude any reference to sexual interests, activities or orientation.
Fine. Let’s see how the shareholders feel about their gay and lesbian neighbors. Every time we buy a Ford product, which now includes Volvo, that’s money into their pockets too after all, in one way or another. It isn’t just the executive salaries we’re helping to pay.
Pitching wares to the gay community while discriminating against glbt employees is nothing new in the auto world of course. BMW seems more then willing to try it , and they don’t even have the excuse of being located in a nation that religious fundamentalists are holding by the balls…
Our goal is not to incite a boycott of BMW’s cars, but rather to arm you, our readers, with awareness of the company’s actions as well as of those of the media outlets that published the ad. Speaking of which, one would hope that the publishers of GLBT-owned magazines and web sites would have higher standards than to accept advertising from a major, multinational corporation whose policies discriminate against the very audience that those publications were created to serve. Advertising dollars are scarce these days, but there is plenty of business from other car companies to go after—Gaywheels.com lists no less than 30 brands that qualify as gay-friendly.
But what really makes you angry about Robert Hurley’s cheapshit attempt to put a knife in the back of loyal Ford Motor Company employees, is that Ford management wants to be part of the civilized world, was willing to stand up to bigotry in a way that it’s founder, who admired Adolf Hitler, could never have fathomed. And like an infection the homophobic bigots keep trying to drag it down into their gutter.
You’d have thought that by now the United States of America would at least be past the point about arguing whether or not gay and lesbian people should even be allowed something as basic as the ability to hold down a job. But you’d be wrong. Never mind same sex marriage…it’s the twenty-first century and we’re still arguing about evolution, let alone about the humanity of women, people of color, and homosexuals. There’s an old joke about how Australia got all of England’s criminals, and America got all its religious fanatics, and between the two countries we got the shit end of the stick.
Why would a boy raised by a family of conservative republican Mormons want to mock rape 18 children under his charge at a Student Leadership camp and then plead for leniency so he could go on missionary duty for his church? Why would a conservative family values republican allow his son to evade responsibility for the serial sexual assault of children, some 15, some as young as 11 years old? Why would a staunchly conservative family values church institution like the Mormon church allow someone who mock raped 18 children with broomsticks, canes, mop handles and flashlights, and who despite being confronted by the testimony of his victims, continued to maintain it was nothing but a little hazing, go on a mission so they could become an elder member of the faith? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it does not make sense. And if it does not make sense, you must acquit!
Clifton Bennett, the 18 year old son of Ken Bennett, the president of the Arizona state senate will, in all likelihood, get probation instead of a prison term, for mock sodomizing 18 children aged 11 to 15 with an assortment of implements, including a broom, a cane, a mop handle and a heavy-duty flashlight. The assaults occurred at the Chapel Rock Camp in Prescott Arizona, at a week long camp held for student council leaders.
The son of Arizona’s Senate president confessed that he and another counselor shoved broomsticks and flashlights into the rectums of 18 boys in at least 40 incidents at a youth camp in June.
Now Yavapai County prosecutors say they will drop all but one assault charge and likely recommend little or no jail time if 18-year-old Clifton Bennett agrees to plead guilty.
A similar agreement has been offered to co-defendant Kyle Wheeler, 19, who faces an additional assault charge for choking three of the boys until they passed out.
The plea agreements were first presented in court last week and could be completed at a hearing Monday.
Prosecuting attorney James Landis explained the plea agreement in court, saying the "broomsticking" was a hazing ritual and a punishment, not sexual assault.
But legal experts, sex-crimes prosecutors and victims’-rights lawyers say the acts clearly fit the definition of sexual assault.
Perhaps, but that definition does not take into account being the son of one of the most powerful republicans in the state of Arizona, which can turn even the serial mock raping of 18 children in less then a week into a non-dangerous, non-repetitive offense…
The pleas, which describe the assault charge as "a non-dangerous, non-repetitive offense," have outraged parents who say their sons were victims of violent sexual attacks. The boys, who were 11 to 14 years old at the time, have had trouble going to the bathroom, sleep with clothes on, are afraid at night, and have undergone sexual-assault counseling.
Boys will be boys. Probation in this case is being sought as the preferable outcome, as this will allow young Bennett to continue with his upcoming missionary duties…
They [Bennett’s lawyers] described Bennett as an honor student and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, planning to go on a mission in September. "A felony conviction for assault will make his desire to complete his mission impossible," they wrote.
And this poor world could certainly use another missionary like him couldn’t it.
Police reports say he was assaulted with a broomstick, a flashlight and a cane — and now a 12-year-old Tucson boy may see the camp counselors accused of attacking him receive a plea deal that could allow them to avoid prison.
…
According to police reports, the assaults took place at Chapel Rock Camp during a weeklong camp for school leaders in June. The reports say some campers clogged a toilet and, when no one would confess, witnesses told police the junior counselors lined up the youngsters, told them to bend over and "broomsticked" them.
The boys told police that "broomsticking" was done alternately with a broom, a cane, a mop handle and a heavy-duty flashlight while they were clothed. The exact definition of broomsticking varied, according to witness reports, from touching brooms to the boys’ rectal areas to one description of how a boy was held down and the witness said the broomstick was "shoved" into his bottom.
…
The father of that boy says he did not know about the assaults until a detective called the family’s home in December. The father said his son spoke directly with the detective and has been reluctant to discuss the incidents with his family.
…
The father said he spoke to the victim advocate in the County Attorney’s Office, who told them Clifton Bennett was going to be offered a plea bargain to one count of aggravated assault. Cadigan also said she was told by a representative from the office that Bennett is being offered a plea bargain to one count of aggravated assault and Wheeler will be offered two counts. They’ll both face probation rather than jail or prison time, a possibility.
"Come on. I told her that was unacceptable. This was not roughhousing. These are 12 and 13-year-old kids. Anyone else would go to prison for six to 10 years," said the father, whom the Star is not naming because it would identify his son.
"I do remember when we picked him up from camp he complained that his butt hurt. But we didn’t pursue it. We had no idea what had been going on," he said. "He’s a pretty accomplished kid and he’s in counseling now, so hopefully he’ll get over it. He’s a strong kid."
The next time either the Mormon church or the republican caucus of the Arizona state senate go on a roll about how homosexuals, and same sex marriages, are such a dire threat to the welfare of children, someone ought to ask them where Clifton Bennett is doing his missionary duty these days, and if he’s allowed anywhere near children or broomsticks.
[Update…] Photo of our fine young Mormon missionary-to-be and one of his accomplices via Pam’s House Blend:
Eighteen boys ages 11 to 15. Broomsticks. Canes. Mop handles. Flashlights. Good thing Dad’s the president of the Arizona State Senate..!
Mystified by a rash of burglaries where thieves made off with…oven doors…the cops in South Bend think they may now know what the heck is going on…
South Bend detective Sgt. Jim Walsh said police arrested a suspect Thursday they believe sold the door to the woman. Police said an oven door and packaging materials were found in the trunk of the man’s car.
Oven doors are an increasingly hot item in burglaries targeting vacant properties. Walsh said oven doors were among the items stolen in five recent burglaries.
…
In the case of the bilked woman, she was approached by the suspect Feb. 20 at her workplace with an offer of a flat-screen TV for $500. The suspect settled for $300. But when the woman unwrapped the packaging, she found a cord, a controller — and an oven door.
Do you really need a flat screen TV so badly you’ll buy it from that shady character selling them out the back of his van? Look…go buy a book…
They’re remembering the death of pope John Paul this week, and in couple more it’ll be the ascendancy of pope Ratzinger. So since my weekly cartoon is late again (I did another sleep clinic at Hopkins which really mucked up my weekend…), I’ll try and bribe you with a re-run:
Calling same-sex unions “pseudo-matrimony” the pope said: “The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.”
Although was his first public comment on same-sex marriage since becoming Pope, Benedict had long history of attacking same-sex unions.
As Cardinal Ratzinger he was the Vatican’s most outspoken opponent of gay marriage.
He was the author of the a 2003 Vatican directive to priests around the world calling for a proactive stand to stop governments from legalizing same-sex marriage and for a repeal of those those already on the books that give rights, including adoption, to gay couples. (story)
In just a year Ratzinger took John-Paul’s various assaults on the humanity of homosexual people, removed the paternalistic veneer from them, and turned it all into a relentless machine. And now worldwide, violence toward homosexuals is on the rise. Imagine that. You’d think the Catholic church would know better then to go down this path again…
We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between “anti-Judaism” and “antisemitism”; between Christian Jew-hatred as a “necessary but insufficient” cause of the Holocaust; between the “sins of the children” and the sinlessness of the Church as such. These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.
-James Carroll, “Constantine’s Sword”
…but hate takes away all reason. In another year people will be marveling at how Ratzinger managed to make the climate for gays and lesbians even worse then he already had. And that hostile climate will in turn, kill more innocent people.
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a photojournalist…
Time was, I had several small newspapers running my photos. But for a kid fresh out of high school there was scant little money in it, and my soul was never competitive enough to keep pounding doors for work in a market that was saturated with other guys like me looking to get their pictures printed. By the mid-70s I’d given it up, and for a decade I just wandered aimlessly in the workforce. But my interest in what news photographers do has never flagged, and I’ll reliably stop to listen whenever a photographer comes forward to tell the story behind a photo. Their stories are worth hearing, to understand the struggle it sometimes is just to take the images that can keep the public informed, let alone deal with the fallout…
So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera — the story of his death became my responsibility.
The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.
…telling the reporter, "To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’" Michelangelo Signorile, himself of Italian descent, said on his show the other day that the word translates roughly into "get fucked up the ass". This is the man the right has been for years calling the most intellectual justice on the court. You have to figure they think it’s too bad Al Capone wasn’t available when Reagan had an opening to fill.
Whether Scalia knew there was a photographer there when he did that I’m still not sure. But the moment he heard the camera go off, he said "You’re not going to print that, are you?". So at minimum he knew he’d been caught being the crude barstool asshole he always is when he thinks the cameras aren’t there. But this time one was.
The photographer, Peter Smith, an assistant photojournalism professor at Boston University, was freelancing for The Pilot, a newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese. The operative word here is freelancing. Had he been staff, the photo of Scalia making an obscene gesture would have been the newspaper’s property and likely would never have seen the light of day. But, at least when I was doing it, a freelancer owns the photos they take, until they sell them to a newspaper. Whether The Pilot offered to buy the photo I don’t know, but I know had that been me I’d have held onto the rights for dear life.
For a couple days the photo stayed in the shadows, while the republican Mighty Wurlitzer went into operation, to convince the public that Scalia had made no obscene gesture…that the reporter was lying…blah blah woof woof… I was watching the whole thing unfold from the sidelines, knowing from my own experience just how suddenly things can happen, and how being just a fraction of a second on either side of the moment means you missed it. You get yourself back home to your darkroom (or nowadays I guess your computer), and you develop your film and you look over what you got and you see that you were close, but not spot-on enough that the picture is clear and unambiguous about what that moment was. Where the difference between capturing the moment and missing it entirely is less then a heartbeat, less then the blink of an eye, to be good at what you do you have to train your mind to see it coming and be there when it happens, just to stand a chance of getting it at all. The rest is chance, and chance can do even the best photographers wrong sometimes. I’d expected the photo of Scalia would hit the papers and the Internet almost at once, and when it didn’t I started to wonder if either Scalia had successfully managed to have it suppressed, or the photographer simply didn’t get a good shot of it.
“It’s inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment,” said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.
Despite Scalia’s insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper “got the story right.”
Smith said the jurist “immediately knew he’d made a mistake, and said, ‘You’re not going to print that, are you?’ ”
The Archdiocese of course, fired Smith immediately. Only I’m a little fuzzy about how you fire a freelancer. I guess what they meant was never darken our door again… Well, they covered up for child molesters. You have to figure that demanding a photographer cover up for a gutter crawling thug, who feels perfectly free to treat a church like it’s the corner bar, would be even less likely to strike them as unethical behavior. Morals. Values.
Peter Smith has taken what will become one of the iconic photographs of our times. That face, and the gesture, say it all, not only about the man, but about the times we are living in. That is what photographers live for. The god of shadow and light smiled on him in that one instant, and he captured an image that says it all, and he did not just the right thing, but the only thing a photographer could do with it; he showed it to the world. Because the world needs to see.
It’s almost shirt sleeve weather in the evenings now. A light jacket is enough to keep me comfortable when I take a casual stroll through the neighborhood. I’ve been a walker ever since I can remember, always taking long meandering strolls through my territory whenever I had something on my mind, or, as mom used to say, I got "ants in my pants". Four feet of snow or a torrent of rain are about the only things that’ll keep me from taking my walks, and even then it’s a near thing. I do my best thinking while walking. I devise software algorithms, write lines of code, compose cartoons, stories, email, blog posts (like this one), and ponder over various household chores and the Big Questions in life. Sometimes the only way I can get a clear head about something is to take a walk and think it over. I really look forward as winter recedes, to not having to bundle up whenever I get the urge to get out of the house and walk about for a bit.
My neighborhood has several corner gas stations scattered around, and nowadays more then ever I’m always taking note of the price whenever I walk by one. Regrettably it always seems to start rising again, whenever I start thinking about a road trip. Tonight I noticed that the price had gone up ten cents a gallon in just the last few days.
Well my retirement fund isn’t giving me returns like that. Maybe instead of buying savings bonds, I should just buy myself a gallon of gasoline and put it in a safety deposit vault somewhere. By the time I’m old and gray I might be able to retire on that gallon of gasoline.
I would not go so far as to say that Bush wanted war from Day One in the White House, but there was plenty of evidence he had Saddam on his mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have it from Richard Clarke, formerly the White House’s chief anti-terrorism official, that within a day of the attacks Bush was inquiring if Saddam might have had a hand in them. When told no — "But, Mr. President, al-Qaeda did this," Clarke told him — it became instantly clear that this was not the answer Bush wanted. "’Look into Iraq, Saddam,’ the president said testily," Clarke writes in his book, "Against All Enemies."
Well thank you for stating what’s been staringly obvious for, oh, about a couple years Richard. Only…what’s missing from this picture…
If there was an “I’m sorry for being so stupid” embedded in Cohen’s column I didn’t spot it.
This is the man who, on Feb. 6, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deeply-flawed testimony in New York, wrote: “The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”
In France right now they’re probably raising a toast now to the fact that Richard Cohen isn’t one of them.
Hey…Richard… The next time some serious threat to world peace raises its head, and I mean a Real threat, not a let’s go start a splendid little war to prove we have bigger balls then everyone else and demagogue the democrats into political submission threat…and the U.S. needs to prove its case to the rest of the world…before you get that urge to tell the world it had better listen to us…Just Shut The Fuck Up! k?
Walking to work in shirt sleeve weather, and watching your neighborhood wake up around you as you go.
Sitting on the front porch with a glass of ice tea, reading or drawing, in the weeks before the mosquitoes take it over (swear to God I’m gonna screen it in one of these years…).
Being able to keep all the windows in the house open because its nether too cold nor to hot outside.
You can stand still at night without freezing while looking up at the stars
That far-right Catholic web site that theocrat Richard Neuhaus leaned on for his claim that 50 or 60 percent of children raised by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual, and suffer many times the norm in incidence of child sexual abuse, has taken its own a peek at Michael Calace’s "Rape Of The Soul. Unaccountably, they seem somewhat appalled…
"The Rape of the Soul" is a fear-mongering, small-minded, and pathetically smutty polemic about art and the Roman Catholic Church. Presented as a documentary by filmmaker and self-described devout Catholic Michael A. Calace, the film seeks to discredit "predatory artists" from da Vinci and Botticelli to anonymous designers of contemporary greeting cards.
Ooooh. Self described devout Catholic is it? But look on the bright side. He doesn’t described himself as a recovering Catholic. Or an Ex-Catholic.
Kinda gets your goat when people read all kinds of filth into even the simplest expressions of beauty and joy in your world, let alone satanic influences, does it? Kinda pisses you off when people ascribe sinister motives to even the smallest commonplaces of your everyday life does it? "Predatory artists", did they say? Why…how unfair…how terribly, terribly unfair it must seem. But what Calace does he does out of love for the church…not hate. I’m sure many who are Catholic may view exposing the disordered subliminal sex messages and satanism in everything from Catholic art to Catholic children’s song books as a personal attack but it is not…any more then saying cancer or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder.
Or…not. After Andrew Sullivan posted about the gutter Neuhaus gets his facts on homosexuality from, the gutter replied that Paul Cameron is being smeared by the "gay lobby", Neuhaus only said it was a claim, Cameron isn’t his only source, and in any case homosexuals just don’t want to address the fact that they are "psychologically malformed". But it would "keep trying to find ways to say so in as charitable manner as possible." Or at any rate, as charitable a manner as possible while spitting in people’s faces and simultaneously twisting a knife in their heart. And you best believe charity like that doesn’t come along every day.
Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of SSA as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “gay” issue.
Charity starts with the standard issue comparison of homosexuals to pedophiles. "SSA" in case you’re wondering, is Same Sex Attraction, "MSM" is Main Stream Media, and "gay" is always in quotes because it’s always better to invent acronyms that dehumanize people, then allow them to speak for themselves. Charity. I wonder if Calace invented any good acronyms for all the penises and satanism he found in Catholic art? And in children’s song books no less…
Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of Catholicism as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “left-footers” issue.
Yeah…something like that. With lots of references to how they put pictures of cocks into school children’s books. And remember, it’s a devout Catholic saying so.
Or perhaps my own charity is a tad lacking. But I tried…I swear I tried…and it’s just too goddamn hard to extend the benefit of good faith to the braying jackass who wrote this, right before he compared gay people to child molesters:
The response to the statements that ’same sex attraction is a disorder’ is never an argument for why it is clearly a part of human nature (I suppose because there is none). Rather, the responses include the accusations of bigotry, “homophobia” (I’ve never figured this out, is that the fear of sameness or the fear of human beings???)…
Get me started… You know David, you’re right. You’re Absolutely Right. The word "phobia" means "an intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing". It doesn’t mean "hate". It doesn’t mean "avoidance". It doesn’t mean "prejudiced". You’re Absolutely Right David. The word "phobia" does not have that meaning. But The Suffix Can!Look Up The Motherfucking Suffix!
Tell your chemistry teacher that the word "hydrophobe" is something you can’t figure out (Is that fearful water? How can water be afraid?). Then tell your biology teacher that "photosynthesis" is something you can’t figure out, because plants don’t synthesize light, they synthesize sugars. It’ll be fun.
Many who are personally affected by SSA might see this as a personal attack. It is not. In fact, the very reason for this series is to show why calling SSA a disorder cannot be viewed as a personal attack any more than is saying cancer, or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder. Let me know what you think…
What I think: Jack Chick is worse then you deserve. "Rape of the Soul" on the other hand, is about right. Charity.
AOPA has prompted the FAA to keep an unregulated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operation out of navigable airspace above one North Carolina community.
"Safety is paramount, and current airspace users must be assured that a reasonable level of safety can be maintained," said Melissa Rudinger, AOPA vice president of regulatory affairs. "The prospect of small UAVs flitting around in the same airspace we use is frightening. We know what kind of damage a 5-pound bird can do to a GA aircraft. Imagine what would happen if you hit a 14-pound UAV?"
The issue came to head when AOPA learned that the Gaston County Police Department in North Carolina had bought a "CyberBUG" UAV from Cyber Defense Systems. The company sells the small radio-controlled drones as cheap helicopter substitutes for police, military, and news gathering uses.
The company says the 14-pound UAV cruises at 29 mph at 1,300 feet agl, which puts it easily into navigable airspace and creates a potential midair collision hazard.
"What do you think your chances are of seeing this thing before you hit it?" said Rudinger. "And it can’t sense you or get out of the way."
Oh tut, tut… Your local police department has better things to worry about. Like…unruly behavior…
This isn’t the first time law enforcement has flown the CyberBUG. The company claims it was used to watch for "unruly behavior" and "alert authorities about accidents" during the 12th Annual Southern Maryland "Blessing of the Bikes" in La Plata. And the company also sells a much larger 70-pound, turbine-powered drone that cruises at 250 knots.
Maryland. Great. Just great. Next time I’m out enjoying myself at an outdoor gathering I’ll be keeping an eye on the sky like I’m a damn rabbit looking out for hawks. All together now…My country ’tis, of thee…
Well Maybe I’ll Stop Again In Kanab Again After All
Looks like the decent folk in town aren’t taking that "Natural Family" resolution laying down…
(Kanab, Utah) Signs began popping up in store windows this week in Kanab, Utah proclaiming ”Everyone welcome here!” in a desperate move to avoid a threatened gay boycott. Some businesses went so far as putting small rainbow flag stickers on their front doors.
Dozens of business owners in the small southern Utah community are trying all they can to distance themselves from a proclamation by the city council that Kanab supports the "natural family" consisting of a working husband, a stay-at-home wife and a "full quiver of children."
…
The signs and stickers are being distributed by the Kanab Boosters, a business owners group. The Boosters are selling the signs and small stickers for cars for between $2.50 and $4.50.
The group hopes to raise enough money to take out newspaper ads throughout the state to promote the town as a diverse place to vacation.
…
Kanab is the only Utah governmental entity to pass the resolution, which was sent to cities all over Utah by the Salt Lake City-based Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank.
Earlier this week Sutherland President Paul Mero told the AP that studies show community problems such as crime, violence and poverty increase when family structures break down.
I question (as in ironically) the importance Mero places on intact families, so long as he’s busy teaching families to hate their gay and lesbian sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. But anyway…
That view was supported by Councilor Terril Honey who voted for the measure. Honey, who also is a local businessman, said it isn’t the council that is discriminatory, its the boosters.
He says that the poster and sticker campaign is likely to drive away families.
You gotta love how the bigot mind works. Gay people have families too of course, and families have gay people in them. And that never occurs to a jackass like Honey. But…never mind… The Everyone Welcome Here signs are discriminatory, because they will drive away people won’t go anywhere everyone is welcome.
TUESDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) — Loneliness has now joined obesity and lack of exercise as a potential risk factor for hypertension.
New research shows that loneliness can add 30 points to a blood pressure reading for adults over the age of 50.
The study’s results have surprised everyone involved.
"The take-home message is that feelings of loneliness are a health risk, in that the lonelier you are, the higher your blood pressure. And we know that high blood pressure has all kinds of negative consequences," said lead researcher Louise Hawkley, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.
Her team published its findings in the April issue of Psychology and Aging.
Thing is…my blood pressure is just fine. If anything it’s on the low side of just fine. But then, they always take my blood pressure reading after I’ve spent about a half hour to an hour quietly zoning out in the waiting room. I hate sitting around waiting, and when it’s an inevitable thing I’ll just stare off into space and zone out. It’s either that or climb the walls. When I finally get called in to see the doctor I’m actually in a very mellow state. But that’s not typically me.
I had a long AIM conversation with a certain someone a few weeks ago…that might have been a good time to take my blood pressure reading…
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I’m glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)
-Tom Lehrer, "Smut"
Okay…these people are nuts. All this time I thought they were just a bunch of uptight prudes who think people shouldn’t actually enjoy sex because people shouldn’t actually enjoy anything. But…no. (Warning…link goes to WorldNetDaily) They really are crazy…
‘Satanic’ art in Catholic Church exposed
Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery
Could the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis be tied to embedded Satanic and occultic imagery in its artwork – some of it hundreds of years old?
That is the seemingly incredible thesis of a new documentary, "Rape of the Soul," made not by anti-Catholic bigots, but by devout followers of the Church.
According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin ", producing an addictive "drug cocktail " of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.
Erototoxins. Erototoxins. Well…somebody’s got brain damage that’s for sure…
The film, which is being released by Silver Sword International, contends a major cause of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could be due to prolonged exposure to sexual and satanic images being incorporated into the religious art.
EEEK!
Experts are featured in the film to offer detailed accounts of the subconscious programming effects of the sex and occult images on the human brain and how it promotes sex, Satanism and the occult. Religious education materials, songbooks, children’s story books, devotionals and the Sunday Missals all have been found to contain embedded imagery.
EEEK!
"These images, unrecognized by the untrained eye, can be a ticking time-bomb to an individual who is unaware of their presence, especially someone who is already predisposed to deviant sexual behavior," said Reisman.
EEEK! EEEK!!
"Artists from DaVinci to Botticelli have embedded subliminal images into their art for centuries," said Calace. "In this case we found penises on crucifixes, anarchy symbols, swastikas, demonic faces and in modern works even the word ‘sex’ encrypted into the images. The works in question include modern artists’ work currently on the covers of missalettes and hymnals that at this very moment sit in the pews of churches throughout the U.S. and on children’s religious teaching aids."
EEEK! EEEK!! EEEK!!!
Calace said, "’Rape of the Soul’ was created to heal the many that have suffered from these uninvited violations."
Therapy for victims of art museums, and grocery store fruit and vegitable counters will be forthcoming in a later program.
Sex addiction. Man…that’s some powerful stuff isn’t it? Penises on crucifixes. Demonic faces. Anarchy symbols! Ms. Reisman and Mr. Calace should get help. How addicted to sex do you have to be to look at a crucifix and see a dick?
My last apartment in Cockeysville had a real nice balcony, with an amazing view looking out over Hunt Valley. I loved sitting out on it. But since it was a second floor apartment, and the balcony right beside the entrance to the building, it didn’t have as much privacy as I’d have liked. So one year I planted marigold and moon flower vines along the rails, which produced a lot of screening, but not quite enough, particularly in the fall and winter. So I bought a big tacky plastic office plant, I think at Staples (yeah…they had that) and put it on the side of the balcony by the entrance. It came in its own fake pot, with a little Spanish moss around the base of the plant to hide the fact that its trunk was nailed and hot glued to a piece of plywood.
The following spring, I noticed that the Spanish moss was disappearing. At first I thought it was the march winds blowing some of it away. But one morning I spied a little tufted titmouse struggling to free a piece of it and then I knew what was going on. It was nest building time. For the rest of that spring I watched while a variety of small birds methodically removed every last bit of Spanish moss from the pot of my plastic office plant. The stuff doesn’t grow up here in Maryland, and the local birds seemed to think it was a rare find. They got every last shred of it, like a bunch of wood workers picking over a stack of mahogany. I watched tiny little birds ferociously struggling with the last few threads of it that were held fast by the hot glue at the base. Finally I took a pair of scissors and cut the last bits of it free and within an hour it was gone.
I was dating Keith then, and the next time I went to visit him on Hilton Head I brought back a trash bag full of Spanish moss. The next spring I kept my office plant stocked with it and the birds took every last bit of it I had. Now I knew another way to attract birds to my front windows.
It’s that time of year again, and nowadays I not only have front windows, I have a front yard, and I can be a bit more creative about attracting birds. One of the pure joys of owning a house is how much more connected to the nature around me I feel. In most apartments I’ve lived in, bird feeding was just not allowed. They do make a mess and you do have to stay on top of it or things will start looking trashy pretty quickly. But it’s no chore to those of us who just like watching birds.
Nowadays I buy a bag of Spanish moss from a local craft shop. I put it out in a couple of old vases in my front yard by the tree. The city birds aren’t quite as impressed by it, but it gets pretty well picked over by the time summer comes along. And last year I added another product to my shelves. My Japanese maple drops tons of little dead twigs every fall, which I’ve just bagged and put out with the leafs. But last year I kept a few and when spring came around, broke them into slightly smaller twigs, about three to four inches, and put them into another vase beside the Spanish moss. It got a little attention last year, but not as much as I’d hoped. But it takes time to build a business.
I’ve had more activity from my feeders this winter then usual so maybe this nesting season my building supplies offering will get picked over a bit more. I’m thinking about buying a nice hanging bird bath for the Spanish moss, and maybe the twigs.
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